Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer

by Gary C. King

  "The damage that's been done to the ferns and pieces of wood appears to be old damage," White told the others. "The ferns covering the body appear to have been broken off, not cut. The ends are jagged and rough."

  The body was visible from the waist down, nude, and there was no clothing in close proximity to it. The upper torso pointed toward the southeast, and the legs pointed to the northwest. The left leg was lying under the right leg and was straight. The right leg was bent with the ankle lying on top of the left leg near the left ankle area. There was a white plastic bottle lying next to the left leg, its spout facing the ankle, and a rusty can was nearby. Deputies Gilliland and Lamarche entered the area and began photographing everything. The fact that the victim was nude left no doubt that they were dealing with a homicide.

  At 10:22 A.M., when they were finished with the initial phase of the photography, George Coleman, the medical examiner, entered the scene and began removing brush from the victim's body. He pulled ferns off of the upper torso and head areas, completely exposing the corpse. The victim's left arm was extended straight out from the shoulder in a direct parallel line with the body, and the right arm crossed under the torso with the right hand lying down between the legs. There was significant maggot activity in the groin area, and it was obvious that large amounts of putrefactive liquid had oozed into the underlying brush and soil.

  The skull bone was exposed where the scalp and curly, light brown, almost blond hair had slipped back during the process of decomposition. It was noted that the victim's left foot was missing, apparently severed just above the ankle, and was not visible in the immediate area. The lawmen didn't know whether the missing foot was the work of animals or the perpetrator.

  Three minutes later, as Coleman continued pulling ferns and brush from the area of the body, another body was exposed. Coleman, suddenly taken aback by the discovery, stopped what he was doing and called out to Machado. The second body, they observed, was in a fetal position on its right side facing the northeast. The left arm was extended and the hand was open, the fingers extending straight out. Both feet were missing, apparently sawed or cut off at ankle level. It was by now obvious that the missing feet were not the work of animals. The body was also nude and decomposed. Everyone cleared the area except Lamarche, who remained to continue taking photos.

  When Lamarche was finished, Machado and Strovink started from the road's edge and began seizing evidence as they worked toward the bodies. In addition to collecting evidence, their objective was to clear a manageable area around the bodies where they could work without fear of contaminating or otherwise inadvertently destroying potential evidence that might be present.

  As they worked, they collected soil samples, dead ferns that had covered the bodies, the white plastic bottle and rusted can, and a piece of fiber cord, red in color. Machado also found a glass bottle near the head of the first body, an empty Bud Lite beer can near that victim's left hand, and a small clear liquor bottle in the stand of ferns that overlooked both bodies. At 12:30 P.M., Strovink called out to Machado.

  "Hey, Mike!" he said. "You'd better get over here. I just found another one."

  "Another what?"

  "Another body!"

  Machado noted that the third body was about fifteen feet north of the first two corpses. It was resting against a tree in a supine position, and the left arm was extended vertically. Like the others, it was nude. Putrefactive odor was strong, and Machado observed a gaping cut or incision that extended from the area of the groin upward to the sternum. He could see the vertebral column and the left iliac bone through the opening. He saw maggots moving about, concentrated on and near the right side of the head.

  Realizing that he had a much more serious situation on his hands than he'd initially thought, Machado ordered everyone out of the forest and down the road to the parking area. Machado decided that Gilliland, Lamarche, and Strovink would process the roadway leading from the parking location to the body location, seizing evidence, so that they would have access to the body locations without disturbing any evidence. He also decided that additional personnel would be needed and that it would be necessary to set up a command post.

  In order to maintain security and prevent unauthorized police band listeners, particularly newspaper and television reporters, from learning about the outdoor human cluster dump, Machado left the area and contacted Captain James Grolbert by telephone. Grolbert, in charge of the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office Operations Division, agreed with Machado's suggestions and assured the detective that he would begin activating additional personnel and equipment immediately.

  Machado arrived back at the crime scene at 2:30 P.M. Minutes later, Senior Deputy D.A. Dennis Miller arrived accompanied by Deputy D.A. Andy Aubertine and D.A. Investigator Tom Kusturin. Strovink provided them a brief review of the scene so they would be aware of what the detectives were working with. Afterward, Machado and Strovink discussed how they were going to proceed, finally deciding that each scene would be processed the same, if at all possible. Each scene was to be divided into twenty-five-by-twenty-five-foot grid sections and labeled by letter. Afterward, each scene would be processed in order of body discovery, starting with additional photographs, a search of the area, and measuring and photographing of evidence. Also, in lieu of identification, each body was numerically labeled in the order found.

  At 5 P.M., Deputy Robin Swanson of the sheriff's department canine unit arrived with her tracking dog, a German shepherd named Colt. Colt and Swanson immediately began searching in the vicinity of the bodies. Fifteen minutes later, Colt found Body #4. It was approximately 40 feet north of Body #3, resting in a supine position deep within brush and blackberry vines and partially covered by a mound of dried dirt. The pelvis and lower vertebral column was tilted somewhat vertically toward the left, exposing a portion of the rib cage. There were no clothes on or near the remains.

  The corpse, unlike the others, was largely skeletonized, an indication that it may have been there longer than the others. The skull was almost completely devoid of flesh, except for a small amount of leathery, dried, and desiccated tissue in the left parietal-temporal region. Long, unattached reddish brown hair remained around the skull. There was a small band of leathery skin that passed around the lower lumbar vertebral region and, similarly, around the left femur. The body was so decomposed that Swanson could detect no putrefactive odor. The scene was carefully processed just like the others, and no attempt to move the remains was made.

  At 6:35 P.M., Reserve Deputy Jim Brown, assisting with the search for more bodies and the seizure of evidence, called out to the others that he had found Body #5. It was located about fifty yards west of Body #4 in a small triangular open area in the woods, separated from the other bodies by the road. Like the other four, Body #5 was nude.

  Body #5 was actively decomposing but partially mummified. It was in a prone position, its head facing downward into a large growth of bracken fern. The right side of the skull was skeletonized, but not to the extent that Body #4 was, a further indication that Body #4 had been there perhaps a few days longer. The hands were bound behind the back with a dark green, one-inch-wide belt that could have been a dog collar, and there were several circular and irregularly shaped defects in the lower back and right buttocks. The right foot had been cut or sawed off.

  By the time the search was called off for the first day at 7:20 P.M., there was considerable talk among investigators and area residents alike that the Green River Killer had moved south into Oregon from Washington state. After all, in 1985 Oregon authorities in Washington County had found the remains of four young women near the Portland suburb of Tualatin, two of which were identified as Denise Darcel Bush, twenty-three, and Shirley Marie Sherill, eighteen, both Seattle-area prostitutes whose deaths were attributed to the Green River Killer. The other two Washington County victims, found close to the town of Tigard, were not officially linked to the Green River Killer, but they had not been officially ruled out, either.


  Because the Molalla forest bodies had been cluster dumped at an outdoor location like the many victims of the Green River Killer—named after the river where the first several victims, mostly young women and teenage girls, were found—Machado duly notified the Green River Task Force in Seattle. He spoke with Detective Dave Reichert and provided an opportunity for the Green River Task Force to send a representative to Oregon so they could watch the progress of the Molalla forest case more closely.

  Although the search had concluded for the day, security remained heavy. Reserve deputies were posted around the clock at all points of entry, and additional guards were stationed at the cordoned-off sites. Machado and Strovink also remained at the scene overnight, but neither slept well. They couldn't stop thinking about the atrocities that had been committed, nor could they help wondering how many more bodies they would find.

  Chapter 13

  By early the next day, a mobile radio command post had been established in a van parked down the hill from the body sites. Since Sheriff Bill Brooks and his investigators anticipated that the search for more bodies and additional evidence might take several days, the mobile command post served to link the searchers and detectives to the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office headquarters in Oregon City. A large, open-sided tent was also put up to provide the searchers shelter from the scorching, late summer heat as well as the intermittent drizzle that occurred from the ever-changing atmospheric conditions for which Oregon is so well known. As an added comfort, Chief Deputy Sheriff W. Risley Bradshaw brought his personal motor home to the site and left it there for those who were required to remain overnight.

  As approximately seventy members of the Clackamas County Sheriff's Department and Sheriff's Reserves mobilized and headed to the crime scene to assist in the search, numerous members from the Clackamas County Sheriff's Law Enforcement Explorer Post No. 715, the Multnomah County Sheriff's Search and Rescue Explorer Post No. 631, the Marion County Sheriff's Office Explorers, and investigators from the district attorney's and medical examiner's offices also arrived at the forest site. Many would be involved in clearing away brush and vines so that others could begin a hands and knees, inch-by-inch search of the areas in grid patterns. Soil in and around the body sites would also be collected and sifted through screens in a procedure many lawmen refer to as "shake and bake" that would, they hoped, yield useful evidence. Because the searchers were working with small spoons and brushes, the operation could have been mistaken by an uninformed outsider as an archaeological dig. The explorers would do the actual searching in a wide area of the hills, and in some cases use ropes for rappelling the cliffs.

  Deputy Bob Davis was assigned to do the gridding of the area, which comprised extensive measuring and the setting up of compass readings. Davis also assisted John Gilliland, who had been assigned to seize evidence, when it came time to measure evidence discovered within the grid areas.

  Meanwhile, Sheriff Bill Brooks and Lieutenant Donald A. Vicars held a news conference and provided sketchy details of the investigation to the public. They initially provided little information, in part because they didn't yet know much about the homicides themselves, and certain pertinent facts that they did know were not released so that they could weed out the false confessors that always crop up in cases like this. They played it close to the vest and didn't reveal details that could only be known to the police and the killer.

  Nonetheless, the public disclosure that the bodies had been found did prompt phone calls from people who hadn't seen or heard from loved ones in a while. According to Deputy Candace Dufur, the number of missing persons in Clackamas County was small, so it would become necessary for the department to reach out into other jurisdictions, such as the Portland Police Bureau and the Multnomah County Sheriff's Department, to develop leads that might help the Clackamas County detectives identify the dead. One thing was fairly certain, though. It was highly unlikely that any of the victims had come from Molalla, a small, country timber town with a population just barely over 3,000 that only had a couple of known missing persons on the books at that time.

  At one point during the morning of the second day, John Turner was pulled away from the Jenny Smith case for the time being and sent to the Molalla forest. Because of the complexity of the case, Dr. Larry Lewman, then the acting state medical examiner but now the state medical examiner, and Dr. Karen Gunson, a deputy state medical examiner, were requested to accompany Turner to the crime scene. They met Machado at the Y Drive-in in Molalla and, because Machado was headed out to make some contacts, he briefed them as to what he had up in the forest. Afterward Turner, Lewman, and Gunson went on up, signed in at the command post, and walked farther up the hill to the crime scene.

  Gilliland met them, then took them over to Body #1. As Lewman and Gunson bent over to examine the corpse, Turner began looking around, all the while keeping an ear tuned to Lewman's comments as the medical examiner spoke into a hand-held tape recorder:

  "The body is generally firm, leathery, and mummified throughout. There is considerable active soft tissue decomposition with putrefactive odor.

  "The skull is lifted and appears to have overall female characteristics with overall small size, small supraorbital ridges, small muscle attachments, small mastoids, and nonprominent inion. The hair has slipped from the skull and remains about the head region. The mandible rests beneath the skull in its normal position. Several teeth have fallen out postmortem. The third molars are not erupted in either the mandible or maxilla. Several loose teeth which have fallen out postmortem are placed in a plastic bag labeled Number One. The cervical vertebral column is intact. The location of the body is staked. The body is rotated to the right. Most of the anterior chest and abdominal wall is intact with the exception of the left chest area. The sternum/manubrium is visible. Most of the soft tissue of the right side of the arm is destroyed by insect activity. Maggots are noted in the groin area, and putrefactive liquid is present in large amounts beneath and around the body. No jewelry is noted on the hands. There are multiple penetrating defects in the midline of the back and subscapular regions bilaterally, most of these on the right. The left foot has been severed and is not found adjacent to the body. Bony edges feel cut or incised."

  As Lewman and Gunson placed the remains in a yellow body bag, labeled simply #1, the left foot was found nearby. It was bagged separately.

  Turner, still looking around, was lost in deep thought. He had heard most of what Lewman had said, but he would have to read the medical examiner's report later to absorb all the details. His mind was elsewhere, jumping back and forth between the Jenny Smith investigation and the Molalla forest case. It wasn't until he looked to the right of Body #1 that he saw it, a single item that suddenly jumped out at him and brought his mind into clear focus. There it was, a miniature Smirnoff vodka bottle, lying among the ferns and barely visible. The startling discovery felt almost euphoric, more intense than an addict's rush. He turned to Gilliland, who was standing nearby, and pointed out the bottle.

  "I want you to pick up every bottle like this that you find," said Turner.

  "Hell, they're all over the place," responded Gilliland. "We've got them marked off on the grids at nearly every site."

  "Just make damn sure that none of them gets left up here," said Turner, grinning slyly.

  "Sonofabitch! You already know who it is, don't you?" asked Gilliland.

  "Yeah, I think so. Just make damn sure you pick up all these bottles."

  When Machado returned to the Molalla forest later that afternoon, he and Turner took a walk along the dirt road downhill from the crime scene to discuss the most recent developments of the case and to bounce ideas off one another. Turner told Machado how he had recently talked to the clerk at the Woodburn liquor store, and how he had learned from her that Dayton Leroy Rogers always bought his liquor, Smirnoff vodka, in miniature bottles. Although it was only a gut feeling, Turner was adamant that their suspect in the Molalla forest case was sitting in the Clackamas County
Jail for the murder of Jenny Smith. Machado knew from prior experience about Turner's gut feelings. They almost always paid off.

  They were only about a quarter of a mile south of the command post, still discussing the possibility of Dayton's involvement in the Molalla forest case, when the pungent, telltale odor of decomposition invaded their olfactory lobes. Turner and Machado looked at each other, and without saying a word they knew what they were about to discover.

  They turned to their left and walked east off the road, heading in the direction of the obvious odor that emanated from an area that had not yet been searched. Minutes later, they found the nude body about thirty feet off the road. It had obviously been dumped from a trail that led to the edge of a cliff in a heavily wooded area. Body #6 was skeletonized, and all they saw was some of the victim's hair and some rib bones. The torso and legs, including the feet, were not at that location, prompting them to search further.

  After going about another thirty feet, the two detectives stopped to examine a dark area on the ground, about the size of a human body. It didn't take them long to decide that they'd found a decayed area where a body had been, where the putrefactive ooze had been absorbed into the soil and was the source of the odor they had detected. But where was the body now? Was that the location where Body #6 had lain as it decomposed, perhaps destroyed and moved by animals? Or was the location an indication that a seventh body was out there somewhere?

  As they continued their search, they came across a piece of black cloth near the road's edge, between the location of Body #6 and the decayed area. A little farther they located an obvious animal trail, and they followed it. Machado and Turner soon found Body #7, about fifty feet from the location of Body #6 and the decayed area.