Extradition Hearing for Accused Serial Killer Postponed

A court hearing scheduled today for extradition requests involving alleged serial killer Glen Rogers has been postponed because formal written requests have yet to be received, Kentucky officials said Monday.

Instead, Rogers will be arraigned in Madison County Circuit Court on local felony charges of wanton endangerment and criminal mischief, which stem from his Nov. 13 arrest near Richmond after a high-speed chase by Kentucky state troopers.

Rogers, a 33-year-old former Van Nuys resident, is the prime suspect in a seven-week cross-country killing rampage that police believe began in the San Fernando Valley. Rogers is being held without bail in the Madison County Jail.

Extradition requests are expected from California, Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana but had not yet been received as of Monday, a spokesman for Kentucky Gov. Brereton Jones said.

Once they are in hand, Jones’ office will consult with the Kentucky attorney general’s office and prosecutors elsewhere to determine who should prosecute Rogers first, probably basing their decision on who has the strongest case, said Joe Lilly, Jones’ press secretary.

Police accuse Rogers of killing Sandra Gallagher of Santa Monica after meeting her in a Van Nuys bar on Sept. 29. Police believe he then went on to seduce and kill three more women in Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana before his capture in rural Kentucky, about 120 miles away from his hometown of Hamilton, Ohio.

Rogers, who became the subject of a nationwide manhunt, has also been linked to the 1993 death of his elderly housemate in Hamilton--72-year-old Mark Peters--whose remains were found bound and hidden last year in a cabin Rogers’ family owns in Beattyville, Ky.

Police nationwide are now looking for connections between Rogers and a host of unsolved slayings, but he has yet to be officially accused of any deaths beyond the recent four that made him a national fugitive.