Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer (34 page)

Sherry told Estes and Eglitis that Dayton had
never been violent with her. At the time she married him, she also
thought he was innocent of his past crimes. But, she admitted, she
had not known the whole story, either. She felt that communication
between them had been good until the past year, during which time
it had begun to deteriorate.

During the summer of 1987, she said, Dayton
had been going out a little more frequently, but Sherry could not
say precisely how often. She said she wouldn't be comfortable
saying whether it was one or two nights a week, or whatever. She
did say, however, that she had noticed that Dayton had been dead
tired for the two months prior to his arrest. She wasn't sure
why.

She said she never knew Dayton to use the
name Steve. They had gone to Reno, but always together. They
usually went there once a year.

In response to Estes's prompting, Sherry
reiterated during this conversation that she had never bled inside
Dayton's pickup, nor could she think of anyone who had. She
occasionally rode in the pickup, but it was seldom. She had never
noticed any cuts in the paneling, door liner, upholstery, or on the
seat. Basically, she said, they each used their own vehicle. If
they went someplace together, they usually went in her Honda.

When Dayton went out alone, he often wore
jeans or casual slacks with polo shirts or button-down shirts. He
had two pairs of western boots with pointed toes that he wore
often. One pair was seized during the execution of the search
warrant on their home, and she stated that she didn't know where he
kept the other pair.

"Did Dayton shower frequently?" asked
Estes.

"There were no unusual showers. Sometimes,
after work, when he came home hot and sweaty, he would shower. And
sometimes in the morning before he left for work."

"Did he ever do magic tricks for you?"

Sherry said that he did on occasion, but the
magic tricks never involved rope or the tying of knots. She never
noticed any wire or rope in Dayton's truck.

"Are you familiar with the Regency-Sheffield
brand kitchen knife?"

"No, I'm not."

To her knowledge, there were no knives
missing from their home, with the exception of the knives that had
been seized during the execution of the search warrant associated
with Jenny Smith's murder.

When asked whether she had ever gone fishing
with Dayton on the Molalla River, Sherry said that she had.
However, Dayton didn't go fishing frequently. When he did, it was
usually with someone other than herself. On the few occasions that
she had gone fishing with him, he had taken her to a location out
past Dickie Prairie, just off the Molalla Forest Road.

As Estes and Eglitis left the interview, each
suddenly realized just how big of a will-o'-the-wisp Dayton really
was. It was one thing to delude a street whore, but to mislead
one's own wife for years took a fair amount of skill and
manipulation. Not to mention cold-heartedness.

Turner and Estes re-interviewed several of
the Molalla forest victims' family members in an attempt to
determine what types of jewelry, if any, the victims might have
possessed at the time of their disappearance. It wasn't until they
reached Christine Adams's children, Floria, fourteen, and Tamera,
twelve, that they felt they had a link between one of the victim's
jewelry and that which had been in the bag inside Dayton's truck.
Both of the girls, observed the detectives, were still in a lot of
pain over the loss of their mother.

"Floria, do you know if your mother carried a
cigarette lighter?" asked Estes as gently as she knew how.

"Yes," said the girl. "It was a long silver
lighter with a unicorn on it. It had some turquoise on it,
too."

"What about other jewelry?" asked Estes.

"Mom wore rings." However, Floria was unable
to describe them, except to say that one may have had a
diamond.

When asked whether Christine wore earrings,
Floria said she believed her mother would have worn gold ones. She
was allergic to the other types of metals and could only wear gold.
She pointed out a dangly type earring in one of the photos Turner
had spread out on the table, but said she couldn't be sure if that
one was her mother's.

At one point Floria told Turner and Estes
that her mother usually wore faded blue jeans or black slacks. She
also had a pair of pink and white tennis shoes. When Turner asked
whether or not her mother ever wore clothing with decorative studs
or rhinestones, Floria said that she had. Her mother, she said, had
a pair of jeans with star-shaped studs, or grommets, that ran down
the side of the pants. When Turner pulled out a photograph of some
of the contents of Dayton's wood stove, Floria pointed out
star-shaped studs and said they were much like the ones she'd seen
on her mother's pants.

When Turner showed Floria and Tamera photos
of the jewelry they had discovered and believed to be related to
the case, the two girls pointed out a wedding set. They said their
mother had worn a wedding set with a diamond similar to the one in
the photograph. They stopped short of positively identifying the
ring as Christine's, although Floria was certain about the
star-shaped studs.

Chapter 25

There was a long line of people waiting to
get inside the courtroom presided by Clackamas County Circuit Court
Judge Patrick D. Gilroy on Thursday, February 4, 1988, well before
the 9 A.M. scheduled start of Dayton Leroy Rogers's trial for the
murder of Jenny Smith. Some of Dayton's relatives were there, as
were several members of Jenny Smith's family. But mostly there were
the curious, those who knew neither the suspect nor the victim but
merely wanted to experience the drama of one of the state's most
lurid murder trials.

There was a steady murmur as the spectators
filed in and took their seats. Moments later a sudden hushed
silence fell over the courtroom as Dayton was brought in through a
side door leading from a holding room. He walked slowly, as much
from the pace of the two armed deputies who walked on each side of
him as from the leg brace he wore to keep him from running should
he decide to bolt. He was seated next to his lawyer on the left
side of the courtroom, facing the judge's bench. He appeared calm,
stoic almost, as he stared at the yellow legal pad in front of him,
as if he were there to attend an informative lecture rather than to
fight for his life.

Following a number of legal formalities,
Deputy District Attorney Andrejs I. Eglitis addressed the jury with
his opening statements. He was dressed in a dark pinstripe suit,
and his lack of sleep from the late nights he had spent preparing
for the case was evident from the dark bags beneath his eyes, eyes
which would only grow more tired with each successive day.
Nonetheless, he faced the jury of five women and seven men and told
them that Dayton Rogers had murdered Jenny Smith by design,
following a pattern that he'd established with countless other
prostitutes. In a voice that was sometimes angry, sometimes soft,
but always to the point, Eglitis called Dayton a vicious predator
who killed for a sexual thrill.

"You'll find that the reason he went to
Portland was to satisfy what you will find to be his bizarre sexual
appetite," said Eglitis. "You'll find that his sexual appetite
included bondage, masturbation, and intent to inflict intense
physical pain."

Dayton's attorney, Arthur Knauss, countered
during his opening remarks by telling the jurors that they would
not like his client, but insisted that they were there to decide
whether what Dayton had done was tantamount to a criminal act.
Dayton had killed Jenny Smith all right, said Knauss. Nobody was
denying that fact. But he killed her by accident while defending
himself. They were not there in the courtroom, he stressed, to
judge Dayton's sexual mores.

Knauss maintained that Jenny had spotted more
than $200 in Dayton's wallet when they stopped at a convenience
store to buy orange juice, at which time she had made the decision
to rob the defendant at knife point at the appropriate moment. She
waited until later, until they had arrived at the GMAC parking lot,
had drunk some of the crudely mixed screwdrivers, and Dayton had
left the truck to urinate. At that time, contended Knauss, Jenny
pulled a knife from the glove compartment of Dayton's truck and
brought it up next to his throat, demanding his wallet. Dayton,
however, refused to hand over his wallet and a struggle followed,
which essentially turned into a wrestling match for the knife.
During the struggle Jenny Smith had been stabbed several times,
killed in the process purely by accident.

There it was, the preposterous claim of
self-defense. Eglitis had known that it was coming, and he had
prepared himself to accept that such a defense would be presented.
He couldn't believe it, but he accepted it. He knew he would
convince the jury otherwise. The evidence would show them the
truth.

One by one, the victims who had survived
Dayton's sadistic cruelty would tell the jurors exactly what they
had told the detectives: how they'd been bound and tortured for
hours on end. Other witnesses, including Michael Fielding, would
describe how they had heard Jenny Smith scream in intense pain for
at least two minutes before James Dahlke and Kurt Thielke found her
blood-covered naked body. And of course Richard Bergio would
testify how he chased Dayton Rogers's pickup in his own vehicle at
high speeds until he could get close enough to write down the
license plate number.

Would the jurors accept that an innocent man
would flee the scene of a death he had caused by defending his own
life? Eglitis didn't think so.

At one point, Eglitis had portions of
Dayton's pickup brought into the courtroom as exhibits.
Criminologists and detectives pointed out the evidence, mostly
blood, cut and slash marks, and fingerprints that had been found on
the pickup's door panels, door sill trays, seat frames, floor mats,
floor coverings, seat bolts, and the actual seat and frame. Some of
the fingerprints were Jenny's, and many of the bloodstains were
believed to have come from Jenny, Dayton, and others.

Dayton himself brazenly took the witness
stand, a maneuver that is seldom used in aggravated murder cases
because it affords the prosecution a chance to cross-examine the
witness, often drawing out testimony damaging to the defense in the
process.

In Dayton's version of the events of the
morning of August 7, he told the jurors how he had paid Jenny Smith
$40 for a sexual encounter that involved bondage. He explained that
when he got out of the truck to urinate, after having bound Jenny's
hands and feet with shoelaces, she slipped out of her bindings and
took a knife from the glove box.

"She attacked me when I got back inside the
truck," said Dayton.

Still nude, Jenny held the knife to his
throat and ordered him to give her his wallet, he said.

"Do it or die," he said Jenny told him.

He refused and fought back. Fearing for his
life, he said, he knocked her arm away and wrestled her for the
knife, which he eventually wrenched from her hands.

"I got ahold of it and used the knife on her.
I was just going back and forth in virtually any direction I
could," said Dayton. It was his explanation as to how Jenny had
received so many cuts. She eventually jumped from the truck, he
said, and he chased her across the parking lot. He eventually
grabbed her, and she fell to the pavement. That, he claimed, was
when he tripped over her.

"Both of our feet entangled," he said. "She
went down backward, and I fell down on top of her. On the way down,
that's when I stabbed her in the upper area here." He indicated the
right side of his chest, near the shoulder.

Eglitis showed the jurors the photographs of
Jenny's body, the ones that depicted the wounds that Dayton had
inflicted while supposedly defending himself. Dr. Karen Gunson,
deputy state medical examiner, explained each and every wound,
including the one that pierced Jenny's liver and severed one of her
major arteries. She also explained the torture wounds to Jenny's
breasts, and the defensive wounds Jenny received while attempting
to fight off her assailant.

Although it was stated in courtroom testimony
that Dayton was left-handed, the issue of whether he received the
wounds to his right hand from a hack saw, as he had said, or
whether they were incurred during his struggle with Jenny Smith,
was never fully cleared up.

Many people close to the case believed he was
ambidextrous, although it was never shown in court, and thought it
more likely that he had cut himself as he slashed at Jenny with the
knife in his left hand while trying to hold or subdue her with his
right hand.

"I know you find my client's contacts with
prostitutes vile and disgusting," said Knauss in his closing
arguments. "You have no sympathy for my client. I know you don't
like Mr. Rogers, and you don't like what he's done to these girls.
He's not here for a popularity contest. If he was going to go out
on one of his usual dates and torture and sexually abuse a woman,
where would he go? Would he go to one of the few establishments in
Clackamas County that's open at one or two in the morning?"

"He's raised self-defense in this case,"
argued Eglitis when it became his turn to summarize his side of the
case. "Self-defense against what? A naked, bleeding woman? The
defendant's claim of robbery is hogwash. Jenny Smith was naked. If
a prostitute is going to rob a customer, a john, she knows she's
got to get away. What is she supposed to have said? 'Mr. Rogers,
take the knife for a minute so I can get my clothes back on and get
away?'

"Jenny's screams were screams of intense
pain," continued Eglitis. "Pain so intense that through the closed
windows of a truck, Michael Fielding could hear that pain from his
apartment. It got him out of bed! Now, somehow Miss Smith frees
herself from her bonds and wants to escape. She's out of the truck,
and she's running for her life." Eglitis wanted to know how a man
chasing a naked woman, wounded and bleeding, can claim
self-defense.