May 15 (UPI) -- Florida executed a man Thursday evening convicted of murdering a woman in a Tampa Bay, Fla., motel room in 1995, marking the 16th death row inmate to have their sentenced carried out so far this year in the United States, and the fifth in the Sunshine State.
Glen Rogers, 62, died by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison near Starke. He was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. EDT, the Florida Department of Corrections said in a statement.
He used his final statement to speak to his victims.
"I know there's a lot of questions that you need answers to," he said, the Tampa Bay Times reported. "I promise you in the near future the questions will be answered and I hope in some way will bring you closure."
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He also praised U.S. President Donald Trump.
"Keep making America great," he said. "I'm ready to go."
For his last meal, Rogers had pizza, chocolate cake and a soda, the Florida Department of Corrections told UPI.
His final visitor was his wife, Victoria Zubie, the department said.
A Florida jury in 1997 convicted Rogers of murdering Tina Marie Cribbs, 34, whom he met in a Hillsborough bar and was the mother of two.
He stole Cribbs' car after killing her and fled Florida before being stopped in Kentucky following a car chase.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Rogers' death warrant last month.
The Florida Supreme Court denied Rogers' last appeal in 2021 after Rogers claimed new evidence showed he endured sexual abuse as a child.
Rogers claimed he was also sexually abused while an inmate at the Training Institute of Central Ohio, which was a now-closed juvenile detention facility.
He also claimed to have repressed the alleged sexual abuse until 2019, but the state's highest court rejected the argument and denied his appeal.
Rogers filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court after DeSantis signed his death warrant, but the nation's highest court denied his appeal.
His death caused the Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty to express remorse, which chastised DeSantis for claiming to support victims of childhood sexual abuse and sex trafficking for killing an alleged victim of childhood sexual abuse.
"Tonight, Florida executed a man they once should have saved," it said in a statement sent to UPI. "His execution did nothing to prevent future victims or future offenders. it is simply one final act of violence to an already devastating story."
"Glen's state-sanctioned murder was the ultimate hypocrisy: Florida's 'commitment' to victims of sex trafficking is nothing more than a sound bite to score political points."
Rogers was also convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1999 in California for the strangulation death of Sandra Gallagher, who was a mother of three.
Rogers met Gallagher in a Van Nuys, Calif., bar and killed her a few weeks before killing Cribbs in Florida.
He also was linked to several other murders and once told police he had killed about 70 people, but Rogers later retracted that claim.
Most of his known or suspected victims were females in their 30s with red hair and petite builds.
Some suggested he might have killed Nicole Simpson Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman, in 1994. During O.J. Simpson's criminal trial, Rogers was presented by the attorneys for the disgraced football star as a potential suspect.
A 2012 TV documentary about Rogers also alleges that he admitted to killing Brown and Goldman and was paid $20,000 by Simpson.
Media often referred to Rogers as the "Casanova killer."
He is the fifth person to be killed by Florida this year, up from only one for all of 2024.
Last week, DeSantis signed the death warrant for the execution of Anthony Floyd Wainwright, whose sentence is scheduled to be carried out at 6 p.m. on June 10.
There have been 16 executions carried out in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Tennessee this year.
On Tuesday, there are two scheduled executions, one in Texas and the other in Indiana.
There were 25 executions in the United States last year.
