Death Penalty Recommended for Rogers

For the second time, a jury has recommended death for Glen Edward Rogers, the convicted killer with a taste for strawberry-blond women he picked up in bars.

Rogers, dubbed the Cross-Country Killer for a six-week crime spree during which he is accused of the slayings of four women in as many states, is already on death row in Florida in the stabbing death of a hotel maid.

“We’re going to have a glass of champagne and toast this jury that had enough sense to know that this monster had no right to live,” said Jan Baxter, whose daughter was strangled and set on fire by Rogers in Van Nuys at the start of his 1995 killing spree.

The six-man, six-woman Los Angeles County Superior Court jury deliberated on the former carnival worker’s fate for over a week.

Jurors seemed to have reached an impasse Friday, but after breaking for the Fourth of July holiday weekend they returned Tuesday and reached a unanimous verdict in just over an hour.

Jurors declined a request to speak with reporters, and Rogers’ defense lawyer said they did not explain to him what changed over the weekend.

“They were very tight-lipped,” said Deputy Public Defender Jim Coady. “I think they were very cautious not to give out anything that would affect an appeal.”

Sitting at the counsel table in a gray business suit, Rogers looked directly at the clerk as she read the jury’s verdict Tuesday but he displayed no emotion.

The lack of reaction was simply another example of Rogers’ emotional problems, said Coady, who had tried to convince jurors that his client should be spared because he was a product of brain damage, physical abuse at his mother’s hands and early drug and alcohol abuse.

Relatives of both the defendant and Sandra Gallagher, whose lifeless body Rogers set on fire in her pickup truck on Victory Boulevard, said the death sentence was a foregone conclusion because of the number of deaths attributed to him.

Claude Rogers, the defendant’s brother, said he believes his brother’s assurances that he didn’t kill Gallagher. He said the jury convicted him only because it was presented from the start with two other murders attributed to him.

He criticized the decision by the district attorney’s office to extradite Rogers for trial after he was put on Florida’s death row, calling it a political ploy to appear tough on crime.

“Let’s put it this way,” replied Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, “if your daughter was murdered, wouldn’t you want her killer brought to justice?”

At a sentencing hearing next week, Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Connor will decide whether to follow the jury’s recommendation or fix the penalty at life without the possibility of parole.

Rogers, who has been described as charming, handsome and volatile, met Gallagher, 33, in September 1995 at McRed’s bar in Van Nuys, where she was celebrating a lottery win. She left the bar to take him home and her charred remains were found in her pickup truck the next day.

He allegedly told a friend he’d killed her during an argument, but that information was kept from the jury after the friend, who is in federal prison, refused to testify.

After Gallagher’s death, Rogers left town and allegedly killed three women in Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida, leaving two of their bodies in bathtubs.

Deputy Dist. Atty Curtis Hazel said there’s no question Rogers is a serial killer.

“All of the women were picked up under similar circumstances,” Hazel said.

“It’s just that the other murders were even more gruesome” than the Gallagher killing.

It was the death of Tina Marie Cribbs that earned Rogers his first death sentence. That case is currently on appeal.

After a nationwide manhunt, Rogers was caught in Kentucky in November 1995.

Authorities from four states convened there to hash out a prosecution strategy. It was decided Rogers would be tried first in Florida, which had a death penalty case.

The governors of Florida and California decided that Rogers would then be extradited to California for trial, where the Cribbs conviction made him eligible for the death penalty for multiple murders.

Authorities here will return Rogers to Florida’s death row after sentencing.