FLORIDA KILLER SUSPECTED IN VAN NUYS SLAYING GETS CHAIR.

Byline: Daily News Staff and Wire Services

A man accused of four slayings, including one in Van Nuys during a cross-country crime spree, was sentenced to the electric chair Friday for stabbing a woman to death in a motel bathtub.

Glen Rogers, 34, was convicted of murdering 34-year-old Tina Marie Cribbs, a stranger who gave him a ride from a bar in 1995. He also was found guilty of stealing her car as she bled to death.

The former carnival worker, flanked by his brother and his attorney, showed no reaction as Judge Diana Allen imposed the death penalty recommended by the jury two months ago.

``If you watch my brother, he's been sitting watching a movie. I don't think reality has set in,'' said Claude Rogers of Palm Springs.

In California, Glen Rogers is accused of strangling 31-year-old Sandra Gallagher and setting her afire Sept. 29, 1995. Gallagher met Rogers at a Van Nuys bar on the evening of her killing. She had gone to the lounge to celebrate her $1,200 Keno win.

California attorneys are trying to extradite Rogers and are in negotiations with the Florida governor's office.

If Florida agrees to let Rogers stand trial in California, attorneys would then have to negotiate the conditions of the extradition, such as the type of transportation, security and access his Florida lawyers would have to Rogers during a second trial.

During the Florida case, Claude Rogers, a real estate agent, flew in with his wife to support his younger brother, as he did throughout the trial.

Glen Rogers' defense attorney said he believes his client was convicted because of suspicions that he committed slayings in three other states.

Rogers stood shackled hand and foot as the judge followed a unanimous jury recommendation in Cribbs' Nov. 5, 1995, death.

Cribbs, 34, agreed to give Rogers a ride to his motel and was never seen alive again. She was stabbed twice - an 8-inch wound through the chest that pierced a lung and a 9-inch gash to the buttocks that punctured a major artery.

Cribbs was alive, conscious and struggling while the two deep stab wounds were inflicted, the knife twisted each time at a 90-degree angle, the judge said in her sentencing.

``All of this took place in a motel bathroom with little, if any, chance of escape,'' Allen said. ``Her lifeblood was flowing down the bathtub drain.''

Cribbs' mother, Mary Dicke, who sat in the courtroom throughout the trial, wasn't present for sentencing. A friend said she was in New York with her grandson.

Rogers was charged with first-degree murder, robbery and grand theft. The jury found him guilty May 7 and voted unanimously for the death penalty two days later.

Rogers is also accused of murders in Louisiana and Mississippi in 1995, and is a suspect in a killing in Kentucky.

``I expected it,'' said his lawyer, Nick Sinardi. ``I don't know that the circumstances of this particular case warrant a death penalty. . . . I think he was convicted of being a serial killer, not of the death of Tina Marie Cribbs.''

Rogers fled the Tampa 8 Motel in Cribbs' car and was later arrested after a high-speed chase in Kentucky. He told Kentucky state police Cribbs was alive when he left the motel and that she lent him her car.

``Glen Rogers is a thief, not a murderer,'' Sinardi told the 12-member jury.

Cribbs went to the bar that Sunday to meet her mother for a family barbecue. Her mother was late, so she and some friends began talking to Rogers and eventually he asked her for a ride. She left a nearly full beer at the bar, asking her friends to tell her mother she would be back in a little while.

``When she left that bar it was like she walked into a black hole. This woman . . . was never heard from again. She was killed shortly after she went into that motel room,'' prosecutor Karen Cox said. ``The hands that twisted the knife are the hands of evil. . . . The punishment must fit.''

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GLEN ROGERS

Sentenced to death in Florida