Original subtitles

MICHELLE MCNAMARA: When I'm puzzling over the details of an unsolved crime

I'm like a rat in a maze given a task.

I had a murder habit and it was bad.

I would feed it for the rest of my life.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS) ♪

MAN: Her ultimate dream was always to write books.

MICHELLE: The case that I'm most obsessed with is

a serial offender that raped 50 women

in California and killed ten people.

She also really wanted a child.

MICHELLE: Oh, Alice!

Michelle wanted to get this guy caught.

The story of the victims, it has to be told.

WOMAN: We were awakened by a voice.

WOMAN 2: There he is in his ski mask.

WOMAN 3: He said, "Don't move or I'll kill you.

WOMAN 4: Everyone loves a story about a killer,

but there was nothing new to say yet.

♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

MALE HYPNOTIST:

(HEARTBEAT THUMPING)

Now...

LORI:

HYPNOTIST:

(LAUGHTER ON TV)

LORI:

HYPNOTIST:

LORI:

HYPNOTIST:

(DOG BARKING)

HYPNOTIST:

LORI:

HYPNOTIST:

LORI:

(HEARTBEAT THUMPING)

HYPNOTIST:

LORI:

HYPNOTIST:

LORI:

HYPNOTIST:

(HEART BEATING FASTER)

LORI:

HYPNOTIST:

LORI:

♪ ("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 ♪

♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪

This guy, I think...

I guess what I think people underestimate is the...

I hate to use this word, the productivity and the--

he was so-- this is what he did constantly.

And when you do something over and over again,

you get-- you just get better at it.

And I don't think that that necessarily meant--

I just don't think he was an evil genius.

-CAMERON CLOUTIER: Right. -I think if you're out

-every night at 3:00 a.m... -CAMERON: Right.

...trying to break into people's houses,

it's a numbers game. At a certain point,

you're gonna be successful.

♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

PATTON OSWALT: (OVER PHONE) Hey, it's Patton.

Just wanted to call and congratulate you.

That is such awesome news.

Oh, you so deserve it.

(HUMMING)

KERA BOLONIK: Hey, Michelle.

I just wanted to say congratulations.

I'm just thrilled for you.

MELANIE BARBEAU: Hey Michelle, It's Mel.

Call me, I'm looking forward to talking to you

about the, um, article.

MICHELLE MCNAMARA: One, one thing that, um, was...

that I was interested in was...

how do you think the East Area Rapist

chose the victims? Because that's the other thing

that's so striking to me about this case,

is that there obviously has to be a high level of surveillance.

-LARRY CROMPTON: Mm-hmm. -MICHELLE: But then there's also

a spontaneity issue because...

So, he had to, like, pick these people,

but then it's also, like, the one time

the husband's called away for two hours.

So it's almost like he's omnipresent,

and I can't figure that out.

LARRY: Well, a lot of times he would go in

and I think he would pick out a person.

(CASSETTE TAPE REWINDING)

LARRY: A lot of times he would go in

and I think he would pick out a person. But--

So he was going into their house maybe beforehand

-when they weren't there? -Yes. Oh, yes.

-MICHELLE: Oh, okay. -LARRY: Yeah.

MICHELLE: The hook for me

was that the case seemed solvable.

He'd left behind so many victims

and abundant clues.

The case dragged me under quickly.

Curiosity turned to clawing hunger.

There were two more victims in January.

A quote by an anonymous sheriff's detective

in the Sacramento Bee

conveyed the brittle weariness setting in.

"It was exactly the same as all the rest."

(PHONE RINGING)

NANCY MILLER: The first draft of Michelle's piece comes in,

and it is one of the most difficult,

disturbing, violent collections

of terrible things that happened to people.

And I was like, "Oh, shit.

This is real."

And then it was like...

an elevator plunging 20,000 stories.

-♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪ -(COMPUTER KEYS CLACKING)

This is the first paragraph

that just gave me nightmares.

"The first attack

in many ways resembled the 49 that followed.

The 23-year-old victim woke to a man

in a navy blue T-shirt and white ski mask

standing in her bedroom doorway.

He wore no pants and was erect.

She thought she was dreaming until he leaped onto her bed.

'If you make one move or sound,

I'll stick this knife in you,' he whispered,

pressing the blade into her right temple."

MICHELLE: The unknown offender,

soon dubbed "the East Area Rapist,"

would go on to rape and terrorize

Northern California communities for the next three years.

"His habits were unique and disturbing.

He clearly did a great deal of surveillance

of his victims and their homes.

He used shoelaces or torn towels as ligatures."

NANCY: "His tenth victim was playing the piano

when he materialized.

He tied her hands behind her back

with shoelaces he'd stolen earlier from her sister's shoes.

He had her masturbate him with hand lotion,

a habit of his,

while he quizzed her on her sexual history.

The victim was a virgin.

He raped her anyway.

'Oh, isn't this good?' he asked.

He held a knife to her throat until she said yes."

(GROANS)

NANCY: When I was reading the piece,

the number "50" skid past me

the first few times I read that story

because it was like, "Twelve murders.

Murders, murders, murders."

And then I stepped back and I was like, "Fifty rapes."

No one wants to talk about that part of the story, really.

The devastation that that had on the community,

on partners, in families,

and then made worse by the fact that

we just didn't necessarily have the tools

or the culture to treat the victims

in the way they probably needed at that time.

MIKE BOYD: They range in age from 22 to 35,

in color, from black to brown to white.

(MEN TALKING INDISTINCTLY)

Joel, convicted of two rapes.

He also told me he'd attacked men.

This is Vic.

He raped, then murdered a woman.

Jim used a gun to beat his victims.

RICHARD SHELBY: In the '70s in Sacramento,

there seemed to be a center for the real wackos.

It really did.

You had all kinds of rapists.

The Early Bird Rapist, who started about '68 or '70,

he did 41, I think it was,

rapes, in the homes.

That never made much in the way of news.

The Stinky Rapist.

He did many, many rapes in Berkeley.

And they thought they knew who he was,

but the DA wouldn't file.

And he moved to Oakland, where he continued raping

and was never caught.

You had the Car Key Rapist.

He would rape the lady in the car,

and then he would take off with the key.

And, uh, you had the Pillowcase Rapist.

These were very, very active rapists.

There were about 15 that I come up with,

where they were raping 30, 40, 50 people.

Rape in the '70s was...

a crime like a simple assault.

It was not considered a big deal.

The sentence for, um, uh...

raping somebody could be 30 days,

could be 90 days, you'd get probation.

There was no real, uh, crime statute

for sexual assault,

and so, um, I think when these crimes began,

um, you know, you looked at the way women were treated.

The sex offender today has a greater number

of available women to choose from.

There are more working women, single women living alone,

not with their families or with men.

SECOND ACTOR: Because of the mobility

and the visibility of today's woman,

she must learn to understand the rapist.

For today's woman to understand the rapist,

she's gotta learn to understand the man.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

MELANIE: Of course, women didn't talk about it

because of the way they were treated

when they did talk about it,

and oftentimes blamed

for what did they do that was inappropriate

or what, you know, what were they wearing?

How were they walking?

You know, did they do something

that would've brought that kind of attention

against their will?

FEMALE NARRATOR 1: The young girl made one bad move after another.

Her attitude was much too inviting.

She should never have stopped to window shop at night.

She parked in a dark section of the parking lot

and didn't have her keys ready in her hand.

(SCREAMING)

CAMERON: So, uh, Michelle...

how did you become interested in true crime?

You know, how old were you when you first got into it?

I got interested in true crime, um, because when I was 14,

uh, living outside of Chicago,

a neighbor of mine was murdered.

Um, and it-- it was, it's still unsolved.

Her name was Kathy Lombardo.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

I grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, which is outside Chicago.

It was just a laid-back residential area

and it really kind of shocked our town.

And it was-- it was headline news, for sure.

MALE REPORTER 1: Kathy Lombardo grew up in this neighborhood.

She felt safe here.

So she could be found just about every night of the week

walking briskly through these streets and alleys,

always alone, always wearing her stereo headphones

with the music turned up full blast.

Last night, somebody grabbed the 24-year-old Oak Park woman

in an alley, probably from behind,

stabbed her in the heart, and slashed her throat.

Police say she was probably sexually attacked as well.

She was found just after 10:00 by two youths,

who called a neighbor to the scene.

I got there and went to reach down

to check her carotid pulse, and her throat was slit open.

Uh, she was turning pale fast and, uh...

couple pumps, you know,

a couple more pumps from her throat,

and she was dead.

MICHELLE: I don't think, up until that point,

I had been interested in murder at all.

I was just very gripped by this story

and very shocked by it and very, um, obsessed

with kind of the blankness of this person's face.

That we didn't know who may be, like,

slinking by us covered in blood.

I mean, it just seemed so unbelievable to me

that someone among us was a cold-blooded killer

who had cut this woman's throat.

MALE REPORTER 1: Today, police scoured the alley where the murder took place

and found the blade of the kitchen knife

they think was used to kill the young woman.

They're still searching for the handle,

which was broken off.

What happened to her is wrong.

It could happen to you or me or anyone.

MICHELLE: I remember walking to the place

where I knew she had been killed and...

um, finding kinda these shattered pieces of Walkman

that were still there and kinda picking them up.

I didn't go as far as to talk to,

you know, the police or anything like that,

but I was definitely very curious

about the different elements of the crime

and how it had happened and who this guy could be.

Was he someone we knew?

Everyone moved on, and I couldn't.

-From, like, '75 to '84... -LARRY: Yeah.

MICHELLE: ...there were so many serial offenders

operating at the same time. It blows my mind.

-LARRY: Yeah, yeah. -MICHELLE: I don't know why that was,

-but there was a ton of that. -LARRY: I don't either.

The East Area Rapist was not the most active.

He was the most violent, from what we knew.

He would break into the homes while they were sleeping.

The sex was not... his thing.

The terror that he put in 'em was the thing.

CAROL DALY: Now, one of the big questions

that was asked here last night,

"If we have a gun, could we shoot him?"

Knowing what I know about this man,

if I had a gun, I definitely would shoot him.

And I would not shoot to injure.

I would shoot to take care of him.

There are two things known about the rapist

currently terrorizing Sacramento.

One is he has never been caught in a home

where there was a man present.

The other is he's never been in a home

where there has been a big dog.

MELANIE: '77 became a time where the East Area Rapist

-began attacking couples. -MICHELLE: And why do you think

he did-- he started to do couples?

LARRY: I really do think it was because of the news media.

MICHELLE: Yeah.

The first 15 rapes in the Sacramento area

were lone women.

The newspaper printed that he'd never hit a place

with a man in the house.

And after that...

there was a man in the house.

-MICHELLE: So he was aware of that? -LARRY: Yeah.

MICHELLE: And-- and that would go to the game playing part of it?

-LARRY: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. -MICHELLE: Mm-hmm.

Absolutely, he was watching the media with everything.

And as soon as the newspaper would say, "This didn't happen,"

it would happen.

Everything became a challenge to him.

KRIS PEDRETTI: I didn't have a lot of exposure

to what was happening, um...

I didn't see the newspaper.

I don't remember hearing it on the news.

In the weeks leading up to the attack,

we had...

hang-up calls.

Uh, I believe three, four a day.

We would have them.

Um...

but it didn't...

it didn't register to me. I was 15.

Maybe it was a boy that liked me.

You know, I didn't...

I really didn't have any...

I'll say it this way.

I didn't have any reason to be fearful

because I lived in a safe world.

MALE REPORTER 2: Residents of the East Area

are locking themselves inside their houses

as never before.

Locks have sold so quickly in the community,

stores have had trouble keeping up with the demand.

LINDA O'DELL: I wasn't scared at the time.

I didn't know about a lot of it going on.

I wasn't reading the paper.

Um, yes, it was in the news.

The one indication we got was...

my husband and I came home,

and the kids in the neighborhood

come running up to us and they said,

"We're playing this game and I was on somebody's back

and we saw a man run out of your yard."

We were like, "What?"

So we went, we got deadbolts, where you put the key in

for the front door and the garage door.

We put this nail at the top

so you could lock the slider and it can't go.

And he had cased the place,

he knew to lift the glass up out of the back window.

(CRICKETS CHIRPING)

LINDA: It was a Friday night,

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

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

Door opens, flashlight.

Mumbling.

Uh, "I have a gun."

And I'm still thinking...

"Am I dreaming? Am I-- Is this really happening?"

And before I knew it, he threw some ties at me

and he says, "Tie your husband up."

And so, he asked him to flip over onto his stomach

and hogtied him and I did, and I didn't tie him tight.

And then he tied me behind my back,

on my stomach, and my ankles hogtied,

and I remember turning my jewelry around,

I'm thinkin' it's gonna be a robbery.

And so, then he re-tied my husband twice as tight.

And then he leaves the room.

We're kind of whispering to each other,

we're like, "What's going on?"

He had a ski mask on the whole time.

He's just walkin' around the house like he owns it.

I could hear him open the refrigerator.

He gets a beer, and he's drinkin' a beer.

He grabbed dishes.

He grabbed plates and bowls

and he put them on my husband's back.

And he told him if he heard those bowls moving,

he was gonna cut his ear off.

He put a blindfold over me and he said, "Follow me."

I'm going down the hallway,

and I remember staying close to the side,

I'm thinking, "I don't want him to see my body."

And I went, "Oh, my God, I'm gonna be raped."

He took me into the family room,

and he tells me to lay on the floor.

He goes into the guest bedroom and he got a towel

and he rips it in half and he puts it over the TV,

but then he puts the TV on so that there's light coming in,

but not too much.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

As he was raping me, I had a knife to my throat,

pushed up against my neck.

And I just kept saying, "Oh, please don't hurt me.

Please don't hurt me."

And I didn't hardly move,

I was like, I'm going to stay as still as possible.

He was in the house for a while.

He drank another beer.

I-- I could smell that.

He asked for where my wallet was.

He was going through, taking things out.

He came back and he says, "Take off your jewelry,"

and I couldn't get it off my hand.

And he says, "I'll cut your finger off,

I don't care. I want your jewelry."

And so I said, "Get some lotion or get some soap."

So he went and got me some lotion,

and I took off my wedding band and my engagement ring.

And I remember being cold on the floor.

Finally, it seemed quiet.

So I got up and I'm still tied, and I go into the bedroom

and I talk to my husband and I ask him how he's doing

and he's like, "Oh, you've just got to get help.

I-- I can't feel my hands. They're totally numb.

I have no circulation."

And I'm thinking, "How do I get out of this house?"

So I go into the kitchen and I'm trying to get the...

the restraints off me, and I'm trying to cut 'em

and I'm trying to saw 'em, and it--

and I-- and I'm also thinking,

"Oh, God, is he gonna come back in the house?

Is he really gone or is he hiding?"

So, all of a sudden, the family room drapes moved.

A breeze came in.

So I ran over

and I put my shoulder and I moved the sliding door.

And I went along the concrete up to the front gate,

I moved the gate.

I'm totally naked from the waist down.

I-- Just my breasts are being covered.

And I went to a neighbor's house.

(DOG BARKING)

And I ring the doorbell.

They're looking at me and the husband comes down

and he sees that I'm, you know, naked,

and he grabs his wife's jacket, puts it on me,

and I said, "I've just been raped.

And my husband's tied up."

He got a gun,

he told his wife to call the police,

"Stay here."

And then I waited for the police to come.

And they came, they took me back to the house.

Carol Daly was a female detective

who I was so grateful that she was there at that time.

Everybody else was men,

and she was the only woman in the group.

And that was-- that was a nice feeling.

We have information that he...

LINDA: She got me to the hospital.

And she said, "You're okay, honey."

She said, "I think you're in shock."

So she's kind of, like, being a mother to me.

She says, "You take as much time,"

and we talked about it. Went back home.

Basically, I went in and I said to my husband,

"Do you wanna-- do you wanna hear--

know what happened?" He goes, "I know what happened."

And he said, "I don't want to talk about it."

He said, "I got rid of your pajamas

and you don't have to see those anymore."

And I said, "Okay."

I don't think a lot of men knew how to deal with it,

to be honest.

I don't think-- I don't--

I know that he cared and he felt terrible,

but I don't think he wanted to relive it either.

He's basically, "We don't talk about it.

It's gone away."

MICHELLE: I think this kind of crime was just...

very ripe for the '70s

because there's, um...

How many people did not call the police

who saw something suspicious is crazy.

And that would not happen today.

Had you had anybody--

any neighbors mention anybody weird

around the neighborhood or anything like that?

-Do you remember? -FIONA WILLIAMS: No.

We were very aware of it.

But it was in East Sacramento.

So we were sympathetic to-- but not alarmed

because we're not his side of town.

You know he picked us partly for the location of the house.

-MICHELLE: Mm-hmm. -FIONA: Right by the freeway,

-empty lot behind us. -MICHELLE: Empty field, right.

FIONA: All of that.

And of course, they asked us about strange cars...

MICHELLE: I mean, so when-- when-- Did you have--

did you feel in your heart when this is happening

this was a stranger?

That this was not someone that you knew?

-FIONA: Oh, yeah. -MICHELLE: You did?

You thought, "This is the East Area Rapist."

-FIONA: Which makes me-- Yeah. -MICHELLE: Yeah.

I knew it was the guy then.

I mean, by that time, this was attack 22.

My husband and I, we were in our bedroom.

We were starting to fool around,

-we hear a scratching. -MICHELLE: Right.

The EAR was a man of few words,

and mostly the same, as I would come to read,

over time.

He did indeed have a script.

What he said to us and mostly routinely was,

"I just want money and food, and then I'll be gone."

My son was three years old.

He woke up as I was being blindfold-led down the hall.

EAR told him to get back in his room.

When he took me into the living room for the assault,

I remember saying to him,

"Why are you doing this?"

And he said, "Shut up."

And I said, "I'm sorry." (LAUGHS)

This is...

This is how women were in the '70s and the olden times.

I said, "I'm sorry." And he said, "Shut up," again.

And that was the longest conversation I had with him,

except at the end when he gave me the instructions about

you know, tell the pigs I have television.

MICHELLE: Wow. God.

He didn't want it to be on TV

and if it was on TV, he'd kill two people,

but then I believe he told my husband

it had to be on TV.

He was constantly playing these silly games with people.

He had told the victims of the attack just before us

that he was going to kill the next two people,

which would have been us.

Sometime after the attack, my husband managed

to get our phone re-connected in the bedroom,

that was on the nightstand, and he called--

in those days, you still called the operator.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

Of course, uniformed officers came first.

When I could see again,

when the uniformed officer took off...

one of the first things I saw was that on my formal couch,

the EAR had laid out three or four of my dresses.

And I do mean laid out.

Not vandalized or thrown about.

They were just laying there.

And I remember very vividly because I was so surprised,

I was not expecting to see that.

I said to the officer,

"The East Area Rapist is now the South Area Rapist."

CAROL THORPE: The worst thing is not knowing.

Not knowing when the rapist will strike again.

Not knowing if you'll be his next victim.

All you can do is take every possible precaution

and then hope that he gets caught

before he gets to you.

I'm sleeping with my husband's hunting knife under the pillow.

We don't go to sleep very well at night.

We go around and lock everything up

as tightly as we can.

As of tonight, the East Area Rapist

has struck on the average once every two weeks,

sometimes every two days, sometimes a week apart,

sometimes three or four weeks apart.

Everybody in Sacramento was terrified.

MALE REPORTER 2: Each night, they patrol the neighborhoods

of Sacramento County's east side,

and hundreds of other volunteers reportedly are doing the same.

They call themselves the EARS Patrol.

"EARS," short for East Area Rapist Surveillance.

THORPE: People complain that after all this time,

the police should've been able to catch the East Area Rapist.

I think that the reason

there hasn't been something done about it

is because it's a crime against women.

We had officers off duty on their own time

going out and working the streets.

It's the first time the so-called East Area Rapist has struck here

in the Foothill Farms area of Sacramento.

-One in Stockton. The total: 25. -(ALARM BLARING)

MALE REPORTER 3: Local burglar alarm distributors

report a run on alarm systems.

I don't like it. It's getting too close to home.

We were giving safety classes for women,

how to protect themselves, what to look for.

CHET HANCOCK: It was about 10:00 last night

when the rapist kicked in the door.

She becomes the eighth teenager

on the list of some 33 victims.

The 39th attack of the East Area Rapist

took place in this very nice middle-class neighborhood.

MELANIE: There were days where I didn't go to sleep

until the sun rose.

We had tambourines on the windows and doors

so we could hear people enter.

Ideally speaking, the potential victim

is supposed to ward off her attacker with this device.

It just was an insane time in Sacramento.

The attacks, two of them,

one last Saturday, and then again early today,

occurred within a few blocks of each other

in the Ignacio Valley area of Concord.

-(OVERLAPPING CHATTER) -REPORTER 1: ...happening in Fremont...

-REPORTER 2: ...in Modesto... -REPORTER 3: ...her home in Contra Costa County.

FEMALE REPORTER: The only thing we really know about the East Area Rapist

is that he's a pro.

He's been at this for four years now

and still nobody even knows what he looks like.

MICHELLE: Alice?

Alice, will you do an imitation of Daddy?

I have a nightly ritual with Alice,

who is a troubled sleeper.

(COMPUTER KEYS CLACKING)

Every night before falling asleep,

she'll call out for me to come into her bedroom.

"I don't want to have a dream," she says.

I brush her sandy hair back and put my hand on her forehead,

and look straight into her big brown eyes.

"You are not going to have a dream,"

I tell her with crisp, confident enunciation.

Her body releases its tension, and she goes to sleep.

(READS)

We make well-intentioned promises of protection

we can't always keep.

-"I'll look out for you." -WOMAN 1: (SCREAMING) No!

MICHELLE: But then you hear a scream,

and you decide it's some teenagers playing around.

A young man jumping a fence is taking a shortcut.

-(GUNSHOT ECHOES) -The gunshot at 3:00 a.m.

is a firecracker or a car backfiring.

You sit up in bed for a startled moment.

Awaiting you is the cold hard floor

and a conversation that may lead nowhere.

You collapse onto your warm pillow

and turn back to sleep.

Sirens wake you later.

We always joke that...

-we must've both been blind. -We're still blind. (CHUCKLES)

'Cause we've been together 40 plus years.

GAY HARDWICK: It was a blind date.

And then, uh, just...

After that, we were pretty inseparable, huh?

Yeah.

Yeah.

We purchased, uh, a house together in Stockton.

That was-- that was the bad house though.

GAY: Yeah, I cried the day we bought that house,

and I think that was foretelling, actually.

Anyway, we could have stayed there very happily.

It was in a cute little neighborhood,

um, the house was big enough to have a small family,

but as, you know, things would work out,

we couldn't stay there.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

GAY: We were awakened by a voice and a bright light.

That's pretty typical of-- of what happened,

and that's what happened to us as well.

It was a real sense of... of evil in the house.

I sensed...

every hair follicle on my being

stand up...

and I understood what it meant to have your skin crawl.

♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

The more uncomfortable he could make me feel,

seemed to be the happier he was.

And he said I was beautiful,

bound and blindfolded and...

shaking.

At times, I couldn't tell if he was crying

or if he was giggling

like someone who's hysterical might be.

He would get silent

and I would hope,

"Okay, maybe he's gone."

And... then I'd hear him again.

I had no concept of time.

It just seemed like I was in bed bound for an eternity.

I had no idea if it was two hours or ten hours.

It went on for a couple hours of coming and going,

and, you know, coming back

and, you know, torturing me some more.

Eventually, after about 40 minutes

of not hearing anything,

he was gone.

And then it was, well, this, you know,

this is not over yet.

And...

that started phase two... (CHUCKLES)

...of, you know, what goes on after an attack.

♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS)

GAY: There you are, um...

bound, incapacitated,

in shock.

(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS)

And now there are four more men in the room that you don't know.

To have somebody else sit down next to you

while you're still unclothed

and, you know, take out a knife and...

have to cut the bindings off

was, um... scary, too.

It was scary, too.

We were very quickly inundated

with, uh, crime scene investigators

and more police officers

and, uh, fingerprint technicians.

We were just, um, a piece of evidence in our own home.

I wasn't allowed to, uh, use the restroom.

And... I remember getting up to reach for my robe

and being, you know, stopped-- "What are you doing?" you know,

"Where do you think-- where do you think you're going?"

(LAUGHS) And it's, like, I just want to cover up myself.

As time went on,

they didn't have anyone to take me to the hospital.

I think the protocol was that they would have

a female officer, but they didn't have any.

I blocked all that out years ago.

I don't remember it like her, but...

my defense mechanisms are block everything out.

(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS)

GAY: That whole aftermath goes on and...

you end up in a county hospital

where, again, you have to meet with strangers

who are going to examine and probe and, you know,

you just really would like to be alone.

You'd really like to take charge of your being again,

but you can't.

And you know that you really mustn't

if you want the person to be caught.

Daylight finally came

about the time I was taken back to the house.

And they were wrapping up there.

Our house was...

-BOB HARDWICK: A wreck. (LAUGHS) -GAY: ...a wreck.

We had just had it painted that week.

All of the newly enameled woodwork

was covered with graphite fingerprinting material.

It looked a lot like a smoke bomb had gone off.

Uh, it was-- it was just--

Everything felt contaminated in that house.

And it never felt the same.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

Right as we get up here, you can look over to the right

and you'll see the American River.

-This was a main thoroughfare at the time. -MICHELLE: Mm-hmm.

MELANIE: And I'll take you to number two.

MICHELLE: But this is where people run and do biking?

MELANIE: This is where-- the bicycle trails and all that,

this green belt would be where he was going

from one point to one point.

We often thought he could've had a boat

-that he was taking to and from. -MICHELLE: Mm-hmm.

What I'm struck by in Rancho Cordova is

I would think that he had to do so much surveillance.

-MELANIE: He did a lot. -MICHELLE: But-- But it-- you--

MELANIE: He fit in, obviously.

MICHELLE: Yeah.

MELANIE: I really feel this area was chosen

because he was comfortable in here

and he, you know, knew the area well enough

to get in and out as quickly as possible.

Right around the corner, there is river access.

Back in the '70s, the fog was way heavier

than it is now and it was so thick

that you couldn't see feet in front of you.

The way he disappeared so quickly

with nobody having the ability to track him.

Fog was a benefit to his escape as well.

And it's a great place to stalk

because you have access to all of the backyards

where you could just walk right up to the fence

and look over it like this

and you can see everything that's going on in that house.

A lot of these houses didn't have back fences at the time.

You could be standing out in these bushes and be watching

everything that's going on inside of people's homes.

And in the evening, nobody's gonna notice you out here.

Like, you know, back in the day,

nobody would even think about

somebody being prowling around behind the scenes.

I feel like he was in this area for great amounts of time.

And probably knew all the young females

that resided in each house.

It makes you just, uh...

This is the type of thing you have to, um, uh...

really, you know, take care of yourself

-or you'll-- It'll consume you. -MICHELLE: Right.

MELANIE: 'Cause this is a really dark place to go.

This can be very dark.

♪ (EERIE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

(GLASS BREAKS)

♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

MICHELLE: (READS)

When my husband, trying not to awaken me,

tiptoed into our bedroom one night,

I leaped out of bed,

grabbed my nightstand lamp, and swung it at his head.

Luckily, I missed.

When I saw the lamp overturned

on the bedroom floor in the morning,

I remember what I'd done and winced.

Then, I resumed my Talmudic study

of the East Area Rapist.

She would have very, very vivid dreams.

So when she would-- When I would wake her up,

she'd be still half in the dream.

Be like, "Oh, God, please, please."

One time, she ran out of the back of the house,

trying to get out of the house, and I'm like,

"You are g-- what is-- you're gonna end up--

you're gonna run into the pool or something like that,

or what are you do--" You know. It was just this--

But again, a very, very vivid,

very, very present mind, and that was one of the--

I guess, one of the-- the costs of it. I don't know.

(SHUDDERS)

(SIGHS) This idea of the DIY detective,

or these kind of digital sleuths,

are essentially amateur obsessives

who congregate online.

And there are anywhere from tens to hundreds

to thousands of people

who are essentially operating as this hive mind.

MICHELLE: (OVER PHONE) Hey, Paul, it's Michelle.

If you have time, I have a little research question

that I would love answered, which is the following...

NANCY: Michelle met Paul Haynes on this message board

and he came on to really help with the research

for the magazine article.

Paul and Michelle were this perfect kind of team

because she's like the lyrics and he's the tempo.

He did incredible data mining.

Something that was really important

to Los Angeles Magazine, to me as an editor, to Michelle,

and to anyone who's been tracking this case,

is making sure that you got your facts straight.

And we relied on Paul a lot.

He would just go laser deep.

And what Michelle could do

was spin these stories in a really beautiful way.

(CAR HORN HONKS)

PAUL HAYNES: Just let me in. Jesus.

What's the big deal?

I just have no patience for stop and go traffic.

Moving to LA was a big move for me

after having spent the better part of a decade

in Florida.

But when Michelle invited me to be her research collaborator,

it was a very exciting opportunity

to be directly involved with this case

and have my interest,

which previously I'd been ashamed of

and felt was impractical and odd, legitimized.

I moved here in November,

and she invited me to spend my first Thanksgiving in L.A.

with her and Patton and their friends and family.

SARAH STANARD: She liked to cook a lot.

She really liked to cook.

She was not a great cook, but she really tried.

So much, so often.

Um, she was-- she was, like, had the heart,

you know what I mean? Like, she had the heart.

That Thanksgiving, I probably did everything.

In fact, I-- I know I did everything.

She just had work to do.

She was finishing the article,

but she just really wanted it to be good,

so she just went upstairs.

Like, we had that kind of friendship, like...

I just came in her house and I knew where everything was

and I made dinner.

MICHELLE: I was in a panic.

We were hosting Thanksgiving, and the second draft

of my 7,000-word story was due Tuesday.

I'd sent out SOS emails, brief and frank pleas for help

that I hoped would be understood.

I wasn't myself, though.

Impatience roiled.

I made a bigger deal than I needed to

that Patton bought an undersized turkey.

But we understood that about each other,

like, "Go have your time."

You need hours and hours and hours

to get to the deep stuff.

You know, when you need-- when you--

When someone says they need five hours to write,

they need an hour to write, but they need the other hours

to get down to those depths to start the writing.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

MICHELLE: When I was a kid,

my family bought a summer place on the shore of Lake Michigan.

The first couple of summers, I didn't really know

any of the other kids in the area.

So I spent a lot of time on the couch,

on the screened-in front porch,

reading Agatha Christie novels.

My interest in writing began on that porch.

As a writer, you could lead a reader

through the act of discovery.

I was amazed that someone had constructed

these intricate mysteries,

that an actual human being,

a woman, had plotted and twisted

and carefully maintained curiosity

so that you never knew who had done it

until the very end.

Yeah, it's-- it's just, there's so many...

When you think of all the lives this guy ruined,

and not just the victims, it just goes on and on and on.

It's-- it's-- it's-- Exponentially, you know.

-FIONA: Right. Right. -MICHELLE: Yeah.

I've worked some really bad cases,

and...

this series...

affected me emotionally and mentally

because there was no resolution.

Everywhere I went,

it's, "How come you guys haven't caught that guy?"

There was a lot of-- I wouldn't call it hysteria,

but gun sales went out the roof.

Burglary rates went from 1,400 in a month down to 200.

MALE REPORTER 2: Sacramento women who have never

-fired a gun before... -(GUNSHOTS)

...are now learning how to shoot in larger and larger numbers.

MALE REPORTER 3: Gun sales are way up,

with some of the buyers not that familiar

with how to use firearms, and that can be dangerous.

We had one citizen that actually shot a person

and killed him.

And, um, when it came time, uh,

for him to go to superior court,

the judge said, "Anybody in the community

at that time would have done the same thing."

And they dropped the charges.

Back in those days... (CLEARS THROAT)

...it was very, very...

very difficult

to get departments to work together.

When the East Area Rapist left our jurisdiction

and went into the city,

then he went to Stockton and Modesto

and started expanding,

there was sort of a lack of communication

between the agencies

because "You guys couldn't catch him, we will."

And that was the attitude.

In two cases in my area, I was kicked out of the town,

told they didn't need my help, didn't want my help.

Two weeks later, they get hit again.

Just because agencies didn't work together.

I remember there was a day

that I was on the phone

telling my friend what had happened.

And my dad...

I guess had picked up the other line and heard me.

And I got in a lot of trouble for telling anybody.

And, um...

and I-- I think at that moment,

that would probably be the beginning feeling of shame.

I felt shame, I felt like, "Did I wear something?

How did he pick me out?"

MELANIE: There was this thought

that you were raped based on your beauty

or your clothing or your action

and not that something is wrong with the man

that can't control these urges.

This was something to do with him

that had nothing to do

with the woman who was his victim.

And it was a time where...

somehow, it always came back to being the woman's fault.

FEMALE NARRATOR 2: The woman who allows herself

to be seen undressing or partially clothed

is the woman who invites trouble.

Here again, we see lack of awareness,

plus invitational behavior.

MELANIE: You even had cops saying, you know,

"Well, at least he got the pretty one of the sisters."

That culture would never know how to ask the right questions

or say the right things to a female victim.

The law and procedure allowed at that time,

the late '70s,

that a rape victim could be routinely asked

to take a polygraph exam

or to see a psychiatrist.

When people find out about this violent attack,

it's like, "Well,

how did you get yourself into that position?"

Or, um, "Why didn't you somehow

get yourself out of that position?"

You know, even some of my best friends would...

like, "You couldn't do anything?"

You know what I mean?

(QUIETLY) Just couldn't do anything.

There wasn't anything to be done.

I couldn't have done anything if I'd had a gun on the, uh...

on the bed table, you know? You're just...

You don't mess around when somebody,

you know, has full control of the situation.

And there was no mistaking that he was serious.

♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

RICHARD: Carol and I both have said

he's going to kill somebody.

The guy's getting more and more brutal as he goes.

More and more violent.

I just had this very, very strong feeling.

LARRY: I talked to, uh, the psychiatrist

at the Vacaville Medical Center

that worked with the rapists there.

And I gave her some reports, and she said,

"Okay, come back next week.

I'm gonna talk to my rapists in here."

The best thing to do if you're in a rape situation

is submit, submit, submit until it hurts.

Because it's gonna hurt a lot less in the long run.

If I'm willing to kill you,

the first move you make, you're gonna be dead.

MAN: The woman that I was with,

she fought back and she's dead.

I went back the next week and, uh, she said,

"You had better catch him.

He wants to kill, and he is going to kill."

And I said, "Why hasn't he killed?"

And she said, "He hasn't found the justification."

And I said, "What's the justification?"

And she said, "I don't know, but it'll get there."

Of course, we didn't know at the time

that he'd already killed.

The house right here,

the Maggiores were killed right outside the fence.

This is where she was shot and killed and came right out of.

MICHELLE: Did you feel at the time that that was related?

MELANIE: During the time of the East Area Rapist attack,

I had never heard about these homicides.

The same owners still reside in these residences

where this happened.

And then, one of the witnesses lived right here.

WOMAN 2: I heard five shots,

and I jumped and looked out the window.

And I saw a man run down the sidewalk.

And I saw the boy across the street.

He came running, running down-- right down the sidewalk.

And he came right up on the lawn next to the tree.

And then right-- right as he came to the tree,

he looked up and he saw me standing right here.

And he was pretty surprised,

turned around as quick as he could.

He just turned around and just headed straight down there

towards the fire hydrant around the corner.

MELANIE: The Maggiores were out walking their dog.

They were seen running

and went through this backyard

where they were attacked.

The fact that they were chased down and shot,

like, Katie was shot right in the head,

made me think that they had seen his face

and they could identify him.

I'm an art student and I drew out a picture of him

standing next to the tree, because I saw him, and I saw--

I drew a picture of him running down.

MELANIE: It's believed that the composite

that was released at the time

was very close to, um, what the attacker looked like.

CAROL DALY: I didn't work the Maggiore homicides

because it was completely different MO.

Okay, this isn't in a home in a rape case,

but this is a prowler in a ski mask.

MELANIE: A pre-tied ligature was also found at the scene,

which was a common knot that the East Area Rapist used.

CAROL: There were officers that said "Yeah,

I think it could've been the East Area Rapist,"

and others said, "No, I don't think it was."

MELANIE: That was a huge debate

because we don't know for sure what happened.

But the idea that most people believe

is that they encountered EAR

and, uh, they were killed because of that.

MICHELLE: And they were just walking?

MELANIE: Yeah. It was so sad.

-They were just married. -MICHELLE: Hmm.

MELANIE: Whatever they saw,

they had to die for it.

I really did... think

that they were going to-- to catch him.

And it was, um...

a hard pill to swallow as the years went by,

that he could've gotten away with these kinds of things.

(CASSETTE TAPE REWINDING)

GAY: I really did think that they were going to--

-to catch him. -(TAPE RECORDER BEEPS)

MICHELLE: I mimicked the bedtime routine

of a normal person...

but after my husband and daughter fell asleep,

I hunted the killer with my laptop,

the 15-inch hatch of endless possibilities.

You know, he stole very specific things from people.

Not necessarily valuable things,

but things that meant something to his victim.

A lot of them were initialed, monogrammed, things like that.

And in my interviews with detectives,

I would say, "Have you ever tried to follow up

and see if these were on eBay or anything like that?"

And that just wasn't something they did.

My thinking was, who's to say some guy didn't die

and you have to clear out your weird uncle's storage.

Then, suddenly, you've just put those on eBay,

and we could find that.

So I just started to keep a list.

The cufflinks, a family heirloom,

were an unusual 1950s style

and monogrammed with the initials "NR."

Michelle had been, you know, late night, bleary eyed,

looking online, the latest, like, possible clue,

and she had stumbled upon a pair of cufflinks.

MICHELLE: The same style of cufflinks

as sketched out in the police file,

with the same initials.

NANCY: The idea was...

were these the cufflinks

that the Golden State Killer had stolen,

that then surfaced somewhere in Oregon?

And if these were the cufflinks,

then there might be a way to trace who sold them to whom

and kind of do this, like, chain of where and how--

where it came from.

MICHELLE: I walked down the hallway to my bedroom.

My husband was on his side sleeping.

I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at him

until he opened his eyes.

"I think I found him," I said.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪