Pathologist Says Stabbing Victim Didn’t Die Instantly

TAMPA, Fla. — The mother of Tina Marie Cribbs wiped away tears and left the courtroom Friday before a medical examiner said Cribbs was alive and aware for at least 15 minutes after being stabbed in a motel room rented by suspected serial killer Glen Rogers.

Forensic pathologist Dr. Daniel Schultz was on the witness stand when defense lawyers said he would testify that Cribbs did not die instantly.

The judge dismissed the jury and noted that Mary Dicke, seated in the front row, was “openly wiping tears from her face.”

Dicke stood.

“I was not aware,” she said. “I’m sorry. I was told at the time of my daughter’s death she died instantly; she didn’t know what hit her.”

Dicke then left the courtroom, visibly shaken.

Rogers, 34, is accused of twice stabbing Cribbs and leaving her body in a motel bathtub as he fled with her car and jewelry. He also is suspected of killing three other women in three states in the fall of 1995, beginning with a slaying in Van Nuys.

With the jury back in the room, Schultz testified that Cribbs was beaten, stabbed and alert for 15 to 20 minutes before passing out. It probably took 30 minutes to an hour for her to die, he said.

He found her body slumped on her back in the bathtub, wearing her shirt and underwear. Her jeans, which had a rip that matched one of her stab wounds, were by the side of the tub. Dried blood covered the bathtub walls, faucet and shower curtain.

The shape of one of the wounds indicated that the knife had been inserted and twisted, he said. “A lot of blood just went out the wounds and down the drain,” he testified.

Earlier Friday, prosecutors brought Rogers’ denim shorts into court with two FBI agents who said they were spattered with blood that could belong to Cribbs.

The shorts, found in Rogers’ suitcase after he was arrested in Kentucky, had spots of blood on them, FBI Agent Joe Errera said. Sam Baechtel, who performed the DNA analysis, said two of the blood spots contained a mixture of DNA material that probably came from Rogers and Cribbs.

Testimony resumes Monday morning.

Rogers was captured driving Cribbs’ car in Kentucky after a nationwide manhunt. He faces the death penalty if convicted.

He also is charged with three other killings:

* Sandra Gallagher, 34, a Santa Monica barmaid found raped and strangled in her burning pickup in Van Nuys on Sept. 29, 1995.

* Linda Price, 34, whose stabbed body was found in the bathtub of her Jackson, Miss., apartment last Nov. 3. Police said she and Rogers had lived together after meeting at a state fair weeks earlier.

* Andy Jiles Sutton, 37, whose stabbed body was found on her punctured water bed in the Air Force town of Bossier City, La., on Nov. 9.