Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer (30 page)

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.

Parker also knew of another sexually related
incident that had been described to him by Dayton. Dayton had told
him of a male relative who had inserted a needle into the head of
his own penis while Dayton watched. The self-inflicted act had left
Dayton shocked, and Dayton's recounting of it had left an indelible
memory in Parker's mind.

There was little doubt in Strovink's mind
that Dayton's sexual inadequacy stemmed from unusual or deviant
acts he had experienced during childhood. It was little wonder that
Dayton could find release only from violent sexual acts and murder.
He had needed help a long time ago but, sadly, hadn't gotten
it.

Chapter 21

As they studied Dayton's background, it
became increasingly clearer to Turner and the other task force
detectives that he fit many of the general characteristics of the
classic profile of a serial killer developed years earlier by
Special Agent John E. Douglas of the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit
at Quantico, Virginia. Douglas and several of his colleagues
defined serial murder as the killing "of separate victims with time
breaks between victims," with the breaks being as short as a few
hours but as long as days, weeks, or even months. The so-called
time breaks were referred to by Douglas as a "cooling off" period.
Dayton clearly qualified as a serial killer under Douglas's
definition.

Turner had realized early in the
investigation, even before interviewing any surviving witnesses,
that Dayton's crimes were also sexual in nature. It was obvious.
All of his victims were nude when found, and the multiple stabbings
and cuttings to the bodies also indicated that the murders were
sexual and committed during sadistic fantasy. Because of the length
of time that the bodies had lain in the woods and the fact that
they were so badly decomposed, the criminologists had not been able
to locate, much less collect, semen samples. It simply was no
longer there in any identifiable form. There was no doubt that he
suffered from symptoms known in law enforcement and psychology
circles as "episodic aggressive behavior."

Dayton's aberrant behavior, first and
foremost, was ritualistic, though not necessarily in the ceremonial
meaning of the term. Turner had found that Dayton's crimes, whether
he allowed his victims to live or whether he killed them, were
repeated in a definite observable pattern which thus formed the
ritual. The pattern rarely digressed from crime to crime, and it
seemed he was unable to alter it even to change or disguise his
modus operandi. He always chose prostitutes, easy victims of
opportunity, some of whom in all likelihood had even initiated
contact with him as he trolled the city streets. His ritual was
crystal clear: bondage, torture, sexual deviancy, mutilation, and
murder. His ritualistic behavior, simply put, provided the
framework in which his darkest fantasies could be carried out, and
in some dark way he was able to justify his actions to himself.

From what Turner had discerned from the
testimonials of the victims who had survived, Dayton's patterns
also clearly fit the various phases of the ritual of serial murder
that such killers go through. Dayton always started out in a
fantasy state that involved bondage, in which he imagined the
tremendous power he could possess over women who had been
incapacitated. Fantasizing about it turned him on, elevated his
mood, and became the springboard that hurled him into action. Then
he would begin trolling the high vice areas and wooing his
potential victims with the promise of money.

Once he had his victim baited and inside his
truck, he would demonstrate his power over her, which essentially
comprised the capturing phase of the ritual. Hours later, after he
reached the apex of his sexual frenzy, he would murder his victim
in the most horrifying way imaginable. Afterward he would take
souvenirs of his kill, apparently clothing and jewelry, to aid him
in reliving the episode again and again within the confines of his
tormented mind. It was conceivable that he had also planned to take
body parts as trophies, but since he left the sawed-off feet and
eviscerated remains at the crime scenes, Turner could only
speculate on that point. But eventually, after growing tired of
reliving what had already occurred and his bloodlust no longer
satisfied, Dayton's desire for a new victim and fresh blood became
uncontrollable and he would become depressed. It seemed that it was
always within days or sometimes merely hours before Dayton entered
the depression phase, during which the vicious cycle would begin
all over again. The thought processes and feelings were similar,
perhaps identical, to those that other sex criminals, such as
exhibitionists and rapists, experience, except that the
consequences of Dayton's, as well as other serial killers', actions
were unarguably much more severe.

The variances in Dayton's method of operation
were minute, if they could be observed at all. Unlike many serial
killers, he did not seem to place his victims' bodies into any
special or peculiar positions that would be indicative of the
"ceremonial" form of the ritual that some killers go through. He
merely dumped them in the Molalla forest, an area he had been
familiar with for a good many years and so had grown to be
comfortable with. Unlike some serial killers, it did not seem like
he wanted his victims to be found, though he made little attempt to
bury or otherwise cover their bodies. It was generally accepted
that he felt the elements of nature and the remoteness of his
dumping ground would prevent them from being found. He definitely
wasn't seeking publicity or recognition by committing the atrocious
acts, but rather was fulfilling some sort of primal need that the
normal mind has difficulty comprehending.

Turner detected that Dayton had no sense of
remorse, and conceded that it was possible that Dayton thought he
was doing mankind a service by ridding it of street whores. From
everything that Turner had so far learned about Dayton it seemed
possible, even likely, that he held a deep-seated hatred toward
women, perhaps even feeling that they could not be trusted. From
the interviews with witnesses, Dayton's blood seemed to boil when
he observed women openly prostituting themselves for money.

In other behavior patterns that the task
force detectives observed, Dayton obviously wore a mask of sanity,
as most serial killers do. He not only wanted to conceal his
homosexual activities and homicidal binges, but he wanted to feel
accepted, even respected in his community. His mask of sanity was
illustrated by the fact that he had a wife, a child, and was a
successful businessman. Although he had a prior criminal record,
Dayton managed to keep it under wraps from most people he knew and
with whom he associated. When all was said and done, it seemed as
if he had a split personality.

Dayton was also compulsive. His
compulsiveness manifested itself in his neatness and cleanliness.
Not only did he keep his own body clean, but he had kept his shop,
his truck, and his home meticulous. Everything clearly had its
place and was kept in its place.

In addition, Turner found, Dayton seemed to
have a chronic inability to tell the truth. His lying manifested
itself when he would encounter a former victim and, when asked by
the victim herself about what he had done, would lie and say he
didn't do it or would feign forgetfulness. He would also lie
regularly to his wife about working late at the shop when he would
in fact be out maiming, torturing, and killing women on any given
night. Turner viewed Dayton's lying to his wife as a form of
self-preservation. He couldn't be truthful because he knew she
would go to the police if she was aware of what he had really been
up to.

Dayton, Turner observed, seemed to possess
traits of both the
organized
and the
disorganized
offender. In the final analysis, however, Dayton appeared more
organized than disorganized. Disorganized offenders seemed to
operate closer to their homes, within their safety or "comfort
zone," and normally were not concerned about the physical evidence
left at the crime scene. Dayton seemed to venture out from his
comfort zone—that is, he did not commit his crimes close to home.
But he did seem to stay within the confines of Union Avenue, 82nd
Street, and the Molalla forest, all of which, perhaps, could be
considered his comfort zone. He littered the crime scenes with
bondage devices, alcohol bottles, orange juice containers, and a
knife, as a disorganized killer would do.

While roaming free, he was a predator, and
even under lock and key he remained psychopathic, as most organized
serial killers are. He seemed to live by the credo that rules were
made to be broken, and had exhibited chronic aberrant behavior
patterns throughout much of his life. Dayton also seemed to plan
out his crimes and had assembled and carried with him all of the
items he would need to accomplish his grisly deeds, items such as
ropes, elastic cords, knives, straps, collars, and anything else
that would make his control over the victim and commission of the
crime easier to carry out. Yet another trait of the organized
serial killer that Dayton clearly held was that, despite having a
high I.Q., he often had low grades in school.

Also, the organized offender is more likely
to be successful in carrying out a more lengthy series of murders
than the disorganized type before getting caught because he has a
tendency to make fewer mistakes and he will not leave his victims'
bodies too close to his comfort zone. Dayton clearly possessed
traits of both a disorganized and an organized serial killer and so
it was difficult to classify him precisely as either. Dayton's
apparent mishmash of both types illustrated the complexity of such
killers.

Moreover, Dayton's history of serious
assault, deviate sexual behavior, and obvious hypersexuality, the
possibility that he was abused both sexually and physically as a
child, and his history of alcohol and drug abuse served to augment
his patterns of episodic aggressive behavior. There was no doubt in
Turner's mind that Dayton Leroy Rogers had been a serial killer in
the making for a long, long time. He was glad that Dayton was
behind bars, and he wanted to make certain that he remained so.