Suspect in 5 Slayings on Trial in Fla.

Glen Rogers went on trial for his life Tuesday in one of a cross-country string of four slayings that began in Van Nuys, bringing him notoriety as a good-looking drifter who preyed on red-haired women.

“This is the man right here that brutally murdered Tina Marie Cribbs on Nov. 5, 1995,” said Assistant State Atty. Lyann Goudie, dramatically wheeling toward the stern-faced defendant and pointing at him with both hands in her opening statement.

“He stabbed her two times and left her dead in a motel room that he rented. He took her wallet, her car and her jewelry, and he hit the high road.”

That high road ended with a wild, televised police chase in rural Kentucky six days after Cribbs’ body was found in the bathtub of a cheap Tampa motel room where Rogers took her after they had met in a local honky-tonk.

Rogers, 34, was driving Cribbs’ car when captured, his fingerprints were found on her discarded wallet, and the victim’s blood was found on a pair of denim shorts in his suitcase, prosecutors say.

Cribbs, 34, was one of four red-haired women Rogers is suspected of romancing and then killing during a murderous five-week spree in the fall of 1995. One of his alleged victims was Santa Monica barmaid Sandra Gallagher, also 34, who was found raped and strangled in her pickup truck, which was left burning in a Van Nuys parking lot.

An “America’s Most Wanted” show on Rogers, his televised arrest, a spate of national publicity about the sensational nature of the crimes, and Rogers’ own penchant for granting interviews from his jail cell have given the former carnival worker a bizarre celebrity in a subculture of true crime fans.

His autographs have been offered for sale in a mail order catalog devoted to infamous criminals; he has been featured on an Internet web page devoted to serial killers, and more than one person in the courtroom audience here claims to be writing books on Rogers.

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Although his hair has darkened, and his normal ruddy complexion has faded to a jailhouse pallor, some of the attention Rogers has garnered flows from his reputed charm and his blond good looks.

In the Showtown USA bar, in a town just south of Tampa that is a winter stopping place for circus and carnival hands, the barmaid who watched him pick up Cribbs just before she was killed described Rogers as “the best-looking guy she’s seen in Gibsonton, ever,’ ” according to Goudie.

“So she’s checking him out,” Goudie told the 12 jurors. When Cribbs and her friends arrive, “They’re all checking him out. They’re looking at his butt, looking at his face. He’s wearing jeans shorts, a button-down shirt. He was blonder and thinner than he is now. All four women are flirting with him.”

If Rogers escapes the electric chair here--the penalty the state is seeking--he still could face death in California, where he is charged with first degree murder in Gallagher’s death, or in other murder trials pending in connection with the deaths of women in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Rogers is also suspected in the 1993 slaying of a 71-year-old man he once roomed with outside his hometown of Hamilton, Ohio.

In Florida, prosecutors admit that the case against Rogers is circumstantial. But, they contend, it is a strong one.

Goudie said Rogers registered at the motel in his own name, left a hand-lettered “Do Not Disturb” sign on room 119 to give him time for his getaway, and was caught by Kentucky state troopers with a carload of incriminating evidence, including blood traces that contain Cribbs’ DNA.

In his defense, Rogers’ court-appointed attorney Nick Sinardi said in his opening statement that he agrees that Rogers went to the Showtown bar, drank beer and flirted with several women, and then took Cribbs to his motel room. Sinardi also admits that Rogers took Cribbs’ car and her wallet.

“So Mr. Rogers is a thief; that’s what the evidence shows,” said Sinardi. “[But] Mr. Rogers would have to be an absolute idiot if he were a murderer in Tampa, Florida, and continued to drive the victim’s car. He might as well hang a sign on it.”

Adding that the murder weapon has not been found, Sinardi said, “What this case is about, what the evidence will show, is that there was a rush to judgment. They focused on Mr. Rogers and did not follow up on other evidence.”

The trial got underway after two days of jury selection and a little more than a week after his attorneys asked for a delay on the grounds that Rogers was psychotic. Co-counsel Robert Fraser said the refusal of Rogers’ jailers to dispense two drugs prescribed by a psychiatrist rendered him incapable of helping with his defense.

But the Hillsborough County jail staff doctors say they cannot give medication unless they confirm the diagnosis of private physicians, and they can’t do that because Rogers refuses to talk to them.

Judge Diana M. Allen denied the defense motion for a delay, as well as a second motion that television cameras be removed from the courtroom.

Earlier, the judge had turned down other defense efforts to put off the trial after prosecutors ordered a search of the cells occupied by Rogers and three other county jail inmates, saying they got wind of a plan by Rogers to have another man confess to Cribbs’ murder.

According to a jailhouse snitch, Goudie reported during a hearing Friday, Rogers was scheming to have Jonathan “Rock” Lundin confess to killing Cribbs, because Lundin already faced death in another case.

Rogers reportedly told a fellow inmate that “Lundin was going to plead guilty in another homicide, and that Lundin was going to take the fall for Glen Rogers by saying that he killed Tina Cribbs,” Goudie said in a motion defending the April 2 search.

“Rogers said that he was feeding Lundin with information about the crime scene and the evidence so that Lundin would be well-informed on the evidence, circumstances, and on the case completely,” Goudie wrote in a response to the judge.

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In court, Cribbs’ mother, Mary Dicke, watches Rogers intently, trying to hold the blue-eyed glare of the man accused of plunging a knife into the chest and back of her daughter. “It’s been a nightmare that won’t go away,” said Dicke, who tends bar in the lounge where her daughter met Rogers.

On the other side of the courtroom is Rogers’ brother, Claude Rogers, a real estate agent in Palm Springs. After listening to the prosecutor’s opening statement, Claude Rogers said, “Unbelievable. That doesn’t sound like the brother I know. My brother declares his innocence, and I believe him.”

The prosecution is expected to call about 45 witnesses, including at least three Los Angeles police officers.

The trial is expected to run into next week.