Judge Denies New Trial for Murder Suspect

TAMPA, Fla. —  A judge denied Glen Rogers’ request for a new trial Friday, dismissing as unbelievable new testimony from a day laborer who said he was with Rogers when one of his four alleged victims was slain.

Rogers is awaiting sentencing in Florida for one of the killings he is charged with in a cross-country string of killings that allegedly began in Van Nuys.

A jury recommended last month that Rogers be sentenced to death for fatally slashing Tina Marie Cribbs and leaving her body in his Tampa motel room bathtub.

The judge was to pass sentence Friday until day laborer Thomas Ambrose appeared in support of a defense motion for a new trial, saying he stood outside a Tampa motel when Rogers went into his room and discovered Cribbs already dead.

Hillsborough Circuit Judge Diana Allen postponed sentencing until after hearing Ambrose’s testimony, which she rejected.

“The evidence would be material to the issue, were it believable,” she said after the hearing, characterizing Ambrose’s story as “inconsistent, incredible and totally unworthy of belief.”

She rescheduled sentencing for July 11. Rogers faces either life in prison or death in the electric chair.

Rogers is also a suspect in the deaths of an elderly roommate several years ago, and three other women, all redheads, who were slain over a period of several weeks in 1995. The first was Sandra Gallagher, 34. Witnesses said the Santa Monica woman was celebrating at a Van Nuys bar after winning some money in the state lottery when she left with Rogers. She was later found nearby, strangled in a burning pickup truck.

Rogers was also charged with slaying women in Louisiana and Mississippi before reaching Florida, where he picked up Cribbs in a bar. Rogers was arrested in Kentucky after a highway chase.