All language subtitles for Ill.Be.Gone.in.the.Dark.S01E01.Murder.Habit.720p.AMZN.WEBRip.DDP5.1.x264-NTb

Hi Cliff.
My name is Michelle McNamara.

I'm a crime writer in Los Angeles.
I am doing a series on unsolved crimes.

Hi, Kate, this is Michelle McNamara.

- Hey, it's Michelle.
- Hi, Michelle.

I write a lot about unsolved cases.
One that I am very fascinated with is

the East Area Rapist/Original Night
Stalker case.

I think it's very solvable.

There's a good likelihood that
he is still alive and he's out there.

I think the narcotic pull for me is
what I think of as the powerful absence

that haunts an unsolved crime.

Murderers lose their power
the moment we know them.

We see their unkempt shirts,

the uncertain fear tightening their
faces as they're led into a courtroom.

When I'm puzzling over the details
of an unsolved crime,

I'm like a rat in a maze given a task.
I mean that in the best possible way.

The world narrows, the search propels.

I felt in the truest sense of the word,
gripped.

I had a murder habit and it was bad.

I would feed it
for the rest of my life.

I'LL BE GONE IN THE DARK

So, what's in Herndon, Virginia ?

Herndon, Virginia is where my parents
live, so I was back there for a week,

and while my daughter was visiting
her grandparents,

I was in the basement struggling to get
this afterword done, it was hard going.

'Cause I was also rereading the book.

And there were those moments when I
would want to just like run upstairs

and go tell her something 'cause it
felt like I was listening to her,

and then I'd be like,
"Oh no, she's not here," you know.

So, it was a very,
it was a very dark week.

- Yeah. Oh, I know.
- For me.

That summer, I hunted the serial killer
at night from my daughter's playroom.

I'd retreat to my makeshift workspace

and boot up my laptop
in search of a man I'd never met,

who'd raped and murdered
people I didn't know.

In 1977, the Golden State Killer,
as I'd come to call him,

hadn't yet graduated to murder.

Long before he was known
by the acronym "EAR/ONS,"

and even before he was known as
the "Original Night Stalker,"

they called him the "East Area Rapist,"

who was attacking women and girls
in their bedrooms

throughout Northern California.

This man is considered to have
an extremely violent potential.

There isn't much that you can do
except comply with his demands.

He always wore a mask.

The victims slept untroubled

until the flashlight's blaze
forced open their eyes.

Sleepy minds lumbered, then raced.

A figure they couldn't see wielded
the light.

But who ? And why ?

7 YEARS EARLIER

The other thing that's so interesting
about this case I think about a lot is,

you know, serial killers
are... oh dear.

This is awkward. Hi.

Why are you wearing a skirt
as a dress ?

Oh my god. You are so funny.

Let's just start at the very beginning.

How did you first become interested
in this particular case ?

So, this particular one, what's
interesting is that I remember...

The great tragedy of this case to me is
that it's not better known.

I wish Zodiac would get rid of his
15 minutes of fame

so that EAR/ONS could get
a little heat, you know.

And so I was very shocked. I think
it was just four or five years ago

that I happened to be home one night
and one of the E ! shows was on.

And I thought you've got to be
kidding me, I've never, what ?

I looked it up...

and Larry Crompton's
book kind of got me.

That's been the last year
kind of obsession.

Started with that book.

It was a Friday night. It was
probably after 1:00, closer to 2:00.

We were awakened by a voice
and a bright light in our face.

Then there he is with his ski mask,

and the only thing you can see is
his silhouette.

Then he said,
"Don't move or I'll kill you."

Welcome to Crime Scene, a podcast
that examines real life crimes.

I'm Michelle McNamara
of True Crime Diary.com.

The terror began on June 18, 1976,

when a masked man raped
a young woman home alone

in middle class Rancho Cordova.

Larry Crompton is a retired lieutenant

of the Contra Costa
Sheriff's Department.

He worked on the Rapist Task Force
in the '70s.

Okay. All of these were suspects
that we worked on and eliminated,

and some of them
really, really did look good.

He recently published a book on
the case.

"Sudden Terror" draws
on police reports, victim interviews,

Crompton's notes, newspaper clippings.

What follows is
my conversation with him.

So, to put together your book
you mostly went through your files ?

Yeah, I had everything.

And I was there.

Present, Sergeant Larry Crompton,
Sheriff's Office.

We're conducting an interview

for case file 7917426
that occurred on 6-11-79.

You talk about it in the book so well,
sort of coming in and you felt him.

And I just wondered
what that feeling was like.

It's just...
It's hard to believe this...

but when I walked into the house,
I had a feeling.

The hair on the back of my neck would
just feel like it was standing up.

It was just the...

the fear that was
in the victims and...

And listening to what they said you had
a feeling that this is a mad man.

It wasn't anything that we had dealt
with before.

He always wore a mask.
Always wore gloves.

Talked through clenched teeth.

Set the houses up
prior to the victim's arriving.

Unlocked doors and windows.
Opened gates.

Okay. This is our backyard.
This was the window right here.

It's on the far side of the house.

I came out here, I walked down here,

and then went this way
to the front of the street.

And that's how I got out, right there.

And this is the back fence to get over.

If there was a man in the house,
he would throw shoelaces on the bed,

and tell the woman to tie him up.

He would rummage and then he would
come back with dishes.

He'd put dishes on the man's back
and tell him,

"If I hear these dishes rattle,
I'm gonna kill your wife."

And that was what he was putting into
their minds...

that they were going to die

and that's what he did
over and over and over.

2/2/78.

Twenty-three.

The attack
happened on May 14th, 1977.

So, this was my first birthday
after the attack.

That's the room it was in.
There's my kitchen.

Boy, I have not looked
at these pictures in a long time.

My job is to catch him
and I didn't do that and...

I can't let it go.

Were normally the victims so relieved
that they were alive that they...

Oh yes. Definitely.

Yeah, I wondered. I tried to put myself
in that situation.

And to go into someone's home is
screwing with them mentally, too.

- Yeah. That's scary.
- Yeah.

I think the story of the victims,
it has to be told.

I remember Michelle ultimately wanted
to serve

helping to get this guy caught.

She looked at it
from the hopeful optimistic humans

putting puzzles together,
trying to get closure,

trying to make sense of violence
and despair.

I mean, what drives me
is the need to put a face

on an unknown killer.

And what I love is this intersection of
sort of technology and crime solving

in that people can get sort of
wheeled out of their house

for something they did in 1957 because
of the internet, because of DNA.

I really get off on that.
That is so amazing to me.

And I want to be a part of that.

Everyone has their cause, and this just
feels like what I was born to do.

Pacific Northwest murders

I love digging for clues,
I love putting things together.

I love the puzzling part of it.
I love being wrong

because sometimes it proves

that you didn't know enough,
and you learn new techniques.

I love every single aspect of it.

What led you to starting this blog ?

I always followed crime stories
and that I was always a writer.

So, I really just, I started it
on a lark really.

I started reading Michelle's blog,
True Crime Diary,

basically on a recommendation.

And I was obsessed with it.
Like she couldn't post enough.

And her stories and the way she told
them made them so memorable.

You know, they all stuck with you.

Whatever light existed was blotted out.

The sound of hurried footsteps
faded away.

It had that feeling of under the
blanket with a flashlight at night.

I was kind of amazed
at how quickly it caught on.

When people talk to me
about finding that blog,

there's a real excitement, people were
like, "I've read every single post."

It was like they were drug addicts
or something.

About a year in, I started to realize
I wasn't really in an echo chamber,

that people were kind of starting to
read it and respond to it.

Most of the TV shows that would cover
these stories were very cold

or really kind of exploitive.

You spent a bunch of time watching

a reenactment
of a beautiful young actress

being attacked over and over
while wearing lingerie.

Michelle's blog kind of changed,
I think, the focus.

She personalized those people.

If you can remind people about the
humanity at the other end of that gun,

this was a person with
hopes and dreams, with family,

that could have done this, this,
or this.

That's what Michelle did
in her writing.

All right, here we go, folks.
We've got Michelle McNamara.

She's a writer and a web sleuth.

She has taught college writing,
worked as an editor, sold TV pilots,

and also consulted for Dateline.

She is a truth seeker is what she is.

Let's face it, you have a career.
You have a life

because people
are always gonna get murdered.

- You deal in the devil.
- The murder biz.

She was a pioneer. She was somebody
who was creating something new.

Yeah, nothing was like that in 2007.

Hi, Los Angeles.
Patton Oswalt on Jonesy's Jukebox.

That was Ceremony by New Order.

I am sitting here with the lovely and
intelligent Michelle McNamara, my wife,

who is the writer and creator
of True Crime Diary.com.

I think this is one of the best written
and creepiest crime blogs on the web...

- You're such a good husband.
- It is. No, it's a good...

If this site was awful,
I'd have to be lying all the time,

so... Michelle ?

You were telling me about something
going on in the Northwest right now.

Yeah, I have a theory there is a serial
killer operating in the Northwest

who is killing couples out camping.
There's been about four or five cases

where there seems to be no motive,
and they are both shot in the head.

I remember the Jenner case so clearly.

That was such a turning point for her
because...

she became very fascinated
with how crimes are investigated.

It's not easy to get to this beach.

You have to negotiate a tricky path
down a rocky cliff.

On Wednesday, August 18,

a Sheriff's helicopter noticed
two sleeping bags on Fish Head Beach.

Despite the noise and nearness
of the helicopter,

the figures in the sleeping bags
didn't move.

Lindsay and Jason had each been shot
in the head at close range

with a .45 caliber Marlin rifle.

That is a creepy beach.

I showed you all that evidence, or all
that footage. It's a very creepy beach.

The act of actually going
to the crime scene and walking the case

made her go, "Oh, yeah, I can't just be
clicking on the internet."

I have to go visit places
and look at places.

It changed the way she wrote about it.

When did you make the shift, Michelle,
from reading stuff and absorbing it

to thinking I can do something here,

I can start trying to connect dots that
I might see that others have missed ?

There was this kind of national news

about a kidnapping
that took place in Missouri.

This boy had been kidnapped
from a bus stop.

And it immediately reminded me of
a lesser known case that had happened

five years before that no one else
was talking about,

but there were things that were
interesting to me.

So, I posted that I think whoever took
this boy, Ben Ownby,

probably also took this kid,
Shawn Hornbeck.

And I posted it on a Wednesday.

That Friday, the police in St. Louis
went to investigate a tip about

where Ben Ownby might be,
and they knocked on the door,

and Shawn Hornbeck opened the door.

You mean a kid who'd been kidnapped
years earlier answered the door ?

Right. And again, this was three days
after I had posted

I think they're probably taken
by the same person.

That was a big moment for me.

I could start to see where
my head full of facts and details

could intersect with technology.

I had started to kind of use
internet tools

to figure out that they seemed similar
and that they might be connected.

It's got to be amazing
when you find a new sort of clue.

When people describe like
porn addiction or something.

- This is really weird.
- I can't stop myself. Time disappears.

- All those things happen.
- So, it's a genuine addiction.

- You are on board.
- Yeah.

- Are you doing this now ? Currently ?
- Every night. Until 2 in the morning.

I cannot remember the specific time
we started talking about EAR/ONS

because every day, there was so many
cases she was following up.

And then just organically, that became
the thing that got narrowed down.

I looked at Michelle's blog,
True Crime Diary.com,

and I was really intrigued.

So, she and I first met in 2011 to talk
about some story ideas,

and she was so smart and so cool

and down to earth,
and her shit was together.

Not only that, I really liked
how she was unpretentious

in an obviously pretty pretentious city
and business.

I remember she wore these clogs.

She had a backpack
that she bought at Target.

And she just showed up in a flannel
shirt and as like low key as possible.

So, we meet up, we go to this café.
I think we met there like at 11

and probably didn't leave until
about three o'clock in the afternoon.

Because she started telling me
this story about this guy.

The case that is sort of the biggest
case that I'm most obsessed with is,

the short version is basically he's the
worst serial offender in modern history

that no one really knows about.

He raped over 50 women in California
and killed 10 people.

And he's never been caught.

There's no one like him out there.
There hasn't been before.

He is such a unique offender.

This guy was one of the most prolific,
violent, brutal serial rapists,

and eventually a murderer,
and I had never heard of him.

Like you'd heard of Zodiac Killer,
you heard Son of Sam,

you hear of all these big, especially
in the '70s and '80s, which seem to be

the most fertile period
for these serial killer stories,

and I had never heard of him.

He would eat in the people's kitchens,

he would hide ligatures under cushions
so that when he was attacking,

you suddenly would watch this man
take a ligature under your cushion

that you didn't even know
he had been in your house.

I'm drinking this Arnold Palmer
that's 36 thousand ounces and I'm like

sipping on it and drinking it
as she's telling me this story.

I needed to go to the bathroom badly
because my bladder was about to burst,

but I couldn't. I couldn't. I just kept
listening and listening and listening.

And that's how I knew
it was a great story.

The challenge for any magazine editor,
any reporter and writer is

sure, you have a person
or you have a topic,

really interesting guy
from a long time ago,

but there was nothing new to say yet.

What's fascinating to me
about this case is that

it's rich with so many clues, and it
really seems to me that it's just

time, energy, and curiosity.
And that...

And frankly, it should be solved.
It just should be.

When I was so gripped by
Crompton's book,

I googled East Area Rapist,
Original Night Stalker,

and this came up, this link to the
A&E Cold Case Files message board.

For someone like me, again,
it's like oh wow, look at all these...

Wow. Wait, who would spend, you know,
all this time ?

Well, me I guess because it's a week
later and I've read 20 thousand posts.

You know, certainly in this case,
there was this community of people,

they all had different reasons
for being involved in it.

Some of them were from Sacramento
and remembered

and were still fearful
and wanted to see it closed.

Others were more kind of just
data mining, sleuth kind of people.

This was unique to me because
I've never actually been part of this

sort of message board
community before.

They throw around clues,
you go down the rabbit hole gleefully

like oh there's just this unending
thread of information that I can find.

EAR/ONS is an acronym for the East Area
Rapist slash Original Night Stalker.

It's an awkward name befitting a man
who crossed jurisdictions

and flummoxed law enforcement
for decades.

What kind of man was he ?

My favourite true-crime blogger
just wrote about the EAR.

I've been aware of Michelle
for probably a few years,

as I was a fan of her True Crime Diary.

I'd read True Crime Diary
in its entirety.

So, when she finally wrote about East
Area Rapist, it was exciting.

I'm obsessed. It's not healthy.
I know the strangest details about him.

I know his blood type.
I know his penis size.

He vaulted fences.
He escaped foot chases.

But I believe it's the rare moments
when he was human

that will be his downfall in the end.

Her writing evoked the central hook
for me, which was the mystery,

the question of
who is behind this crime ?

She wasn't a ghoulish gore hound.

There was nothing tasteless about her
writing. It struck just the right tone.

An impressive community of people
has come together

at an A&E sponsored website. Unlike
other unsolved mystery communities,

the EAR/ONS community's desire
for justice feels strong and sincere.

She reached out to me privately,
and we started corresponding,

and it was evident she was
entrenched in this case. As was I.

I saw who seemed to be some of the kind
of leaders on the board,

and I just began kind of
personal messaging.

We started exchanging notes and
developed a rapport pretty quickly.

We just built mutual trust

until we were just openly sharing
our work with each other.

And that's when we discovered that
a lot of it had intersected.

We kind of started exchanging ideas
and theories and things like that,

and we just kind of forged
a friendship,

a strange friendship
over this strange 30-year-old case.

You're the best, Paul Haynes !

Hi, my name is Michelle. I'm a
long-time lurker on the EAR/ONS board.

The case is of interest to me
and you seem

really measured and thoughtful
in your responses.

I wanted to know if you have
any thoughts on something.

I spent an afternoon doing
some research,

and I feel like I've stumbled upon
a compelling suspect.

Hi Michelle, thanks for trusting me
with this information.

I'm a Sacramento native and have been
investigating this case for years.

Let's talk.

I traveled to Sacramento to meet
a woman about whom I know very little,

including the spelling
of her last name.

The social worker operates
as a kind of gate keeper

between investigators
and the board community.

This irks some posters who accuse her
of hinting at confidential information

but then shutting down
when asked to share.

She greeted me in the parking lot
by waving her arms wildly overhead.

I liked her right away.

Well, we had been in communication.
I knew she was flying into Sacramento.

And she was another civilian that
was interested in the movement.

And we would drive around
to the crime scenes.

I would take her to the areas.
And so, we drove around for hours.

We're gonna go about five miles
from here.

And I'm going to take you
to the first crime scenes first.

Our language just immediately became
about the case facts

and about what we knew and what
this and what do you think of that.

It was a language that nobody else
could've understood what we talke about

unless you had that experience
or you were aware of the case.

I just don't think it's gonna be
somebody that everybody thought,

oh, that's the East Area Rapist.

I think you're right because
he wasn't caught.

I think it's gonna be somebody
that they go, "Really ?"

Right. Right. Obviously,
he didn't stand out at the time.

There's something about two women
getting together

that have a common cause and a common
goal, and, you know, we're crusaders,

we're warriors, we're on the path.

That was the beginning
of a relationship.

We'll remain lifelong friends forever.

First, we're gonna head into
Rancho Cordova

to his very early attacks,
number one and number three.

Sacramento...
When you were growing up,

did it seem to be a lot of people
who worked...

- It was a cow town.
- Oh, okay.

When you say a cow town, you mean
that there was the out-outlying farms ?

Yeah, it was outlying farms and...

- There's still a lot of like...
- It's still outlying.

It's interesting 'cause coming from LA,

you almost never see sort of
big open empty spaces.

Driving around, it's like wow.

We're entering
the Rancho Cordova realm.

And I'm gonna take you right into
the heart of it all.

This is where the first crime occurs.

When you first are learning
about the case,

you just want to get a feel
for where did these things happen,

who were the players in this, and...

Can you tell anything more about
this offender

by going into the places he was in ?

A few houses down on the right
is number three.

Yeah, so these houses
are close together. Yeah.

And I'll actually show you
number one's house.

For Michelle, it's like I want to get
in this guy's mind,

I want to go to these places,
I want to try to understand

why this area
and why so close together.

Was he from here ?
This is his hot spot.

This is the house right here.

He cut the phone lines, and

raped her and left the scene.

This was in June, June 18th, 1976
was this attack.

And the attack we're going to
was in August, August 29th, '76.

So, we're pulling up to attack
number three right now.

- That's how close he was.
-He had to be from around here.

A 12-year-old saw a masked man
outside the window,

ran, and woke her mother up.

The mother ran to the kitchen
and dialed the operator.

Moments later, EAR was standing
in the doorway with a club and a gun,

naked from the waist down. He told
the mother, "Freeze or I'll kill you."

The mother grabbed the gun band
as he approached her.

He clubbed her until she lay
on the floor.

A neighbor had seen EAR walking away
with no pants on

but could not describe his face.

This is the second house in,
and if we drive to the corner house

and if you just look on the fence line
right here through,

this goes straight through to the
number one attack in June of '76.

The neighbor also said that he was
hearing for a couple months prior

people jumping over his fence.

It's my guess he was actually

looking at these houses
long before he attacked.

It's amazing to me that any one person
could get away with this many crimes.

And you can just see how they're just
a stone's throw away from each other.

And right down the fence line.

But he wasn't walking on those kind of
fences, was he ?

- He's said to have been walking them.
- Oh, wow.

As Michelle was going up,
doing drive arounds of Sacramento,

I saw her confidence growing.

It was really exciting to have someone
who was...

you're in love with someone
and they're doing something

and you can see how excited
and energized they are about it,

and that makes you excited
and energized.

I'm amazed I'm still funny. I'm amazed
I'm still funny. Because I'm in love.

I'm in love. I'm in love. Yes, I am.

And there is nothing, nothing ends
a comedian's career quicker

than regular sex and being in love.
It's the worst thing on the planet.

My girlfriend is obsessed with
true crime and serial killers too.

All she does all day, watches FBI
Files, Forensics Files on TV.

The most graphic, disturbing,
depressing shows.

I walk in the house every single day,

"The amount of semen found in the chest
cavity led investigators..."

Oh my God !

She's like, "Shh, it's the semen cavity
killer. I want see what's..."

When I met Michelle was on...

It was a show at the Largo.
I think it was May 20th.

I had been doing "The King of Queens"
for five years,

and I'd had a couple specials
at that point.

But she wasn't that steeped
in the comedy scene,

so she didn't know who I was.

This guy was funny. More than funny.

He was moody and startling,
but hilarious.

He could move the crowd
with the tiniest of expressions.

"Irish girls," he said, he knocked
the microphone against his forehead,

"Irish girls are my kryptonite."

And then I was just sitting at the bar
afterwards, and she was leaving,

and she literally tapped me
and just went, "Irish women, nice."

And she was so fucking like
steam roller gorgeous

that I was just stunned, and I ran,
I literally ran down the street

and went like, "Hey !" And then
the first word I ever said to her was,

"Hey !," screaming.
And then she turned around, and I went,

"I'm not going to play any fucking
games. I want your name and number

so I can take you on a date
this weekend. Are you free ?"

And she went, "Yeah."
I went, "Good, give me your number."

It was just the most awkward,

non-James Bond moment
I could have had.

Take off my mask.

Our first date in LA they show movies
at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

So, we went and watched an Italian film
called "The Tenth Victim".

Really goofy Italian
science fiction film.

I was too nervous to really do
a lot of talking that night.

She did way more of the talking 'cause
she just was...

And the more we talked I'm like, "Oh
my God, she's so smart and so cool.

I'm gonna screw this up."

I remember I called her late at night
'cause I was up and I'm like,

"The Creature
From the Black Lagoon is on."

She goes, "I'm watching it.
It's one of my favorite movies."

That was one of the things we bonded
over really early. We loved that.

We loved many of the same things.

Like "Creature From the Black Lagoon,"
tales of the grim and offbeat,

and good food.

I didn't like the way his comedian
friends, including him,

seemed to tell jokes but never listen.

He thought I was thin skinned. For
a while, it seemed it might not work.

But one night,
he was saying goodbye to me,

and he won me over with an adorable
Edward G. Robinson impression.

And I was doing that, "Meh, see. Look
at the getaway sticks on that tomato."

Like chatting her up

but in that old kind of slang
and she thought that was so hilarious.

I laughed and grabbed him.

"More," I said.

"Look at the keister
on that hot number."

Couples have in-jokes with each other,
and that became one of my...

It was just all that '30's gangster
slang.

However you wanna say it.
I can't, oh God.

I wouldn't let him go. After a while,
we gave up and moved in together.

I made this custom desk for her that
was in this kind of half-moon shape.

Like I wanted her to have
like this command center.

I've never tired
of the Robinson impression.

I've never tired of Patton.

Michelle knew that she was marrying
a famous person,

and as much as lived a life that a lot
of people might fantasize about,

none of that mattered to her.
And I mean really.

She was a regular salt of the earth
Midwestern gal.

And she didn't want to be
anything else.

The whole being photographed
and going to premieres and stuff.

That meant nothing to her.

Especially if you're someone
who's thinking,

"I want to go home and write later,
I want to get up tomorrow and write."

One of her favorite things in the world
was to be in her room

under the covers with a fan reading.

- Do you want Patton alone ?
- Do you want to leave ?

Yes, I do.

She went to the Oscars.
She went to the Grammys.

We just always giggled about it. It was
so different from how we grew up.

She usually would wear black
and she would joke

that they would think
she was like a PR person.

She was just an introvert, that's all.

She was really good at making herself
a fly on the wall and inconspicuous.

I think it's one of the reasons
she had incredible insight into people.

She listened, she watched, she didn't
need to be the center of attention.

She didn't want to be.

I think she'd always been
sort of singled out as

you're a terrific writer,
and then she got to LA where

there's a gazillion people trying to do
the same thing

and that was hard for her.
She hadn't experienced

that degree of consistent rejection
and failure and disappointment.

Her ultimate dream was always
to write books or for the New Yorker.

She also really, really wanted a child.

Four years after we got married,
our daughter was born.

Alice. Hi.

Hi.

It was so amazing.

Look at her...

Oh, Alice.

I think Alice was about two or three

when Michelle was meticulously, due
diligence researching about EAR/ONS.

In Sacramento,
the air is immediately better.

Struck by the big open spaces.

A little over half a million,
or about half a million people,

but it feels, coming from Los Angeles,
it feels so much smaller.

- How are you doing in here ?
- I'm good.

I might have... okay, this is crazy,
can I have one more latte ?

Of course. You got it.

- But this was really yummy.
- Good.

When Michelle interviewed me,

we met for breakfast down at the
Citizen Hotel in downtown Sacramento.

Talking about the attack is difficult,

but Michelle,
she was so serious about the case.

She was just the easiest person
to talk to.

So, I'm from suburban Chicago,
so all of this is so foreign to me.

But I'm trying to get back
into sort of the mindset.

A lot of people will say that

the E-A-R crimes, crime period,

was kind of the end
of innocence for Sacramento.

We have the confluence of the American
and Sacramento rivers.

It was built up
being a commerce center,

and it became the state capital.

We had both Mather Field
and McClellan Air Base.

So, military was a big aspect of the
economy and the people who lived here.

Back in those days, you did know more
of your neighbors,

people didn't lock all their doors or
their cars necessarily all the time.

And terrible crime was just

not that common.

'70's Sacramento, being a cop
was like a cop anywhere else.

It was pretty slow.
And then June comes along,

and you got this pervert later known
as the East Area Rapist.

I responded to a home invasion, a rape,
in 1976, October 5th.

Jane Carson on Wood Parkway.

At the time, the East Area rape cases
started, I was working Homicide.

And I think it was the fifth case I was
called to the scene on,

which was Jane Carson.

I understand the feelings that
you're going through and wondering

whether you did the right thing
or whether you did the wrong thing,

and could you have done anything
any differently ?

And I think you handled the situation
very well.

Well, I had thought of kicking him,
but it would have been useless

as my hands were tied and I was
blindfolded and my child was with me.

When the husband left for work, the
rapist was in their house and on her.

He knew down to the minute
what was going on in Jane's house

and the neighborhood.

When I left there, I was convinced this
probably wasn't just a routine rape.

In fact, I know it wasn't.
And then I started digging in deeper.

In the meantime, we have a couple more
rapes and at that point,

there's no question we had a serial
rapist. He had a definite pattern.

When we realized that we first had
a series going,

the sheriff did not want the media
to be aware of it.

Because we didn't have anything.

Because of what was happening
within the rapes,

he didn't want the word to get out to
make fear in the community.

We just weren't ready to handle
anything coming in

and we didn't have
that many people working it.

This is attack number eight

and this victim was accosted
outside of her house,

as she drove her car into the driveway.

She was taken into the backyard
of her neighbor's house

and there were strips of cloth
already laid out for ligatures.

Her ankles were tied with cord.
She was blindfolded, gagged.

Jingling her car keys, the EAR said
he'd be back in five minutes.

Car was reportedly found in the area
with the dog locked in the trunk.

The media became aware of it.
The Sheriff said,

"Please don't print anything,
we're gonna catch this guy."

And then as time went on and we didn't
catch the guy, the media said,

"Okay, we're gonna start printing."

That was when the whole community
was brought in.

What happened right after number eight
on 11/3/76,

the rape series came to light during
this meeting on crime prevention.

There were 500 people in attendance.

You can use a simple alarm system.

Mount a bell device
on the outside of your home.

String some wires to a power source,
and then string the other set of wires

right to a nightstand
and have a toggle switch there.

If you ever hear the glass breaking,
reach over on your nightstand,

and flip the switch,
the bell goes off on the outside.

Other than by word of mouth

where people might be talking about
a neighbor that had been raped,

there wasn't a lot of information
until this time.

On 11/4/76,

the first newspaper article on the EAR
appears in the Sacramento Bee.

Warren Holloway was a reporter.

I put a little one paragraph note
out to the detectives,

"Got a rape series going
in the East Area."

And he walked out, he saw that.
The next day on the newspaper

"East Area Rapist."

It just got picked up and there it was,
"East Area Rapist."

Three weeks after attack number eight,

where it was announced there was
a town hall meeting in Rancho Cordova,

of the 35 that attended,
only one of those was a male.

Following two weeks later, "Publicity
May Have Curtailed Rapist,"

is written in the Sacramento Bee.
Then he has his tenth attack.

A lot of people don't realize this,

but six rapes in Sacramento
out of the first ten,

six of them were teenagers.
And two of them were 15 years old.

This one here is probably
Christmas day.

So, it would be a week
after it happened.

It was December 18th. There was
a high school dance and I had a cold,

so at the last minute,
I decided to stay at home.

My parents were going to a Christmas
party, and my sister was at work.

My parents left probably around
6:30ish.

And I think I put a pizza in the oven.

I remember having my slippers on,
and I decided to go play the piano.

I heard a noise,

but at 15 years old,
you always hear noises in your house

when your parents aren't home.
So, I didn't think much of it.

I stopped. I do remember stopping
and listening and...

I didn't hear anything else,
so I continued to play.

It wasn't very much longer, maybe
a couple minutes, that I felt

a presence next to me,

and I looked up, and

then I felt a knife at my throat.

And then he told me in my ear,

"If you scream or move, I will put
this knife through your throat.

And I'll be gone in the dark."

He moved me down the hallway, through
the garage, and into the backyard.

Where I was left out in a...

on a picnic bench
while he went back into the house,

and he told me he'd be watching me
every 10 seconds.

He came back outside, and that is
where he cut my clothes off.

He would bring me inside

and he would rape me,
take me back outside,

inside, rape me again, back outside,

and then another time.

Yeah. So that
was my first memory of that.

I think during that time though
there wasn't a lot of feeling going on.

I was pretty numb and...

But what I do remember is he had moved
the couch

very close to our fireplace.

But because I was blindfolded
and couldn't see,

I thought he had caught our couch
on fire.

And I think that was probably...

That was really scary,
because I thought I was going to die.

And then he was gone.

I stopped playing the piano
shortly after the attack.

It was difficult for me to play

because I always felt like
there was somebody behind me.

It was just a few hours.

But it changed everything.

It had been a month since he last
struck, but he has struck again.

This time it was a 15-year-old girl.

Again, it was in a Northeast Sacramento
neighborhood.

Again, he knew she was alone,

forced his way in using a knife
to threaten her,

and raped her repeatedly
for several hours

and forced her to perform
perverted sex acts.

The latest victim was younger
than the others,

and the attack took place early
in the evening

where the others took place between
11 at night and dawn.

But it definitely was the same rapist
who eluded authorities for over a year.

When Michelle and I talked about
this story,

it was one of those things you keep
thinking about and keep thinking about.

Michelle had already done
an incredible amount of research.

And I remember thinking,
"Okay, we've got a few hurdles."

I have to pitch this
to my editor-in-chief.

Everyone loves a story about a killer,
but in order to get her interested,

I had to convince her that this story
was relevant now

and that it was like a Los Angeles
and a California story.

Michelle was an incredible,
intrepid reporter.

And so, as we were sort of trying to
put the pitch together,

she would go on her own
and just research things.

You could be completely confident
that she was going to come back

with something, something good,

and not just get the facts right
but also be able

to have that relationship
with that person she would need

that no one else could get to.

I pitched L.A. Magazine the EAR story,

and they're interested in doing it
possibly, which would be amazing.

That would be, like, the kind
of publicity that you can't buy.

I just think this story
is so important to be told.

I just feel like he's smirking
somewhere going, like,

"I don't have to pay for this ever."

If there's any way I could look
at whatever you have

and I won't copy anything,
I just look at it and take notes

and then give it back to you tomorrow,

at least then I can say
I saw case files.

Can I let you while you're here
look at some stuff ?

Because I've sworn confidentiality

that I would never release it
out of my possession.

Right. So I can sit there...

You can sit there and go through them.
I just can't let them leave my home.

How many pages are there
all together like ?

- Probably four or five thousand.
- Oh my god.

- Yeah, it's big.
- Yeah.

It's all the rapes.
It's all 50 rapes.

I should make a trade with you today.

You let me take this today
and I'll let you take the cases today.

-And then we give them back.
-And then we give them back.

I would do that,
but we have to give them back.

I can't believe I'm doing this.

These underground trades,

the result of furtive alliances forged
from a shared obsession

with a faceless serial killer
were common.

Online sleuths, retired detectives,
and active detectives,

everyone participated.

DUDE. I got my hands on 4,000 pages
of police reports.

Case files of rapes 1-50.
DYING.

The grandiose seeker in me

couldn't wait to insert the flash drive
into my laptop back at my hotel.

At every stoplight I touched
the top pocket in my backpack

to make sure
the tiny rectangle was still there.

Once in my room, I immediately changed
into the crisp white hotel bathrobe.

I lowered the shades
and turned off my phone.

I dumped a bag of mini-bar gummy bears
into a glass

and set it next to me on the bed where I
sat cross legged in front of my laptop.

Ahead of me was a rare 24-hour stretch
without interference or distraction.

No tiny hands, slicked with paint,
asking to be washed.

No preoccupied hungry husband
to inquire about dinner.

I inserted the flash drive.

My mind in mail sorter mode,

my index finger
on the down arrow key.

I began to not so much read as devour.

Drainage ditches
and cement lined canals

come up frequently
in the police reports.

It's clear from the start,

from footprints, evidence,
suspicious sightings,

and even bringing one victim
down there,

that the East Area Rapist traveled this
way, like a subterranean creature.

He was doing reconnaissance.

He was studying people.

Learning when they were home.

That means that women exist who,

because of change of schedule or luck,
were never victims.

But they felt something terrifying
brush against them.

Hours vanished,
the gummy bears were gone.

I was jittery from sugar, hunger,

and spending too much time alone
in the dark

absorbing a 50-chapter horror story.

Part of the thrill of the game for him
I believe

was a kind of connect the dots puzzle
he played with people.

You may not think you have something
in common with your neighbor,

but you do.

Me.

Hi Michelle,
just spoke with the LA Mag editor.

It's official. It's a green light.