Speaker 1: Hey guys, it is Ryan. I'm not sure if you
Speaker 1: know this about me, but I'm a bit of a
Speaker 1: fun fanatic when I can. I like to work, but
Speaker 1: I like fun too. It's a thing. And now the
Speaker 1: truth is out there, I can tell you about my
Speaker 1: favorite place to have fun, Chumba Casino. They have hundreds
Speaker 1: of social casino style games to choose from, with new
Speaker 1: games released each week. You can play for free anytime, anywhere,
Speaker 1: and each day brings a new chance to collect daily bonuses.
Speaker 1: So join me and the fun. Sign up now at
Speaker 1: chumbacasino dot com.
Speaker 2: No we're necessary d where I lost Terms Conditions eighteen plus.
Speaker 3: With the Lucky land Slots, you can get lucky just
Speaker 3: about anywhere.
Speaker 4: It's your captain speaking. We've got clear runway and the
Speaker 4: weather's fine, but we're just gonna circle up here a
Speaker 4: while and get lucky. Oh no, nothing like that. It's
Speaker 4: just these cash prizes add up quick, so I suggest
Speaker 4: you sit back, keep your trade table up right, and
Speaker 4: start getting lucky.
Speaker 3: Play for free at Lucky Landslots dot com. Are you
Speaker 3: feeling lucky? No purchase necessary void We're prohibited by Law
Speaker 3: eighteen plus. Terms and conditions apply See website Ford.
Speaker 1: Lot Talk Radian.
Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Night Stalker BTK.
Speaker 5: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 5: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 5: your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 6: Good Evening. Dayton Leroy Rogers was known in Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 6: as a respected businessman and devoted husband and father. But
Speaker 6: at night he abduct did women, forced them into sadistic
Speaker 6: bondage games, and thrilled in their pain, terror, and mutilation.
Speaker 6: His murderous spree was stopped only after in plain View,
Speaker 6: he slashed to death his final victim, and when a
Speaker 6: hunter accidentally stumbled onto the burial grounds of seven other
Speaker 6: women Rogers had killed one by one in the depths
Speaker 6: of the Malaala Forest, police realized that they were dealing
Speaker 6: with a serial killer whose blood lust knew no bounds.
Speaker 6: This is the shocking true story of the horrifying crimes, capture,
Speaker 6: and conviction of Dayton Leroy Rogers, Oregon's mild mannered businessman
Speaker 6: by day, vicious serial killer by night. The book that
Speaker 6: we're profiling the seating is blood Lust, Portrait of a
Speaker 6: Serial sex Killer, with my special guest, journalist and author
Speaker 6: Gary C. King. Welcome back to the program, and thank
Speaker 6: you for agreeing to this interview. Gary C. King.
Speaker 7: Thanks Dan, it's good to be I like your show
Speaker 7: a lot.
Speaker 6: Well, it's great to have you back. So that works
Speaker 6: out good for everyone, including our esteemed audience. So now,
Speaker 6: as we spoke before just before the program, here, this
Speaker 6: is a book that came out twenty years ago. So
Speaker 6: tell us now, this true crime classic Bloodlust. Tell us exactly,
Speaker 6: without giving anything really too much away, how it came
Speaker 6: to be that you wrote this book Bloodlust? Was it
Speaker 6: your idea, the publisher's idea? How did you come to this?
Speaker 6: How did it come to your attention? Tells us a
Speaker 6: little bit about how you came to write Bloodlust.
Speaker 7: Well, at that time in my writing career, I was
Speaker 7: still writing for the detective magazines and I wanted very
Speaker 7: much to break out from that and explore books. This
Speaker 7: was my first book, and well therefore it was my
Speaker 7: choice to write about this particular case. There were a
Speaker 7: lot of women at the time going missing, and you know,
Speaker 7: there was a true mystery going on, was what was
Speaker 7: happening to Portland's prostitutes. They were just disappearing. And I thought, well,
Speaker 7: this looks like a really good possibility, because it sure
Speaker 7: seems like there's a serial killer at work here, and
Speaker 7: so I followed it. I just followed the story for
Speaker 7: a long time, and as time went on, the case,
Speaker 7: of course, became more and more interesting as the cops,
Speaker 7: in fact, you know, determined that there was a serial
Speaker 7: killer and they began developing the case. But it turned
Speaker 7: out that it was It was my idea, was my
Speaker 7: choice to write about it, and I had lots of
Speaker 7: cooperation from the cops in this case, which we can
Speaker 7: get into and I can tell you about if you're interested. Absolutely,
Speaker 7: But that's how it got started. And then came the
Speaker 7: famous one hundred and sixty page proposal. I never had
Speaker 7: written a book proposal before in the book proposal after.
Speaker 6: The book, but yeah, proction.
Speaker 7: And Michael Hamilton, then at that time at Penguin Books,
Speaker 7: decided she wanted it for their new American Library imprint,
Speaker 7: and so she snapped it up and I worked with
Speaker 7: her for the next six months or so in developing
Speaker 7: the rest of it into a book.
Speaker 6: And she went on to Kensington Press and that's more
Speaker 6: on the story.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, she is. She's actually been over there for
Speaker 7: years now. Yeah, I'm very happy there with her True
Speaker 7: Crime division.
Speaker 6: Absolutely. Now, tell us a little bit about I thought
Speaker 6: this a very fascinating to to put in perspective. Very
Speaker 6: much like Canada, the US is even more known for
Speaker 6: it seems to be one of the coasts. Even more
Speaker 6: evidence of serial killers in on the West coast for
Speaker 6: some reason. And Oregon and that area Portland, Washington. Anyway,
Speaker 6: tell us a little bit about the history of some
Speaker 6: of the famous and not so famous serial killers from
Speaker 6: this area. Tell us about Brudos and up to the
Speaker 6: Green River Killer, which I thought was very interesting.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we know that the Pacific Northwest, particularly the Seattle area,
Speaker 7: it was the stomping grounds of Ted Bundy and that
Speaker 7: went on for a long time. And of course there
Speaker 7: was Jerome Brudos. He operated out of Oregon and was
Speaker 7: not as as big or well known as some of
Speaker 7: the other serial killers, but just as vicious and savage
Speaker 7: as as they were. He liked, you know, collect trophies
Speaker 7: like breasts and feet and things like that. But he uh,
Speaker 7: he he was, you know, fairly big in the news,
Speaker 7: uh when when these things were coming out. But uh,
Speaker 7: but then we've got you know, people like Wesley Alan
Speaker 7: Dodd came from that area. He was headline news for ages.
Speaker 7: Uh you know, child killer, pedophile.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 7: And then uh the I five killer, Randall Woodfield, probably
Speaker 7: less well known, but uh nonetheless an interesting, interesting character
Speaker 7: from from that area.
Speaker 2: Then.
Speaker 7: Uh, in the mystery the Green River Killer, you know
Speaker 7: that went on for good how many decades it seemed
Speaker 7: like before uh where they found Gary Ridgeway.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I found it interesting in your book is that
Speaker 6: obviously if people had bought the book twenty years ago,
Speaker 6: they would have The Green River Killer was not identified
Speaker 6: at that time.
Speaker 7: That's true. Yeah, I allude to him a few times
Speaker 7: in the opening passages because he was still out there
Speaker 7: operating at the time, and there were times when people
Speaker 7: thought that Rogers may have been somehow linked to that case.
Speaker 7: But you know, of course that history turned out not
Speaker 7: to be the situation.
Speaker 6: Now in the subject of this story, or the location
Speaker 6: of this story is Portland, Oregon, and we have this
Speaker 6: you paint again very vivid portrayal of this area and
Speaker 6: the people that inhabit it, this eighty second Avenue, and
Speaker 6: you get the rationale why these people would operate not downtown,
Speaker 6: but more so in this area. And then you introduced
Speaker 6: the character Tracy Baxter. Tell us about Portland, Oregon at
Speaker 6: that time in the late eighties and this area and
Speaker 6: specifically and take us back and paint a portrait of
Speaker 6: this very different slice of life at that time.
Speaker 7: Well, as you know, in any any major city, there
Speaker 7: there's always going to be pockets of prostitution in a
Speaker 7: particular area. And in Portland, for instance, Northeast Union Avenue
Speaker 7: was well known for prostitution, and in fact, it was
Speaker 7: so well known that the residents they're often referred to
Speaker 7: it as prostitute Row. But it wasn't the only area.
Speaker 7: You know, there were parts of Southeast Union Avenue, you know,
Speaker 7: going all the way out to the Milwaukee, Oregon area,
Speaker 7: and of course eighty second Avenue, perhaps because of its
Speaker 7: proximity to the airport. I don't know for sure that
Speaker 7: it seems reasonable because it's a busy boulevard, you know,
Speaker 7: plenty of opportunity for hookers and john's to do their work,
Speaker 7: make their connections. But but those were the main areas
Speaker 7: at that time. I've been away from there for quite
Speaker 7: a wile, so I don't know what's going on with
Speaker 7: there right now. But eighty second Avenue Southeast, eighty second
Speaker 7: Avenue was probably just as popular for prostitution and john
Speaker 7: activity as was Northeast Portland.
Speaker 6: Now you introduced this very crucial character in this story,
Speaker 6: and the amazing access you have to this story is
Speaker 6: really the gift of this book because it explains how
Speaker 6: on earth this could actually happen, because without this information
Speaker 6: you have a lot more questions than answers, and this
Speaker 6: is really takes you to the heart of the matter. Now,
Speaker 6: you introduced this Tracy Baxter, barely sixteen, young, batite, good looking,
Speaker 6: in fit with a boy friend that you know is
Speaker 6: her pimp slash boyfriend. Introduced Tracy Baxter and and her
Speaker 6: pimp boyfriend and sort of the rationale for what she's
Speaker 6: doing at this time in her life.
Speaker 7: And your question is, well, just.
Speaker 6: To just tell us about the what she was doing
Speaker 6: at this age, at this age doing this. I mean,
Speaker 6: obviously you explained how the boyfriend explains that we need
Speaker 6: some money, honey, and so, but that's how you introduce
Speaker 6: the character of.
Speaker 7: The typical, typical teenager, you know, skipping school or not
Speaker 7: going to school, or whatever the case may be. The
Speaker 7: the situation was simply that, you know, she needed money
Speaker 7: and this was a quick way for her to turn
Speaker 7: a buck. And a lot of other girls got into
Speaker 7: the same situation as Tracy, which is not her real name,
Speaker 7: but it's just the youthful age of the girls seemed
Speaker 7: to be a recurring pattern. Rogers seemed to like them
Speaker 7: young when he could get them, you know, at that
Speaker 7: age that oftentimes he had to settle, you know for
Speaker 7: older women, the more mature prostitutes, but most of them
Speaker 7: were supporting drug habits. Many of them were supporting the
Speaker 7: drug habits of their pimps slash boyfriends. And that was
Speaker 7: a recurring theme over and over. It was just life
Speaker 7: on the streets of Portland or any other major city
Speaker 7: for that matter, where you have this kind of activity,
Speaker 7: and it makes people like Tracy, you know, a perfect
Speaker 7: right victim for people like Rogers. I mean, they're out there,
Speaker 7: they're in the open, they're taking risks that they probably
Speaker 7: know that they shouldn't be taking. And of course people
Speaker 7: like Dayton Rogers, you know, knew this so easy victim
Speaker 7: for someone like Rogers.
Speaker 6: What I found very interesting was this the pimp the boyfriend,
Speaker 6: and her mission was to go out on the streets
Speaker 6: and make enough money, she said, for a couple of
Speaker 6: days worth of motel food, crack, cocaine and alcohol, and so,
Speaker 6: you know, four or five hundred dollars. And so you
Speaker 6: even described basically around the FETI was sixteen. Because she
Speaker 6: was good looking, sometimes she would make eighty dollars. But
Speaker 6: on this particular night that she's hitchhiking, it's raining. Now
Speaker 6: what I found most interesting is that she had been
Speaker 6: warned about, you know, this blue She had a description
Speaker 6: of the vehicle of a guy that maybe you can
Speaker 6: tell us what that description was that warning. And then
Speaker 6: also what I found interesting was that you point out
Speaker 6: that maybe the reason why, or the reason why the
Speaker 6: boyfriend said that they should go to eighty second Avenue
Speaker 6: was because the real freaks, the anima guys, the thestality guys,
Speaker 6: the the torture guys. I couldn't believe this, were actually
Speaker 6: more known to be those kinds of clients downtown. Tell
Speaker 6: us a little bit more about about this.
Speaker 7: Well, you know, naturally, they they couldn't see more than
Speaker 7: two or three days into their futures, and that it
Speaker 7: counts for a lot of their thinking. They're mainly just
Speaker 7: thinking about getting by for the next day or two,
Speaker 7: and it includes their their drug and alcohol habits. But
Speaker 7: that you're right, there were certain areas where certain types
Speaker 7: of johns, for lack of a better word, you know,
Speaker 7: they would frequent And while I may not know them
Speaker 7: off the top of my head, my research into the
Speaker 7: book showed me that many of the prostitutes working the
Speaker 7: various areas knew at least a little bit about the
Speaker 7: kinds of guys who frequented a certain area, such as
Speaker 7: the you know, the enema freak or the bondage freak,
Speaker 7: or the violent ones. And at this particular time, and
Speaker 7: I think this is what you might have been referring to,
Speaker 7: as there were warnings out to the girls among themselves
Speaker 7: and you know, among others, just people on the street
Speaker 7: to watch out for this man named Steve the Gambler,
Speaker 7: and he'd drove a you know, little blue Nissan pickup
Speaker 7: and he had been known to be violent with his
Speaker 7: with his dates, and so the warnings were out there
Speaker 7: that yet people the women that they kept taking chances
Speaker 7: suppose out of desperation. I mean, you and I. It's
Speaker 7: harder for us to fathom what would drive people to
Speaker 7: go to these lengths or to take such risks. But
Speaker 7: you know, it's well documented the fact that they do,
Speaker 7: and it's sad.
Speaker 6: What I found fascinating was that they had give a
Speaker 6: good description of the vehicle pretty well, because when Tracy
Speaker 6: actually did see it, she at least recognized that memory
Speaker 6: of Okay, here's the description of that vehicle from this
Speaker 6: kind of guy, and then the description of the guy.
Speaker 6: But didn't anybody give her a physical description of the guy.
Speaker 6: I thought that was odd.
Speaker 7: There weren't the physical descriptions that were going around in
Speaker 7: the early days, which would have included when Tracy had
Speaker 7: her encounter with Rogers. They were very limited descriptions. They
Speaker 7: were very vague, very general. They knew they were looking
Speaker 7: for a you know, a white guy, seemed you know, reasonable,
Speaker 7: seemed to have manners, soft spoken sort of individual. But
Speaker 7: that's about all they really had to go on. You know, blondish,
Speaker 7: brown hair, the sort of thing. Now, if somebody had
Speaker 7: come out, come forward and said, hey, he kind of
Speaker 7: looked a little bit like John Ritter, you know, that
Speaker 7: would have helped mentally, you know, especially at that stage
Speaker 7: of Dayton's life, because there is a resemblance there, but
Speaker 7: nobody did that.
Speaker 6: Unfortunately, there was one particular other than well i'll give
Speaker 6: i'll give it away bondage, but there was one other
Speaker 6: particular fetish that there was quite unique that it becomes
Speaker 6: important a little bit later.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: That was the feet.
Speaker 7: The feet, Oh yeah, the feet, yeah, paramount, I mean,
Speaker 7: it was always the feet with him.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I don't know how much you want to get into
Speaker 7: that here, but.
Speaker 6: Well we will eventually.
Speaker 7: Yeah, was just unbelievable.
Speaker 6: But what I found interesting was that she was this
Speaker 6: tracy though at sixteen years old, was actually warned that
Speaker 6: he sometimes liked to get violently, like you said, but
Speaker 6: he also like knives and off and cut his dates.
Speaker 6: And when we're talking about desperate even I am kind
Speaker 6: of shocked at this that really people were warned like
Speaker 6: that and still took a chance. I mean, even I'm sorry.
Speaker 7: Yeah me too, But I think it really boils down
Speaker 7: to this, it'll never happen to me syndrome. This sort
Speaker 7: of thing. Now, they know it's out there, they hear
Speaker 7: about it, they see it, but it's not going to
Speaker 7: happen to me. It happened to the other person. You know,
Speaker 7: I really believe that there was a major part of it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and you explain that too. Now, now, tell us
Speaker 6: about go back to the this amazing event with Tracy hitchhiking.
Speaker 6: It's it's March, it's a little bit cold, it's it's rainy.
Speaker 6: She's dressed real scantily, so she's not got too much clothing,
Speaker 6: and she wants she's just been out for ten minutes
Speaker 6: or so, and she has sort of a mindset. Take
Speaker 6: us back where you take the reader to what she's
Speaker 6: doing and what happens that evening.
Speaker 7: Well, she's out, you know, exposed to the march weather
Speaker 7: for one thing, and in the Pacific Northwest that's not
Speaker 7: you know, very very nice weather. And she was out
Speaker 7: showing her skin and you know the passion paint anklets
Speaker 7: if I remember correctly, And and she was basically out
Speaker 7: showing off her wares to try to attract some business.
Speaker 7: And the best way she knew how was to dress
Speaker 7: that way into you know, act as young as possible
Speaker 7: and see how many people she could attract, how many
Speaker 7: guys you know from the street. Sure, and uh, it
Speaker 7: was just a typical night for her, probably a pretty
Speaker 7: typical night for for Dayton too, as far as that goes.
Speaker 7: But but uh, anyway, that's what she was doing. She uh,
Speaker 7: she was just out work in the streets and and
Speaker 7: she liked to hang around the Hamburger joined out there
Speaker 7: to Bob's Big Boy restaurant. I don't think there are
Speaker 7: too many of those around anymore. But uh, anyway, I
Speaker 7: don't know how much you want me to get into that.
Speaker 7: I mean, I I think that that pretty much covers
Speaker 7: what she was doing to set up her evening. She
Speaker 7: she just wanted to make sure that they had the money,
Speaker 7: her and her boyfriend, you know, to to take care
Speaker 7: of their drugs and alcohol in the room for a while,
Speaker 7: and and uh, at one point, Steve the Gambler pulled up.
Speaker 6: In his blue pickup truck.
Speaker 7: Yeah. Yeah, and you know, had a likable face. He was,
Speaker 7: like I said before, he was soft spoken, kind of
Speaker 7: mild mannered personality until he you know, worked himself into
Speaker 7: one of his frenzies. And that was a different matter.
Speaker 7: But she must have trusted him because she certainly you know,
Speaker 7: got into the truck with him. And then when she
Speaker 7: did that. Of course, it was all downhill until until
Speaker 7: she managed to get away.
Speaker 6: Now let's not let's not skip over that, because that
Speaker 6: tells us a lot about what happened to the people
Speaker 6: that didn't get away, because we'll never be able to
Speaker 6: tell that story. Yeah, so the thing is with with him.
Speaker 6: She what you'd said in the book was that she
Speaker 6: noticed the blue truck and it fit the description. But
Speaker 6: again she's, well, it might not be, she rationalized, because
Speaker 6: she needed the money. She didn't want to be out
Speaker 6: that long. Again, just not thinking too far ahead. She was.
Speaker 6: She was barely sixteen years old, so she got He
Speaker 6: seemed to be uh normal, good looking, soft spoken, like
Speaker 6: you said, he got into the vehicle. How did it?
Speaker 6: How did this date proceed?
Speaker 7: Well, they wrote along for a while. I think they discussed,
Speaker 7: you know, the date that at one point, and probably
Speaker 7: arrived at the price and and you know, I think
Speaker 7: his his quietness eventually began to bother her. But you know, nonetheless,
Speaker 7: you know, she stuck with it for a while. And
Speaker 7: again she's not believing that something's you know, bad, you know,
Speaker 7: is about to happen to her. But then he very
Speaker 7: bluntly at you know, at one point told her that
Speaker 7: he wanted to see her feet. He wanted to look
Speaker 7: at her feet, and you know, she's thinking that it's
Speaker 7: a strange request when he, you know, tells her that he,
Speaker 7: you know, she needs to take off her shoes and
Speaker 7: and but she did, you know, what she was told,
Speaker 7: and she was paying attention to him, noticing that he
Speaker 7: was getting, you know, aroused by by what she was doing.
Speaker 7: And uh, you know, it was the nature of the business. So,
Speaker 7: you know, the day goes on, and you know, he
Speaker 7: he pushes some his trademark drink of of orange juice
Speaker 7: and vodka, you know, typical screwdriver on her cause it's
Speaker 7: easy to carry, easy to mix, easy to dispose of
Speaker 7: because he used the little airline type bo vodka, the
Speaker 7: type of orange juice purchased at a like a seven
Speaker 7: eleven or the other convenience store. And he used the alcohol,
Speaker 7: I think as much to make himself relax more as
Speaker 7: much as he did to to try and loosen up,
Speaker 7: you know, the girls. But like I said, I don't
Speaker 7: know if I should have thought it was his trademark
Speaker 7: because that's kind of revealing. But yeah, I've said it. There,
Speaker 7: it's done.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, you know, now she has her she has
Speaker 6: her doubts when first with the vehicle a little bit.
Speaker 6: Then then when he talks about the feet, but then
Speaker 6: he sort of seems to be he doesn't precede anything violent,
Speaker 6: it seems, wants to drink some alcohol. Then he negotiates
Speaker 6: with her that he says, listen, I only got forty
Speaker 6: bucks and some alcohol. And right away she's not even
Speaker 6: used to making that much money. She agrees to it. Now,
Speaker 6: what is his idea? And how do they get to Malalla?
Speaker 6: So how does it? How does the this date go
Speaker 6: that she what happens.
Speaker 7: Well, the the southeast part of the city where they're at,
Speaker 7: you know, off of the eighty second is is kind
Speaker 7: of heading in that direction anyway, you know, towards the
Speaker 7: Malala Forest. They're in the vicinity already, right, so they
Speaker 7: just have to drive a few more miles down the
Speaker 7: road and get off the freeway and there they are,
Speaker 7: you know, deep in the in the Malala forests. So
Speaker 7: that that really didn't take very long. Excuse me, but
Speaker 7: he had he had kind of a little bit of
Speaker 7: a route that, you know, that he liked to use,
Speaker 7: and I think it becomes somewhat apparent is as the
Speaker 7: reader you know, delves into the book that uh. But uh, anyway,
Speaker 7: they drink their vodka and agree on their their date
Speaker 7: and they they had the Milala Forest road and and
Speaker 7: they turn off they park, and at some point he
Speaker 7: tells her to get her you know, all of her
Speaker 7: clothes off, to get completely undressed, and uh and uh
Speaker 7: she agrees, and uh she hasks for the money first.
Speaker 7: But uh I at some point, you know, he he
Speaker 7: he brings bondage into the situation as he's looking at her,
Speaker 7: you know, a youthful naked body that uh, he's obviously fantasizing,
Speaker 7: probably recalling something that he had done previously with someone else.
Speaker 7: And uh, you know, bondage gets brought up and and
Speaker 7: uh and the feet thing and and and uh you
Speaker 7: know it says that he actually tells her that that's
Speaker 7: the only way that that he can do it is
Speaker 7: he ties her up and plays with her feet and
Speaker 7: basically masturbates, and and uh she says she feels like
Speaker 7: that she can handle that, and and uh, I guess
Speaker 7: it goes on from there. But you know, when she
Speaker 7: she got into the restraints, she started complaining that they
Speaker 7: were too tight and and uh, he gets angry and
Speaker 7: tells her she agreed to do it, and and uh,
Speaker 7: you know, so forth, Uh it's almost like he w
Speaker 7: he was I don't know, he was no longer the
Speaker 7: nice guy. His personality was changing. Yeah, and she was
Speaker 7: becoming more and more scared and uh, but again she
Speaker 7: was one of the lucky ones. And you know, she
Speaker 7: complained and she fought with him, and and you know,
Speaker 7: he tells her to fight as much as she wants
Speaker 7: and nobody will hear her in the forest. And then
Speaker 7: he he goes on and starts talking about some woman
Speaker 7: that that he knew before, Maureen, and he's like, it's definitely,
Speaker 7: you know, fantasy if you as you know from studying
Speaker 7: this kind of work, serial killers typically like to relive
Speaker 7: what they've done over and over and over, and he
Speaker 7: apparently was doing reliving his experience with Tracy using another victim, Maureene.
Speaker 7: And she she comes into play later on in the book.
Speaker 7: It's not clear at this stage that that's who he's
Speaker 7: talking about, but it becomes clearer later on, I believe.
Speaker 7: And anyway, he gets violent with her. He starts biting her,
Speaker 7: you know, biting her her feet, I believe, and she
Speaker 7: screams that him and tells him that it wasn't part
Speaker 7: of the the deal and that he needs to back
Speaker 7: off basically, And and uh, he really put fear into
Speaker 7: her when he pulled the kitchen knife, you know, out
Speaker 7: of his glove compartment and uh he held it you know,
Speaker 7: next to her, next to her body, and uh that
Speaker 7: I mean he threatened at that point he was gonna
Speaker 7: he wanted to cut off her breasts, and she basically
Speaker 7: fought back and told him that there was no way
Speaker 7: that that he was going to cut off her breasts.
Speaker 7: And I believe that her action of fighting back with
Speaker 7: him and trying to take control of the situation at
Speaker 7: least as best she could, might have shocked him back
Speaker 7: into reality enough to where he was no longer either
Speaker 7: not in the mood to go through with what he
Speaker 7: had planned, or it had scared him out of being
Speaker 7: in the mood to carry on with what he had planned.
Speaker 7: But for whatever a reason, her standing up to him,
Speaker 7: uh calls him to back down, and he ended up,
Speaker 7: you know, letting her go.
Speaker 6: This is this is a we we don't want to
Speaker 6: I don't want to underestimate how powerful this this scene
Speaker 6: in your book is how powerful it is for that woman.
Speaker 6: I was totally totally taken aback. This woman at some
Speaker 6: point figures, listen, I I I'm hoping I can get
Speaker 6: out of this. I've been optimistic so far. Maybe if
Speaker 6: I go along with this guy, because he's changed his
Speaker 6: personality radically to listen, bitch, and he's got her, he's
Speaker 6: got her hog tiede and face down, and he's, uh,
Speaker 6: he's not entering her nicely, and he's well endowed, and
Speaker 6: he's mean and uh, and it seems like he's reveling
Speaker 6: in any kind of pain and any kind of blood,
Speaker 6: the sight of blood, and so he's, uh, she's really afraid,
Speaker 6: and so we don't underestimate that fear. And then he says, listen,
Speaker 6: there's only two ways out of here. Either I'm gonna
Speaker 6: carve I'm gonna cut both your breasts off, or I'm
Speaker 6: gonna I'm gonna strangle you. And then she mustered up
Speaker 6: this at least because she couldn't move, she said, well,
Speaker 6: you're gonna have to kill me. She yelled at him,
Speaker 6: You're gonna have to kill me because you're not going
Speaker 6: to carve me up. And I was blown away on
Speaker 6: how how powerful that was from this woman to be
Speaker 6: able to you know, crack this mind of this guy
Speaker 6: at that point. It's very important. We'll talk about this
Speaker 6: this point in time, how important that is and hurt
Speaker 6: obvious being able to escape. So tell us now more
Speaker 6: about he puts her, she puts him in his place.
Speaker 6: How does it come that he thinks, geez, despite what
Speaker 6: I've done to her, despite what she's gone through and
Speaker 6: seen witnessed, I can let her go. Tell us about that.
Speaker 7: Well, it would really be just you know, supposition on
Speaker 7: my part more than anything, because you know, the fact
Speaker 7: is that he he did let her go, whether it
Speaker 7: was out of fear or whether he felt sorry for her.
Speaker 7: I you know, I I have no way of knowing
Speaker 7: what the reason was, other than the course, it has
Speaker 7: been twenty years since I wrote the book.
Speaker 6: It just.
Speaker 7: It just seems like he had a he lost his edge,
Speaker 7: he lost the edge that he had with his victim,
Speaker 7: and when he realized that he he he just let
Speaker 7: her go. I mean I he he probably at some
Speaker 7: point knew that his impending doom was, you know, out there,
Speaker 7: that he would eventually get caught. No matter what. He
Speaker 7: must have thought about it, but in this particular instance,
Speaker 7: why let go of a pert, you know, potential witness.
Speaker 7: It could be that he felt like that she just
Speaker 7: wouldn't tell, or that they would never connect because a
Speaker 7: lot of these a lot of these girls never did
Speaker 7: tell the police until later.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, I mean it seems that and again it
Speaker 6: might be it might just be what I haven't feared
Speaker 6: from it is that any kind of previous attacks will
Speaker 6: say or this kind of behavior was never reported. It
Speaker 6: was reported among the women, but who, like you stayed
Speaker 6: in the book, these people aren't going to go because
Speaker 6: they likely have warrants. And that's why Tracy was hesitant
Speaker 6: to warrants, the police not caring much anyway, thinking it's
Speaker 6: just a date gone bad. So again, that kind of
Speaker 6: information probably floats among the women to the point where
Speaker 6: there's no use, you know. So you've stated in the
Speaker 6: book that he likely knew that as well. But what
Speaker 6: I found was fascinating was that that he you kind
Speaker 6: of maybe I read more into it, that he lost
Speaker 6: his enjoyment right there. There was sort of an edge
Speaker 6: of fantasy and excitement, but it's sort of got drained
Speaker 6: out of him. It was no more enjoyment at that point.
Speaker 7: Well, yeah, I believe that that was true. Part of
Speaker 7: the thrill, part of the sexual thrill, was his dominance
Speaker 7: over her, and suddenly he had lost that. And that's
Speaker 7: like almost like sticking a you know, a ten in
Speaker 7: a balloon. I mean, it was just popped. He just
Speaker 7: you know, kind of lost where to go because that
Speaker 7: was his modus operandi, and that's just the way he operated.
Speaker 7: He liked to do it that way, and that's the
Speaker 7: way he got off on committing his crimes. And suddenly
Speaker 7: here was this woman who.
Speaker 6: Now you would think that most people, most people would
Speaker 6: go to the police. So she didn't go to the police.
Speaker 6: She must have told her did she tell her boyfriend?
Speaker 6: I mean, what about she must have warned the other women?
Speaker 6: Tell us what happened after.
Speaker 7: I'm trying to remember back if she did go to
Speaker 7: the police, it was it was a little bit later.
Speaker 6: Maybe it wasn't initially.
Speaker 7: No, yeah, I don't believe it was right away. No,
Speaker 7: I know, I know Detective Turner did find out about
Speaker 7: her later. But I thought I knew those frontwards and backwards.
Speaker 6: But it so Yeah, now she she bumps into a
Speaker 6: person that's known on the street that's working the streets
Speaker 6: as well, a co worker named Mo. And while Mo
Speaker 6: is giving her some hard luck story, she realized she
Speaker 6: tells her about She tells Mo about her experience with Steve,
Speaker 6: and tell us about that conversation between the two.
Speaker 7: Well, she Mo basically once she heard that Tracy had,
Speaker 7: you know, had this encounter with Rogers or Steve the
Speaker 7: Gambler as he was known, she she basically said that,
Speaker 7: you know, she wouldn't have anything to do with him anymore,
Speaker 7: and you know this has been I don't know, she
Speaker 7: Mo had gone out on a few dates with Rogers.
Speaker 7: And it becomes clearer as you get into the book.
Speaker 3: And wait the Lucky Landslide. You can get lucky just
Speaker 3: about anywhere.
Speaker 4: It's your captain speaking. We've got clear runway and the
Speaker 4: weather's fine, but we're just going to circle up here
Speaker 4: a while and get lucky. No, no, nothing like that.
Speaker 4: It's just these cash prizes add up quick. So I
Speaker 4: suggest you sit back, keep your trade table up right,
Speaker 4: and start getting lucky.
Speaker 3: Play for free at Lucky landslipes dot com. Are you
Speaker 3: feeling lucky? No purchase necessary void. We're prohibited by Law
Speaker 3: eighteen plus terms and conditions apply. See website for details.
Speaker 2: Judy was boring Hello. Then Judy discovered chumpacasino dot com.
Speaker 2: It's my little escape. Now Judy is the life of
Speaker 2: the party. Oh baby, mama is bringing home the bacon. WHOA,
Speaker 2: Take it easy, Judy. The chumb of life is for everybody.
Speaker 2: So go to chumpacasino dot com and play over one
Speaker 2: hundred casino style games. Join today and play for free
Speaker 2: for your chance to redeem some serious prices. Jump chump
Speaker 2: a casino dot com.
Speaker 6: No necessary point.
Speaker 2: We're promitted by eighteen plus terms and conditioned to ply
Speaker 2: see what severe details and.
Speaker 7: With the interviews with the various prostitutes. But she just
Speaker 7: basically gave her a word of warning, you know, to
Speaker 7: stay the hell away from yim if he ever she
Speaker 7: ever came, you know, into you encountered him again. She
Speaker 7: recognized him as dangerous. She, you know, her mo herself,
Speaker 7: was not going to have anything else to do with him.
Speaker 7: But I don't know when her actions or when her
Speaker 7: business actually ended with Rogers. It must have been, you know,
Speaker 7: when he killed her. I'm going to have to be
Speaker 7: her final. I mean that's obvious, you know that it
Speaker 7: was her final thing. But whether or not there were
Speaker 7: many encounters as opposed to just a few between Marine
Speaker 7: and Rogers from the time that Marine was finding out
Speaker 7: about what she was hearing on the streets. It's probably
Speaker 7: anybody's guess. I would just be you know, give me
Speaker 7: a conjecture at this point.
Speaker 6: Yeah. What I found incredible is that Tracy doesn't really
Speaker 6: make the connection between Moe and Maureen, despite the name.
Speaker 6: So they have the conversation wherein Maureen warns Tracy, who
Speaker 6: you know, was already warned before by someone, maybe even
Speaker 6: somebody like Maureen, who had told someone else this is remarkable.
Speaker 6: So she rewarns Tracy and states her own experience of
Speaker 6: having gone on the dates with this freakazoid. And then
Speaker 6: she goes on more dates with the guy, even though
Speaker 6: she tells hers, listen, if you even bump into the guy,
Speaker 6: call the cops if you have to. And then Maureen
Speaker 6: goes back on dates with this guy. Now, before we
Speaker 6: go any further, we introduce this. We've introduced this gentleman here,
Speaker 6: so maybe we can give us the background on this
Speaker 6: gentleman before we go any further. You mean Rogers, yes, please.
Speaker 7: Well, he had a very unusual background unusual by my standards. Anyway,
Speaker 7: he was born in Moscow, Idaho, and that in itself
Speaker 7: is not so unusual. But his parents were you know, religious, zealous,
Speaker 7: and moved around a lot. At some point, I believe
Speaker 7: they even lived in chicken coops wherever they could find shelter,
Speaker 7: but very very strict parents, you know, dating. I believe
Speaker 7: I had a sister. You know, they had a thing
Speaker 7: about his sister's shoes, which the family tried to keep quiet.
Speaker 7: He he was, you know, basically a loner. Didn't have
Speaker 7: you know, too many friends growing up, None that I
Speaker 7: could find there were. He he he fits your basic
Speaker 7: I guess profile of of how so many of these
Speaker 7: other guys you know, Gaycy Bundy, all these guys, how
Speaker 7: they developed and just that that h his his time
Speaker 7: was perhaps shorter than some of the others. That his
Speaker 7: family life. And I'm hesitant to always try to put
Speaker 7: the blame off on, you know, how the child was raised.
Speaker 6: I mean, hm, there have.
Speaker 7: Been horrendous parents in the world, and they don't all
Speaker 7: turn out to be you know, bad seat like that.
Speaker 7: But but one can't help but wonder if if the
Speaker 7: way he was brought up had something to do with it.
Speaker 7: He got involved in in uh like minor or uh,
Speaker 7: not really minor. I don't want to try to oversimplify
Speaker 7: anything that he ever did, but uh, the the crimes
Speaker 7: that he was involved in were less severe, you know,
Speaker 7: early on, than they became as he progressed through through this.
Speaker 7: And by saying that, I mean that he had encounters
Speaker 7: with younger girls that got him in trouble with the
Speaker 7: cops and and it was mainly usually just a hand
Speaker 7: slapping type thing. He'd get arrested, you know, and charged
Speaker 7: and released. And it was it was kind of sad
Speaker 7: in a way because had they recognized early on the
Speaker 7: type of person that they were dealing with, Dayton may
Speaker 7: not have killed so many women. But unfortunately that didn't happen,
Speaker 7: and we had this monster running around Portlandaria for quite
Speaker 7: some time.
Speaker 6: What were the what were the relatively minor crimes if
Speaker 6: we if we would hear about them, maybe we could
Speaker 6: see how they might be able to establish some sort
Speaker 6: of future pattern or future threat.
Speaker 7: Well, you know, they were encounters with younger girls. Whenever
Speaker 7: he was like the teenager maybe a little bit older.
Speaker 7: And I don't want to go too far and to
Speaker 7: his other crimes because a lot of them were never adjudicated,
Speaker 7: and and I just you know, kind of got to
Speaker 7: be a little bit careful with it.
Speaker 6: But well, was there any warning signs that that could
Speaker 6: have been seen? Foreseen? Some sometimes they some people don't
Speaker 6: seem to be recognized by the courts where in hindsight
Speaker 6: they should have been. It was there any indication of
Speaker 6: that here? Some oversight?
Speaker 7: When he stabbed a girl in Eugene, for instance, that
Speaker 7: was a perfect idea of oversight there. I mean, he
Speaker 7: just they should have seen that this guy, you know,
Speaker 7: has his violent tendency and uh, yeah, why why would
Speaker 7: he stab her, you know, just and and leave her
Speaker 7: in the woods and go back later to try and
Speaker 7: save her that was supposedly was his you know girlfriend
Speaker 7: at the time, or somebody that he had thought of
Speaker 7: as possibly a girlfriend.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 7: But just the fact that he stabbed her out of nowhere,
Speaker 7: it became out of out of nowhere, that that should
Speaker 7: have been a big clue right there. But yeah, it didn't.
Speaker 7: He was released and life went on.
Speaker 6: No, at what point does he does he get married
Speaker 6: and and started assuming this real normal life? Uh? How young?
Speaker 7: Well is he I don't remember how old he was
Speaker 7: when he got married right off the top of my head.
Speaker 7: But he, uh, he was actually married a couple of times.
Speaker 7: And and his first wife actually came to see me
Speaker 7: at a book signing and U, I didn't believe it
Speaker 7: was really her, hm until she showed me a picture
Speaker 7: of her and Dayton at their wedding and uh and uh,
Speaker 7: so he was married to this this other woman for
Speaker 7: a while. And he then he married uh, his later
Speaker 7: wife during the time of the killing. And uh, I'm
Speaker 7: I'm reluctant to name her name. She probably wants to
Speaker 7: get on with her life by now, but uh, they
Speaker 7: had a child together, boy. And uh. You know, Dayton
Speaker 7: was running a small engine repair shop out of small
Speaker 7: town there south of Portland, and he was fairly successful
Speaker 7: at it. You know, he made a decent living for
Speaker 7: his family. And but he was living these these two lives.
Speaker 7: He was going to work repairing small engines and then
Speaker 7: staying out late instead of coming home to his wife
Speaker 7: and child. He was, you know, on murdering prostitutes and
Speaker 7: making up excuses to his wife. So you know, he
Speaker 7: was living a double life, to be sure.
Speaker 6: And from all indications, he did really have this. He
Speaker 6: wasn't a loner, but had the the facade of the
Speaker 6: marriage in the in the in the child. Was he
Speaker 6: this this genuine very much like Bundy able to have this,
Speaker 6: as you described, a sort of a mask about him,
Speaker 6: this really duality.
Speaker 7: Yeah. He had social skills and there's no there's no
Speaker 7: doubt about it. He he knew when too to pour
Speaker 7: on the charm and and when not to. Uh. He
Speaker 7: may not have been quite as adept as Bundy, you know,
Speaker 7: in that regard, but that the ability was there.
Speaker 6: Now was amazingly that h Tracy Baxter doesn't go to
Speaker 6: the police. Uh, police never hear about well do not
Speaker 6: hear about this report till much later, or know about
Speaker 6: her at all. Moe disappears at some point. There's this
Speaker 6: six month period. Tell us about that period in Portland,
Speaker 6: what was going on, and tell us what happened in
Speaker 6: that six months?
Speaker 7: Well, can you be a little bit more specific about
Speaker 7: the six month period? It's not making.
Speaker 6: Well after Tracy didn't report anything to police. Then later
Speaker 6: much well we alluded to it in the in the
Speaker 6: introduction about the hunter accidentally finding the bodies. But what
Speaker 6: happens with the investigation itself into these women disappearing.
Speaker 7: Well, they're they're basically documenting the disappearances, and they're taking
Speaker 7: reports from you know, potential witnesses, and they've they've they've
Speaker 7: talked to a number of these women and they're beginning
Speaker 7: to you know, see similarities, see certain things that that
Speaker 7: they're standing out, but nothing real definitive yet. And really
Speaker 7: I don't think they They would have known about Rogers
Speaker 7: for quite some time if he hadn't screwed up on
Speaker 7: his final kill. But I'm not quite sure where you're
Speaker 7: trying to go with that other than.
Speaker 6: Well, just I mean, maybe that's the amount of months wrong.
Speaker 6: But I know that the investigator, I mean, obviously there's
Speaker 6: a pro but a force that's looking at this at
Speaker 6: the same time. You you talk about in your book
Speaker 6: that the reason why you know Rogers is very careful
Speaker 6: till Tracy Baxter and then he felt, well, geez, you know,
Speaker 6: I don't think you know, he was pretty confident she
Speaker 6: wasn't going to go to the police. He wasn't that worried.
Speaker 6: He didn't really change what he was doing. So at
Speaker 6: some point we alluded to that he has his he
Speaker 6: finally makes a mistake. He's very careful though before that,
Speaker 6: there are no bodies, there is no there's no evidence
Speaker 6: because there's no one showing up. So tell us what happens.
Speaker 6: How does everything all change? What happens to what happens
Speaker 6: to our perpetrator here that somehow he is not careful anymore.
Speaker 7: Well, basically, we have a number of women who are disappearing,
Speaker 7: you know, one by one off of Portland streets over
Speaker 7: a period of month, and a killer who's obviously out there,
Speaker 7: but we have no bodies yet to prove murder. So
Speaker 7: he's obviously getting away with what he likes to do,
Speaker 7: and he's probably building up a lot of confidence and
Speaker 7: doing it. And this went on for some time, and
Speaker 7: you know, when there would be the occasional case that
Speaker 7: would come in or the police would interview someone, you know,
Speaker 7: something might ring a bell, that similarity of name, you know,
Speaker 7: a place or whatever, but it was never enough to
Speaker 7: make the determination that there was something actually actively going on,
Speaker 7: not until Everett Baniard, the Hunter stumbled upon Dayton's cluster
Speaker 7: dump in the Malala Forest. Once he stumbled upon those
Speaker 7: bodies and reported it to the Blackhams County Sheriff's Department,
Speaker 7: that's when the case really broke wide open, and that
Speaker 7: would have been, you know, beginning of the end for
Speaker 7: Rogers by by the time that the cops actually get
Speaker 7: up there. And this was one of the reasons that's
Speaker 7: why I wrote the book in the manner that I
Speaker 7: did it was it was too hard to put it
Speaker 7: together in a dramatic fashion in strictly chronological order. But
Speaker 7: I tried to do that by showing the final kill,
Speaker 7: that of Jennifer Lisa Smith at the Denny's restaurant, by
Speaker 7: showing that first in detail, because it clearly showed Rogers
Speaker 7: in action, it showed what he liked to do, had
Speaker 7: eye witnesses who saw him doing it, and he fled
Speaker 7: the scene and basically escaped for a short time until
Speaker 7: the cops tracked him down in the wee hours of
Speaker 7: the morning is at his shop, you know, south of Portland.
Speaker 7: And then of course the bigger break comes a little
Speaker 7: bit later. I don't know if you want to get
Speaker 7: into that yet or not, sure.
Speaker 6: Proceed just proceed from there. Basically, what I wanted to
Speaker 6: do is establish I mean, to me, it's remarkable why
Speaker 6: anybody would jump in a vehicle as a I mean,
Speaker 6: I understand prostitution. But I didn't understand this element of it.
Speaker 6: I didn't understand, so I wanted to introduce somebody that survived.
Speaker 6: And then you would think, oh, now the police will know.
Speaker 6: Still the police don't know, so tell us more about
Speaker 6: So tell us more about the discovery, and what do
Speaker 6: police do right from there? How do they proceed?
Speaker 7: Well, the cops have been getting these reports all along
Speaker 7: of this guy who liked to, you know, be rough
Speaker 7: with his dates and so forth. And there was one
Speaker 7: recurring theme that seemed to be among them, and that
Speaker 7: was that he'd always liked to drink vodka and orange juice,
Speaker 7: and vodka being in the small airline bottles and the
Speaker 7: orange juice being from those types bout at the convenience stores.
Speaker 7: And it wasn't until after Jenny's meth was murdered in
Speaker 7: front of dining patrons at the Dennis Restaurant in Milwaukee, Oregon,
Speaker 7: that Rogers was arrested, of course, and they had that
Speaker 7: one murder on him right then and there. But that's
Speaker 7: all they knew at that point. But then there comes
Speaker 7: Everett Daniards, the hunter, and he reports finding these bodies
Speaker 7: up in the Malala forests. So John Turner and Jim
Speaker 7: Strovank and different ones from the Clackhams County Sheriff's Department
Speaker 7: head up there find them, you know, designated as a
Speaker 7: crime scene. They start they basically, you know, do the
Speaker 7: whole operation in the way it's supposed to be done.
Speaker 7: And at one point they encountered orange juice bottles and
Speaker 7: the small miniature vodka bottles that have been dropped off
Speaker 7: near one of the bodies. And that was the clue,
Speaker 7: the one single thing that put in Detective Turner's mind
Speaker 7: that Dayton Rogers was behind these killings, and it was.
Speaker 7: It was mainly because of he I'm having trouble remembering
Speaker 7: exactly how you put this together. You you read the
Speaker 7: book recently. I haven't, but but there was something that
Speaker 7: I should know this, but god, it's been so long. Yeah,
Speaker 7: you know, there were there had something to do with
Speaker 7: the the alcohol and orange juice. I thought with Jenny
Speaker 7: Smith too, but maybe not.
Speaker 6: I'm not I'm thinking of what you're referring to.
Speaker 7: But yeah, I probably got off on a tangent that
Speaker 7: I shouldn't have.
Speaker 6: There, No, no, no, I I wanted to know what
Speaker 6: was the was the police, what was their idea in
Speaker 6: terms of the timeline timeline in that cluster dump that
Speaker 6: he did have there. What did the police initially look
Speaker 6: at and say this? Did they did? They think it
Speaker 6: was a large expansive time or a shorter expansive time
Speaker 6: in terms of how the how the victims got there
Speaker 6: and how long it had been there since they had
Speaker 6: been there.
Speaker 7: Well, it wasn't a long time. It was like it
Speaker 7: was it was less than two years if memory serves
Speaker 7: me correctly. You had to look at the dates of
Speaker 7: the victims that that they were finding him there and
Speaker 7: when they when they disappeared. But it was, it was
Speaker 7: it was overall a fairly short period of time, but
Speaker 7: one that could have went on and on and on
Speaker 7: had it not been for you know, Dayton's carelessness with
Speaker 7: the uh, the vodka pottles. But I think I I
Speaker 7: just remembered where Turner had seen the vodka poles, and
Speaker 7: it had been when they impounded his pickup truck the
Speaker 7: morning after Jenny Smith's and that's what had caused you know,
Speaker 7: to ring the bell when they found the debris or
Speaker 7: the garbage in the in the forest near the body.
Speaker 6: But tell us a little bit about Detective John Turner
Speaker 6: in terms of who who he was before this sort
Speaker 6: of well not sort of definitely changed his life for
Speaker 6: a couple of years.
Speaker 7: He's a great detective, if not somebody you want on
Speaker 7: your hearth, No, he John and I developed a great
Speaker 7: relationship over the period that I was writing this book,
Speaker 7: and even before and after that, we'd known each other
Speaker 7: because of my days of writing for True Detective. So
Speaker 7: he had kind of an open door policy with me.
Speaker 7: I'd dropped by and we'd talk, and if he had something,
Speaker 7: I'd research it. And when I put this on him,
Speaker 7: he decided he had to take this to the sheriff
Speaker 7: and find out if they could cooperate, and and so
Speaker 7: they did. The sheriff was very happy to be able
Speaker 7: to have this case highlighted in such a positive manner
Speaker 7: for their department, because they really did do an outstanding
Speaker 7: job on solving it. And so I get this phone
Speaker 7: call one day from John says, you need to meet
Speaker 7: me downtown. We're gonna make this the easiest possibly said
Speaker 7: you need to meet me downtown in a parking garage.
Speaker 7: So I'm thinking, Wow, Okay, Woodward and Earnstein, uh deep
Speaker 7: throat type stuff. So anyway, we go to the parking
Speaker 7: garage and I pull up next to his car and
Speaker 7: he basically unloads all copies of the case files, you know,
Speaker 7: and from his car into mine. There's like six boxes.
Speaker 7: Is take him, study him, give him back when you're done,
Speaker 7: But uh, any questions in the meantime, just call me.
Speaker 7: And that's how I had such good information from number
Speaker 7: one on how the case was handled, and number two,
Speaker 7: that information enabled me to go and talk with people
Speaker 7: in person because I could track them down. I was
Speaker 7: basically dealing with the same thing that the cops were
Speaker 7: dealing with.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was amazing the access you had, and that
Speaker 6: information is just inc invaluable really to this story.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but you know, I have the utmost respect for
Speaker 7: John Turner. I think he might be retired now. I've
Speaker 7: kind of lost track of what's going on up there
Speaker 7: been a way so long. But they all did a great,
Speaker 7: great work on the case.
Speaker 6: Well, it's it's it seems to be hard to fathom
Speaker 6: for some people, but not every officer goes in into
Speaker 6: this without a certain amount of bias. So we we
Speaker 6: hear constantly how less valued the the prostitute's story is,
Speaker 6: or the prostitute is in terms of a victim, certainly,
Speaker 6: it seems not. It's not just the police. I'm saying
Speaker 6: in terms of society in general, media, the public, and
Speaker 6: oftentimes police are just in that small, you know, group
Speaker 6: of people that could care less. But this person was not.
Speaker 6: That's not what he was made of.
Speaker 7: No, No, he actually cared for the victims. And I
Speaker 7: think by and large, we get this perception that a
Speaker 7: lot of cops really don't care, you know, if they're
Speaker 7: from the lower dregs of society or whatever. Something happens
Speaker 7: to him, you know, it's their fault, they deserved it
Speaker 7: or whatever. Sure, you've got a number of people who
Speaker 7: have that attitude, but I believe for the most part
Speaker 7: that you almost have to believe this, and my line
Speaker 7: of work and as far as just being human, I
Speaker 7: guess we have to. We have to believe that they care,
Speaker 7: you know, about what they're doing, at least to some degree.
Speaker 7: And John definitely demonstrated, you know, that he cared about
Speaker 7: the victims.
Speaker 6: Well more importantly too. You know, if you if you
Speaker 6: and he had outrage, that's what you put in the
Speaker 6: book too, that he had a certain level of outrage.
Speaker 6: And so so these kinds of people are hell bent
Speaker 6: on catching the criminals so as much as they care
Speaker 6: about the victims, of course, because they deal with the families.
Speaker 6: So how could you not be sympathetic because there's families involved.
Speaker 6: But it's their job, the dirty job. They get these guys,
Speaker 6: elicit the confessions, they get all the necessary evidence, and
Speaker 6: live with these cases till completion. So I find homicide
Speaker 6: detectives are not, obviously, you know, are a lot more
Speaker 6: involved than the general cop on the beat might have
Speaker 6: a bad misrepresentation of a young cop that's a little
Speaker 6: still naive, but the homicide detective is not a guy
Speaker 6: that just started off.
Speaker 7: So that's true. Yeah, that's very true.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Now do how do they come? Sorry?
Speaker 7: Go ahead, No, go ahead, you go ahead. I don't
Speaker 7: out of time?
Speaker 3: I think?
Speaker 6: Now, what what happens with with police now that they
Speaker 6: have this this murder witness and also this other mounting evidence.
Speaker 6: What is m What is the police interview like with Rogers?
Speaker 7: Well, they're you know, of course, there were several, but
Speaker 7: the the main interviews before he you know, lawyered up
Speaker 7: and wouldn't talk to him at all, was, you know, Dayton,
Speaker 7: we have this evidence, you know, we your your car
Speaker 7: was seen at the scene of the crime. You have
Speaker 7: a witness that showed you stabbing a victim. You know,
Speaker 7: we even have the knife. We have your your vehicle.
Speaker 7: It was warm, you know to the touch, and you're
Speaker 7: saying you didn't drive it, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 7: He has cuts on his fingers, you know, defensive wounds. Evidently, uh,
Speaker 7: you know, they they know they've got him red handed.
Speaker 7: They know they have someone red handed, at least for
Speaker 7: Jenny Smith. And and you know, so at first they're
Speaker 7: not they're not polite at all. And they basically accused
Speaker 7: him of this and accused him of that, and of
Speaker 7: course it's all related to Jenny Smith during the first encounters,
Speaker 7: and then then later any lawyers up and doesn't speak
Speaker 7: to anybody, and that was pretty much the end of
Speaker 7: the end of that other than what was in the
Speaker 7: official police reports.
Speaker 6: So the evidence, so the evidence that they have against
Speaker 6: him is is is a lot more than circumstantial at
Speaker 6: that time. DNA is not tell us about the state
Speaker 6: of DNA at that time.
Speaker 7: Well, that would have been in the mid to late
Speaker 7: eighties when the crimes are being committed and DNA was
Speaker 7: still in its very early stages, and they were beginning
Speaker 7: to work with it and you know, use it as
Speaker 7: a tool. But I don't believe that there was much
Speaker 7: done as far as DNA is concerned with this particular case,
Speaker 7: unless you know, I mean that could be mistaken. I
Speaker 7: just don't recall it right now. It doesn't help, no,
Speaker 7: they you know, because it's smart't using it then.
Speaker 6: But so how do they what what is the case
Speaker 6: that they put together with? What with the what is
Speaker 6: the evidence that they do have? How strong a case
Speaker 6: can they put together on him? Of course he has
Speaker 6: a good lawyer. Tell us what they do have on him?
Speaker 7: In terms of evidence, Well, they had a lot of
Speaker 7: fiber evidence, They had hair, they had blood typing. You know,
Speaker 7: much of it came from inside the truck itself. The
Speaker 7: underneath the floor, you know, is basically just soak with blood,
Speaker 7: and a lot of it would have been really great
Speaker 7: DNA evidence had been available to them at the time,
Speaker 7: but instead it was mainly blood typing, hair, fiber, you know,
Speaker 7: him maybe being seen in the vicinity of somewhere, the uh,
Speaker 7: the orange juice. A lot of it was circumstantial, of course,
Speaker 7: but uh, you know, they uh, they they built a
Speaker 7: as good a case as I guess they could have
Speaker 7: built against him based on what they had, and as
Speaker 7: you probably know from reading the book and went through
Speaker 7: the system, you know, two or three times, and he's
Speaker 7: still on death row. It hasn't you know, he hasn't
Speaker 7: been put to death. Chances are probably won't be uh
Speaker 7: in Oregon. But UH, they they had a a decent
Speaker 7: case against him, is right?
Speaker 6: What point? At what point did police a and what
Speaker 6: circumstances do police speak with uh, Tracy Baxter.
Speaker 7: That came out and I in the well for me,
Speaker 7: that came out, uh a little bit later on, and
Speaker 7: it prompted me to use you know, give her a
Speaker 7: fictitious name and so forth. But it came out during
Speaker 7: the interviews with the prostitutes. And there's a section in
Speaker 7: the book that kind of deals with that. But I don't,
Speaker 7: you know, go into great detail with it. There's just
Speaker 7: too much you know, other info to use instead. But
Speaker 7: I used enough of it to where it would give
Speaker 7: the reader a good idea of what kind of information
Speaker 7: that the police, you know, we're receiving and what kinds
Speaker 7: of details that the prostitutes were providing them. Because the
Speaker 7: interviews were quite detailed and interesting. And that's where I
Speaker 7: found you know, Tracy's statement, what.
Speaker 6: Is the evidence of the you talked we talked about
Speaker 6: in the in the beginning, which is this guy is
Speaker 6: quite unique. I mean, serial killers a lot of very
Speaker 6: often share a lot of characteristics. This guy, of course,
Speaker 6: shares many of those characteristics, but has some unique features too.
Speaker 6: This mutilation while people are alive, whereas a lot of
Speaker 6: them might mutilate afterwards. Tell us what evidence they did
Speaker 6: get from the prostitutes themselves in terms of what this
Speaker 6: Rogers was like and likely did to his victims.
Speaker 7: Well, he enjoyed torturing them. I mean that was very clear.
Speaker 7: He would bite them on their feet, the bottoms of
Speaker 7: their feet, and other parts of their body to the
Speaker 7: point you know, where they would bleed and calls them
Speaker 7: tremendous pain. He would cut the heels of their feet,
Speaker 7: you know, with a knife. There was evidence that he
Speaker 7: eviscerated one of his victims with a machete. He basically,
Speaker 7: you know, shoved it into her vagina and then cut
Speaker 7: her from there all the way up to the sternum,
Speaker 7: presumably while she was alive and conscious, or at least
Speaker 7: for a moment or two, and he enjoyed sawing their
Speaker 7: feet off. He would take a hack saw. And this
Speaker 7: was more theory than proof, but there was evidence shown
Speaker 7: that in some of two or three of his victims
Speaker 7: he would take a hack saw and cut their ankles,
Speaker 7: you know, like a halfway or two thirds of the
Speaker 7: way through, and to elicit more pain, to cause more pain,
Speaker 7: to elicit a better pain response to something that he
Speaker 7: would enjoy. And when they would go into shock and
Speaker 7: basically not provide any show for him, I guess for
Speaker 7: lack of a better word, he would then break the
Speaker 7: bone the rest of the way to try and you know,
Speaker 7: elicit additional response. So there there were many indicators, including
Speaker 7: witness testimony, that that he he thoroughly enjoyed torturing his victims.
Speaker 7: And he definitely had a blood lust or a lust
Speaker 7: for blood.
Speaker 6: And and what what was his idea about the clustered dump?
Speaker 6: And and when police believed that there may be other victims? Again,
Speaker 6: what what what's their idea that there may be other victims?
Speaker 7: Well, there was there was one victim that went unidentified
Speaker 7: for a number of years, Victim number seven I believe,
Speaker 7: or maybe it was eight. I can't recall for sure
Speaker 7: she was recently identified and attributed to him. She was
Speaker 7: one of those found in the forest. Now, what was
Speaker 7: Roger's idea? One can only guess that he helped to
Speaker 7: elude detection by cluster dumping the bodies up there in
Speaker 7: the middle of this forest. I mean, it's really creepy.
Speaker 7: If you've ever been up there, you would know exactly
Speaker 7: what I was talking about, because it's there's nothing there,
Speaker 7: you know, in the middle of a massive, dark, wet
Speaker 7: forest with forest sounds and nobody around for miles. I mean,
Speaker 7: it's perfect opportunity to get to get rid of a body,
Speaker 7: and he evidently thought that it would buy him more
Speaker 7: time by placing them there. He just never thought ever
Speaker 7: Danyard would come wandering through there one day.
Speaker 6: But was was he careless with the with the cluster
Speaker 6: dump itself at some point or how was I'm sorry
Speaker 6: if I didn't understand exactly how this hunter found something that.
Speaker 6: You know, he took a lot, he took a lot
Speaker 6: of effort to be able to do this. So how
Speaker 6: did the hunter actually stumble across that?
Speaker 7: I think the hunter just you know, I mean got lucky.
Speaker 7: I mean, I mean, you call that luck. But he
Speaker 7: to me, when I viewed a lot of the pictures
Speaker 7: that were taken from up there, it looked to me
Speaker 7: like he was careless. It didn't seem like any extra
Speaker 7: care had been made to you know, cover the bodies
Speaker 7: or whatever. He just find a place that you toss
Speaker 7: a body out here, it's not going to be found
Speaker 7: for a long time. And I think that must have
Speaker 7: been a certain amount of his thinking. I mean, you know,
Speaker 7: one can only guess.
Speaker 6: But what do you attribute to him being so careful
Speaker 6: for so long? And then in the last instance with
Speaker 6: Jenny Smith, what was in public in a crowded you know,
Speaker 6: what happened was that this is descent into as we
Speaker 6: see sometimes with serial killers, where they are quite organized.
Speaker 6: Even Jeffrey Dahmer was quite organized and careful, but then
Speaker 6: wasn't what would.
Speaker 7: You I think he lost a certain amount of the
Speaker 7: control that he was having over Jenny, and I think
Speaker 7: a certain amount of it was panic. I think a
Speaker 7: part of it might have been the build up phase,
Speaker 7: where's he's building up the excitement, and I think he
Speaker 7: got a little bit too bold by using this parking
Speaker 7: lot of a Denny's restaurant.
Speaker 6: It was.
Speaker 7: It's a very dark parking lot, I should say where
Speaker 7: it's located. It at that time of the early morning,
Speaker 7: it would be difficult for someone you know to easily
Speaker 7: see him, but in this case it was made easier
Speaker 7: to be seen because of Jenny's screaming. And then once
Speaker 7: of course a person has been able to eyeball the
Speaker 7: source of the screaming, they can see that there's a
Speaker 7: naked woman out there, partially down, covered in blood, and
Speaker 7: this guy's you know, hovering over or stabbing or but
Speaker 7: I think the part of the excitement or the build
Speaker 7: up it got to him and he couldn't hold back,
Speaker 7: couldn't wait, caused him to become careless. And then of
Speaker 7: course you had Jenny, you know, trying to escape. That
Speaker 7: threw him into a panic situation. And one thing, panic
Speaker 7: witnesses had seen him, and one person chased him, you know,
Speaker 7: got his license number. It was really basically all over,
Speaker 7: just a matter of time for everything was put together.
Speaker 6: Now sometimes cases like this warrant I guess a good
Speaker 6: response from the public or interest from abroad from international media,
Speaker 6: but sometimes when the story is particularly shocking, sometimes even
Speaker 6: the media kind of gets a little gun shy. What
Speaker 6: was the media and the public response to this trial?
Speaker 7: As I recall the media, you know, it was all
Speaker 7: over it for you know months, and the public's response
Speaker 7: was you know, one of typical you know shock and
Speaker 7: oh my god, you know, I can't