Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer (11 page)

Jenny had sustained slashing wounds to both
of her breasts, one of which was a horizontally oriented stab wound
that bisected the left nipple and extended into the lateral left
areola. There were two deep stab wounds in her abdomen that pierced
her stomach. She also had slash wounds on both of her hands that
cut all the way to the bone, which Dr. Gunson described as
defensive injuries caused when she had tried to wrest the knife
blade from her attacker or otherwise tried to prevent him from
stabbing her. She had also been stabbed at the base of her throat,
where the neck joins the upper chest.

After Jenny's body was opened with the usual
Y-shaped incision, Dr. Gunson determined that a major artery on the
left side of her chest had been severed and was the likely cause of
death. A V-shaped wound on her back had pierced the liver, and Dr.
Gunson explained that the V shape of the wound was probably the
result of two stab wounds that had overlapped.

Dr. Gunson also pointed out other wounds,
including two quarter-inch-wide bruises around both of Jenny's
wrists. She explained that the bruises were an indication that the
victim had been tied up, perhaps with the shoe laces found at the
crime scene, and that significant pressure would have to have been
applied for such bruising to occur.

Fingerprints and palm prints were obtained
from their well-developed Jane Doe, as were samples of blood,
urine, and head and pubic hair strands. Oral, anal, and vaginal
swab specimens were also collected and would later be tested with
acid phosphatase for the presence of semen. Each of the samples,
along with the paper bags that had enclosed Jenny's hands, were
retained by criminologist Gilliland.

When Gilliland left the morgue, he went
straight to the Portland Police Bureau's Identification Division in
the towering downtown Justice Center building, carrying the
victim's fingerprints. After he was properly checked in, the prints
were classified and the search through the fingerprint files, often
a lengthy process, commenced. As luck would have it, however, the
search didn't take long this time. His Jane Doe was soon identified
as Jennifer Lisa Smith, also known as Gypsy Roselyn Costello, date
of birth November 14, 1961, making her twenty-five at the time of
her death. According to her rap sheet, she was a prostitute.

While Gilliland had been making the
identification of their homicide victim in downtown Portland,
Turner was in Oregon City at the Clackamas County District
Attorney's Office, located in the courthouse, putting together an
affidavit of probable cause for issuance of a search warrant. The
effort took him the remainder of the afternoon.

At 5:35 P.M., Turner presented the affidavit
before Clackamas County Circuit Court Judge Patrick Gilroy, inside
the judge's chambers. Gilroy read over the document, then promptly
issued warrants to search Dayton Leroy Rogers's home, his place of
business, pickup truck, and his person. The search warrants were
served that evening, making it a long day for everyone
involved.

Among the items subsequently seized as
evidence were the bandage wrappers, a hacksaw, and blood samples,
all from Dayton's shop. From his home, the detectives took a pair
of Texas brand boots from the rear bedroom closet; a pair of Levi's
from the left side of his bed's headboard; a knife from a knife
block in the kitchen; two knives from a bowl on the kitchen
counter; and a box of Band-Aids from a cabinet near the kitchen
stove.

While Turner was executing the search
warrants, first at Dayton's mobile home in Canby and then at his
shop in Woodburn, and preparing to have Dayton's truck removed for
searching, Detective Michael Machado read the warrant to search
Dayton's person. Present at the procedure was Dayton; Machado;
Dayton's attorney, Arthur Knauss; Deputy Larry Peck; and
Corrections Corporal Mike Baumgartner. Two vials of blood were
collected from Dayton, as were strands of his head and pubic
hairs.

Dayton's pickup truck believed to contain
perhaps the most damning evidence associated with Jenny Smith's
death, was removed from his shop and taken to a secure garage on
the premises of the sheriff's office. Criminologist Robert Thompson
of the Oregon State Police Crime lab, accompanied by Turner and
Gilliland, went over the pickup later with much care and in great
detail.

During its processing, they lifted latent
fingerprints from the pickup's right door and from the rear cargo
area's top rail section of the bed. A black piece of weather strip
with stains resembling blood was removed from the rear portion of
the right door, just below the window frame. They also removed a
pull handle from the right door, which contained bloodstains on the
inner portion. Hair samples were removed from beneath the passenger
seat, and separate vacuum sweepings were conducted from the right
floorboard, right passenger seat area, left floorboard, and the
left passenger seat area. A sample of the vehicle's
antifreeze/coolant was removed from the radiator and placed in a
glass evidence container. Criminologist Thompson also collected
several samples of blood from the right passenger door and the
passenger area, including beneath the floorboard. Gilliland noted
and photographed numerous knife cuts and slashes on the upholstery,
dashboard, and seat. He also found a small green plastic band in
the bed of the pickup, similar to the anti-tampering devices found
on plastic milk jugs and disposable fruit juice containers.

As he left Dayton's pickup, something about
the truck kept bothering Turner. He couldn't quite put his finger
on it, but he thought it was the color. Something in the back of
his mind kept edging toward the surface, until finally he
remembered the incident of July 7 involving Heather Brown. Could
Dayton have been the one who had taken her into the woods and
frightened her so badly that she had jumped from the speeding
pickup? The truck Heather had described to Deputy Bill Strosser
certainly seemed to fit. But Turner didn't have an adequate
description of its driver, and he couldn't obtain one until he made
contact with Heather. The log truck driver who helped Heather had
only glimpsed the pickup's driver, so it wasn't likely that he
would be a reliable witness. No, he had to talk to Heather. He had
to find out if Dayton had been the alleged kidnapper, as much to
clear the case as to satisfy his own curiosity.

Prior to executing the search warrants,
Turner had been delighted when informed that the Denny's parking
lot victim had been identified. It was good luck that her identity
had been made so quickly, especially since no documents had been
found near her body, in her clothing, or anywhere else at the crime
scene. Most times, he knew, when there is no identification on a
homicide victim, establishing the identity can take considerably
longer, often days, weeks, even months. Since identifying a victim
often produces additional leads and evidence, it is, short of
identifying and capturing a suspect, considered the cornerstone of
an investigation. The case was indeed going well, reflected Turner
after the search and seizures had been completed. Almost too
well.

Before calling it a day, Turner tapped into
the National Crime Information Center's (NCIC) data banks to see
what additional information, if any, he could learn about Jenny
Smith. As the printout appeared, he found that she had a rap sheet
for prostitution arrests and convictions longer than the Bill of
Rights, not surprising for a person in her line of work. She had
also been arrested on a charge of public indecency, specifically
indecent exposure. The complaint was lodged after she was seen
romping around the house naked with a male friend in front of open
windows that faced a public street. She also had a list of aliases
and false Social Security numbers too numerous to list. Her last
known address was 1205 N.E. Roselawn Street in Portland, smack-dab
in the heart of the City of Roses' "Crack Alley" and within walking
distance to one of the city's notorious prostitution hot spots,
Union Avenue. Turner guessed that Dayton must have picked her up
somewhere on Union, and he decided that that would be the most
logical place to check out next. He knew from prior experience that
much could be learned from hookers and other street people,
provided they were approached in a low-key manner and treated with
respect.

Because Jenny was a known prostitute, any
other cop might have simply dismissed her murder by saying that
such dangers go with the territory: "Tough luck, not much that we
can do." After all, many cops subscribe to the notion that most
homicide victims die by their environment, their lifestyles, and
there's no question that prostitutes make themselves easy victims
of opportunity. Right or wrong, statistics tend to validate such
beliefs, making it understandable why policemen are sometimes
reluctant to give such murders their undivided attention.

But Turner couldn't brush this case off that
easily. His main concern was for people, regardless of their class
in life, which was why he became a cop in the first place. Jenny
Smith had been a living human being, some mother's child and a
mother to two small children herself. To have been killed with such
unleashed savagery troubled Turner immensely. She shouldn't have
had to die at age twenty-five, at least not that way. He wanted to
make sure that he built as strong a case as possible against the
man he believed killed her.

There was another reason. Call it instinct, a
cop's intuition, or whatever, something kept telling Turner that
Jenny's killer had obtained great pleasure in his acts of violence,
that he had committed such acts before. The injuries her killer had
inflicted on her had been painful, excruciating, and unbearable,
and seemed intended as an act of torture. Few killers, regardless
of how violent they are, kill their victims so slowly and with such
precision.

And then there was that damned blue pickup
that kept cropping up. Why did he keep thinking about it, unable to
get it out of his mind? Was there another case besides Heather
Brown's involving a blue pickup? He seemed to think so, since its
description kept floating around in the farther reaches of his
mind. Could there be others, victims like Jenny, that he knew
nothing about? And if so, were their cases buried somewhere within
some police agency's filing cabinets, their bodies unidentified as
Jenny's had been?

Jenny's murder could have been written up so
neat and simple, and Turner could have forgotten it and gone on to
the next case that came his way. But something kept telling him
that he wasn't finished with this case, that he really wasn't
seeing the big picture of it yet. And he also kept telling himself
that nobody deserved to die at the hands of a brutal murderer.
Nobody deserves that.

Chapter 5

It was 1:30 P.M. the next day, August 8, when
detectives John Turner and James Strovink responded to the home of
Barbara Smith, located in the 500 block of North Jarrett Street in
Portland near "Crack Alley," in the middle of Portland's chapter of
the Bloods' and Crips' gangland war zone. Neither detective had had
much sleep, and they weren't particularly happy about being there.
It was a neighborhood where it was not uncommon for the residents
to dodge stray bullets from drive-by shootings and other instances
of gang warfare that claim innocent people, including young
children playing inside their homes, as victims of a growing and
senseless violence. Turner and Strovink preferred the more
civilized qualities of their own turf in the normally peaceful
confines of Clackamas County, but they resigned themselves to the
fact they had a job to do, and that job was to determine the truth
behind the killing of Jenny Smith no matter where in Portland's
seamier netherworld the case took them. After inviting them inside
her home, Barbara Smith tearfully described herself as the mother
of Jenny Smith's ex-husband and grandmother of Jenny's
children.

Smith, between sobs, told Turner and Strovink
that she last saw Jenny at approximately 9:45 P.M. Thursday, August
sixth, near Holiday Park Hospital. Jenny had asked her to drive her
to that location because Jenny had left her car, a Honda Civic,
there earlier when she couldn't get it started after apparently
flooding the engine. Upon arrival, however, Jenny's car had started
immediately. Prior to their leaving, the last thing Jenny said to
Mrs. Smith was, "When the food stamps come, keep them for me,
Grandma." Jenny followed her for a short distance as Smith drove
toward home. Mrs. Smith said that the last time she saw Jenny was
when Jenny waved goodbye to her near the intersection of Vancouver
Avenue and Alberta Street.

Smith told the detectives that her son,
Frederick, Jenny's ex-husband, showed up at her home the next
morning. When he learned that Jenny hadn't returned to his mother's
home to pick up her kids, he went out looking for her, to no avail.
She apparently hadn't been to her own home, either, which she
shared with Frederick despite the fact that they were divorced, and
she wasn't working her usual corner where Northeast Union Avenue
and Wygant Street intersect. Mrs. Smith described Jenny as a
non-drinker and a nonsmoker and said that she abstained totally
from drugs. She was a very quiet person, a loner, and never became
rowdy. Mrs. Smith never knew Jenny to have been violent. The only
"bad" thing that Jenny did, said Mrs. Smith, was to work the avenue
as a prostitute.

With the help of her "grandma" and other
family members, Turner and Strovink traced Jenny's movements the
last evening of her life to the home of a friend, Tina Hall,* at
Northeast 7th Avenue and Skidmore Street. Jenny had been at Tina's
residence with a black female, April Bowen,* who was known to work
the streets with Jenny. They had arrived in Jenny's Honda, and both
were joking and kidding around and seemed to have been in a good
mood. According to Tina, Jenny had been dressed in blue jeans and a
white T-shirt with blue sleeves. Jenny and April had departed
Tina's home at approximately 12:30 A.M. after staying only fifteen
minutes, and Tina didn't know where they were headed when they
left.