Glen Rogers and the OJ Simpson Case: Documentary Claims and Facts

The claim connecting Glen Rogers to the O.J. Simpson case comes from a 2012 documentary that alleged Rogers, a convicted serial killer, was the actual killer of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in June 1994. Law enforcement rejected the theory. The Los Angeles Police Department said it had no reason to believe Rogers was involved, prosecutors who had tried him said the killings did not fit his pattern, and no charges were ever filed against him in connection with the Brentwood murders. Rogers was executed by Florida on May 15, 2025, for a different killing.¹

Who Glen Rogers Was

Rogers, nicknamed the “Casanova Killer” and “Cross-Country Killer,” was convicted of two murders in the mid-1990s: the September 1995 strangling and burning of Sandra Gallagher in Van Nuys, California, and the November 1995 stabbing of Tina Marie Cribbs at a Tampa motel.²³ He was sentenced to death in both states. His documented pattern involved meeting women at bars and killing them, sometimes after spending days with them. He was also suspected in the deaths of Mark Peters in Kentucky, Linda Price in Mississippi, and Andy Lou Jiles Sutton in Louisiana, though he was never charged in those cases.⁴ At one point Rogers told police he had killed roughly 70 people, then recanted.¹

What the 2012 Documentary Alleged

In November 2012, Investigation Discovery aired My Brother the Serial Killer, directed by David Monaghan. The film argued that Rogers, not O.J. Simpson, stabbed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman outside Brown Simpson’s Brentwood condominium on June 12, 1994.⁵

The main voice in the film was Rogers’ brother, Clay Rogers, who said flatly: “I’m absolutely certain that my brother Glen killed Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman.” According to Clay, Glen phoned him in the weeks before the killings, said he was seeing Nicole Brown Simpson, described her as rich, and said he was going to “take her down.” Clay also said Glen mailed a gold angel pin allegedly taken from Brown Simpson’s body to their mother in Ohio, and that their mother later wore the pin to one of Glen’s murder trials at his request.⁶

The film also relied on Anthony Meoli, a forensic psychology consultant who said he had visited Rogers on death row for nearly 50 hours.⁷ Meoli said Rogers told him O.J. Simpson had hired him to break into the Brentwood condominium and steal diamond earrings Simpson had given Brown Simpson, and that Simpson said, “You may have to kill the bitch.” Rogers, through Meoli, further alleged Simpson waited nearby and later stepped onto the bloody sidewalk, which the filmmakers suggested could explain Simpson’s footprints at the scene.⁵

To place Rogers in Los Angeles, the documentary cited work receipts showing he had painted houses in the area around the time of the murders. The film also said Rogers had given Meoli a drawing of the weapon he claimed to have used, which the filmmakers said matched forensic descriptions of the blade.⁸

Why Investigators and Prosecutors Rejected the Claim

The LAPD dismissed the theory directly. Commander Andrew Smith said: “The LAPD is quite confident that we know who killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. We have no reason to believe that Mr. Rogers was involved.”⁶ The department said its robbery-homicide detectives would review the material for thoroughness, but Los Angeles police and prosecutors concluded they “found no credible link” between Rogers and the case.¹

Pat Dixon, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted Rogers in California in the 1990s, said the Brentwood killings did not match Rogers’ method. Rogers courted women at bars over days before killing them; the Simpson-Goldman murders were a fast attack outside a home. “Rogers and O.J. Simpson’s cases don’t match except that all the victims were stabbed,” Dixon said. He suggested Rogers had reason to invent the confession: a California proceeding could pull him out of Florida and push his execution date further out.⁶

Fred Goldman, Ron Goldman’s father, rejected the film outright: “The overwhelming evidence at the criminal trial proved that one, and only one, person murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. That person is O.J. Simpson and not Glen Rogers.”⁵ ABC News legal analyst Dan Abrams said the filmmaker had assembled a “compelling case” but had not answered “the enormous amount of evidence pointing at O.J. Simpson.”⁸

The physical items the documentary treated as corroboration did not translate into evidence. The gold angel pin Clay Rogers described was never reported to have been examined or authenticated by law enforcement as connected to the Brentwood scene.⁹ The Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office declined to open new leads based on the film, according to its director.¹⁰

The Simpson Case’s Actual Legal Record

Whatever Rogers said on death row, the Brown Simpson and Goldman killings have a documented court record that does not mention him. O.J. Simpson was charged with the June 12, 1994, stabbings and tried in a Los Angeles criminal case that became a national event. The prosecution, led by Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden before Judge Lance Ito, pressed Simpson’s history of domestic violence. The defense, led by Johnnie Cochran, argued that LAPD evidence had been mishandled and, in part, planted, and highlighted racist statements by Detective Mark Fuhrman and the courtroom moment when a bloody glove appeared not to fit Simpson’s hand.¹¹ On October 3, 1995, after less than four hours of deliberation, the jury acquitted Simpson.¹²

A civil jury reached the opposite conclusion. Beginning in October 1996, that jury found Simpson liable for the wrongful deaths of both victims and awarded the families $8.5 million in compensatory damages and $25 million in punitive damages, a judgment affirmed by a California appellate court in 2001.¹³ The judgment was renewed over the years and domesticated in Nevada in 2021; Simpson’s estate accepted a creditor claim from Fred Goldman for nearly $58 million in 2025.¹⁴ Simpson later served nine years for an unrelated armed robbery and died in 2024.¹² Rogers is not named in any of it.

What Happened to Rogers

Rogers spent nearly three decades on death row in Florida. His conviction and death sentence for the Cribbs murder were affirmed on direct appeal in 2001, and he lost successive rounds of state and federal postconviction litigation over the following twenty years.¹⁵ Governor Ron DeSantis signed his death warrant on April 15, 2025. Florida executed him by lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke on May 15, 2025, and he was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m.¹⁶

In his final statement, Rogers told the families of his victims: “I know there’s a lot of questions that you need answers to. I promise you, in the near future the questions will be answered and I hope in some way will bring you closure.”¹⁷ He did not use those final moments to admit to the Brown Simpson and Goldman murders. He was 62. No charges in the Brentwood killings were ever brought against him, and none can be brought now.

1
CBS News Miami. Florida Glen Rogers Casanova Killer Execution
2
FindLaw. People v. Rogers, No. S080840
3
FindLaw. Rogers v. State, SC91384
4
USA Today. Casanova Killer Glen Rogers Victims
5
KTLA. Serial Killer Confesses to Murders of Ron and Nicole
6
CNN. O.J. Simpson Film Claim
7
Psychology Today. Who Killed Nicole
8
ABC News. Serial Killer: OJ Simpson Murdered Nicole Brown Simpson
9
New Haven Register. Documentary: Florida Death Row Inmate May Have Killed Nicole Brown Simpson
10
Variety. My Brother the Serial Killer Review
11
Britannica. O.J. Simpson Trial
12
PBS Frontline. O.J. Simpson Murder Trial Verdict
13
Justia. Rufo v. Simpson
14
KBTX. O.J. Simpson Estate Agrees to Pay Fred Goldman
15
FindLaw. Rogers v. State, No. SC20-1863
16
WUSF. Florida Executes Glen Rogers for 1995 Murder
17
Justia Verdict. Let’s Stop Asking for Last Words of People About to Be Executed