In Cold Blood

[July 11th, 2007]

A Multnomah County jury will decide next week whether a local man beat and strangled his boyfriend to death, put the body on ice in a bathtub and then led police to the scene of the crime.

Slayings linked to domestic violence are nothing unusual. But the grisly details of this killing still trouble the victim's family and the Southeast Portland neighborhood where it happened.

A year ago this week, on July 13, 2006, then-36-year-old Jeffery Scott Rogers walked into the Portland Police Bureau's Central Precinct at 3 am to report a dead body. A tearful Rogers told cops he was off his prescribed meds, had been using meth and alcohol for five days, and was "trying to do the right thing," according to court records filed by the Multnomah County District Attorney's office.

Rogers accompanied police to his home at 1608 SE 48th Ave. Inside the well-kept one-story house, officers were stunned to find a bathtub packed with ice, packages of frozen meat and vegetables, and the body of 50-year-old Timothy Gripp, Rogers' live-in boyfriend of 14 months.

According to the DA's court filings, Rogers told police he'd last seen Gripp alive four days beforehand. The state medical examiner ruled the death a homicide after finding Gripp had been badly beaten and strangled.

Rogers was arrested that day and indicted a week later by a Multnomah County grand jury for murder constituting domestic violence. His trial starts July 16 in Multnomah County Circuit Court. If convicted, he faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years.

Currently held in Multnomah County Jail, Rogers has admitted no wrongdoing. His public defender, Gareld Gedrose, did not return repeated phone calls for comment.

Gripps' death rocked the up-and-coming neighborhood off Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard, where he was a well-loved resident and a regular at the Space Room lounge half a block from his house. "It's a very horrible situation that happened here in a very tight-knit community," says Lori Langlois, a neighbor and friend.

A part-time cleaner, Gripp was a trained pianist and composer. His memorial services at Starky's gay bar and Brite Spot Restaurant next to the Space Room were attended by hundreds of friends, gay and straight, says his brother, Darrell Gripp, a painting contractor in Yreka, Calif.

In its broad outlines, police say the slaying was not unusual. One-third of Portland's 27 homicides last year were domestic violence-related. And alleged killers do sometimes lead cops to the scene, authorities say.

"It's usually a crime of passion," says Lt. Jason Gates of the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office. "Later on, after the adrenaline tones down a little bit, they realize things went too far."

But police offered no guesses why a person would put a body on ice. "Sometimes people do things motivated by mental illness, sometimes because they're just twisted," says Portland Police spokesman Sgt. Brian Schmautz.

It wasn't the first July night that police responded to trouble at the home, which Gripp inherited from his former boyfriend.

Shortly after midnight on July 30, 2005, Portland Police Officer Daniel Jensen answered a domestic disturbance call at the house. Gripp, his face bruised and swelling, said Rogers had beaten him. Rogers tried to leave the scene, hitting Jensen several times in the face, according to court records.

Rogers was sentenced to 36 months' probation for assaulting Gripp and Jensen. That capped a string of prior convictions for robbery, theft, menacing and driving under the influence.

Little is known of Rogers' background. He grew up in Portland and Tualatin and worked odd jobs, says his grandfather, Stanley Rogers of Otis, Ore. "He had a pretty good personality until he got to drinking," he says.

Neighbors recall Jeffery Rogers as meanspirited and frequently drunk—a contrast to Gripp's conviviality. They say in the run-up to the killing, Gripp was concerned about Rogers' drug use and wanted him to move out. But they say Rogers, who used the house as a venue for binges with friends, refused.

Darrell Gripp says when he visited his brother's house afterward, he found the words "You're Dead" scrawled on a door. The shelves were gone from the freezer, he says, apparently because Rogers tried to put the body inside.

"Even in anger, I can't imagine killing somebody and living with it," Darrell Gripp says. "The way he was killed, too, it was so brutal. In his own home."