The Cross Country Killer, the Glen Rogers Story

By Joyce Spizer

The Cross Country Killer, the Glen Rogers Story provides an insightful look into the mind and making of an American predator. Glen Rogers, twice on America's 10 Most Wanted list, is currently on death row in Florida.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Top Publications, Ltd.
• Release date: Mar 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9781935722083

Joyce Spizer

Considered the "Hart-Hart" of Southern California investigators, Joyce and her husband Harold investigated cases involving move stars, mobsters, and millionaires during their careers that spanned several decades. Changes in law enforcement, the judicial system, and how citizens respond, have become bountiful fruit for her Harbour Pointe Mystery Series; fictionalized stories taken from her actual case files.Her experience with serial Killers have led her to the dark world Glen Rogers, a serial killer with perhaps more than 70 victims. Rogers, now on death row in Florida has also been convicted of murder in California. The Cross Country Killer, The Glen Rogers Story as told by Joyce and Glen's brother, Claude Rogers, Jr.

Book preview

Prologue

How a brother sees

A damp, bone-chilling draft chases the rancid air through the steel gray cellblock. Incessant screams, organized chaos, and bright fluorescent lights flood the corridors twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year. Forever.

It is June 1999. This is the Maximum Security Unit of the Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail; home of one of the FBI’s Most Wanted serial killers, Glen Edward Rogers.

For him, no silence. No darkness. No peace. No time to think or concentrate.

His first date with Florida’s electric chair, Old Sparky, had been scheduled for February 14, 1999.

Valentine’s Day, known for fluttering hearts filled with love and happiness, was not a good day to die.

My name is Claude Rogers, Jr. I’m Glen’s oldest brother and

staunchest supporter. We stand almost head-to-head and whisper about the days court appearance. His dark blonde hair is neatly trimmed as is his beard and mustache. Although Glen’s been incarcerated almost four years, his skin is flush with California color.

Despite our thirteen-year age difference, we cannot dispute our ancestry. Prominent cheekbones, chiseled jawlines, and well-defined noses send strong message of Cherokee lineage.

The media had written: Glen had a Don Quixote profile and the most riveting blue-gray eyes a woman could die for.

In Glen’s case, several may have.

This is the story of Glen Edward Rogers, my brother.

*****

Chapter 1

Ah, family values

Glen Roger’s paternal grandparents, Shelby and Mary Rogers, lived on a Kentucky farm. Shelby drank heavily, sported a vicious temper, and had an impulsively barbaric attitude. Glen’s father, Claude Rogers, Sr., accepted that behavior as the norm in his circle of society.

When Claude Senior was young and impressionable, his father attempted to break a wild horse to the saddle. The animal wouldn’t respond to the training. Shelby flew into a rage over the horse’s stubbornness. Screaming, yelling, and cursing at it, he yanked the reins, drew the terrified animal to the edge of the cliff, and pushed it off. Claude Senior watched in horror as the horse’s body slammed against the rocks tumbling over and over again. Shelby laughed. It was a lesson learned.

Later, when Shelby lay on his deathbed, he hallucinated crying out, Get that horse off me. Don’t let it kick me. Don’t let it touch me. Don’t let it take me down with it.

His demons had found him.

Edna Sears Rogers, Glen’s mother, had no less difficult a beginning in Lili, Kentucky. Her mother, Clara, married three times: Sears, Holland, and Barker. From those unions, there were seven children.

Bob Sears, the happiest child of the lot, tried his hand in sales but eventually ended up in prison. Bernard Sears performed odd jobs in the scraping business. Harold Sears was an accountant but, in Claude Junior’s opinion, may have been the family pedophile.

Nancy Holland experienced severe mental health problems and lived much of her life on the streets. Her mutilated body was discovered near the Miami River next to her favorite park bench. She died alone and homeless. Donald Holland toured the country as a singer and entertainer.

John Barker earned millions during his venture capital days. He founded Barker Manufacturing, once the largest used machinery company on the West Coast. His creative and imaginative spirit bred ideas for portable school buildings, water purification systems, and he envisioned a water oasis park on 500 acres in Palm Springs. But he lost it all.

Edna was a happy, striking young woman with reddish blonde hair. At age sixteen, she met and married Claude, eight years her senior. He promised her mother, Clara, who was on her deathbed, that he’d take care of Edna. Life and hard times quickly drained the color from Edna’s red hair, dashed any dreams she might have had, sapped her energy, and destroyed her emotionally.

Unstable childhoods, alcoholism, and sinister family secrets defined the ground rules for Edna and Claude Rogers, Sr.’s marriage, life, and the macabre legacy they gave their children.

The Rogers family had deep roots in Kentucky but, like many of their Blue Ridge Mountain neighbors, chose to live in Hamilton, Ohio, on the west side of the Great Miami River. They traded the bleakness of coal mining and a homestead cabin on forty acres in Beattyville, Kentucky, for the city that held the promise of steady work.

Known in the 1790s as Fairfield, Hamilton had grown and prospered as a factory town whose population topped out about 55,000 strong during the peak of its highest economic period. Houses with fresh coats of paint, paved streets, good schools, and clean parks tied the community together. By the time the Rogers family and other Hamiltuckians, as they were called, arrived — the community tie unraveled changing the town to one of bleakness, blight, decay, and unemployment.

Claude Senior, whose heritage may have included Tiana Rogers, the Indian wife of General Sam Houston, had a deeply etched face, dark hair, and a powerful sense of style. Often seen wearing hats, riding jodhpurs, and carrying a sidearm, his mere

presence made Edna cower and the family tremble. His hair-trigger temper reinforced his unexpected violence.

They lived on Pine Street in the early 1950s. Claude Senior worked the graveyard shift as a hydro pulp operator for Champion Paper company for sixteen years, the longest unbroken employment period in his working life. He drank before going to work in the afternoon and after each shift ended in the early morning hours. Local bar patrons loved his sense of humor and his stories, but after long hours of drinking and flirting, another personality often reared its ugly head — one filled with madness and impulsiveness often resulting in violence. His reputation as a womanizer defined his role in the community.

A female co-worker he was rumored to have had an affair with disappeared.

They never found her body.

*****

When I was in diapers, Claude Junior said, Sue developed a plan that would free us from our house of hell. She took me by the hand early in the mornings before anyone was up and we ran away. Not once, but many times throughout the years. To this day she doesn’t clearly remember why. She simply knew she must save and protect her little brother and herself.

This became so routine that neighbors and police would be on the lookout for the little straggly Rogers kids, both barefooted and Claude Junior in diapers, and return them to their house of hell. No representative from children’s services or social worker ever came to the house for a follow-up.

Claude Junior’s sister, Sue, carries another scar from her childhood. Edna, tired of being awakened by the police and disturbing her husband’s drunken stupor, moved the lock higher on the front door jamb. One morning three-year old Sue placed a chair against the door, put a book on the chair, and stood on top of the book to unhook the lock. The chair and its contents tipped over. The door hook caught in her hand and ripped it from the thumb to the wrist.

Sue knew she must get away from that house. And she’s take me with her someday. Claude added.

"My sister Sue and I vividly remember harsh punishment administered by our Mom during that time. I was six. Sue was eight. We’d crawl out of bed early on the weekends and turn on the television to watch cartoons. If we made too much noise, there was this old closet, one of those old ones that you can move around like a piece of furniture. Had two doors on it. It was catty-corner against one wall. If I saw that closet today, I’d burn it to the ground.

Mom would stand me in one corner and Sue in the other with our noses against the wall. We’d have to stand there till bedtime. No food, no bathroom, no talking. Nothing. And you couldn’t cry or you’d get hit with a belt. And we couldn’t turn our face from that corner from early morning until bedtime. If we soiled our pants, another beating followed.

Time passed with no new siblings. Frequent hospital visits implied that Edna might have suffered several miscarriages and nervous breakdowns between 1950 and 1957.

Always the family disciplinarian, Edna ruled with a harsh open-palmed hand, a nearby belt, or anything else within reach. After the 1957 birth of son Gary, Edna created a new corporal punishment. She’d make him stick out his tongue, then she’d strike the bottom of his jaw shut with her fist so he’d bite his tongue and bleed.

At home, Claude Senior’s behavior remained unchecked. Physical violence and emotional abuse heaped daily on Edna, Sue, Gary, and Claude Junior, created a roller coaster existence that affected everyone’s nerves.

Claude Senior destroyed the house on Pine Street more than once. He’d stagger through the front door with his gun drawn and shoot out the television screen. He’d fire at photos too, especially those with Edna in them. The kids would run for cover until he passed out for the day.

During those rampages, Claude Junior said, "Dad would destroy every piece of furniture, every dish, every material thing we owner — and that wasn’t much. But it was all we had. Neighbors, frightened by this bizarre behavior, wouldn’t let their children play with us. Kids teased and taunted us.

"Sue and I ran away constantly. I was probably in the fifth grade; she would have been in the seventh. One day we followed a road that ran down through a creek. I forget the name of the road. Anyway, we came upon this little park that had cabins with stuff in them.

"My sister said, ‘Let’s go over here.’ We were running away and looking for money. So we went over to where the cabins were and broke into them. She was like the leader. So we go in and for no reason that I can remember, we just tore the whole place up. I mean literally just destroyed the cabins. We ripped big stuffed animals apart and threw the stuffing around. We laughed and carried on throughout the entire thing. We tore cabinets away from the walls, busted chairs, ripped pillows, cracked pictures and threw them on the floor, and shattered all the windowpanes. To this day, I have no idea why.

"Afterward, we walked down this road and came across this truck. So we calmly walked up and looked in. The truck belonged to two guys who were fishing way over the back bank. They had waders on. We saw their pants and wallets were in the truck. So we emptied their wallets and divided several hundred dollars between us.

"While walking through the woods enjoying our good fortune, we decided now that we better hide. So we cut off the highway, walked along the railroad tracks, and eventually followed another small country road. We had cash in our pockets and were moving on.

Well, somehow it got reported that we had run away again. And the Butler County Sheriff’s Department was looking for me and Sue. We started hitchhiking. There we were, two very young kids thumbing. Well, one white car comes by and Sue waved it down hoping for a ride to the next town. To our good fortune the car made a U-turn to come back to us. We didn’t realize it at the time, but it was an unmarked police unit looking for us. At the police station I ‘dropped a dime’ on Sue. And she took all the blame. Said it was her idea. She was doing her best to keep me out of trouble and get us as far away as possible from our mad house.

*****

In 1960, the Rogers family put a down payment on a one and one-half acre $16,000 farm in Somerville, Ohio. Located near a small forest, the Rogers children had a wonderful place to play and a nice home to live in.

Claude recalled, "We hoped and prayed for peace. We even got a pet.

"We had no food to eat at this time. We had an oil furnace. But we had no money to pay for the oil. We were burning wood and paper stuff just to stay warm. One of Dad’s co-workers at Champion owned a donut shop. My Dad would bring home day-old donuts every day for dinner. We’d store the extras in a freezer.

"Before too long, the female cat gave birth to a litter of kittens. Dad arrived home one afternoon heavily intoxicated. Sue and I were feeding one of the stale donuts to the kittens. The mother cat was still nursing. Dad walked into the backyard cursing that, ‘We ain’t got enough damn food to feed ourselves, let alone those cats.’

"He shooed the mother car out of this little white shed we had. He stood in the open area with his gun drawn and shot the baby kittens to death. My sister and I looked on in horror. Dad told us he couldn’t feed us, much less another litter in the house.

"For food, Dad would go to the auction houses and buy piglet runts for about fifty-cents each. We fed them and they grew quickly. Another time he shot several baby pigs, then left them in the sty with the other pigs that promptly devoured the carcasses. Dad threw back his head and laughed. Sue and I learned another terrifying lesson that day. Parents eat their own.

"Then Dad lost his job. We cut wood from the forest behind our home to keep warm. Coal oil lamps served as electricity.

Mom suffered another miscarriage and a nervous breakdown. A waist-high flash flood hit the house and we almost drowned. When things couldn’t get worse — we got evicted.

*****

The children numbered five by the late 1950s: Sue, Claude Junior, Gary, Clay, and Craig. Several of them were school-age, but there was little or no money to purchase school clothes. With what extra money Edna could find, she’d buy each of the school-age boys one pair of jeans. That pair had to be removed after school so they could be worn the following school day — for the entire year. Welfare became their only source of income and Claude Senior could not find work.

Although not gainfully employed outside the house, Edna took in ironing, earning two dollars a basket. That money could buy four packs of cigarettes for her and Claude. When there was extra money, the priority-shopping list read alcohol, then cigarettes. Items like food, clothing, shelter, or transportation were considered luxuries. The family never celebrated birthdays, Thanksgiving, or Christmas in any traditional way.

The school offered free food programs, but they were designed to humiliate those less fortunate.

Claude remembered, "I worked in the cafeteria in order to get my free lunch. That was fine with me. I had no problem bussing tables, working the line. But the consequences of that, as kids, is that everybody knew what you were doing. They knew you were the welfare kids who couldn’t afford the thirty-cent lunch. And they tormented us unmercifully. We fought daily for our self-respect, our self-esteem, and our pride.

"While the other boys may have suffered more, I was probably the more personally humiliated. Because everyone knew our family’s financial level, there were certain people in school that would hang out with me and those who wouldn’t hang out with me. So you develop a reputation for being a certain type of person simply because of who your parents are. Remember, we wore the same used clothes every day of the school week, all semester.

I was a pretty good dancer and the girls would all line up to get a dance with me on the weekends. But come Monday, there wasn’t one female who would say, ‘Hi’.

Claude Junior began to stay away from home and gradually developed a small circle of local acquaintances at places where people took him at face value, not considering whether he was poor or wealthy.

Claude Junior credited Aunt Ona Dees, who was his father’s sister, and her husband, John, for changing his life. They took an interest in Claude who was about the same age as their own son Roger. Claude and Ona were both dark-headed. Roger was light-headed and light-skinned and appeared to be more like his father than his mother, Ona. As the boys played together, they were seen as a family unit and people began identifying Claude as her son. Ona became Claude’s role model.

Claude said, "Ona was always caring, loving, and always showed me respect. Always did things like if I needed a coat for the junior high graduation, she bought me a graduation outfit. She didn’t do that for the other kids. This gave me a different lifestyle. Ona and John had a nice home and nice cars. They weren’t alcoholics and the home had some order and sense to it. Roger was always a grounded young man.

She saved my life. I’ve had my share of problems. I’ve had my bouts with alcohol and drugs and a lot of things. But, she gave me that sense of value that maybe I’d forgotten for a while and they came back to it. But that’s who I could be, given a different perspective as opposed to just drinking, self destruction and abuse.

Her husband, John, died at age 91 in the summer of 1999.

*****

In 1962, the family moved to Park Avenue. Gray paint chips flaked off the gray tile shingled home. The bug-infested house was tall, narrow, and leaned to the right. Claude Senior always said that made it unique and joked that sooner or later one of his boys would cause the house to topple over anyway.

Sue said of those days, It was like you were really holding for yourself. Trying to survive, and if something happened to somebody else, well I’ll just get out of the way, and leave me along today, ‘cause tomorrow might be my turn. It was like a pack of wolves in a den. Leave me alone today. Our parents had no compassion.

The economy turned, factories and businesses downsized or closed. Decay filled every crevice of Hamilton. Shells of abandoned automobiles, boarded-up dilapidated homes, and trash strewn across front yards created the visual image of a dying city. Parks became fertile venues for gang activity, drugs, and the homeless. Toxic dumpsites oozed poison to the earth’s surface.

In 1960, voters had elected their first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy. By 1962, many Americans wrapped themselves in the fabric of Catholicism. Women’s rights did not yet include an abortion option. Abortions were illegal, costly, and dangerous. Undergoing voluntary sterilization was not recommended or encouraged.

It’s unclear, from family memories, whether or not Edna was pregnant with Glen and wanted to abort him, or wanted to prevent another birth by having her tubes tied. But, Sue and Claude remember the family filed papers with the court requesting medical intervention and Edna and Claude Senior met with the local judge to plead their case. Married less than twelve years, Edna grappled daily with her own mental health issues, an out-of-work alcoholic and abusive husband, and five children under the age of fourteen.

The judge declined their request.

Chapter 2

The early years, the throwaway kid" is born

Glen Edward Rogers became the sixth of seven children. Unlike the others who were all natural births, Edna experienced a difficult pregnancy with Glen who dug his heels into both sides of her uterus and refused normal entrance to the world. It seemed that even from the womb, he knew he wasn’t expected, intended, or wanted. Glen entered the world by C-section, on July 15, 1962, kicking and screaming all the way.

By 1964, Sue Rogers, the first born and only girl, had six brothers: Claude Junior, Gary, Clay, Craig, Glen, and Clint. A life of living hell with a physically abusive, financially crippled, and emotionally absent husband father, became the family’s daily fare. Edna, herself a victim, left a legacy to her children that included rejection, avoidance, and abandonment.

She recalled, in her soft, southern accent, the day Glen came home from the hospital. "It was a real bad time when Glen was born. Because Dad had lost his job, and our home in Somerville, and then wrecked the car. He lost it all because of his drinking. Here we were spread out between relatives, Mom being pregnant and nobody would rent to us.

"We didn’t even have the fifty dollar a month rent money for a house that was in a real, real bad neighborhood. Some of us stayed with aunts and uncles, friends and different places. So when Mom finally did get that dump, I call it a dump, she told the landlord she only three kids. There were five of us.

It was a bad house. Full of roaches. The plumbing was bad and would freeze. We had a space heater to heat the whole house. During hot summer nights we kids would slip outside to the back of the house and sleep on a cool slab of cement. There was always too much month left at the end of the money.

                                                             *****

During several of Claude Senior’s drunken rampages, Edna took the family station wagon and her young babies and hid in an off-the-road park until he sobered and left for work the following day. Claude Junior, then thirteen-years old, stayed away for days at a time and missed these episodes.

Sue remembered, Glen always had disruptive sleep patterns, but it was real bad when he kicked and grunted and groaned so nobody could sleep in the car. We were terrified of being discovered before Dad sobered up. We made every effort to keep Glen quiet.

During another car getaway, Edna told Sue that she was having a nervous breakdown and was going to kill all of them and end the torment. She pressed down on the accelerator until the car reached speeds of over 100 mph as she steered the family station wagon toward a highway embankment. Sue and the boys huddled terrified on the floor behind the driver’s seat screaming and pleading with Edna not to kill them.

As an infant, Glen would sit and rock back and forth and continually bang his head against hard surfaces, never once crying. Behind his eyes, his emotions seemed to remain flat. His gaze fixed. He’d make grunting sounds, but not cry. No one could calm Glen. His uncontrollable and continuous motion wreaked havoc in a house already in turmoil.

The fifty-year old house on Park Avenue had three rooms on the first floor with walls painted with a dark green lead-based lacquer. Glen’s baby bed had rails. Edna and Claude Senior slept on a roll-away couch on the opposite side of the bedroom. As Glen grew, he’d pull himself up and lean over, wanting to get out and crawl. Edna would tie his arms to the side rails with shreds of ripped blanket. The wailing drove the rest of the children outside. Edna must have hollered, Shut up, a thousand times a day, according to Sue and Claude Junior.

But the wailing and moaning and grunting and rocking continued.

Glen was still in diapers when Edna once slapped him so hard that he couldn’t breathe and he passed out. Claude Senior blew in Glen’s blue face until his lungs caught some air and he cried.

When Glen learned to work his arms free of the restraints, he’d pacify himself by peeling paint off the walls and eating it. Many times Claude Junior would find small pieces of the paint in Glen’s mouth, inside the crib, and in his tiny fingers.

Glen rocked himself and banged his head throughout infancy. From age two to three — defiant, hostile behavior toward authority figures and society began to surface. He sensed his survival in

Reviews for The Cross Country Killer, the Glen Rogers Story

[Dawn Buzzard · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Although an intriguing story, the obvious lack of editing made it difficult to fully digest. Page after page was rife with misspellings and incorrect grammar, making it difficult to read.