Valley Murder Suspect Linked to More Deaths

A man connected to two slayings in Van Nuys and Ohio is now being sought in the killings of two women he courted in Mississippi and Florida--both of whom were found stabbed to death in bathtubs.

Glen Rogers, described as charming, handsome and volatile, was charged last month with murdering Sandra Gallagher, 33, whose body was found in her burning pickup truck on Victory Boulevard in September.

“He’s getting to be like one of your serial killers,” said Detective Dan Pratt of the Hamilton, Ohio, Police Department. Hamilton police want to question Rogers about the death of his former housemate, whose corpse was found last year under a pile of furniture in an abandoned house owned by Rogers’ family in rural Kentucky.

After the Van Nuys killing, Rogers disappeared. But last Friday, police in Jackson, Miss., got a grisly clue to his whereabouts when they discovered Linda Price, 34, dead in her bathtub.

Price had met Rogers at a county fair about three weeks before she was killed. “She just started dancing with him,” Price’s mother, Carolyn Wingate, said. “She fell madly in love with him.”

Then Tuesday morning, police in Tampa, Fla., found the body of yet another woman who had been fatally stabbed and left in the bathtub of a motel room that Rogers had rented.

Tampa Police Detective Rick Childers said officers ran Rogers’ name through their computer and learned he was wanted in the Van Nuys killing. Tampa police called the Los Angeles Police Department from the motel, reaching Van Nuys homicide detectives who were already on another line, speaking to Jackson police about their homicide.

“We’ve got two phones off the hook and they’re both talking about Glen Rogers and murders,” Detective Stephen Fisk said.

In addition to the four deaths he is linked with, Rogers turned a blowtorch on Hamilton police detectives, tried to set a closet in his Hollywood apartment on fire and attacked two people in Hollywood with a knife, according to authorities.

“This guy is my No. 1 right now,” said LAPD Detective Mike Coblentz, the lead investigator in the Gallagher killing. “He’s certainly capable of doing more.”

Fisk pointed out that a month elapsed between Rogers’ alleged flight from Van Nuys and the death of Linda Price in Jackson. “You just have to wonder what else this guy’s done during the time he’s been en route,” he said.

Price’s mother, Wingate, said her daughter was quickly charmed by the 33-year-old construction worker “with the prettiest eyes and blond hair you had ever seen.”

Price, a housecleaner, was described as a sweet woman who was emerging from two personal tragedies. Her husband had committed suicide, her mother said, and a boyfriend had beaten Price, sending her to the hospital. Then she met Rogers.

“He was the most gorgeous man,” Wingate said.

Price quickly moved into Rogers’ hotel room, and a week later the two of them got an apartment together, Wingate said.

But three days before she was killed, Price had told her sister over the phone that she had learned something about Rogers that scared her, Wingate said. Price stopped short of revealing her discovery when Rogers walked into the room. Rogers apparently overheard Price talking to her sister, Wingate said, and got angry with her.

Wingate said she went to check on her daughter, who visited Wingate daily, at her apartment Oct. 31, after she failed to show up at her house.

When she peered through the blinds, Wingate said, a slight detail signaled to her that something was wrong.

“I could tell the shower curtains were pulled . . . we never pulled the curtains all the way,” Wingate said. “I thought to myself, ‘Linda is in there dead.’ ”

Wingate said her pleas to the building manager to let her inside her daughter’s apartment were ignored. By last Friday she and Price’s 18-year-old daughter had persuaded police to check out the apartment.

Once inside, police verified Wingate’s suspicions. Her daughter was dead. Wingate said somebody had written a cryptic message on the bathroom mirror: “We found you Glen.”

A few days after Price’s body was discovered, Wingate said she received a telephone call from a man saying he was Rogers’ brother. Glen Rogers, the caller told her, could not have killed Price. Wingate thinks the caller was Rogers.

Authorities said Rogers, last seen in Jackson loading black bags into his pickup truck, then drove to Tampa.

He arrived at the Tampa 8 Inn last Saturday night with an unidentified woman in her late 30s, Childers said. The couple checked into Room 119, paying to stay through Monday.

Tuesday morning, a maid checked the room and found the woman stabbed to death in the bathtub. Childers said the woman had probably been killed late Sunday or Monday.

An all-points bulletin has been issued for Rogers in Florida, and the television show “America’s Most Wanted” plans to do a segment on him, police said.

Rogers first came to Los Angeles in 1994 and soon had three run-ins with the law.

Fisk said that in the summer of 1994, Rogers and his then-girlfriend quarreled, and Rogers went into a closet, doused her clothes with gasoline and set them ablaze. He was arrested on suspicion of arson, but charges were dropped after the girlfriend refused to testify.

In June of this year, Fisk said, Rogers got into an argument with a man outside a building on Las Palmas Boulevard in Hollywood. Fisk said Rogers attacked the man and a security guard with a knife. Rogers was arrested, although it was unclear Tuesday whether charges were filed.

The men who scuffled with Rogers in Hollywood were not hurt. Police say that Rogers’ next alleged victim was not so lucky.

Sandra Gallagher, a mother of three, went to Van Nuys from her home in Santa Monica on Sept. 29 to redeem a $1,200 winning lottery ticket and later met Rogers at a local bar.

Fisk said Rogers talked Gallagher into giving him a ride home, strangled her outside his apartment building, then set her body on fire inside her truck.

Rogers grew up in Hamilton, a community of about 60,000 north of Cincinnati. Ohio authorities said Rogers had a number of encounters with police, the most notable incident being the time he poked a flaming blowtorch through the peephole of his front door when officers responded to a domestic violence call.

In September, 1993, Rogers moved in with 71-year-old Mark Peters, according to Peters’ daughter, Joan Burkhart. A month later, both men had vanished, police say. Peters’ body was found in the abandoned Kentucky house in January, 1994. Investigators sought Rogers for questioning, but he was already in Los Angeles, said Pratt, the Hamilton detective.

Pratt described Rogers as a seemingly friendly man who would frequent bars in Hamilton, meeting new people and forming friendships. But police suspected he had a darker side and had arrested him several times on charges ranging from arson to forgery, and kept an eye on him. Rogers served time in jail, but details of his criminal history were not available.

Pratt said Tuesday that he recalls a habit of Rogers’ that bothered Hamilton police in the past but that now seems chilling. Every so often, he said, Rogers would leave Hamilton for months at a time. Police always wondered what Rogers did while he was away.

“Maybe he’s committed these crimes before,” Pratt said, “but [the bodies] have just never been found.”

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A Murderous Trail

Glen Rogers, 33, is now being sought in the killings of two more women in Mississippi and Florida. Rogers has been connected to gruesome slayings in Ohio and Van Nuys.

THE VICTIMS

1) Mark Peters, 71.

* Body Found: In Lee County, Ky., in January of 1994.

* Cause of Death: Undetermined.

****

2) Sandra Gallagher, 31.

* Body Found: In her burning pickup truck early Sept. 30, 1995, near Rogers’ Van Nuys apartment building.

* Cause of Death: Strangulation.

****

3) Linda Price, 34.

* Body Found: In the bathtub of her apartment Friday in Jackson, Miss.

* Cause of Death: Slit throat and stab wounds.

****

4) Unidentified woman.

* Body Found: In a motel bathtub in Tampa, Fla., Tuesday morning.

* Cause of Death: Stab wounds.

Source: Times staff.