Crime & Safety

Conviction, Death Sentence Upheld for So-Called 'Cross-Country Killer'

Glen Rogers was convicted in 1999 of murdering a Santa Monica woman.

By Terri Vermeulen Keith/City News Service

The California Supreme Court today unanimously upheld a death sentence for the so-called "Cross Country Killer'' Glen Rogers, who was convicted in 1999 of murdering a Santa Monica woman after being sentenced to death for killing a Florida woman.

The state's highest court rejected the defense's contention that jurors who convicted Rogers of Sandra Gallagher's Sept. 29, 1995, strangulation should not have heard evidence during his trial's guilt phase about two other killings, including one for which he was sentenced to death.

In a 70-page ruling, Associate Justice Marvin R. Baxter wrote that Rogers "selected each of his victims in a similar manner, used a common ploy to lure them to a place where they would be alone before murdering them, then acted in similar fashion after each murder, cleaning up the murder scenes or otherwise attempting to conceal the victims' bodies to buy himself time to escape, taking personal property from each victim, and fleeing across state lines.''
   
Associate Justice Ming W. Chin went even further in a concurring opinion, finding that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Jacqueline Connor could have allowed evidence about Rogers' suspected involvement in a fourth killing -- that of Linda Price in Jackson, Miss. -- during the trial's guilt phase.

"Within a six-week period, four women in four different states on four different occasions were murdered shortly after they met defendant, previously a stranger to them, in a bar and socialized with him; and defendant suddenly disappeared from the area at precisely the time each murder occurred,'' Chin wrote. "The compelling -- and entirely legitimate -- inference from these facts is that defendant committed all four murders, including the charged California murder.''

In July 1999, Rogers was sentenced to death for killing Gallagher, whose body was discovered inside her burning pickup truck in the rear parking lot of a convalescent hospital in North Hollywood. The 33-year-old married mother of three  -- her sons were 7, 8 and 15 at the time -- had met Rogers in a Van Nuys bar, where she had gone after winning nearly $1,300 in the California Lottery.
   
Two forensic pathologists determined that Gallagher had been manually strangled, and that she was already dead when her body was burned.

A few days later, a yellow hoop earring belonging to Gallagher was found on the kitchen floor of Rogers' Los Angeles apartment during a police search, according to the California Supreme Court's ruling.

Rogers fled first to Mississippi, where Price was killed on Oct. 31, 1995, and then to Florida, where he was eventually convicted and sentenced to death in July 1997 for the Nov. 5, 1995, stabbing death of Tina Marie Cribbs, who was found in the bathtub of a Tampa motel room he had rented.

He was also suspected in the Nov. 7, 1995, stabbing death of Andy Lou Sutton in the bedroom of her Bossier City, La., apartment.

Rogers -- who grew up in Hamilton, Ohio -- was arrested on Nov. 13, 1995, by Kentucky State Police after a wild, high-speed chase in Cribbs' white Ford Fiesta, from which he threw half-full beer cans at the pursuing officers.

Just before being sentenced to death in California, Rogers maintained that another man was responsible for Gallagher's killing.


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