Convicted Killer Denied New Trial

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 alleged victims was murdered.

Rogers is awaiting sentencing in Florida for one of the four murders 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 expected to pass sentence Friday, but 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. Life in prison or death in the electric chair are the only choices.

Rogers is a suspect in the death of an elderly roommate several years ago. In addition, he was charged in the deaths of three other women, all red-haired, who were slain over a period of several weeks in 1995. The first was Sandra Gallagher, 34, a Santa Monica woman who witnesses said was celebrating a state lottery win when she left a Van Nuys bar with Rogers shortly before she was found strangled in a burning pickup truck nearby.

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. He was driving Cribbs’ car.

Rogers’ defense attorney disclosed last week that Ambrose came forward after Rogers was convicted but then disappeared. Police officers found Ambrose this week, and he was brought to the sentencing hearing to testify.

According to the defense, Ambrose said he met Rogers walking from a convenience store near their motels in November 1995. Rogers went back with Ambrose to the Tropicana. But first, they went to the Tampa 8 Motel across the street so Rogers could get cigarettes from his room.

Ambrose said he saw a woman and a man in Rogers’ room. Hours later, they went back to Rogers’ room, and that was when Rogers discovered the body of Cribbs, 34, in a bloody bathtub, according to Ambrose’s story.