Hillsboro Killer Glen Rogers will be executed Thursday evening

Glen Rogers, who killed a woman in a room at a Tampa Motel almost 30 years ago, is scheduled to be executed at Florida State Jail on Thursday evening.

Apart from his last minute stay, he is killed by a fatal injection at 6pm for the 1995 murder of Tina Marie Cribbs.

Rogers, 62, is a former carnival worker known by the media as “The Casanova Killer” and “The Cross Country Killer” and is believed to have committed other murders.

Cribs’ murder occurred on the same day he arrived in Tampa in November 1995. He rented a room at Tampa 8 Inn off Columbus Drive near the interstate and told a motel clerk that he was the truck driver whose vehicle had broken down.

He later went to the US 41 Showtown USA bar and restaurant in Gibsonn. The patrons there recall a long-haired bearded stranger dancing towards a jukebox song and buying a drink for a group of women.

Cribs, 34, was with them. The native New Yorker moved from Oklahoma to Gibsonton a few years ago. She lived in three houses far from her mother, but her mother gave them a pager so they could stay in touch at any time. She had two sons. She worked as a waitress at Steak’n Shake and as a housekeeper at Ramadaine Apollo Beach.

When she chatted with Rogers, Cribs agreed to ride him on a nearby carnival lot. She left a cold can on top of the bar and said she’d come back. She never did. Her mother paged her over 30 times that night, but there was no response.

Two days later, a maid from Tampa 8 Inn found Cribs dead in a bathtub in room 119. She was stabbed twice with a long knife.

The room was rented by Rogers. He paid for the extra day, told the clerk not to clean it up, and placed a handwritten “Do Do Duterd” sign on the door.

Police in California, Louisiana and Mississippi investigated Rogers for the murder of similar women they met in these states over the six weeks of that year. He was also suspected of a Kentucky man’s death, but was never charged.

In a prison call with a Kentucky newspaper, Rogers claimed he hadn’t killed anyone.

Physical and circumstantial evidence of the Cribbs case was stated in a different way. Investigators discovered her wallet was thrown away at a rest stop on a highway in North Florida. His fingerprints were on it. When the Kentucky Troopers spotted Rogers a few days after the crime, he led them on a fast tracking of Cribs’ stolen Ford Festivalva. Blood marked a pair of his shorts. Investigators determined that it contained DNA that suited Cribs.

At the trial, the ju judge heard about the criminal history of a man who is said to be attractive and sociable, but especially prone to explosions of anger when he drinks. His defense presented evidence of an abusive childhood and an alcoholic father.

However, it did not overcome the cruelty of murder. Prosecutors testified that the suffering of the stab wound formed an L-shaped shape, indicating that the killer had thrust the knife into her and then twisted it.

The ju judge convicted him and unanimously recommended the death penalty. Rogers was sentenced to death in California for the murder of Sandra Gallagher, who was later murdered in California.

His appeal has been hurt through court for years, as is typical. Cribs’ mother, Mary Dick, told the Tampatribune in 2011 that she feared she wouldn’t live long enough to see her daughter’s murderer being executed.

“My life stopped in 1995,” she said. “My daughter was everything to me.”

The Tampa Bay Times could not contact Cribs’ family this week for comment.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a warrant for Rogers’ death last month. This is the fifth execution ordered this year after a relatively small period of time the state has. Florida only had one execution in 2024. Before that, DeSantis carried out six executions in 2023.

The reason for the current increase in progress is unknown. The governor’s office did not respond to emails due to comments.

Rogers’ final appeal included a court request to hear new evidence of the mass abuse he suffered as a child. He was repeatedly raped by women and men between the ages of 10 and 10, exchanged for drug money, and staff were exploited at a juvenile correctional facility in Ohio, according to court records. The lawyers argued that if a new ju judge heard those details, they might support a life sentence, but the court refused to give him a new penalty hearing.

Prior to his execution, Rogers’ brothers last saw him by car from Kentucky. On Wednesday, Claude Rogers told the Tampa Bay Times that the visits are less personal than in past meetings in prison visitor rooms – occurring on a glass wall between them. He felt uneasy about the isolated atmosphere and decided to go home.

“I said goodbye to him,” Claude Rogers said. “He is my brother and I love him. I asked God to guide him on this next journey.”