Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer (25 page)

As he watched Lewman work, Turner briefly
recalled to himself the hacksaw he seized from Dayton's shop, and
reflected on how the serrated edge of such a tool's blade would do
a very good job of puncturing and slicing through flesh and bone,
as had been done to victims #1 and #2. Unfortunately, no traces of
blood or tissue had been found on it. But that didn't mean that it
couldn't have been carefully cleaned after each use. Dayton was,
after all, a stickler for neatness.

Body #4 was another Caucasian female, late
twenties to early thirties, long curly brown hair, approximately
five feet four inches tall. Lewman did not observe any cutting
wounds in any of the long leg bones, but when he turned the remains
over he noted several vertically oriented perforations in the
lumbar region of the back, on both sides of the vertebral column.
Four of the wounds measured one-half inch in length, and a fifth
one was five-eighths of an inch long. He said the cause of death
could have been caused by the stab wounds to the posterior
trunk.

Body #5 was a Caucasian female, likely in her
early to mid-thirties, with an estimated height of between five
feet two inches to five feet four inches. The victim had generally
poor dentition, with an upper denture plate that was still in
place. Several teeth were missing prior to death, and the right
foot had been severed above the ankle. As with the severed feet of
bodies #1 and #2, tool marks were visible. Unlike the others,
however, the hands of victim #5 had been bound together with a
one-inch belt that looked like a dog collar, buckled over the
dorsum of the left hand. Lewman left the belt in place.

Clearly, all of the victims would had to have
been bound to facilitate the killer in his acts of torture and
dismemberment. But Turner thought it unusual that the killer had
left victim #5 bound like that, and not the others. Why hadn't he
taken the time to remove the bindings? Had he been frightened away
by something or someone intruding into his outdoor torture chamber?
Turner momentarily recalled the pigeons Everett Banyard had
reported seeing fly away suddenly, shortly after having seen a man
in a small blue Datsun pickup stop nearby. Had Dayton carried the
body, still bound, from his pickup to the woods, leaving the
restraint in place on the victim after being frightened by Banyard?
Turner decided that he might never know, especially since Banyard
had been unable to positively identify the man driving the pickup
and was uncertain about the exact date.

Lewman noted several circular to irregular
defects in the victim's back, as well as on the right buttock. The
perforations were one-quarter to five-sixteenths of an inch deep.
Similarly, there was a gaping one-half-inch horizontal defect in
the left posterior flank region and another gaping, ragged defect,
approximately four inches in length, nearby.

Autopsies on bodies #6 and #7 were somewhat
more difficult, primarily because the remains had been scattered.
As best as Lewman could determine, however, body #6 was an adult
female, possibly twenty to thirty-two years old. She had been about
five feet tall, had a somewhat stocky build, and had two top front
teeth that were rotated inward. One of those teeth, the one on the
top left, was chipped. Lewman figured the victim was of mixed
racial heritage, perhaps part American Indian or Asian and part
Caucasian. Lewman noted tool marks in the ankle region, evidence
that the killer had considered or had even tried to cut or saw her
feet off but had given up for some reason.

Body #7 was a Caucasian female, probably in
her thirties, about five feet eight inches tall and with dark brown
hair. Lewman didn't observe any saw or cut marks on either leg, but
the condyles of each had been completely chewed off by animals. The
victim's nasal bones were irregular, slightly deviated to the
right, which Lewman guessed might have been caused by an old nose
fracture. Like the others, he found several stab wounds to the
posterior trunk and guessed that had been the cause of death.

Lewman explained that four of the bodies had
been at the Molalla forest site for from one to three months. The
others had been there longer, but he couldn't say with any degree
of certainty just how much longer. He said the level of
decomposition could vary significantly if the bodies had been
exposed to varying amounts of sunlight and other elements.

Four of the bodies, he told the detectives,
had enough flesh remaining on the hands and could be fingerprinted.
He also explained that all of the victims had distinctive dental
work.

"If we have a clue on who we're dealing with,
I think we can readily rule people in or out."

During the autopsies, it was pointed out that
the Molalla forest victims were significantly different from the
Green River Killer's victims, and the Green River Killer could thus
be ruled out as the perpetrator. Taking that point one step
further, Turner interjected that Dayton Leroy Rogers could not be
the Green River Killer due to the fact that he was incarcerated at
the Oregon State Penitentiary at the time the first Green River
victims were believed killed.

To sum up, Lewman told the detectives that
all of the victims suffered multiple stab wounds to their lower
backs. However, because the bodies were so badly decomposed, he
said he couldn't determine conclusively the exact cause of death in
any of the victims. Instead, he would list on their "Jane Doe"
death certificates that they died as a result of "homicidal
violence of undetermined type." He explained that there was just no
way for him to positively determine whether the stab wounds had
been inflicted before or after death. He said the wounds appeared
to have been caused by a single-edged knife with a blade about
one-half to five-eighths of an inch across, and concurred that the
injuries of the Molalla forest victims were consistent with the
type of kitchen knife that Dayton Rogers had used to kill Jenny
Smith.

Chapter 16

On Saturday afternoon, September 5, a
Clackamas County Sheriff's Office desk officer contacted John
Turner at the Molalla forest site by radio and informed him that
Heather Brown had been located. Portland police officers had picked
her up on Union Avenue around 4:30 P.M. and were holding her in an
interview room at the downtown Justice Center. Turner and Machado
arrived at the Justice Center shortly before 7 P.M. and were
escorted to the thirteenth floor, where Heather was waiting for
them.

Turner reminded Heather that they were there
to follow up on the kidnapping report she had initiated on July 7,
in which she reported being taken to an area outside Molalla. In
light of the more recent and macabre discoveries in the same area,
Turner explained to her, it was important that she recall as much
detail about the incident as possible. Heather agreed to cooperate
fully.

"Was there anything strange or unusual about
the guy that picked you up?" asked Turner.

"No, not at first," said Heather. "He seemed
all right to me."

"Why did you want to get in the truck?"

"He offered me fifty dollars for a date. He
said he was going to Oregon City and wanted some company. He
stopped along the way and bought some juice at a 7-Eleven, then
stopped at a liquor store and bought these little bottles of
vodka."

"What kind of vodka?"

"Oh, they're tiny bottles. Smirnoff, I
think." She used her hands to indicate a very small bottle.

"Did he buy them in a carton?"

"Yeah."

"What did the two of you talk about while
driving?"

"He told me he was from Las Vegas, that he
was a gigolo. He said he liked to tie women up."

"Did he describe how he liked to tie women
up?"

"Not really. He said he liked to tie women up
and fuck their brains out, stuff like that. I knew he was crazy
from the way he was talking. He said he had this foot fetish. It
was just weird. He took his shoes off and said he liked to screw
around with his feet."

"He would have put his toes in your vagina?
Something like that?"

"I guess. Something like that." Heather lit
up a cigarette and inhaled deeply. "He wanted to screw around in,
or on, my feet. He wanted to screw my feet."

Heather explained that the man who picked her
up told her that he used to have an Oriental woman he "dated"
regularly, but that he hadn't seen her in quite a while and instead
had decided on Heather. While they were driving, she said she asked
him why they had to go so far away to carry out their date. He told
her that he liked the spot where they were going and that he had
taken a lot of girls up there.

"Did he say where, specifically, he had taken
them?" asked Turner.

"No. Just in the woods."

"Did he say where he had met these other
girls?"

"Well, I'm sure it was on Union."

"Did you drink any of the vodka on the way
out there?"

"Very little. And he got kind of angry 'cause
I wouldn't drink more. He kept saying, well, 'Drink some more,
drink some more,' and kept shoving it at me."

"How did he mix the vodka?"

"He bought the little plastic bottles of
orange juice. Then he'd take a little bit of orange juice out and
then he'd dump in the vodka. It looked like you were just drinking
the orange juice."

"The individual-type containers?"

"Yes, like single serving size."

"Did he talk to you about his home? Where he
lived? Did he say if he had children or if he was married?"

"He said he wasn't married and that he didn't
have any kids."

"I've got some photographs here that I want
you to take a look at. Now, the guy that was driving that truck
like you described may or may not be among them. Please look
carefully at each one of these and tell me if you recognize any of
them. Okay?"

Turner placed the throwdown of six
photographs on the table in front of Heather. Fourteen seconds
later, she pointed to photo number three.

"Okay. That looks like him."

"Do you have any doubt about it?"

"That's him! That nose, I remember that
nose."

She was pointing to the photo of Dayton Leroy
Rogers.

Clackamas County sheriff's deputies and the
search and rescue explorers continued their search for evidence in
the Molalla forest throughout the weekend. Their efforts paid off.
Before the weekend was over, searchers found a Regency-Sheffield
kitchen knife, identical to the one found at the scene of Jenny
Smith's murder. If Turner had held any doubts that Dayton Rogers
was the Molalla forest killer, the knife's discovery had quickly
erased them.

Although no additional bodies were found, the
searchers had bagged more than five hundred items of evidence from
the area, including nine miniature Smirnoff vodka bottles. They
also found four other alcohol bottles, several pairs of women's
pantyhose, some of which had been knotted and conceivably could
have been used as restraints or bondage devices, a pair of
"Garfield" panties, a bra and another pair of panties, a pair of
blue jeans, a Playboy bunny pendant, braided rope, wire, knotted
cloth, a leather dog collar, and several sections of knotted
shoelaces that had been looped at both ends like those found at the
scene of Jenny Smith's murder. They also found four plastic orange
juice bottles, the individual serving type, clustered in an area
where one of the victims had lain, as well as paper cartons or
cases that Smirnoff miniatures had come in.

One of those cartons was fairly new, still in
good condition, while the other one was old and weathered. Turner
was convinced now more than ever that Dayton was their man. The
evidence clearly pointed toward him. But the skeletonized remains
and the older, worn Smirnoff carton, troubled him. Not that such
evidence didn't point to Dayton, but that it indicated he had been
busy up in the Molalla forest a lot longer than they had first
suspected.

How long? No one could say. Were there other
bodies up there? Most likely. But the area was too vast and the
terrain too difficult to search aimlessly without finding another
body to point them in the right direction. No law enforcement
agency had the type of manpower, not to mention money, that would
be needed to search every square foot of a forest as immense as the
one outside Molalla. If additional bodies didn't turn up in the
areas they were searching, they would have no choice but to call
off the search unless or until someone unwittingly stumbled across
another body, like Everett Banyard had done.

Chapter 17

On Monday morning, September 7, after having
compared notes with missing persons detectives at the Portland
Police Bureau, Mike Machado decided that there was a good chance
that Body #2 was that of Lisa Marie Mock. The tattoos on the
victim's body seemed to match those describing Lisa in Portland's
missing person report. The report also indicated that Lisa had
talked to her grandmother shortly before she disappeared. Machado
located Lisa's grandmother in California and called her to see
what, if anything, he could learn that might shed some light on
Lisa's last known activities and possibly tie in with the Molalla
forest case.

Lisa's grandmother said that Lisa had called
her collect on July 22 at 7:42 P.M. and had talked to her for
twenty-eight minutes. Because Lisa had called collect, the
grandmother, after the family became concerned about Lisa's
well-being, later called the telephone number that appeared on the
bill and found that Lisa's call had come from a Portland automotive
garage. Lisa had told her grandmother that her husband was beating
up on her and that she planned to leave him. She was also on heroin
again and was planning to go to an abuse center as soon as she
could get away from her husband. When asked about identifying marks
or tattoos, Lisa's grandmother told Machado that Lisa had a
butterfly tattoo on the upper part of her left arm, and on her
lower back, near her buttocks, she had a tattoo that included the
word "bitch." She explained that at one time Lisa had been hanging
around with a gang of bikers—Hell's Angels, she thought. The
grandmother said that Lisa had another tattoo on one of her
shoulders, but she couldn't recall which shoulder. It was a tattoo
of a unicorn.