Justice System Missed Chances to Jail Alleged Serial Killer : Crime: Backlogged courts and overcrowded facilities helped Glen Rogers elude custody. The most recent slip through the cracks came in L.A. County.

As Glen Rogers graduated from routine assaults to alleged serial killings, the criminal justice system missed three chances to stop him, or at least slow him down, according to court records and interviews.

Miscommunications among police, overcrowded jails and backlogged courtrooms all contributed to Rogers’ ability to repeatedly elude authorities and avoid lengthy jail time during the last two years.

In his most recent slip through the cracks, Rogers could have been sent to Los Angeles County jail in September for as much as 2 1/2 years for spousal battery and probation violation.

Instead, he was ordered by a Van Nuys court commissioner to serve two days in jail, pay a $100 fine, enroll in a domestic violence program and stay away from his girlfriend, Maria Gyore. Because of time he spent in jail waiting for the hearing, Rogers walked out of the courtroom a free man.

That was Sept. 1. Four weeks later, Rogers allegedly fatally strangled another a woman he met in a Van Nuys bar, 33-year-old Sandra Gallagher of Santa Monica, then embarked on what authorities contend was a cross-country killing rampage that spread to Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana.

“This guy should’ve been put away a long time ago,” Gallagher’s husband, Steve, said Tuesday. “He’s obviously one of those cases of the kind of people who shouldn’t be walking around.”

Rogers, 33, was captured Monday near Richmond, Ky., and remained there Tuesday while authorities from five states conferred on who will prosecute him first. Investigators also grappled with the question of whether four deaths could have been prevented had authorities in Los Angeles and elsewhere acted differently in their encounters with Rogers.

Police in Hamilton, Ohio, now say they were on to Rogers “right away” after he vanished in November, 1993, about the same time that his roommate, 72-year-old Mark Peters, was reported missing. Rogers had a long criminal record in his hometown, where he was known for a hair-trigger temper and violence against women, so he seemed a logical witness to question.

Then, on Jan. 10, 1994, investigators found Peters’ badly decayed body bound and hidden inside a rural Kentucky cabin belonging to the Rogers family. They were led there, according to one source, by one of Rogers’ brothers. Although the cause of death has yet to be determined, the discovery of the body in the Beattyville, Ky., cabin only affirmed detectives’ intent to question Rogers.

Yet the drifter’s location remained unknown until the next summer, when he was arrested and jailed in Los Angeles County on charges of arson. Noting that he was wanted for questioning in Ohio, Los Angeles authorities contacted Hamilton police and Detective James Nugent said he prepared to fly to Los Angeles to interview Rogers about Peters’ death.

But Nugent’s trip was vetoed at the last minute by Hamilton’s police chief, said a department spokesman, Dan Pratt, a casualty of concern that the interview might not be fruitful. Hamilton authorities also said they believed colleagues in Kentucky, where the body was found, were actively pursuing Rogers.

But about the same time, authorities in Kentucky dropped burglary charges against the missing Rogers, abandoning their own efforts to return him to their state.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Joan Burkhart, Peters’ daughter, said in a telephone interview. “I couldn’t get them to do anything. I talked to the chief of police here [in Hamilton] and the chief of police and detective in Kentucky. . . . I finally just gave up on it.”

In Los Angeles, meanwhile, Rogers was racking up new allegations of domestic abuse and other crimes.

On June 6, Rogers attacked two men with a knife in his Hollywood apartment building, trapping one inside an elevator for several minutes with the knife held to his throat, police said.

Rogers pleaded no contest to charges of assault with a deadly weapon for that attack and was sentenced by Hollywood Municipal Judge Michael Mink to six months in jail and three years’ probation.

But Rogers served only 42 days. He was the beneficiary of a county work release program aimed at freeing up space in overcrowded jails. Under the program, only the least dangerous convicts are supposed to be let out before they finish their term.

Undersheriff Jerry Harper and sheriff’s Sgt. Richard Spear noted that both of Rogers’ convictions were misdemeanors, making him eligible for the work release program. “People like this are being released early because we just don’t have the capacity,” Spear said. “The most we can keep them in jail is about one-third of the sentence,” Harper said.

After his release in July, an enraged and jealous Rogers caused so many frightening, drunken scenes at the Van Nuys lounge where Gyore worked as a bartender that she was fired in order to keep him away.

Then in late August, Rogers attacked Gyore again--throwing her and her belongings out of the Van Nuys apartment they shared and apparently motivating her to seek legal recourse. The next day, Gyore and her brother filed a complaint against Rogers at the Van Nuys police station and Rogers was arrested on suspicion of spousal battery.

Once again, he pleaded no contest to the charge and because of his previous conviction, might have been returned to jail. Rogers was still on probation for the Hollywood assault case and a judge could have revoked his probation at that point, officials said.

But despite the record, Van Nuys Municipal Court Commissioner Rebecca Omens gave Rogers a standard sentence for misdemeanor spousal battery that included only two days in jail.

Omens would not comment on Tuesday but told a reporter for KCBS-TV on Monday night that she did not remember the case. “As a bench officer, generally you rely on court staff--the attorneys, the sheriffs--to bring to your attention anything unusual,” Omens said.

Michael Knight, presiding judge of the Van Nuys Municipal Court, said bench commissioners such as Omens hear an estimated 300 to 400 cases a day, leaving them with no choice but to rely on others to red-flag anything serious.

“She’s a hard-working bench officer and does a lot of cases every day and she’s committed to what she does,” Knight said.

The prosecutor in the case might have missed the earlier conviction, said Richard Schmidt, supervisor of the city attorney’s office in Van Nuys, which handled the case.

Gyore’s brother, Laszlo, said he was shocked by Rogers’ lenient treatment. “They just turned him loose. . . .”

Laszlo Gyore also maintains that he repeatedly called police at the Van Nuys station, as well as Deputy City Atty. Michael Duran, who prosecuted Rogers in the knife attack, to warn them of Rogers’ potential violence. His sister, meanwhile, had fled to their native Hungary for safety.

“I barely did anything else besides alarm people to do something,” he said. “And nobody paid any heed until we had five cadavers.”