by Gary C. King
"Anybody else?"
"I knew Lisa."
"You mean Lisa Mock?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. What does Christine look like?"
"She's, uh, heavyset. She has long brown hair down to her waist, almost. She's got blue eyes. She's Caucasian. She's about as tall as me. I'm five-six."
"How much do you think she weighs?"
"She was pretty big. She probably weighs about a hundred and seventy. Maybe a little more." Darla provided the detectives with the names of Christine's family and where they could be reached.
When Turner showed Darla a photo of Dayton's truck, she froze, visibly upset.
"That's the truck, all right," she said. "I'll never forget it as long as I live."
She also picked Dayton Rogers out of the photo montage within two seconds. Tears welled up in her eyes as she said, "That's him, that's him."
One by one, Portland's streetwalkers and former hookers told their story to Turner and Machado, each nearly identical. When he would first meet the girls, the man calling himself Steve always began on a softer note, the first dates plain and simple, almost always seeming harmless. But by the third date, each of the girls who hadn't yet been harmed considered Steve a "regular," and usually didn't object to bondage by the third date because he hadn't hurt them previously. Slowly, it appeared, he had built up their confidence and had gained their trust.
One prostitute, who had positively identified Steve as Dayton Rogers, told Turner and Machado that on her third and final date with Dayton he pushed her head into the seat of the pickup and began punching her in the face. The more fear she displayed, the more aggressive he became.
At one point, after he had her bound, Dayton stabbed her in the left ankle. In tears, she told the detectives that Dayton had said he was going to "take off my feet." However, lights from a passing pickup frightened him and he untied her and let her go. The hooker told the detectives that she knew Lisa Mock, whom she had last seen in July. She said she also knew Maureen Hodges, whom she described as a good friend and last saw on July 2, and Christine Lotus Adams.
Next, a jailer brought in Lena Hastings,* a twenty-one-year-old blond, blue-eyed hooker who looked like she was strung out and in need of a fix. She sat down at the interview table and began telling Turner and Machado how a man, whom she promptly identified as Dayton Rogers, had picked her up in July or August a year earlier in front of a convenience store near 82nd Avenue and Flavel Street. Dayton's hair had been greasy and slicked back, parted on one side. It hadn't looked natural, she said, but Lena never realized then that he might have been trying to disguise himself. It was about 10 A.M., a beautiful warm summer day when he pulled up in his truck. Dayton, she said, offered her $80 to go skinny-dipping with him at Wagon Wheel Park near Molalla. She was sick and in need of a fix, so she accepted.
They began drinking. Lena, being sick, thought that getting drunk might ease her pain. She didn't tell Dayton that she was a heroin addict, and she never protested about the long drive because he seemed very friendly at first.
"At one point he pulled over and asked me if I wanted to watch him suck himself off," said Lena. "He said, 'Have you ever seen a man suck himself off?' He didn't even want to have sex with me, so I said, 'Well, shit, that oughta be a real trip to see. I'll watch him do that for that kind of money.' He wanted to see my feet and he wanted me to get off while he was sucking himself off. This guy is a real weirdo."
She watched him fellate himself, then they drove on. All the while Lena had made plans of her own. When they stopped at the river to go skinny-dipping, she was going to run back to the truck and steal his wallet. But they hadn't stopped. They passed on by Wagon Wheel Park and soon turned onto a gravel road.
"We just kept going and going and going," she said. "There was a bunch of people by the river, and he just said that the spot where he was taking me was farther on up the river. I pointed out spots that I thought looked just fine, but he wouldn't stop. He kept saying, 'Trust me, trust me. I go deer hunting up here all the time. I know this really good spot.' All of a sudden he took a right turn onto a real bumpy road, and the river was off to the left. When I pointed it out to him, he whipped out a machete. The biggest knife I ever saw. He held it to my throat and said, 'Bitch. Shut up. You reach for that door and I'll cut your fuckin' throat.' Here I am, drunk. You know, I woke up real quick."
Lena explained that they drove to the top of a mountain, away from everybody, and parked along a narrow dirt and gravel road. They were surrounded by trees and tall bushes.
"He took the machete and cut my shirt off. I could see he was a sadist, into torturing. He said, 'You told me you liked a little pain, you know. We'll see how you like me. Maybe you'll like me a lot.' He grabbed my tit and held the knife up to it like he was going to cut it off. And then he would bite it, drawing blood. I was in pain. I was scared to death. The whole time he was doing this he had the machete between my legs and he told me, 'One false move and it's going up inside of you.'!"
Turner and Machado looked sharply at each other, but didn't say anything. Lena's story had brought forth a chilling recollection of how Body #3 had been found, completely cut open from the vagina to the sternum. They wondered if that victim had tried to escape, only to have the machete rammed up inside her.
"A little later on, he started punching me between my legs as hard as he could," said Lena. "He tried to shove his fist up my cunt, but he couldn't get it up there. It hurt like a motherfucker. And then he started pulling on my clit, and pinching on it between his thumb and finger. He cut my pubic hairs off little by little, and cut some of my hair on my head. He wanted me to scream and holler, but I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't give in to what he wanted. He hit me in the face and gave me a black eye.
"When he pinched my clit, he said, 'Does this hurt? Do you like it? I thought you told me you liked it.' Then he started slapping me and said, 'Do you like the sight of knives? Smile for me, bitch.' I smiled for him, but I wasn't happy about it. Finally I told him to just do whatever the fuck he wanted to do.
"I was in so much pain," Lena continued, "I finally decided that if this guy was going to kill me, I'd just rather try and make a break for it than sit there and be tortured. I reached for the doorknob, and he thrust the machete up toward my vagina. It didn't go in, but it cut my leg. I heard a car coming up the hill, so I jumped out and screamed at the top of my lungs. He drove off real quick. Three guys in another truck stopped, and here I am, naked and bleeding, and my clothes were all cut up. They gave me a ride back to town."
"Did he do anything else to your feet?" asked Machado.
"He tried to fuck 'em" said Lena, laughing. "He was a real sicko. And the whole time that he did this, he had the machete at my throat."
When Turner and Machado returned to the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office headquarters in Oregon City, they were promptly informed that the medical examiner's office had reported that they had positively identified Body #7 as that of Maureen Ann Hodges from dental charts provided by Hodges's dentist.
Chapter 19
By Monday, September 14, Machado had made considerable headway in narrowing down possible identifications of the remaining Molalla forest victims using a list of missing females he had obtained from Deputy Dave Broomfield. He focused on the women who had been missing from the Portland metropolitan area from January through August 1987, and ordered dental charts on all of those who had records available. Because Christine Lotus Adams's name surfaced as a missing person during the course of the Molalla forest investigation and because she was a known prostitute, obtaining her chart would become his top priority, for the time being.
In the meantime, Turner and Machado met with Irene James, Maureen Hodges's mother, to make the next-of-kin notification and to cull as much background on Maureen as possible, which they hoped would generate additional names and leads.
"I had not heard from Maureen, and neither had any of her friends, since mid-July," said James. Maureen was a heroin addict,
she said, and had made several attempts to conquer her addiction.
"I know now that she started on drugs when she was in high school, at the age of about fourteen or fifteen," said James. "We didn't know at first it was heroin. We thought it was pills or marijuana. I wasn't even aware of Maureen's drug problem until she was twenty."
Despite having been a good student in elementary school, Maureen dropped out of high school during her freshman year. She took to the streets and worked on and off at area nursing homes and motels as a housekeeper. After giving birth to a child that she put up for adoption, Maureen became a prostitute to support her drug habit.
"She talked about getting into drug treatment all the time," said James. "When she was missing, I guess I had this dream that she was off at a treatment center somewhere. I know they keep that sort of thing confidential. That was my hope."
The last communication that James had with Maureen was a letter that Maureen had left hanging on her front door just before Thanksgiving, some ten months earlier. The note read:
"I'm safe, and warm and alright. I'm starting to get it together. I have good friends that are helping me, not junkies. I'm not saying this just to make you feel better. It's for real. I'll call you sometime soon. I do love you. Maureen.
p.s. A lot has happened, but I'm OK and now out of trouble."
Seeing that Mrs. James was becoming upset over the news of her daughter's death, Turner and Machado decided it was best that they conclude their interview with her. She needed the time alone to try to make some sense out of what had happened to Maureen, and to grieve her loss. Before they left, however, James told the detectives that there were only two people that she was aware of who could provide additional information about Maureen. One was Maureen's ex-husband, Albert Black,* and the other was Tim Wilson, Maureen's last known boyfriend. She provided them with telephone numbers and addresses.
At 1:40 P.M. that same day, Turner and Machado met with Tim Wilson, Maureen's last known live-in boyfriend, at his room at the Fairfield Hotel in downtown Portland. Wilson told them how he and "Mo" had met at a bar, and how she had moved in with him shortly afterward. He also explained about their fight and how Mo had walked out, never to return.
In May, Maureen was raped on Union Avenue, according to Wilson, but the rape had not been reported to the police. Although having been raped had affected her adversely, Maureen was a tough woman and she just brushed it off as one of the risks of her profession.
On one occasion, Wilson said he jokingly commented about Maureen's feet and how attractive they would be to a foot fetishist. She had responded angrily and told him to knock it off. Wilson said he never understood why she had reacted that way, but he never talked about her feet to her again. Neither Turner nor Machado had brought up the subject.
At 3:20 P.M., Turner and Machado met with Mo's ex-husband, Albert Black, at a north Portland restaurant. Black said that Mo was heavily into drugs and that she would do just about anything to get them. When asked about possible men that she had dated, particularly any that stood out as unusual, Black said he remembered that Mo had talked about a guy who liked to take girls up into the woods, tie them up, and do things to their feet. Black didn't know the guy's name, but he did know that Mo was terrified of him. Mo had told him that the guy liked to "screw" her feet, and apparently was carrying out his foot fetish with a number of girls. One of those girls, Tracie Baxter, had gotten her feet carved up by this guy, said Black.
After locating Tracie Baxter, sixteen, Turner and Machado had her brought in to the task force offices for questioning. When she was told that Mo had been identified as one of the Molalla forest victims, Tracie began to cry. She told Turner and Machado how she had been taken up into the forest and how her date had hog-tied her and cut her foot, after torturing her for hours and threatening to kill her.
"Did he bite you severely?" asked Turner.
"He drew blood," she said. "He drew blood on my tits and on my feet." She reflected about the incident for a moment. "The strange part about it is, he only screwed me for maybe a second. That's it. I mean, he was jacking off the rest of the time, from seven o'clock at night until he dropped me off in Portland at one o'clock in the morning."
"Did he talk about anyone else during this ordeal?"
"He said he was raped once, when he was younger. I figured that's why he did what he did to me. It was like revenge."
"Did he mention who raped him when he was younger?"
"Just a bunch of girls, that's all he said."
When asked if there was anything unusual that stood out about the man and his truck, Tracie recalled that she had been intrigued by his key ring. It had some sort of swivel hook on it, and she remembered watching it as it dangled back and forth from the pickup's ignition.
Turner excused himself for a moment and left the room. When he returned a few minutes later, he had three key rings, each different and each holding several keys. One of the key rings was his own, another was Detective Lynda Estes's, and the third one he had obtained from the property room. When he laid them out on the table in front of Tracie, he asked her if the key ring she remembered seeing was among them. Without hesitation she picked the third set, the one that held a black plastic swivel hook. The key ring she chose belonged to Dayton Leroy Rogers. Likewise, when she was shown the photo montage of possible suspects, Tracie picked out Dayton's photo.
"That looks like the guy. Yeah. That's him—the one with the sad-looking eyes and the funny-looking nose!"
On Monday, September 21, Turner got the call from the medical examiner's office. Body #5 had been positively identified as Christine Lotus Adams, thirty-five. Shortly after the identification was made public, Darla Johnson, the prostitute who had initially informed Turner and Machado about Christine's disappearance, contacted the task force.
"We were a team," said Darla. "No one realizes what life is like out there on the street. You find someone good, and you hold on to them. That was me and Christine. We hung on to each other. We shared the same corner. Christine was fun-loving and a little crazy at times. She was like all of us out there. She worried about her weight and dreamed about meeting a nice man and getting married someday. But they were just dreams. We did what we did so we could survive. Neither of us had any skills to get a good job. We worked the streets to pay the bills and to get things for our kids."
Christine, said Darla, was born and raised in Portland, the third child of five. She dropped out of high school in the tenth grade at age sixteen, got married and pregnant, and became a mother. She went through two more marriages and as many children, and had an arrest record for prostitution offenses despite having worked as a checker at a grocery store. She sometimes used drugs, mostly cocaine, but was not a heroin addict. She began prostituting herself when she was twenty so that she could support her children.
"Every night we went out there we would be afraid," said Darla. "Both of us have been raped and beaten by johns. But it was all we knew, so we kept working the corner. It wasn't unusual for one of us to take off for a while, so I figured she was out of town. But then the months went by, and I never heard from her. She never got in touch with her kids or with me, and then I started to worry. When those bodies were found, I really started to worry. I prepared myself for the fact that she could be dead, but when I learned she was gone, I felt like someone had hit me in the chest."
Over several days, Turner, Machado and Detective Lynda Estes rounded up a number of prostitutes they had interviewed to determine if they could retrace the routes they had taken on their dates with Dayton Rogers. Each witness was driven separately from the location where they were picked up by Dayton, and each was asked to tell the detectives which roads to take and where to turn. Several of the victims were able to direct the investigators out toward Molalla Forest Road 75 and the Glen Avon Bridge area, and several others came close to getting to the site where the seven bodies were found. Two of the women directed the detectives to the clearing or turnaround area on Molalla
Forest Road 75 where the first five bodies were discovered.
Lydia Clark,* thirty-three, one of those two women, had initially contacted Detective Joe Goodall of the Portland Police Bureau after she recognized Dayton Rogers's photo in the Ore-gonian. She had known the man only as Steve until she saw Dayton's picture, despite the fact that she had dated him a number of times over a period of about three and a half years.
She had been hitchhiking the first time she'd had any contact with Dayton. He had been driving a small white foreign car that Lydia thought might have been a Honda. Dayton, calling himself Steve, approached her and negotiated a $50 date. He told her that he didn't want to stay around Portland because there were too many police, but instead wanted to go to a rest stop along the freeway, away from the city. Feeling uncomfortable about the proposition, Lydia suggested they go to a hotel instead. But Dayton had declined, and Lydia, feeling more uncomfortable, turned down his date and returned the money.
A few weeks later he approached her again. That time, he was driving a brown pickup truck. It had been sometime in 1984, but Lydia could not be more specific about the date.
He said he wanted to party with Lydia. He wanted her to spend several hours with him, and he wanted to drink. He brought with him several miniature bottles of alcohol that included Smirnoff vodka, Baccardi Rum, and Jack Daniels. He kept the booze in the glove compartment. Lydia decided to go with him, which constituted their first date.
They drove to a senior citizens retirement building in Portland's Eastmoreland area, just off McLoughlin Boulevard. After driving into a dark area of the parking lot, he told her that he liked bondage and liked to tie up women. Lydia was adamant that she wasn't going to allow him to tie her up, but she told him she would simulate bondage with him. Dayton agreed, and Lydia got undressed. She held her hands behind her back and placed her feet, crossed at the ankles, up next to her hands. Lying on her stomach on the passenger side, she felt more at ease. Dayton masturbated as he glared at her naked body.