Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer (7 page)

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 minutes 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, where 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.

Another witness, Kurt Thielke, had provided a
similar description of the suspect, but added that he had a square
build. Thielke had told Tutmark that the suspect was not fat or
muscular. He said he didn't think the suspect had any facial hair.
He remembered him as being clean-shaven.

As Tutmark was concluding his sketchy
briefing, Strovink found them and interrupted. A team of patrol
deputies, he said, had run the suspect vehicle's license number
through the Department of Motor Vehicles computer and had come up
with a name and address. The vehicle registered to license CYW 194
was a 1985 Nissan pickup, just like the witnesses had said, and the
registered owner's name was Dayton Leroy Rogers, date of birth
September 30, 1953. Motor Vehicles, said Strovink, had provided an
address of 10518 S. Heinz Road in Canby, a small town south of
Portland. To get there from the crime scene, Turner knew, all one
had to do was head due south on McLoughlin Boulevard, also known as
Highway 99E, the direction the suspect's vehicle was last seen
heading.

Turner welcomed the development, especially
so soon in the investigation. The lead was a luxury, he knew, the
type of clue that often only comes as a result of many interviews
and tedious hours, if at all. He only hoped that Richard Bergio had
written the number down correctly. Bergio had been adamant that he
had, said Strovink, who brought Bergio over to talk with Turner.
Bergio insisted to Turner that he had followed the suspect's truck
until he was certain that he had the complete plate number.