Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer

by Gary C. King

  * * *

  Aided by the bright morning sun Turner, Gilliland, and others conducted a thorough examination of the crime scene, photographing everything of potential relevance. They collected blood samples from the area where Jenny's body had lain, as well as excrement and urine specimens. Each item of evidence, including Jenny's clothing, was placed inside separate bags and containers as the lawmen scoured every inch of the parking lot. At one point they found a trail of blood, believed to be that of their suspect, and followed it around the building complex along the route taken by the suspect as described by Michael Fielding.

  But where was the murder weapon? They continued circling the group of buildings as they hunted for the knife. They looked inside dumpsters, combed grassy areas, searched through brush, peered into sewer grates with flashlights, looked anywhere that the suspect might have tossed the knife as he fled. But it seemed to be nowhere to be found. Turner and Gilliland began to think that the killer had taken it with him.

  Finally, at 9:30 A.M., after having been over the same area at least six times, Gilliland stopped in his tracks and called out to Turner.

  "I think I found it," he said as he pointed out a shiny object to Turner. It was lying beneath a shrub in a bed of bark dust about three feet from the sidewalk behind the GMAC building, in an area where the suspect was seen running. Gilliland picked it up carefully so that he wouldn't spoil any fingerprints that might be on it. It was a Regency-Sheffield stainless steel kitchen-type knife with a five-inch blade and a brown handle, the type commonly sold in sets. It was covered with blood, and the blade was bent. Gilliland placed it inside a brown paper bag and marked it, and would turn it over to the Oregon State Police Crime Lab, along with the other evidence that had been collected, for analysis. But first Turner had someone he wanted to show the knife to.

  At 9:35 A.M., some fifty minutes into Machado's interview with Michael Fielding, Turner appeared at Fielding's apartment, carrying the brown paper bag. He apologized for interrupting.

  "Do you recall saying that you thought you would be able to recognize the knife that you saw the suspect holding while he stood beneath the streetlight?" Turner asked Fielding.

  "Yes, I do. I think I would recognize it."

  Turner opened the brown paper bag and asked him to look inside.

  "Yes. I think that's the knife. That's exactly like the one he had."

  Turner smiled broadly, stretching his mustache into a nearly straight line beneath his nose. Elated, he thanked Fielding for his help and left.

  Later, after he'd had time to put together a photo display consisting of six similarly appearing subjects arranged in two rows of three photos, Machado contacted Michael Fielding again and asked him if the suspect was pictured in the throwdown. Twenty-two seconds after Machado had flipped the display over and revealed the faces, Fielding exclaimed, "I'd have to say number three." It was the photograph of Dayton Leroy Rogers.

  At 1:00 P.M., Detective John Turner, Deputy John Gilliland, and Clackamas County Deputy District Attorney Andy Eglitis arrived at 301 N.E. Knott Street in Portland, the offices of the Multnomah County medical examiner. They were there to attend the definitive autopsy of Jenny Smith, so far still known to them as their Jane Doe. Dr. Karen Gunson, a deputy state medical examiner, would conduct the procedure.

  After everyone was assembled in the room where Jenny's corpse lay on a stainless steel table, her hands wrapped in paper bags as a measure to preserve evidence, the room was darkened. A pathology technician slowly moved an ultraviolet light carefully over her body. The inside of her legs, particularly the thighs, and her breasts were meticulously examined for traces of semen and latent fingerprints. However, fifteen minutes later, the technician turned off the ultraviolet light and brought the room lights back up after finding neither. Fingernail scrapings were taken from both of Jenny's thumbs, but like Dayton Leroy Rogers, she had been a nail biter and her other fingernails were too short from which to obtain specimens.

  During the external examination, Dr. Gunson pointed out eleven knife wounds in Jenny's body, ten of which were very deep. Eight of the injuries were present on the front of her body, and three on her back side.

  Jenny had sustained slashing wounds to both of her breasts, one of which was a horizontally oriented stab wound that bisected the left nipple and extended into the lateral left areola. There were two deep stab wounds in her abdomen that pierced her stomach. She also had slash wounds on both of her hands that cut all the way to the bone, which Dr. Gunson described as defensive injuries caused when she had tried to wrest the knife blade from her attacker or otherwise tried to prevent him from stabbing her. She had also been stabbed at the base of her throat, where the neck joins the upper chest.

  After Jenny's body was opened with the usual Y-shaped incision, Dr. Gunson determined that a major artery on the left side of her chest had been severed and was the likely cause of death. A V-shaped wound on her back had pierced the liver, and Dr. Gunson explained that the V shape of the wound was probably the result of two stab wounds that had overlapped.

  Dr. Gunson also pointed out other wounds, including two quarter-inch-wide bruises around both of Jenny's wrists. She explained that the bruises were an indication that the victim had been tied up, perhaps with the shoe laces found at the crime scene, and that significant pressure would have to have been applied for such bruising to occur.

  Fingerprints and palm prints were obtained from their well-developed Jane Doe, as were samples of blood, urine, and head and pubic hair strands. Oral, anal, and vaginal swab specimens were also collected and would later be tested with acid phosphatase for the presence of semen. Each of the samples, along with the paper bags that had enclosed Jenny's hands, were retained by criminologist Gilliland.

  When Gilliland left the morgue, he went straight to the Portland Police Bureau's Identification Division in the towering downtown Justice Center building, carrying the victim's fingerprints. After he was properly checked in, the prints were classified and the search through the fingerprint files, often a lengthy process, commenced. As luck would have it, however, the search didn't take long this time. His Jane Doe was soon identified as Jennifer Lisa Smith, also known as Gypsy Roselyn Costello, date of birth November 14, 1961, making her twenty-five at the time of her death. According to her rap sheet, she was a prostitute.

  While Gilliland had been making the identification of their homicide victim in downtown Portland, Turner was in Oregon City at the Clackamas County District Attorney's Office, located in the courthouse, putting together an affidavit of probable cause for issuance of a search warrant. The effort took him the remainder of the afternoon.

  At 5:35 P.M., Turner presented the affidavit before Clackamas County Circuit Court Judge Patrick Gilroy, inside the judge's chambers. Gilroy read over the document, then promptly issued warrants to search Dayton Leroy Rogers's home, his place of business, pickup truck, and his person. The search warrants were served that evening, making it a long day for everyone involved.

  Among the items subsequently seized as evidence were the bandage wrappers, a hacksaw, and blood samples, all from Dayton's shop. From his home, the detectives took a pair of Texas brand boots from the rear bedroom closet; a pair of Levi's from the left side of his bed's headboard; a knife from a knife block in the kitchen; two knives from a bowl on the kitchen counter; and a box of Band-Aids from a cabinet near the kitchen stove.

  While Turner was executing the search warrants, first at Dayton's mobile home in Canby and then at his shop in Woodburn, and preparing to have Dayton's truck removed for searching, Detective Michael Machado read the warrant to search Dayton's person. Present at the procedure was Dayton; Machado; Dayton's attorney, Arthur Knauss; Deputy Larry Peck; and Corrections Corporal Mike Baumgartner. Two vials of blood were collected from Dayton, as were strands of his head and pubic hairs.

  Dayton's pickup truck believed to contain perhaps the most damning evidence associated with Jenny Smith's death, was removed from his shop an
d taken to a secure garage on the premises of the sheriff's office. Criminologist Robert Thompson of the Oregon State Police Crime lab, accompanied by Turner and Gilliland, went over the pickup later with much care and in great detail.

  During its processing, they lifted latent fingerprints from the pickup's right door and from the rear cargo area's top rail section of the bed. A black piece of weather strip with stains resembling blood was removed from the rear portion of the right door, just below the window frame. They also removed a pull handle from the right door, which contained bloodstains on the inner portion. Hair samples were removed from beneath the passenger seat, and separate vacuum sweepings were conducted from the right floorboard, right passenger seat area, left floorboard, and the left passenger seat area. A sample of the vehicle's antifreeze/coolant was removed from the radiator and placed in a glass evidence container. Criminologist Thompson also collected several samples of blood from the right passenger door and the passenger area, including beneath the floorboard. Gilliland noted and photographed numerous knife cuts and slashes on the upholstery, dashboard, and seat. He also found a small green plastic band in the bed of the pickup, similar to the anti-tampering devices found on plastic milk jugs and disposable fruit juice containers.

  As he left Dayton's pickup, something about the truck kept bothering Turner. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but he thought it was the color. Something in the back of his mind kept edging toward the surface, until finally he remembered the incident of July 7 involving Heather Brown. Could Dayton have been the one who had taken her into the woods and frightened her so badly that she had jumped from the speeding pickup? The truck Heather had described to Deputy Bill Strosser certainly seemed to fit. But Turner didn't have an adequate description of its driver, and he couldn't obtain one until he made contact with Heather. The log truck driver who helped Heather had only glimpsed the pickup's driver, so it wasn't likely that he would be a reliable witness. No, he had to talk to Heather. He had to find out if Dayton had been the alleged kidnapper, as much to clear the case as to satisfy his own curiosity.

  Prior to executing the search warrants, Turner had been delighted when informed that the Denny's parking lot victim had been identified. It was good luck that her identity had been made so quickly, especially since no documents had been found near her body, in her clothing, or anywhere else at the crime scene. Most times, he knew, when there is no identification on a homicide victim, establishing the identity can take considerably longer, often days, weeks, even months. Since identifying a victim often produces additional leads and evidence, it is, short of identifying and capturing a suspect, considered the cornerstone of an investigation. The case was indeed going well, reflected Turner after the search and seizures had been completed. Almost too well.

  Before calling it a day, Turner tapped into the National Crime Information Center's (NCIC) data banks to see what additional information, if any, he could learn about Jenny Smith. As the printout appeared, he found that she had a rap sheet for prostitution arrests and convictions longer than the Bill of Rights, not surprising for a person in her line of work. She had also been arrested on a charge of public indecency, specifically indecent exposure. The complaint was lodged after she was seen romping around the house naked with a male friend in front of open windows that faced a public street. She also had a list of aliases and false Social Security numbers too numerous to list. Her last known address was 1205 N.E. Roselawn Street in Portland, smack-dab in the heart of the City of Roses' "Crack Alley" and within walking distance to one of the city's notorious prostitution hot spots, Union Avenue. Turner guessed that Dayton must have picked her up somewhere on Union, and he decided that that would be the most logical place to check out next. He knew from prior experience that much could be learned from hookers and other street people, provided they were approached in a low-key manner and treated with respect.

  Because Jenny was a known prostitute, any other cop might have simply dismissed her murder by saying that such dangers go with the territory: "Tough luck, not much that we can do." After all, many cops subscribe to the notion that most homicide victims die by their environment, their lifestyles, and there's no question that prostitutes make themselves easy victims of opportunity. Right or wrong, statistics tend to validate such beliefs, making it understandable why policemen are sometimes reluctant to give such murders their undivided attention.

  But Turner couldn't brush this case off that easily. His main concern was for people, regardless of their class in life, which was why he became a cop in the first place. Jenny Smith had been a living human being, some mother's child and a mother to two small children herself. To have been killed with such unleashed savagery troubled Turner immensely. She shouldn't have had to die at age twenty-five, at least not that way. He wanted to make sure that he built as strong a case as possible against the man he believed killed her.

  There was another reason. Call it instinct, a cop's intuition, or whatever, something kept telling Turner that Jenny's killer had obtained great pleasure in his acts of violence, that he had committed such acts before. The injuries her killer had inflicted on her had been painful, excruciating, and unbearable, and seemed intended as an act of torture. Few killers, regardless of how violent they are, kill their victims so slowly and with such precision.

  And then there was that damned blue pickup that kept cropping up. Why did he keep thinking about it, unable to get it out of his mind? Was there another case besides Heather Brown's involving a blue pickup? He seemed to think so, since its description kept floating around in the farther reaches of his mind. Could there be others, victims like Jenny, that he knew nothing about? And if so, were their cases buried somewhere within some police agency's filing cabinets, their bodies unidentified as Jenny's had been?

  Jenny's murder could have been written up so neat and simple, and Turner could have forgotten it and gone on to the next case that came his way. But something kept telling him that he wasn't finished with this case, that he really wasn't seeing the big picture of it yet. And he also kept telling himself that nobody deserved to die at the hands of a brutal murderer. Nobody deserves that.

  Chapter 5

  It was 1:30 P.M. the next day, August 8, when detectives John Turner and James Strovink responded to the home of Barbara Smith, located in the 500 block of North Jarrett Street in Portland near "Crack Alley," in the middle of Portland's chapter of the Bloods' and Crips' gangland war zone. Neither detective had had much sleep, and they weren't particularly happy about being there. It was a neighborhood where it was not uncommon for the residents to dodge stray bullets from drive-by shootings and other instances of gang warfare that claim innocent people, including young children playing inside their homes, as victims of a growing and senseless violence. Turner and Strovink preferred the more civilized qualities of their own turf in the normally peaceful confines of Clackamas County, but they resigned themselves to the fact they had a job to do, and that job was to determine the truth behind the killing of Jenny Smith no matter where in Portland's seamier netherworld the case took them. After inviting them inside her home, Barbara Smith tearfully described herself as the mother of Jenny Smith's ex-husband and grandmother of Jenny's children.

  Smith, between sobs, told Turner and Strovink that she last saw Jenny at approximately 9:45 P.M. Thursday, August sixth, near Holiday Park Hospital. Jenny had asked her to drive her to that location because Jenny had left her car, a Honda Civic, there earlier when she couldn't get it started after apparently flooding the engine. Upon arrival, however, Jenny's car had started immediately. Prior to their leaving, the last thing Jenny said to Mrs. Smith was, "When the food stamps come, keep them for me, Grandma." Jenny followed her for a short distance as Smith drove toward home. Mrs. Smith said that the last time she saw Jenny was when Jenny waved goodbye to her near the intersection of Vancouver Avenue and Alberta Street.

  Smith told the detectives that her son, Frederick, Jenny's ex-husband, showed up at her home the next morning.
When he learned that Jenny hadn't returned to his mother's home to pick up her kids, he went out looking for her, to no avail. She apparently hadn't been to her own home, either, which she shared with Frederick despite the fact that they were divorced, and she wasn't working her usual corner where Northeast Union Avenue and Wygant Street intersect. Mrs. Smith described Jenny as a non-drinker and a nonsmoker and said that she abstained totally from drugs. She was a very quiet person, a loner, and never became rowdy. Mrs. Smith never knew Jenny to have been violent. The only "bad" thing that Jenny did, said Mrs. Smith, was to work the avenue as a prostitute.

  With the help of her "grandma" and other family members, Turner and Strovink traced Jenny's movements the last evening of her life to the home of a friend, Tina Hall,* at Northeast 7th Avenue and Skidmore Street. Jenny had been at Tina's residence with a black female, April Bowen,* who was known to work the streets with Jenny. They had arrived in Jenny's Honda, and both were joking and kidding around and seemed to have been in a good mood. According to Tina, Jenny had been dressed in blue jeans and a white T-shirt with blue sleeves. Jenny and April had departed Tina's home at approximately 12:30 A.M. after staying only fifteen minutes, and Tina didn't know where they were headed when they left.

  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.