Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer

by Gary C. King

  There were other dates after that, all similar to the first one. The first thing he always wanted her to do was to take off her shoes. If her feet happened to be dirty, Dayton would stop someplace so she could wash them. He eventually began playing with her feet, then nibbling and biting them.

  There wasn't any particular time of the day or night when they went on their dates. Sometimes she would see Dayton at noon, other times at 2 in the afternoon. It wasn't unusual for him to show up at 8 in the evening, midnight, or 2 in the morning. Sometimes she would see him cruising the streets as late as 4 A.M. He didn't seem to have any preference regarding time.

  They began going out of town, parking at rest stops along Interstate 5, usually twenty to thirty miles south of Portland. Since he hadn't harmed her physically, more and more trust was gradually built into the relationship. Eventually they began going to a secluded area near Molalla. Lydia said she must have gone there with him at least fifteen or sixteen times and would have little trouble directing the detectives to the location.

  With Machado driving, Lydia directed the detectives south on McLoughlin Boulevard to the intersection of Highways 213 and 99E, where they turned south on 213. They proceeded through Oregon City, continuing up to the top of the hill that much of the city is built upon and on toward Molalla.

  As they drove along, Turner asked if Dayton had ever removed his clothes. She said, "Never." He wouldn't even take off his shoes. He would just pull the front part of his pants down, far enough to expose himself, and masturbate. They had never engaged in sexual intercourse.

  Eventually, as her trust in Dayton grew, Lydia began allowing him to tie her up. Sometimes he would use nylon stockings to bind her, other times wire and electrical tape. He eventually began to use leather straps, at least six inches long with buckles, to bind her hands and feet. Then he would tie the straps on her hands to the straps on her feet, using a heavy piece of wire that she believed was previously a coat hanger. The end result was that she was forced into a position commonly known as being hog-tied.

  During each successive date, Dayton's actions toward Lydia did not change significantly. If she complained about the straps being too tight, he'd bite her feet harder than she liked. But when she told him to back off he would, although she could tell that he was annoyed at having to do so. It wasn't until their final date that he became extraordinarily violent with her.

  It was in February or March 1987 when he picked her up on 6th Avenue and Burnside Street in downtown Portland for the last time. It was during the early morning hours, and they drove out to the usual location near Molalla.

  When he began tying her up, she complained that the straps were too tight. Instead of loosening them, he made them tighter. He began biting her, hard. The more she screamed and begged him to stop, the more he seemed to enjoy it. He told her he was going to cut her feet up, which he did.

  Dayton made several incisions on the sole of Lydia's left foot. She tried to see what he was using, but she was not in a position where she could actually see the blade. She thought it might have been a short box cutter.

  She screamed at him and pleaded with him to stop. She even told him she would give him his money back if only he wouldn't cut her anymore. But he continued with the biting and the cutting for approximately forty-five minutes. Finally, devoid of all energy, Lydia went numb. She had reached the point where she had just given up.

  Three minutes after she had stopped screaming, Dayton stopped torturing her. With evil anger in his eyes, he gave Lydia a choice of being cut on her buttocks or on her chest. She told him that if he was going to cut anything else, she'd rather it be her buttocks, which he did cut. Afterward, he undid her bindings and allowed her to dress. As they drove back toward the city, Lydia asked Dayton why he had stopped, why he hadn't killed her. He said he'd never killed anyone before and that he had stopped because she had quit struggling.

  It was after 5 A.M. when they had arrived back in Portland. Lydia's feet hurt terribly and her stockings were soaked with blood. She could barely walk and needed assistance to get inside the hotel where she was staying. Dayton gave her a kiss on the cheek, then left.

  Did he always take her back to Portland after their dates? Turner wanted to know.

  Dayton normally dropped Lydia back at the location where he had picked her up, she said. However, there were several occasions when he dropped her off at Woodburn, near the entrance to Interstate 5, and she would have to find her own way back to Portland. It was usually late on the mornings when he did that, around 5:30 or 6 A.M., and it had seemed that he was in a hurry to get home or was worried about getting to work on time.

  After driving through the city of Molalla, Lydia directed Machado to keep heading south on Highway 213. They went out past the Y Drive-in, where she instructed him to turn onto Freyrer Park Road and then onto Dickie Prairie Road. She led them to the intersection of the Glen Avon Bridge, at which point she told them to turn west across the bridge and then again directed them south on Molalla Forest Road. When they reached the intersection of Molalla Forest Road 75, Lydia was overcome with emotion.

  "Bingo," she said. "I knew we wouldn't be able to see the road until we were on top of it."

  She directed them on up the hill, and told them to stop where the road made a 180-degree hairpin turn. They got out of the car and Lydia walked to the side of the road, peering into the brush.

  "This is the location where he always brought me."

  "Are you certain that this is the place?" asked Turner.

  "Yeah. This is it. I feel it with my guts. This is it."

  They were at the site where the Molalla forest victims had been discovered.

  Chapter 20

  As Turner and Machado were conferring with the medical examiner's office and confirming the identity of Body #5, Detective Jim Strovink was making contact with forty-two-year-old Mel Crouch,* who had called the task force and left a message that he had information about Dayton Leroy Rogers. When Strovink interviewed Crouch, he was informed that Dayton had regularly visited Crouch's roommate, Tommy Parker,* when Crouch and Parker had shared a house in north Portland. The purpose of Dayton's visits, said Crouch, was to engage in a homosexual relationship with Parker.

  According to Crouch, Dayton had become acquainted with Parker while attending a Seventh-Day Adventist school together while both were still in their teens. They had remained in contact with each other for years.

  "When was the last time you saw Dayton?" asked Strovink.

  "This past winter—February or March of this year," said Crouch. "Dayton has had a few sexual encounters with Tommy through the years."

  "Do you think Dayton's a bona fide homosexual, then?"

  "Oh, no. He's bisexual at most. I only brought this up because, well, it could trigger a lot of anger if he's fighting some kind of a trip, his sexual orientation, you know."

  "Did Tommy ever tell you anything unusual about their sexual activity? Was Dayton into sa-domasochism or anything like that?"

  "I think Tommy did mention that Dayton was rough at times, but not angrily rough. I can't recall the exact words Tommy used, but there was some intimation that it was more related to frustration or something like that."

  "Mel, are you gay?"

  "Yes."

  "Okay. Then you would have obvious knowledge or free conversation with Tommy, someone Tommy could freely confide in."

  "Yeah, I guess so. I've been there at the house a couple of times when Tommy and Dayton went upstairs together. Their encounter was pretty short—didn't last too long. Not my type of relationship." Crouch laughed.

  "I understand," said Strovink.

  "Short and quick. But apparently they've been doing it since they were kids."

  Couch's mood turned somber, and it seemed to Strovink that something else was on his mind. Finally he told Strovink that the real reason he called the task force was not to reveal Dayton's gay relationship with Tommy, but to tell him about a black female prostitute who had been fou
nd dead, apparently murdered, in a vacant lot near his and Tommy's house the morning following one of Dayton's visits. He said he had a strange feeling about Dayton and felt that Dayton might have been responsible for the prostitute's death.

  "The suspicion that Dayton might be involved didn't come up until all of this Molalla business happened," said Crouch.

  "What month are we talking about?" asked Strovink.

  "February, I think. All I know is Dayton was here in the evening hours before they found that young black woman's body around the corner the next morning."

  "Did you notice what type of vehicle Dayton operated?"

  "There was a little foreign pickup truck, light in color, parked out in front of the house, and another car nearby. I guess it was about nine o'clock in the evening. There was some noise out front, too. Two guys talked to each other for a little while, then the guy from the pickup went and sat with the other guy in his car. I thought they were doing a drug deal or something, and I was getting ready to call the police but they moved on." He left Strovink with the impression that the guy in the pickup might have been Dayton, although he had stopped short of making a positive identification.

  "Is that little pickup truck the one you would associate with Dayton Rogers?" asked Strovink.

  "In a way, yeah. See, Dayton came into the house later. He stopped by and knocked on the door."

  "This was after you saw the two guys out front?"

  "Yeah. It was about ten o'clock when he came by. I let him in 'cause I knew he came by to see Tommy. But Tommy was gone to a National Guard meeting. Dayton asked for a cup of coffee, and I said, 'Sure. It's in the kitchen.' He sat down for a few minutes and bullshitted about some machine or something and then left. That's what he always did when Tommy wasn't home."

  "Since you lived in a high vice area—near Union—did you ever see Dayton soliciting prostitutes in the neighborhood?"

  "There was one afternoon, in late summer, that I saw Dayton standing outside on Union. There were a couple of girls, you know, doing their little trip. They kept walking, and Dayton just sort of glared at them, if anything. But a lot of guys do that."

  "Is there anything else that you can think of that would help me?" asked Strovink.

  "No. It just seemed like Dayton and Tommy were carrying on something that they'd been doing for years—sort of an outlet, maybe. I think Dayton's got a lot of guilt going on about his gay activities, and if he dislikes women underneath all that, well, that could get pretty violent."

  When Strovink related to Turner and Machado what he'd learned, a whole new picture of Dayton Rogers began to emerge. If he was in fact gay and had married only for convenience and cover, then there could indeed be a lot of anger beneath his family man facade. Had he been lashing out at women all of his adult life simply because he could not come to terms with his own sexuality? It certainly appeared that way to the investigators. Had he actually murdered the black prostitute? It seemed a distinct possibility. But would they be able to prove it?

  On Tuesday, September 22, Strovink responded to Lyon's Restaurant on Union Avenue in Portland, where he met with Debra Solorio, twenty-five, a bartender at the restaurant's cocktail lounge. Solorio had contacted the task force after seeing Dayton's photo on a television news program and suggested that they send someone out to talk to her. Having worked at the bar for five years, she said she knew that Dayton had been coming in from December 1984 through August 1987. She said she recognized him, however, as an individual who went by the name of Steve.

  Solorio said that Dayton came in once a week, sometimes more often, and usually drank a golden Cadillac or a screwdriver. He indicated that he was a gambler from Nevada, and he often approached prostitutes when they came in for drinks.

  She recalled at least one occasion when Dayton told her that he couldn't understand why some women became prostitutes for a living and that he didn't think women should sell their bodies for money. She added, however, that despite his apparent dislike of prostitutes, she often saw him talking with hookers at the bar. Solorio said that Molalla victim Christine Adams had been a regular customer and that she had seen her soliciting customers in the bar. But she couldn't recall any instances where she had seen Christine and Dayton together.

  "He seemed to be an intelligent type," she said. "He did magic tricks occasionally. I remember one in particular where he transferred ashes from one hand to another mysteriously."

  His normal attire consisted of jeans or corduroy slacks, a T-shirt under his dress shirt with the two top buttons unfastened to form an open collar. She said that Dayton had asked her out for a date on a few occasions, but she had always turned him down.

  "Do you happen to know what kind of vehicle he drove?" asked Strovink.

  "No, but he talked about having had an accident in the Reno area and had purchased a new pickup afterwards," she said. "He talked quite a bit about that type of vehicle."

  When Strovink returned to headquarters, he ran a check with motor vehicles in Oregon and Nevada. The result of the search turned up the fact that Dayton had owned a 1984 Datsun pickup, brown in color. But it had been wrecked in California. Shortly after the wreck, he purchased the blue 1985 Nissan pickup.

  When Strovink informed Turner of the new information, Turner recalled the conversation he'd had with Lisa Daniels, the young woman who in 1984 had gone to Eugene with Dayton for dinner and drinks prior to being taken to the Molalla forest. She had been correct in her description of the truck he had picked her up in, after all. It had been a brown one. Both Lydia Clark and Debra Solorio had confirmed that

  Dayton had driven a brown pickup.

  * * *

  As one day followed another and gradually faded into October, John Turner and his colleagues continued putting in long days, often in excess of twelve hours, in their efforts to build their cases against Dayton Rogers. District Attorney James O'Leary was planning to try Dayton in two separate trials: one for the murder of Jenny Smith and another for the murders of the Molalla forest victims. Thus, Turner and his cohorts had to garner evidence and identify potential witnesses appropriate for each case. Unfortunately, not all of the witnesses and evidence would be interchangeable, resulting in the need to set up and maintain two separate case files.

  When Tommy Parker learned that the task force had interviewed Mel Crouch, his ex-roommate, and was looking for him, he telephoned task force offices and set up a late-night meeting with Strovink at the Alibi restaurant and bar on North Interstate Avenue in Portland. When Strovink arrived, Parker was at first uncooperative, angry that the cops were prying into his private life over his homosexual relationship with Dayton Rogers. Loud and obnoxious at first, Parker calmed down when Strovink assured him that the task force was simply attempting to obtain information pertaining to Rogers's background and that it wasn't an effort to delve into Parker's private life.

  Parker first became acquainted with Dayton in 1964, when the two of them were eleven years old. They were both attending the same Seventh-Day Adventist academy when they had their first homosexual encounter.

  "Boys will be boys," said Parker.

  Parker said his homosexual relationship with Dayton persisted throughout the years and that they saw quite a lot of each other between 1964 and 1969. Between 1969 and 1975, however, the relationship cooled and became more or less a hit-and-miss type of affair.

  Parker described Dayton as a person with a very high I.Q., which he believed to be around 145 on the intelligence quotient scale. He said Dayton was a good businessman with a good business sense, that he was a hardworking and industrious person who possessed good mechanical skills. But he also recognized that Dayton was a very secretive and shrewd individual. An aura of mystery seemed to follow him.

  When Dayton married Sherry, Parker told Strovink that he was the best man at the wedding. He described Sherry as a very beautiful woman, but she was also very religious and bashful. It was Parker's understanding that if Sherry or any of her family members became curious or
concerned about Dayton's extramarital activities, specifically his late hours or affairs with other women, they were told by Dayton not to ask any questions. It was also Parker's understanding that Dayton and Sherry had an agreement about money, namely that Dayton had his own from his earnings at the shop and that Sherry had her own from her job at a Salem insurance agency.

  The night before the wedding ceremony, Parker and Dayton had a homosexual encounter. During this rendezvous, Parker and Dayton had each taken a Polaroid photograph of each other's erected penis. Parker said that Dayton had told him that he later showed the photographs to Sherry, for reasons that Parker said were unknown to him. He reasoned that maybe Dayton had been turned on by showing her the kinky photos. Whatever Dayton's reason had been, Parker said he was certain that Sherry was aware of the homosexual relationship between Dayton and himself.

  On one occasion, Parker went to the Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem to visit with Dayton when Dayton was doing time there on a rape charge. During that visit, Dayton had confided to Parker that he was having homosexual relationships with some of the inmates. Parker described Dayton as a very gentle man and a good lover who was not into kinky sex and toys. Following Dayton's release from prison, he came to Portland often to see Parker, at least four to five times a month. Dayton frequently called him from a Denny's restaurant, just to let him know he was in town.

  Parker told Strovink that on one occasion Dayton had told him that "I wish you would have kept the relationship going. You would have prevented me from marrying my first wife and prevented me from marrying women." Parker felt certain that Dayton married Sherry as a cover to conceal his homosexual appetite and to maintain a respectable family presence to gain community acceptance.

  On one occasion, one of Dayton's sisters told Parker that "there is a darker side to that man," a reference to Dayton and his personality.