by Gary C. King
Also during that fourth week in August, while investigators in Portland were looking into the unexplained disappearances of Lisa and Mo, detectives at the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office in Oregon City were busy mulling over reports about a sixteen-year-old girl, Reatha Marie Gyles, who had been missing from her Estacada, Oregon home since July 21 and hadn't been heard from since.
Deputy John Johannessen had been dispatched to the Gyles residence at 440 S.W. Maple in Estacada on Wednesday, July twenty-ninth, and arrived there at 4:22 P.M. Reatha's mother, Wanda Marie Gyles, a deaf-mute, motioned for him to come inside, at which time Reatha's boyfriend, Leonard Todd Thornton, seventeen, known as "Moose" on the streets, and Reatha's sister, Wanda "Lovey" Gyles, fourteen, interpreted.
Using sign language, Wanda Gyles explained that she wanted to report Reatha missing because she had not seen her for a week. Leonard said he last saw Reatha, who was also known as "Leslie" on the streets, on foot near 82nd Avenue and Division Street in Portland, and that she was supposedly on her way to see a friend who lived near that location.
"She never showed up, but Reatha was always going off somewhere," interjected Reatha's mother with sign language. "We didn't worry for a while."
Wanda Gyles explained that Reatha dropped out of Marshall High School in April, just prior to the end of her sophomore year, and began hanging out along 82nd Avenue. Lovey told Johannessen that Reatha knew many of the prostitutes and street people who hung out on 82nd Avenue.
"82nd Avenue was her life," said Lovey. "She never used drugs. She just liked the money and the clothes. I was shocked when I found out what she was doing, but she is my sister and I love her."
Reatha, Johannessen was told, had been arrested for prostitution twice in 1987, the most recent arrest on July 10, less than two weeks before she disappeared.
"She was a good child until she got around her friends," said Reatha's mother. "She was so sweet. Then she hit the streets, and it all changed. Her friends pressured her to make quick money. No one wanted to wait two weeks for a paycheck. She started turning some tricks for fast cash. I wanted her off the streets. I told her to get a job. She wouldn't listen. She wanted to party."
Leonard said he met Reatha two years earlier, when Reatha was fourteen, after helping her mother carry her groceries from a supermarket in Southeast Portland.
"I met Reatha and liked her right off," said Leonard. "I had her over for dinner and then we started going out. She was sort of naive, but good and honest."
After they dated for a while, Reatha began alternating living with her mother and with Leonard, who lived on Portland's southeast side. Eventually she began attending Marshall High School in Portland because she was spending most of her time at Leonard's. Although she was not known to experiment with drugs, Reatha began having problems at school and received straight Fs for much of the 1986-87 school year.
Reatha was described as a pretty girl, about five feet four inches tall and 120 pounds, with thick shoulder-length brown wavy hair and blue eyes. Leonard said that her appearance was normally casual but well groomed and that her complexion was light. She was always polite. She walked with a slight limp because one leg was shorter than the other, and she had multiple scars on both legs from extensive surgery performed over the years at the Shriner's Children Hospital in Portland for congenital dislocated hips. Despite the hardships she had endured, Reatha had a sweet disposition and a capacity to care for other people.
"Reatha normally wears rings on the last three fingers of both hands and has a chain and pendant of two Playboy bunnies around her neck," said Leonard. The day she disappeared she was also wearing a brown suede jacket with contrasting suede on the cuffs and pockets, Levi's jeans, a light-colored blouse, and black leather boots.
"Did Reatha have any enemies that you know of?" asked Johannessen. "Anybody who might have wanted to harm her?"
Leonard, Wanda, and Lovey looked at one another quizzically, each waiting for the other to reply. Finally Leonard spoke up.
"Milton Graves,* Wanda's ex-boyfriend, and some of his friends threatened to kill her."
Without waiting for Johannessen to ask why, Leonard explained that Graves was arrested about ten days earlier due to a complaint that Wanda had filed against him alleging abuse. According to the complaint, Graves purportedly forcibly injected Wanda with crank, a powerful methamphetamine, twice on July 19. Graves fled the house afterward, but sheriff's deputies found him hiding in bushes down the street and arrested him for fourth-degree assault. He denied the charges and vehemently insisted that Wanda had "shot up" herself with a "nickel bag of dope." He spent the night in jail, but Leonard had learned that he was placed on work-release the next day. Graves was on parole from previous felony convictions, however, and was afraid that Leonard and Reatha's family would testify against him about having drugs as well as guns in Wanda Gyles's house, both violations of his parole. He wanted the guns back and, according to Leonard, said that he would kill everyone in the family if they talked.
Lovey spoke up and said that she, too, had received telephone threats from Graves and his friends following his release from jail. She didn't know where he was calling from, but she gave Johannessen an address of one of Graves's friends on Southeast Powell Boulevard.
"If you don't keep your mouth shut," Lovey quoted Graves as saying, "you won't live to see your fifteenth birthday." Lovey explained that she had seen at least four handguns in the house, but the police didn't get them. Graves had hidden them someplace, but she didn't know where.
When Johannessen finished at the Gyles residence, he called the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office Records Department and had Reatha entered into their data system as missing. He also sent out a metro-area teletype that indicated she might be a victim of foul play, and sent out an APB for Graves's arrest on a charge of tampering with witnesses.
When Graves was rearrested, he denied making any threats to anyone and insisted that he had not harmed Reatha Gyles in any way. In fact, he said, he hadn't even seen her for some time. Unfortunately, neither had anyone else. Nonetheless, Graves volunteered to take a polygraph examination regarding Reatha's disappearance and possible untimely demise, and successfully passed it. As far as the cops were concerned, he was not a suspect in her disappearance.
On Friday, August 28, Detective John Turner made contact with Maxine Jewell, a clerk at the Woodburn OLCC store where Dayton Rogers made most of his liquor purchases. The store was conveniently located at the North Park Plaza Shopping Center, on the corner of Highways 211 and 99E.
Maxine told Turner that she had worked at the liquor store for about seventeen months, and during that time she had served Dayton Rogers numerous times. She hadn't known his name, she said, until she saw and heard it announced on television news reports the evening of August 7 in connection with Jenny Smith's murder.
"He came in near closing time on August 6," she said. Maxine said she remembered the date and time because Rogers hadn't been in for a while. She had always considered him a regular customer because he came in at least two or three times a week and always bought one particular brand of vodka.
"What type of vodka was that, Maxine?"
"He always bought Smirnoff vodka and would sometimes play the lottery by buying a couple of scratch tickets. He was always a very quiet man, never loud, never caused any trouble in the store."
The store's proprietor, Willie Verboort, offered that Rogers was an unfriendly type, more of a loner. He was different than most people, a dead-end character who never cracked a smile, even when he was told a joke.
"Did he ever buy any other brand of vodka?" asked Turner.
"No, he only bought Smirnoff, in the tiny miniatures. He always bought a carton of them."
"Did he ever buy Smirnoff in a larger-size bottle?"
"No, that's all I've ever sold him, small miniatures."
By the time Turner arrived back at his office, he found that the Oregon State Police Crime Detection Laboratory had returned some of its reports regardi
ng the scene processing associated with Jenny Smith's death. Turner read that an examination of Jenny's blood revealed only a trace blood alcohol level, less than 0.01 grams of ethanol per lOOcc of her blood. She clearly had not been intoxicated at the time of her death and had likely consumed less than one drink.
A number of reddish brown stains found inside Dayton's truck had been identified as human blood. Of particular interest were the stains found in a spatter pattern on the inside driver's side windshield area, the pattern of which demonstrated a passenger-to-driver's area directionality. Simply put, the wounds that caused the spatter pattern were inflicted on the passenger side of the truck and could have come from Rogers's hand wounds.
Similarly, test results on bloodstains from the bathroom door at Dayton's shop, the drop near the shop entrance, the pickup's right door, weather stripping, and interior right door handle could have all come from Dayton's wounds. The blood found on the sidewalk adjacent to the GMAC building could also have come from Rogers. Jenny was excluded as being a source of any of the aforementioned bloodstains.
Criminologists also determined that the extensive bloodstains on the blade of the Regency-Sheffield knife found near the crime scene could have come from Jenny. Likewise, bloodstains on Jenny's denim pants, sweatshirt, and samples from beneath the passenger seat were consistent with her blood type.
However, both Jenny and Dayton were excluded as possible sources of the extensive bloodstains found beneath the driver's side floor pad of Dayton's truck, as well as the bloodstains on the right heel area of the Texas brand boots confiscated during the execution of the search warrants.
So whose blood was that? wondered Turner. What did it mean? He didn't like the grimness that it implied and became even more concerned when Dayton's wife, Sherry, informed Detective Lynda Estes that neither she nor their son had ever bled inside the pickup. Likewise, Sherry had said that she could not recall any instances in which Dayton or anyone else had bled in the pickup.
Turning back to the crime lab reports, Turner read that several hairs from Dayton's truck had been deemed macroscopically and microscopically similar to strands taken from Rogers and from Jenny's body. Surprisingly, there were no pubic hairs in the sweepings that had come from either Jenny or Dayton, and there were no hairs similar to Jenny's head and pubic hair standard samples found on Dayton's clothing. Likewise, none of the hairs matched those of Sherry Rogers or her son. No semen was detected on the vaginal, oral, or rectal swabs taken at Jenny's autopsy, nor was any detected on any of Jenny's clothing found at the crime scene.
More damning, however, was the analysis of the items found in the wood stove ash from Dayton's shop when compared to the construction of the single shoe found at the Jenny Smith crime scene. A shoe shank found in the stove was similar in size, shape, and thickness to the shank found in the sole of the shoe left at the crime scene. Also, patterns of adhesive on both sides of the crime scene shoe shank matched the patterns found on the stove shoe shank. The lacing on the crime scene shoe was held by twelve eyelets and four swivel lace fasteners at the top of the shoe, and a corresponding number of eyelets and lace fasteners of like design were found in the stove ash. It was clear that Dayton, or someone, had burned one of Jenny's shoes in the stove.
The stove ash analysis also revealed enough shanks for two additional pairs of footwear. There were also snap fasteners, buttons, clasps, zippers and zipper parts, belt buckles, shoe nails, needles, decorative studs and assorted designs, wire springs, earring pieces, coins, and a safety pin.
A sudden inexplicable chill came over Turner for a few moments as he contemplated what he had just learned. What reasons could Dayton have had for burning articles of women's clothing and footwear? If he had nothing to hide, why not just discard them in the usual manner or give them to one of the charitable organizations that resells such items? Turner's gut feeling now was that Dayton's murderous activities reached far beyond the murder of Jenny Smith. But who were the other victims? And how could he find out?
As Turner began reading through the stacks of reports about Dayton's past—many of which, he found, had been compiled by his own department when they'd had run-ins with Dayton many years before, as well as others that had been retrieved from a number of state agencies—he began to get a firm grasp of the type of person with whom he was dealing. He began to visualize the terror, pain, and suffering that Dayton, clearly a sociopath, had put his victims through for such a long, long time. Turner knew in his gut that he was on the right track, that his reasoning was correct. Dayton was a serial killer. But unless Dayton talked, which was doubtful, proving it might be impossible. Worse yet, his other victims might never be discovered.
PART TWO
A Murder Case Waiting for a Place to Happen
Chapter 8
Although no one could have foreseen that the helpless child would metamorphose slowly into a human abomination through the years, that is precisely what happened with Dayton Leroy Rogers. Sadly, the danger signals were there all along, from the times in early adolescence when he would masturbate while fantasizing about his sisters' feet, using their shoes as a stimulus, to his early teens when his sexual escapades escalated to peeping at his sisters in various stages of undress. Unfortunately, all this occurred in a less enlightened period when few people had the insight to recognize the warning signals. As a result of not being saved from his ever-growing affliction, many of those unfortunate enough to cross his path later would be mercilessly done in and discarded like yesterday's trash, all to satisfy his own gradually manifested and perverted form of sexual gratification. Whether those he touched survived or not, wherever he walked he left behind him a trail of shattered lives.
Dayton Leroy Rogers was born in Moscow, Idaho, on September 30, 1953. His parents seemed an appropriately matched couple, each being devout, some would say even zealous, members of the Seventh-Day Adventist faith who would rear Dayton, his two biological sisters, three adopted sisters, and an adopted brother accordingly. Dayton's father, Ortis Noble Rogers, never really liked children, not even his own, and hadn't wanted any in the first place. But Dayton's mother, Jasperelle, adored children and revered the role of housewife/ mother, and ultimately became the decision maker with regard to the size of her and Ortis's family. Ortis fulfilled his role by bringing home the money, what little there was, and strived to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.
Having old-fashioned ideas about sex and religion to the extreme, Ortis was a strong believer in harsh discipline and punishment, which he doled out regularly. It wasn't uncommon for Ortis to suddenly attack one of the children in an inappropriately intense fashion that often left the child bleeding or covered with bruises. He never offered to explain or made any comments about his actions later, but would instead seem to rationalize his behavior only to himself. Ortis never apologized and the children never knew whether their punishment was justifiable correction or if it was a form of insane torture.
"I saw Dayton punished almost every time I was in the house," said one of Rogers's brother-in-laws, a minister. "I saw him hit with a belt, slapped, and punched. Every time I visited with the family, it seemed like there was some kind of punishment."
On one occasion, young Dayton was forced to sit in a chair while Ortis punched his legs with his hands and fists. "And then everybody would sympathize with Ortis because he had broken a blood vessel in his hand from hitting Dayton. Ortis was out of control with his children, but Dayton was so under control that he would sit there and take it. He wouldn't even move his hands to protect himself."
Ortis Rogers's attitude about sex was simple and self-motivated: "I have a right to this." Sex to him was not a want, but a need, much like eating or breathing. Ortis continually preached that his children had an evil entity living inside them, and he attempted to remove it by relentlessly driving home his church's doctrine through regular church attendance, frequent family Bible readings, and by sending all of his children to Seventh-Day Adventist schools withou
t ever looking inward to see whether that evil entity might be a dark extension of himself.
He also practiced strict censorship. He was the approving authority for whatever was watched, read, or listened to inside his house. Carrying such beliefs to the extreme, Ortis went so far as to fully dress the hula dancers clad in grass skirts on the covers of his collection of Hawaiian record albums by drawing clothes on their bodies with black felt pens so that they wouldn't be exposing any flesh except for their faces and hands. When visitors asked about the unusual practice, Ortis always explained that the women were "sluts" and that he wouldn't tolerate such a display of pornography inside his house. But he did like the Hawaiian music.
Ortis also taught his children that women who had sex prior to marriage or who necked with boys on dates "should be stoned," just like the whores depicted in the Bible.
Dayton's early years could best be described as chaotic. His father, semi-skilled as a painter, baker, and sometimes teacher in church-run schools, followed jobs and moved the family wherever employment took him. As a result they moved frequently, sometimes as often as three or four times a year. It was a rarity if the children were in school for more than a year in any one place, which naturally made it difficult for them to make friends or form relationships. Some people even said that Ortis and Jasperelle were emotionally insecure and held an unreasonable fear that if they allowed their children to make friends and form bonds with others, someone outside the family would steal their love away from them.
Adding to all the chaos of Dayton's, as well as the other children's, home life, according to Dayton's brother-in-law, was Ortis and Jasperelle's irrational belief that Armageddon was near and that "they needed to be away from wicked big-city influence." As a result, related the brother-in-law, they nearly always lived in the country or in small towns, "away from everything." Occasionally they lived in homes with no electricity, occasionally in trailers, and sometimes in cars. Once, when they moved to Idaho, Ortis was so down on his luck that he actually moved his family into an abandoned chicken coop with a dirt floor and converted it into a "house."