Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer (29 page)

With Machado driving, Lydia directed the
detectives south on McLoughlin Boulevard to the intersection of
Highways 213 and 99E, where they turned south on 213. They
proceeded through Oregon City, continuing up to the top of the hill
that much of the city is built upon and on toward Molalla.

As they drove along, Turner asked if Dayton
had ever removed his clothes. She said, "Never." He wouldn't even
take off his shoes. He would just pull the front part of his pants
down, far enough to expose himself, and masturbate. They had never
engaged in sexual intercourse.

Eventually, as her trust in Dayton grew,
Lydia began allowing him to tie her up. Sometimes he would use
nylon stockings to bind her, other times wire and electrical tape.
He eventually began to use leather straps, at least six inches long
with buckles, to bind her hands and feet. Then he would tie the
straps on her hands to the straps on her feet, using a heavy piece
of wire that she believed was previously a coat hanger. The end
result was that she was forced into a position commonly known as
being hog-tied.

During each successive date, Dayton's actions
toward Lydia did not change significantly. If she complained about
the straps being too tight, he'd bite her feet harder than she
liked. But when she told him to back off he would, although she
could tell that he was annoyed at having to do so. It wasn't until
their final date that he became extraordinarily violent with
her.

It was in February or March 1987 when he
picked her up on 6th Avenue and Burnside Street in downtown
Portland for the last time. It was during the early morning hours,
and they drove out to the usual location near Molalla.

When he began tying her up, she complained
that the straps were too tight. Instead of loosening them, he made
them tighter. He began biting her, hard. The more she screamed and
begged him to stop, the more he seemed to enjoy it. He told her he
was going to cut her feet up, which he did.

Dayton made several incisions on the sole of
Lydia's left foot. She tried to see what he was using, but she was
not in a position where she could actually see the blade. She
thought it might have been a short box cutter.

She screamed at him and pleaded with him to
stop. She even told him she would give him his money back if only
he wouldn't cut her anymore. But he continued with the biting and
the cutting for approximately forty-five minutes. Finally, devoid
of all energy, Lydia went numb. She had reached the point where she
had just given up.

Three minutes after she had stopped
screaming, Dayton stopped torturing her. With evil anger in his
eyes, he gave Lydia a choice of being cut on her buttocks or on her
chest. She told him that if he was going to cut anything else,
she'd rather it be her buttocks, which he did cut. Afterward, he
undid her bindings and allowed her to dress. As they drove back
toward the city, Lydia asked Dayton why he had stopped, why he
hadn't killed her. He said he'd never killed anyone before and that
he had stopped because she had quit struggling.

It was after 5 A.M. when they had arrived
back in Portland. Lydia's feet hurt terribly and her stockings were
soaked with blood. She could barely walk and needed assistance to
get inside the hotel where she was staying. Dayton gave her a kiss
on the cheek, then left.

Did he always take her back to Portland after
their dates? Turner wanted to know.

Dayton normally dropped Lydia back at the
location where he had picked her up, she said. However, there were
several occasions when he dropped her off at Woodburn, near the
entrance to Interstate 5, and she would have to find her own way
back to Portland. It was usually late on the mornings when he did
that, around 5:30 or 6 A.M., and it had seemed that he was in a
hurry to get home or was worried about getting to work on time.

After driving through the city of Molalla,
Lydia directed Machado to keep heading south on Highway 213. They
went out past the Y Drive-in, where she instructed him to turn onto
Freyrer Park Road and then onto Dickie Prairie Road. She led them
to the intersection of the Glen Avon Bridge, at which point she
told them to turn west across the bridge and then again directed
them south on Molalla Forest Road. When they reached the
intersection of Molalla Forest Road 75, Lydia was overcome with
emotion.

"Bingo," she said. "I knew we wouldn't be
able to see the road until we were on top of it."

She directed them on up the hill, and told
them to stop where the road made a 180-degree hairpin turn. They
got out of the car and Lydia walked to the side of the road,
peering into the brush.

"This is the location where he always brought
me."

"Are you certain that this is the place?"
asked Turner.

"Yeah. This is it. I feel it with my guts.
This is it."

They were at the site where the Molalla
forest victims had been discovered.

Chapter 20

As Turner and Machado were conferring with
the medical examiner's office and confirming the identity of Body
#5, Detective Jim Strovink was making contact with
forty-two-year-old Mel Crouch,* who had called the task force and
left a message that he had information about Dayton Leroy Rogers.
When Strovink interviewed Crouch, he was informed that Dayton had
regularly visited Crouch's roommate, Tommy Parker,* when Crouch and
Parker had shared a house in north Portland. The purpose of
Dayton's visits, said Crouch, was to engage in a homosexual
relationship with Parker.

According to Crouch, Dayton had become
acquainted with Parker while attending a Seventh-Day Adventist
school together while both were still in their teens. They had
remained in contact with each other for years.

"When was the last time you saw Dayton?"
asked Strovink.

"This past winter—February or March of this
year," said Crouch. "Dayton has had a few sexual encounters with
Tommy through the years."

"Do you think Dayton's a bona fide
homosexual, then?"

"Oh, no. He's bisexual at most. I only
brought this up because, well, it could trigger a lot of anger if
he's fighting some kind of a trip, his sexual orientation, you
know."

"Did Tommy ever tell you anything unusual
about their sexual activity? Was Dayton into sa-domasochism or
anything like that?"

"I think Tommy did mention that Dayton was
rough at times, but not angrily rough. I can't recall the exact
words Tommy used, but there was some intimation that it was more
related to frustration or something like that."

"Mel, are you gay?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Then you would have obvious knowledge
or free conversation with Tommy, someone Tommy could freely confide
in."

"Yeah, I guess so. I've been there at the
house a couple of times when Tommy and Dayton went upstairs
together. Their encounter was pretty short—didn't last too long.
Not my type of relationship." Crouch laughed.

"I understand," said Strovink.

"Short and quick. But apparently they've been
doing it since they were kids."

Couch's mood turned somber, and it seemed to
Strovink that something else was on his mind. Finally he told
Strovink that the real reason he called the task force was not to
reveal Dayton's gay relationship with Tommy, but to tell him about
a black female prostitute who had been found dead, apparently
murdered, in a vacant lot near his and Tommy's house the morning
following one of Dayton's visits. He said he had a strange feeling
about Dayton and felt that Dayton might have been responsible for
the prostitute's death.

"The suspicion that Dayton might be involved
didn't come up until all of this Molalla business happened," said
Crouch.

"What month are we talking about?" asked
Strovink.

"February, I think. All I know is Dayton was
here in the evening hours before they found that young black
woman's body around the corner the next morning."

"Did you notice what type of vehicle Dayton
operated?"

"There was a little foreign pickup truck,
light in color, parked out in front of the house, and another car
nearby. I guess it was about nine o'clock in the evening. There was
some noise out front, too. Two guys talked to each other for a
little while, then the guy from the pickup went and sat with the
other guy in his car. I thought they were doing a drug deal or
something, and I was getting ready to call the police but they
moved on." He left Strovink with the impression that the guy in the
pickup might have been Dayton, although he had stopped short of
making a positive identification.

"Is that little pickup truck the one you
would associate with Dayton Rogers?" asked Strovink.

"In a way, yeah. See, Dayton came into the
house later. He stopped by and knocked on the door."

"This was after you saw the two guys out
front?"

"Yeah. It was about ten o'clock when he came
by. I let him in 'cause I knew he came by to see Tommy. But Tommy
was gone to a National Guard meeting. Dayton asked for a cup of
coffee, and I said, 'Sure. It's in the kitchen.' He sat down for a
few minutes and bullshitted about some machine or something and
then left. That's what he always did when Tommy wasn't home."

"Since you lived in a high vice area—near
Union—did you ever see Dayton soliciting prostitutes in the
neighborhood?"

"There was one afternoon, in late summer,
that I saw Dayton standing outside on Union. There were a couple of
girls, you know, doing their little trip. They kept walking, and
Dayton just sort of glared at them, if anything. But a lot of guys
do that."

"Is there anything else that you can think of
that would help me?" asked Strovink.

"No. It just seemed like Dayton and Tommy
were carrying on something that they'd been doing for years—sort of
an outlet, maybe. I think Dayton's got a lot of guilt going on
about his gay activities, and if he dislikes women underneath all
that, well, that could get pretty violent."

When Strovink related to Turner and Machado
what he'd learned, a whole new picture of Dayton Rogers began to
emerge. If he was in fact gay and had married only for convenience
and cover, then there could indeed be a lot of anger beneath his
family man facade. Had he been lashing out at women all of his
adult life simply because he could not come to terms with his own
sexuality? It certainly appeared that way to the investigators. Had
he actually murdered the black prostitute? It seemed a distinct
possibility. But would they be able to prove it?

On Tuesday, September 22, Strovink responded
to Lyon's Restaurant on Union Avenue in Portland, where he met with
Debra Solorio, twenty-five, a bartender at the restaurant's
cocktail lounge. Solorio had contacted the task force after seeing
Dayton's photo on a television news program and suggested that they
send someone out to talk to her. Having worked at the bar for five
years, she said she knew that Dayton had been coming in from
December 1984 through August 1987. She said she recognized him,
however, as an individual who went by the name of Steve.

Solorio said that Dayton came in once a week,
sometimes more often, and usually drank a golden Cadillac or a
screwdriver. He indicated that he was a gambler from Nevada, and he
often approached prostitutes when they came in for drinks.

She recalled at least one occasion when
Dayton told her that he couldn't understand why some women became
prostitutes for a living and that he didn't think women should sell
their bodies for money. She added, however, that despite his
apparent dislike of prostitutes, she often saw him talking with
hookers at the bar. Solorio said that Molalla victim Christine
Adams had been a regular customer and that she had seen her
soliciting customers in the bar. But she couldn't recall any
instances where she had seen Christine and Dayton together.

"He seemed to be an intelligent type," she
said. "He did magic tricks occasionally. I remember one in
particular where he transferred ashes from one hand to another
mysteriously."

His normal attire consisted of jeans or
corduroy slacks, a T-shirt under his dress shirt with the two top
buttons unfastened to form an open collar. She said that Dayton had
asked her out for a date on a few occasions, but she had always
turned him down.

"Do you happen to know what kind of vehicle
he drove?" asked Strovink.

"No, but he talked about having had an
accident in the Reno area and had purchased a new pickup
afterwards," she said. "He talked quite a bit about that type of
vehicle."

When Strovink returned to headquarters, he
ran a check with motor vehicles in Oregon and Nevada. The result of
the search turned up the fact that Dayton had owned a 1984 Datsun
pickup, brown in color. But it had been wrecked in California.
Shortly after the wreck, he purchased the blue 1985 Nissan
pickup.

When Strovink informed Turner of the new
information, Turner recalled the conversation he'd had with Lisa
Daniels, the young woman who in 1984 had gone to Eugene with Dayton
for dinner and drinks prior to being taken to the Molalla forest.
She had been correct in her description of the truck he had picked
her up in, after all. It
had
been a brown one. Both Lydia
Clark and Debra Solorio had confirmed that

Dayton had driven a brown pickup.

* * *

As one day followed another and gradually
faded into October, John Turner and his colleagues continued
putting in long days, often in excess of twelve hours, in their
efforts to build their cases against Dayton Rogers. District
Attorney James O'Leary was planning to try Dayton in two separate
trials: one for the murder of Jenny Smith and another for the
murders of the Molalla forest victims. Thus, Turner and his cohorts
had to garner evidence and identify potential witnesses appropriate
for each case. Unfortunately, not all of the witnesses and evidence
would be interchangeable, resulting in the need to set up and
maintain two separate case files.