'The evilest thing': Florida executes serial killer Glen Rogers; victims in 5 states

Yahoo

15-05-2025

Florida has executed a man known as the "Casanova Killer" for his good looks and ability to charm women just before murdering them.
Glen Edward Rogers, 62, was executed Thursday by lethal injection for the murder of Tina Marie Cribbs, one of four single mothers in their 30s with reddish hair who fell victim to the Casanova Killer. Rogers was also known as the "Cross Country Killer" because the victims all lived in different states: California, Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida.
"He's an animal," one of his victim's sisters said in court before Rogers was sentenced to death, according to an archived report from the Associated Press. "He's about the evilest thing I think I've ever imagined."
Soon after his arrest, Rogers claimed to have killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles in June 1994, and about 70 people overall. There was no evidence to back that up.
Rogers − a native of Hamilton, Ohio − was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m., becoming the 16th inmate executed in the U.S. this year and the fifth in Florida. Another three men are set to be executed in the U.S. next week, in Texas, Indiana and Tennessee.
Here's what to know about Rogers' execution, including who his victims were.
Authorities connected five victims to the Casanova Killer. Four of them were mothers with reddish hair in their 30s. Three of the murders happened within a six-day period.
Mark Peters, a 72-year-old retired electrician in Hamilton, Ohio, with whom Rogers lived with briefly, was found dead in a shack owned by Rogers' family in January 1994 in Beattyville, Kentucky. (Rogers is a native of Hamilton, Ohio just outside Cincinnati.)
Sandra Gallagher, a 33-year-old mother of three, of Santa Monica, California, killed on Sept. 28, 1995 in Van Nuys. Her body was found in her burning vehicle. She had met Rogers in a bar the night of her murder.
Linda Price, a 34-year-old mother of two, found stabbed to death in the bathtub of her home in Jackson, Mississippi, on Nov. 3, 1995. Price briefly lived with Rogers, telling her mother: "He is my dream man," according to an archived story in the Dayton Daily News.
Tina Marie Cribbs, a 34-year-old mother of two, found stabbed to death in a Tampa, Florida hotel bathtub on Nov. 7, 1995. Like Gallagher, she had met Rogers at a bar on the night of her murder.
Andy Lou Jiles Sutton, a 37-year-old mother of four: three sons and a daughter who were 19, 17, 8, and 6 when she was found stabbed to death in her bed on Nov. 9, 1995 in of Bossier City, Louisiana. Sutton and Rogers met before her murder and are believed to have slept together.
Growing up, Rogers' childhood was deprived of love, moral guidance or family values, and he frequently witnessed his alcoholic father beat his mother, according to court records.
Rogers started using controlled substances at a young age and began committing burglaries, eventually becoming a chronic alcohol abuser, court records said.
As an adult, he held a slew of jobs, from a school bus driver in his native Hamilton, Ohio, to a carnival worker in Mississippi.
Since his arrest at the age of 33, he spent most of the past three decades on death row. He was 62 at the time of his execution.
Randy Roberson, who was 17 when his mother Andy Lou Jiles Sutton was murdered, planned to attend Thursday's execution with his wife.
Roberson remembered Sutton as a fun mom always ready to play a game and who greeted her kids off the school bus with fresh grilled cheese sandwiches. Today, she would have been a grandmother to 11 and a great-grandmother to two.
Amy Roberson told USA TODAY that her husband was looking for closure he never got, partially because Rogers was never tried in Louisiana.
"He just wants to see him take his last breath," she said the day before the execution. "He wants to try to fill this void that he's had all these years and just know that he's no longer alive and being fed three meals a day and getting to live a life."
Mary Dicke, the 84-year-old mother of victim Tina Marie Cribbs, beat brain cancer and lung cancer, fighting to survive so she could witness the day Rogers would be executed.
"God is on my side. I hope he will remain on my side until I do see this done," Dicke told WTVT-TV in Tampa in 2016, saying she made a vow to live to see Rogers die.
Jerri Vallicella, whose sister Sandra Gallagher was murdered by Rogers, said she has long been ready for the execution. "It's been 30 years of nightmares, and I'm ready for this to be over."
More: A handsome stranger with piercing blue eyes asked them for rides. Then he killed them.
Rogers' attorneys have been arguing that a medical condition that affects his liver could interact with one of the lethal injection drugs in such a way that it would cause him "substantial risk of needless pain and suffering."
The Florida Supreme Court rejected that argument, as did the U.S. Supreme Court, clearing the way for the execution.
His attorneys declined to comment for this story.
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter with USA TODAY.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Serial killer Glen Rogers executed in Florida; victims from 5 states