Closing Arguments to Begin in Trial of Convicted Killer

After only six days of testimony, the heart of the trial of alleged serial killer Glen Rogers came to a close with the defendant adamantly denying any role in the murder of a Van Nuys woman four years ago.

Closing arguments are scheduled for today. Rogers, who has already been convicted of one murder in Florida and has been sentenced to death in that state’s electric chair, is accused of killing four women in as many states over six weeks in 1995. The cross-country killing spree allegedly began with the strangulation of Sandra Gallagher, then 33, the night she met Rogers at a Van Nuys bar. Her charred remains were found in her pickup truck the next day.

About a month later Rogers allegedly stabbed Linda Pierce to death in Jackson, Miss. A Florida jury found he killed Tina Cribs in his Tampa hotel room in November 1995. He then allegedly stabbed Andy Lou Jiles Sutton to death in her Bossier City, La., apartment, according to authorities.

Prosecutors were allowed to bring in evidence of the Florida and Louisiana slayings in the California trial because, Deputy Dist. Atty. Pat Dixon argued, those later crimes show Rogers intended to kill Gallagher when he picked her up in the bar.

Deputy Public Defender Jim Coady told jurors that he would show them another man, a friend of the defendant, is the real killer.