Florida Court Clears Way for Glen Rogers’ Extradition

An alleged serial killer already sentenced to death in Florida can be extradited to face another murder charge in California, the Florida Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

Glen Rogers, a former drifter, was sentenced to death in Tampa a year ago for stabbing to death Tina Marie Cribbs, a hotel maid who met him at a bar and offered him a ride to a nearby carnival.

Authorities say Rogers killed three other women, all redheaded like Cribbs, in three states besides Florida.

They say Rogers killed Sandra Gallagher in Van Nuys, Linda Price in Jackson, Miss., and Andy Sutton in Bossier City, La., between September and November 1995. Kentucky authorities also want to talk to him about the 1993 death of Mark Peters, his former roommate.

Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, said her agency is prepared to put Rogers on trial for the Van Nuys slaying.

“We’re gratified to know that we’ll be able to seek justice for the victim in this case,” she said.

Gallagher’s father, Wes Baxter, told The Times last month that he was anxious for justice to be served.

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

Baxter and his wife, Jan, became alarmed in April when they said they received a call from a Los Angeles County prosecutor whom, they contend, broached the topic of not prosecuting Rogers in California because he was already facing death in Florida.

The prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Pat Dixon, said the Baxters were mistaken, that there was never any question of whether prosecutors would seek to try Rogers locally.

Sandra Gallagher, a 33-year-old mother, was strangled and set afire in her pickup truck, parked outside an apartment building in 1995.

Rogers was indicted in July 1997 on charges of first-degree murder and arson in connection with Gallagher’s death, and Florida agreed to extradite him for a trial in September. He will return to Florida afterward to await death in that state’s electric chair.

Rogers’ attorney appealed the extradition order, saying it would unconstitutionally hinder his attempts to appeal his Florida conviction.

But in a terse 1 1/2-page opinion, Florida’s highest court disagreed, saying the practice of returning suspects to the state where a crime occurred was well-entrenched in state and federal law.

“This rule serves many important purposes,” the court ruled in an unsigned decision. “It promotes the constitutional objective of returning persons for criminal trial to the state in which they have been charged; it honors the constitutional theory that extradition is essentially an executive function; it encourages comity between the states, and it conserves scarce judicial resources by narrowing the scope of collateral proceedings.”