Apparently the people in charge of the Investigation Discovery channel have not shame. I don’t blame the Goldman family for being incensed by this exploitation film in light of the overwhelming evidence that Simpson killed his wife and their son Ron.
DOCUMENTARY: FORMER VAN NUYS RESIDENT GLEN ROGERS MAY BE INVOLVED IN O.J. SIMPSON CASE
By Tamara Lush
Associated Press
November 20, 2012
TAMPA, Fla. - A documentary says a Florida death row inmate might have been involved in the murder of O.J. Simpson's ex-wife and her friend, a claim being criticized by one victim's family and being looked at skeptically by a detective who has dealt with the convict.
The Investigation Discovery show, "My Brother the Serial Killer," will air Wednesday. The film is a look at Glen Rogers, a carnival worker who had lived in Van Nuys and was convicted in Florida in 1997 for killing a woman in a Tampa motel room.
Rogers, who is now 50, was also convicted of murdering Sandra Gallagher after meeting her in a Van Nuys bar. He is a suspect in homicides in Mississippi, Louisiana and Kentucky - and possibly several other states.
Most of his victims were women he had met in bars while drifting across the country. All of his victims were stabbed to death. With blazing blue eyes, a scraggly beard and long, blond hair, Rogers was arrested in November 1995, near Waco, Ky., after a nationwide manhunt for the so-called "Cross-Country Killer" and a 100 mph chase.
Rogers, who is from Hamilton, Ohio, met Nicole Brown Simpson in 1994 when he was living in Southern California, his family says in the documentary.
A criminal profiler in the film says he received paintings by Rogers with clues possibly linking him to the 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman. The profiler says that Rogers sent him a painting of the murder weapon used in the slayings.
"I believe that Glen believes he killed them," said Anthony Meoli, an Atlanta criminal profiler who has received more than 1,000 letters from Rogers and has interviewed him in prison.
Simpson was accused in those killings but the so-called "trial of the century" in Los Angeles ended with his acquittal in 1995.
Simpson never testified at the criminal trial, but memorably demonstrated in court that a glove found near the slaying scene did not fit his hand. He testified at length in a wrongful death trial that led a Los Angeles civil court jury in 1997 to find him liable for damages in the case. Simpson is serving a prison sentence in Nevada after being convicted in 2008 of leading five men, including two with guns, in a September 2007 confrontation with two sports memorabilia dealers and a middleman at a Las Vegas casino-hotel.
Los Angeles police, whose investigation of the Simpson case drew international scrutiny, did not appear to take the claims in the film seriously.
"Nothing's been reopened," Officer Norma Eisenman, an LAPD spokeswoman, said Tuesday.
She said detectives in the Robbery-Homicide Division declined to respond at all to the film.
Eisenman said she was not aware of any similar claims in the past about the Simpson-Brown slayings.
Much of the film is narrated by Rogers' brother, Clay Rogers, who used to rob homes with Glen Rogers as a teen but in 1993, called police on his brother after finding a body at the family's Kentucky cabin.
Clay Rogers said that in 1994, weeks before the infamous murders, his brother told him about meeting Nicole Simpson.
"They've got money, they're well off and I'm taking her down," Clay Rogers recalls Glen Rogers saying.
Other family members also said Glen Rogers talked about meeting Simpson's ex-wife.
In a statement, Goldman's sister criticized the documentary.
"I am appalled at the level of irresponsibility demonstrated by the network and the producers of this so-called documentary," Kim Goldman said. "This is the first time we are hearing about this story, and considering that their `main character,' Glen Rogers, confessed to stabbing my brother and Nicole to death, you would think we would be in the loop."
Meoli said Rogers told him that OJ Simpson paid him to break into Nicole Brown Simpson's house to steal a pair of $20,000 earrings. Other clues, Meoli said, were that Rogers drove a white pickup for his construction job - a white pickup was seen near the Simpson house on the day of the murders - and that a second bloody footprint at the scene was never identified.
"All those things put together a plausible alternative theory," Meoli said.
The film's director, David Monaghan, said Tuesday that he feels investigators should look into Rogers' claims of killing Simpson and Goldman - and the inmate should be held accountable for several other murders around the country as well.
Los Angeles County Assistant District Attorney Pat Dixon, who prosecuted Rogers for the 1995 murder of Sandra Gallagher, said his crimes didn't fit the Simpson-Brown killings at all.
"It seems bizarre to me and highly unlikely," Dixon said Tuesday.
He said Rogers was linked to at least five murders across the country. And in every one, he first met a woman at a bar and convinced her to come home with him.
That would begin a whirlwind romance lasting a few weeks. In some cases, the women and Rogers even lived together - until one day he'd snap and stab them to death.
In the Van Nuys case, Rogers killed Gallagher, a 33-year-old mother of three, then burned her body. He hadn't known Gallagher as long as some of the other victims, Dixon said.
Rogers killed three other women after that before being caught in Kentucky following a national manhunt.
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