Every Town - The Molalla Forest Serial Killer - Portland, OR

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

Today we’re headed back to the late 1980s, when a series of gruesome discoveries were made deep within the beauty of Molalla Forest. Hikers and locals seemingly one after another kept on stumbling upon skeletal remains of people that had been brutally murdered, their bodies left out there to the elements.  👀 Watch This Episode On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/scarymysteries 🎧 Our Other Podcast Scary Mysteries: https://open.spotify.com/show/3ZooEZMoZ421WdsOVJhVkT 💀 Exclusive Videos, Podcasts & Perks: https://www.patreon.com/scarymysteries  👁 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrew.fitzg 👁 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewfitzgerald 👁 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scarymysteriesofficial 🗣 Business Inquiries, questions and comments hit us up at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Everytown has a dark side. In the darkest chapters of our history, certain stories strike at our deepest fears, none more so than the tales of serial killers and the vicious crimes they commit. How they grow up and become compelled to hunt down other human beings at random, in a morbid display of control, and to achieve a feeling of satisfaction is about as close to evil as it comes. Often hidden behind a mask of normalcy, and these killers live among us, and have to be able to. navigating the everyday world just like anyone else. Only they have a lust and compulsion for murder that can't be stopped. And they are your neighbors, friends, and family members. And one, who tried to stop it from happening, but just couldn't.

As a subject of today's episode, he would go on to become known as the Molala for a serial killer. Hey guys, it's Andrew, and thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of Everytown. where today we're headed back to the late 80s, and a series of gruesome discoveries were made deep within the beauty of Malala forest. Hikers, and locals, seemingly one after another, kept stumbling upon skeletal remains of people that had been brutally murdered, and bodies left out there to the elements. Some were even missing their feet.

So, let's head on over to just south of Portland, Oregon, and take a look at who the madman of Malala. Forrest was how he came to be and will let him to commit such heinous crimes. Dayton, Leroy Rogers was born on September 30th, 1953 in Moscow, Idaho, to Ordis and Jasperl Rogers. His family was large and extremely religious. He had two biological sisters, three adopted sisters, and one adopted brother, and together they were all devout members of the Seventh-day Adventist faith.

The Rogers clan attended church regularly. After dinner was done each night, they spent the rest of the evening studying their Bibles before it was time for bed. So, as you can imagine, the things were pretty strict around the house. Jasperl was a stay-at-home mom, took care of the kids and everything else around the homestead. Meanwhile, Ortiz worked several jobs to keep the family fed. He worked as a baker, house painter, and teacher at Seventh-day Adventist School. But he constantly found himself out of work, forcing him to move the family around to find employment fairly frequently. And Ordis ruled his family with an iron fist.

As the breadwinner, whatever he said went, so Ordis disciplined in any way he saw fit to get his point across. That meant that Rogers and his siblings would frequently suffer from physical and verbal abuse at the hands of their father. It wasn't uncommon for them to show up to church bloodied or bruised. And back then, especially in their religious world, it was overlooked by the community. And the Ordis believed that his children, whenever they acted out of order, well, it was due to them being possessed by an evil entity. That the only way he could rid them of this was by beating it out of them. As the kids grew up, Ordis monitored everything his children came into contact with, including what they listened to and what they watched. Anything deemed to have anything to do with sex or be sexual in nature, it was taken away instantly, and often it was followed by beating.

For example, the family had a record of Hawaiian music, where on the cover it had two women wearing hula skirts. This was deemed to be a big no-no, so Ordis took a thick black marker, covered over the ladies' entire bodies. The Rogers lived in small homes when they could, with the children all sharing the same bedroom. But at one point, things got so bad because Dad couldn't find work. The family moved on into a chicken coop with a dirt floor, that Ordis was certain they could turn into their family home. So all this accumulated to a life of despair, anger, and repression for young Dayton, unable to unleash his natural urges.

As he grew up into his teenage years, he started having violent sexual fantasies that involved his own sisters. The family were relatively isolated, and Rogers didn't have a lot of exposure to other females. He developed a foot fetish, would steal his sister's shoes often to pleasure himself with. In the seventh grade, Dayton would have his first run in with the law when he was arrested for shooting a BB gun at passing cars.

After hearing about this, Ordis again beat Rogers in an attempt to get Satan out of him, knowing that he was having major issues, and they then sent him away to a strict, religious private school called Upper Columbia Academy in Spangle, Washington. Over this arrangement didn't last long as Ordis found himself yet again without work and unable to pay for it. Ordis then moved his family to Oregon, where he worked as a cabinet maker. After the move, Rogers enrolled in Emerald Junior Academy, another strict religious private school,

and at this point, Rogers despised not just his father, but his mother too, as he felt she never intervened or stood up for him while his father inflicted whatever pain he saw fit. The man of the house who had his family living in destitute trying to act all high and mighty was too much for him to take and so the age of 16 Rogers dropped out of school and decided to move to Corvallis, Oregon, alone where he picked up a job as a house painter to make ends meet. Three years later in July of 72 at the age of 19, Rogers left Corvallis to move to Eugene, Oregon to take a different housepainting job, and it was here that he met 16-year-old Julie. The pair began dating straight away and quickly got married.

His family, who had kept in touch with Rogers up until this point, though, decided to cut all ties after the wedding. And strangely, it wasn't the fact that Julie was just 16 that upset them, but rather the fact that she was a Lutheran. Just 30 days after their wedding, Rogers will go on to commit his first serious offense. It was as if the new-found freedom of not having his mother and father in his life any longer allowed him to finally let loose. And all that pent-up everything inside came flooding out.

During this incident, he stabbed a 15-year-old girl in the stomach. And the act even shocked Rogers himself. He raced the young girl to the nearby hospital, by still sticking out of her abdomen. Initially, he told authorities that the day before, they had gone out into the woods near Malala Forest to have sex. They had then arranged to see each other the next day. However, when Rogers went to pick the girl up,

he claimed that he found her with a knife in her belly, and she had done it to herself. A few days later, after receiving medical treatment, Julie then began to open up to the hospital staff about what really happened. She confirmed that the initial part of the story was true. They had indeed gone into the woods the day before. However, she revealed that on this particular day, Rogers had picked her up again and taken her back into those woods.

They had been rolling around on the ground, kissing and cuddling, when suddenly Rogers pulled out a knife and stabbed her. She managed to convince him to take her to the hospital. He insisted that she lie about what happened and stick to his story, warning her that he'd get into a lot of trouble otherwise. Thankfully, though, she chose to tell the truth about the incident, leading to Rogers' arrest. It was at that point in custody that police could tell

there was something seriously off with Dayton, so he underwent a psychiatric evaluation. And from that, it was determined that he had a very depressive neurosis. In other words, almost beyond depressed. He also had a possible long-standing schizoid personality disorder. However, the psychologist also determined that Rogers knew the difference between right and wrong, and that he was in full control of his actions at the time of the crime. Rogers went to court in February of 73, but remarkably, it was a lot of the time of the crime. Rogers went to court in February of 73, but remarkably received only a lengthy probation sentence of four years. Not even a year later, Dayton found himself locked up at the Oregon State Mental Facility,

following an incident of assault involving two teenage girls. At the time, Rogers and his partner, Julie, had allowed the runaway teens to stay with them at their home. Rogers, who was struggling with alcoholism at this point, frequently got drunk and made inappropriate advances towards the women, pressuring them into doing things they didn't want to. And Julie, having reached her breaking point, left the house one evening. And that very same night, the two teens got attacked with a glass bottle. Thankfully, despite their injuries, they managed to escape.

While Rogers was hospitalized, Julie seized the opportunity to leave him permanently. That's when she filed for divorce, moved on over to California, leaving Rogers and his dark thoughts all to himself. In November of 74, psychologists at the hospital, deemed Rogers to be cured, and it is released that December. Over that raises a critical question. Was Rogers genuinely rehabilitated, or did he simply master the art of telling the doctors what they wanted to hear?

Dayton quickly found love again after his release. There was something about the companionship of a wife that he needed in his life, most likely because it helped him feel better about himself and appear more normal. He met Sherry Miller, the two became inseparable, In October of 75, just seven months after they started dating, the pair got married. And things would go okay for a couple of years after that. Even though Rogers was arrested on suspicion of assaulting a woman in 75, he was later found not guilty by the jury, so he skirted by that.

But eventually, what karma caught up with good old Dayton. In 1977, Rogers had picked up a young woman, and as he often did after they got to talking, drove her on out. to an isolated spot just outside of Portland. Once parked, he pulled a knife on her, forced her to get in the back seat where he tied her up with electrical wire and assaulted her. Afterwards, the woman asked Rogers if she could get out of the car and go into the forest to relieve herself. He allowed it, that's when she took off running. Despite being in the middle of nowhere, she kept going until she found a couple houses in her neighborhood, banged on a few doors till someone opened up. At that

point she called the cops. And in terms of karma, while trying to flee the scene, Rogers' car got stuck in the mud, so with his tires just spinning, made it easy for authorities to fine and arrest him. Dayton pled innocent by reason of insanity, but this time the jury found him guilty of first degree assault for which he was sentenced to five years in prison. During the closing statements, the state prosecutor, after looking through his lengthy rap sheet, remarked that it was difficult to understand how a monster like Dayton, Leroy Rogers, could slip through the cracks over and over again. Those words couldn't have been more on point because Dayton was just getting started.

By 82, after serving his time, Dayton was released. At this point, he was still married to Sherry. He got her pregnant, and they had a son. Rogers also started his own small engine repair business, and so from the outside, it seemed like he had finally gotten his life together and got on the right track. Then on August 7th of 1987, at around 3 o'clock in the morning, patrons at a Denny's restaurant in Clackamas County were eating their grand slams when they heard the terrified screams of a woman coming from the parking lot. And one of the witnesses headed outside to check it out, as they got closer the cries just abruptly stopped. And to his horror, he then saw a man, a bloody knife in hand, standing between the woman's legs who was lying on the ground.

and when he saw he had been spotted, this man took off running, got into a pickup truck, and fled the scene. The witness immediately called the police and began attending to the injured woman who was naked, bleeding heavily, and struggling just to breathe. Within minutes, paramedics arrived and transported her to the hospital. Meanwhile, another patron from the restaurant had followed the knife-wielding attacker all the way to a house, presumably his own home, which point he jotted down the license plate number and address. Identified as 25-year-old Jennifer Smith, the victim tragically passed away from her severe wounds en route to the hospital. She'd been stabbed 11 times in the chest, abdomen, and back.

The officers headed to the home provided by the patron, but they then located and arrested the attacker. Dayton Rogers. As investigators began to interrogate him, it was initially cooperative, but as they started to push, for details they noticed his story kept on changing. He knew Jennifer and then she was a stranger, things like that. And on top of it all, the more questions they asked, the quieter Roger's gone. In the following weeks, the police conducted an extensive investigation into Jennifer Smith's murder. They found the knife left behind of the crime scene, and then in the subsequent searches of Rogers' house and the workshop where he ran his business revealed a trove of incriminating evidence.

Among the items discovered were a hacksaw, boot stain with blood, burnt up women's garments, as well as multiple blood stains spread across his house, workshop, and vehicle. And police were actually shocked at what they had discovered. There was so much more evidence than they had expected. More stuff than just for the single crime. So then the question became, how many women had Dayton actually killed? Not even a month later on August 31st, a bow hunter, trekking through the dense Malala Forest,

made a grim discovery. It was a woman's body lying beneath a cover of matted ferns. When she was naked, he noticed straight away that one of her feet was missing. Acting quickly, he ran back to his vehicle, alerted police, and then guided them back to the scene of the crime. And with Dayton in custody, they then started doing a grid search at the area, thinking this might be his dumping grounds. Sure enough, they were right.

Over the next week that followed, police then uncovered the bodies of six more women in the same vicinity. Each body found nude and in different stages of decomposition. Autopsies revealed that they had been in the forest for around one to three months. Six of the victims were identified as 23-year-old Lisa Mock, 26-year-old Maureen Hodges, 35-year-old Christine Adams, 20-year-old Cynthia D'Ovoire, 26-year-old Nanda and Servantes Servantes, and 16-year-old Riafie Giles.

Unfortunately, the seventh victim was unable to be identified, and all these women have been reported missing. And each one of them have been strangled and stabbed. In some cases, their feet were sawn off just above the ankles, by what look like a hacksaw. Other evidence found near where the bodies have been dumped, included orange juice and smearing off vodka bottles, a knife with human tissue still on it,

and several items that have been tied into knots. including stocking, shoelaces, rope, and cloth. That knife with the human tissue was the exact same size and brand as the one that had been used to stab Jennifer Smith to death. With all the disturbing evidence that investigators had previously found in Rogers' home, workplace, and vehicle, well, it didn't take the authorities long to come to the conclusion that Dayton Rogers is most likely a sadistic serial killer. In February of 88, he then went on trial for the murder of 25-year-old Jennifer Smith.

His defense attorneys threw up a hail Mary, argued that he killed Jennifer in an act of self-defense. Over the prosecution contended that Rogers committed the crime to fulfill a deviant sexual desire. Dayton Rogers was found guilty of the murder of Jennifer Smith, and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. But it wasn't long before he found himself back on trial, this time for the murder of six women in the Malala Forest. Taking place the following year, the court heard from 11 former Ladies of the Night who testified that they had accompanied Rogers on dates before, and they told the room that during the date, Rogers would take them to a remote area in or around the Malala forest, where he would cheerfully supply them with vodka and orange juice. They mentioned that although the date would start off fun, Rogers at some point would quickly turn violent, and he would tie their hands and feet tightly behind them.

and threatened to cut off their feet with a knife, so pretty damning evidence here. At the Malala forest crime scene, investigators had discovered dozens of miniature vodka bottles near where the bodies have been dumped, aiding their testimonies. They also found the victim's hair and jewelry in the wood stove at Rogers' workshop and woodburn. Prosecutors informed the jury that Rogers had a documented history of violent crimes, so it was a pretty open and shut case. On Wednesday, June 7th of 1989, the jury convicted Dayton on two counts of aggravated murder for each of the six identified victims. Unfortunately, he was not convicted of murder for his seventh victim, as at the time of the trial, the woman remained unidentified.

It wasn't until 2013 that investigators were positively identified the woman, his 18-year-old Tanya Johnson. Rogers was then sentenced to the maximum punishment. He received the death penalty, which, most felt was fitting for what he had done, but it wouldn't stick. In the U.S., the death penalty is obviously a highly contentious issue. It's not uncommon for death sentences to be overturned, even years after the original sentencing. That's exactly what happened at Dayton Rogers.

Over the next couple of decades, he was sentenced to death four times, only for each sentence to be overturned by the Oregon Supreme Court. The first two sentences were vacated at 92 in 2000, with each instance resulting in a new death penalty being imposed by a jury. On October 11th of 2012, the Supreme Court vacated his latest death sentence and ordered a new penalty trial. On November 16th of 2015, a Clackamas County jury once again sentenced Rogers to death. According to his defense attorney, Rogers would have waived all future appeals and confessed to his crime. if given a true life sentence instead of facing the death penalty. On November 12th of 2021, his death sentence was overturned for the fourth time.

This decision was influenced by a new law signed by Governor Kate Brown, which reduced the number of aggravating factors required to seek the death penalty. Subsequently, December 13th of 2022, Kate Brown commuted the death sentences of everyone on Oregon's death row to life without parole. So as of now, 70-year-old Rogers is currently serving out his sentence at Two Rivers Correctional Institution and Umatilla. He's officially linked to the murders of eight women, though likely there are many more. He's never spoken with authorities about the details of the murders. And keep secrets, he will most likely take with him to the grave.

So that's it for this week's episode of Everytown. I hope you guys enjoyed it. And if you want more content, go check out our scary misdemeanor. History's podcast, YouTube channel, and Patreon. We have all sorts of other crazy stories for you to check out. Thanks for tuning in today. Remember to come back next week for another episode for what's scary, strange, and mysterious stories?

Because you never know. Maybe your town will be next.