Man May Be Tied to 3 More Slayings : Port Hueneme: Police examine unsolved ’93 killings. Evidence could link women’s deaths to Glen Rogers.

As authorities step up a nationwide manhunt for alleged serial killer Glen Rogers, Port Hueneme officials said Saturday that they are sifting through clues that could link the suspect to three unsolved 1993 slayings.

Two years ago, in a town that police say averages no more than one homicide annually, three women were killed in a three-month spasm of violence that never resulted in arrests.

Jerry Beck, a Port Hueneme police sergeant who is leading the local investigation, said the slaying of Cynthia Burger on Aug. 5, 1993, most closely “fits part of [the serial killer’s] method of operation.”

Burger, a 44-year-old customer-service manager at Gold Coast Acura in Ventura, was strangled and her two-story condominium on Outlook Cove was set ablaze in an apparent attempt to cover up the cause of death. Investigators found Burger’s body in a bathtub.

In one of at least four deaths nationwide that police say may be linked to Rogers, authorities discovered the body of 33-year-old Santa Monica resident Sandra Gallagher strangled and burned in the back of a truck in Van Nuys on Sept. 29.

In another death that authorities have tied to Rogers, Linda Price’s naked body was found last week in a bathtub in Jackson, Miss., after she had been stabbed to death.

Beck said the fact that Burger was strangled and found in a bathtub and that her house was set afire led authorities to investigate connections between the 1993 slaying and the recent string of killings linked to Rogers.

“Those things obviously prompted us to be somewhat interested,” Beck said. “This is another lead. That is all this is right now.”

Beck said local authorities are also looking for possible ties between Rogers and two other 1993 homicides in Port Hueneme, but said they less closely match the killer’s method of operation.

The Port Hueneme killings began June 1, 1993, when Norma Rodriguez, a 32-year-old mother of two young boys, was strangled in the living room of her home on East B Street. Rodriguez’s estranged husband found the body when he went to pick up the children, who were not harmed.

Three weeks later, 87-year-old Beatrice Bellis was discovered stabbed to death inside her apartment in a senior citizens’ complex on East Scott Street.

According to officials, Rogers may have struck in California, Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana, and he seems to seek out red-haired, single women he meets in country-Western bars.

None of the women killed in Port Hueneme had red hair, Beck said. And Patrick Murphy, who worked with Burger at the Acura dealership, said he “knows for sure” his co-worker did not frequent bars.

Beck also said the killer in each of the three cases did not force entry into the victim’s home. The element that links all three homicides is the fact they happened so near to one another in time and distance, he said.

Beck said he knows that Rogers, 33, a recent Van Nuys resident who is originally from Ohio, lived in the Los Angeles area in 1994 and 1995. Beck said police have not established that Rogers spent time in Ventura County, but that “there is an indication that he could have been in this area.”

The local investigation, Beck said, will focus on contacting police departments to see if they have any information. In particular, Beck and others will try to determine if Rogers had contact with police that would put him in this area during the time of the 1993 homicides.

Beck said both Burger and Bellis were sexually assaulted by their slayer. He said police have DNA evidence, which means a test should be able to establish if Rogers is a suspect. Beck did not know if there is DNA available from Rogers.