Original subtitles

♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

(PHONE RINGING)

(DOG BARKING)

(PHONE BEEPS)

MICHELLE MCNAMARA: 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. -PETE KOTZ: Hi, Michelle.

MICHELLE: Hi.

I-- I write a lot about unsolved cases.

One that I, um, 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.

And 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.

♪ ("AVALANCHE" BY AIMEE MANN PLAYING) ♪

♪ Well, I stepped Into an avalanche ♪

♪ It covered up my soul ♪

♪ When I am not this hunchback That you see ♪

♪ I sleep beneath The golden hill ♪

♪ You who wish To conquer pain ♪

♪ You must learn ♪

♪ Learn to serve me well ♪

(KEYBOARD CLACKING)

WOMAN: So, what's in Herndon, Virginia?

PATTON OSWALT: 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

'cause it was hard going.

Um... 'Cause I was also re-reading the book.

And there were those moments when

I would want to just...

like, run upstairs and go tell her something

because it felt like I was listening to her

and then I'm like, "Oh no. She's not..."

-You know. -Mm-hmm.

So it was just-- it was a very--

-Yeah. Well, I can only imagine. -PATTON: For me.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

MICHELLE: 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 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.

CAROL DALY: This man is considered

to have an extremely violent potential.

There isn't much that you can do

except comply with his demands.

MICHELLE: 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?

The other thing that's so interesting about this case

that I think about a lot is, you know,

serial killers are, um... Oh dear.

-This is awkward. -(CAMERON CHUCKLES)

Hi. (LAUGHS)

Why are you wearing a skirt as a dress?

Oh, my God.

You are so funny.

CAMERON CLOUTIER: So, how did you...

Let's just start at the very beginning.

How did you first become interested in this case?

Like this particular case?

So, this particular one, you know, what's interesting

is that I remember

the great tragedy of this case to me

is that it's not better known.

I mean I can't, you know, like, you know,

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

so that EAR/ONS could get a little heat,

-you know? Um... -CAMERON: Right.

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 or something was on,

and I thought, "You've gotta be kidding me. I've never-- what?"

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

MICHELLE: I looked it up.

And Larry Crompton's book kind of got me.

That's been the last, like, year kind of obsession.

-CAMERON: Mm-hmm. Right. -Started with that book.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

WOMAN #1: It was a Friday night.

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

WOMAN #2: We were awakened by a voice

and a bright light in our face.

WOMAN #3: Then there he is... with his ski mask

and the only thing you can see is his silhouette.

WOMAN #4: Then he said, uh,

"Don't move or I'll kill you."

♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

MICHELLE: Welcome to Crime Scene,

a podcast that examines real life crimes.

I'm Michelle McNamara of truecrimediary dot com.

The terror began on June 18th, 1976,

when a masked man raped a young woman home alone

in middle class Rancho Cordova.

(DOOR OPENS)

Larry Crompton is a retired lieutenant

from the Contra Costa Sheriff's Department.

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

LARRY CROMPTON: Okay. All of these were suspects

that we-- we worked on and, uh, eliminated.

And, uh...

and some of them really, really did look good.

But, uh...

MICHELLE: 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.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

-(LARRY MUMBLING) -MICHELLE: So, to put together your book,

you mostly went through your files. Was that...

-LARRY: Yeah, I had everything. -Wow.

LARRY: And I was there.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

LARRY: Now present, Sergeant Larry Crompton,

Sheriff's Office.

We're conducting an interview for...

case file 7917426

that occurred on 6-11-79.

MICHELLE: You talked about it in the book so well,

sort of coming in, and that you felt him

and I just wondered, like, what that feeling was like.

LARRY: 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, uh, and listening to what they--

what they said. It...

It just had a feeling that this is a madman.

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 went this way to the front of the street,

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

This is the back fence

to get over.

LARRY: 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."

WOMAN: This is our family room...

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.

Two-two-seventy-eight.

Twenty-three.

The attack happened on May 14th, uh, 1977.

So this was my first birthday after the attack.

This is mine. 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, uh, I can't let it go.

MICHELLE: Were normally the victims so relieved that they were alive

-that they-- -LARRY: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

-MICHELLE: Yeah. -LARRY: Definitely.

MICHELLE: Yeah. I wondered. I tried to put myself

in that situation, you know, and, uh...

to go into someone's home

is screwing with them mentally too.

-LARRY: Yeah. -MICHELLE: Ugh, yeah.

-That's scary. -LARRY: Yeah.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

You know, I think the story of the victim-- victims,

it has to be told.

PATTON: 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 a unknown killer.

And what-- 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 wanna be a part of that.

Nothing-- it's, you know, everyone has their cause,

and this just feels like what I was born to do.

(KEYBOARD CLACKING)

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.

MAN: What led you to starting this blog?

MICHELLE: Well, I always followed crime stories,

and I was always a writer.

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

KAREN KILGARIFF: 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.

Her stories and the way she told them,

made them so memorable.

You know, they all stuck with you.

MICHELLE: Whatever light existed was blotted out.

The sound of hurried footsteps faded away.

It had that feeling of, like,

under the blanket with a flashlight at night.

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

KAREN: When people talk to me about finding that blog,

there's a real excitement where people are like,

"I've read every single post."

It was like they were drug addicts or something.

MICHELLE: I would say 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.

KAREN: Most of the TV shows that would cover these stories

were very cold or really kind of exploitive.

We spent a bunch of time

watching a reenactment of a beautiful young actress

being attacked over and over while wearing lingerie.

(WOMAN SCREAMING)

KAREN: But 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've done this, this, or this."

That's what Michelle did in her writing.

CHRISTINE BLACKBURN: All right. Here we go, folks.

We've got Michelle McNamara.

She's a writer and a web sleuth.

She has taught college writing, uh, worked as an editor,

sold TV pilots, and also consulted for Dateline.

She is a truth seeker is what she is.

-(MICHELLE LAUGHS) -Let's face it.

You have a career, you have a life

because people are always gonna get murdered.

-MICHELLE: Well. Yeah. The murder biz. -You deal with the devil.

She was a pioneer, she was somebody

who was creating, uh, you know, something new.

Yeah. Nothing was like that in 2007.

PATTON: 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 truecrimediary dot com.

I think this is one of the best written

and creepiest crime blogs on the web.

MICHELLE: You're such a good husband. (LAUGHS)

PATTON: It is! No, it's a good-- I'm telling you, man.

If this site was awful, I would have to be lying all the time.

-(MICHELLE LAUGHS) -So, um, Michelle.

-MICHELLE: Mm-hmm? -You were telling me about

something going on in the Northwest right now.

MICHELLE: Yeah, I mean, I have a theory that there is

a serial killer operating in the Northwest

who is killing couples, like, 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.

PATTON: 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.

MICHELLE: It's not easy to get to this beach.

You have to negotiate a tricky path

down a rocky cliff.

On Wednesday, August 18th,

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.

PATTON: That is a creepy beach.

MICHELLE: I showed you all that evidence--

or all that footage, it's a very creepy beach.

PATTON: 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.

DICK GORDON: When did you make the shift, Michelle,

from just 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"?

MICHELLE: There was this, um, 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, um,

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.

DICK: You mean, a kid who'd been kidnapped years earlier

-answered the door? -MICHELLE: Right. 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.

You know, I had started to kind of use internet tools

to figure out that they seemed similar

and that they might be connected.

JACKIE KASHIAN: It's got to be amazing

when you find a new sort of clue.

MICHELLE: When people describe, like,

porn addiction or something. And...

-No, this is really weird. -JACKIE: (CHUCKLES) Right.

MICHELLE: I can't stop myself, time disappears.

JACKIE: Oh, right.

MICHELLE: You know, all those things happen.

JACKIE: So it's a genuine addiction?

-MICHELLE: Yeah. Yeah. -JACKIE: You are onboard.

Are you doing this now, currently?

MICHELLE: Oh, every night, until like 2:00 in the morning.

(JACKIE LAUGHS)

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.

NANCY MILLER: I looked at Michelle's blog,

truecrimediary dot 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... (SIGHS) cool and down to earth.

And her shit was together.

Not only that, I really liked how she was unpretentious

in a, obviously, pretty pretentious city and business.

I remember she wore these, like, clogs.

She had a backpack like a-- like a--

that she bought at Target.

And she just showed up totally like in a-- in a flannel shirt

and just as like low-key as possible.

So we meet up, we go to this cafe.

I think we met there like at 11:00

and probably didn't leave

until about 3:00 in the afternoon.

Because she started telling me this story about this guy.

MICHELLE: The case that is sort of my--

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.

Um, and he's never been caught.

There's no one like him out there.

There hasn't been before.

He is a 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, like you hear all of these big--

especially in the '70s and '80s, which seemed to be

the most fertile period for these serial killer stories.

And I had never heard of him.

MICHELLE: 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,

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

NANCY: I'm drinking this, like, Arnold Palmer

that's like 36,000 ounces,

and I'm like sipping on it and drinking it and drinking it

as she's telling me this story.

I needed to go to the bathroom really badly

because my bladder was like about to burst.

But I couldn't. I couldn't.

And I just kept listening, and listening and listening.

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

You know, the challenge for any magazine editor,

any reporter and writer, is...

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

really interesting guy from a long time ago,

but there was nothing new to say yet.

MICHELLE: 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, um-- and frankly it should be solved.

I mean, it just should be.

When I was so, um, gripped by Crompton's book,

I googled "East Area Rapist Original Night Stalker."

And this came up, this link,

to the Cold Case Files message board.

And I was just...

You know, for someone like me, again,

it's like, "Oh, wow, look at all these--

Oh, wow."

-(WOMAN LAUGHING) -Like, "Wait!

Who would spend, you know, all this time..."

Well, me, I guess,

because it's a week later and I've read 20,000 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, you know, were from Sacramento

and remembered and were still fearful

and wanted to see it closed.

Others were more kind of just, um,

data mining, sleuth kind of people.

You know, 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 know, you just--

you go down the rabbit hole kind of 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?

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

PAUL HAYNES: I'd been aware of Michelle for, um,

probably a few years.

I was a fan of her True Crime Diary.

I'd read True Crime Diary in its entirety.

So when she finally wrote about the East Area Rapist,

it was, you know, it was exciting.

MICHELLE: 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, um, 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.

MICHELLE: 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, um, it was evident she was, like,

entrenched in this case. As was I.

MICHELLE: I just kind of... I saw who seemed to be

some of the, like, kind of leaders on the board,

and I just began kind of personal messaging.

PAUL: You know, we started exchanging notes

and, um, developed a rapport pretty quickly.

You know, we just built mutual trust

until we were just, you know,

openly sharing our work with each other.

And that's when we discovered that a lot of it

had intersected.

MICHELLE: We kind of started just exchanging ideas

and theories and things like that.

And we just kind of forged a friendship,

you know, a strange friendship

over this strange 30-year-old case.

-(KEYBOARD CLACKING) -Hi.

My name is Michelle.

I'm a longtime 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.

MELANIE BARBEAU: 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.

MICHELLE: 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 gatekeeper

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.

MICHELLE: Okay.

MELANIE: And I'm gonna take you to the first crime scenes first.

MICHELLE: Okay.

Our language just immediately became, uh, you know,

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 probably

could've understood what we were talking about

unless you have 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."

-MICHELLE: Well, I mean, I think you're right because... -I think it's gonna be--

MICHELLE: ...he wasn't caught.

-I mean, obviously-- -Yeah, I think it's gonna be

somebody that they go, "Really?"

MICHELLE: 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.

You know, that was the beginning of a relationship.

We'll remain lifelong friends forever.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

MELANIE: First, we're gonna head into Rancho Cordova

to, um, his very early attacks,

number one and number three.

MICHELLE: Sacramento. I mean, when you were growing up,

did it seem to be, like, a lot of people who worked for--

-MELANIE: It was a cow town, it was... -Okay. But there's a--

when you say "cow town," you mean that there was

-the outlying farms and stuff? -MELANIE: Yeah, it's kind of outlying farms.

-MICHELLE: There's still a lot of, like-- -It's still outlying. Yeah.

MICHELLE: Well, you see, it's interesting

'cause coming from LA, you almost never see sort of

-big, open, empty spaces. -Mm-hmm.

MICHELLE: And driving around, it was like, "Wow."

MELANIE: We're entering the Rancho Cordova realm.

MICHELLE: Okay. Yeah.

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

MICHELLE: Mm-hmm.

MELANIE: This is where the first crime occurs.

When you first are, like, learning about the case,

you just wanna get a feel for, like,

where did these things happen?

Who were the players in this, and, you know,

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.

MICHELLE: Yeah, so these houses are close together, yeah.

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

For Michelle, it's like, "I wanna get in this guy's mind.

I wanna go to these places.

I wanna try to understand...

Why this area, and why so close together?

You know, was he from here?"

-This is his hotspot. -MICHELLE: Mm-hmm.

MELANIE: This is the house right here.

He cut the phone lines

and, uh... raped her

and left the scene.

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

And the attack we're going to was in August,

August 29, '76.

We're pulling up to attack number three right now.

-That's how close he was. -MICHELLE: Wow.

He had to be from around here.

MELANIE: "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 kind of just look on the fence line

right here through,

this goes straight to the attack,

uh, 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 that he was actually, uh,

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 stones--

a stone's throw away from each other.

And right down the fence line.

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

-MELANIE: Yeah. -MICHELLE: I mean, that's--

MELANIE: He's said to have been walking them.

MICHELLE: Oh, wow.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

PATTON: 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.

(LAUGHTER)

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. -(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

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, like, true crime

and serial killers too. All she does all day.

Watches FBI Files, Forensic 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 lead investigators..."

Oh, my God!

She's like, "Shh! It's the Semen Cavity Killer,

I wanna see what the..." (MUTTERS)

-(SIGHS) -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

When I met Michelle, it was on, um,

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.

MICHELLE: 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 I was--

and she was so fucking, like, steamroller gorgeous

that I was just stunned. And I ran-- I literally

-ran around the street. -(LAUGHTER)

And I went, "Hey!"

And then that was the first word I ever said to her was, "Hey!"

-Screaming. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

And then she turned around, and I'm like,

"I'm not gonna play any fucking games.

I want your name and number so I can take you on a date

-this weekend, are you free?" -WOMAN: Yeah!

And she went, "Yeah." I went, "Good!

-Give me your number." -(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)

It was just the most awkward, non-James Bond moment

I could've had.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

CAROLINE MEREDITH: Take off my mask.

PATTON: Our first date in LA, they show movies

at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

So we went and watched an Italian film

called The 10th Victim.

(GUNSHOT)

-(GUNSHOT) -(MAN GRUNTS)

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 because she just was--

and the more we talk, 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,"

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

And that was one of the things we bonded over really early.

We loved that.

MICHELLE: 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 "Yeah, see.

Look at the getaway sticks on that tomato."

Like, you-- like, chatting her up,

but in that old kinda slang,

and she thought that was so hilarious.

MICHELLE: I laughed and grabbed him.

"More," I said.

PATTON: "Ooh, look at the keister on that hot number."

You know, couples have in-jokes with each other,

and that became one of my, you know...

It was just all that '30s gangster slang.

I'd, you know, however you wanna say it.

I can't-- Oh, God.

MICHELLE: I wouldn't let him go.

After a while, we gave up and moved in together.

PATTON: 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.

MICHELLE: I've never tired of the Robinson impression.

I've never tired of Patton.

ADAM DRUCKER: Michelle knew that she was a marrying

a famous person, and as much as she lived a life

that, you know, 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 wanna be anything else.

PATTON: The whole being photographed

and going to premieres and stuff,

that meant nothing to her.

MAN: Patton, can we get a quick single?

Especially if you're someone who's thinking,

"I wanna go home and write later,

I wanna get up tomorrow and write."

ADAM: One of her favorite things in the world

was to be in her room under the covers,

like, with a fan, reading.

-(PAPARAZZI CLAMORING) -You want Patton alone?

MAN: Do you want to leave?

(LAUGHS) Yes, I do.

SARAH STANARD: She went to the Oscars, she went to the Grammys.

We just always giggled about it. I mean, it was just, like,

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.

ADAM: She was really good at making herself

sort of a fly on the wall and inconspicuous.

I think it's one of the reasons

she had an 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, you know,

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

and that was hard for her.

She hadn't experienced, you know,

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.

-MICHELLE: Alice, hi. -(ALICE COOS)

MICHELLE: Hi.

It was so amazing.

-MICHELLE: Look at... (LAUGHS) -(PATTON HUMMING)

MICHELLE: Oh, Alice. (LAUGHS)

PATTON: And I think Alice was about two or three

when Michelle was meticulously due diligence researching

about, you know, EAR/ONS.

MICHELLE: 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 feels--

coming from Los Angeles, feels so much smaller.

WAITRESS: How are you doing in here?

MICHELLE: I'm good. Um, I might have--

Okay, this is crazy. Can I have one more latte?

-WAITRESS: Of course. -(MICHELLE LAUGHS)

-WAITRESS: Got it. -MICHELLE: All right.

-But this was really yummy. -WAITRESS: 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.

MICHELLE: So, I'm from suburban Chicago.

So all of this is so foreign to me.

But what I wanted--

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

A lot of people will say

that the EAR crimes--

crime period--

was kind of the end of innocence for Sacramento.

♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

FIONA WILLIAMS: 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 have 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.

RICHARD SHELBY: Seventies 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, 1976, October 5th.

Jane Carson over at 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.

What's 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.

JANE CARSON: Well, I had thought of kicking him,

but it would've been useless,

as my hands were tied and I was blindfolded

-and my child was with me. -CAROL: Okay.

RICHARD: 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 that day, I was convinced

that 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.

At that point, there's no question

we had a serial rapist. He had a definite pattern.

CAROL: 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-- we just weren't ready to handle anything coming in.

You know, we didn't have that many people working it.

MELANIE: "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."

CAROL: 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, uh, said, "Okay, we're gonna start printing."

That was when the whole community was brought in.

MELANIE: 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.

MELANIE: 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.

RICHARD: Warren Holloway was a reporter.

And I'd 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."

MELANIE: 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.

LARRY: 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.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PAYING) ♪

(CAR DOOR OPENING)

KRIS PEDRETTI: This one here is probably, um, Christmas Day,

which, so it'd 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.

Uh, my parents were going to a Christmas party

and my sister was at work.

My parents left probably around 6:30-ish.

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...

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

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

that I felt...

um, a presence next to me.

And I looked up and, um,

then I felt a knife at my throat.

And then he told me in my ear, you know,

"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, um...

where I was left out in the, uh...

on a picnic bench

while he went back into the house.

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

He, uh, 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. (CHUCKLES)

So that was my first, um, memory of that.

Um...

(KETTLE WHISTLING)

I think during that time though, I was--

there wasn't a lot of feeling going on.

I was pretty numb.

And, uh-- 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, uh...

that was-- that was really scary.

Because I thought I was gonna die.

Um... and then he was gone.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

KRIS: 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.

REPORTER: 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 11:00 at night and dawn.

But it definitely was the same rapist

who has eluded authorities for over a year.

NANCY: When Michelle and I talked about this story,

it was one of those things that you just kind of

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.

Um, I have to pitch this to my editor-in-chief."

Everyone loves a story about a killer. (CHUCKLES)

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.

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 that she would need.

That no one else could get to.

MICHELLE: I pitched LA Magazine the EAR story.

And they're interested in doing it, possibly,

which would be amazing. I mean, that would be like

the kind of publicity that just-- you can't buy.

You know? I mean, I just think this story

-is so important to be told. -MELANIE: It is.

MICHELLE: I mean, it's-- it gets me that this person--

-I just feel like he's smirking somewhere, going like... -MELANIE: Yeah.

-MICHELLE: ..."I don't have to pay for this ever." -Fuck him.

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.

MELANIE: Can I...

let you, while you're here, look at some stuff?

MICHELLE: Um...

MELANIE: Because I've sworn confidentiality,

that I would never, uh,

release it out of my possession.

MICHELLE: Right. Yeah. I mean,

so what you're thinking is that I could sit there...

-MELANIE: You could sit there and go through them. -Okay.

-MELANIE: I just can't let them leave my home.

MICHELLE: Right. How many pages are there all together, like?

MELANIE: Probably four or five thousand.

-MICHELLE: Oh, my God. -MELANIE: Yeah, it's big.

-MICHELLE: Yeah. -MELANIE: It's all the rapes.

-MICHELLE: Right. -It's every-- all 50 rapes.

MICHELLE: Wow.

MICHELLE: Wow.

MELANIE:

MICHELLE: 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.

(CAR BEEPS)

(CELL PHONE PINGS)

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PAYING) ♪

MICHELLE: 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 minibar 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.

♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪