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Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Yahoo
Hillsborough killer Glen Rogers to be executed Thursday evening
Glen Rogers, who almost 30 years ago stabbed a woman to death in a Tampa motel room, is set to be executed Thursday evening at Florida State Prison. Barring a last-minute stay, he will be put to death by lethal injection at 6 p.m. for the 1995 murder of Tina Marie Cribbs. Rogers, 62, a former carnival worker dubbed by media as the 'Casanova Killer' and the 'Cross-Country Killer,' is believed to have committed other murders. Cribbs' slaying occurred the same day he arrived in Tampa in November 1995. He rented a room at the Tampa 8 Inn off Columbus Drive, near Interstate 4, telling a motel clerk he was a truck driver whose vehicle had broken down. He later went to the Showtown USA bar and restaurant on U.S. 41 in Gibsonton. Patrons there remembered the long-haired, bearded stranger dancing to songs from a juke box and buying a round of drinks for a group of women. Cribbs, 34, was with them. A native New Yorker, she'd moved to Gibsonton from Oklahoma a couple of years earlier. She lived three houses away from her mother, who gave her a pager so they could always stay in touch. She had two sons. She worked as a waitress at Steak 'n Shake and as a housekeeper at the Ramada Inn-Apollo Beach. As she chatted with Rogers, Cribbs agreed to give him a ride to a nearby carnival lot. She left a cold can of beer on the bar and said she'd return. She never did. Her mother paged her more than 30 times that night, but got no response. Two days later, a maid at the Tampa 8 Inn found Cribbs dead in the bathtub of Room 119. She'd been stabbed twice with a long knife. The room had been rented to Rogers. He'd paid for an extra day, telling a clerk not to clean it and placing a handwritten 'do not disturb' sign on the door. Police in California, Louisiana and Mississippi investigated Rogers for similar slayings of women he met in those states during a six-week period that year. He was also suspected, but never charged, in the death of a man in Kentucky. In a jailhouse phone call with a Kentucky newspaper, Rogers asserted he had not killed anyone. Physical and circumstantial evidence in the Cribbs case said otherwise. Investigators found her wallet discarded at a North Florida highway rest stop. His fingerprints were on it. When Kentucky state troopers found Rogers days after the crime, he led them on a high-speed chase in Cribbs' stolen Ford Festiva. Blood marked a pair of his shorts, which investigators determined contained DNA that matched Cribbs. At trial, a jury heard about the criminal history of a man who was described as charming and sociable but prone to bursts of anger, especially when he drank. His defense presented evidence of an abusive childhood and an alcoholic father. But it couldn't overcome the brutality of the murder. A medical examiner testified that the stab wounds Cribbs suffered formed an L-shape, indicating that the killer twisted the knife after plunging it into her. A jury convicted him and unanimously recommended the death penalty. Rogers was also later sentenced to death in California for the murder of Sandra Gallagher, who was strangled and left in her burning pickup truck a few weeks before Cribbs' murder. His appeals, as is typical, wound through courts for years. Cribbs' mother, Mary Dicke, told the Tampa Tribune in 2011 she feared she wouldn't live long enough to see her daughter's killer executed. 'My life stopped in 1995,' she said. 'My daughter was everything to me.' The Tampa Bay Times was unable to reach Cribbs' family this week for comment. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Rogers' death warrant last month, the fifth execution he has ordered this year after a period in which the state conducted relatively few. Florida only had one execution in 2024. Before that, in 2023, DeSantis carried out six executions, which occurred as he was running for president. The reason for the current uptick in executions is unclear. The governor's office did not respond to an email for comment. Rogers' final appeals included requests for a court to hear new evidence about extensive abuse he suffered as a child. From the age of 10 through his teen years, he was repeatedly raped by women and men, traded for drug money and exploited by the staff at an Ohio juvenile correctional facility, according to court records. Lawyers argued that a new jury might favor a life sentence if they heard those details, but courts declined to give him a new penalty hearing. Ahead of the execution, Rogers' brother drove from Kentucky to see him for the last time. On Wednesday, Claude Rogers told the Tampa Bay Times the visit was less personal — occurring with a glass barrier between them — than their past meetings in the prison visitor room. He decided to head home, unsettled by the isolated atmosphere. 'I said my goodbyes to him,' Claude Rogers said. 'He's my brother and I love him. I asked God to guide him on this next journey.'
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Yahoo
As he faces death, Hillsborough killer's troubled youth is an untold story
TAMPA — The state plans to execute Glen Rogers on Thursday evening, almost 30 years after he stabbed to death a 36-year-old mother of two in a Tampa motel bathtub. Barring a last-minute stay, the execution will affirm what a jury long ago unanimously decided should be Rogers' fate. Yet his lawyers have argued there is much that the jury never heard — enough that if another jury heard it, Rogers might instead receive life in prison. Courts have repeatedly rejected efforts to reduce the sentence for Rogers. Rulings essentially say his arguments are meritless and should have been made long ago. As he faces the now imminent prospect of the death penalty, Rogers' lawyers say his story is yet to be fully told. Well documented is the tale of the blue-eyed charmer known as the Casanova Killer or the Cross-Country Killer, twice convicted of murder and suspected in at least three other deaths across the U.S. Less known is the tale of a damaged young man whose early life experiences in state facilities and as a victim of sexual abuse that put him on a path to murder, his attorneys contend. 'Glen basically is a creature that was built by the state,' said Dan Sikes, the attorney handling Rogers' federal appeals. 'And people wonder why he's accused of doing the things he's accused of doing.' Glen Edward Rogers was born in 1962, the second-youngest of seven children who grew up in Hamilton, Ohio, a hardscrabble industrial town about 20 miles north of Cincinnati. His father was described in court records and news accounts as an alcoholic, prone to fits of rage wherein he'd break things in their home and fire a gun outside. When his drinking caused him to lose his job at a paper mill, the family moved into a dilapidated house. Their mother was described in court as a battered woman who would severely punish the children if they woke their dad from his drunken naps. They were seldom disciplined otherwise, even when they got caught burglarizing houses. New details surfaced about five years ago, when experts — among them, a former FBI agent — working for Rogers' defense uncovered what were described as repressed memories of horrific sexual abuse he endured. Witnesses were lined up to corroborate. Court records filed in 2020 include a detailed summary. When he was 10, Rogers spent 'many nights' with a woman in his hometown who raped him until he was replaced by another boy. He was the same age when he began spending time in a local brothel, known as the 'cathouse.' One of his older brothers, who is now deceased, took advantage of Rogers by 'pimping him out' to obtain drug money, court records state. The records name two women who raped the boy, but also offered him to men who produced child pornography. When he was 11, court records state, a man described as a 'notorious child molester' gave Rogers a job sweeping his Hamilton radio store, using it as a 'grooming' opportunity for sexual favors. He gave Rogers gifts and showed up at his house if he missed work, reminding him of his generosity to get him to acquiesce to the abuse. Rogers was interviewed later as part of a criminal investigation against the man, but denied being molested by him, court records show. He recalled that once, when he and the man were alone on a boat, the man told him he 'could murder him anytime he wanted.' The man pleaded guilty to a sex crime in an unrelated case, records state. 'Mr. Rogers' family and local community failed him,' attorney Ali Shakoor wrote five years ago. 'It is no wonder that he began a life of crime at such a young age and was eventually sentenced to juvenile correctional facilities, where he was further ruined.' In his early teens, Rogers began using drugs. He ended up in the Training Institution of Central Ohio, a defunct juvenile detention facility. Rogers recalled further sexual abuse there at the hands of male guards. He also was regularly locked in a room, where he was kicked and punched, then held in solitary confinement. One night, staff awakened Rogers. He was told to go outside and dig a hole. A boy's body was later placed inside it and buried, court records state. 'The state of Ohio failed to protect Mr. Rogers and is partially responsible for him eventually becoming a capital defendant,' Shakoor wrote. Rogers had worked as a cab driver in his hometown, according to news accounts. He'd also been described as a carnival worker. Before he turned 30, Rogers had been arrested more than 25 times, news accounts state. The crimes ranged from petty theft to attempted arson to assault. The Cincinnati Enquirer in 1995 described him as a 'free-spending Goodtime Charlie who wooed women in honky-tonks and taverns.' But the same story, drawing on reports from people who knew Rogers, called him disturbed, angry and a man who could turn mean, especially when he drank. Police questioned him in 1994 after a man named Mark Peters turned up dead, tied to a chair in a dilapidated cabin in northern Kentucky. Peters, 71, a neighborhood handyman who repaired old clocks and restored antique furniture, had let Rogers stay in his house. Investigators were unable to determine a cause of his death. Soon after, Rogers left town. He surfaced in Van Nuys, California, near Los Angeles in September 1995. A bartender at McRed's Cocktail Lounge remembered the well-dressed, bearded stranger romancing Sandra Gallagher, a 33-year-old mother of three who was celebrating a $1,250 lottery win. He was seen getting into her truck. The truck was found the next day, burned. Gallagher's body was inside. She'd been strangled. In early October that year, a woman named Linda Price met Rogers in a beer tent at the Mississippi State Fair. She had two children. She worked in sales and, like Rogers, lived out of hotels. Quoted in news stories from the time, friends said she was lonely and fell immediately for him. They got an apartment together. She was found there in early November, stabbed to death in the bathtub. Days later, Rogers appeared at Showtown USA, a bar and restaurant in Gibsonton, a carnival town on the eastern shore of Tampa Bay. Tina Marie Cribbs, another young mother, was there with friends. Rogers bought them drinks and flirted with her. She offered to give him a ride and said she'd be back. She never returned. She was found two days later in the bathtub of Room 119 at the Tampa 8 Inn motel off Columbus Drive, near Interstate 4. She, too, had been stabbed. Rogers had rented the room. Her Ford Festiva was missing. Her wallet turned up at a highway rest area in North Florida. His fingerprints were on it. As a nationwide manhunt ensued, Rogers turned up in Bossier City, Louisiana. People saw him shooting pool in a bar called It'Il Do and dancing with a woman named Andy Jiles Sutton. Her roommate found her two days later, lying nude on a leaking waterbed. She'd been stabbed. Days later, Kentucky State Police located Rogers driving Cribbs' stolen car. He was arrested after a high-speed chase. Juries in Florida and California found him guilty for the murders of Cribbs and Gallagher; authorities in the other states chose not to prosecute him. Defense lawyers presented some evidence of Rogers' troubled upbringing, along with claims that he was mentally ill. Rogers denied killing anyone. But he also denied, in a 1997 jailhouse interview after his trial, that he'd had an abusive childhood. Whether his claim is true is unclear. It wasn't enough, anyway, to overcome the brutality of Cribbs' murder. 'This totally destroyed my life,' her mother, Mary Dicke, said in a sentencing hearing. 'She was all I had.' The Florida Supreme Court last week turned down Rogers' latest appeal, which included the claims about his childhood. His remaining legal avenues include a challenge to the constitutionality of lethal injection, pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, and a new pleading filed Monday, which challenges the quality of the legal representation death row inmates receive from the state. If neither of those appeals succeeds, Rogers will be executed at 6 p.m. Thursday at Florida State Prison, near Starke.
