Glenn Edward Rogers, a former carnival worker who murdered a Gibsonton woman in an East Tampa hotel room 30 years ago, was executed Thursday night.
Rogers, 62, received a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke and was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m., authorities said. He was fifth inmate put to death in the state this year.
Rogers was convicted of the November 1995 murder of Tina Marie Cribbs, a 34-year-old mother of two he had met at a lounge in Gibsonton. Two days later, she was found stabbed to death at the Tampa 8 Inn, on 46th Street at East Columbus Drive.
Rogers was arrested in Kentucky a few days later after a police pursuit while driving Cribbs’ car. He was found guilty by a jury in Tampa in 1997.
In a final statement, Rogers thanked his wife, who visited him earlier in the day at the prison, according to visitor logs. He also somewhat cryptically said that “in the near future, your questions will be answered” without going into detail. He also said, “President (Donald) Trump, keep making America great. I’m ready to go.”
Then the lethal injection began, and he lay quietly through the procedure.
The entire execution took 16 minutes. Once it began, Rogers hardly moved, only lying still with his mouth slightly open. At one point, a staff member grasped him by the shoulders, shook him and yelled, “Rogers, Rogers,” to see if he was conscious.
No family members of Cribbs spoke to the media afterward.
Rogers also had drawn a separate death sentence in California for the 1995 strangulation killing of Sandra Gallagher, a mother of three whom he had met at a bar in Van Nuys in that state. That killing came weeks before the Cribbs murder. He also was a suspect in slayings in Louisiana and Mississippi.
Randy and Amy Roberson, children of the woman killed in Louisiana, Andy Jiles Sutton, released a statement after the execution that said Rogers "got what he deserves."
"He certainly did not deserve to live the past 28 years," the statement said.
The U.S. Supreme Court had denied Rogers’ final appeals on Wednesday without comment.
Rogers’ lawyers have filed several unsuccessful appeals with state and federal courts. One argument was that newly enacted state legislation authorizing the death penalty for trafficking in young children makes clear that abuse he suffered as a child is now taken seriously and should result in a life prison sentence for Rogers. That argument was rejected.
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the death warrant for Rogers on April 15, the sixth of the year.
The four previous death sentences carried out were:
- James Dennis Ford, 64, on Feb. 13 for the 1997 murders of a married couple while out on a fishing trip.
- Edward James, 63, on March 29 for killing an 8-year-old girl and her grandmother in 1993.
- Michael Tanzi, 48, on April 8 for kidnapping and murdering a woman in the Florida Keys in 2000.
- Jeffrey Hutchinson, 59, on May 1 after killing his girlfriend and her three children with a shotgun in 1998.
On June 10, Anthony Wainwright, 54, is scheduled to die for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Carmen Gayheart in 1994. Gayheart was abducted from a grocery store parking lot in Lake City.
Florida uses a three-drug cocktail for its lethal injection: a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Corrections Department.
Sixteen men have died by court-ordered execution so far this year in the U.S.: Florida, Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas.
Eleven others ae scheduled to be put to death in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Ohio, although Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine has been routinely postponing the actions as their dates near.
