Serial Murders Florida

The setting was the Citrus County Jail when Arlene Pralle was finally able last month to hold and kiss her daughter for the first time. It was a rapturous moment, Pralle says, when she understood what being a mother really means. "I felt fulfilled, a sense of completeness and confirmation that what I was doing was correct," she says. "And I knew that others didn't know her like I do." Pralle, slight, doe-eyed and 44, is no ordinary woman.

A mentally disabled man who had been known as one of Florida's most prolific serial killers was released after 22 years in prison, cleared by DNA testing that did not exist when he was convicted. Jerry Frank Townsend, 49, was convicted in the early 1980s of six murders and one rape and had been serving concurrent life sentences.

As accused serial killer Glen E. Rogers awaits trial here on first-degree murder charges in the bloody slashing death of a Florida woman, he has been basking in a tainted celebrity fueled by both the mainstream media and a small cult of collectors who seek mementos of notorious criminals.

Convicted serial killer Angel Maturino Resendiz led authorities in Oxford, Fla., to the skeletal remains of a teenage girl, a day after admitting to authorities he killed her and her traveling companion three years ago. Resendiz, 39, told Marion County sheriff's detectives during an interview in Texas that he killed Jesse Howell, 19, with a railroad air brake coupling and that he strangled Wendy Von Huben, 16, about eight hours later. Howell's body was found in 1997.

Convicted serial killer Angel Maturino Resendiz led authorities in Oxford, Fla., to the skeletal remains of a teenage girl, a day after admitting to authorities he killed her and her traveling companion three years ago. Resendiz, 39, told Marion County sheriff's detectives during an interview in Texas that he killed Jesse Howell, 19, with a railroad air brake coupling and that he strangled Wendy Von Huben, 16, about eight hours later. Howell's body was found in 1997.

U.S. 41, also called the Tamiami Trail in Florida, is one of the state's oldest and most important landmarks, a 250-mile highway that begins in Miami's Little Havana and runs through the heart of Tampa. Completed in the 1920s, the two-lane blacktop remains the state's southernmost east-west link and a scenic byway through an Everglades full of alligators, wading birds and saw grass. But in recent weeks, the Tamiami Trail has become synonymous with murder.

BACKGROUND: In a December story, View spoke with Arlene Pralle, 44, the born-again Christian who legally adopted accused serial killer Aileen Wuornos, 35, after seeing her picture in the paper and befriending her in jail. The hitchhiking "Damsel of Death" was charged with murder in five of the seven killings to which she has confessed. UPDATE: Wuornos is now on Death Row in Florida, awaiting a date with the electric chair, after her Jan.

Authorities have detained a carpet cleaner in the slayings of two University of Florida students, a local newspaper reported in today's editions. The killings had renewed fear in a community still edgy over a series of student killings last summer. Lt. Spencer Mann, a spokesman for the Alachua County Sheriff's office, said a news conference was scheduled for early today to announce an arrest in the case.

The main suspect in the slaying of five Gainesville college students may be linked to a 1989 triple murder in Louisiana, police said in an affidavit unsealed Monday. The affidavit in support of a search warrant was released as jury selection began in a robbery trial for Danny Harold Rolling. The trial began a year to the day after the first two victims were found in Gainesville. Last week, police in Shreveport, La.

The FBI on Friday intensified a nationwide search for alleged serial killer Glen Rogers, a laborer whose blond good looks and free-spending charm may have lured at least four women to their deaths in California, Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana.

A Florida judge has given the state permission to seize money an author made by marketing the confessions of a serial killer, co-writing a book with him and selling his art and autographs. Circuit Judge Martha Ann Lott ruled that Sondra London's collaborations with Danny Rolling, who murdered five college students, were subject to a Florida law that bars convicted felons from profiting from their stories, artwork and autographs.

The motel where Tina Marie Cribbs died from two deep stab wounds was in a dangerous area filled with felons, but police never tried to determine if she was killed by anyone other than suspected serial killer Glen Rogers. That's what Rogers' lawyers hope to prove in their defense presentation, which began Monday after prosecutors rested their case in his trial on charges of murdering Cribbs. They also focused on the time of Cribbs' death to show she might have been alive when Rogers left town.

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.

A former construction worker charged with killing a prostitute in North Carolina is suspected in the slayings of seven Florida women over 12 years. William Darrell Lindsey, 61, will be charged within the next 10 days in the killings, which began in 1983 and continued through 1995, authorities said. His name came to the attention of the St. John's County sheriff in Florida when a former county resident mailed him a newspaper clipping about the Dec. 26 slaying of the prostitute.

As accused serial killer Glen E. Rogers awaits trial here on first-degree murder charges in the bloody slashing death of a Florida woman, he has been basking in a tainted celebrity fueled by both the mainstream media and a small cult of collectors who seek mementos of notorious criminals.

In his first formal appearance in a Florida courtroom since his extradition from Kentucky, accused serial killer Glen Rogers stood silent during arraignment Tuesday as a judge entered a not guilty plea on his behalf. Rogers, suspected of killing four women in a cross-country rampage that began in Van Nuys, is charged in Florida with first-degree murder in the stabbing death of Tina Marie Cribbs, whose body was found in a Tampa motel bathtub in November.

A nationwide hunt continued Wednesday for a former Van Nuys man sought in connection with four grisly deaths--three involving women who were found strangled or stabbed to death, while a detective on the case indicated the total slayings could grow as high as 10. Police in Tampa, Fla.

For more than a year now, Ricky Paules has followed the news with agonizing patience, reading and watching every report on the investigation into the brutal slayings of her daughter and four other college students in Gainesville, Fla. Scores of times, she has looked at newspaper photos of Danny Harold Rolling, the man police call the prime suspect in the deaths. She has seen him on television, hands and feet chained, shuffling in and out of courtrooms, looking drugged and confused.

Accused serial killer Glen Rogers, whose first alleged victim was slain in Van Nuys, was extradited Wednesday from Kentucky to Tampa, Fla., to stand trial. Rogers has been accused of killing women in four states, and California, Louisiana and Florida all wanted to put him on trial. Authorities in Mississippi also have a murder charge pending but decided to await action by the other states. Gov.

Alleged serial killer Glen Rogers moved one step closer to being tried for murder in Florida--where he could be executed if convicted--when a Kentucky judge ruled Tuesday that his extradition could proceed. His attorney wants him sent instead to California, where he is accused of killing a Santa Monica woman in Van Nuys, the start of an alleged four-state murder spree. Rogers' attorney, public defender Ernie Lewis, raised objections to the extradition warrant signed by Gov.