Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer

by Gary C. King

  When they would discuss acts of violence they had read about in the newspapers, things such as rape and murder, Dayton always laughed about it. It seemed to Ancisco that Dayton thought violence against women was a joke.

  "I said, 'Dayton. To me it's not a joke, because I've got two daughters, teenagers, and if anybody ever hurt them I would take care of the guy who did it. I really would, Dayton, because they are my flesh and blood.'

  "I would not let anybody get away with something like that," he continued. "That's why I called you, Detective Turner. Because if he killed this Jennifer and those girls up in the Molalla forest—well, no matter what they were, they're still human beings and nobody has the right to ..."

  Ancisco's voice trailed off, leaving the sentence unfinished. But Turner knew what he meant.

  "You look at it the same way I do," responded Turner. "That's the only way I can look at it anymore—I just do my job, and I could care less what kind of backgrounds these girls had. They had the right to live, and somebody took that right, along with their lives, away from them."

  Turner learned from the Oregon Liquor Control Commission that Hublein Corporation bottled Smirnoff vodka. He then telephoned Thomas D'Zialo, product manager for Hublein, to inquire about the Smirnoff miniatures, the fifty-milliliter containers used by airlines. Turner read off the product code numbers from the bottles that were found at the Molalla crime scene to D'Zialo, who, after checking his company's records, determined that those bottles had been filled in Hartford, Connecticut, on May 18, 1987. D'Zialo further explained that Hublein's records showed that part of the miniature bottle production from that day was shipped to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission for distribution to Oregon liquor stores about ten days later. Turner subsequently learned from an Oregon Liquor Control Commission official that a shipment of Smirnoff miniatures had been sent to the Woodburn liquor store on June 18th and another on July 1.

  The Smirnoff miniatures bearing the code numbers in question were available for purchase prior to when the Molalla victims began disappearing. They were in place on store shelves, ready for sale, at the Woodburn liquor store at the times when Dayton had made his purchases.

  When Turner got off the phone, he was handed a report from Elizabeth A. Carpenter, a criminologist with the Oregon State Police Crime Laboratory. Carpenter's report showed that the Regency-Sheffield knife found at the Molalla forest crime scene contained a small bit of human tissue, roughly about the size of a grain of rice. Although she indicated that it was of human origin, she said she was unable to match the tissue fragment to any blood type or other type of classification.

  Turner also read a report from Special Agent John L. Quill, an FBI fiber expert. The good news was that Quill stated that two deteriorated sections of shoelaces found at the Molalla forest crime scene had been tied with two half hitches at each end and a granny knot in the middle. It was the same combination of knots that had been found at the scene of Jenny Smith's murder. The bad news was that granny knots and two half hitches are knots commonly used by any number of the public at large and require no special expertise to tie. With regard to Turner's question of whether the knots had been tied by a right-or left-handed person, Quill could not say.

  On October 7, 1987, a Clackamas County grand jury indicted Dayton Leroy Rogers on charges of aggravated murder in connection with Jenny Smith's death. The indictment alleged that Dayton murdered Jenny during the course of rape, kidnapping, sexual abuse, and torture. It also alleged that Dayton murdered her to cover up the other crimes. A conviction on any one of the theories of aggravated murder could get Dayton a sentence of death or a life prison term.

  Dayton pleaded not guilty to the charges and retained Oregon City attorney Arthur B. Knauss to defend him. Surprisingly, Knauss revealed that Dayton would claim self-defense in Jenny Smith's death. Many felt that, had the case not been so tragic, such a defense would have been laughable, particularly with all of the evidence that pointed to Dayton's guilt. Dayton was continued held in the Clackamas County Jail without bail.

  Because of the magnitude of the Jenny Smith case and the Molalla forest murders, it came as no surprise to anyone when Clackamas County District Attorney James O'Leary announced that he had assigned his chief deputy, Andrejs "Andy" Eglitis to prosecute both cases. Eglitis was known as a tough prosecutor, highly intelligent, articulate, and respected, and he had been in on both cases from the beginning. Even though he had lost a couple of well-publicized cases over the years, his wins far outnumbered his losses. If they were going to get Dayton Rogers the death sentence, which O'Leary wanted, Eglitis was the right man for the job.

  Chapter 22

  In the early part of October, the Molalla Forest Task Force received a telephone tip that one of the remaining unidentified forest victims could be Nondace "Noni" Kae Cervantes, twenty-six, originally from Tempe, Arizona. When Turner checked the National Crime Information Center's computer data banks to see if she had a criminal record, he learned that she had been arrested in Canby on July 6, 1979, on a misdemeanor charge of public indecency, specifically indecent exposure. She had been arrested again in 1984 in Portland on accusations of trespassing and assault. Turner contacted the Canby Police Department, and they agreed to dig out and send him the crime report on the public indecency charge. The Portland Police Bureau agreed to do likewise with its trespassing and assault report.

  Meanwhile, Turner located one of Noni's relatives who lived in Oregon. The relative said she hadn't seen Noni for some time, at least for two or three months. She said she thought she had last seen her in Portland on July 24, when Noni was living at a downtown hotel. The hotel was described as a "shooting gallery," and its primary residents consisted of former prisoners, drug addicts, and prostitutes.

  The relative told Turner that Noni was into drugs, particularly cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and alcohol. She was known to inject cocaine and heroin intravenously, but the relative did not know if Noni worked as a prostitute. The relative said that Noni had been seen by a psychiatrist when she was younger.

  "I think she just liked the rock groups and that sort of thing," said the relative. "She was quite adolescent in her likes, but we all loved her. She was always beautiful. Her pictures don't do her justice at all. She could have been a Harper's Bazaar model, she had such beautiful features. She was a slender, tall girl."

  Turner tracked down an acquaintance of Noni's, who described the missing woman as wild. She said Noni was a heavy drinker, and confirmed that she was heavily into drugs and moved around a lot.

  "Noni looked like something out of the Goodwill box," said the acquaintance, who added that she hadn't seen her for some time.

  A couple of days later, Turner received the crime report on Noni from the Canby Police Department. Officers Dale Janzen and Robert Ek had been dispatched to the corner of 2nd Avenue and Elm Street in Canby on July 6, 1979, after a shocked citizen reported seeing a female exposer in front of what had previously been a Baptist church.

  When Janzen and Ek arrived, they had observed a leg protruding from behind a tree in front of the former church. As they approached, the two officers saw a naked woman lying on the front lawn of the church. She was face up, massaging her left breast with her left hand, and she was fondling her vagina, masturbating, with her right hand. Her eyes were closed, and she seemed to have been enjoying herself. She wasn't even aware that the officers had arrived.

  When she realized that she was being observed, she sat up but made no attempt to cover her body. She appeared very intoxicated, and the officers smelled a strong odor of alcohol on her breath.

  It was a busy intersection, and several cars had passed by slowly to get a peek at the naked woman. Finally Janzen and Ek managed to get her into their patrol car and found her clothes lying in the bushes nearby. After being asked to do so, she put her clothes back on. She began laughing.

  "This is nothing to get upset about," she said, still laughing. "I do this all the time in California."

  "Why w
ere you doing that?" asked Janzen.

  "Because I haven't had a fuck in some time. I'm horny as hell, and you guys came too soon. I didn't even reach climax."

  She added that the first time she ever made love was inside a church she had broken into, and she felt that the churchyard was a good place to masturbate.

  "What is your name, miss?" asked Janzen.

  "Linda Blair," she responded. "And I'm going to throw up all over you!"

  She had no identification on her. However, after arriving at the police station, she finally told the two officers that her name wasn't Linda. It was Nondace Kae Cervantes. She told them that she was an actress and that she wanted to become a porno queen. She couldn't understand why everyone was making such a fuss about her masturbating on the church lawn. She said she had committed no crime, was born nude, and that she did that sort of thing all the time. She was living in Canby at the time, she said.

  Noni was convicted of indecent exposure in Canby Municipal Court and placed on bench probation for one year. Basically, all that meant was that she had to report in regularly to a probation officer and stay out of trouble.

  When Turner checked Noni's police record in Arizona, he came up empty-handed. She had no arrest record with the Tempe police, none with the Phoenix police, and none with the Arizona Department of Public Safety (state police).

  On Wednesday morning, October 14, Turner received a call from Dr. Larry Lewman, acting state medical examiner. Lewman told him that one of Noni's relatives from Arizona had called him and was concerned that Noni might be one of the Molalla forest victims. He said the relative mentioned that Noni had had jaw surgery several years ago and that she might very well be Body #3.

  "I don't know how the relative heard about the Molalla killings in Arizona," Lewman told Turner. "But she said Noni had been missing and the height, weight, and so on fit pretty well, particularly the surgery she'd had on her left jaw."

  Turner promptly called Lieutenant Colleen Aas at the Oregon State Police Identification Bureau. Aas was trying to match the fingerprints of the Molalla forest victims to prints of missing females, and Aas told Turner that she had obtained fairly good prints from the hands of Body #3. After Turner filled her in on the latest developments concerning Noni Cervantes, Aas agreed to coordinate identification efforts with law enforcement authorities which had Noni's fingerprints on file.

  Later that same afternoon, Aas informed Turner that she had made a match. Body #3 was in fact Noni Cervantes, making Noni the first of the Molalla forest victims to be identified through fingerprints.

  As he reflected on the case, Turner recalled that Noni was the victim that had been eviscerated and had likely died so horribly. Not that the others hadn't; they, too, had died slow and painful deaths. It was just that it was so hard to visualize someone, even a maniac, inserting a knife blade, possibly a machete, into a woman's vagina and then ripping her all the way up the middle. He also considered it ironic that Noni had lived in Canby, not too far from where Dayton Leroy Rogers had lived.

  Chapter 23

  At 9 A.M. on Monday, November 2, detectives Turner, Machado, and Strovink, accompanied by Criminologist John Gilliland, met Oregon State Police Criminologist Bob Thompson at the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office property room, essentially a large warehouse-type structure located adjacent to the county jail. They were there to execute a second search warrant on Dayton Leroy Rogers's light-blue Nissan pickup.

  The reason for the second search warrant was simple. The first time the truck was searched had been in connection with Jenny Smith's murder. Since then the Molalla forest bodies had been discovered, along with an abundance of evidence that linked Dayton to those crimes as well. Since they were essentially investigating two cases, the lawmen had to have a second search warrant that stipulated what they were searching for with regard to the second case. Everything was going to be done by the numbers on this one. There could be no room for slipups.

  First, they disassembled and removed the bench seat from the pickup. Then they removed the left and right door panels and took out the floor covering. Numerous blood samples were collected and hair and fiber samples were obtained by vacuum sweepings from the now-bare interior locations. What appeared to be some kind of larvae husks were collected from a blood-soaked portion of the underside of the floor mat. From the pickup's exterior, they removed elastic cords and ropes that were strewn about the bed, and soil samples were collected from the wheel wells. The effort took most of the morning.

  At 1 P.M., the yellow Mustang that Dayton's wife formerly owned was brought to the sheriff's office by its new owner, who had agreed to allow Turner to collect fiber and hair samples from its interior. Because so much time had passed since Dayton had used the vehicle, it was doubtful that anything useful would be obtained. But since Turner had gone to the trouble of tracing the car down, he figured he might as well collect potential evidence from it. As suspected, though, he soon realized that the effort had been futile.

  At 1:10 P.M. Machado received a call from Deputy Dave Broomfield, who informed him that Body #1 had been positively identified as Reatha Marie Gyles, sixteen. The missing person report that Reatha's mother had filed on July 29 had surfaced in Broomfield's computer as a possible Molalla forest victim, and a comparison of Reatha's dental charts to the teeth of Body #1 had matched. There were other identifying factors as well, such as the distinctive pelvic and hip surgery that Lewman had noted during the autopsy on Body #1. Reatha, it turned out, had gone through several such surgeries at Portland's Shriner's Hospital while growing up, due to congenitally dislocated hips.

  An hour later Turner and Machado drove to the Gyles residence and delivered the bad news. For-tunately, the pastor from the church that the Gyleses attended was there visiting when the detectives arrived. Although the pastor's presence seemed to be comforting to the family, it didn't make it any easier for Turner and Machado to tell them that Reatha had been murdered.

  The family revealed that they knew that Reatha was a prostitute. They told the detectives that she normally worked 82nd Avenue near Powell Boulevard. Except for a girl they had heard of only by the name of Dee Dee, they didn't know the names of any of the other girls Reatha had associated with on 82nd. Dee Dee, they thought, was older than Reatha, about twenty-one, and they thought that she hung out with Reatha at the Game Room, a popular teen gathering spot on 82nd.

  Family members identified a jewelry pendant that Turner had brought along as Reatha's. It was two Playboy bunnies facing each other, and she normally wore it on a gold chain. They also identified a pair of underpants found at the Molalla forest site that had "Thursday's Child" stitched into the fabric. They also thought that a pair of jeans found at the site had belonged to Reatha.

  When Turner tracked down Reatha's boyfriend, Leonard Todd Thornton, at a Washington State Job Corps center, he confirmed much of what Reatha's family had told him and Machado. Leonard said that he last saw Reatha alive on July 21, when he dropped her off on 82nd Avenue so she could look for a customer. He explained that he wasn't Reatha's pimp, that she didn't have one. He said he didn't like the fact that Reatha worked as a prostitute, but the money attracted him. Leonard identified the pair of blue jeans and the metal Playboy bunny pendant found at the Molalla site. He said he had given Reatha the pendant. When Turner mentioned Reatha's acquaintance, Dee Dee, Leonard immediately identified her as Cynthia Diane DeVore, another prostitute.

  When Turner had crime analyst Broomfield run Cynthia's name through his computer, nothing came up. There had been no missing person reports filed on her, but she did have a police record. She had been arrested twice in Multnomah County on accusations of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle in December 1985 and again in June 1987. In the latter case, she had told police that she had been hitchhiking and was picked up by a man who was driving a stolen car, but the follow-up investigation indicated that her involvement was more than what she had acknowledged. At the time of Turner's inquiry, according to Portland Police Bu
reau Detective David Simpson, Cynthia was wanted on a warrant for failing to show up in court to answer to the charges. Turner listed her as a possible Molalla forest victim, along with hundreds of other missing women.

  Much of December entailed more of the same for the task force detectives, namely interviewing area hookers who claimed to have had contacts with Dayton Leroy Rogers. They were also called out to the Molalla forest area on several occasions to investigate shoes and articles of clothing that had been discovered by area residents, and to look into reports of strange and unusual odors that some said smelled like decomposing flesh. However, they failed to find the sources of the odors, and the shoes and clothing had been dumped in the area quite some time ago. They were in fact rotten, and there was nothing to indicate that they had any bearing on the case. In short, the calls amounted to a wild goose chase, but it had been necessary to check them out just the same.

  It wasn't until December 28 that anything new that was of particular significance surfaced. At 4:55 P.M. that day Detective Strovink was contacted by a concerned citizen who also happened to be a longtime friend of Dayton Leroy Rogers's family. The caller identified himself as Clifford Shirley and offered what Strovink considered vital information to the case.

  Shirley told Strovink that he had received information during the Christmas holiday that had been shared between his wife, Sherry Shirley, and relatives of Dayton's. He said that his wife had been told that Dayton had confessed to his mother and a sister that he was responsible for the murders of Jenny Smith and the Molalla forest killings. The information was passed on to Turner, who followed up on it the next day.

  At 9:45 the next morning, Turner and Detective Lynda Estes responded to Clifford and Sherry Shirley's place of business in Sherwood, Oregon, a small community southwest of Portland. During the interview they were told that Dayton's sister, Connie, had confided to a family friend that Dayton had confessed to her and his mother about the murders. Connie, Clifford said, had also questioned Dayton as to whether or not he was involved in the Green River murders. Dayton had said that he wasn't. However, when he was asked about two skulls that had been found in the Tigard area, he had become evasive. Shirley could not understand why Connie had not come forward with the information, but felt that if Turner and Estes went to see her she would talk to them.