Kentucky’s Top Official Weighs Options on Rogers : Extradition: Gov. Brereton Jones, who leaves office in nine days, first must decide whether to defer matter to his successor.

Kentucky Gov. Brereton Jones faces a decision: Should he try to extradite alleged serial killer Glen Rogers to California, or one of the three other states that wants him, before Jones leaves office in nine days? Or hold onto him in case Kentucky itself decides to bring murder charges against Rogers?

Or just leave the whole thing to Jones’ successor?

His current inclination, the governor said this week, is to hand Rogers over to the state with “the best chance of getting a conviction for a death penalty or life imprisonment.”

“Because, if everything I have heard is true--and of course I cannot pass judgment on that, but if in fact a jury finds that is true--then this person should not be ever out on the street again,” Jones said.

California on Thursday became the first state to get its extradition request onto Jones’ desk, asking that Rogers be returned to stand trial for the killing of Sandra Gallagher, a Santa Monica woman who was strangled and set afire in Van Nuys on Sept. 29.

Jones’ press secretary, Joe Lilly, said Friday that Jones is waiting until he receives the expected extradition requests from Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana before deciding which state has the strongest case. “We expect them next week,” Lilly said.

Rogers, 33, who acquaintances said had a charming way with women, allegedly picked up and killed women in Tampa, Fla., Bossier City, La., and Jackson, Miss., in a cross-country flight after the killing of Gallagher.

Rogers’ attorney, Deputy Public Defender Ernie Lewis, has vowed, however, that Rogers will fight extradition to any state that has a death penalty--and all four of them do.

“At this point, we would continue to fight extradition,” Lewis said, declaring Jones would still have time to determine the matter before his term ends Dec. 12.

Brereton will be replaced then by Gov.-elect Paul Patton.

Any extradition warrant Jones signs will be fought at a hearing in circuit or district court in Richmond, Ky., Lewis said.

Rogers has been held in the Richmond jail since his arrest Nov. 13 by state troopers following a 100 m.p.h. chase that ended in a two-car crash near Waco, Ky., the climax of a nationwide manhunt.

While the extradition issue is being decided, Rogers is being held on Kentucky charges of wanton endangerment and criminal mischief, based on the car chase. Trial is scheduled for Feb. 5.

A possible complication is that there are suspicions that Rogers may have been involved in at least one Kentucky death.

After the California extradition request arrived, Bob Winlock, spokesman for Kentucky Atty. Gen. Chris Gorman, said ordinarily any such request is processed within 90 days.

“But the clock’s not running now,” he added, “because there is a good possibility that he might be involved in a murder here.”

Winlock said Kentucky state police are still investigating the discovery of human remains in a shack owned by Rogers’ family in Beattyville, Ky., that are suspected to be those of Mark Peters, Rogers’ former roommate in Hamilton, Ohio, who disappeared in November, 1993.

This week, state police detectives returned to the shack where the decomposed body was found in January, 1994, bringing a dog trained to sniff out old remains. The dog used in the previous search was trained to find fresh remains. Investigators did not say whether they had found additional evidence.

But so far the Peters case is still being treated only as a “death investigation,” state police spokesman Ed Robinson said.

At this point, “we’re not calling it a murder,” he said. “The problem is identification of the body. There was very little left of him. There was some rope with the remains, but no lower jaw, for example. Identification has been difficult.”

Robinson said the remains were sent to Ohio to check against X-rays taken of Peters when he was alive, “but the Ohio pathologist never signed off that it was Mark Peters.”

Noting that California and other states have “good cases” against Rogers, Robinson said extradition to one of the other states “would be the practical thing to do.”