Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer (23 page)

Meanwhile, Sheriff Bill Brooks and Lieutenant
Donald A. Vicars held a news conference and provided sketchy
details of the investigation to the public. They initially provided
little information, in part because they didn't yet know much about
the homicides themselves, and certain pertinent facts that they did
know were not released so that they could weed out the false
confessors that always crop up in cases like this. They played it
close to the vest and didn't reveal details that could only be
known to the police and the killer.

Nonetheless, the public disclosure that the
bodies had been found did prompt phone calls from people who hadn't
seen or heard from loved ones in a while. According to Deputy
Candace Dufur, the number of missing persons in Clackamas County
was small, so it would become necessary for the department to reach
out into other jurisdictions, such as the Portland Police Bureau
and the Multnomah County Sheriff's Department, to develop leads
that might help the Clackamas County detectives identify the dead.
One thing was fairly certain, though. It was highly unlikely that
any of the victims had come from Molalla, a small, country timber
town with a population just barely over 3,000 that only had a
couple of known missing persons on the books at that time.

At one point during the morning of the second
day, John Turner was pulled away from the Jenny Smith case for the
time being and sent to the Molalla forest. Because of the
complexity of the case, Dr. Larry Lewman, then the acting state
medical examiner but now the state medical examiner, and Dr. Karen
Gunson, a deputy state medical examiner, were requested to
accompany Turner to the crime scene. They met Machado at the Y
Drive-in in Molalla and, because Machado was headed out to make
some contacts, he briefed them as to what he had up in the forest.
Afterward Turner, Lewman, and Gunson went on up, signed in at the
command post, and walked farther up the hill to the crime
scene.

Gilliland met them, then took them over to
Body #1. As Lewman and Gunson bent over to examine the corpse,
Turner began looking around, all the while keeping an ear tuned to
Lewman's comments as the medical examiner spoke into a hand-held
tape recorder:

"The body is generally firm, leathery, and
mummified throughout. There is considerable active soft tissue
decomposition with putrefactive odor.

"The skull is lifted and appears to have
overall female characteristics with overall small size, small
supraorbital ridges, small muscle attachments, small mastoids, and
nonprominent inion. The hair has slipped from the skull and remains
about the head region. The mandible rests beneath the skull in its
normal position. Several teeth have fallen out postmortem. The
third molars are not erupted in either the mandible or maxilla.
Several loose teeth which have fallen out postmortem are placed in
a plastic bag labeled Number One. The cervical vertebral column is
intact. The location of the body is staked. The body is rotated to
the right. Most of the anterior chest and abdominal wall is intact
with the exception of the left chest area. The sternum/manubrium is
visible. Most of the soft tissue of the right side of the arm is
destroyed by insect activity. Maggots are noted in the groin area,
and putrefactive liquid is present in large amounts beneath and
around the body. No jewelry is noted on the hands. There are
multiple penetrating defects in the midline of the back and
subscapular regions bilaterally, most of these on the right. The
left foot has been severed and is not found adjacent to the body.
Bony edges feel cut or incised."

As Lewman and Gunson placed the remains in a
yellow body bag, labeled simply #1, the left foot was found nearby.
It was bagged separately.

Turner, still looking around, was lost in
deep thought. He had heard most of what Lewman had said, but he
would have to read the medical examiner's report later to absorb
all the details. His mind was elsewhere, jumping back and forth
between the Jenny Smith investigation and the Molalla forest case.
It wasn't until he looked to the right of Body #1 that he saw it, a
single item that suddenly jumped out at him and brought his mind
into clear focus. There it was, a miniature Smirnoff vodka bottle,
lying among the ferns and barely visible. The startling discovery
felt almost euphoric, more intense than an addict's rush. He turned
to Gilliland, who was standing nearby, and pointed out the
bottle.

"I want you to pick up every bottle like this
that you find," said Turner.

"Hell, they're all over the place," responded
Gilliland. "We've got them marked off on the grids at nearly every
site."

"Just make damn sure that none of them gets
left up here," said Turner, grinning slyly.

"Sonofabitch! You already know who it is,
don't you?" asked Gilliland.

"Yeah, I think so. Just make damn sure you
pick up all these bottles."

When Machado returned to the Molalla forest
later that afternoon, he and Turner took a walk along the dirt road
downhill from the crime scene to discuss the most recent
developments of the case and to bounce ideas off one another.
Turner told Machado how he had recently talked to the clerk at the
Woodburn liquor store, and how he had learned from her that Dayton
Leroy Rogers always bought his liquor, Smirnoff vodka, in miniature
bottles. Although it was only a gut feeling, Turner was adamant
that their suspect in the Molalla forest case was sitting in the
Clackamas County Jail for the murder of Jenny Smith. Machado knew
from prior experience about Turner's gut feelings. They almost
always paid off.

They were only about a quarter of a mile
south of the command post, still discussing the possibility of
Dayton's involvement in the Molalla forest case, when the pungent,
telltale odor of decomposition invaded their olfactory lobes.
Turner and Machado looked at each other, and without saying a word
they knew what they were about to discover.

They turned to their left and walked east off
the road, heading in the direction of the obvious odor that
emanated from an area that had not yet been searched. Minutes
later, they found the nude body about thirty feet off the road. It
had obviously been dumped from a trail that led to the edge of a
cliff in a heavily wooded area. Body #6 was skeletonized, and all
they saw was some of the victim's hair and some rib bones. The
torso and legs, including the feet, were not at that location,
prompting them to search further.

After going about another thirty feet, the
two detectives stopped to examine a dark area on the ground, about
the size of a human body. It didn't take them long to decide that
they'd found a decayed area where a body had been, where the
putrefactive ooze had been absorbed into the soil and was the
source of the odor they had detected. But where was the body now?
Was that the location where Body #6 had lain as it decomposed,
perhaps destroyed and moved by animals? Or was the location an
indication that a seventh body was out there somewhere?

As they continued their search, they came
across a piece of black cloth near the road's edge, between the
location of Body #6 and the decayed area. A little farther they
located an obvious animal trail, and they followed it. Machado and
Turner soon found Body #7, about fifty feet from the location of
Body #6 and the decayed area.

The body was mostly skeletonized and was not
intact. They could see evidence of animal chewing, as well as
insect holes over the leathery skin of the chest. Even though it
was in such a decomposed state, they could also make out stab
wounds in the chest, located left of the midline.

In the meantime, medical examiners Lewman and
Gunson examined Body #2. Like the first body, there was
mummification, active decomposition, and putrefactive odor. Also
like the first, Body #2 had female characteristics. Long, curly,
blondish brown hair lay on the ground surrounding the skull. The
teeth were intact except for the left central incisor, which had
fallen out and was found on the ground next to the skull. The teeth
struck Lewman as being extraordinarily straight.

Lewman noted a tattoo in the left flank
region, and he could make out the word "Bitch" among others. He
also noted a tattoo on the left shoulder. When he and Gunson turned
the body over to place it in a body bag, they found the severed
feet beneath it. Each had been sawed or cut through about three
inches above the distal tibia and fibula, and there were multiple
saw or cut marks in each tibia. Although there was no way to tell
for certain, Lewman had no reason to believe that either of the
victims were dead when the sawing or cutting of their feet
occurred. Whoever had performed this carnage had done so to inflict
intense physical pain upon his victims and had enjoyed watching
their blood flow freely. There was no doubt that he was one
sadistic sonofabitch.

Before the day was over, it was brought to
Turner's attention that the Sheriff's Department's search and
rescue explorers had found two shoelaces in separate locations.
Each had been looped and knotted at the ends, as if they had been
used for restraints. When Turner examined them, he saw immediately
that they were just like the ones found at the scene of Jenny
Smith's murder.

Detective Jim Strovink caught the assignment
to interview Everett Banyard about his discovery of Body #1, and to
determine whether or not he had anything else of significance to
offer the investigators.

"Why was it that you were in that area on
that particular date?" asked Strovink.

"Well, it's like I said before," responded
Banyard. "I was gonna do a little deer hunting that evening before
dark. That's when I parked in that area and discovered that
body."

"Have you hunted in that area in the
past?"

"Oh, yeah. Quite a few times. I've walked
through there probably hundreds of times over the years. My
daughters rode through there on horseback quite a bit, and it was
just kind of a main trail to the river from our house."

"Had you been there this summer at all?"

"Off and on—yeah." Banyard explained that he
thought he had smelled a slight odor on earlier trips to the
location, but concluded that somebody had likely dumped a dead dog
or garbage up there. He said that was a common practice among
residents.

"Did you ever notice anyone unusual in that
area?" asked Strovink.

"Well, there's quite a few people that come
in there. One time I pulled in and stopped at the bottom of the
road—before deer season opened—and was gonna walk up and scout
around. That would have been in late July or early August."

"What did you notice on this particular
occasion?" pushed Strovink.

"There was a small blue Datsun pickup. It
came slowly by the bottom there. The driver stopped just down the
road."

"Was the driver alone in the vehicle?"

"Yeah, he was alone."

"And it was a male subject?"

"Yeah, he was a male. He didn't look like a
great big guy, you know. That's about all I can say because he was
settin' down in the pickup when he went by."

"Would you recognize the driver of that
vehicle if you saw him again?"

"No, I couldn't even begin to give you a
description."

"What did he do?"

"He stopped, just down the road. I saw some
pigeons take off, and I thought he released some homing pigeons—I
didn't think nothing about it."

It was more likely, reasoned Strovink, that
the man in the blue Datsun had frightened a flock of birds when he
either walked in or tossed something into the brush.

Chapter 14

On Thursday, September 3, after news about
the discovery of the Molalla forest bodies broke publicly, John
Turner began coordinating the missing persons reports that began to
flow into the sheriff's office from various other agencies. He
didn't know it yet, but he and his colleagues would fill not less
than half a dozen three-ring binders, each more than three inches
thick, with reports concerning missing females from throughout the
Northwest. He would fill more than that with tip sheets about the
case, reports concerning suspicious odors in the Molalla forest
area, suspicious individuals, clothing discoveries, even calls from
prostitutes who wanted to help. All in all, Turner's case file
alone would grow to thirty-five such volumes that would hold
thousands of pages.

While Turner was fielding the calls, Mike
Machado returned to the forest site, where the search for more
bodies and additional evidence continued. Similarly, Dr. Lewman and
Dr. Gunson continued to examine the corpses and secure them in body
bags for eventual transport to the morgue in Portland. Machado was
observing the work of an entomologist who was collecting bugs from
the site, when he was called to the command post about a truck
driver, Mike Travis, who was waiting at the entrance of the logging
spur road. Travis, he was informed, had information about a girl he
had picked up a couple of months earlier.

Travis explained that he had been driving his
log truck at a location about four miles from the crime scene in
July, a few days after Independence Day. He said the girl he had
picked up had jumped out of a small blue Datsun pickup traveling in
front of him after—the girl had told him—the pickup's driver had
threatened to kill her. After he picked up the girl, who had been
injured from the jump, Travis said he saw the pickup again but the
driver had managed to elude him. Machado thanked Travis for his
help, then drove to the Molalla Police Department, where he
telephoned Turner. It was, by then, 4:30 P.M.

As Machado started to explain what he had
learned from Travis, Turner interrupted him. The incident rang a
bell, said Turner, and had done so before, while he was
investigating Jenny Smith's murder. He had already read the report,
taken by a road deputy, he said, and found it as he spoke. It
involved a woman by the name of Heather Brown, who had been picked
up on Union Avenue in Portland. Heather's address was on the
report, and the two detectives agreed to meet in Oregon City and
drive to her home together that evening.