Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer (12 page)

At 3:20 P.M. Turner and Strovink returned to
Mrs. Smith's home after being informed that Jenny's ex-husband was
there and wanted to talk to them. They, likewise, wanted to hear
what he had to say. Frederick Smith told them that Jenny had moved
around a lot and had not lived at the Northeast Roselawn address,
listed on Portland Police Bureau reports as her last known address,
for some time. Instead, she had been sharing an apartment with him
at 4804 North Albina Avenue. Being fully cooperative, Smith took
Turner and Strovink there and provided them with a tour of the
dwelling and consented to a search of the premises. The apartment,
one of many inside an old and rundown building, wasn't much to look
at. But it did seem clean and tidy, a characteristic they didn't
encounter too often in their line of work.

As they tossed ideas off one another, Turner
and Strovink considered the possibility that Jenny had pulled a
knife or some other weapon on Dayton Leroy Rogers after their date
had somehow gone sour and he had perhaps become threatening, only
to have him wrest the weapon from her hands and use it against her.
Specifically, they wanted to know if she possessed any
Regency-Sheffield brand kitchen knives such as the one they had
found beneath the shrubs near the GMAC building. After carefully
inspecting the kitchen, however, they were satisfied that she had
not. During the search Turner did find an Oregon identification
card bearing Jennifer Lisa Smith's identification information, but
he didn't turn up any knives or other types of weapons that Jenny
may have carried on her person. Smith explained that Jenny rarely
took her identification with her, let alone weapons. He also told
them that Jenny had not been a violent person.

Turner knew that many experienced hookers did
not carry their identification with them. When arrested for
soliciting or other charges, a prostitute could easily provide the
booking officer with a fictitious name and address, and with no
identification on her person, the officer would have no way to
determine if she was being truthful or not. Later, when she failed
to show up for a court hearing, the bench warrant would be issued
under the false name and address. It was a known way that hookers
and other petty criminals used to slow the system down.

"Jenny never carried any weapons, whether she
was working or not," said Smith in response to Turner's probing, as
Smith began to cry. "Jenny never even carried Mace." Most street
hookers, reflected Turner, usually carried Mace canisters or
knives. He wondered why Jenny hadn't.

She seldom had problems on the street, said
Smith, wiping tears from his eyes. Recently, however, she came home
one morning and said that she had been harassed by a man in an
older white car who reportedly had chased her with a stick.
Unfortunately, Smith could not provide a more detailed description
of the man or the car he was driving. He did, however, tell the
detectives that he had talked to Jenny's friend April, who had told
him that she had seen Jenny leave with a Caucasian man in a
light-colored pickup truck at approximately 1:30 A.M. Smith
volunteered to take the detectives to April's home.

Twenty minutes later they arrived at another
run-down complex, common to that side of town, at 4800 Northeast
Wygant Street. April was home, and after confirming what Smith had
told the detectives about the white man in the pickup, she agreed
to accompany them about forty blocks west to the location where she
last saw Jenny.

When they arrived at the intersection of
Union and Wygant, April explained that she had been driving for
Jenny on the morning of August 7, a security precaution utilized by
prostitutes just in case one of their customers posed any sort of
threat or problem. They had a system where they would trade off,
allowing one to solicit customers while the other drove and served
as a lookout. In addition to the extra measure of security it
provided, however scant, the system also gave the girls an
opportunity to rest, a break from their work that they may not
otherwise have had. Unfortunately, the buddy system hadn't saved
Jenny's life, reflected Turner.

April indicated that she had been lying down
in the front seat of Jenny's Honda, parked on Wygant facing Union,
while Jenny worked the avenue. At one point, April said she fell
asleep while listening to the radio. But she was awakened at 1:10
A.M. when she heard the radio announcer broadcast the time. A few
minutes later she heard Jenny yell out her name two times, and when
she looked up she saw the light-colored pickup approaching Jenny
from the opposite side of Union Avenue on Wygant. Jenny, it seemed,
had attracted a customer.

As she watched, April said the driver moved
the pickup toward the location where Jenny was standing, but
remained on the opposite side of the street. He turned the pickup's
lights off, completed a U-turn in the intersection, and faced the
opposite direction on Wygant, away from her location. After hearing
Jenny yell "April, April," she said Jenny had waved to her, which
meant that Jenny had not wanted to be followed. Sometimes, April
explained, a hooker's driver would follow the john if he appeared
threatening or was not known by the girls.

"Jenny must have felt comfortable with this
guy," said April. She had watched as Jenny climbed into the
passenger side of the pickup, after which the driver took an
immediate right turn, departing from April's view within seconds.
She explained that she waited at that location for over an hour,
but Jenny never returned.

"Was anyone else working the street that
morning?" asked Turner.

"Oh, yeah," said April. "We weren't alone.
There was Brenda, a 'he-she,' and Darla was working down the
block." April explained that Brenda was a male/female impersonator
who often worked that location, and that the block was also favored
by Darla and a few other girls. April didn't know the last names
for either of the prostitutes and didn't know where they could be
found when they weren't working. She promised that if she saw them,
she would try and persuade them to contact Turner.

On the way back to her apartment, as she went
over the events of the morning of August 7 again for the
detectives' benefit, April saw a white Nissan pickup pass through
the intersection. She suddenly became very excited and began
jumping up and down and waving her hands.

"It was just like that one!" she exclaimed.
"Jenny got into a pickup just like that one!" The only problem,
reflected Turner as he followed the vehicle with his eyes, was
that
pickup was white, and Dayton's was light blue. The two
detectives thanked April for her help and dropped her back at her
apartment.

April seemed to be a good witness, decided
Turner. But he was troubled about her quick identification of the
white pickup. Her statement that she saw Jenny get into such a
truck wouldn't look too good on the witness stand in the eyes of a
jury. Later that night, however. mulling over the possibilities
with Strovink, Turner got an idea.

At 11:50 P.M., the two detectives drove back
to Portland and returned to the intersection of Wygant and Union.
They made note of the fact that the area was illuminated by four
sodium vapor streetlights of standard height and distance
conforming to Portland's lighting code. Although the sky was
overcast and a light rain was falling, one thing stood out. All of
the cars parked in that location under the sodium vapor
illumination appeared lighter, even bleached, in color. A car that
passed by, similar in color to Dayton's pickup, looked almost
white!

As he drove toward his country home in Eagle
Creek, along a lonely stretch of Oregon 224 that runs parallel to
the Clackamas River, John Turner kept wondering about how Dayton
Leroy Rogers's light blue Nissan would have looked to April under
the sodium vapor streetlights early on the morning of August 7. It
would definitely have appeared lighter. He had no doubt about that.
And at that time of the morning, with April still bleary-eyed after
having just awakened from a nap, the light blue pickup she saw
Jenny get into might really have looked white to her under the
sodium vapor lights surrounded by the dark of night. He lit up
another Marlboro Light and smoked it as he pondered the
possibilities, also wondering how many incidents of violence Dayton
may have committed that had slipped by unnoticed. The thought of
such a possibility unnerved him, and he did not sleep well that
night.

Chapter 6

On August 13, a Thursday, Detective John
Turner had been at his desk for a little more than an hour trying
to catch up on the ever-burgeoning pile of paperwork related to
Jenny Smith's murder when his telephone rang at 9:20 A.M. It was a
gentleman who identified himself as a minister from Canby, who
briefly explained that he had just held a disturbing conversation
with Roy Miller, Dayton Leroy Rogers's seventy-two-year-old
father-in-law. Miller, said the minister, had just told him about
some suspicious items he had found inside the wood stove at
Dayton's shop. When Miller asked him for advice, the minister
suggested that the police be notified and agreed to make the call
for Miller. Miller, he said, was just too upset to do it
himself.

Immediately upon concluding his conversation
with the minister, Turner drove to Dayton's place of business in
Woodburn, where he found Roy Miller inside, talking on the
telephone. From what he could hear of the conversation, it appeared
to Turner that Miller was closing the business down for good,
notifying the rightful owners of power equipment that had been left
for repair prior to Dayton's arrest. When he finished the phone
call, he escorted Turner to the office area. After closing the
door, Miller, his face drawn and weary, turned and faced the
detective.

"I was going to take care of the lawn mowers
and chain saws and whatever was there and give them back to the
customers," Miller said somberly, explaining that Dayton had sent
him a note from jail instructing him to close the business for
good. He stared quietly into thin air for a few moments, gathering
his thoughts. Then he abruptly continued: "I don't know if I should
talk to you or not. But my conscience says that I should." Turner
nodded, but said nothing. A grave and worried look on his face,
Miller related that he had been in the shop the day before when
Dayton telephoned him from the jail.

"I gave him money to open this business and I
supported him all the time that he worked at the Coast to Coast
store here in Woodburn. Now, I just don't know." Turner remained
quiet, sympathetic with the old man's feelings. It was difficult
for Miller to talk, he knew. It was always hardest for those who
were taken in, utterly duped by a sociopath. If the activities of
the last few days seemed like an unpleasant dream to Miller, they
must have appeared as a full-blown nightmare to Miller's daughter,
Sherry, Dayton's wife of many years.

Miller explained that Dayton had first set up
shop in a small shed in front of his mobile home in Canby, while
holding down a full-time job in the small-engine repair department
of the Coast to Coast Hardware Store. When it appeared that the
business could be successful, Miller loaned him the money he needed
to set up the shop on Pacific Court in Woodburn, taking a
promissory note for the funding in the autumn of 1986. Following
Dayton's arrest and his subsequent written instructions to Miller
telling him to shut the business down, Miller had little choice but
to take over.

"I would have had to take over anyway because
my note says that if he couldn't make the payments I get the
business back. And I don't know anything about that business." He
hadn't yet determined how much money he had lost resulting from
closing the business, but he was certain that the final figures
would be staggering.

"During the phone call from Dayton,"
continued Miller, "we talked about different customers and
different things about the business. Then he asked me if the police
had searched the closet of the bathroom. He wanted to know if the
police had taken the clothes he had hanging there. I went and
looked while he waited on the phone, and I told him there was only
a jacket left."

Dayton had next asked whether the police had
searched his wood stove. When Miller told him that it appeared that
they had, Dayton had become silent. Following the conversation,
Miller explained, he thought about what Dayton had asked and it
worried him enough that he retrieved a magnet from the work bench
and ran it through the ashes inside the stove.

"There were metal things hanging on to it,"
he said of the magnet. "There were shoe shanks, five of them. There
were little hooks like those from a bra. There were those little
things that hold beads to clothing, and there were shoe eyelets."
Miller hesitated for a moment, then brought out a small brown paper
sack from beneath the counter and handed it to Turner. "I found
this in the stove. I quit after I found these, but you can take the
rest if you want or use a magnet."

Miller took an empty Luv's diaper box from
behind the counter, then walked around to the wood stove. Opening
the top, he and Turner removed the remaining ashes and debris from
inside. Afterward, Turner gave Miller a receipt for the brown paper
bag and the ashes they had placed inside the diaper box.

"What kind of a person is Dayton?" asked
Turner, fishing now that Miller was in a talkative mood. "Can you
enlighten me about his personality?"

"I always thought he was okay," said Miller.
"But now that he's been charged with murder, I just don't know."
Following the arrest, Miller and Dayton's wife, Sherry, began
hearing a lot of things about Dayton that Sherry had suspected for
a long time but just hadn't believed. Miller didn't elaborate, and
told Turner that he didn't want to report anything that he had
heard.