by Gary C. King
As they tossed ideas off one another, Turner and Strovink considered the possibility that Jenny had pulled a knife or some other weapon on Dayton Leroy Rogers after their date had somehow gone sour and he had perhaps become threatening, only to have him wrest the weapon from her hands and use it against her. Specifically, they wanted to know if she possessed any Regency-Sheffield brand kitchen knives such as the one they had found beneath the shrubs near the GMAC building. After carefully inspecting the kitchen, however, they were satisfied that she had not. During the search Turner did find an Oregon identification card bearing Jennifer Lisa Smith's identification information, but he didn't turn up any knives or other types of weapons that Jenny may have carried on her person. Smith explained that Jenny rarely took her identification with her, let alone weapons. He also told them that Jenny had not been a violent person.
Turner knew that many experienced hookers did not carry their identification with them. When arrested for soliciting or other charges, a prostitute could easily provide the booking officer with a fictitious name and address, and with no identification on her person, the officer would have no way to determine if she was being truthful or not. Later, when she failed to show up for a court hearing, the bench warrant would be issued under the false name and address. It was a known way that hookers and other petty criminals used to slow the system down.
"Jenny never carried any weapons, whether she was working or not," said Smith in response to Turner's probing, as Smith began to cry. "Jenny never even carried Mace." Most street hookers, reflected Turner, usually carried Mace canisters or knives. He wondered why Jenny hadn't.
She seldom had problems on the street, said Smith, wiping tears from his eyes. Recently, however, she came home one morning and said that she had been harassed by a man in an older white car who reportedly had chased her with a stick. Unfortunately, Smith could not provide a more detailed description of the man or the car he was driving. He did, however, tell the detectives that he had talked to Jenny's friend April, who had told him that she had seen Jenny leave with a Caucasian man in a light-colored pickup truck at approximately 1:30 A.M. Smith volunteered to take the detectives to April's home.
Twenty minutes later they arrived at another run-down complex, common to that side of town, at 4800 Northeast Wygant Street. April was home, and after confirming what Smith had told the detectives about the white man in the pickup, she agreed to accompany them about forty blocks west to the location where she last saw Jenny.
When they arrived at the intersection of Union and Wygant, April explained that she had been driving for Jenny on the morning of August 7, a security precaution utilized by prostitutes just in case one of their customers posed any sort of threat or problem. They had a system where they would trade off, allowing one to solicit customers while the other drove and served as a lookout. In addition to the extra measure of security it provided, however scant, the system also gave the girls an opportunity to rest, a break from their work that they may not otherwise have had. Unfortunately, the buddy system hadn't saved Jenny's life, reflected Turner.
April indicated that she had been lying down in the front seat of Jenny's Honda, parked on Wygant facing Union, while Jenny worked the avenue. At one point, April said she fell asleep while listening to the radio. But she was awakened at 1:10 A.M. when she heard the radio announcer broadcast the time. A few minutes later she heard Jenny yell out her name two times, and when she looked up she saw the light-colored pickup approaching Jenny from the opposite side of Union Avenue on Wygant. Jenny, it seemed, had attracted a customer.
As she watched, April said the driver moved the pickup toward the location where Jenny was standing, but remained on the opposite side of the street. He turned the pickup's lights off, completed a U-turn in the intersection, and faced the opposite direction on Wygant, away from her location. After hearing Jenny yell "April, April," she said Jenny had waved to her, which meant that Jenny had not wanted to be followed. Sometimes, April explained, a hooker's driver would follow the john if he appeared threatening or was not known by the girls.
"Jenny must have felt comfortable with this guy," said April. She had watched as Jenny climbed into the passenger side of the pickup, after which the driver took an immediate right turn, departing from April's view within seconds. She explained that she waited at that location for over an hour, but Jenny never returned.
"Was anyone else working the street that morning?" asked Turner.
"Oh, yeah," said April. "We weren't alone. There was Brenda, a 'he-she,' and Darla was working down the block." April explained that Brenda was a male/female impersonator who often worked that location, and that the block was also favored by Darla and a few other girls. April didn't know the last names for either of the prostitutes and didn't know where they could be found when they weren't working. She promised that if she saw them, she would try and persuade them to contact Turner.
On the way back to her apartment, as she went over the events of the morning of August 7 again for the detectives' benefit, April saw a white Nissan pickup pass through the intersection. She suddenly became very excited and began jumping up and down and waving her hands.
"It was just like that one!" she exclaimed. "Jenny got into a pickup just like that one!" The only problem, reflected Turner as he followed the vehicle with his eyes, was that pickup was white, and Dayton's was light blue. The two detectives thanked April for her help and dropped her back at her apartment.
April seemed to be a good witness, decided Turner. But he was troubled about her quick identification of the white pickup. Her statement that she saw Jenny get into such a truck wouldn't look too good on the witness stand in the eyes of a jury. Later that night, however. mulling over the possibilities with Strovink, Turner got an idea.
At 11:50 P.M., the two detectives drove back to Portland and returned to the intersection of Wygant and Union. They made note of the fact that the area was illuminated by four sodium vapor streetlights of standard height and distance conforming to Portland's lighting code. Although the sky was overcast and a light rain was falling, one thing stood out. All of the cars parked in that location under the sodium vapor illumination appeared lighter, even bleached, in color. A car that passed by, similar in color to Dayton's pickup, looked almost white!
As he drove toward his country home in Eagle Creek, along a lonely stretch of Oregon 224 that runs parallel to the Clackamas River, John Turner kept wondering about how Dayton Leroy Rogers's light blue Nissan would have looked to April under the sodium vapor streetlights early on the morning of August 7. It would definitely have appeared lighter. He had no doubt about that. And at that time of the morning, with April still bleary-eyed after having just awakened from a nap, the light blue pickup she saw Jenny get into might really have looked white to her under the sodium vapor lights surrounded by the dark of night. He lit up another Marlboro Light and smoked it as he pondered the possibilities, also wondering how many incidents of violence Dayton may have committed that had slipped by unnoticed. The thought of such a possibility unnerved him, and he did not sleep well that night.
Chapter 6
On August 13, a Thursday, Detective John Turner had been at his desk for a little more than an hour trying to catch up on the ever-burgeoning pile of paperwork related to Jenny Smith's murder when his telephone rang at 9:20 A.M. It was a gentleman who identified himself as a minister from Canby, who briefly explained that he had just held a disturbing conversation with Roy Miller, Dayton Leroy Rogers's seventy-two-year-old father-in-law. Miller, said the minister, had just told him about some suspicious items he had found inside the wood stove at Dayton's shop. When Miller asked him for advice, the minister suggested that the police be notified and agreed to make the call for Miller. Miller, he said, was just too upset to do it himself.
Immediately upon concluding his conversation with the minister, Turner drove to Dayton's place of business in Woodburn, where he found Roy Miller inside, talking on the telephone. From what he could hea
r of the conversation, it appeared to Turner that Miller was closing the business down for good, notifying the rightful owners of power equipment that had been left for repair prior to Dayton's arrest. When he finished the phone call, he escorted Turner to the office area. After closing the door, Miller, his face drawn and weary, turned and faced the detective.
"I was going to take care of the lawn mowers and chain saws and whatever was there and give them back to the customers," Miller said somberly, explaining that Dayton had sent him a note from jail instructing him to close the business for good. He stared quietly into thin air for a few moments, gathering his thoughts. Then he abruptly continued: "I don't know if I should talk to you or not. But my conscience says that I should." Turner nodded, but said nothing. A grave and worried look on his face, Miller related that he had been in the shop the day before when Dayton telephoned him from the jail.
"I gave him money to open this business and I supported him all the time that he worked at the Coast to Coast store here in Woodburn. Now, I just don't know." Turner remained quiet, sympathetic with the old man's feelings. It was difficult for Miller to talk, he knew. It was always hardest for those who were taken in, utterly duped by a sociopath. If the activities of the last few days seemed like an unpleasant dream to Miller, they must have appeared as a full-blown nightmare to Miller's daughter, Sherry, Dayton's wife of many years.
Miller explained that Dayton had first set up shop in a small shed in front of his mobile home in Canby, while holding down a full-time job in the small-engine repair department of the Coast to Coast Hardware Store. When it appeared that the business could be successful, Miller loaned him the money he needed to set up the shop on Pacific Court in Woodburn, taking a promissory note for the funding in the autumn of 1986. Following Dayton's arrest and his subsequent written instructions to Miller telling him to shut the business down, Miller had little choice but to take over.
"I would have had to take over anyway because my note says that if he couldn't make the payments I get the business back. And I don't know anything about that business." He hadn't yet determined how much money he had lost resulting from closing the business, but he was certain that the final figures would be staggering.
"During the phone call from Dayton," continued Miller, "we talked about different customers and different things about the business. Then he asked me if the police had searched the closet of the bathroom. He wanted to know if the police had taken the clothes he had hanging there. I went and looked while he waited on the phone, and I told him there was only a jacket left."
Dayton had next asked whether the police had searched his wood stove. When Miller told him that it appeared that they had, Dayton had become silent. Following the conversation, Miller explained, he thought about what Dayton had asked and it worried him enough that he retrieved a magnet from the work bench and ran it through the ashes inside the stove.
"There were metal things hanging on to it," he said of the magnet. "There were shoe shanks, five of them. There were little hooks like those from a bra. There were those little things that hold beads to clothing, and there were shoe eyelets." Miller hesitated for a moment, then brought out a small brown paper sack from beneath the counter and handed it to Turner. "I found this in the stove. I quit after I found these, but you can take the rest if you want or use a magnet."
Miller took an empty Luv's diaper box from behind the counter, then walked around to the wood stove. Opening the top, he and Turner removed the remaining ashes and debris from inside. Afterward, Turner gave Miller a receipt for the brown paper bag and the ashes they had placed inside the diaper box.
"What kind of a person is Dayton?" asked Turner, fishing now that Miller was in a talkative mood. "Can you enlighten me about his personality?"
"I always thought he was okay," said Miller. "But now that he's been charged with murder, I just don't know." Following the arrest, Miller and Dayton's wife, Sherry, began hearing a lot of things about Dayton that Sherry had suspected for a long time but just hadn't believed. Miller didn't elaborate, and told Turner that he didn't want to report anything that he had heard.
"I've put the situation into the hands of God. Whatever the outcome, that's the way it should be."
Turner thanked Miller for his help, assuring him that he had done the right thing by talking to him. As he was departing from the business, Miller stopped him and began talking about the morning of August 7. He said Dayton had called him twice at his house that morning, beginning about 4:00 A.M.
"I didn't think he was drunk. He sounded straight, but you never know." Miller said that Dayton told him that he had been working all night. Miller paused for a moment, then stated: "He told me that before. When I would come in, I sure couldn't tell if he had worked all night. It didn't look like any of the pieces of equipment had been touched."
"When I arrived," offered Turner, "everything in the shop seemed so neat and orderly."
"Yeah, he's like that. He's always been that way."
"Over the past month or so," probed Turner, "has Dayton been acting strange or doing things out of the ordinary?"
"No. Just a normal guy, but I'm beginning to have my doubts now. I'm beginning to find out that he was nothing but a liar." Tears welled up in his eyes, and it became an effort for him to overcome his emotions. As Turner drove away, Miller just stood in the doorway, staring at the ground.
Upon his return to headquarters, Turner booked the evidence into the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office Property Room, where Deputy John Gilliland would see to it that it was analyzed by criminologists at the Oregon State Police Crime Lab in Portland as soon as possible. In the meantime. Turner wrote up his report regarding his meeting with Mr. Miller and forwarded a signed copy to the chief of detectives Lieutenant Detloff. Detective James Strovink subsequently caught the assignment to follow up on Dayton's connection to the Woodburn Coast to Coast Hardware Store.
When Strovink went to the Coast to Coast store in Woodburn, he talked with a supervisor and employees to determine who had known Dayton Leroy Rogers best. He was provided a number of names, including John Frank, Teresa Dinges, and Roberto Ancisco. To his dismay, he was informed that Frank and Ancisco no longer worked there, and Teresa Dinges was out with the flu. Determined, Strovink telephoned Teresa Dinges. Although she felt terrible, she said it would be all right if he came over to her house.
It was 10 A.M. when Strovink arrived at Teresa's residence, located in the 200 block of Acacia Street in Woodburn. When she let him inside, Teresa acknowledged that she was aware of Dayton's arrest and the ongoing murder investigation, though she expressed surprise that he was the prime suspect in such a case. It just didn't seem possible, she said. He seemed so harmless with his easygoing manner and his big brown basset-hound eyes.
Even though Dayton had worked in the small-engine repair area of the store, she had become acquainted with him and had befriended him. He seemed to prefer association with the female employees more than with the males and was always at work when he was supposed to be. He always acted like the "big brother" type, and they often met for lunch.
"We held long, in-depth conversations, and I would often ask Dayton for advice, much like a sister would talk to her brother about problems," she said.
"Was your relationship with Dayton ever sexual?"
"No. Never. We were never intimate. It's like I said, I looked upon him as a brotherly type."
On one occasion during a day off from work, in December 1986 or January 1987, she had accompanied Dayton on a one-day outing to Lincoln City, a resort town on the Oregon coast. They had left Woodburn about noon and headed toward the coast from Salem, eventually turning onto Oregon 18. They stopped briefly at a state park along the way, the Henry B. Van Duzer State Park, where they took a short walk in the woods.
"How did Dayton conduct himself in your presence?"
"He was a perfect gentleman. He never tried anything, nor did he do anything suggestive."
"Was there any alcohol involved duri
ng your outing?"
"No. We drank coffee and soft drinks."
Teresa said they walked along the beach for a while upon their arrival in Lincoln City, then returned to Woodburn. They arrived at her home at approximately 6:00 P.M.
"He did tell me that I shouldn't talk to anyone about our trip to the beach," she said. "He was afraid that others might think we were having an affair, which, of course, we weren't."
"What kind of a vehicle did you ride in with him to the coast?"
"His blue Datsun pickup." Although he sometimes drove a gray Honda, which Teresa believed was his wife's, she always associated Dayton with the blue pickup, which he always kept neat and clean, inside and out.
"Did you ever see any weapons inside the pickup?" asked Strovink. "Guns, knives?"
"No. Nothing like that."
Teresa expressed to Strovink that Dayton held a mysterious fascination with Portland, that he acted as if the city were a whole different world to him. He often emphasized how boring the small town of Woodburn was and indicated that he came to Portland three or four times a week. He had some sort of agreement with his wife in which he would dress up and go to Portland on Friday and Saturday nights with little or no objection from his wife. He liked to wear western style clothes, particularly light-colored shirts, Levi's slacks, and cowboy boots.