Rogers Guilty in Florida Woman’s Death

Glen Rogers, a smooth-talking drifter notorious as the alleged “cross-country killer” after four woman died in a string of grisly slayings that began in Van Nuys in the fall of 1995, was found guilty of first-degree murder Wednesday in the stabbing death of a Florida woman.

A jury of seven women and five men took nearly eight hours to decide that Rogers, 34, killed Tina Marie Cribbs after he met her in a bar and asked her for a ride to a low-rent motel room he had rented under his own name.

The bloody body of Cribbs, 34, was found in the bathtub of the Tampa motel room on Nov. 7, 1995, and Rogers was arrested by police six days later after a televised high-speed chase in Kentucky. He was driving Cribbs’ white Ford Festiva.

Rogers, a former carnival hand with a reputation for charming women, could be sentenced to death. The same jury is to resume deliberations today to determine whether to recommend that Rogers be executed in Florida’s electric chair.

Rogers could also face the death penalty in California, where he is charged with the strangulation of Sandra Gallagher, 33, of Santa Monica. She is believed to have met Rogers in McRed’s Cocktail Lounge in Van Nuys while she celebrated a $1,000 Keno win. She left with Rogers, witnesses said, and her body was found in her burning truck not far from the bar.

Whether Rogers will ever stand trial in California is unclear. An agreement between Florida and Kentucky, where Rogers was arrested, calls for Rogers to remain in Florida if he receives the death penalty.

Nonetheless, Gov. Pete Wilson’s office is trying to work out a plan with Florida officials to bring Rogers back to Los Angeles, and believes that would be possible even if Rogers is sentenced to death in Florida, a Wilson spokesman has said.

Rogers has also been charged with killing women in Louisiana and Mississippi. All the victims had red hair.

Rogers, who was also found guilty of robbery and grand theft in connection with Cribbs’ slaying, showed little emotion when Hillsborough County Circuit Judge Diana Allen read the verdict in a Tampa courtroom. But his mother, sitting just a few feet away, began to sob silently.

Mary Dicke, Cribbs’ mother, quickly left the courthouse without comment.

In closing arguments to the jury earlier this week, Assistant State Atty. Karen Cox told jurors that Cribbs, a hotel maid and mother of two sons, suffered a cruel death, stabbed once in the chest and once in the buttocks by a killer who twisted the knife in the wound and then left her to die slowly in the bathtub.

“When she left the bar,” said Cox--referring to Showtown USA, the honky-tonk south of Tampa where Cribbs and Rogers met--”it was like she walked into a black hole. This woman . . . was never heard from again.”

Rogers’ court-appointed defense attorney, Nick Sinardi, argued that the state’s case was circumstantial and weak. He conceded his client took Cribbs to the motel, but insisted that she was alive when Rogers stole her car and drove away.

“I told you before, and I’ll tell you again,” Sinardi repeated to jurors. “Glen Rogers is a thief, not a murderer.”

No murder weapon was found. But prosecutors put FBI scientists on the stand who testified that a pair of denim shorts found in Rogers’ suitcase were stained with what appeared to be both Cribbs’ and Rogers’ blood, according to DNA analysis.

Other prosecution witnesses testified that Rogers’ fingerprints were found on Cribbs’ discarded wallet, and suggested that a black watch found under Cribbs’ body was similar to one Rogers was seen wearing.

Rogers, who did not testify, has enjoyed a macabre celebrity since his arrest 17 months ago after a nationwide manhunt during which he was featured on television’s “America’s Most Wanted.” While in jail he has called newspaper and television reporters to grant interviews as well as hosting visits from groupies and autograph collectors who track serial killers.

Several witnesses in the Cribbs case mentioned Rogers’ body and long blond hair. One friend of the victim’s described him as the best-looking man ever seen in the Showtown lounge.

Rogers is also charged with murder in two other deaths in addition to Gallagher’s. In Bossier City, La., he is charged with stabbing Andy Jiles Sutton, 37, in November 1995. And in Jackson, Miss., he is accused of stabbing 34-year-old Linda Price, whose body was found in her apartment bathtub two days before Rogers picked up Cribbs in Florida.

Rogers also is suspected in the 1993 slaying of his elderly roommate, whose body was found in a Kentucky cabin, but no charges have been brought in that case.