Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer (13 page)

"I've put the situation into the hands of
God. Whatever the outcome, that's the way it should be."

Turner thanked Miller for his help, assuring
him that he had done the right thing by talking to him. As he was
departing from the business, Miller stopped him and began talking
about the morning of August 7. He said Dayton had called him twice
at his house that morning, beginning about 4:00 A.M.

"I didn't think he was drunk. He sounded
straight, but you never know." Miller said that Dayton told him
that he had been working all night. Miller paused for a moment,
then stated: "He told me that before. When I would come in, I sure
couldn't tell if he had worked all night. It didn't look like any
of the pieces of equipment had been touched."

"When I arrived," offered Turner, "everything
in the shop seemed so neat and orderly."

"Yeah, he's like that. He's always been that
way."

"Over the past month or so," probed Turner,
"has Dayton been acting strange or doing things out of the
ordinary?"

"No. Just a normal guy, but I'm beginning to
have my doubts now. I'm beginning to find out that he was nothing
but a liar." Tears welled up in his eyes, and it became an effort
for him to overcome his emotions. As Turner drove away, Miller just
stood in the doorway, staring at the ground.

Upon his return to headquarters, Turner
booked the evidence into the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office
Property Room, where Deputy John Gilliland would see to it that it
was analyzed by criminologists at the Oregon State Police Crime Lab
in Portland as soon as possible. In the meantime. Turner wrote up
his report regarding his meeting with Mr. Miller and forwarded a
signed copy to the chief of detectives Lieutenant Detloff.
Detective James Strovink subsequently caught the assignment to
follow up on Dayton's connection to the Woodburn Coast to Coast
Hardware Store.

When Strovink went to the Coast to Coast
store in Woodburn, he talked with a supervisor and employees to
determine who had known Dayton Leroy Rogers best. He was provided a
number of names, including John Frank, Teresa Dinges, and Roberto
Ancisco. To his dismay, he was informed that Frank and Ancisco no
longer worked there, and Teresa Dinges was out with the flu.
Determined, Strovink telephoned Teresa Dinges. Although she felt
terrible, she said it would be all right if he came over to her
house.

It was 10 A.M. when Strovink arrived at
Teresa's residence, located in the 200 block of Acacia Street in
Woodburn. When she let him inside, Teresa acknowledged that she was
aware of Dayton's arrest and the ongoing murder investigation,
though she expressed surprise that he was the prime suspect in such
a case. It just didn't seem possible, she said. He seemed so
harmless with his easygoing manner and his big brown basset-hound
eyes.

Even though Dayton had worked in the
small-engine repair area of the store, she had become acquainted
with him and had befriended him. He seemed to prefer association
with the female employees more than with the males and was always
at work when he was supposed to be. He always acted like the "big
brother" type, and they often met for lunch.

"We held long, in-depth conversations, and I
would often ask Dayton for advice, much like a sister would talk to
her brother about problems," she said.

"Was your relationship with Dayton ever
sexual?"

"No. Never. We were never intimate. It's like
I said, I looked upon him as a brotherly type."

On one occasion during a day off from work,
in December 1986 or January 1987, she had accompanied Dayton on a
one-day outing to Lincoln City, a resort town on the Oregon coast.
They had left Woodburn about noon and headed toward the coast from
Salem, eventually turning onto Oregon 18. They stopped briefly at a
state park along the way, the Henry B. Van Duzer State Park, where
they took a short walk in the woods.

"How did Dayton conduct himself in your
presence?"

"He was a perfect gentleman. He never tried
anything, nor did he do anything suggestive."

"Was there any alcohol involved during your
outing?"

"No. We drank coffee and soft drinks."

Teresa said they walked along the beach for a
while upon their arrival in Lincoln City, then returned to
Woodburn. They arrived at her home at approximately 6:00 P.M.

"He did tell me that I shouldn't talk to
anyone about our trip to the beach," she said. "He was afraid that
others might think we were having an affair, which, of course, we
weren't."

"What kind of a vehicle did you ride in with
him to the coast?"

"His blue Datsun pickup." Although he
sometimes drove a gray Honda, which Teresa believed was his wife's,
she always associated Dayton with the blue pickup, which he always
kept neat and clean, inside and out.

"Did you ever see any weapons inside the
pickup?" asked Strovink. "Guns, knives?"

"No. Nothing like that."

Teresa expressed to Strovink that Dayton held
a mysterious fascination with Portland, that he acted as if the
city were a whole different world to him. He often emphasized how
boring the small town of Woodburn was and indicated that he came to
Portland three or four times a week. He had some sort of agreement
with his wife in which he would dress up and go to Portland on
Friday and Saturday nights with little or no objection from his
wife. He liked to wear western style clothes, particularly
light-colored shirts, Levi's slacks, and cowboy boots.

"During your conversations with him, did
Dayton ever talk about sex, particularly any peculiar sex
habits?"

"No. The only thing that would come close
were his statements about the agreement he had with his wife. He
always said that Portland was alive, not boring, that it was an
ideal location to seek fun and pleasures." Teresa said she often
questioned Dayton's relationship with his wife and felt that it was
peculiar. "I always felt he should be at home with his wife and
young child."

"Did he ever talk about traveling?"

"He mentioned that he went to Reno a couple
of times a year." He had a friend, whose name Teresa did not know,
and they would stay over the weekend on the twice-yearly trips.

"Is there anything else you can tell me about
him?"

"He liked to do magic tricks."

"You mean with ropes, knots, and the like?"
Strovink was probing.

"No. The tricks I saw him do involved cards,
coins, and an ashtray trick." Although he didn't smoke, he liked to
make ashes mysteriously disappear from one hand and reappear in the
other. Teresa was unable to provide Strovink with any further
information about Dayton.

At 7 A.M. the next day, August 14, Strovink
reached John Frank at his residence by telephone. Frank confirmed
that he had worked with Dayton at the hardware store, and was
surprised to learn of Dayton's arrest on the murder charge. Dayton,
he said, was a guy who never lost his cool, someone whom he never
knew to carry weapons. Frank said that he had, on occasion, gone
fishing with Dayton at the Molalla River, and that he had
accompanied him to Portland a couple of times.

"He seemed to have a very different
lifestyle," said Frank. "He liked to frequent the bars even though
he was married, and he often spoke of the nightlife crowd that can
be found in Portland." Frank said that he had accompanied Dayton a
few times to some of Portland's bars, but the outings were usually
during business trips to the city.

"Was Dayton ever successful at picking up
women during any of these trips?" asked Strovink.

"I can only remember one occasion when Dayton
picked up a woman on one of these trips. Actually, the gal picked
him up." Frank said he thought the incident occurred either at a
Denny's or a VIP's restaurant. Frank emphasized that he wasn't
interested in nightlife like Dayton was, and that his relationship
with Dayton outside of work consisted primarily of fishing on the
Molalla River.

"Did you ever see a weapon of any type inside
Dayton's pickup?" asked Strovink.

"Yeah, he carried a club-type device in the
cab of his truck." Frank added that he never saw Dayton use it,
however, and never witnessed him become agitated or assaultive with
anyone.

"Did he ever mention any unusual sexual
activity?"

"He did say once that he met a lady who liked
'rear entry,' " said Frank. "This was about three years ago. He
also told me that he enjoyed going to restaurants where hookers
hung out, that he found them interesting and enjoyed talking to
them." Frank couldn't recall the names or locations of the
restaurants.

Frank indicated that Dayton's home life
seemed like it was quiet and uneventful. He said that he knew about
Dayton's agreement with his wife, however, but that Dayton never
said or did anything to give him the impression that he was able to
go out and "easily get laid." He said that Dayton's wife was a
nice, religious lady, and that he didn't believe she would put up
with that type of behavior from her husband.

Frank told Strovink that he knew Dayton to
drink alcohol, and when he did so he preferred the "sweeter"
drinks, like liqueurs with cream, or vodka and orange juice. Frank
admitted that he and Dayton also smoked marijuana periodically, but
"not in an abusive fashion." Frank characterized Dayton as an
individual with no tact in dealing with customers at the Coast to
Coast store and, as a result, was surprised to see that his own
business was doing so well.

Strovink was unable to immediately reach
Roberto Ancisco. He was working in Portland, and Strovink would
have to trace his whereabouts.

On Thursday afternoon, August 20, Turner
drove to the Coast to Coast store in Woodburn, where he talked to
the manager, Beverly Clarambeau, a co-owner of the store. Turner
learned that Clarambeau's husband, now deceased, had hired Dayton
in June 1984, despite the fact that Dayton had a prior criminal
record. Clarambeau said that she was under the impression that he
had done time for armed robbery, and was not aware of any other
crimes that he might have committed. He worked at the store on a
subcontract basis until September 1986.

"He was moody," she said. "Sometimes he was
very short with the customers. He was always right and the
customers were always wrong. At times he was almost
belligerent."

Clarambeau said that she and her husband
tolerated his shortcomings, however, because he really seemed to
know what he was doing in his work. He was a perfectionist, she
said, and had a penchant for cleanliness and order.

"Why, you could eat off the floor in his work
area. If he spilled even a drop of oil, he would immediately wipe
it up. My house wasn't as clean as the floors in his shop."

But he had an ego problem, she said, which he
often let get in the way in his dealings with customers and other
employees, and she suspected at one point that he might have been
stealing parts and equipment from her store to use in starting his
own business. Following his arrest for the murder of Jenny Smith,
said Clarambeau, a business associate of hers, the owner of the
Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) liquor store in Woodburn,
had related to her that Dayton Rogers had been one of his best
customers.

As Turner was wrapping up his interview, Mrs.
Clarambeau informed him that one of her other employees, Joy Bean,
had seen Dayton with other women in his truck prior to the incident
for which he was arrested. At Turner's request, she called Joy into
the room.

"It was my impression that Dayton was a
womanizer," Joy told the detective. She explained that she had
heard stories about Dayton frequenting different taverns in the
area, and on at least two different occasions she had seen him with
two different women in his 1985 Nissan pickup. About a week before
Dayton's arrest, Joy said, she saw him southbound on Highway 99E
near the community of Hubbard with a woman who had long dark
hair.

"Could it have been Sherry, his wife?" asked
Turner.

"No, absolutely not. I've met Sherry, and
that woman in the truck with Dayton was not his wife." She added
that when she saw him with the different women, it had always been
between 7 and 7:30 P.M., in the vicinity of Aurora and Hubbard,
just north of Woodburn and Highway 211. Turner knew that Highway
211 was a direct route to Molalla and the Molalla forest, and he
again wondered if Dayton had been the unknown suspect who had
driven Heather Brown into the forest and terrified her on July 7.
He pushed the thought aside for the moment.

"What kind of person do you think Dayton is?"
asked Turner.

"He's an oddball," Joy said abruptly. "He was
always trying to come on to me, making subtle sexual comments." She
said she always rebuffed his advances and had as little contact
with him as possible. She wasn't necessarily afraid of him. She
just didn't like him.

After the ashes from the wood stove in
Dayton's shop had been sifted and analyzed, state criminologists
determined that it contained five belt buckles, two long metal
springs, metal shanks from at least five shoes, several buttons,
four star-shaped grommets, earrings, a number of bra hooks,
fasteners, strap adjustors, other women's effects, and remnants of
a burned tennis shoe. Several of the metal parts found in the wood
stove closely matched the metal parts of the single shoe discovered
in the GMAC parking lot where Jenny Smith was murdered.

What did the discovery of all the other
objects imply? Was the evidence a major break in Turner's case
against Dayton in Jenny Smith's murder? Or was it an indication of
something far more sinister, something that Turner and the other
investigators knew nothing about yet? Turner had a bad feeling
about it all, a gloomy outlook that grew more dismal with each
passing day.