Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer (15 page)

Reatha was described as a pretty girl, about
five feet four inches tall and 120 pounds, with thick
shoulder-length brown wavy hair and blue eyes. Leonard said that
her appearance was normally casual but well groomed and that her
complexion was light. She was always polite. She walked with a
slight limp because one leg was shorter than the other, and she had
multiple scars on both legs from extensive surgery performed over
the years at the Shriner's Children Hospital in Portland for
congenital dislocated hips. Despite the hardships she had endured,
Reatha had a sweet disposition and a capacity to care for other
people.

"Reatha normally wears rings on the last
three fingers of both hands and has a chain and pendant of two
Playboy bunnies around her neck," said Leonard. The day she
disappeared she was also wearing a brown suede jacket with
contrasting suede on the cuffs and pockets, Levi's jeans, a
light-colored blouse, and black leather boots.

"Did Reatha have any enemies that you know
of?" asked Johannessen. "Anybody who might have wanted to harm
her?"

Leonard, Wanda, and Lovey looked at one
another quizzically, each waiting for the other to reply. Finally
Leonard spoke up.

"Milton Graves,* Wanda's ex-boyfriend, and
some of his friends threatened to kill her."

Without waiting for Johannessen to ask why,
Leonard explained that Graves was arrested about ten days earlier
due to a complaint that Wanda had filed against him alleging abuse.
According to the complaint, Graves purportedly forcibly injected
Wanda with crank, a powerful methamphetamine, twice on July 19.
Graves fled the house afterward, but sheriff's deputies found him
hiding in bushes down the street and arrested him for fourth-degree
assault. He denied the charges and vehemently insisted that Wanda
had "shot up" herself with a "nickel bag of dope." He spent the
night in jail, but Leonard had learned that he was placed on
work-release the next day. Graves was on parole from previous
felony convictions, however, and was afraid that Leonard and
Reatha's family would testify against him about having drugs as
well as guns in Wanda Gyles's house, both violations of his parole.
He wanted the guns back and, according to Leonard, said that he
would kill everyone in the family if they talked.

Lovey spoke up and said that she, too, had
received telephone threats from Graves and his friends following
his release from jail. She didn't know where he was calling from,
but she gave Johannessen an address of one of Graves's friends on
Southeast Powell Boulevard.

"If you don't keep your mouth shut," Lovey
quoted Graves as saying, "you won't live to see your fifteenth
birthday." Lovey explained that she had seen at least four handguns
in the house, but the police didn't get them. Graves had hidden
them someplace, but she didn't know where.

When Johannessen finished at the Gyles
residence, he called the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office Records
Department and had Reatha entered into their data system as
missing. He also sent out a metro-area teletype that indicated she
might be a victim of foul play, and sent out an APB for Graves's
arrest on a charge of tampering with witnesses.

When Graves was rearrested, he denied making
any threats to anyone and insisted that he had not harmed Reatha
Gyles in any way. In fact, he said, he hadn't even seen her for
some time. Unfortunately, neither had anyone else. Nonetheless,
Graves volunteered to take a polygraph examination regarding
Reatha's disappearance and possible untimely demise, and
successfully passed it. As far as the cops were concerned, he was
not a suspect in her disappearance.

On Friday, August 28, Detective John Turner
made contact with Maxine Jewell, a clerk at the Woodburn OLCC store
where Dayton Rogers made most of his liquor purchases. The store
was conveniently located at the North Park Plaza Shopping Center,
on the corner of Highways 211 and 99E.

Maxine told Turner that she had worked at the
liquor store for about seventeen months, and during that time she
had served Dayton Rogers numerous times. She hadn't known his name,
she said, until she saw and heard it announced on television news
reports the evening of August 7 in connection with Jenny Smith's
murder.

"He came in near closing time on August 6,"
she said. Maxine said she remembered the date and time because
Rogers hadn't been in for a while. She had always considered him a
regular customer because he came in at least two or three times a
week and always bought one particular brand of vodka.

"What type of vodka was that, Maxine?"

"He always bought Smirnoff vodka and would
sometimes play the lottery by buying a couple of scratch tickets.
He was always a very quiet man, never loud, never caused any
trouble in the store."

The store's proprietor, Willie Verboort,
offered that Rogers was an unfriendly type, more of a loner. He was
different than most people, a dead-end character who never cracked
a smile, even when he was told a joke.

"Did he ever buy any other brand of vodka?"
asked Turner.

"No, he only bought Smirnoff, in the tiny
miniatures. He always bought a carton of them."

"Did he ever buy Smirnoff in a larger-size
bottle?"

"No, that's all I've ever sold him, small
miniatures."

By the time Turner arrived back at his
office, he found that the Oregon State Police Crime Detection
Laboratory had returned some of its reports regarding the scene
processing associated with Jenny Smith's death. Turner read that an
examination of Jenny's blood revealed only a trace blood alcohol
level, less than 0.01 grams of ethanol per lOOcc of her blood. She
clearly had not been intoxicated at the time of her death and had
likely consumed less than one drink.

A number of reddish brown stains found inside
Dayton's truck had been identified as human blood. Of particular
interest were the stains found in a spatter pattern on the inside
driver's side windshield area, the pattern of which demonstrated a
passenger-to-driver's area directionality. Simply put, the wounds
that caused the spatter pattern were inflicted on the passenger
side of the truck and could have come from Rogers's hand
wounds.

Similarly, test results on bloodstains from
the bathroom door at Dayton's shop, the drop near the shop
entrance, the pickup's right door, weather stripping, and interior
right door handle could have all come from Dayton's wounds. The
blood found on the sidewalk adjacent to the GMAC building could
also have come from Rogers. Jenny was excluded as being a source of
any of the aforementioned bloodstains.

Criminologists also determined that the
extensive bloodstains on the blade of the Regency-Sheffield knife
found near the crime scene could have come from Jenny. Likewise,
bloodstains on Jenny's denim pants, sweatshirt, and samples from
beneath the passenger seat were consistent with her blood type.

However, both Jenny and Dayton were excluded
as possible sources of the extensive bloodstains found beneath the
driver's side floor pad of Dayton's truck, as well as the
bloodstains on the right heel area of the Texas brand boots
confiscated during the execution of the search warrants.

So whose blood was that? wondered Turner.
What did it mean? He didn't like the grimness that it implied and
became even more concerned when Dayton's wife, Sherry, informed
Detective Lynda Estes that neither she nor their son had ever bled
inside the pickup. Likewise, Sherry had said that she could not
recall any instances in which Dayton or anyone else had bled in the
pickup.

Turning back to the crime lab reports, Turner
read that several hairs from Dayton's truck had been deemed
macroscopically and microscopically similar to strands taken from
Rogers and from Jenny's body. Surprisingly, there were no pubic
hairs in the sweepings that had come from either Jenny or Dayton,
and there were no hairs similar to Jenny's head and pubic hair
standard samples found on Dayton's clothing. Likewise, none of the
hairs matched those of Sherry Rogers or her son. No semen was
detected on the vaginal, oral, or rectal swabs taken at Jenny's
autopsy, nor was any detected on any of Jenny's clothing found at
the crime scene.

More damning, however, was the analysis of
the items found in the wood stove ash from Dayton's shop when
compared to the construction of the single shoe found at the Jenny
Smith crime scene. A shoe shank found in the stove was similar in
size, shape, and thickness to the shank found in the sole of the
shoe left at the crime scene. Also, patterns of adhesive on both
sides of the crime scene shoe shank matched the patterns found on
the stove shoe shank. The lacing on the crime scene shoe was held
by twelve eyelets and four swivel lace fasteners at the top of the
shoe, and a corresponding number of eyelets and lace fasteners of
like design were found in the stove ash. It was clear that Dayton,
or someone, had burned one of Jenny's shoes in the stove.

The stove ash analysis also revealed enough
shanks for two additional pairs of footwear. There were also snap
fasteners, buttons, clasps, zippers and zipper parts, belt buckles,
shoe nails, needles, decorative studs and assorted designs, wire
springs, earring pieces, coins, and a safety pin.

A sudden inexplicable chill came over Turner
for a few moments as he contemplated what he had just learned. What
reasons could Dayton have had for burning articles of women's
clothing and footwear? If he had nothing to hide, why not just
discard them in the usual manner or give them to one of the
charitable organizations that resells such items? Turner's gut
feeling now was that Dayton's murderous activities reached far
beyond the murder of Jenny Smith. But who were the other victims?
And how could he find out?

As Turner began reading through the stacks of
reports about Dayton's past—many of which, he found, had been
compiled by his own department when they'd had run-ins with Dayton
many years before, as well as others that had been retrieved from a
number of state agencies—he began to get a firm grasp of the type
of person with whom he was dealing. He began to visualize the
terror, pain, and suffering that Dayton, clearly a sociopath, had
put his victims through for such a long, long time. Turner knew in
his gut that he was on the right track, that his reasoning was
correct. Dayton was a serial killer. But unless Dayton talked,
which was doubtful, proving it might be impossible. Worse yet, his
other victims might never be discovered.

PART TWO

A Murder Case Waiting for a Place to
Happen

Chapter 8

Although no one could have foreseen that the
helpless child would metamorphose slowly into a human abomination
through the years, that is precisely what happened with Dayton
Leroy Rogers. Sadly, the danger signals were there all along, from
the times in early adolescence when he would masturbate while
fantasizing about his sisters' feet, using their shoes as a
stimulus, to his early teens when his sexual escapades escalated to
peeping at his sisters in various stages of undress. Unfortunately,
all this occurred in a less enlightened period when few people had
the insight to recognize the warning signals. As a result of not
being saved from his ever-growing affliction, many of those
unfortunate enough to cross his path later would be mercilessly
done in and discarded like yesterday's trash, all to satisfy his
own gradually manifested and perverted form of sexual
gratification. Whether those he touched survived or not, wherever
he walked he left behind him a trail of shattered lives.

Dayton Leroy Rogers was born in Moscow,
Idaho, on September 30, 1953. His parents seemed an appropriately
matched couple, each being devout, some would say even zealous,
members of the Seventh-Day Adventist faith who would rear Dayton,
his two biological sisters, three adopted sisters, and an adopted
brother accordingly. Dayton's father, Ortis Noble Rogers, never
really liked children, not even his own, and hadn't wanted any in
the first place. But Dayton's mother, Jasperelle, adored children
and revered the role of housewife/ mother, and ultimately became
the decision maker with regard to the size of her and Ortis's
family. Ortis fulfilled his role by bringing home the money, what
little there was, and strived to keep a roof over their heads and
food on the table.

Having old-fashioned ideas about sex and
religion to the extreme, Ortis was a strong believer in harsh
discipline and punishment, which he doled out regularly. It wasn't
uncommon for Ortis to suddenly attack one of the children in an
inappropriately intense fashion that often left the child bleeding
or covered with bruises. He never offered to explain or made any
comments about his actions later, but would instead seem to
rationalize his behavior only to himself. Ortis never apologized
and the children never knew whether their punishment was
justifiable correction or if it was a form of insane torture.

"I saw Dayton punished almost every time I
was in the house," said one of Rogers's brother-in-laws, a
minister. "I saw him hit with a belt, slapped, and punched. Every
time I visited with the family, it seemed like there was some kind
of punishment."

On one occasion, young Dayton was forced to
sit in a chair while Ortis punched his legs with his hands and
fists. "And then everybody would sympathize with Ortis because he
had broken a blood vessel in his hand from hitting Dayton. Ortis
was out of control with his children, but Dayton was so
under
control that he would sit there and take it. He
wouldn't even move his hands to protect himself."

Ortis Rogers's attitude about sex was simple
and self-motivated: "I have a right to this." Sex to him was not a
want, but a need, much like eating or breathing. Ortis continually
preached that his children had an evil entity living inside them,
and he attempted to remove it by relentlessly driving home his
church's doctrine through regular church attendance, frequent
family Bible readings, and by sending all of his children to
Seventh-Day Adventist schools without ever looking inward to see
whether that evil entity might be a dark extension of himself.