Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer

by Gary C. King

  Shortly after the task force offices were set up, it was publicly announced that Dayton Leroy Rogers was the chief suspect in the Molalla forest murders. Captain Ryan made it clear that Dayton wasn't the only suspect being looked at "to the exclusion of others," but that it appeared that Dayton was their best suspect so far. The revelation, they hoped, would prompt tips from concerned citizens and potential witnesses.

  It wasn't long before the calls began pouring in. Surprisingly, one of those calls was from Anna Buchanan, one of Dayton's victims from twelve years earlier who was now working Portland's streets as a prostitute. Anna's call was transferred to Turner, and he agreed to meet with her when she explained the nature of her call and former encounter with Dayton.

  During their meeting, Anna told Turner that she had only recently heard about Jenny Smith's murder. But she had known Jenny, and remembered seeing her on the morning of August 7 near the intersection of Northeast Union Avenue and Wygant Street in Portland. She saw Jenny cross the street and walk toward a late-model, light-blue pickup. When Turner showed her a picture of Dayton's pickup, Anna gasped.

  "That's it!" she said.

  "Would you be willing to testify to that?" asked Turner.

  "I sure would."

  On Thursday, September 10, Detective Jim Strovink met with prostitute Beth Crane,* twenty-three, at a Southeast Portland apartment. Beth had called the task force earlier, claiming she had some information about Dayton Leroy Rogers that might interest the detectives. Beth had indicated that in November 1986 she had a frightening experience with a man who seemed to fit Dayton's description. She had met the man around midnight in the Shilo Inn parking lot on Union Avenue. When she got inside his truck, she negotiated a $50 price for straight sex. The man, however, didn't want to go to her motel. He said he wanted to go up into the woods, about a forty-five-minute drive from Portland, where he took all of his dates.

  "Can you describe the man's vehicle?" asked Strovink.

  "It was an '85 Nissan pickup, a light blue one, almost a grayish blue. It seemed like the only color that Nissan made for that year."

  "How do you know it was an '85 Nissan pickup?"

  "Well, after I got inside the truck, I tried to roll down the window. But the window wouldn't roll down. I got nervous, so I tried to open the door and the doorknob, er, door handle came off. I got real scared and nervous, so I started talking, mainly about my car, which is an '84 Sentra. He told me his pickup was an '85 and that it was a five-speed.

  "Did he say anything to you about the window or door not working?"

  "No. He just had a kind of Cheshire cat grin on his face, like it had all been planned to happen that way."

  "Did this individual identify himself to you by name?"

  "Yes, he did. He said his name was Steve and that he was from Reno. He asked me to come to Reno where he said his sister worked as a call girl."

  "What else did you talk about?"

  "He told me how his sister had molested him when he was a child, how she had tried to bite his penis off." Somewhat embarrassed, Beth began to laugh. "He said she had done other things to him, such as putting her finger into his rectum."

  "Did he offer you anything to drink?"

  "Yeah. Some of those plain little bottles of vodka. The miniature type."

  Beth explained that she didn't drink any because she doesn't touch liquor. But she knew it was vodka. She could smell it when he mixed it with the orange juice.

  "Do you remember the brand name of the orange juice?"

  "They're green-labeled, in plastic bottles. The kind you get at convenience stores. They have the green, peel-away top. I remember he poured some orange juice out, then poured two or three of those little bottles of vodka into the orange juice. Mixed it together."

  "Where did he keep the vodka?"

  "In the glove compartment."

  "Did you notice anything else in the glove compartment?"

  "Yeah. Leather straps. The kind you can buy in the adult sex paraphernalia stores. They were brown, about an inch wide, and they fastened like a belt."

  "Did he have you remove any clothing while you were driving to the forest?"

  "Yes. My shoes. He started talking about how he had these fantasies, a foot fetish of some sort."

  "Were you scared?"

  "Yeah, I was scared, all right. As we were driving, he reached under his seat and pulled out a gun. He didn't point it at me, but he set it on the seat. He started talking about how he hated people, especially women, because of what his sister had done to him. I began to think that I had the Green River Killer for my date. I was real scared."

  "When you reached the forest, what happened?"

  "He started playing with my feet, then began rubbing my feet and legs. The whole time he kept talking about how he liked feet, especially the arches. He unzipped his pants, took his penis out, and began rubbing it against my feet."

  "Did he have you take off your clothes?"

  "Yeah. I took my shirt and pants off, and I asked him if I really had to take off all my clothes, and he said yes. After I took my bra and underpants off, he told me to lay flat on my stomach. I thought he was going to kill me, and I asked him if that was in his plans. He told me to shut up. He made me place my hands behind my back and grasp my fingers so that my wrists would be closer together. He put the strap on around my wrists, then put the ankle straps on. Then he took wire, I think it was a coat hanger, and wrapped it between the two straps, so that both my hands and feet were behind my back. An exit swan. You know how that swan style is? You know, your feet and hands are back there?"

  "Then what happened?"

  "He started to bite on me, slightly, just a nibble. He started on my upper back, on my shoulders. Then he proceeded down my back, and as he got closer to my butt, he started to really bite hard. He bit so hard that my butt began to bleed. Then he proceeded down the back of my legs, and he kept telling me what a high tolerance of pain I had. He said he couldn't believe the amount of pain that I could take. He started to bite on my feet, then he turned me over. He bit my breasts. He drew blood from biting my nipples. He was really biting, like he was trying to take 'em off. He never even touched me in the area of my vagina."

  "What else did he do to you?"

  "He mainly concentrated on my breasts and on my stomach. He bit the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet. He bit my toes, too, so hard I thought he was going to bite them off."

  "Did the biting of your toes draw blood?"

  "Yeah. I remember, uh, the next morning, I couldn't even walk because my feet were so sore. And my hands, I couldn't be touched."

  "Did he masturbate at all?"

  "During the course of the time that he was biting me he was masturbating."

  "Which hand did he use?"

  "His left hand. I remember it was his left hand because that's the arm his watch was on."

  "Did he say he was going to kill you?"

  "No. He just started telling me that he hated women. And every time I asked him if he was going to kill me, he just said, 'Shut up, bitch.' "

  "How long did the biting last?"

  "Three to four hours."

  "What did he do with all of the empty containers?"

  "Threw them out. He didn't want to mess up his truck interior, you know."

  When it was all over, the man dragged Beth out of the truck, naked and incoherent, over at least ten feet of gravel. It was very cold outside, and she was crying. He removed the bondage devices and took them with him, but tossed the wire into the brush. He then threw Beth's clothes out of his pickup and walked over to where she lay.

  "He was probably about two feet from me. I looked up at him, and it was like I wanted to just jump up, but I had no strength. He just said 'I hope you die' and left."

  Beth explained that she eventually flagged down a truck driver, who drove her to a restaurant in Molalla where she was able to clean herself up. He then drove her to her motel in Portland because he felt sorry for her.r />
  "What prompted you to tell this story?" Strovink wanted to know.

  "Because, when I remembered Molalla, I got to thinking about all those girls, and then I thought about him. He's been heavily on my mind 'cause when I first came back to Portland from Seattle, he was the first person I saw when I hit the streets. That was four or five months after he did all that to me. He was sitting outside a tavern near Third Avenue and Burnside in downtown Portland."

  Strovink placed the photo montage of six men in front of Beth and asked her if her assailant was among those shown. It took her only two seconds to point out her attacker.

  "Oh, my God! That's him—oh, my God, that is him. I would never forget his face!" She pointed to the photo in the number three position, the one of Dayton Leroy Rogers.

  Beth's telephone call had been only a trickle of the flood of telephone calls that followed, mostly from Portland area hookers claiming to have been victimized by Dayton Leroy Rogers. Nearly all of the girls had been bitten and cut by their assailant, and nearly all claimed that their john mixed screwdrivers using miniature bottles of Smirnoff vodka and disposable plastic containers of orange juice. There was indeed a pattern to the crimes, and before it was over the detectives would talk to nearly fifty prostitutes and former prostitutes, twenty-six of whom would come forward with information specific enough about their encounters with Dayton Leroy Rogers that detectives could use in court to positively link him to the Molalla forest victims. Crime analyst Deputy Dave Broomfield received thousands of tips and bits of information to put through his computer, and in order for anyone to make any sense out of it all, Broomfield had to compile a booklet of case similarities.

  Broomfield's booklet clearly showed the relationships and similarities of Dayton's method of operation relative to the hookers he dated. He compiled a master chart which showed forty-three different elements related to these encounters, elements that included how the women were tied, number of times dated, whether or not he wanted to see his victim screaming and in pain, presence of weapons and type of weapons, how he injured them, whether or not he masturbated or had intercourse with the victim, and so on. Broomfield also compiled breakdowns that showed which Denny's restaurant a particular girl was taken to, whether or not she was taken to Molalla, other locations, what types of clothing had been lost, and so on. The case similarities were astonishing and provided the detectives with answers at a glance. About the only question it didn't answer was why Dayton chose to let some women live.

  Chapter 18

  The next day, Friday, September 11, Machado went through a packet of missing person reports that had been sent over from the Portland Police Bureau. There were several that could have fit the general descriptions—which were scant at best—of the Molalla forest victims, but only one stood out among them. The one that caught his eye was that of a young woman, twenty-six-year-old Maureen Ann Hodges, who had suffered a broken nose when much younger. Machado immediately recalled what Dr. Lewman had said about Body #7 having a nose slightly deviated to the right, likely the result of an old injury. Machado contacted a member of Maureen's family to obtain the name of her dentist. He wanted Maureen's dental records as soon as possible.

  In the meantime, Machado and Strovink went to the Clackamas County Jail to try to interview Dayton. Because of all the calls that were coming in about his dates with Portland hookers, the detectives wanted to talk to him more than ever. They had not previously talked to him about the Molalla forest case, and so he had not had the opportunity to invoke his rights against self-incrimination in that investigation. They really didn't expect him to talk to them, but they had to be able to say that they at least tried. The interview was set up in an office of the jail.

  When Dayton was brought into the office, he was carrying a manila file folder and a pad of paper. When he saw the two detectives, even though he hadn't met them previously, he stiffened and became solemn-faced. He stared hard at both of them.

  "Wait a minute," he said. "Are you guys police?"

  "I'm Detective Jim Strovink, and this is Detective Mike Machado." Strovink smiled slightly and held out his hand, but Dayton declined to take it.

  "I don't want to talk to you," said Dayton sternly.

  "Is it that you don't want to talk to us, or is it that your attorney doesn't want you to talk to us?" asked Strovink.

  "My attorney said not to, and I am following his advice. I don't want to talk to you."

  There wasn't any use in pursuing the matter any further. Dayton had invoked his rights and there was nothing Strovink and Machado could do about it. Under the law, they couldn't question him unless he indicated on his own that he wanted to talk to the police, legally referred to as "initiation after an invocation." Since Dayton didn't want to talk and clear matters up, the detectives resigned themselves that they would have to get the answers the hard way by interviewing witnesses and generating new leads. The high volume of telephone calls coming into the task force office helped in that aspect immensely.

  One such call from a Multnomah County sheriff's deputy summoned Turner and Machado once again to the Justice Center in Portland, where Multnomah County houses most of its inmates. There were a number of prostitutes in custody there, they were told, many of whom were talking about a man who called himself Steve and claimed to be a professional gambler from Nevada. The man typically offered $40 to $80 for a sexual scenario that involved bondage, but sometimes offered as much as $150. According to the girls, he always had his dates completely undress and then bound their hands and feet at the wrists and ankles with rope, dog collars, wire, nylon stockings, shoe laces, anything that would hold their arms and feet securely in place while he tortured and mutilated them for hours on end. Nearly all of the girls told Turner and Machado that the fellow had a foot fetish and that he found their arches sexually arousing. The dates always occurred inside his pickup truck and included the mixing and drinking of screwdrivers using vodka in miniature bottles and orange juice in plastic disposable containers. All of the prostitutes said that the man masturbated frantically during the lengthy encounters.

  One prostitute told Turner and Machado that the man was endowed with a very large penis. All of the hookers echoed that he never had intercourse with them, but instead just manipulated himself.

  "You should see that guy," said one prostitute. "That guy's huge, real huge. Thank God he never fucked me!"

  Another working girl told the two detectives that she had been working on Union Avenue near Sumner Street when a man in a Nissan pickup approached her at about 11:30 P.M. on July 11. He said he wanted a date, and she told him it would cost him $40, to which he agreed. After getting into his truck, they drove to a nearby Winchell's Donut shop and parked, where she asked him for the money they had agreed upon.

  "'You whore, I'm giving you nothing!'" she quoted the man. "'I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill all you whores!' I said, 'Like hell you are.' I then opened the door and jumped out. He pulled a gun from the waistband area of his body and fired one shot. The next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital bed."

  Another hooker, Darla Johnson,* thirty-five, recalled climbing into a light blue pickup near Union and Wygant, a corner she had sometimes shared with Jenny Smith. It had been in the winter, during January or February 1987, at about 1:30 in the morning when the man approached her and asked her for a date. Wearing a miniskirt and a thin top, Darla was cold and desperately wanted to get out of the early morning chill. She agreed to go with him for $50, and he handed her a $50 bill.

  While they were driving to a wooded location that Darla thought was on the way to Salem, the man asked her to remove her shoes and pantyhose so that he could look at the arches of her feet. He told her to put her feet up on the dashboard by the glove compartment so that he could see them better. When she complied, he reached over and began rubbing them. He began talking about bondage, which frightened Darla. But they were already on the highway and there was little she could do to get out of the situation. Sensing
her fear, he had told her not to be scared, that he always tied his girls up when he took them into the forest.

  After reaching their destination in the woods, Darla was more frightened than ever. She did whatever the man asked of her, and he soon had her in bondage. He pulled up her miniskirt and began rubbing her back and buttocks. He then slipped her panties down and entered her from behind, vaginally. He pulled out at one point and masturbated to climax, ejaculating on her back. He then began his biting routine, mainly on Darla's feet and toes. Although he bit her hard several times, for some reason he hadn't subjected her to the high level of pain that he had put many of the other girls through.

  Turner and Machado later reasoned that Dayton hadn't tortured Darla too severely because he had ejaculated and reached climax early on in their encounter, and Darla hadn't put up as much resistance and had not shown as much fear as had some of the others. The investigators reasoned by now, correctly, that Dayton got off on the fear, that fear was the driving force behind his sexual frenzies. It was beginning to seem that the girls who withstood the pain and didn't react were the ones who made it out of the forest alive.

  "Do you know the names of any other girls this guy has picked up?" asked Machado.

  "No."

  "What about Jenny Smith?"

  "Oh, yeah. I remember a night that I saw him. I wouldn't get in the truck with him, and he pulled around the corner and Jenny was on the opposite side of the street. I assumed he was going toward her, but I had already gotten in the car with another john and I didn't see if he picked her up. That would have been about four weeks ago." About the time Jenny was murdered, reasoned Machado.

  "Have you seen Jenny since then?"

  "No."

  "Are there any other girls you haven't seen lately?"

  "Yeah. Christine Adams. I haven't seen her out on the street for more than two months. We were real close. She was my best friend. I've been concerned because she used to come by or stay with me at my place on Rodney Avenue, and her kids don't know where she is, either. She's been missing for two or three months now."