Accused Serial Killer Glen Rogers Making Most of Infamy

TAMPA, Fla. —  As accused serial killer Glen E. Rogers awaits trial here on first-degree murder charges in the bloody slashing death of a Florida woman, he has been basking in a tainted celebrity fueled by both the mainstream media and a small cult of collectors who seek mementos of notorious criminals.

This month, for example, Rogers is featured in both Cosmopolitan magazine and an obscure mail-order catalog called Crime & Criminals, which, among hundreds of ghoulish items, markets snippets of Charles Manson’s hair and paintings by mass murderers John Wayne Gacy and Richard Ramirez, the so-called Night Stalker.

The price for Rogers’ signature on a 3-by-5-inch index card: $30.

The notion that Rogers is profiting from and relishing his celebrity as an accused killer is a torture for many, including Mary Dicke, the mother of one of his alleged victims, Tina Marie Cribbs. Dicke tends bar at Showtown USA, a honky-tonk in Gibsonton, 25 miles south of here, where Rogers drank with Cribbs shortly before she disappeared.

“He is a man with no conscience,” Dicke said.

Rogers was nationwide news for several days last year. He was the “cross-country killer,” a personable, good-looking drifter with a taste for redheads. As his mother pleaded with him to surrender, Rogers vaulted to the top of the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List and sparked a coast-to-coast manhunt.

Before he was captured after a televised car chase in Kentucky, police say the tall, well-built 33-year-old had killed at least four women, including one young mother of three he met in a Van Nuys bar.

Now, locked up in the Hillsborough County jail, Rogers has been busy entertaining a steady stream of weekend visitors, including young women, while filing his own legal motions and granting telephone interviews.

Although Rogers has yet to be convicted of any capital crime, he apparently enjoys his growing infamy.

“He gets off on it. He thinks it’s cool,” said Ken Karnig, 26, a Tampa bookstore clerk and collector who has befriended Rogers.

In a telephone call he made several months ago to Tampa television station WFLA-TV, Rogers complained to anchorman Wes Sarginson about his public defender, calling her a lousy attorney.

Then Sarginson asked Rogers, “What have you got against women?” “Why would you ask that?” responded Rogers.

“Because you’re accused of killing so many.”

At that point, Sarginson said, Rogers laughed twice and hung up.

Rogers followed up his complaint with a motion to have his public defender removed from his case, saying she offered inadequate representation. The motion was eventually granted by Judge Diana Allen, who also issued a gag order prohibiting attorneys and police from discussing the case.

But that has not stopped Rogers from talking.

“Oh, yeah, he’s called here,” said Chris Sanders, whose husband, Kregg, publishes Crime & Criminals from their hometown of Danville, Ill. “He wants to be famous. That comes through loud and clear.”

Sanders has six of Rogers’ autographs on consignment. Only one has sold so far, Sanders said. “He’s not going to be a big seller.”

Nonetheless, Sanders added: “It is best to get a killer before he’s convicted. That’s a coup and doesn’t happen often.”

Karnig says he frequently visits Rogers in jail, often accompanied by young women eager to meet a charming accused killer. He is saving letters from Rogers and has collected cuttings from his hair and beard, which he believes could become valuable if Rogers is found guilty.

Of Rogers, Karnig said: “He actually seems like a pretty nice guy, but I don’t know him outside of jail. I never went drinking with him.”

One of the last times Rogers did go drinking was at the Showtown bar, which for more than 25 years has served as an unofficial community center for many of the carnival and circus workers who spend winters in Gibsonton after traveling the United States during the summer months.

Glen Rogers is himself a former carny, as carnival roustabouts are called, and was familiar with the town, located on U.S. 41. The last visit he made was on Nov. 5., 1995.

Mary Dicke was off work that Sunday and was to join her daughter for a drink at the Showtown, a wood-frame and brick lounge with a horseshoe-shaped bar and a jukebox filled with country-western music.

In fact, Dicke walked in one door, friends told her, just minutes after Cribbs and Rogers walked out another. “They told me, ‘Mary, Tina just left here with a guy who is drop-dead gorgeous. She’s giving him a ride,’ ” Dicke recalled. “Some of the other girls were jealous because he had picked Tina instead of them.”

Cribbs’ body was discovered two days later in blood-splattered Room 119 of the Tampa 8 Motel. The 34-year-old divorced mother of two, who worked as a hotel maid, was found stabbed to death in the bathtub.

The room was registered to Rogers, police say.

Since his extradition to Florida in May, Rogers has appeared in court on several occasions, and Dicke has been there each time.

“He is cocky and arrogant,” she said. “He waves, he whistles at people. When I’m in court, I never take my eyes off him.”

She brings along Cribbs’ 13-year-old son, Damien, “because he is the spitting image of my daughter. I want [Rogers] to know what he did.”

Rogers was arrested Nov. 13, 1995, in Waco, Ky., about 120 miles from his hometown of Hamilton, Ohio, after leading police on a high-speed chase that began after he threw a beer can at a police officer. He was driving Cribbs’ 1993 Ford Festiva.

Rogers has also been charged in the slaying of Sandra Gallagher, 33, of Santa Monica. She is believed to have met Rogers Sept. 29, 1995, in McRed’s Cocktail Lounge in Van Nuys as she was celebrating a $1,000 keno win. After an evening of drinking, Rogers allegedly asked Gallagher for a ride home, just as he reportedly would ask of Cribbs. Gallagher’s burned body was found in her truck. She had been strangled.

Police have named Rogers a prime suspect in the death of Linda Price, 34, found stabbed to death Nov. 3, 1995, in the bathtub of a house she briefly shared with Rogers in Jackson, Miss. He faces murder charges in connection with the death of Andy Jiles Sutton, a woman he met in a bar Nov. 7, 1995, in Bossier City, La. Sutton, 37, was found stabbed to death two days later.

Rogers is also a suspect in the 1993 disappearance of a 71-year-old man who allowed Rogers to share his house in Hamilton.

Nick Sinardi, the court-appointed attorney now representing Rogers, declined comment on the charges. Rogers’ trial is scheduled to begin Dec. 9, and prosecutor Karen Cox has said the state will seek the death penalty.

Dicke said that she, along with several other Showtown regulars, will attend the trial. She will force herself to look at photos of the murder scene. “I’m scared to death,” said Dicke, “but I must know how she died.”

The emergence of Rogers as a celebrity is devastating to Dicke.

A large picture of him appears in the October issue of Cosmopolitan, above her daughter’s 1988 community college graduation photo.

The headline on the accompanying article reads, “The Fatal Charm of Glen Rogers.”

“Each time I think about it, or see him, it’s a hell of a shock,” said Dicke.

For about three months after her daughter’s slaying, Dicke stayed away from Showtown. The association with her daughter’s last hours was unbearable, she said. But then she returned to her post behind the well-worn bar, and the familiar surroundings of the lounge and her friends there.

“I don’t think of that last day, ever,” said Dicke. “When I’m here, I think about the wonderful times, not that last day of Tina’s life. . . . She wasn’t just my daughter, she was my best friend.”