Man who raped, murdered 21-year-old OSU student to be executed

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- A man who admits robbing, raping and murdering a 21-year-old Oklahoma State University student is scheduled to be executed early Thursday morning. <br><br>Kelly Lamont Rogers, 31,

Tuesday, March 21st 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- A man who admits robbing, raping and murdering a 21-year-old Oklahoma State University student is scheduled to be executed early Thursday morning.

Kelly Lamont Rogers, 31, is slated to get a lethal mix of drugs at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary for the Dec. 19, 1990, murder of Karen Marie Lauffenburger.

There are no emergency appeals planned to fight the execution, said Rogers' court-appointed lawyer Steve Presson. Rogers' final appeal was denied in January and the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board denied him clemency earlier this month. Rogers told the clemency board he was truly sorry for killing Lauffenburger and that he would gladly trade his life for hers if he could.

"He knows he did it, he feels horrible about it," Presson said. "There's much more to a person than the worst thing they've done."

But Frank Muret remembers a different Kelly Lamont Rogers. Muret prosecuted Rogers in Payne County in 1991 and said it was the kind of trial that gave him bad dreams for months afterward.

"The young woman was tortured to death, basically," said Muret, who is now in private practice in Stillwater. Muret now defends criminal cases and is no adamant supporter of the death penalty. But he said if anybody deserves execution, Rogers does. "I don't think any remorse after the fact mitigates the egregious nature of the facts," he said.

Court records describe the night of Dec. 19, 1990, this way:

Rogers -- just five weeks removed from prison -- ordered a pizza, telling his girlfriend, Audra Todd, that he planned to rob the person who delivered it.

Lauffenburger, an OSU freshman in interior design who worked part time delivering pizzas, made the delivery to Todd's Stillwater apartment. Afterward, Rogers followed Lauffenburger out of the apartment, held a knife to her and took $40 of pizza money. He forced Lauffenburger to drive to her apartment, where she was to retrieve her ATM card. She did, and Rogers forced her to withdraw $175 from her bank account at a nearby ATM. He then forced her to return to her apartment, where he stabbed her and raped her as she was either dead or dying.

Todd testified that when Rogers came back to her apartment, he told her he had killed Lauffenburger. He showed her $275 and then spent the evening doing crack cocaine and drinking wine.

Todd testified against Rogers and received a 10-year prison sentence for robbery. Rogers was convicted of first-degree murder, rape, robbery and larceny.

He had previous convictions for armed robbery, forgery and escaping from a penal institution. Presson claimed Rogers suffered mental problems from a head injury he sustained during an arrest when he was 15. "After that, his whole family noticed a change in his behavior -- a hot temper, an inability to rationally and coolly react in stressful situations," Presson said. "They always saw he calmed down and apologized later."

But prosecutors said Rogers showed little remorse during his trial, often grinning at law enforcement officers and courtroom spectators.

Charlie Price, a spokesman for the attorney general's office, said several of Lauffenburger's relatives might witness the execution, including her parents, two brothers, her fiancee and an uncle.

Lauffenburger and her family moved to Oklahoma from Whitefish Bay, Wis., so she could study interior design at Oklahoma State. A scholarship is now given in her name to an interior design student.

Presson said Rogers has a number of planned witnesses as well. They include his father, his elementary school wrestling coach, a family friend and several lawyers.

Rogers would be the 106th inmate executed in Oklahoma and the 23rd person executed by the state since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1977. Three Oklahoma death row inmates have already been executed this year.