Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer

by Gary C. King

  James Virgil Dahlke, three days shy of his fifty-first birthday, had arrived at Denny's at about the same time that Jenny Smith had fallen out of Dayton Leroy Rogers's truck. Clad in a blue nylon jacket, green plaid shirt, and blue jeans, the mustachioed man with longer than usual sideburns and short brown hair was alone as he parked his 1983 Ford two-tone blue van on the side of the building closest to McLoughlin Boulevard. When he got out and began walking toward the restaurant, he heard Jenny hollering and screaming. Although he couldn't quite make out what she was saying, if anything, Dahlke could see two human forms in the GMAC parking lot, the direction from which the screams had come. He adjusted his wire-framed glasses, hoping to get a better look at what the commotion was all about.

  About that time Kurt Thielke, thirty-three, walked out of Denny's and headed toward his brown 1966 Dodge van, parked in front of the restaurant just west of the front door. Thielke heard the screams, too, and saw the two people in the GMAC parking lot. He also heard what he thought was a muffled yell. Then he saw Jenny. Although his view was somewhat obscured by the parked cars, he saw that her arms were held out and up, and it looked like she was trying to get away from the man who by now held her by her neck from behind. That was when Dayton and Jenny went down, out of sight. At first Thielke thought that the man was trying to control a woman high on drugs, or perhaps who was deranged. But then he heard her pleas for help and knew that he had to do something.

  "Help me! Please help me! Rape! I'm being raped!" Jenny's screams were wild and high-pitched, the result of extreme physical pain. It was difficult, in the darkness, to see precisely what was happening. Dahlke and Thielke briefly exchanged glances, as if questioning each other about what they should do.

  "Let's see what that is. Let's check it out," said Dahlke, leading the way and shouting for Thielke to follow him toward the sound of the screams. By the time they reached the couple, Dahlke and Thielke saw that Jenny was naked, lying on her back, and that Dayton was now on top of her, face-to-face. Dayton was lying in between her legs, in a position that made it appear he was having, or at least trying to have, sex with her.

  "What the fuck do you think you are doing?" shouted Dahlke at the complete stranger in stunned disbelief. In all of his nearly fifty-one years he had never witnessed such an outrageous, blatant display of violence against another human being. When he realized how serious the situation was, he hoped that he would never witness such an episode again.

  Upon hearing Dahlke's words, Dayton looked up and lifted his upper body with his arms. He got off Jenny, then ran around the west end of the GMAC building. Thielke considered going after him but, after observing what he thought was a knife in the fleeing man's hand, decided against it.

  When Dahlke reached Jenny, he was both sickened and stunned. Blood gushed from a hole in her neck, and she was making coughing sounds. She had also sustained wounds to her abdomen, from which blood slowly oozed. Although Dahlke felt a breeze of air from her lungs, Jenny no longer appeared conscious. He shouted for Thielke to get help, and remained with Jenny. Thielke ran inside the restaurant.

  "Somebody call nine-one-one! A lady has been raped out there!"

  Stan Conner, twenty-one, looked up from his table to see what the fuss was about. So did Richard Bergio, twenty-four, and Charles Gates, twenty-three. Each left his separate table and rushed outside. When Gates, a handicapped man in a wheelchair, reached Jenny, he was overcome with emotion.

  "My God!" he exclaimed. "Her throat has been slit!" Experienced in first aid and emergency medical treatment, Gates, undaunted by all the blood, fell forward from his wheelchair and onto his knees. He had to try and help her. He felt her carotid artery to see if there was a pulse, but found none. Jenny would not respond to his questions, and she was not breathing. Gates immediately began CPR, while Dahlke placed pressure on Jenny's wounds. Although sickened and revulsed at the carnage, Gates was relentless in his efforts to try to save Jenny, a complete stranger to himself and everyone else who was present.

  As a crowd gathered, Richard Bergio ran back inside the restaurant to make certain that someone had called for medical and police assistance. When he returned to the parking lot, he found that Gates's gallant attempts had not revived the woman. When he looked closer, he lost what little hope he had that she would survive. She had far too many wounds on her upper torso.

  While everyone was trying to save Jenny's life, Dayton Rogers was seen going around the side of the GMAC building. He wasn't running, and he wasn't walking, but sort of loped along the sidewalk, occasionally stopping long enough to see if anyone was following him. No one was, but in an apparent move to elude those he now knew were watching him from a safe distance, he scaled a short flight of stairs, apparently to see if they would lead him away from the ever-growing crowd. Starkly aware that they didn't provide a safe haven or even a place to hide, he went down the other side and walked toward his pickup. Surprisingly, he still did not seem in a hurry to those watching him.

  "That's him!" someone shouted, as if to alert the many sets of eyes that were already focused on Dayton as he climbed into his truck. "That's the son-of-a-motherfucker! Somebody get his license plate number!" But the poor lighting condition made it impossible for anyone to read the license plate.

  Dayton backed his truck, which had been parked facing the front of the GMAC building, fast, lights out, nearly hitting a red car parked behind it. He then sped away, west through the parking lot toward an apartment complex, and down a narrow gravel lane. The lane was a dead end, however, and Dayton was forced to turn his truck around and go back the way he had come.

  By that time Stan Conner and Richard Bergio were inside their own vehicles, which they moved to the parking lot's exits. Positioning their automobiles lengthwise across the exits, both thought that they had adequately blocked off the parking lot so that the man driving the "straight-looking" pickup could not escape. But Dayton surprised them. Traveling at a high rate of speed, he turned on his lights and bounced over onto the sidewalk and went around them, nearly striking Conner's car. He fled south on McLoughlin Boulevard.

  Brimming with confidence and an overwhelming need to help, Bergio, without a moment's hesitation, pulled out onto McLoughlin Boulevard and went after him. Estimating that the blue Nissan was traveling in excess of eighty-five miles per hour, Bergio accelerated his own truck and nearly caught up with Dayton as they passed through the community of Jennings Lodge. Several times he brought his pickup within yards of Dayton's, trying to get a glimpse of the Nissan's license plate. But the license plate light was out, and he just couldn't get close enough to read its letters and numbers in the dark. Finally, just after they passed the city limits of Gladstone, Bergio positioned his pickup directly behind Dayton's. He was traveling at nearly a hundred miles per hour, but he could now make out the rear plate: CYW 194, Oregon. Bergio stopped his truck, wrote the number down, then headed back to the crime scene.

  The first report of the violent episode was received by C-COM, the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office Communications Center, at 3:03 A.M., while Richard Bergio was still giving chase. The dispatcher on duty sent out the following message: "RAPE VICTIM, THROAT SLIT, BEHIND DENNY'S RESTAURANT, 16251 SE MCLOUGHLIN. SUSPECT WHITE MALE ADULT, 25-30, LONG BROWN WAVY HAIR, POSSIBLY 6'2", 260 POUNDS. POSSIBLY WEARING WHITE BUTTON SHIRT AND JEANS. POSSIBLE SUSPECT VEHICLE LIGHT BLUE NISSAN PICKUP. LAST SEEN HEADING SOUTH ON MCLOUGHLIN."

  Sergeant Danny Fine was in C-COM when the call came in and was duly advised of the incident by the dispatcher as she sent the message to all available road deputies. Sergeant Fine immediately left the C-COM facility, located at the sheriff's office complex on South Kaen Road in Oregon City, and proceeded north to the crime scene.

  While Fine was en route, Deputy Randy M. Barry also responded to the dispatch. Barry arrived at 3:11 A.M., and Fine a minute later. There were a number of paramedics from the Oak Lodge Fire Department already there, attending the nameless nude victim, themselves having arrived only minute
s before Barry and Fine. Captain Glenn Summerville and Lieutenant Walter Rivers directed the operation, and engineer Donald Boling and Firefighter Emory Sandusky assisted the paramedics, keeping the ambulance ready for immediate departure.

  Following a brief consultation with Summerville and Rivers, Fine and Barry approached Jenny as emergency medical technicians William Kost and Richard Wilcox tried to stop her bleeding. Both lawmen were informed that she was unconscious, and they noted what appeared to be a cut on her right breast and another on the left side of her throat. There were other wounds, the paramedics told them, but the two lawmen could not get in close enough to observe them. Her eyes, said the paramedics, were open and fixed, and her color was pale.

  After deciding that everything that could be done for the victim was being done, Sergeant Fine assigned Deputy Barry to secure the crime scene. Although saving the victim's life unquestionably took precedence over the preservation of evidence, it was Fine's job to make certain that the loss of evidence was kept to a minimum.

  When Richard Bergio returned, the crime scene was cluttered with patrol cars, emergency vehicles, and lots of people, those who had jobs to perform there as well as those who didn't. Although it looked like chaos to the curious civilians, every official at the scene carried out his or her function with control and efficiency.

  At 3:26 A.M. Deputy Peter Tutmark arrived at the crime scene and was directed by Sergeant Fine to round up witnesses and begin taking their statements. Deputy Barry, in the process of his assigned duty to secure the crime scene, noted and marked off the locations of various items he considered to be of an evidentiary nature. Richard Bergio, wandering amid all of the activity, was directed to Sergeant Fine, to whom he turned over the suspect's vehicle license plate number.

  Despite the paramedics' valiant attempts to revive the nude, blood-covered Jenny Smith, they feared that their efforts would ultimately be futile. They continued trying, even though it seemed hopeless. But minutes later, after deciding that she had lost too much blood and that they had done all that they could for her at the scene, they loaded Jenny onto the waiting ambulance. With no life signs and only a glimmer of hope remaining that she might survive, paramedics Kost and Wilcox rushed her to the emergency room at Emanuel Hospital and Health Center in Portland.

  Ironically, the hospital where Jenny Smith would be pronounced dead was only a few blocks from where Dayton Leroy Rogers had picked her up on Northeast Union Avenue and Wygant Street three hours earlier. She died very close to home.

  Chapter 2

  John Turner knew at age nine or ten that he wanted to be a lawman when he grew up. Harboring a fascination with airplanes, he also had toyed with the idea of becoming a fighter pilot. But when he got into high school and discovered that he didn't like math, and subsequently learned that high math skills were required to become a fighter pilot, Turner decided that he would take a shot at being a cop, which had been his first choice anyway. As a result, he enlisted in the Army following graduation from high school and went into the military police to find out if he really liked police work or if he should change his options. He quickly discovered that he liked it, spent a tour in Vietnam with I-Corps, and when he got out of the Army, he went directly into civilian law enforcement.

  Born on September 29, 1942, in Compton, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, Turner returned to his native Southern California following his discharge from the Army and worked as a patrolman for the Los Angeles Police Department from 1970 to 1973 under Chief Ed Davis. He soon grew tired of the rat race in L.A., however, and moved north to Oregon. He went to work at the Clackamas County Sheriff's Department on July 20, 1974, and has been there ever since. Having little interest in administrative work, Turner worked his way up through the ranks to detective, a position in which he has excelled for the past several years. He likes what he does and, by his own admission, has found his own little niche in life as a detective.

  Detective Turner was sleeping soundly at his country home near the banks of the Clackamas River in the community of Eagle Creek at 3:30 A.M. August 7, 1987, when the telephone suddenly invaded his dream world. He bolted upright, instantly alert as he picked up the receiver. Years with the sheriff's department had taught him to expect calls in the middle of the night, and he had learned to put his dreams, among other things, on hold. He had also learned that such calls never brought good tidings.

  Lieutenant H. Patrick Detloff, chief of detectives, was on the other end of the line. After a curt hello, he advised Turner that an as yet unidentified female had been critically stabbed and was not expected to live. He directed Turner to respond to the parking lot of Denny's restaurant in Milwaukie to take over as the primary investigator into the assault. Lieutenant Detloff informed him that Detective James E. Strovink had also been assigned to the case, as had Detective Michael Machado. Sergeant Danny Fine and Patrol Deputy Randy Barry had already cordoned off the crime scene, he said, and deputies Peter Tutmark and Joy Copley were doing preliminary interviews of the witnesses as they spoke.

  Turner dressed quickly, then kissed his wife, Dee, goodbye. Like her husband, Dee had become accustomed to the calls in the middle of the night. She didn't like them, but she came to accept them. As Turner walked out the door, Dee knew it might be several hours to a day or two before she would see her husband again.

  It wasn't a mere luck of the draw that Turner, Strovink, and Machado caught the assignment to investigate Jenny Smith's untimely death. Since there was no doubt that this was a crime of the most violent sort, Lieutenant Detloff, as well as Sheriff Bill Brooks, wanted their most crack detectives on the trail of the killer while the trail was still red-hot. They were a conscientious team, each having worked their way up through the ranks from road patrol to homicide, a trek that took many hard and frustrating years. They were more than merely competent. They were a team who worked together with diligence and near-perfection that no criminal would be happy to have on his tail.

  Turner arrived at the sheriff's office in Oregon City at 4:20 A.M. He was met there by Lieutenant Detloff and Detective Strovink, and was advised that Machado would join them later at the crime scene. Detloff informed him that, while he was en route to the sheriff's office, the victim had died in surgery at Emanuel Hospital as a result of her wounds. The information didn't surprise Turner; such information never did. News of the woman's death did mean, however, that the crime had been elevated from a serious assault to a homicide, which made Turner all the more eager to go after the assailant while the clues, evidence, and witnesses' memories were still fresh. Turner knew, as does virtually every cop, that the best opportunity to identify and capture a killer or other criminal is during the first twenty-four hours of the investigation. After that the trail becomes colder with each passing hour, and their chances of catching the perpetrator diminishes accordingly.

  Turner and Strovink picked up homicide kits, flashlights, and portable radios in preparation to go to the crime scene. Before leaving, they attempted to roust Deputy John Gilliland, the department's criminologist, from his sleep, but he apparently had forgotten to take his phone off the answering machine before going to bed. The two rings before the machine takes over apparently weren't enough to wake him, and since he wasn't normally required to wear a pager they were unable to immediately reach him. Because Gilliland lived in Portland, the Clackamas County Communications Center asked the Portland Police Bureau to send an officer to his house to try to stir him out. Dawn had just broken when the detectives arrived at the crime scene twenty minutes later, and they were advised that Gilliland had been awakened and was on his way.

  Deputy Tutmark led Turner, Strovink, and Lieutenant Detloff to a pool of congealing blood and pointed out soiled rescue supplies that the paramedics had left behind in the northeast corner of the parking lot. Tutmark explained that the victim had been found at that location, apparently after having been chased a short distance by the assailant.

  Tutmark led the detectives to the front of the GMAC building, w
here he pointed out a pool of what appeared to be antifreeze. Turner and Strovink observed that tire impressions, where a vehicle's tires had apparently passed through the greenish yellow liquid, had been marked off by spray paint. Nearby, they observed a pile of female clothing that had also been marked off. Turner, taking notes, listed a pair of Levi's pants, one white shoe, several shoelaces knotted and looped at both ends, a white bra, a Nike sweatshirt and one pink sock. Turner commented that the shoelaces resembled a restraint of some kind.

  "Where are the victim's underpants?" asked Turner. "And what about her other shoe and sock?" Tutmark reported that those items hadn't been found, but remarked that they might turn up during the ensuing crime scene search if the suspect hadn't taken them with him. As Tutmark's briefing continued, another deputy momentarily called Strovink away.

  A man named Richard Bergio, said Tutmark, had courageously chased the suspect. Bergio, he said, had obtained the suspect's license plate number and had gotten a good look at the vehicle. He was sure he would recognize it if he saw it again. When Turner asked how, Tutmark said that Bergio had reported that the suspect's vehicle's license plate light was not operable.

  Another witness, James Dahlke, had provided a description of the suspect by the time Turner had been notified of the crime. The assailant was a white male adult, five feet eight inches to five feet nine inches tall, with dark medium-thick hair, collar-length and somewhat curly. Dahlke had told Tutmark that the suspect was wearing a light blue shirt and light blue jeans. He said that the suspect ran funny—not fast, but sort of sauntered away from the victim as he headed toward the GMAC building. Dahlke hadn't been sure what type of shoes the suspect was wearing.