Original subtitles

Hey, it's Pat. Just wanted to call

and congratulate you. That is such awesome news.

In '77, the East Area Rapist began attacking couples.

The sex was not his thing. The terror was the thing.

I felt shamed. Did I wear something?

It was a time where somehow it always came back to being

the woman's fault.

Michelle would have very vivid dreams.

"There's a scream..."

When I would wake her up, she'd be still half in the dream.

We don't know who may be, like,

slinking by us covered in blood.

It was a hard pill to swallow that he got away

with these things.

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

He wants to kill and he is going to kill.

Test, test, test, test, test.

Hello?

Hello?

Hello?

EAST AREA RAPIST:

Gonna kill you...

Gonna kill you...

Bitch.

Bitch...

Bitch...

Bitch...

He was a lunatic.

Bitch.

Unseen. So doubly feared.

Hello?

The danger of taking a wrong turn in the catacombs

always looms in this case.

Fucking whore.

I turned to the retired detectives.

I lamented that I felt I was grasping at straws.

"My advice?" one said.

"Grasp a straw,

work it to dust."

It definitely goes down as one of the biggest mysteries.

That's for sure.

Just everything about it is a mystery. Um...

And it has such a boogeyman aspect to it, you know.

He does feel like a ghost sometimes.

By 1979, the East Area Rapist

appeared to have stopped.

It's quite possible the East Area Rapist

takes a summer vacation just like you do.

Let's hope he forgets to come home again.

Our task force was... was shut down.

And we were told that, now he's gone.

He's no longer our problem.

Crompton's bosses nearly danced with relief.

But in reality, the East Area Rapist

had only moved 400 miles south,

where he would become known as the Original Night Stalker.

Goleta is a bedroom community

outside of Santa Barbara.

Despite its safe reputation,

few people would brave San Jose Creek

alone at night.

Michelle and I, it was in, 2013.

We drove out here to Santa Barbara.

And, we visited each of the scenes

associated with the killer's, activity in this area.

We definitely spent time under this bridge

and probably passed through this area multiple times.

His footprints were seen throughout this neighborhood.

He... he had a unique pattern.

So, there was evidence of him roaming

in that whole vicinity.

Investigators felt like they knew the night

that changed him.

October 1st, 1979.

That was the night a Goleta couple

on Queen Ann Lane awakened to a blinding flashlight

and a young man's clenched-teeth whisper.

The woman was ordered to tie up her boyfriend.

Then the intruder tied her.

He led the woman into the living room

and made her lie face-down on the floor,

throwing a pair of tennis shorts over her head as a blindfold.

They heard him enter their kitchen

chanting to himself, "I'll kill you.

I'll kill you. I'll kill you."

A surge of adrenaline

allowed the woman to escape her bindings

and flee out the front door screaming.

Right. Yeah.

The couple's next-door neighbor was an FBI agent.

Alerted by the woman's scream, he came outside just in time

to see a man furiously pedal past

on a stolen silver Nishiki 10-speed.

I saw him come out of the driveway,

and he went this way.

So you just said, what, "Stop," or something like that?

- I yelled at him, yeah. - Yeah.

I got in my car. He was in front of me.

I could see the reflector on the bicycle.

Just gaining on him real quick.

Yeah.

And he came a couple hundred yards

and he dumped the bike on the sidewalk

and he climbed over a fence.

Stan Los would later catch shit from local cops

about why he didn't shoot the guy.

"Why didn't you shoot him?"

Well...

See, but all I had at that point was a lone scream...

And a kid on a bike.

- ...and a kid on a bike. Or a person on a bike. - Yeah. Yeah.

He couldn't have predicted that the next time

he'd emerge a few blocks over...

he'd be a full-blown killer.

They're lucky.

- When you think about it, I mean, no one... - They are.

After that, no one, no one survived.

This is a classic East Area Rapist-style attack.

They don't recognize that it's the same guy

that's been attacking up in... up in Northern California,

you know, so they have this standalone case.

So much wasn't considered relevant then.

But rewinding is important.

Among the ways in which the East Area Rapist

victimized those whom he targeted was stealing items

that were personal and irreplaceable,

items like wedding rings,

jewelry that appeared to be inherited.

Michelle felt that if she could find,

somewhere in the wild, one of those items,

that could be the thread that leads her

to the East Area Rapist.

I came across sort of very similar cufflinks

with the same initials that looked the same.

And I bought them, and at that point, I knew

I needed to give it to an actual detective,

you know, to see if we could find out where these came from.

Are you recording at this point?

Um, I just wanted to make sure I was. Yes.

Any ideas that you have,

I'm completely open to them.

- Okay. - So...

I had an interview set up with Larry Pool,

the Orange County investigator

who has led the cold case task force since the mid '90s.

Every investigator I know that's been given

the opportunity to examine this case feels that

it's the case that they want solved before they die.

I take a chance at the end of our conversation

and reach into my bag for the cufflinks.

Well, I have to tell you, I... We're just...

I have insomnia sometimes.

Sometimes at 3:00 in the morning,

I would just start googling and look for things.

- Me too. - Um...

So, you know, 50 times, nothing happened.

Then, lo and behold, I found some cufflinks.

So, it's slightly unusual.

'Cause you never know.

I will...

No, you can have them.

- I can. - Yeah, yeah. Yes.

I didn't know if I was gonna make you mad that I did that.

Not at all.

Good. I'm glad.

He was overjoyed because he's been s... You know,

searching for kind of out-of-the-box ways

to solve this case anyway, and hadn't thought to do this.

He tracked down the victims for, on a weekend,

they thought they were the cufflinks.

And so, we were incredibly excited.

Turned out that they're not the actual cufflinks.

Um, so... so that kind of trail ended.

But it kind of opened up this... it definitely opened up

a relationship with these detectives in which I would...

The first time I heard about this woman

named Michelle McNamara.

Larry Pool brought her name up.

And, he said there was this true-crime writer slash blogger

who's interested in doing an article

for Los Angeles Magazine on this case.

At this point in time, I'd been involved

in the East Area Rapist case for two decades.

But the public just was unaware of it.

The hope is... is that maybe by having greater

public attention, the right person

will come forward and give the right tip.

Michelle called me shortly after that.

Do you have any source material

that you could give me?

And I'm being very standoffish.

You know, I have had things that I've said

taken out of context put in the press.

So, I was giving very vague answers.

And then she would follow up and say, "No, hold on.

Isn't this true?"

And she'd bring up a fact about the case.

And I was going, " she knows, she knows her stuff."

I started telling her things about my investigation

off the record.

Three months after the very first attack

down in Goleta, Santa Barbara, there's a double homicide

right next to the San Jose Creek.

Right.

The Horinek-Himmel attack is October of '79,

and then Offerman-Manning attack is at the end of December '79.

And they are within a few blocks of each other.

On the morning of December 30th, 1979,

Santa Barbara County sheriff's deputies

responded to a call at the condo

of osteopathic surgeon Dr. Robert Offerman

and his new girlfriend, psychologist Debra Manning.

Their good friends had arrived for a tennis game

and found a sliding glass door open.

Our offender goes in.

He gets both Offerman and Manning bound face-down

in the bed. And then he leaves,

like he typically would do, to get the dishes

or whatever else.

Something he did with the rapes was... was like he tied you up,

and then he would go and eat in your kitchen.

At the Offerman condo, it was right near Christmas,

and he had taken out the turkey and eaten it.

He goes back in to check on the victims,

and Dr. Offerman has slipped his bindings

and gets up and charges him.

The offender shoots Offerman,

then goes and shoots Dr. Manning

in the back of her head, and then runs off.

Because this case went sideways, he never got a chance

to sexually assault Debra Manning.

Do you know what kind of haunts me is,

do you know what book was on Offerman's night table?

Offerman was reading something like, How to Be Assertive.

Really?

Yeah. It was just kind of like, oy.

I had, heard of the murders

in Southern California.

So, I call Santa Barbara.

I said, "I think the Original Night Stalker

is the East Area Rapist."

And they said, "Don't know what you're talking about.

We don't have anything like that down here."

And then, in February, I was sent down to San Diego

to take a class.

And there happened to be a Santa Barbara deputy

in the class. And I got talking to him.

And he said, "Yeah, yeah, we had the,

the double homicide."

"A matter of fact," he said,

"they had an attempted rape before that."

And I said, "What?"

So, I got those reports, and the tie-ups.

And, the ski mask.

It all was there.

I know that it's the same person.

According to sheriff spokesman Bill Miller,

the department sent an investigator

to Santa Barbara last week

to look into the December shootings

of a physician and his psychologist girlfriend.

Two people were murdered.

But what they have there is just the evidence

at the scene which, is a strong indication

it could be the same man.

However, when I talked to Sergeant William Baker

of the Santa Barbara Sheriff's department,

I got a very different view.

SERGEANT WILLIAM BAKER:

Until we put a face on a killer who remains

a question mark,

he will continue to hold sway over us.

I wonder at times if I need to step back.

"He can't hurt me," I say,

not realizing that in every minute spent hunting him

and not cuddling my daughter, he already has.

Hey, I'm Nancy.

Michelle ultimately came up with

the name "Golden State Killer" 'cause it makes sense.

He terrorized up and down the state.

It was an effort to recognize that he was a predator of...

people's vision of California, of their dreams.

He had kind of, like, floated under the radar.

Whereas the Zodiac or

you know, Son of Sam got all this attention.

And I thought, this guy had ten times more victims

than those people. And he was ten times worse.

And we should know about him and we should all care,

and we should get justice for these people.

The night that we put that story up,

it exploded.

In the sharing of it, it just got bigger and bigger and bigger.

Roger Ebert tweeted about it.

It was her first major piece of writing.

What Michelle did was introduce herself

as a really important figure, a sympathetic figure,

and the person that we needed to get to know,

almost in a memoir way that would help bring

these sort of disparate collection

of tragedies together.

It was so beautifully, and, like, personally written.

It was like every case was... Happened to someone

that was a friend of hers.

It wasn't just the usual reporting.

It was also like a very subtle call to action.

I hadn't read anything that well-written in this field

since probably Truman Capote.

It was just, you know, one of those things

where the hairs on the back of your neck stood up.

You know, that's when...

things really started for her.

I called Michelle, and I said that I would be

the right person to represent that book

if she wanted to turn it into one.

I think the best way to sell this is for you to come

to New York and meet with the publishers.

Daniel Greenberg said

he was gonna send the proposal for a true crime book

that would transcend the genre.

The thing that drew me to it the most was the way Michelle

humanized all of the victims.

And the fact that Michelle herself is one part of the story

was so interesting.

And that was what I thought truly set it apart.

I remember being at Shutters at the Beach.

Me and Michelle and Alice.

And then, Michelle got the call that she had sold the book.

And we were very, very excited.

I ordered up champagne.

And Alice was jumping up and down the bed

because Mommy was so excited about something.

Alice, can you come down

and sit on the couch for a second?

Sorry.

Um, Alice, come down, okay?

You want to go see Mercedes and...

We go watch...

-What? -Let's go Peppa Pig.

You are watching Peppa Pig. But Mommy's talking.

I go watch Peppa Pig.

Okay. Can you, um...

...but...

yeah. I don't know. Um...

So, where would you start with this, then?

Gosh.

Op. Gosh.

I... hey.

You go watch Peppa Pig, and then I'll put your clothes on,

and we'll go.

You go. Go put on your clothes, thank you.

Go put on your clothes.

Um...

I mean, I would just recanvass those neighborhoods.

I would look through every police record

from year before and a year after.

I mean, I think there's things you can do.

Again, it's just time, energy...

After we finished that piece, it was like, "

we're done."

I was, like, kind of traumatized.

I had weird dreams.

I don't think I realized how toxic and scary it would be.

But I was done.

Like, I'm gonna go now work on a piece

about tacos for the next issue of Los Angeles Magazine.

Michelle had to continue.

She was like, "I got to keep going.

I've got to keep... I've got to keep go...

I've got to keep working on this."

Michelle and I, we were developing this...

this friendly relationship.

So, when her article was released,

I was holding my breath.

And I get to the end of the article,

I was like, "Thank God."

She kept her word.

I could trust her.

We had more phone calls...

and agreed to establish some... some email communications.

And it was really at that moment

in which it clicked between Michelle and I.

She proved herself to me.

And I basically opened wide open,

in terms of this is where I'm going with my investigation.

what I've got is I've got just your general list of the cases

and the attack times.

When you take a look at the homicides down south...

...um, all the victims appear to have been bound,

though he sometimes left the bindings

and later on, he took all the bindings.

And do you think he took the bindings

because he was evolving and kind of learning

and didn't want to leave evidence?

Well, that... that's a possibility.

Well, and also you said, interestingly, I mean,

before you were talking about how he killed defensively.

It seems by the time the Smith case in Ventura

came around, he wasn't doing that anymore.

It was more pure rage, "I wanna murder these people."

Yeah.

You can kind of see the comings and goings

of the people...

without anybody really being suspicious

about what you're up to.

So do we know where the back of the house is?

Yeah, that's it.

This is the victim's backyard.

Lyman Smith was a well-known attorney

on the verge of a superior court judgeship.

His wife Charlene was an interior designer

with a jewelry business.

It was a regular Sunday,

and my younger brother Gary

had gone up to mow the lawn at my dad's house.

But then he went into the house,

and he could hear the alarm going off.

And Gary thought, "Crap.

They're just getting up right now,"

which is weird 'cause it was noon or one.

It just kept buzzing.

So, he walked back to the bedroom.

He saw they were still in bed, and he still did the, like,

"Ooh, I need to give them privacy."

But at the same time thought,

"This is weird. They're not moving,

and the alarm's still going off."

So, he walked around to my dad's side of the bed.

He turned off the alarm and lifted back the cover

and saw that color of what I imagine was dried blood.

He also knew they weren't moving and there was big trouble.

He put the cover back and picked up the phone

that was there by the bed and called 911.

We started to learn a lot more about what had happened

in the house and how they died, how they'd been murdered.

And it was a lot worse than anybody thought.

The offender is able to get Lyman face down and bound.

Probably had Charlene bind Lyman.

He's even using the... the blanket

tucked up underneath his arms

to make it even that much more difficult

for Lyman to be able to escape out of the bed.

Instead of leaving the room and moving

the woman out to the family room,

like he typically would do,

I think he is sexually assaulting Charlene

with Lyman still in that bed.

At some point, he goes and retrieves a log

and bludgeons them to death.

The homicides up to this point in time were shooting deaths

because he was reacting defensively.

This is the first time that it goes the way he wants,

and he probably realized a huge psychological release

from accomplishing this task.

Five months after the Smith homicides,

we see the next attack in August of 1980

down in Laguna Niguel

with Keith and Patrice Harrington.

This case identically mirrors the Smith case in Ventura.

Going into a gated community to pick that...

Yes.

Keith was a fourth-year medical student.

His wife of four months, Patty, was a registered nurse.

Keith and Patrice Harrington.

They're found face-down in their bed.

They'd been bludgeoned to death with an unknown type weapon.

A metal fragment consistent with brass

was found in Patty's head wound.

That suggested that someone picked up

one of the newly installed brass sprinkler heads

from the yard and slipped inside the house.

In a subdivision with a manned gate,

it was high-risk.

It suggested the killer's pleasure

was in part derived from raising the stakes.

And then six months later,

in February of 1981,

the Original Night Stalker shows up in Irvine

and attacks Manuela Witthuhn.

Investigator Veach

with the Irvine Police Department.

The time is approximately 14:05.

Investigating an apparent homicide,

which occurred sometime, during the last evening hours.

Manuela was wearing a brown velour robe

and was partially wrapped in a sleeping bag

which she sometimes slept in when she was cold.

The sleeping bag was placed

over the top of her head.

And, she was struck over the head,

with an object,

causing a hole in the, bag itself.

The lamp's absence gave police a good idea

of the heavy object that was used

to bludgeon Manuela to death.

In Manuela's case,

she had been sexually assaulted,

bound, and then bludgeoned to death

just like the previous victims.

It's just now we don't have a male present.

In that offense.

Right, right.

My brother Dave, he had a respiratory infection.

So, the recommendation was that he get checked in

the hospital for a couple days.

He had an incredible dose of survivor's remorse.

He said over and over, "If I would've been home,

this never would've happened."

Couple days after the funeral, I went over

and stayed with my brother.

He, you know, was having a few beers,

and I noticed he was getting a little, you know,

he was, drinking a little bit.

And he just all of a sudden, He just said, you know,

"Drew, they think I killed her."

He said... Well...

And I didn't know what to say to that.

So, I just said, "Did you?"

I mean, it just kinda came out.

Right.

Right.

"I would never hurt my wife.

I would never have anything done to her.

No, not in a million years. I loved her very much."

And I believed him.

The murders of Manuela Witthuhn

and Patty and Keith Harington shared similarities,

both big and small.

A forensic match between the cases didn't exist,

but a feeling did.

A sense that a single mind was at work.

It was a dark place,

you know, that she was taking you.

And I remember one time she sent me some pages,

and in the header, she wrote,

"Don't read this alone at night."

She just kept finding more and more sources

who wanted to speak to her and more avenues

to sort of chase down, and I could see how beguiling

and, um, seductive it was, and how, um...

...addictive.

- You're a good interviewer. - I am?

- You are. - Good.

Um... No, I mean...

And, um...

In some ways, I'm, you know,

Michelle's voice was a part of the proposal

and was a really strong part all along, and so, you know,

that way was a given that that would be in the book

in some form.

But I know there was part of her

that that... that was something she was navigating.

She wasn't a big "me, me, me" person.

She was much more interested in other people

than in talking about herself.

Oak Park..

Oak Park. Shit.

Oak Park borders the west side of Chicago.

Ernest Hemmingway, who grew up there,

famously referred to it as a town of wide lawns

and narrow minds.

But that wasn't my experience with the place.

We lived in a drafty three-story Victorian

on a cul-de-sac in the center of town.

Michelle was our baby sister

and she was born when I was 12 years old.

So, there was a big gap between Michelle

and the rest of us.

I just moved from playing with dolls

to having a real... ...doll myself."

And my mom was more than willing to pass her off.

In some ways, Michelle was an only child

because we were just up and out.

Because she was so much younger than everyone else,

I really think she found her voice early.

And I think she just became

an independent thinker and spirit.

I mean, she came out strong.

She came out strong-willed.

Once Michelle got to high school,

which is kind of a typical time to get rebellious,

Michelle and my mother

had developed into a very complicated relationship.

Michelle, I think, viewed our mother

as more an enemy than, you know,

someone who was supporting her.

Well, I think Michelle, being the youngest,

wanted more physical affection and more attention

where my mom was pretty... pretty reserved.

I mean, there was never any question

that she loved all of us deeply and was,

really did anything she could to support us.

But, you know, she did have, I think, sometimes a...

a difficult time giving a direct compliment.

Their communication was just very different,

and they would not back down.

We button-pushed our whole lives.

We had a summer cabin on Lake Michigan,

and I remember one afternoon as a kid playing in the waves

as she read a book in a chair on the beach.

I realized the waves were just high enough

so that I could remain underwater

and then rise for a quick breath

when the wave was at its highest,

shielding me from view.

I let my mother straighten up and scan the water.

I let her put down her book.

I let her stand.

I let her run toward the water preparing to scream.

Only then did I pop up nonchalantly.

Her lifelong nickname for me, only half-jokingly,

was "the little witch."

But I felt her expectations, the transference of hope,

and I bristled.

I both yearned for her approval...

and found her investment in me suffocating.

I believe that Golden State Killer

has a comfort using these waterways.

We saw that up in the Sacramento area,

and when he gets to Santa Barbara,

he's going back to a region

in which he's previously attacked twice

along this geographic feature, this creek.

On the morning of July 27, 1981,

a realtor found their bodies.

Cheri Domingo, a Natalie Wood lookalike,

was an old fashioned romantic who loved to dance.

Her boyfriend Gregory Sanchez was a computer programmer

who coached little league and rode a motorcycle.

Domingo-Sanchez,

again, they're in bed.

It's in the middle of the night.

That is a horrific fight. Very violent.

The offender enters the backyard

through a side gate.

And it appears Gregory has got a sense

that there's a prowler outside.

Because when he enters the master bedroom,

Gregory Sanchez is already up facing him.

Offender pulls a gun and shoots Gregory.

However, Greg gets up.

Now the offender gets into hand-to-hand combat

with six-foot-three Greg Sanchez.

It's a terrible fight.

The suspect ended up bludgeoning Greg,

and he ends up in the closet

where he's later found deceased.

And Domingo is severely bludgeoned.

When I, years later, spoke to the criminalist,

she was just still greatly disturbed

by the amount of, damage done to her.

The offender's semen was found,

but a very small amount,

and it was found on the comforter.

So it's unknown what type of sexual interaction he had,

but he definitely got to the point

where he left some semen behind.

Five years later, he murdered 18-year-old

Janelle Cruz.

Manuela and Janelle lived in the same subdivision,

just two miles apart.

His female victims was just the latest

unlucky stand-in for the lustful sneering women.

Mother, wife,

who formed a disapproving circle around the killer

in his daydreams.

The act of bludgeoning was arousal.

Alchemized to hate.

My mom and I,

people all the time referred to us as sisters.

And she loved the beach, she loved...

she loved the outdoors. She was a California girl.

Yeah, yeah.

She was... she was amazing.

When my mom was killed, I was a kid.

I'm thinking right close

to the end of my 10th grade year.

You know, she... she would set a curfew,

and I would break it.

And she would set a rule, and I would just throw it out the window.

Bless her heart, I don't know how

she kept from wringing my neck.

Um, and, um, so about,

I want to say right about two weeks before she was killed,

we got in a humungous fight.

And we ended up having this crazy screaming match.

And the last thing I said to her was,

"Why don't you just get the hell out of my life?"

And I slammed down that receiver.

And those are the last words I spoke to her.

- Yeah. - She didn't know, you know?

Yeah. She didn't know how to handle me

-and, bless her heart... -MICHELLE: My... my... Your... It's... it's interesting

'cause my... my mom and I

had a very complicated relationship,

and... but we could never yell at each other.

She would always slip envelopes,

um, under my bedroom door...

...that had, you know, I just remember so clearly,

"You're vain, thoughtless, rude."

Like, all these terrible things, but she could only write it out.

She wouldn't be able to say it to me.

Well, yeah. Yeah, 'cause we were totally different...

At my wedding,

my mother and I had our biggest blowout.

I put a lot of time, too much probably,

into the planning.

At the dinner, I seated small groups of people

who didn't know each other together.

The only thing I told them

was that they had one thing in common

and had to figure it out.

My mother came up to me

as I was making my way to the bathroom.

She gestured at the tables.

"You have too much time on your hands," she said.

I'd been avoiding her because a friend of mine

made the mistake of telling me that earlier in the evening,

she'd remarked to my mother that she thought

I was the best writer she knew.

"I know. I think so too," my mother said.

"But don't you think it's too late for her?"

I went to the ladies' room, locked myself in a stall

and allowed myself to cry for five minutes...

then went back out...

Hey, sweetie. It's Patton.

The new pages you sent me are amazing.

I just have a couple little tweaks, but, man,

that was a really cool read, especially that last paragraph.

My god.

Hey. It's Patton. I'm in Miami.

I'm in Toronto. I'm on my way to Iceland.

My wife is ten times smarter than me.

She is thinking and operating on this way elevated level.

And I'm just noticing when things fart

and pointing at it

until she tells me, "Don't... don't point at that,

all right?" "Okay."

Who's that, Alice?

Who is that on the TV?

Daddy.

Is that Daddy?

Daddy.

Reading galley of Patton's book...

Michelle was, um...

she was so hard on herself.

Her writing and, "Am I doing a good job as a mom?"

And Patton was working a lot.

So, yeah. I... I'm gonna...

I'll just meet you at Barnes. I... I got to do a signing.

About to do a video shoot here for Spin Magazine.

I'm so close to finishing this goddamn movie.

Got your email. I am doing the errands now.

You want her to go to a two o'clock class?

I'm gonna do these as quickly as I can.

Call me if you... if you think of anything else

for me to get, goodbye.

Hey, it's Patton.

- Hi! - Driving home

- as fast as I can. - You're on a horsey.

Hey, it's Patton. Just got a call

from my guys at CAA.

- They can get me... Get us... - You're on a horsey.

this... for this Thursday,

two tickets to go see Prince at the Forum.

Happy birthday, Michelle.

Hello. This is a refill reminder

from CVS Pharmacy for Michelle McNamara.

We show that the following prescription numbers

are due for refill.

Hi, Michelle. This is your father

calling to wish you happy birthday.

To be 41 again.

How sweet it is. Talk to you soon.

It's two plates.

You know, Michelle...

Michelle was a brilliant investigator.

Aside from being a good writer,

she had a real investigative mind.

She didn't just tick the boxes.

She was a creative thinker about crime.

I mean, I was shocked, frankly,

when Larry Crompton told me that he called Santa Barbara

and he was told over the phone the murders never happened.

- I... I was shocked. - Yeah.

He said, "Listen, it was a different time."

A lot of things went wrong because people...

You didn't even share information

among your coworkers, which is crazy.

They could've solved these cases.

There is no question.

And I think people would be very surprised

how these investigations can simply go off the rail

and never go anywhere.

So everyone that I talk to seemed to grumble

a bit about Santa Barbara.

Do you feel like that's kind of a past thing?

When I was working in Santa Barbara,

there were a tremendous amount of burglary,

prowling, and rapes.

To me, the numbers of rapes we had was just astonishing.

And a lot of it was written off as,

"Well, it's a university town. What do you expect?

What do you expect?" Well.

But I never understood

Santa Barbara as... Was different

than other jurisdictions.

Did it have to do with, "We don't want bad publicity?"

What do you think it was?

Well, Reagan's ranch was about 15 miles up the coast.

At that time, Ronald Reagan

was in the process of declaring his candidacy

for president...

...and they did not want any of this negative stigma.

They didn't want the publicity.

They didn't want the publicity.

And then we had Montecito, where, you know,

every famous person on earth has at least one house.

So, it shows you the money

and political influences there.

I remembered asking the sergeant,

"Why... why do you not publicize these,

sexual assaults that we have?"

"Well, the sheriff, made an agreement

with the board of realtors that we would not publicize

certain crimes."

God.

"Because property values will go down..."

Wow.

"...and they don't want people afraid

to come here and buy."

'Cause Goleta was growing.

So, when we get into the period of the homicides,

we were, psst, quiet.

Hey, Mich. It's Mary Rita.

We just went to see dad.

Yeah, he was totally sedated and out of it.

But, um, obviously the next 48 hours are critical.

We will keep you posted.

All right, thanks. Bye.

- This is North Star Security at 323-730-4935. -

We've just installed a massive security system

in our house to keep us sane... This is probably little paranoid

but better safe than sorry.

I noticed the screen on one of the front windows was off.

My assumption is that... I meant to mention this earlier,

but I'd prefer if none of us...

I wanted to be sure, in case some crazy man

out of a horror movie is trying to get in.

Something I think about surprisingly often.

I know I'm being paranoid, but it...

You guys own a gun?

- No. - You should get one.

I know... Well, no. Patton's, like, blind as a bat.

I'm jittery.

We're the worst people in the world to have a gun.

He likes to shoot guns.

I just... We can't have one in the house.

At the time that he died,

she literally got in

just after he had kind of...

lost,

you know, consciousness or whatever.

And so she didn't really get that... that last moment

with him.

So, there was a lot of shock for her.

Michelle and my dad had a very special relationship.

They were just, you know, simpatico, I would say.

After he had passed, she had told us

the inscription on the book she planned to use was

"To my father who believed."

But, you know, she just kind of kept...

kept at it and kept working.

And, um, in hindsight, she probably should have, um,

slowed down a little bit and taken a little...

taken a little more time.

You've been now studying this for so long

and looking at it as a puzzle

that horror doesn't really affect you anymore.

Well, I'm not sure.

- Really? I... yeah. - I mean, I'm,

yeah. I mean, I... I still don't probably have

a good night's sleep, you know, every night.

And, um, thank God for Ambien.

But it doesn't make for, like, a peaceful existence.

That doesn't mean I'm stopping it,

but I certainly think it's kind of wormed its way

in... into my brain a bit.

Well, and you could tell.

Yeah.

Yeah.

For my brother, this cloud of suspicion

just seemed to never go away.

Some very professional, well-meaning people

were investigating this crime.

But they had no suspect.

So, he always had to remain a person of interest.

I don't know how he emotionally dealt with that day after day,

year after year.

Manuela was killed in 1981, and it wasn't until 2000

that my brother no longer was a person of interest.

I just picked up the paper on a Sunday morning.

Opened it up, and there's my brother's picture.

They made a... a DNA connection

between Manuela's killing and others.

But to have that cloud of suspicion...

- Right. - ...over you for so long.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

When the crime labs began incorporating DNA testing

in the early '90s, Orange County decided

to prioritize homicides involving sexual assaults.

Every inch of fabric and millimeter of cotton tip,

held promise.

In 1996, Mary Hong was one of the criminalists

tasked with concentrating on cold cases.

An older criminalist took her aside.

Fifteen years on,

he still hadn't forgotten his old suspicion.

This case was the very first cold case

that I started to work,

and that was in 1997.

I was working for Contra Costa County

as a young criminalist.

I had just started DNA training.

One day, I found this file cabinet

that I never saw anybody go to.

What really stood out was this red E-A-R

written on each tab.

That's when I learned about the East Area Rapist.

I was fascinated.

We won't be able to do anything

because it's long past statute of limitations.

But I just want to kind of figure out,

you know, maybe I can identify the guy

and solve this series.

I end up calling Larry Crompton.

I got a phone call.

And, fella said, "I'm Paul Holes.

I'm with the crime lab in Contra Costa."

And I said, "Paul, I know of five homicides

in Southern California.

I know it's our rapist that did it,

but nobody will talk to me, and nobody will help me."

I was told that the Orange County Sheriff's office

has been doing some DNA work.

So I did call up, Mary Hong,

but our DNA profiles were different technologies.

We couldn't compare 'em.

It took four years before we got that technology online

and could revisit the East Area Rapist case.

The tubes that advanced the mystery

closer to an answer were opened and tested.

When the results came in, Paul Holes called Mary Hong.

"Same guy," Mary said.

With the Ventura case,

Lyman, Charlene Smith,

we have semen evidence.

In Patrice and Keith Harrington, we have semen evidence.

With Manuela Witthuhn, we have semen evidence.

Domingo-Sanchez, Janelle Cruz,

five of cases all have semen evidence

in which DNA testing showed it was the same offender,

the same DNA profile.

And of course, in my jurisdiction

in Contra Costa County, I had three cases

in which I still had evidence from the sexual assaults

that matched the five DNA-related cases

to the Original Night Stalker series.

And that connection was made back in March of 2001.

We believe he is responsible for no fewer than 12 murders,

50 rapes, um, between 1976 and 1986.

We don't have a name, and... and that's the goal.

We need to match name to the DNA profile.

Hey Michelle.

7:07 on an early Thanksgiving morning,

the 26th day of November.

-Happy Thanksgiving. -RADIO HOST 2: Happy Thanksgiving.

Yes, Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

Real nice to have you with us...

Hello?

Hello?

Hello?

Gonna kill you.

Gonna kill you.

Gonna kill you.