Florida to execute Glen Rogers, convicted

A suspected serial killer once scrutinized for a possible link to the O.J. Simpson case that riveted the nation in the mid-1990s is scheduled to be executed Thursday in Florida for the murder of a woman in a Tampa motel room.

Glen Rogers, 62, is set to receive a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, barring a last-day reprieve.

He was convicted in Florida of the 1995 robbery and murder of Tina Marie Cribbs, a 34-year-old mother of two he had met at a bar, and sentenced to death in 1997. According to court documents, Rogers killed Cribbs and stole her car, fleeing the state before being stopped after a highway chase in Kentucky.

Execution set after decades of failed appeals

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Rogers’ death warrant on Tuesday, marking the fifth such execution this year in Florida.

A letter from Attorney General James Uthmeier to the governor detailed a series of appeals that have been rejected over more than two decades. One of the most recent came in 2021, when the Florida Supreme Court denied an appeal in which Rogers asserted “newly discovered evidence” of sexual abuse he said he endured as a child—including at the now-closed Training Institute of Central Ohio, a juvenile-detention facility. Rogers claimed the trauma had been repressed until 2019. The death warrant is likely to prompt a final round of legal challenges.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied Rogers’ final appeals on Wednesday without comment.

Nationally, 15 people have been executed as of May 1 across eight states, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. That compares with 25 executions nationwide in all of 2024.

Rogers also sentenced to death in California

Rogers also received a separate death sentence in California for the 1995 strangulation killing of Sandra Gallagher, a mother of three whom he met at a bar in Van Nuys just weeks before the Cribbs murder.

Nicknamed the “Casanova Killer” and “Cross Country Killer” in media reports, Rogers has been linked to multiple other slayings across the U.S. and once told police he had killed around 70 people. He later recanted that claim, but was the subject of the 2012 documentary My Brother the Serial Killer, which featured his brother Clay and a criminal profiler who corresponded with Rogers in prison.

Documentary raised O.J. Simpson case questions

That documentary raised questions about whether Rogers could have been involved in the 1994 stabbing deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.

During a widely publicized trial in 1995, former NFL star O.J. Simpson was acquitted of their murders. After the documentary aired, Los Angeles police and prosecutors said they found no credible link between Rogers and the case.

“We know who killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. We have no reason to believe that Mr. Rogers was involved,” the Los Angeles Police Department said at the time.

Simpson, who maintained his innocence but was found liable for the deaths in a civil case, later served nine years in prison on unrelated charges. He died in April 2024 at age 76 following a battle with cancer.

Rogers’ pattern of victims and how Florida carries out executions

Rogers’ female victims — both confirmed and suspected — often shared similar traits, including petite builds, red hair, and being in their 30s. He was originally from Hamilton, Ohio.

Florida uses a three-drug cocktail for executions by lethal injection: a sedative, a paralytic, and a drug that stops the heart, according to the state Corrections Department.