Blood Lust: Portrait of a Serial Sex Killer by Gary C. King Read Free Book Online Page B

been a fool to think that she had been.
    As Dayton shivered with angry ecstasy, Jenny
continued to try and fend off the knife. Despite the severity of
her wounds she managed somehow to reach over with one hand and open
the passenger door. She fell out onto the pavement.
    Bleeding profusely from her wounds, she began
to run in a feeble attempt to escape the madman, to find someone,
anyone, who could help her. However, after she gained only a few
yards, Dayton, close behind, lunged at her and grabbed her by the
neck. Her arms flailing wildly, he brought her down to the asphalt.
Jenny continued to scream because that was all that she could do,
and her shrieks were no longer muffled. Dayton, hovering over her,
raised the knife, its shiny blade reflecting the brilliance of the
parking lot's overhead lights. Jenny tried to fight with her hands
as he brought the blade down again and again. But it was no use.
She was too weak to fight him off. Her attempts to fend off the
knife became more automatic, instinctive, no longer a cognizant
effort to survive. She slipped into unconsciousness, and her body
fell limp.
    Although Dayton had chosen the darkest area
of the parking lot, it was adjacent to an all-night establishment,
the Denny's restaurant. The taverns and bars had just closed half
an hour earlier, and the Denny's business was brisk. It was the
only restaurant open in the area at that time of the morning, and
customers came and went almost nonstop.
    James Virgil Dahlke, three days shy of his
fifty-first birthday, had arrived at Denny's at about the same time
that Jenny Smith had fallen out of Dayton Leroy Rogers's truck.
Clad in a blue nylon jacket, green plaid shirt, and blue jeans, the
mustachioed man with longer than usual sideburns and short brown
hair was alone as he parked his 1983 Ford two-tone blue van on the
side of the building closest to McLoughlin Boulevard. When he got
out and began walking toward the restaurant, he heard Jenny
hollering and screaming. Although he couldn't quite make out what
she was saying, if anything, Dahlke could see two human forms in
the GMAC parking lot, the direction from which the screams had
come. He adjusted his wire-framed glasses, hoping to get a better
look at what the commotion was all about.
    About that time Kurt Thielke, thirty-three,
walked out of Denny's and headed toward his brown 1966 Dodge van,
parked in front of the restaurant just west of the front door.
Thielke heard the screams, too, and saw the two people in the GMAC
parking lot. He also heard what he thought was a muffled yell. Then
he saw Jenny. Although his view was somewhat obscured by the parked
cars, he saw that her arms were held out and up, and it looked like
she was trying to get away from the man who by now held her by her
neck from behind. That was when Dayton and Jenny went down, out of
sight. At first Thielke thought that the man was trying to control
a woman high on drugs, or perhaps who was deranged. But then he
heard her pleas for help and knew that he had to do something.
    "Help me! Please help me! Rape! I'm being
raped!" Jenny's screams were wild and high-pitched, the result of
extreme physical pain. It was difficult, in the darkness, to see
precisely what was happening. Dahlke and Thielke briefly exchanged
glances, as if questioning each other about what they should
do.
    "Let's see what that is. Let's check it out,"
said Dahlke, leading the way and shouting for Thielke to follow him
toward the sound of the screams. By the time they reached the
couple, Dahlke and Thielke saw that Jenny was naked, lying on her
back, and that Dayton was now on top of her, face-to-face. Dayton
was lying in between her legs, in a position that made it appear he
was having, or at least trying to have, sex with her.
    "What the fuck do you think you are doing?"
shouted Dahlke at the complete stranger in stunned disbelief. In
all of his nearly fifty-one years he had never witnessed such an
outrageous, blatant display of violence