Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer (Onyx)
Though sometimes burdened with cliches, this is an effective, workmanlike account of the worst serial killer in Oregon's history. Owner of a small business in Portland and apparently happily married, Dayton Leroy Rogers was known among local streetwalkers as a violent john who liked kinky sex and bondage. Through interviews with investigators and witnesses, King reconstructs Rogers's brutal murder of a prostitute in 1987. Not until a hunter in the Mollalla Forest found the graves of other victims did the true horror of the case become apparent: there were seven other murders and many rampages. Rogers claimed self-defense in his first trial but was convicted; he was also found guilty of killing the victims found in the forest. Probing Rogers's past, King finds the killer had a repressive, violent father, fetishized his sisters' shoes as a child, had his first brush with the law at 18 and was soon labeled a sociopath. The author sometimes stretches the narrative, offering interior monologue from Rogers even though the killer, who is now on death row, hasn't spoken to him or investigators. Photos not seen by PW.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.