THE CROSS COUNTRY CASANOVA KILLER

Article BY LORI BELL

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For six weeks in the fall of 1995, a murderer crisscrossed the country seducing red-headed women he met in bars before savagely murdering them. Also known as the “Casanova Killer,” cops track this road romeo’s every step, but they can’t catch him till his killing spree comes full circle.

In Van Nuys, California, on September 29, 1995, 33-year-old Sandra Gallagher was drinking at McRed’s Lounge, a neighborhood bar around the corner from her apartment. People called her Sam. She stood about 5’3”, 95lbs., but had a big voice.

The mother of two had endured two failed marriages, but on that night she was celebrating having just won $1200 playing Keno. Her plan was to take her winnings and use it to move closer to her sons who were now living in Northern, CA.

Across the bar, a well-groomed blond haired man was entertaining a small crowd. He had a southern charm, was witty, and people enjoyed being around him. Often times he bought drinks for the whole house.

Apparently he was making constant attempts to pick up the female bartender who was working that night. Flirting, the man asked the bartender if she would give him a ride home, she refused. Ultimately he turns his attention towards Sandra Gallagher, and she started to flirt with him.

The smooth operator bought Sandra a drink, and the two began to dance. Before long he asked her for a ride home. His excuse was he didn’t want to drink and drive, and that gave the very subtle appearance that he was a responsible person. Unlike the bartender, she took the bait.

Around 1:30am she agreed to give the young man a ride home. They left the bar through the back door and hopped into Gallagher’s truck. The man only lived a half mile from McRed’s, but they never made it to his apartment . Once in her truck, he eventually strangles her, stabs her, and lights the truck on fire.

Later that morning authorities discovered Sandra’s truck in the parking lot of a North Hollywood Convalescent Hospital. Her body was so badly burned, it took four days to make a positive identification. In the meantime the killer skipped town on a greyhound bus. Police had absolutely no idea who was responsible for this.

In Jackson, Mississippi, on October 14, 1995, Linda Price, a 34-year-old house cleaner and mother of two was with her sister at the State fair. She was considered a sweet woman that had two personal tragedies in her life up to this point.

She had a husband who committed suicide, and a boyfriend who was very abusive. Price wasn’t necessarily looking for a companion, but the man who stood before her in the beer tent caught her eye. She was struck by his brilliant blond hair. He was tall and good looking. The handsome stranger had only been in town for two weeks.

He showered Linda with compliments when she asked him to dance. They hit it off and ended up spending the night together in his hotel room. She told her mother he was the most gorgeous man she had ever met and believed she was in love. During their brief courtship he told her that he was a construction worker. A week later they started living together. But Price soon had second thoughts about her new boyfriend.

On October 31st, 1995, Linda called her sister and told her she’s heard something about her new lover, something that scared her. Linda’s sister, as she waited for Linda to tell her exactly what this information was that so traumatized her, suddenly heard a male entering into the room in the background and the phone is hung up.

Later that day, when Linda failed to call for their daily chat, her mother stopped by the apartment. Even though the curtains were drawn her mother could still look through the window and see that the bathroom shower curtain had been pulled all the way closed.

This is something they never did in their own house. Because of that she believed her daughter was actually dead inside that apartment. But three days passed before Price’s family convinced law enforcement to perform a welfare check on the residence.

Police made entry and at that point they made a gruesome Discovery. They found Linda Price dead in the bathroom tub, she was stabbed four times in the back and her throat had been cut. Investigators also found blood smeared paper towels and a mop. It appeared the killer had cleaned at the crime scene, however there was a clue left at the scene.

Investigators note that on the bathroom mirror there was a message that said “We have found you Glen .” Linda’s boyfriend, whose name happen to be Glen, is nowhere to be found.

In late September 1995, a smooth operator picked up Sandra Gallagher from a bar in Van Nuys, California, then viciously murdered her and burned her body. Two weeks later nearly 2,000 miles away in Jackson, Mississippi, Linda Price had met the same Casanova at the State Fair.

This killer was well-dressed, well-groomed, he had been characteristically charming, he enjoyed buying women drinks, he gave them compliments, and he told them he preferred not to drink and drive and would ask for a ride home.If you combine all those features, how could anything possibly go wrong?

That’s the persona he had learned to really home and craft, and it was absolutely deadly. Once he had these women alone, his rage and anger came out, and he just didn’t kill he overcompensated with numerous stab wounds, slashing and strangulation. It’s one-on-one, it’s very very personal.

In Gibsonton, Florida, on November 5th, 1995, 34 year old Tina Cribbs was having drinks with friends at Showtown USA, a bar popular with traveling Carnival and circus workers. Cribbs, a divorced mother-of-two, had a hard, busy life. Tina had three jobs, she worked at a Ramada as a cleaner, worked at another hotel as a cook, and at a restaurant as a cook.

Tina was waiting for her mother to meet her at the bar, when a well-groomed man captured her attention. A young man broke into her circle of friends, began buying everybody drinks, and socialized. She was absolutely charmed right off her feet. The blonde-haired Patron asked Tina for a lift to his hotel, the Tampa 8 Inn.

Around 3:45 p.m., Tina and a man left Showtown in her 1993 white Ford Festiva. Eventually her mother arrived at the bar, and Tina’s not there but her friends are, and they told her that Tina had just left with a drop-dead gorgeous man. Cribbs never returned to the bar that evening. Her mother had reported her missing to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Department.

Fast forward to the next day. A motel manager at the Tampa 8 Inn noticed a white Ford Festiva, they noticed a young man got in that Festiva and drove away. Before he left the same man paid for an additional night and gave the front desk specific Instructions that no one clean his room till check out on Tuesday morning.

Less than 48 hours after Tina Cribbs went missing, motel staff entered the man’s room, number 119, and made a horrific discovery, Tina’s body. She had been stabbed several times in the chest and buttocks.

There wasn’t much forensic evidence for detectives to go on, but they immediately identified a suspect. Investigators determined that the person who rented the motel room was Glen Rogers. They ran his name through the FBI National Crime Information Center database and discovered that he was wanted for homicide.

Authorities in Florida now knew that Glenn Rogers was a fugitive on the run, wanted for murder in Van Nuys, California, and Jackson, Mississippi. Tampa homicide detectives were talking to Van Nuys homicide detectives. At the same time that they were talking to them about the subject, Mr. Rogers, the detective was on the phone talking to the Jackson, Mississippi police about Mr. Rogers. No one had a clue where Rogers was.

In Bossier City, Louisiana, on November 8th, 1995, thirty-seven-year-old barmaid Andy Sultan was enjoying the night off, drinking beer at a honky-tonk bar called A Touch of Class. Andy was hanging out at the bar with a man she’d known for approximately one month, they had originally met sometime during the month of October.

He had been living with her on-and-off since that period of time. Witnesses at the bar noticed that as the night progressed the two eventually engaged in an argument. Andy and her companion left the bar together.

A resident at Sultan’s apartment complex, noticed the next morning, a young man with blonde hair loaded up items into a white Ford Festiva. It was the same man who left the bar with Andy, but she hadn't been seen or heard from since.

On November 9th, Sultan’s roommate found her naked corpse on a waterbed. She had been stabbed multiple times in the chest and back. Outside the location where the homicide occurred was a pickup truck.

The registration on the pickup truck belonged to Glen Rogers. Authorities notified local media, the newspaper, and soon his face was known throughout the southwestern United States. Glen Rogers was on the run from law enforcement in a stolen white Ford Festiva.

The 33-year old Drifter was wanted for four murders in four different states. Rogers was put on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. Over 400 leads came in, but none of them proved to be viable. Rogers’ own mother actually went on TV and pleaded for her son to turn himself in to authorities.

Rogers ended up in Central Kentucky where he visited his cousins. While there, he told everybody that what they’ve seen on TV about him was not true. He knew that in the end when he was caught that he’d be killed, so he was basically there to tell everybody goodbye.

He broke down crying, and he asked them to pray for him. As soon as he left one of his family members called the Kentucky State Police and told them of his whereabouts. She did this because she didn’t want to feel responsible for the next person he killed.

In Waco, Kentucky, on November 13th 1995, authorities converged on Glen Rogers’ last known location. One of the detectives responded to a white Ford Festiva, pulled alongside of it and saw Rogers. Glen looked at the police officer, took a swig of beer, through the beer can at the police officers car, and took off.

Rogers led the cops on a 15-minute chase. The police tried to shoot out the tires which didn’t work. At the same time they tried to set up a roadblock. Rogers slipped past the roadblock. Another detective managed to catch up to him and ran him off the road where he subsequently crashed.

The police surrounded the car, he did not offer resistance, and the police then took him into custody. Kentucky State Police finally had the suspected Casanova Killer in cuffs. Following his arrest he was interrogated for approximately 6 hours.

During that time he boasted about killing up to 70 people and then he also said he didn’t kill anybody. Eventually he did admit that he knew some of the women. He also claimed that the Ford Festiva was loaned from a victim and when he last left her she was alive.

Rogers was no stranger to law enforcement in the Bluegrass State. Coincidentally, directly across from the residence of Rogers’ family members that he just visited in Kentucky, was a family cabin. The body of Rogers’ former roommate, Mark Peters, was found inside that cabin. The body was so decomposed that the coroner could not make a determination concerning death. Rogers was suspected of the Peters murder, but was never charged.

As they looked into his background, it was clear to investigators that Rogers had been in trouble since childhood. He grew up in Hamilton, Ohio, which was very close to Kentucky, as the sixth of seven children living in a condemned house.

Rogers was exposed to violence early and often. Glenn’s father Claude was an alcoholic and extremely abusive. His mother Edna, had her nose broken several times by him. Some have even said that as a baby he was slapped so hard by his mother, that occasionally he would pass out.

Glenn was diagnosed at an early age with porphyria, a rare blood disorder that can affect the body and mind. Symptoms include burning, blistering, and scarring of the body. Also, symptoms included anxiety, paranoia, hallucinations, and confusion.

By age 12, Glen started drinking and taking drugs just to cope. During his adolescent years, he and his brother Clay, began committing burglaries, in fact a string of 200 burglaries. Then at 13, Glen experienced a series of traumatic events that would shape his rage toward women.

The first took place when Rogers found naked photos of his mother. He attempted suicide at that point in time. He took 25 Motrin in concert with injecting alcohol into his veins with a hypodermic needle.

Glen’s mother was a very attractive redheaded woman, whose hair color became a trigger which later surfaced in Rogers life. All four of the women Glen was suspected of murdering had some gradient of red hair.

It wasn’t just the relationship with his mother that fueled his fury, also at the age of 13 he started going to work with his dad, but it was far from a typical father-son bonding experience. His father was a custodian at a local United Way and would often, in addition to Glenn, bring a mistress to work.

At some point the mistress confronted Glen, one of these nights, and to his face, told him that his mother was a stupid b****. In a rage, Glenn pushed the woman down the stairs. He ran and hid in a closet, he heard screaming and yelling, then suddenly everything went quiet.

Glenn’s father found him in the closet and told him “Boy you’ve done it now, we got to clean up this mess.” He and his father loaded the lady up in their car, drove across the border into Kentucky, where they disposed of the body on the side of the road.

Glenn wasn’t sure if he killed the woman or his father finished her off, but the idea of taking someone’s life had a profound impact on him. It somehow stimulated him, and it was the first real conversation that he ever had with his father. Unfortunately his father cut off all communication after this occurred, and of course this built deep resentment in Glen towards his father. Law enforcement never looked into the matter.

By December 1995, thirty-three-year-old Glen Rogers is facing murder charges in 4 different states for the killings of Sandra Gallagher, Linda Price, Tina Cribbs and Andy Sulton. The justice system in Florida took its shot at the suspected Casanova killer first.

While awaiting trial, Glen was eventually tested by a court psychiatrist. He was diagnosed as having chronic psychotic disturbance. What that does is cause Glenn to have beliefs with no basis in reality. He scored a 76 on his IQ test which was just six points above retardation. He also showed evidence of brain damage.

In Tampa, Florida, on April 28th, 1997, Glen stood trial for the murder of Tina Cribbs. Prosecutors presented strong evidence connecting Glenn to the murder. Tina’s wallet contained her ID, and was found at a rest stop on I-10 in Florida.

Fingerprints were found on the wallet and in the motel room, both came back with positive identifications for Glen Rogers. And once he’s arrested in Kentucky, obviously he was driving her car. That was one more way to connect the dots.

The prosecution argued that Glen premeditated Tina’s murder based on the precise way she had been stabbed. A knife was inserted into her body and turned and then pulled out. The medical examiner believed that Tina lived for approximately 30 minutes after being stabbed, which was long enough for Tina to know she was going to die.

The defense argued that Glen’s upbringing and medical conditions made him incapable of knowing right from wrong, but the jury didn’t buy it. On May 7th, 1997, the jury returned a verdict of guilty, and all were in favor of the death penalty.

Following his trial in Florida, he was subsequently extradited to California to stand trial for the murder of Sandra Gallagher. Glen was convicted of murder and arson in June 1999, and received the second death sentence. Regarding the cases of Linda price and Andy Sultan, authorities decided not to pursue prosecution of either of those two cases.

In 2012, after he spent 13 years on death row, Rogers went public with a story that no one could believe. In June 1994, more than a year before his killing Spree began, Rogers was living in Southern California.

He worked as a painter and one of his jobs took him into the home of OJ Simpson’s wife. According to his brother Clay, a couple of days before the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, his brother Glen called him and told him that he had been partying with Nicole Brown Simpson.

Glen claimed that OJ Simpson hired him to break into Nicole’s house to steal back a pair of $20,000 earrings. According to the criminal profiler, Glen said, “OJ Simpson told me that I may have to kill the b****.” According to Glen, when he went to the residence to take back the earrings, Ronald Goldman just happened to show up. Goldman was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

At that point he killed Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson. The LAPD doesn’t believe Rogers played any role in the murders. Neither does the Goldman family. But there may have been evidence connecting him to the crime scene.

Glen’s work truck at the time was identified as one of the trucks seen outside Nicole’s condo at the time of her murder. There was also the second bloody footprint which was located at the crime scene, that was never identified. While there was no proof Rogers was involved in the double homicide, he remained a suspect in at least four other murders, all unsolved in the state of California.

Regarding Glen Rogers in some respects as far as his looks, his charm, and his ability to persuade others, he had a lot going for him. He could have really been anything, but yet he kind of took the easy way out. He was involved with drugs at an early age, he was involved in violent crime, and then he eventually resorted to killing women. Glen Rogers remains on death row at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida. A date has not been set for his execution.