84. Deathbed repentance
On May 15, 2025, Glen Rogers, known by several names such as The Casanova Killer and The Cross-Country Killer, was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison after spending nearly 30 years on death row.
It marked the end of a story that haunted headlines. Many family members of his victims traveled far, even some families making a 10-hour drive to witness the execution.
In his last moments, Rogers expressed gratitude to his wife for her love and support, and the next name he mentioned caught many by surprise.
It was the name of U.S. President Donald Trump. He said, “President Trump, keep making America great. I'm ready to go.”
With these words, Rogers ended a chapter marked by decades of violence and courtroom battles. Police had named him as a suspect in several unsolved homicides.
Rogers, who previously worked as a traveling carnival worker, became one of the most infamous suspected serial killers of the 1990s. He was convicted of two brutal murders in 1995, but he initially claimed responsibility for as many as 70 killings. A claim that he later retracted.
All the women he murdered shared similar physical traits—petite, red-haired, and in their 30s.
Meetings mainly took place in bars. Police records identify Sandra Gallagher, a 33-year-old mother of three, as the first victim. Rogers met her at a California bar and later strangled her to death. A week afterward, he killed Tina Marie Cribbs, a 34-year-old mother of two, whom he met at a Florida bar. Her body was discovered in a motel room, and Rogers was subsequently arrested while driving her car.
It wasn’t the first time a criminal on death row has undergone profound transformations before execution.
In a letter to me, my elderly American friend William J. Dean wrote about Jacques Fesch (1930–1957), a French criminal who, while awaiting execution in prison, became a devout Catholic and whose name was proposed as a candidate for sainthood. Yes, that’s correct.
An antisemite whose father was ethnically Jewish, Fesch’s story is quite unusual.
He murdered a police officer while fleeing after a robbery and admitted that his motive was to buy a boat to go to Tahiti. People were outraged over the murder of a policeman.
Pressure from several police unions that refused to provide security for Queen Elizabeth II's upcoming visit also played a significant role, and he was sentenced to death.
Early in his imprisonment, Fesch mocked his lawyer's Catholic faith. Still, after a year in prison, he underwent a profound religious conversion, became very devout, and bitterly regretted his crime before declaring himself a mystic after having a vision on March 1, 1955.
After his execution, his wife and daughter honored his memory as a symbol of redemption and published his writings. In 1987, the Archbishop, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, opened a diocesan inquiry into his life, and the cause for his beatification was formally opened in 1993.
William told me that the immediate reason for talking about this criminal was that he watched a play called ‘Spomen sin a mna’ (Remember Me) in 2018, which was based on and inspired by the life and conversations of Jacques Fesch, as well as the real events of this murderer who became a Christian.
He wrote that Fesch's conversion is often mentioned in Christian writings about forgiving sinners, and his writings are usually quoted in Catholic publications, especially his personal journal and letters to his mother and Brother Thomas, which often discuss mystical or theological topics.
A life filled with violence and deception has many footnotes, but a criminal remains a criminal regardless of circumstances and must face punishment.
I feel that these conversions, often called deathbed repentance, can be seen as attempts to attain forgiveness, redemption, and peace before death.
And I also strongly believe that crime is fundamentally a mindset of an individual. A change is not possible; however, we have to accept such rare cases.
(Top Photo Courtesy https://richtopia.com with thanks)