<2 cents>

To be honest, if I saw that problem, I would first test the old perl version

#!/usr/bin/perl
use Image::Magick;
[download]

if that works, but #!/usr/local/bin/perl causes the crash, you probably built the 2 Perl's differently(like one has threads?). The easiest fix, would be to do a fresh install of Image::Magick using /usr/local/bin/perl; I believe it will search /usr/local/lib first, before /usr/lib for the module. Do a manual install, those rpm installs are probably confusing you. Like are you sure which Perl the rpm installer is using?

If that dosn't work, you may have a different problem, but are jumping to a false conclusion that it is ImageMagick or Perl5.8.8.

</2cents>