Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer (10 page)

"What happened this morning?"

"I cut myself with a hacksaw blade. I had it
in a vise."

"When did it happen?"

"About one or two in the morning."

"How did you get a hacksaw blade in there?"
asked the doctor, motioning to the area between Dayton's little
finger and the ring finger of his right hand.

"I was holding it and it slipped." He
explained that he was left-handed and was holding the hacksaw with
his left hand when it rammed the base of his fifth finger. When he
attempted to move his hand away, he cut the surface of his fifth
finger.

Given the lapse of time between when the
injury occurred and when Dayton arrived at the hospital, Dr. Brown
elected not to suture the wounds. Instead, she irrigated the
lacerations with normal saline, cleansed the affected skin with
Betadine, then applied an antibiotic ointment and dry dressing. She
affixed a volar splint to his injured small finger. When the doctor
was finished, Deputy Naab swabbed Dayton's hands with gauze pads
saturated with saline solution to remove trace elements, such as
dried blood. Afterward the gauze pads were placed in separate brown
paper bags.

It had been Detective White's intention to
obtain fingernail scrapings from Dayton. However, Dayton's
fingernails had been bitten off to the quick. There simply was not
enough fingernail present on any finger for anything to become
trapped beneath, and he was unable to obtain the scrapings. Dayton
mockingly told him that he bites his nails.

Later that morning, John Turner followed up
Dayton's supervised visit to the hospital. When he asked the doctor
if Dayton's injuries could have been caused by a hacksaw blade, he
was told that it was highly unlikely. If his hand had been cut with
a serrated blade such as that of a hacksaw, said the doctor, his
wounds would have been jagged and uneven. Instead, Dayton's wounds
were smooth and clean, as if they had been caused by a knife blade.
It was precisely what Turner had wanted to hear.

As the morning wore on and Detective Jim
Strovink continued his interviews of the Denny's witnesses,
Detective Michael J. Machado entered the case. He had been notified
of the brutal murder while still at home and was advised to report
to the crime scene instead of going to the office that morning.
Although he would eventually become Turner's partner as the
investigation continued to mushroom, he was initially assigned to
assist Strovink with the questioning.

Upon his arrival, he met briefly with
Strovink, who told him that Deputy Randy Barry had the name and
address of a witness, Michael Fielding, thirty-two, who had
obtained a good look at the suspect separate and apart from the
Denny's witnesses. Machado proceeded to an apartment complex at
16350 S.E. Vineyard Lane, located directly behind the GMAC
building.

It was 8:45 A.M. when Machado rang the bell
at Fielding's town house apartment. Fielding, expecting the
detective, led him inside and showed him around to give him a feel
of the apartment's layout. The downstairs area consisted of the
living room and kitchen, and the bedrooms and bathroom were located
upstairs. Machado noted that the front of the apartment faced the
parking lot and from upstairs provided an unobstructed view of the
crime scene.

Fielding explained that he and his roommate
left their apartment at about 1:20 A.M. and walked to Stuart
Anderson's Cattle Company Restaurant, located just up the street on
McLoughlin Boulevard, to have a drink. They arrived there about ten
minutes later, where Fielding drank three bottles of beer over the
next forty minutes. It was about 2:25 A.M. when they arrived back
at their apartment. Fielding went to bed, while his roommate
remained downstairs watching television. Fielding maintained that
his perception of the events that followed had not been impaired by
the beer.

Fielding had only been in bed for about five
minutes when he suddenly heard a high-pitched "yeowl," much like
the screaming that occurs during a cat fight. The sounds came from
the parking lot below, which he at first tried to ignore. But the
screaming and yelling continued until finally he heard a
"bloodcurdling" scream that he recognized as a human female
voice.

After realizing that what he had heard was no
cat fight, Fielding said he jumped out of bed and ran to the
window. Because the front of the apartment faced to the east, he
had covered the window with a sheet of black semi-transparent
plastic shortly after he moved in to prevent the morning sun from
entering his bedroom. He pulled back a section of the plastic and
looked toward Denny's, he said, the direction from which the
screams had come. He said the screams continued for two, maybe
three minutes.

When he looked out, Fielding said he really
didn't know what he expected to see. His first thought had been
that the screams were from a drunken girl because he hadn't seen
anyone at first. Then he heard a male voice say something like,
"Hey, son-of-a-motherfucker," followed by a brief period of
silence. Moments later, he heard what sounded like cowboy boots
clomping through the parking lot. Suddenly he spotted a man coming
around the northwest corner of the GMAC building along the west
side of the parking lot. The man was running, and he made a wide
turn around the building. As he entered a lighted area, he slowed
and looked back, as if to see if anyone was following him. But no
one was.

When the man was directly underneath an
overhead light, Fielding said he saw a shiny metal object in his
right hand. It was pointed away from his body in a relatively
straight line forward, only slightly pointed upward. The metal part
of the object was about five inches long, and it looked thin. When
he focused on it, he could tell that it was a knife. He couldn't,
however, see whether there was any blood on it or dripping from the
blade.

The man continued running along the west side
of the building, heading south. When he reached the southwest
corner of the building he turned left, which put him eastbound.
Fielding could still see the suspect as he attempted to flee the
area by scaling a flight of steps connected to the GMAC building,
and at one point he heard metal striking metal. He couldn't tell if
the man had attempted to open one of the office building's doors or
if the knife in his hand had been striking the railing as he
ascended the steps. He continued to watch for a few minutes, he
said, but the man never returned. Fielding said he assumed that the
man must have jumped over the fence behind the building.

Fielding explained that he quickly pulled on
his pants at that point. As he started down the stairs to the
living room to inform his roommate about what he had seen, he heard
the sound of tires peeling in gravel. Realizing that a vehicle just
passed his apartment at a high rate of speed, he ran back upstairs
to his bedroom window in time to see a small pickup "shooting
straight through the parking lot towards Denny's."

He described the man as a white male, about
thirty years old, maybe 190 to 200 pounds. Although it was
difficult to judge the suspect's height from the downward angle
from which Fielding was watching him, Fielding said he appeared to
be six feet three inches or more and had a slight paunch to his
stomach. His hair was dark brown, wavy, and collar-length, possibly
a little shorter. The man was wearing brown cowboy boots, a long
yellow polo shirt that was not tucked inside his pants. The pants,
he said, were blue jeans, and the shirt had standard cut sides.
Although he had not seen the man's face straight-on but mostly from
a profile angle, Fielding was adamant that he could positively
identify the suspect.

During any investigation of great intensity
many things, of course, occur simultaneously, often at different
locations. While deputies Beckwith and Layng had been at Dayton's
residence in Canby interviewing Sherry Rogers, Turner and Detloff
were being briefed at the crime scene. At the same time, doctors
had worked feverishly at Emanuel Hospital trying to revive Jenny
Smith and save her life, but had failed in their efforts. Likewise,
while Turner had been arresting Dayton and was having him
transported to the Clackamas County Jail, Deputy John Gilliland,
the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office criminologist, had arrived at
the crime scene shortly after being rousted from his home by
Portland police officers and was busy processing it for clues.
Because of all the activities happening at once, such cases can
quickly become complex. When it comes time to put it all together
so that all interested parties can easily visualize and understand
what has occurred, police work suddenly becomes an art.

When Turner returned to the crime scene after
processing his murder suspect into jail, he was trying to maintain
just such a sense of order in his head, an uncanny ability made
possible by twenty years of police work. Between taking sketchy
notes and reflecting on the morning's events, he had thought
initially that he would have the case wrapped up in a couple of
days. They had a suspect already in custody, and several
eyewitnesses had assured the investigators that they would
recognize the man they had seen fleeing the crime scene if they saw
him again. With every passing hour, the case that Turner and his
colleagues were building against Dayton Leroy Rogers seemed to grow
stronger. It looked like it was going to be a piece of cake to
clear up, but it wasn't. Not by a long shot.

* * *

Aided by the bright morning sun Turner,
Gilliland, and others conducted a thorough examination of the crime
scene, photographing everything of potential relevance. They
collected blood samples from the area where Jenny's body had lain,
as well as excrement and urine specimens. Each item of evidence,
including Jenny's clothing, was placed inside separate bags and
containers as the lawmen scoured every inch of the parking lot. At
one point they found a trail of blood, believed to be that of their
suspect, and followed it around the building complex along the
route taken by the suspect as described by Michael Fielding.

But where was the murder weapon? They
continued circling the group of buildings as they hunted for the
knife. They looked inside dumpsters, combed grassy areas, searched
through brush, peered into sewer grates with flashlights, looked
anywhere that the suspect might have tossed the knife as he fled.
But it seemed to be nowhere to be found. Turner and Gilliland began
to think that the killer had taken it with him.

Finally, at 9:30 A.M., after having been over
the same area at least six times, Gilliland stopped in his tracks
and called out to Turner.

"I think I found it," he said as he pointed
out a shiny object to Turner. It was lying beneath a shrub in a bed
of bark dust about three feet from the sidewalk behind the GMAC
building, in an area where the suspect was seen running. Gilliland
picked it up carefully so that he wouldn't spoil any fingerprints
that might be on it. It was a Regency-Sheffield stainless steel
kitchen-type knife with a five-inch blade and a brown handle, the
type commonly sold in sets. It was covered with blood, and the
blade was bent. Gilliland placed it inside a brown paper bag and
marked it, and would turn it over to the Oregon State Police Crime
Lab, along with the other evidence that had been collected, for
analysis. But first Turner had someone he wanted to show the knife
to.

At 9:35 A.M., some fifty minutes into
Machado's interview with Michael Fielding, Turner appeared at
Fielding's apartment, carrying the brown paper bag. He apologized
for interrupting.

"Do you recall saying that you thought you
would be able to recognize the knife that you saw the suspect
holding while he stood beneath the streetlight?" Turner asked
Fielding.

"Yes, I do. I think I would recognize
it."

Turner opened the brown paper bag and asked
him to look inside.

"Yes. I think that's the knife. That's
exactly like the one he had."

Turner smiled broadly, stretching his
mustache into a nearly straight line beneath his nose. Elated, he
thanked Fielding for his help and left.

Later, after he'd had time to put together a
photo display consisting of six similarly appearing subjects
arranged in two rows of three photos, Machado contacted Michael
Fielding again and asked him if the suspect was pictured in the
throwdown. Twenty-two seconds after Machado had flipped the display
over and revealed the faces, Fielding exclaimed, "I'd have to say
number three." It was the photograph of Dayton Leroy Rogers.

At 1:00 P.M., Detective John Turner, Deputy
John Gilliland, and Clackamas County Deputy District Attorney Andy
Eglitis arrived at 301 N.E. Knott Street in Portland, the offices
of the Multnomah County medical examiner. They were there to attend
the definitive autopsy of Jenny Smith, so far still known to them
as their Jane Doe. Dr. Karen Gunson, a deputy state medical
examiner, would conduct the procedure.

After everyone was assembled in the room
where Jenny's corpse lay on a stainless steel table, her hands
wrapped in paper bags as a measure to preserve evidence, the room
was darkened. A pathology technician slowly moved an ultraviolet
light carefully over her body. The inside of her legs, particularly
the thighs, and her breasts were meticulously examined for traces
of semen and latent fingerprints. However, fifteen minutes later,
the technician turned off the ultraviolet light and brought the
room lights back up after finding neither. Fingernail scrapings
were taken from both of Jenny's thumbs, but like Dayton Leroy
Rogers, she had been a nail biter and her other fingernails were
too short from which to obtain specimens.

During the external examination, Dr. Gunson
pointed out eleven knife wounds in Jenny's body, ten of which were
very deep. Eight of the injuries were present on the front of her
body, and three on her back side.