Rogers ‘Joked’ He Had Killed 70, Report Says : Suspect: Kentucky TV station broadcasts information from affidavit of interview with man accused of slaying Van Nuys woman.

Suspected serial killer Glen Rogers told--or joked with--an investigator that he had killed as many as 70 people, a television station reported Friday.

In an affidavit obtained by WTVQ-TV in Lexington, Kentucky State Police Detective Robert G. Stephens said he and Detective Floyd McIntosh interviewed Rogers on Monday, after his arrest following a chase by state police officers.

“I advised him that we were looking at him concerning the murder of five people, and we had five bodies,” Stephens wrote in the affidavit, which was submitted to a judge to obtain a search warrant.

Stephens said Rogers told McIntosh “that it’s more like 70 bodies and laughed as he said this.”

Police already suspect Rogers, 33, of killing four women in Van Nuys, Jackson, Miss., Tampa, Fla., and Bossier City, La. Rogers also is wanted for questioning in the slaying of his roommate, Mark Peters, 72, of Hamilton, Ohio, in 1993.

Rogers was formally indicted Thursday on Kentucky charges of first-degree wanton endangerment and criminal mischief stemming from a chase with police before he was arrested. A hearing is expected next week, although the date had not been firmly set on Friday.

The detective’s affidavit was to justify a search warrant seeking hair and blood samples from Rogers, and authorization to search the car Rogers was driving when he was arrested.

The Preble County, Ohio, Sheriff’s Department said Thursday that Rogers’ first victim might have been Kelly Ann Camargo of Hamilton, Ohio, the Dayton Daily News reported Friday.

Camargo’s decomposed body was found in Camden, Ohio, in September, 1993, two weeks after she was seen for the last time--getting into a car with a stranger outside a Hamilton bar. Preble County Sheriff Tom Hayes said an investigation began this week to explore any link between Camargo’s death and Rogers.

“We’re going on the information that he was from Hamilton and she was from Hamilton and it was reported that he picked up his victims in bars,” Hayes said.

Peters was reported missing on Nov. 1, 1993, two months after Camargo’s body was found, Hamilton Police Detective Dan Pratt said.

Rogers and Peters, who had been roommates for several months, were seen together shortly before Peters disappeared sometime between Oct. 18 and Nov. 1, according to a missing-person report.

Peters’ decomposed body was found wrapped in a sheet and tied to a chair in a Kentucky cabin that Rogers’ family owns, in the same area where Rogers was arrested last week.

Meanwhile, authorities said Rogers is no longer a potential suspect in the disappearance of a woman abducted from an Ohio River beach.

Rogers has been ruled out as having been involved in the Aug. 26 abduction of Heather Tegue from a beach near Henderson in western Kentucky, state Trooper Larry Abel said. Henderson police had said that they wanted to talk with Rogers because he resembles a man seen dragging Teague, 23, off a deserted stretch of the river beach.

The prime suspect in that case, Marvin Ray Dill of Poole, fatally shot himself as police and the FBI arrived at his home in rural Kentucky to question him and search his property.

Teague’s body was never found.

Both Dill and Rogers resembled the person seen dragging the victim. Both are heavily bearded and slightly heavyset.