Ex-deputy takes stand to testify about murdering prostitute in retrial
Former Kern County Sheriff’s deputy David Keith Rogers took a deep breath before answering a question asked Thursday by his public defender on the stand: Why did he solicit prostitutes?
Rogers leaned back and then inched forward into the microphone to very clearly answer. The response probably resulted from reflecting on his actions after being in prison for decades for murdering two prostitutes in the 1980s.
“Stupidity,” Rogers, 76, said Thursday in Kern County Superior Court while dressed in an orange jumpsuit. “It was illegal. It would have cost my job if I were seen or caught. It was just flat out stupid.”
It did cost Rogers his job — and led him to be sentenced to die in his original 1988 trial. He was convicted of murdering Janine Marie Benintende, 20, and pregnant Tracie Clark, 15, both prostitutes working in Kern County. The California State Supreme Court overturned his death sentence after a witness reneged on her 1988 testimony. That witness’ statements were used by a Kern County Superior Court judge to sentence Rogers to death.
Kern County jurors will not consider the validity of Rogers’ murder convictions, but will determine if he should be sentenced to death or life in prison without parole. The retrial has lasted for about one month, and Chief Deputy Public Defender Tanya Richard called Rogers as her first witness Thursday after prosecutors rested their case Wednesday.
Rogers testified how he didn’t immediately begin soliciting prostitutes after he began working as a KCSO deputy, but did so after a few years of work. Soon after, he paid for sex with Tracie Clark while on East Belle Terrace.
She got into his car, and they agreed to sex for $30, Rogers testified. That’s when he drove her out “in the country” and they began to have sex, he added.
But, an argument began about “money and distance,” Rogers said. He pulled out a gun to scare Clark to stop hitting him with her nails and pushing him while they argued, he said.
But she didn’t stop, he added. Clark kept hitting him, and that’s when Rogers shot her, he testified.
“It was an unconscious move,” Rogers said, while adding he doesn’t remember exactly how it happened or when he cocked back the trigger.
Clark ended up outside the truck and began screaming about reporting him shooting her, Rogers said.
That’s when he “panicked and shot her multiple times,” Rogers said. He added he didn’t want to lose his job and dropped her body in a canal, where she was later found by deputies.
Rogers drove home, testifying he knew he made a bad decision, felt terrible and sad.
“I was a mess,” he said. The then-deputy sheriff thought about taking many days off from work, or leaving the country. But, he went to work the next day and didn’t tell anyone about killing Clark. Even when deputies came to his house to show him Clark’s picture, Rogers testified, he told them he didn’t know Clark. Murdering someone wasn’t a topic to drop in casual conversation, Rogers said, when asked why he didn’t tell his then-wife.
“‘I’m sorry’ is such a pitiful word,” Rogers said.
He later added: “I’ll be sorry for the rest of my life, or however long I live. But, it doesn’t undo what I did.”
The defendant has denied killing Benintende, according to interviews between KCSO detectives and Rogers played at trial.
Richard also questioned Rogers about his upbringing.
He was born in Richwood, W.Va., and had three brothers. Rogers eventually moved to Exeter and then to Hopland. In Hopland, Rogers lived with his abusive stepfather, he testified.
One day, Rogers’ stepfather caught him, at age 4, wearing his mother’s underwear. The stepfather dressed him up, had makeup put on him and shoved him out the door so all the neighborhood kids could see, Rogers said.
“He wasn’t loving, he wasn’t kind to me or my brother,” Rogers testified.
The stepfather also made Rogers and his brother strip to their underwear, hug each other and hit them with a leather belt capped with a silver tip, Rogers said.
The leather left red marks on his body, but the sliver tip would pierce skin, Rogers testified. His brother purposely positioned himself to bear a greater brunt of the beating rather than let a 4-year-old boy suffer, Rogers testified.
The 76-year-old became emotional as he testified, wiping his face with a tissue.
“He was only 6 years old,” Rogers said of his brother.
Rogers’ testimony will continue Tuesday.
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I’ll be sorry for the rest of my life, or however long I live. But, it doesn’t undo what I did.” — David Keith Rogers, Former Kern County Sheriff’s deputy