Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer

by Gary C. King

  Soon after, when family members were in a forced close proximity to one another, Dayton developed an interest in his sisters' feet. If anyone noticed, they didn't let on, but his sisters always seemed to be looking for their shoes. At night, after everyone was asleep, Dayton would fantasize and masturbate, often while holding one of his sisters' shoes. He would later tell acquaintances that after the family moved again his sisters became whores and would force him to engage in sexual acts with them, a highly doubtful story likely directed toward his parents to cause them pain, shame, and embarrassment for all of the chaos and maltreatment he had received. Although it could have been seen as his way of settling the score, it just wasn't enough. Dayton apparently thought that they needed to suffer more, much more, just like he had suffered.

  By the time Dayton entered middle school, Ortis Rogers and his family had moved to College Place, Washington, a small town in the eastern part of the state near Walla Walla, where he obtained employment at a bakery owned by relatives. Dayton worked at the bakery, too, part-time, while attending Walla Walla Valley Academy, a Seventh-Day Adventist school, where he earned barely average grades. He wasn't ignorant or incapable of learning. He just had no interest in school. It was during this time that Dayton, while in the seventh grade, had his first and only scrape with the law as a juvenile. Bored with small-town life and looking for excitement, he and a friend were caught by police shooting at passing cars with a BB gun, trying to break the motorists' car windows. Although each got off with only probation for the acts of malicious mischief, Dayton, as usual, caught hell from his father. Ortis's way of dealing with such matters, rather than facing the real problem, was to beat hell out of Dayton and then forget it. In his mind, might was right.

  Jasperelle would later tell a detective that she had always wanted Ortis to warm up to Dayton, to be more fatherly, "to do things with Dayton like a lot of fathers do. But he just wasn't a pal with Dayton like I wished." Instead, as the years passed, the father and son became even more distant. As the poor father-son relationship grew worse, the history of abuse, social isolation, and unstable home life did likewise. Eventually Dayton grew to hate his father and began rejecting everything he stood for, and resentment toward his mother soon turned to hatred because she would not take a stand against what he perceived as his father's unreasonable actions. In time he would get even with them, no matter what the cost.

  Shortly after the incident with the BB gun in 1969, Dayton's parents sent him away to Upper Columbia Academy, a church-run boarding school in Spangle, Washington, near Spokane, to which Dayton also took exception. As a result his grades suffered even more than before. He received mostly Cs and Ds, but he wasn't at the boarding school very long. His parents soon moved to Pleasant Hill, Oregon, where he attended Emerald Junior Academy the following year. He also worked part-time as a cabinetmaker, but soon left the job. Dayton's anger and resentment toward his parents grew again that year and his grades fell far below average, according to school records. Finally, at age sixteen, he dropped out of the academy in the middle of his sophomore year against his parents' wishes and moved to Corvallis, Oregon, where he obtained a job as a house painter earning $2.35 an hour. His life relatively uneventful, Dayton moved south to Eugene two years later, in July 1972, where he was again employed as a house painter, this time for a relative on his mother's side of the family. While in Eugene he began dating a sixteen-year-old girl named Julie who he soon married, against his parents' wishes. His young bride was of a different faith, a Lutheran, and she purportedly had had problems with drugs and alcohol that required her to be institutionalized at one point. To Dayton's family, his marriage to the girl was an utter disgrace. They just couldn't understand how he could marry outside his faith, especially a Lutheran.

  Less than thirty days after his marriage he had his first scrape with the law as an adult when he, without prior warning, attacked a fifteen-year-old Eugene girl with a knife. His actions cost him what little contact he had left with his family, and he would later tell psychiatrists that his family considered him the black sheep of the family from that point on.

  August 25, 1972, had been a sultry Friday evening in the city of Eugene, located 110 miles south of Portland, the state's largest city, in the heart of the Willamette Valley, when case number 72-14342 began. At that time Eugene's population was nearing the 100,000 mark, and at least 15,000 more people could be temporarily added when the University of Oregon opened its doors for students every fall. Eugene Patrolman D.A. Norenberg, badge number 175, didn't particularly relish the idea that another year of college dorm and fraternity house parties, fights, and other disturbances was close at hand, but he was a realist and he knew that college carousing was a fact of life for him and the other patrolmen of the Eugene Police Department. He was also aware that the heat on this particular evening was oppressive, the mercury nearing a hundred, and that such high temperatures, not to mention Friday nights, always seemed to bring out the worst in people. It wasn't long before he was proven correct.

  Norenberg was about halfway through his shift when he received the dispatch at 8 P.M. to report to Eugene's Sacred Heart General Hospital regarding an injured person report called in by Dr. Wesley White. When Norenberg arrived, Dr. White explained that a young girl, fifteen-year-old Deniece Raymond,* had been brought into the hospital's emergency department at 6:20 P.M. with a stab wound to her lower abdomen. The wound had been quite deep, almost fatal because it had barely missed vital organs and arteries. After performing preliminary first aid and stabilizing the girl's condition, Dr. White said he spoke to her in an attempt to learn what had happened. When brought into the hospital, he said, she was wearing a multi-colored pullover zippered blouse, a pair of purple girls button-front slacks, and a white hand towel that she had pressed tightly against her wound. Norenberg seized all of the items as evidence.

  Deniece had explained that she had stabbed herself with a hunting knife, but due to the severity of her wounds, Dr. White could not believe that the wound was self-inflicted, which is why he notified the police so promptly. When Norenberg asked to see her, he was advised that she had been moved to intensive care and would not be available for questioning for at least a couple of days. Dr. White added that Deniece was brought to the hospital by a man who said his name was Dayton Leroy Rogers, who had explained that he had discovered the girl walking along the 300 block of Figueroa Street bleeding profusely and in intense pain.

  When Officer Norenberg contacted Dayton later that night, Dayton calmly explained that he barely knew the girl and said that he had met her only two days earlier when he saw her hitchhiking in Eugene and gave her a ride to her home. Having been attracted to her, Dayton said he attempted to contact her again over the two days since he met her, but he was always told by her relatives that she had not returned home. Finally he began driving around and looking for her in her neighborhood. When he found her walking and bleeding on Figueroa Street, he said he helped her into his car and rushed her to the hospital. He explained that Deniece had not talked to him about the incident while en route to the hospital, and he said he had not spoken to her since her hospitalization. Norenberg never really believed Dayton's story, but without anything more substantial to go on all he could do was write up the report.

  The next day, Saturday, August 26, 1972, Deniece's mother contacted Officer Norenberg after having spent several hours talking with her daughter about the stabbing incident. According to the story her daughter had related to her, the incident had occurred inside a car, an older model Volkswagen bug, red in color, somewhere in the hills around Eugene.

  Deniece had told her mother that while she and Dayton were driving along 28th Avenue, she suddenly felt an excruciating pain in the area of her stomach. When she looked down, she saw a large hunting knife protruding from her abdomen. She told her mother that she pulled the knife out of her stomach and threw it out the window. Her mother, still doubting the accuracy of the story, pressed Deniece for more details but the girl decl
ined. Instead, she became fearful and stated, "I'm afraid of what he'll..." She left the sentence hanging. Norenberg returned to City Hall and turned over his reports to the Detective Division.

  The following Monday, August 28, 1972, the case was assigned to Detective Clifford Miller and Youth Officer Glynn Michael for further investigation. They contacted Deniece Raymond, who appeared nervous and frightened. At first she didn't want to talk to either of them, but after assuring her that they wouldn't let her assailant "finish her off," she named Dayton as her attacker. The statement she gave them was markedly different from what she had said upon her arrival at the hospital.

  Deniece explained that she had met Dayton the day before the attack and had driven with him to a wooded area on the outskirts of town. At first they kissed and fondled each other, but one thing led to another and they soon engaged in sexual intercourse. Afterward he drove her home and asked if he could see her again. She agreed, and he had picked her up at her home the next day, August 25, and promised to take her to the woods, where they could make whistles out of wood for neighborhood children. Instead of making whistles, however, they became impassioned once again.

  "We were holding hands and swinging around," she said. "Then we sat down. He was tickling my legs and said to close my eyes, and we lay down on the ground. Then I felt the plunge. I thought at first that a rattlesnake or some kind of snake had bitten me. Then I thought it felt like a horse had kicked me. I looked down, and there was the hunting knife. Dayton said, 'I just couldn't trust you anymore.' I pulled it out with my left hand. I was bleeding. I said, 'Dayton, I love you.' And he said, 'Oh, my God! What did I do?' "

  Out of the blue Dayton proposed marriage to the girl, despite the fact that he was already married, while Deniece pleaded with him to take her to a hospital for treatment. Finally he agreed to drive her to Sacred Heart Hospital, but only if she promised that she would tell the doctors that she had stabbed herself.

  Following their interview with Deniece Raymond, the detectives contacted Dayton's wife, Julie. After explaining to her the reason for their visit, they asked her about her husband's activities the day of the stabbing. She responded that she had been baby-sitting at her home and that Dayton had come home late.

  "I was taking the kids swimming at a friend's house, and he said he had to go to the hospital because one of his friends had gotten hurt. When I pressed him for details, he told me that she was an old girlfriend. I told him I didn't think it was right for him to be going to the hospital to see an old girlfriend." Julie explained that she accompanied her husband to see the girl, primarily out of curiosity.

  "It was strange. She had blond hair, blue eyes, and looked exactly like me. It really scared me. Before that night, every time he'd seen a blond-haired girl he would say, 'There's Julie.' He was just, I don't know, kind of strange."

  After talking to his wife, the detectives contacted Dayton at the painting company where he worked. They told him they had talked with the girl and that they had some more questions for him before they could clear things up. Dayton agreed to meet them in front of Albertson's supermarket at 18th and Chambers at 12:15 P.M. After being advised of his constitutional rights under Miranda, Dayton consented to accompany the investigators to police headquarters at City Hall to answer their questions.

  Once inside the cold, austere interrogation room, Dayton chose not to invoke his rights and gave his permission for the lawmen to tape-record the interview. Sitting across from the policemen at a gray, rectangular, governmental-looking steel table, Dayton continually averted his eyes from the stony stares of the detectives. In response to their questions, he repeated much of what he had told them before.

  "Come on, Dayton. We talked to the girl," said Miller as he placed a second tape recorder on the table. "She told us that she did not stab herself, either intentionally or accidentally. Do you want to hear the tapes?"

  Without waiting for him to respond, Detective Miller reached over and pushed the play button. In a state that bordered on shock and panic, Dayton listened to the girl's statement. His hands began to tremble.

  "Do you understand what she said, Dayton?" asked Miller as he switched off the player. Dayton, pale and sullen, shook his head yes, but did not answer verbally.

  "Well, what do you say, Dayton? Is the girl's statement true?" Dayton shook his head no and still did not speak.

  "It would be in your best interest if you were truthful," suggested Officer Michael.

  Dayton looked down at his hands, searched for a nail to bite, and eventually decided on the thumb of his left hand. After he gnawed on it for a few moments, he sheepishly told the detectives that he needed a little time to get his thoughts in order, but assured them he would tell everything in his own words and that he would tell them the truth.

  "I'm married," he finally began. "I've only been married about a month, and I've been having some difficulties with my wife." He told the detectives that his wife was young and that she was having problems adjusting to marriage. He explained that he only wanted to talk to Deniece Raymond, to have a friend he could relate to when he was having problems with his wife. That's all he planned to do the day he took Deniece into the woods. But one thing led to another, and before he knew it they were frolicking on the ground, where he began fondling her legs and feet. The attack occurred shortly afterward, when he leaned over to kiss her.

  "She didn't respond or even put her arms around me," said Dayton. "While I was kissing her, that's when it happened. She doubled up and I drew back, startled, then looked down and saw the knife in her stomach. She had both hands on it and she was pulling it out. I stood up in complete confusion and shock and said, 'Oh, my God. What do I do now?' I must have been taken over by the devil, or else I wouldn't have done it." Dayton said that his mind just went blank prior to the stabbing.

  "Did you fuck the girl, Dayton?"

  "No, no. We just kissed."

  "What happened to her bra, then?"

  "She just got hot and wanted to take it off." Dayton said he helped her remove it, but insisted that he had not engaged in sexual intercourse with her. Following the stabbing he threw the brassiere into some bushes, along with the knife and the knife sheath, near a rural location just off the Lorane Highway in the vicinity of the Izaac Walton League Firing Range.

  He volunteered to direct the lawmen to the location and to help them locate the items.

  It was shortly before 2 P.M. when Dayton and the policemen arrived at the location, near McBeth Road. Upon entering a field accentuated by heavy forest in the background, Dayton pointed out the spot where he had stabbed the girl. He then pointed to the east, across a fence that separated the field from the firing range, and stated that he had thrown the brassiere in that direction. Detective Miller soon located the bra and found the knife sheath a few steps to the northeast. Dayton directed them farther north, where they found the knife near some bushes, lying beneath the bottom strand of a barbed-wire fence.

  On the way back to town, Dayton admitted to Detective Miller that he had in fact had sexual intercourse with Deniece Raymond. He added that the sex act had occurred the day before in his car on a side road near the community of Fern Ridge. He said they would also have had sex the day of the stabbing if he hadn't attacked the girl first for her apparent lack of affection. He insisted that the sexual incidents had been mutually agreed upon by himself and the girl. Upon their arrival at municipal jail, Dayton was lodged on a charge of first-degree assault and later released on bail.

  At the request of Lane County District Attorney Robert K. Naslund, Dayton Leroy Rogers underwent his first psychiatric examination on October 27, 1972. The examination was performed by Dr. J. Alan Cook, a Eugene psychiatrist. Dayton, neatly groomed and casually dressed, arrived at 1:30 P.M. He appeared somewhat anxious and exhibited noticeable tension.

  The examination consisted of an interview and a series of standardized psychiatric tests including the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the Sentence Completion Test
, and the Draw-a-Person Test. Overall, Dayton performed well on the tests and appeared oriented in all "spheres of reference." However, during the interview Dayton recanted his earlier statement to Detective Miller in which he had admitted stabbing Deniece Raymond. Instead he told Dr. Cook that it was his opinion that the girl had stabbed herself and that she was under the influence of some type of drug at the time of the incident.

  At the conclusion of the examination, Dr. Cook wrote his diagnostic impression:

  There was no evidence during the interview that his judgment was impaired and he seemed to have significant levels of psychiatric insight. It is my opinion that the defendant at this time does not have a mental disease or defect which would form the basis for an adequate defense against the charges of first-degree assault under Oregon Statutes. It is noted during the psychiatric examination that the defendant consistently maintained that he was in complete awareness of his mental faculties and denied being under the influence of any drugs or alcohol which would alter his mental status or state of consciousness. Diagnostically, I feel the defendant falls into the classification of depressive neurosis, probably superimposed on a longstanding schizoid personality disorder. There is no suggestion at the present time, nor at the time of the alleged crime, that either of these emotional disorders would render the defendant incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong, of being aware of the criminality of an assaultive act, or diminish his degree to form intent to commit such an act.

  As would become his custom, Dayton, facing hard jail time, plea-bargained the charge down to second-degree assault, to which he pleaded guilty on February 13, 1973. As a result, he received no prison time and was placed on four years' probation.

  Less than six months later, Dayton again caught the attention of Lane County law enforcement authorities. According to police reports, Dayton and his young wife had taken two teenage females, both minors and listed as runaways, into their home.