The first time Oscar Rozsa saw Glen Rogers last March, he threw him out of the bar he owns in Van Nuys, Calif. Rogers was breaking beer bottles. Rozsa didn't stand for that. When Rogers came back to apologize the next day, Rozsa told him never to return.In Rogers' world, Rozsa was odd. People didn't stand up to Rogers like that. Women certainly didn't. They almost always took him back.
Besides, there were plenty of other bars. McRed's was just a mile down the street. Rogers found Sandra Gallagher there the night of Sept. 28. The next morning, Gallagher was found strangled in her burning truck.
Now, Rogers, 33, has been linked to the deaths of four women this fall and is wanted for questioning in the disappearance of a 71-year-old Hamilton man.
In addition to Gallagher of Santa Monica, Calif., authorities have also linkedRogers to the killings of Linda Price of Jackson, Miss.; Tina Cribbs of Tampa,Fla.; and Andy Sutton of Bossier City, La.
If Rogers killed the four women, experts say, it was not the spontaneous combustion of a previously amiable gentleman. From the time he first left his hometown of Hamilton in 1982 until this fall, Rogers became more and more violent and manipulative, according to police and court records and interviewswith people who knew him.
More likely, Rogers grew steadily bolder through repeated acts of violence that were met with more forgiveness than punishment, said retired FBI executive John E. Douglas, who spearheaded the FBI's use of psychology in finding serial killers when he directed its serial crime unit.
Angel Wagers, 30, took Rogers back often enough in 1989 and 1990 that she filed five separate Hamilton police complaints on him for assault. He chipped a tooth, repeatedly bruised her face and once said her car would blow up if she started it. ``They would have been perfect for that movie Natural Born Killers ,'' said Clara Sue Rogers, Glen's sister. ``They were both high-strung, on drugs, always moving around like idiots.''
Cora McKnight, 27, suffered similar abuse, but without calling the cops. She didn't file a complaint until Rogers filed one on her in 1991, when she said she cut him with a butcher knife in self-defense. She told police Rogers had ``beaten her several times and she was afraid he would do it again.''
Maria Gyore, 45, lost at least six jobs because of Rogers, said Rozsa, who reluctantly fired her as a bartender last summer because of Rogers' harassment. She went back to Rogers after he set her clothes closet on fire. ``She lost all of her friends,'' Rozsa said. ``I was the only one. Not even her brother would talk to her.''
Debi Nix, Glen's ex-wife and 29 when she died of diabetes 18 months ago, let him live with her and her boyfriend after their 1983 divorce. A year or two later, her father, Clifford Nix, said she moved in with Rogers in the Los Angeles area. She had gone to retrieve their sons, whom Rogers had taken there. About a week later, she sneaked away with the boys to a Catholic church, which bought them bus tickets back to Ohio.
Between the episodes with Debi, Rogers apparently married Catherine Kopoianof Southern California. There's no marriage record for them in Los Angeles' orHamilton's counties, but Rogers' sister said they made it legal. Their son, Marc Rogers, was born Sept. 8, 1983. Kopoian later filed for child support.
``I liked Cathy,'' said Glen's sister. ``She was different than what he wasused to going with. Like a schoolteacher type. A little heavy. Quiet. She wasn't just wild, like the rest of them.'' Back in Hamilton Rogers was backin Hamilton by August 1986, the same year the city did some image-polishing bytacking an exclamation point to the end of its name. He spent most of the nextfive years there.
He made quite a splash on the police blotter, but he didn't stand out in the city of 61,000. It had more per capita violent crime last year than its big-city neighbors, Cincinnati and Dayton.
Rogers lived several places in Hamilton, usually in the dilapidated east-side neighborhood where prostitutes wave at strangers at lunch hour. The bars identify themselves with letters little bigger than street signs, or no name at all. The homes are likely as not to have windows covered with plywood,plastic or sheet metal.
Hamilton was the only Ohio jurisdiction to send Rogers to state prison, on forgery and breaking-and-entering charges. On Nov. 9, 1987, Rogers tried to ram his car through the Midas Muffler Shop's plate-glass window. He stole a blank check and filled it in for $450. He was sentenced to two years in jail, the maximum.
After being paroled and violating his parole, Rogers was released for good on June 1, 1989. On June 2, he punched Angel Wagers' face repeatedly while driving her car. Taxi driver One of his longest steady jobs was from July 1990 to March 1991, when he drove a cab for Ohio Taxi. ``He was real popular,'' especially with women, said fellow driver Mark Crouch. They'd ask specifically for him to drive.
Crouch even took Rogers home to show him his Boston terriers once. Rogers liked those dogs. Crouch also saw Rogers' prescription bottle of Ritalin, a drug similar to amphetemines and used mostly for treating children with attention-deficit and hyper-activity disorders.
Rogers was hyper. ``Constantly,'' said Rogers' sister.
``He said he was on medication for some mental problems,'' Ohio Taxi mechanic Steve McKay said. ``If he would drink on that medicine, he'd go from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde. He beat up one girl out here, a hooker. He used to collect money from them.''
McKay could have been talking about McKnight or Debbie Meyers, both of whomwere Rogers' girlfriends. Rogers pummeled both in front of the cab company. McKnight wound up with her arm in a cast, Crouch said. Dispatcher Chuck Spahn saw Meyers' beating.
``He hit her on the face and knocked her down,'' Spahn said. ``Then he started tearing off her clothes and he found the money. He took it and left her lying there.''
Rogers took some beatings himself around that time. ``He had as many enemies as friends,'' McKay said, especially when he was helping the police make drug arrests in 1991, January through August. Snitching education The snitching probably emboldened Rogers, said the FBI's Douglas, and also educated him. ``He had to outcon other cons and would have learned some policeprocedures,'' Douglas said. It was what he always wanted, controlling others and avoiding punishment.
Rogers left town after one beating scarred his eye. When he returned one time in 1992, he called former girlfriend Vicki Lakes from a bar, the Caboose.He said he was in disguise, didn't want anyone to know he was in town. He was supposed to be in Kentucky. He wanted Lakes to join him. He called her every 15 minutes for an hour.
``The last phone call, he just went nuts,'' Lakes said. ``It was scary. I could have been his first victim.''
Lakes had strawberry-blond hair. McKnight, Wagers and Rogers' first wife also had strong reddish tints to their hair. So did his mother. So did three of the four recent victims.
He had another redheaded girlfriend in 1993. He lived in Winchester, Ky., then. From March to August, he was arrested there four times. The last charge was for punching a 15-year-old boy. He bruised the boy's chest all the way to his heart.
He pled the charge to a misdemeanor and spent 30 days in jail, where he wasreleased Sept. 7. He left town without paying the court-ordered $702 restitution to the family. Call to a friend That was about when Rogers' mother, Edna, prevailed on her friend, Mark Peters, to put Glen up in his home. ``She said he was going through a divorce with his wife in Texas,'' saidPeters' son, James, who lives in the San Diego suburb of Del Mar.
Mark Peters was a retired 71-year-old electrician living alone. He liked torefinish antiques, so he spent most of his time in his garage workshop. He'd go to flea markets to find things that needed fixing up.
``Dad would be out in the garage, and Glen would be in the house going through his papers,'' said Joan Burkart, Peters' daughter. He found James' Social Security number and birth certificate. He had already started using them in California by the time Peters' decomposed body was found Jan. 10, 1994, in a central Kentucky cabin owned by Rogers' family.
James figured that out last December, when he received a collection agency's bill for $2,816. He said the money was owed to Los Angeles County fordrug rehabilitation of a ``James E. Peters'' who was really Glen Rogers. When Peters applied for a loan last summer, he also discovered an unpaid $300 phonebill for Rogers' North Hollywood address. Lost chances ``The Hamilton police had said they would fly wherever they could go to question him,'' Burkart said. The opportunity came in August 1994, when Los Angeles police hadhim on arson charges for burning Maria Gyore's clothing. Nobody went to Los Angeles. Too expensive, Hamilton's police chief said.
``Ridiculous,'' Burkart said. ``He should have been put away before he killed any of these women.''
He could have been put away after June 6, 1995, when a security guard told Rogers to stop beating on cars in an underground garage. Rogers chased the security guard with a knife. He slammed the guard's head against a pillar. He chased a building resident into an elevator and held a knife to his throat.
He served 42 days of a six-month sentence for assault with a deadly weapon.On Aug. 30 and 31, he served two more days for another assault on Gyore. The city of Los Angeles did not revoke his probation. It gave him probation again and freed him.
When he heard of Gallagher's murder Sept. 29 in Van Nuys, James Peters had no idea the suspect was the same man sought for questioning in his father's death. About six weeks later, an FBI agent came to Peters' door while he was away.
Peters said: ``He wanted to make sure I wasn't Glen Rogers.''
* THIS STORY was reported by Russell Carollo, Lou Grieco, Kevin Lamb and Kevin Amorim.