Dayton Leroy Rogers was born in Idaho in 1954. His family eventually ended up in Oregon where Rogers would one day join the long list of West Caost Serial Slayers. His first serious offense occurred at the age of eighteen when he stabbed his fifteen-year-old girlfriend in the stomach, but escaped with only a lengthy probation sentence. A year later Rogers was confined to a mental facility for a sexual assault on two teen girls. He was also found innocent of a 1976 rape before being finally sent to prison for five years after the knifepoint rape of a young woman.

In the meantime the bodies of seven women were discovered in a wooded area near Mololla. One has remained unidentified (thus Rogers has never been charged with her murder) but the other six were Lisa Mock, 23, Maureen Hodges, 26, Christine Adams, 35, Nondace Cervantes, 26, Reatha Gyles, 16, and Cynthia Devore, 21. Only one did not have links to prostitution or drugs. Rogers was not a suspect until an evidence search of the dump site revealed that the ground was littered with small individual containers of orange juice and miniature vodka bottles that Rogers was almost never without.

In his trial for the murder of Smith, Rogers pleaded not guilty but was sentenced to life in prison. He had claimed self-defense, claiming Smith had held a knife to his throat prior to his killing her. At his subsequent trial for the slayings of the six known Mololla victims he was found guilty and sentenced to death and now sits on Oregon's death row. At his two trials several surviving victims testified to Rogers' taste for bondage and torture, facts corroborated by the injuries inflicted on the murderered women, some of whom had their feet cut off, possible while still alive.