Sadistic Killers: Profiles of Pathological Predators (14 page)

In turn, the prosecution played the jury tapes of the sadist’s detailed confessions, and a video in which he took them to the lonely murder sites.

The jury retired for the weekend and returned on Monday 2 April 2001 with a guilty on all counts verdict. A fortnight later the penalty phase began. This time the jury heard from one psychiatrist that the defendant was a sexual sadist and an alcoholic. The psychiatrist explained that having a sadomasochistic sexuality was not a voluntary decision, that

‘one of the factors which contribute to the development of this pathological sexual make-up is early childhood abuse’.

A second psychiatrist noted that sexual sadism wasn’t a disease, that people with sadistic sexual fantasies were the same as people with more mainstream sexual fantasies. In other words, giving in to the urge to sadistically kill was an active choice.

The defence then argued for a life sentence, stating somewhat disingenuously that they could eliminate the evil side of Rex 115

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whilst retaining the good side. But the jury were taking no chances and voted for the death penalty.

Rex Allan Krebs is currently on Death Row in California. An appeal in 2003 by his legal team was turned down.

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CHAPTER NINE

DAYTON LEROY

ROGERS

Many people find any sexuality other than their own
to be a source of humour or derision, but Rogers’

lethal foot fetish marked him out as a particularly
unusual predator. He murdered at least eight
women in Oregon in 1987.

Early beatings

Dayton was born on 30 September 1953 to Jasparelle and Ortis Rogers in Idaho. Ortis was a house painter and Jasparelle a housewife. Both were Seventh Day Adventists who believed in the maxim of spare the rod and spoil the child. Ortis didn’t like or want children but was apparently overruled by his wife who gave birth to Dayton and two baby girls, then adopted three girls and a boy.

From the age of three, Dayton and his adopted brother were beaten approximately three times a week by their father.

He would immobilise their ankles with their undergarments, and make them kneel on the bed awaiting the belt. If they flinched or cried out they’d receive additional lashes on their buttocks, thighs and the soles of their feet. Their mother also beat them on the bare buttocks and feet with her hand 117

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or with a fly swat, though she sometimes intervened when the beatings from their father were particularly prolonged.

This foot-beating ritual would eventually become part of the adult Dayton’s murder signature as he strove to be on the administering side of these hellish acts.

Dayton also saw his father regularly beat his sisters from the time they were three or four until they were 12. One of them would understandably admit that she often prayed her father would be killed in a car crash. But Dayton was punished the most often, possibly because he was exceptionally bright.

Sadly, he rarely had a friend to confide in, for as soon as the family settled in one place, they’d decide it was unsuitable and move again – psychologists would later speculate that this was the insecure parents’ way of maintaining almost total control over their brood. As a result, Dayton was moved from school to school in the Seventh Day Adventist faith, an average of three schools per year, where the teachers noted that he was hyperactive and found it hard to concentrate.

His father also taught religious instruction in some of those schools, but his employment brought in so little money that the children were ragged and sometimes had to live in an abandoned car or chicken shed.

Further trauma

Dayton soon learned never to refuse his parents’ demands, no matter how inappropriate, for to do so would earn him further censure. So when his mother demanded that he massage her feet, he reluctantly complied. She would gasp and squirm as he did so, and it was a deeply unpleasant experience for a young boy.

Little Dayton’s life was increasingly inappropriately sexualised. His religion forbade onanism, yet one of his 118

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sisters saw a religious adult male relative masturbating. And psychiatrists were later convinced that Dayton had been sexually abused. His biographer, Gary C. King, was told that Dayton had watched a relative push a pin into the head of his own penis, an image which had left the boy traumatised.

Early bisexuality

By 11, Dayton apparently had sexual knowledge beyond his years, and he found comfort in the arms of another 11-year-old boy. He would continue this homosexual relationship on and off into his twenties, though it caused him endless guilt. His foot fetish had now fully established itself and he began to masturbate whilst holding his sister’s shoes. These items of footwear seemed like safe choices as his father had told him that women who had sex before marriage should be stoned. By making love to an inanimate object rather than a girl, the sensitive boy believed that he was saving young girls from pain.

Dayton’s childhood experiences began to take their toll and he chewed his fingernails until they bled. His IQ of 145 put him in the top one per cent of the population, yet, like many desperately disturbed children, he performed badly at school.

Early criminality

At 16, he and a friend were so angry at the world that they broke the windows of several cars and were put on probation.

As usual, Dayton was brutally beaten by his father – and this time he was sent away to a religious boarding school in Spangle, a small town in Spokane County, Washington. He hated it and soon dropped out of the educational system, moving to Oregon where he became a house painter, one of the many jobs his father had had in the past.

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First marriage

Dayton worked in this capacity for the next two years, then met and married a girl two years his junior. His wife was a Lutheran who’d previously been in rehab fighting an addiction to both drink and drugs.

Unsurprisingly, the marriage wasn’t a success and within a month Dayton was going mad with the pressure. He simply hadn’t been shown how to treat other people, especially women, in a loving and balanced way. Smarting at this latest failure, he left the marital home and drove around until he saw a 15-year-old girl whom he’d previously had sex with. Now he drove her to the same wooded area where they’d had intercourse and encouraged her to lie down on the grass with him.

A near-fatal stabbing

Dayton looked down at the girl, who had her eyes closed, her lips parted. To a normal man she was a desirable if underage partner, but to Dayton she was a whore whose actions would send him to a supposed Hell. Taking his hunting knife from its holster, he stabbed her in the stomach, telling her that he could no longer trust her. Shocked, she pulled the knife out and he seemed to come to his senses, gasping ‘What did I do?’ The terrified girl begged him to take her to the nearest hospital, something he eventually did – but he made her promise to tell everyone that she’d stabbed herself.

The traumatised victim did as she was told, only telling the truth the following day when sceptical police questioned her further. Dayton was taken into custody where he told detectives that the devil had made him do it. He admitted that he was finding it difficult to adjust to marriage and had turned to extra-marital sex for comfort, but his victim hadn’t 120

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put her arms around him or shown much affection and he’d just snapped.

Sent to see a police psychiatrist, Rogers was tense but lucid.

The doctor concluded that he was a depressive neurotic, possibly with an underlying schizoid personality disorder.

Incredibly, he was only given four months’ probation for the stabbing, having plea-bargained the charge down to second degree assault. And his growing sexual sadism had yet to be recognised.

Further assaults

Dayton returned to his still-troubled marriage and tried to lighten the atmosphere by taking in two teenage female lodgers. But after six months he again gave in to his violent urges, battering both girls on the head with a beer bottle before jumping in his car and crashing it. Realising that he was never going to be the perfect husband, his wife quickly arranged a divorce.

He was sent to see another psychiatrist who diagnosed him as a sexually dangerous sociopath. This time he was found not guilty of the assaults by reason of insanity and sent to a mental hospital in Salem. The date of his incarceration was 6

March 1974.

Initially clinicians thought that Rogers would spend the rest of his life in the hospital, but he seemed to respond to a sex offenders programme and was soon relocated from a maximum security unit to a minimum security ward. In reality, he’d simply pretended to change his ways.

That said, Dayton doubtless told the truth when he said that he fantasised about binding and raping women but that his fantasies sometimes took a terrifying turn when the women got the upper hand and attacked him back.

Sadists have invariably been the victims of cruelty before 121

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they become the aggressors, and they fear being beaten and tortured again. As such, they sometimes project their sadism onto innocent people then hurt them in a twisted parody of self-defence. With his history of stabbing a lover and bludgeoning his lodgers, Dayton clearly fell into this confused category and was a danger to everyone he met.

Frighteningly, the hospital let him out on day release to do painting work and to attend church services. And a mere nine months after his incarceration they freed him permanently, letting him go and live with a local minister.

Second marriage

Within weeks he’d met the daughter of another minister and had started courting her, though he still picked up girls in bars to have sex with. As ever, he concentrated his attention on their feet.

On 25 October 1975, he married for the second time, taking care to hide his history from his deeply religious young wife and her family. They helped him set up a garage where he could use his mechanical skills.

Rapes

Two months after his wedding, he chatted up an 18-year-old girl and she agreed to go for a drink with him, but he drove her to a secluded location where he bound her and raped her brutally. After a short recovery period he raped her again, then let her out of the vehicle to urinate, whereupon she escaped.

Dayton Rogers attempted to drive off at speed – but his tyres stuck in the mud and he was still trying to leave the area when the police arrived. He was subsequently charged with first degree rape, though he told his wife that it was a trumped-up charge. Whilst awaiting trial, he raped another 122

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young woman – tying her up, biting her feet and threatening her with death – but was found not guilty. He then raped two schoolgirls and was found guilty of coercion and given a five-year prison term.

The District Attorney noted that he was one of the most dangerous sexual predators that he’d ever met, but once again, Dayton Leroy Rogers proved to be a model prisoner. Settled in the Oregon State Correctional Institution, he began to have homosexual affairs with a number of other prisoners. He was paroled in January 1982.

Torture victims

Back home with his second wife, Dayton continued to live the life his parents desired – married to a very devout woman and running his own garage. Yet he remained deeply troubled, suffered from frequent migraines and continued to go out three to four times a week picking up prostitutes.

His routine rarely varied. He would pick up a girl in his truck telling her that he was Steve (the kind of normal name he’d longed for when he was teased at school) and that he was a gambler. It was a fun-sounding occupation, a far cry from the responsible and demanding job he actually held.

Dayton was good-looking and unthreatening in appearance, so the girl would happily agree to a price for sex and get into his truck.

For their first two or three encounters he would simply ask them to take their shoes and socks off so that he could rub himself to orgasm between their toes. Or he’d ask them to simulate being bound and he’d then masturbate. But after several dates, when he was sure that the prostitute trusted him, he’d drive her to a more remote location and torture her for hours.

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Dayton Rogers hog-tied a 34-year-old call girl then began to bite her feet and calves. The more she screamed, the harder he bit down. Then he turned his attention to her breasts, biting them until she became hysterical, after which he cut the soles of her feet with a knife. Eventually she went into mild shock and became limp, whereupon he untied her. He drove her back to her chosen location and kissed her on the cheek.

Later, he tied another prostitute so tightly that he almost cut her circulation off. Again, he bit cruelly at her breasts, and the more she screamed and begged, the more he hurt her. This is unusual – sadists are usually so turned on by a victim’s screams that they ejaculate and the sadism stops for a while. But Dayton had been told as a child that he mustn’t move or cry whilst he was being punished, an impossible task that he was now setting his innocent victims. Indeed, he told one victim, ‘Stop crying or I’ll really give you something to cry about,’ the kind of comment a cruel parent makes to a distressed child. She, too, went into a fugue state, whereupon he untied her and took her home.