A handsome stranger with piercing blue eyes asked them for rides. Then he killed them.

Sandra Gallagher enjoyed brightening people's day so much, she used to buy a flower to hand to a random stranger whenever she was out shopping.

It was usually a rose or a carnation.

"She'd just stop and say, 'There's the one,' and she'd walk over and give somebody the flower and you'd watch their face light up," Gallagher's sister, Jerri Vallicella, recently told Paste BN. "She wanted everyone to smile and be happy."

Vallicella sometimes wonders if her sister's trusting and sweet nature was partly why she became the target of a burgeoning serial killer 30 years ago.

On the night of Sept. 28, 1995, in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Van Nuys, Gallagher helped out a man she had met at a local bar. They'd hung out a bit, played some pool, and flirted, according to court records. He told her he needed a ride, Vallicella said.

Somewhat reluctant, Vallicella said that her sister asked another woman in the bathroom if she knew the man at all. The woman said he was like a brother, so Gallagher decided to give him a lift to his apartment.

It was one of the last moments of her life. Gallagher would become one of five people believed killed by the "Casanova Killer," so named for his good looks and ability to pick up women in bars.

That man, Glen Edward Rogers, is set to be executed in Florida on Thursday. Paste BN is looking back at his crimes and most importantly, who his victims were.

Who were the Casanova Killer's victims?

Authorities connected five victims to the Casanova Killer. Four of them were mothers in their 30s with reddish hair. Three of the murders happened within a six-day period.

• Mark Peters, a 72-year-old retired electrician in Hamilton, Ohio, with whom Rogers lived with briefly, was found dead in a shack owned by Rogers' family in January 1994 in Beattyville, Kentucky. (Rogers is a native of Hamilton, Ohio just outside Cincinnati)
• Sandra Gallagher, a 33-year-old mother of three, of Santa Monica, killed on Sept. 28, 1995 in Van Nuys. Her body was found in her burning vehicle. She had met Rogers in a bar the night of her murder.
• Linda Price, a 34-year-old mother of two, found stabbed to death in the bathtub of her home in Jackson, Mississippi, on Nov. 3, 1995. Price briefly lived with Rogers, telling her mother: "He is my dream man," according to an archived story in the Dayton Daily News.
• Tina Marie Cribbs, a 34-year-old mother of two, found stabbed to death in a Tampa hotel bathtub on Nov. 7, 1995. Like Gallagher, she had met Rogers at a bar on the night of her murder.
• Andy Lou Jiles Sutton, a 37-year-old mother of four: three sons and a daughter who were 19, 17, 8, and 6 when she was found stabbed to death in her bed on Nov. 9, 1995 in of Bossier City, Louisiana. Sutton and Rogers met before her murder and are believed to have slept together.

Soon after his arrest, Rogers claimed to have killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles in June 1994, and about 70 people overall. There was no evidence to back that up.

How the 'Casanova Killer' struck

On the night of Sept. 28, 1995, Rogers noticed 33-year-old Sandra Gallagher playing pool at McRed's Bar, according to witnesses. The pretty and petite married mother of three boys with strawberry blonde hair was celebrating a $1,200 Keno win, according to court records.

Rogers was "wearing cowboy boots, blue jeans, and a brown leather belt with 'a fancy cowboy-style buckle,'" according to prosecutors. "His bleached-blond hair was long and feathered, and he had a neatly trimmed beard and moustache. He approached Gallagher, who 'brushed him off' and continued to play pool."

Rogers left, and Gallagher spoke to her husband just after 8 p.m. to tell him she was staying to sing with the band. Rogers later returned, and this time, Gallagher greeted him with a "big smile" and the two were seen dancing, being playful and at one point, she kissed him on the cheek, court records say.

Later, she agreed to give him a ride. Her body was found in her burning truck the next morning. She had been strangled and set on fire.

Rogers told a friend that "she's dead," fled the state and later ended up in Mississippi, where authorities believe he killed a 34-year-old redheaded mother of two named Linda Price, who was found stabbed to death in her bathtub on Nov. 3, 1995.

Then, Rogers went to Florida and met Tina Marie Cribbs at Showtown Bar in Tampa. The redheaded single mother of two agreed to give Rogers a ride and was found dead in the bathtub of his hotel room on Nov. 7, 1995, stabbed multiple times and Rogers' watch lodged underneath her.

Authorities believe Rogers then went to Louisiana, where he had previously met Andy Lou Jiles Sutton, a mother of four described in court records as a "very beautiful" redhead with an outgoing personality, at the It'll Do Lounge in the Shreveport suburb of Bossier City. Sutton was found stabbed to death in her bed on Nov. 9, 1995.

Rogers landed on the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list and was captured in Kentucky driving Cribbs' car following one of the nation's first widely televised police chases.

Rogers was later convicted of Cribbs' and Gallagher's murders but prosecutors didn't pursue him in Louisiana or Mississippi, reasoning at the time that he was being tried in the death penalty state of Florida and that justice was being served.

Who was Sandra Gallagher?

At the time of Sandra "Sam" Gallagher's death, the 33-year-old had three sons who were 9, 10 and 14 years old.

"They were her whole entire world," Gallagher's Colorado-based sister, Jerri Vallicella, told Paste BN in an exclusive interview. "There was nothing that lit up her smile and her eyes like her little boys."

One of Gallagher's sons now has two daughters, and one of them has a daughter, so Gallagher would have been a great-grandmother, just one of life's many milestones she didn't get to experience.

In her younger years, Gallagher had to grow up far too soon during a tough childhood. As the oldest of four siblings, she was often more like a young mother than a big sister, Vallicella said.

But she also knew how to let loose.

"She was the first punk rocker in Paradise," Vallicella said, referring to the northern California town where the family used to live. "Her hair was dyed purple, cut real short, she'd wear a lime green shirt, bright orange pants. And my grandmother just about had a heart attack. She said, 'The frumpier you look, the happier you get.'"

Gallagher eventually joined the Navy and served for a number of years across the U.S. She also used to visit death row inmates in Leavenworth, Kansas, as part of a military program, Vallicella said, adding that her sister thought she might be able to help some of the men.

Gallagher was on the cusp of divorcing her husband and relocating her life to where her mother and oldest son were living in the town of Paradise when she was killed, Vallicella said.

"She was an amazing person," Vallicella said. "I could never, never put into words how beautiful she was. She just wanted to help people."

How the victims' families are feeling about execution

Mary Dicke, the 84-year-old mother of victim Tina Marie Cribbs, beat brain cancer and lung cancer, fighting to survive so she could witness the day Rogers would be executed. That day is coming 30 years after Cribbs' brutal murder.

"God is on my side. I hope he will remain on my side until I do see this done," Dicke told WTVT-TV in Tampa in 2016, saying she made a vow to live to see Rogers die.

Paste BN was unable to reach Dicke for this story, and the Florida Attorney General's Office ignored requests to reach out to her.

As for Vallicella, she said she has long been ready for Rogers' execution.

"It's not bringing back my sister. He can never bring back the 30 years of hell that we have suffered waiting for this to be over," she said. "Maybe in three days (after the execution) I can lay down and go to sleep for the first time in 30 years and not worry about him hurting someone else ... It's been 30 years of nightmares, and I'm ready for this to be over."

Contributing: Nick Penzenstadler, Paste BN

Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter with Paste BN.