Today, there is nearly a total of three thousand serial killers and ten thousand victims of their violent rampage in the United States. Part of those ten thousand victims are the eight, casualties of Dayton Leroy Rogers, aka The Molalla Forest Killer. Although their deaths were unfair and tragic, Roger’s experience allowed for more information to be contributed to help solve and prevent future crimes. Born in Idaho on September 30, 1953 and quickly moved to Oregon, Rogers was enrolled into a life full of crime, already shooting cars with BB guns in the seventh grade. By the time he was nineteen his desire for crime was fulfilled when he reached over to kiss a girl on their second date, but “according to police reports, he stabbed her in …show more content…
However the orange juice and vodka couldn’t contain his sexual fantasies and thirst for blood. One night he left his wife Sherry (now divorce) and their engine repair business in Woodburn to go to Portland’s “Prostitute Row”. Going by the name “Steve the gambler” he was easily able to pick up a previous provider; together they traveled to the local Denny’s. Upon arriving separately James Dahlke, a fifty-year old, and Charles Gates, a disabled customer, soon heard the screams of a woman yelling rape. As Gates and Dahlke approached the man he soon got up and fled, leaving behind a battered and torn woman in his wake. “My God! He slit her throat!” Gates yelled as he fell out of his wheelchair, immediately performing first aid. As a cluster of people surrounded the scene “Dahlke again spotted the man he'd seen only moments before kneeling by the nude victim(Gary C. King, Dayton Leroy Rogers: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer)” trying to escape. Within moments, bystanders Stan Conner and Richard Bergio blocked the exits, but the man simply drove out using the sidewalk and a chase pursued between the man and Bergio. After giving up, Bergio returned to find the women being carried off, who died upon arrival of the hospital, and the man’s license plate number in his hand. Easily, the police was soon able to find the owner of the number, Dayton Leroy Rogers, and was able to search his house and criminal