Dayton Leroy Rogers - Part 1 - The Crimes

Dayton Leroy Rogers: The Molalla Forest Killer — Part 1: The Crimes

Before Dayton Leroy Rogers became known as the Molalla Forest Killer, women in Oregon had already survived him.

In Part One, we follow Rogers from his earliest documented violence through the crimes that eventually exposed what he had been doing. We look at the teenage girls he attacked years before the murders, the women who knew him as “Steve the Gambler,” and the survivors who described bondage, knives, isolation, and escalating violence.

Then, on August 7, 1987, 25-year-old mother Jennifer Lisa Smith screamed for help from inside Rogers’s truck in a Denny’s parking lot. Strangers ran toward her. One tried to save her life. Others tried to stop Rogers from escaping. And when he got away, a witness chased him long enough to get his license plate.

Within hours, Dayton Rogers was in custody.

Twenty-four days later, a bowhunter entered the Molalla Forest and discovered the first of seven women hidden there.

This episode is about the crimes, the survivors who lived long enough to tell investigators what Rogers had done to them, the evidence connecting his truck and repair shop to the women in the forest, and—most importantly—the women themselves.

Jennifer Lisa Smith. Riatha Marie Gyles. Elizabeth Marie “Lisa” Mock. Nondace “Noni” Kae Cervantes. Christine Lotus Adams. Maureen Ann Hodges. Cynthia Diane “Dee Dee” DeVore. Tawnia Jarie “Tawnie” Johnston.

Eight women. Eight names.

They deserve to be remembered as more than the reason we know the name Dayton Rogers.