Jennifer Lisa Smith lay on the black concrete floor screaming in pain as people approached her, frantically dialing 911. She was raped and stabbed 11 times by none other than Dayton Leroy Rogers, the so-called “Molalla Forest Murderer.”
Dayton Leroy Rogers was born in Moscow, Idaho, on September 30, 1953. He was 1 of 3 siblings in a very religious family. His father was very abusive towards his children and wife, creating an environment where Rogers grew up in fear of both of his parents. His father taught him and his sibling’s extreme religious ideals like women who show themselves in a sexual way before marriage should be stoned.
This completely altered Roger’s attitude towards women.
Roger’s family had moved around frequently due to financial struggles. When they fully set down roots after his father got a job in a bakery, Roger started acting out of rebellion. It wasn’t taken seriously until in 7th grade when he and his friends ditched school and shot “BB” guns at moving cars. Afterward, he was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor.
This incident caused the family to move to Oregon because Roger was so fed up with his father that he dropped out of high school and ran away. He ran to Corvallis and found a job as a house painter. After two years, Rogers moved to Eugene to continue painting.
In 1972, Roger was 19 when he started dating 16-year-old Julie Roberts, and by the end of the season, they were already married. He thought he married Julie because she was loyal and pure, but in reality, he was seeking something else. In his early adolescence, he developed an interest in feet, as they were the only part of the body his sister revealed.
Dayton was driving home from work when he saw a 15-year-old girl, Riatha Gyle, hitchhiking. He picked her up and took her to a field where they had sex. He saw her the next day, went to the same field, and had sex again. But this time, he stabbed her in the abdomen with a hunting knife. After he stabbed her, he asked her to marry him, and she accepted. She convinced him to take her to the hospital, where she told the police everything.
Three days later, the police interrogated Roger and took him into custody. He was later diagnosed with Schizoid Personality Disorder (SPD), a mental condition where a consistent pattern occurs in a person who doesn’t desire or enjoy close relations with others.
Instead of going to prison, Rogers received 4 years of probation, which he violated numerous times. Once again, he was driving home from work when he saw two high school girls. They got in the back of his car, and he convinced them to start drinking and smoking marijuana. During this time, it was raining heavily. Since Rogers was also drinking while driving through a field, he crashed and got stuck in the mud, causing his car to break down. (Because of this crash, he received brain damage.)
As they were both high and drunk, he tied them up and raped one of them in front of the other. The weather was stormy, so he forced the girls to help him push his car out of the mud. He untied them, and as soon as the doors were open, they made a run for it. They notified the police, and Roger was again brought in for questioning.
Doctors realized that he had brain damage in his frontal lobe and tissue loss on the right side of his head. This was due to his car crash. After they got Roger’s medical attention, he was charged with two more counts of assault. He was found not guilty due to insanity and was sent to the Oregon State Hospital. Rogers remained in the Hospital for 8 months after doctors decided he should leave. He was discharged in November 1974.
Once Rogers was released from the Oregon State Hospital, he continued on his spree. 6 more women were found in the Molalla forest, along with evidence, such as 38 miniature bottles of vodka, the shoes of the victims, a knife near one of the bodies, and more. As the police dug up the bodies of Lisa Marie Mock, Nondace “Noni” Cervantes, Christine Lotus Adams, Cynthia De Vore, and Maureen Ann Hodges, they noticed that all of them were stabbed more than 5 times in the back and abdomen. Some of the victims even had missing legs.
After all the evidence was brought forward, Rogers was back in the courtroom once again, and this time, the judge sentenced him to the rest of his life in prison. He was sent to The Two Rivers Correctional Institution in Umatilla`, where he is still carrying out his sentence to this day at 71 years old.
