Victim’s Family Says D.A. Sought to Abandon Case

Sandra Gallagher was murdered three years ago. Strangled. Then the body of the 33-year-old mother of three was set afire in her pickup truck, parked outside an apartment building in Van Nuys.

Given those facts, what family would not want to be sure that the man charged with such a monstrous crime would stand trial? But not long ago, Wes and Jan Baxter say, a Los Angeles County prosecutor called their home in Paradise, a small town two hours north of Sacramento, to sound out Jan about not prosecuting alleged serial killer Glen Rogers because he is already on Florida’s death row.

“I feel like I have been betrayed,” Jan Baxter said last week in an interview.

Added her husband: “I want to tell the D.A.’s office, ‘Get off your butt, get this guy to California, put him on trial and get him sentenced.’

“I don’t care who kills him, Florida or California. Just get the job done.”

The Baxters say their ire was triggered by a call from veteran Deputy Dist. Atty. Pat Dixon, who was assigned the Rogers case last summer.

Dixon insists that the case is still on track for prosecution in Los Angeles.

“There is no issue of whether or not we will ask for him. We want him back [for trial],” Dixon said of Rogers, who also is linked to at least two other slayings in Mississippi and Louisiana. It’s not true, he said, that he suggested to Jan Baxter that it was no longer necessary to try Rogers in California.

But that is not how she remembers it.

In an interview, Jan Baxter maintained that Dixon told her that he did not ask to handle the case and did not know why he had been appointed by Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti to replace the previous prosecutor, Lea P. D’Agostino.

“He told me he hadn’t wanted this case in the first place. He said he knew that I had a good rapport with Lea D’Agostino. So he was apologizing,” Baxter recalled. “He said he didn’t know why Garcetti had thrown Lea off the case and put him on. That is what he told me.”

(D’Agostino has filed a Civil Service Commission case against the district attorney’s office, claiming that she was removed from the high-profile case after urging City Atty. James K. Hahn to challenge Garcetti’s reelection--a claim the district attorney’s office denies.)

Then, Baxter said, Dixon told her he would be ready for trial 30 days from the date that Rogers arrives from Florida, where he is on death row and fighting extradition in a proceeding that is before the state Supreme Court.

But after saying that, Baxter said, Dixon wondered aloud whether it made sense to bring Rogers to California to stand prosecution.

“He said it is going to cost California a lot of money to bring him here. So his feeling was why should California go through this expense when Florida was going to go ahead and take care of Rogers anyway?” Baxter said.

Besides, she said she was told by Dixon that if Rogers is executed in Florida, it would be punishment enough. “He said the electric chair in Florida sometimes catches on fire and [the executed are burned] when they electrocute them,” she said Dixon told her.

“And I said, ‘Well, I don’t care. He set my daughter on fire,’ ” Baxter said.

Finally, Baxter said, when she told Dixon she and her family would not soften their position that Rogers should stand trial in California, he suggested that they were motivated by something other than justice.

“He said, ‘Well, maybe you and your family are just wanting revenge,’ ” Baxter recalled.

“It just really bugged me,” she said.

In an interview Friday, Dixon insisted that he and the district attorney’s office are committed to prosecuting Rogers, who allegedly killed Gallagher after she gave him a ride home from a Van Nuys cocktail lounge, an old hangout where she was celebrating a $1,250 win at keno.

“We are doing everything we can to bring this guy back,” Dixon said.

As for his assignment to the case, Dixon added, he brought up D’Agostino’s involvement because he knew that the prosecutor and the Baxters had a “close” relationship.

Jan Baxter, he said, “was concerned about the switch in prosecutors, and I said that it was not my decision to make the switch. . . . I think what I was saying was that I didn’t take this case from Mrs. D’Agostino.”

Although he could not remember referring to the potential cost of trying Rogers in Los Angeles, Dixon said he may have pointed out a reality: A death penalty case in California could take months to schedule for trial and years to litigate.

“I may have said that [about the cost] . . . and it is true that it will cost a lot of money to try this case. But we have already made the decision to do this,” Dixon said.

Said Dixon: “Gil Garcetti has decided we are bringing [Rogers] back and assigned me to the case.”

As such, Dixon said, the call to the Baxters was always intended as a status report, not an effort to sound them out about dropping the case. “It was a courtesy call to let [them] know what was happening,” he said.

Added Dixon: “I tried very hard to explain . . . what all the possibilities were. I tried to explain what might happen and not to sugarcoat anything.”

But at this point, the Baxters said, they do not need anything sugarcoated. They just want two things: the truth and a California trial for Rogers.

“Every day you read about somebody getting off on a technicality,” said Wes Baxter. “It happens. It isn’t speculation. And we want to make sure that doesn’t happen because this man needs to be killed for what he has done.”

Although Dixon maintains that he never made such a reference, Wes Baxter said he remains angry that “this guy in L.A. says something about [Rogers] getting his head burned” during an execution in Florida’s electric chair, which is nicknamed Old Sparky.

“Well, Christ, he burned our daughter up and we feel no sympathy for him. We want him brought to justice,” Baxter said.

And notwithstanding Dixon’s stated commitment to the case, Baxter said that, like his wife, he believes that the district attorney’s office has lost interest in the case since Rogers has already been sentenced to die in Florida.

“I think they’re hoping this thing will go away,” he said.

But that, the Baxters said, would be a betrayal of the district attorney’s promise long ago to prosecute Rogers for the killing of their daughter.

“They said, ‘We will keep you informed . . . we will let you know what is going on,’ ” Jan Baxter said she was assured in a meeting last summer that included Dixon. “They said they were continuing the prosecution.”

Then came Dixon’s one and only call since last summer, Jan Baxter said.

“It seemed like he was feeling me out . . . trying to get me to say, ‘Well, OK, don’t worry about . . . bringing [Rogers] out here,’ ” Baxter said.

“But I want him out here to make sure that . . . he dies.”

Added Baxter: “I don’t think my daughter’s death ought to be brushed under the rug.”