Casefile True Crime - Case 53: The East Area Rapist 1978–1979 (Part 4)

Episode Date: June 3, 2017

[Part 4 of 5]As the 1970s drew to a close, the East Area Rapist continued terrorising residents of Northern California. His attacks became increasingly violent, with one psychologist warning that the perpetrator would most likely escalate to murder as soon as he felt killing was justified.---Researched and written by Anna PriestlandDownload the map of the attacks hereDownload "The Homework" files hereFor all credits and sources please visit casefilepodcast.com/case-53-east-area-rapist-1978-1979-part-4 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This series deals with horrific sexual assault offences, and there's a lot of them. We feel it's a very important story to cover, but it won't be suitable for all listeners, so please use your discretion. If you decide to keep listening, we will be releasing a map with each episode to help as you go along or for you to refer to afterwards. You'll find a link to the map in the show notes on our website, or you should be able to access the link from the show notes in your app. Part 3 began with an emergency press conference in mid-1977. A composite sketch as well as a physical and psychological profile of the East Area rapist was released. The public were warned to be vigilant. Police received thousands of tips and there were countless sightings of the rapist.

Unfortunately, these sightings weren't always reported at the time. Many persons of interest made the suspect list. Some even look like prime suspects due to many similarities, but these turned out to be nothing more than. and strange coincidences, and most were eliminated from the investigation. The East Area Rapist enjoyed communicating with police, the press, and survivors. In August 77, the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office received a letter, known as the Afraid letter, from someone claiming to know who the East Area rapist was.

The letter writer requested to be contacted through the press if the police wanted further information. The police did what the letter writer asked, but they never heard from the person again. The rapist started calling survivors, ranging from hang-up calls to obscene calls and threats to kill. A local TV station received a poem called Excitements Crave, claiming to be from the East Area rapist. After a dentist went public and added more to the reward offer for the East Area rapist capture, he attacked the survivor who lived close to the dentist's office in South Sacramento, the furthest south he had attacked up to that point. Police had another close call when they set up a covert operation in a Rancho Cordova 7-11 store.

This backfired when the suspicious mail they were waiting for called the store and asked to speak to the officers. Brian and Katie Majori were shot dead in Rancho Cordova in February 1978. With the exception of one further attack in South Sacramento after the shooting, the attacks moved outwards to Stockton, Modesto and Davis. Sacramento was not hit again. In Sacramento, was immense. After the shooting murders of Brian and a Katie Majori, people wondered if the East Area rapist had now escalated to murder. Although the murder wasn't officially linked, with the attacks moving out of Sacramento after the shooting, police considered that the East Area rapist may have moved because it was now a murder suspect. Surveillance in the city was at an all-time high. Helicopters

were now in use. The California Highway Patrol used their patrol helicopters to scour the streets every night. Pilots would swoop if they got a call of possible East Area rapist activity in an area. When no calls came in, they cruised the air over east and south Sacramento, shining their floodlights below, hoping to catch him. When the helicopters flew overhead, homes below were filled with floodlights. The dull, constant drone of the helicopters would become a sound that many would associate with the East Area rapist for years to come. People remembered lying in their beds in total fear. As soon as night fell, many would leave all their lights on. Radios and televisions would also be left on to make home seem busy. Before going to bed, people would check all the locks on their doors and windows,

some many times over. As people climbed into bed, the fear of the long night set in. Many tied wind chimes to curtain rods on the inside of their windows. This way, if it broke into their house, they may get a warning. Any gust of wind or noise outside sent people into a panic. Rumors were circulating that the East Area rapists broke into homes prior to attacks and unloaded guns, so people re-checked their guns under their beds or pillows every night to make sure that was still loaded. People slept in shifts so that someone in the house was awake at all times and ready to take action. Constant rumors and the need for police to withhold many details of the attacks caused widespread confusion of the facts. What colour were his eyes,

his hair? Did he walk with a strange gait, or was he putting it on? Did he really have a stutter? The fact that the East Area rapists seemed to be using different vehicles for almost every crime added to the confusion of people for what to look out for. Was it a station wagon, a Chevy, a Fiat, a Mustang, a Volkswagen, a van, a bike? Was it primed, re-sprayed? Whatever it was, he seemed to have access to many different vehicles. None of them showed up as stolen as far as it's known, so it's possible that he had unquestioned access to them, maybe through a job. Another theory was that he broke into car body shops and borrowed vehicles only to return

them before anyone suspected. Whatever he was doing, it didn't seem suspicious to anyone else, anyone who would report him anyway. None of the items stolen from the survivor's homes had been located. East Area rapists likely kept them as mementos, a way to relive each attack. Many of the items were of more sentimental value to the survivors than financial, meaning they could be easily identified if found. Homemade coin earrings, other costume jewelry, cufflinks that were a family heirloom with the letter N engraved on them, and many more items that could be

easily identified, including photos of survivors. The last five attacks we covered in part three were the two in Modesto and three in Davis, attacks 33 to 37, June 5th to July 6th, 1978. Sergeant Jim Bevan's Lieutenant Ray Root and the rest of the Sacramento Sheriff's Task Force came to the conclusion that these attacks were not just random attacks outside of Sacramento. They felt this new cluster of attacks running between Modesto and Davis were planned and targeted, in the same way he targeted those in Sacramento. They strongly believed he was on the same. the move and they had to work out where his next strike was going to be.

There was always the chance he would continue to prowl and strike in Sacramento, but after weighing it all up, the task force determined the most logical place for the East Area rapists to strike next was Contra Costa County. They believed he could be headed south to Los Angeles, and Contra Costa County was an ideal next target that was on the way. The primarily middle-class suburban area of Contra Costa County is located east of San Francisco. The name is Spanish for opposite coast, which refers to its location on the other side of the bay from San Francisco. To the northeast of Contra Costa County lies the border of Sacramento County. But unlike its neighbors, Contra Costa County had no experience in serial rapists,

certainly not of this caliber. Sergeant Jim Bevan's and Lieutenant Ray Rout prepared to hold a briefing with their counterparts in Contra Costa County, and they were expecting some pushback. The city of Concord in Contra Costa County is just over an hour south-west of Sacramento and an hour directly west of Stockton. In 1978, it had a population of around 100,000 people. On the morning of August 14, 1978, Chief Criminalist Dwayne Dylan held the weekly meeting with his crime lab at the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department in Martinez just west of Concord. in the room that day was crime scene investigator, Detective Larry Crompton. Crompton had just

been selected for a transfer to the Sheriff's Crime Lab after two years in narcotics and three years in patrol. Dwayne Dillon addressed the crime lab, quote, Sacramento Sheriff's Office investigators will be there at Concord PD tomorrow to talk about the rapist that has been terrorising their county for the last two years. They believe he's heading our way and the sheriff wants us to be represented at the meeting. We don't know much at this time, but apparently their investigators have not been able to come up with anything of value, and do they think we had better be ready. Duane Dillon requested that Larry Crompton attend the briefing at Concord PD on behalf of Contra Costa Sheriff's Crime Lab. The Sheriff's Department would also send representatives from patrol and detectives.

Just like our Sacramento Sheriff's and Sacramento City Police are two different departments. So too were Concord PD and Contra Costa Sheriff's Department. They were only about 15 minutes away from each other, but two separate police departments entirely. The Contra Costa Sheriff's Crime Lab, where Larry Crompton worked, was the largest lab in the county. Some other city police departments had their own labs, but they were small and couldn't run as many tests, so most specimens were sent to the Contra Costa Sheriff's Lab. If the East Area rapists did strike in Contra Costa County, it was important Crompton and his lab was informed, as they would likely process the evidence.

The following day, August 15th, just after 8 a.m. in the morning, Sergeant Jim Bebbins and Lieutenant Ray Root arrived at the Concord Police Department. It became immediately clear to all officers in attendance why they had chosen Concord to hold the briefing. Based on the city's geography and a lot of intuition, the Sacramento Sheriff's Task Force believed Concord was the place the East Area rapist would hit next. With its vast canal system, trails and open spaces, it mimicked many of the areas previously

hit by the rapist. To the Sacramento detectives, it seemed a logical place for him to strike. Representatives from all of the central Contra Costa County law enforcement agencies were present at the briefing. Concord PD, Walnut Creek PD, Pleasant Hill PD, Martinez PD, and the Sheriff's Department. Some law enforcement agencies from other parts of the county, like Antioch PD and a Pittsburgh PD were also present. But law enforcement agencies from other parts of the county

not considered potential targets of the East Area rapists didn't attend. Larry Crompton spoke to us about the meeting. Quote, I went to the meeting and listened to what they were talking about, and even though Sacramento was not that far from Contra Costa County, we knew nothing about the attacks. They started telling us about the rapist and that they felt it was coming down into our area.

At the time we all thought, Why would he be coming to our area? They went over the things that were happening during the rapes. When we heard the things that this person was doing during those attacks, we thought, no way, he's not coming to us. We don't have any serial rapists like that. But what you have to understand is, back then, if the crimes were not happening in your area, and you were not getting the newspaper from other areas, you didn't hear about any of these things.

Today it's a little different. Back then, we knew nothing about it. We were told that he was very violent and that he had threatened to kill. The big thing is that before we even knew about this, there were almost 40 attacks. That's the difference between how things were then compared to today. Today you would know about it. It made it very hard. They told us they thought he was coming to our area, but they thought he was going to

Los Angeles or Southern California, and in order to get there, he had to come through our area. That was very difficult for us to imagine. Why, if that was the case that he was going there, why would he even stop in our area? We left that meeting thinking that we wouldn't hear any more about him. Lieutenant Root told those in attendance at the meeting, quote, We think he's ready to move and we believe he is coming here. You better be prepared.

We think he might come to your area. You're going to need a task force. All the agencies need to work together. Unless you cooperate completely with each other, you are going to lose. I strongly suggest you form a multi-agency task force before he hits. The psychological profiles that we have each say that he will kill, and that he will kill a cop if cornered. We believe it, and we suggest that you believe it too.

Lieutenant Root offered all of the different Contra Costa law enforcement agencies the reports and evidence they had, as well as an offer for any assistance they needed, day or night. He finished with this quote. We have invented the wheel, but we can't seem to fit the space. When he hits and he will, we would appreciate a call. The Contra Costa law enforcement agencies heard the details of his MO and the signs to look out for, but the sentiment in the room matched what Crompton was feeling.

Not in our county. White-collar crime, sure, but a serial rapist. Never. Crompton wasn't alone in thinking it was a joke to imagine all agencies cooperating either. Not only that, but cooperating on a task force for something that had had to be. didn't even happen yet. This is a quote from Larry Crompton's book, Sudden Terror. Cooperation, multi-agency task force, get real. Some cops cooperate, even some agencies cooperate, but most cops don't, most agencies don't. Only when it's too late and the damage is done

does any real sense of cooperation kick in, and then only because outside pressure comes to bear. Egos, politics, budgets, laziness, competence, human nature, all play a part in the phenomenon known as lack of cooperation. Another thing Lieutenant Root made clear to the Contra Costa law enforcement agencies in that briefing was that the rapist often said and did things they believed were a deliberate attempt to throw off the survivors and police. Paul Holes is an investigator for the district attorney's office in Contra Costa County. He was previously chief of forensics at Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department.

He discussed this point with us. I will tell you that this offender did verbally stage what I call verbal staging or even behavioral staging. You can stage a crime scene, right? You want to make a homicide look like a suicide. So you place the person you just shot the gun in their hands and you kind of change things up to make it look like a suicide. That's called staging. He was staging these scenes, but he's staging it verbally as well as behaviorally. He is telling the victims bits of information because he knows they're going to be talking to law enforcement, but he's telling them bits of information to mislead law enforcement away from what he is.

And, you know, little examples such as, you know, don't tell the pigs you saw my van outside or I need to take food and money out to my van. He says that multiple times. I guarantee he was never driving a van. He's verbally staging that he's this transient individual that is just scraping by. In the first Modesto attack, he steals $1,500. They had a dry cleaning business. They had their business proceeds in a bank, what do you want, bag? It's a little zippered bag. And he takes that.

Well, over $1,300 of that was cash. Two days later, he's up in Davis attacking a 19-year-old girl, and when he first walks in, I need food and money, right? No, he doesn't. He just got $1,300 cash. That's $1,300 in 1978. This is showing he's following a script. He's decided, I need to have the victims think this is the type of person I am. Behaviorally, some of the victims would say he would sit there and shift.

like he's withdrawing from drugs or he'd be asking for drugs and like one time he finds the victim's coating pills and she hears him run over to the sink and he's on the faucet he's making all sorts of noises like he's taking a bunch of these pills this is all part of his act and so when you start to see well he's trying to make the victims and thus law enforcement believe he's this semi-transient just dredge of society guy well he's obviously trying to make law law enforcement think completely opposite of what he really is. In Sacramento, Task Force detectives were continuing to receive tips and continued to review possible suspects. When detectives had a suspect, they would pull up any information they could

find. If they had a military record, it would show the blood group of the person, which made it easy to determine if they were type A or not. What they didn't know was at the time, military records were not always correct. So there is a chance that some suspects may have been eliminated based on an incorrect blood type on their military record. Paul Holes confirmed that at the time they mostly used saliva samples to determine a suspect's secretive status. That would help to either eliminate the suspect or keep them on the list. He had this to say via email about secretor status and blood type to eliminate suspects.

Quote, the suspect's blood was obtained either via consent or search warrant. Military records have also been used, but we have concerns about the accuracy of the military's determination of the soldier's blood type. A small percentage of suspects had their blood type determined, but most suspects were eliminated based on secretor status, as it was easier to get a saliva sample than to get a phlebotomist out each time a suspect was contacted. The use of the secretor status was an unfortunate misstep in my opinion, as there are a subset of individuals who do not neatly fall into the secretor, non-secreta groupings, and there is the potential of someone with poor dental hygiene having bleeding gums, throwing the secretor status determination off.

It is possible that someone was falsely eliminated based on secretor status. Today we completely ignore the previous determination of secretar status, and go for DNA if we find a suspect that had previously been eliminated by it. There was no slowing down of the Sacramento Sheriff's Task Force. Extensive patrols, surveillance and inquiries were still being conducted. The East Area Rapist last struck in Davis on July 6, 1978. He hadn't struck in Sacramento since mid-April. No attacks were happening, but there was a reason the helicopters were still hovering every night.

The East Area Rapist was still present in East Sacramento. He just wasn't attacking. He was prowling. He was doing the reconnaissance missions he had always done, and for a select group of residents, he was leaving the early warning signs that he was coming for them. Case File will be back shortly. Thank you for supporting us by listening to this episode's sponsors.

Thank you for listening to this episode's ads. By supporting our sponsors, you support CaseFile to continue to deliver quality content. Sarah and James moved to Carmichael around this time. That's not their real names. They were building a home outside of Sacramento, but needed to rent in Carmichael until the build was finished. They had just bought their first daughter in, to the world, and they rented a home on St. Lynn Lane, Carmichael, in the pocket just east

of Arden Arcade. Sarah spoke to us about her time in Carmichael. The articles in the newspaper, local TV news and conversations with friends kept the crimes of the East Area rapists on the front burner. Helicopters flying at night with large spotlights focused on sleeping neighborhoods, filling backyards and darkened streets with blinding light as they searched. Folks in the area had taken to painting their house numbers on their roofs, big white numbers to help law enforcement as they flew overhead during the night. We were happy to know we would not be staying, as it really was a fearful situation in Carmichael with the rapist on the loose.

It was the end of September in 1978, and we had been up working on the new house. It was dark we parked in our carport, and we could see right away that the kitchen door to the house was open. We went in and looked around. The screen was removed from my daughter's room, and our dog was still in the backyard and had been given a couple rib bones. We called the police.

It seemed like they filled the house within minutes. Sitting on the couch, we answered their questions and listen to their cautions. I was told to make note of things that may be missing as they explained that the rapist would break into homes like a reconnaissance for his later crime. The police finally left, and we were still sitting there, sleeping child, and two adults that would not close their eyes

until the next night when we started staying with a relative in Fair Oaks. We never went back to that house and stayed with relatives until our house was finished later in October. The police sent us a postcard saying that they were not able to gather any forensic evidence about our intruder.

Regarding the missing items, a snapshot of myself that was on our kitchen bulletin board and a piece of my lingerie that went missing and was never recovered. You know, at the time, it felt to our community that it must be somebody we know,

somebody you see on a regular basis, because obviously he did not. stand out. In 1978, around 100,000 people lived in the city of Concord, the largest city in Contra Costa County. Concord police had taken the warnings from the Sacramento Sheriff's Department seriously, but it had been over seven weeks since the briefing, and the chatter and the rumours had subsided. Officers went about their jobs just like they had done before. Nothing changed. The Concord PD, just like the other departments in Contra Costa County, were now confident they were right. No serial rapist was coming their way. The Interstate 680 is a north-south highway

that links Concord to San Jose, San Jose being an hour south of Concord. If the Sacramento Task Force was right and the East Area Rapist was about to strike in Concord as he moved south towards Los Angeles, then towns and cities along the Interstate 680 could also be in his sights. Some of the major ones were Walnut Creek, San Ramon, Fremont and San Jose. In 1977, the East Area Rapists took a break after Attack 22 on May 22nd. He didn't strike again until September 6th, a three and a half month gap. Now a year later, in 1978, he had taken another break. The last attack he committed, Attack 37 in Davis, was on July 6th, 1978. Attack 38. Attack 38 occurred, three months later on October 7th, 1978.

Around 11.30pm, a 26-year-old woman was driving home with her husband after a night out. They lived in Belang Court, Concord, which came off Minert Road. As they pulled into Belang Court, they noticed a vehicle parked on Minert Road they didn't recognize, possibly a Volkswagen. They weren't concerned by it. They just remembered seeing it. What the couple didn't know was that three nights earlier, a resident, on Minert Road was awoken by his 17-year-old daughter at 1.30 in the morning. She had seen a

prowler standing in their backyard. In an instant, the girl's father was standing at his bathroom window, pointing a rifle at the prowler, who was about 20 feet away. The father yelled out, what the fuck are you doing here? The prowler replied, he was looking for a friend. When the father yelled, get out of my yard or I'll blow your fucking head off. The prowler ran. The father ran through the house, unlocked the front door and went after him, but he was gone. The girl and her father returned to bed after that. They didn't call the police. After all, it was Concord, not Sacramento. The East Area rapist hadn't struck in Concord. Yet. After the couple arrived home to Bellian Court on October 7th, they put their sleaking baby to bed. The husband noticed the door

closed that he was sure he had left open. When he checked the other doors, he found the front of doors deadbolt unlocked. He checked with his wife, but she hadn't unlocked it. They must have forgotten to lock it when they went out, he thought. They hadn't. The East Area rapist had been inside while they were out. He had tried to pry the outside garage door lock with a knife, leaving nicks around the doorknob, but the deadbolt held. He then tried numerous window screens before having success with the living room window. The glass was found with a neat hole in it, near the lock, just like other crime scenes in Sacramento. It's believed he did this by holding a screwdriver to the glass and lightly tapping it. He got inside, unlocked the front door and left,

leaving it unlocked, before returning to the backyard to replace the living room screen to avoid suspicion. This enabled him to lay in wait for the couple to return home, then enter the house again in complete silence. The couple had been asleep for some time when the husband, was awoken with a flashlight in his eyes and something touching his foot. I just want food and money. I'll kill you if you don't do what I say. My main man wants gold and silver. He was panting, almost hyperventilating as he said this. The attack followed the same script as previous attacks, the threats to kill, the woman tying the man up, only for the East Area rapist to retie him, then tie the woman up, the shoelaces, the ransacking, the place,

on their backs. It was all the same. He dragged the survivor out of the bedroom to the living room. He said he wanted her to find her purse, but really he was just getting her out of the bedroom to rape her. He turned the TV on, put the volume down and threw a blanket over the screen. He cut the survivor's nightgown off and threatened to cut her baby's ear off if she didn't give him what he wanted. She said he smelt musty. Before he raped her, he called her by name and said, I've been seeing you for a long time. After the rape, he cried in the corner before leaving. Police arrived within 20 minutes, but the rapist was long gone.

The attending patrol officer had not been involved in any discussions about the East Area rapist, so the attack was initially treated as an isolated burglary and rape. The rapist had taken thousands of dollars' worth of jury and other items, including kitchen utensils, dishes and appliances. It was anyone's guess why he stole these items, but if Sergeant Bevins and Lieutenant Root from the Sacramento Task Force were correct, and the East Area rapist was heading south towards Southern California, maybe he was in need of household goods for his new place. Seamen and saliva samples were discovered at the crime scene. It would take four days for the Sacramento Task Force to be informed of this latest attack. Sergeant Jim Bevan's

made his way to Concord as soon as he heard. After looking at the case, he told Concord police, quote, Your rape was committed by the East Area rapist and he's going to hit again. He's going to hit you soon and he's going to hit you in the same general area. We think he uses different cars and different disguises when he checks out neighborhoods, and it appears that many of those times are during the day, as we've had neighbours tell us later that they had seen suspicious people and cars in the area. He shot a teenager who chased him, so we know he, he is capable of murder. If confronted, the East Area rapist will have no qualms about shooting and killing a cop. The survivor's husband agreed to be hypnotised. It revealed the following.

The rapist wore gloves, talked through clenched teeth and had a revolver with four or five bullets in the cylinder. He also remembered a white, or aqua green box-shaped van parked near the house the night before the attack, the type of van with only two small windows at the back. Standing by the van was a white male with dark hair. He was wearing light blue pants and a white t-shirt. A security officer's badge was found in a neighbour's backyard. A state of California seal was in the middle of the star-shaped badge. The words special officer were around the leading edge.

It was traced back to a manufacturing company called Hookfarr Specialties in Providence, Rhode Island, with the model number B-617. The badge appeared worn with a badge. scratch marks on it, consistent with being kept in a wallet. The company provided a list of 3,000 salesmen who worked for 12 different companies that had the task of selling that specific badge, but no further leads came from this information. Numerous neighbours came forward during the canvas with the usual stories of backyard prowlers, hang-up calls, as well as obscene calls. They didn't stop after this attack either. Neighbors continued to get them.

numerous strange cars were seen in the area and many neighbours found prime marks and drill holes on their own window screens the survivor mentioned to police that in the lead-up to the attack a Mormon couple knocked on their door this sparked the interest of police because Mormons weren't known to do their rounds in male and female pairs at that time as well as the Sacramento task force Concord police contacted Stockton police for assistance Stockton police were able to provide them with information about a vehicle of interest. A survivor from one of the Stockton attacks had since gone under hypnosis. She described an early 60s model, tan or beige, Toyota or Datson, seen in the area at the time of her attack. The car had the old-style California license plates and two stickers.

One said, Milk drinkers make better lovers. And the other said, I'd rather be sailing. The license plate was remembered partially, possibly being B-I-K, B-T-K or B-E-K, but no matches were found on the system. Despite contacting Stockton and Sacramento, Concord Police hadn't thought to inform the Contra Costa Sheriff's Department of the attack. The sheriffs knew nothing about it. The Sacramento Task Force had been right. They correctly predicted where the East Area rapist would strike next, and they knew it was just the beginning.

29 occurred only five days later in Ryan Court Concord, only two blocks from the previous attack. A 29-year-old mother and her 30-year-old boyfriend put their young daughter to bed. They had only moved to Concord two months earlier and were getting used to their new neighborhood. They hadn't seen the little scratches on nearly all of their window screens outside. These scratches didn't seem to be prime marks as the screens removed easily. They were small markings on the bottom left corner of the screen, likely made by the East rapist while prowling the neighbourhood.

The same scratches appeared at the crime scene the week before in the first Concord attack, and they would be later found on many neighbours' screens as well. Little marks which secretly indicated the East Area rapist had set his sights on the house. The couple didn't know anyone in their new neighbourhood well. If they did, they may have heard the local talk of prank calls, backyard prowlers, side gates being left open, window screens being removed, and windows being pried open. If they had heard that talk

and knew anything about the East Area rapist, they likely wouldn't have gone to sleep with a bedroom and living room windows open. The house was silent as they slept. The couple awoke to the sound of their bedroom door hitting the wall as it burst open. A flashlight shone straight in their eyes. Don't move, I'll blow your heads off.

The ski mask, the angry whisper, nothing had changed. The woman screamed. If you scream again, I'll kill you. The East area rapist pointed a gun in the face of the boyfriend. I don't want to hurt you. I just want food and money for my girlfriend and me. Roll over and put your face in the pillow.

Put your hands behind your back. He told the woman to tie her boyfriend's wrists with white shoelaces he had brought himself. He told her to tie them really tight or he would kill her. He did his usual thing of untying and retying as he threatened to kill them both. Their young daughter heard the commotion and walked into the room. She screamed when she saw the East Area rapist. He walked the girl towards the bathroom, telling her to be quiet, before shutting her in and propping a piece of furniture against the door so she couldn't get out.

Then the rummaging began. The bedroom cupboards, the kitchen, the garage. He returned and placed dishes on the boyfriend's back and made more death threats. He hit the boyfriend in the head with his gun. He walked the survivor to the live. living room. He put his face close to hers and whispered, If you want to live, then this had better be good. Between the raves, the survivor heard towels tearing and plastic bags rustling as he walked in

and out of the garage several times. At one point, she heard him say, here, put this in the car, but she didn't hear a reply. This confused the survivor, as there were no other footsteps or anything else to indicate there was another person present. The house soon fell silent. They got free and opened to the bathroom door to get their daughter out before calling the police. The neighbour was woken up by the beeping sound a car makes when the door is opened and the keys still in the ignition. He heard it again five minutes later. Concord Police responded.

They found two strips of a blueprint towel each approximately two to three inches wide on the floor in the garage. The television had been unplugged and the cable. was missing. Another strip from the tower was lying on the survivor's bed and a brown shoe with the laces missing was near the foot of the bed. Several white and brown shoe laces were scattered around the room. The East Area rapist had brought the white ones with him but taken the brown ones from the shoe in their house. On the floor near the front door they found metal shavings which matched the scratches on the window screens. The California Highway Patrol sent a helicopter up and a spotlight lit the area until dawn broke. At 7am that morning, a woman in the same street found her side gate open

and a bicycle missing. It was recovered three days later in bushes just around the corner. It wasn't until Larry Crompton received evidence in his lab from the second Concord attack that he even knew the East Area rapist had struck in Contra Costa County. Another special meeting was held at Concord Police Department with briefings from Concord Police Chief Jim Chambers, and Contra Costa Sheriff Harry Ramsey. Concord Police Chief Jim Chambers got himself into hot water at the meeting when he suggested that women shouldn't wear short shorts or bathing suits in their front yards. The Mount Diablo Rape Crisis Center,

who were helping the Concord survivors of the East Area rapist, were quick to respond. Quote, That is a sexist approach to the problem. That says women are inviting rapes. Larry Crumpton spoke to us about this second meeting. Quote. After the first two in Concord, there was another meeting with us, and they said, you'd better put

a task force together. But when he hit Concord the first time, we knew nothing about it. They didn't tell us. Then the second time, the only reason that we found out was that they brought evidence over to the crime lab. Because of that, we started looking at it, and then the Sacramento detectives came back down again to remind us that we better be ready for him. We had nothing to go on, other than the way he did his crime.

attacks, the things he said to the victims and the way he handled the victims. We knew it was the same person each time. Several tips were called in to police after the Concord attacks. A Concord investigator received a call from a woman who thought her ex-boyfriend could be the East Area rapist. She felt one of the composite sketches looked like him, plus he had been acting strangely. Descriptions of his recent behavior raised alarm bells. However, it was discovered that he was six foot two. Too tall. to be the East Area rapist. He was eliminated based on his height. A second caller suggested that police look into one of their own. A California Highway

patrol officer who had been working in Sacramento during the attacks there had just been transferred to the Martinez office near Concord, right before the first Concord attack. The anonymous caller said the officer also owned ski masks. The officer was questioned, but it was discovered that he was on patrol and made a DUI arrest the night of the first Concord attack. Plus he was blood type O, so he was eliminated. They also received a call about a grocery manager who had worked in Sacramento, then Stockton, before recently making the move to Contra Costa County. He fit the description of the East Area rapist, and he had been in the military for one

month before being medically discharged. But it was just another promising tip that led to nothing when it was found that his blood type also didn't match. The geography of both Concord attacks was very familiar, a canal system and nearby walking trails. The following is quoted from the website questifiles.com. He was thus following the dig and retreat MO of striking deep in a community from the point from which he accessed it, then retreating a bit and striking a victim closer to his point of entry. The nearly identical method is followed here as with the two Modesto attacks. This had become come the East Area rapists ammo everywhere, stalking from a distance and coming in close.

The two crime labs of Sacramento County and Contra Costa County had quite a few good-quality forensic evidence swabs from the crime scenes. At the time, there was not much they could do with them, but they were aware forensics was changing rapidly. They had done the right thing by preserving as much physical evidence as they possibly could with the early version primitive style of rape kit they had at the time. By the late 70s, more women were coming forward to report sexual assaults. Many jurisdictions still didn't actively investigate rapes by men unknown to the survivor, but that was changing. Forensics was about to shift to a place that made identifying offenders possible. Raps were receiving a lot of media attention, especially with the countless

serial rapists popping up, and with a recent arrest of Ted Bundy, rape was being taken more seriously. At the time, many crime labs fell short when it came to keeping the evidence preserved and free from contamination. In that year, 1978, Martha Goddard headed up a Chicago organization called the Citizens Committee for Victim Assistance, with the goal to spread the word of the benefits of a brand-new rape kit that had been created. She was a survivor of rape herself. She had approached police stations all over the Chicago area, visited hospitals, prosecutors, judges and judges. politicians, determined to find out what was needed to best collect and preserve evidence. But she needed funding to make the Rate Kit a reality.

She got it from her friend Christy Hefner, the daughter of Hugh Hefner. The initial funding for the new Rape Kits came directly from Hugh Hefner's Playboy Foundation. According to the Chicago Tribune, quote, The kit was first utilised in September 1978, when 26 Cook County Hospital Emergency Rooms made it part of their standard practice for gathering trace evidence when rape victims came through the doors. From there, the new rape kit became standardized across the country. It was a cardboard box which held items like swabs, slides, a small comb and a set of instructions. Larry Crompton knew he needed to find out a little more about the mind of the East Area rapist, so he sought out the help of a psychologist.

Larry Crompton told us, quote, to the Vaccarville Medical Center where they hold certain prisoners. Charles Manson was there at the time. Dr. Emily, as she was known by the prisoners, was the psychologist who dealt with rapists at the facility. Vacaville Medical Center is an adult facility for prison inmate felons incarcerated within the California Department of Corrections who need medical psychiatric care. Some of the worst are there. I left a couple of reports with Dr. Emily and she said to come back in a week. When I returned, she said to me, you would better catch him. She told me her rapist patients told her that he wants to kill, and he will. Dr. Emily told me that he just needed

justification, and then he would begin killing. I asked her why he hadn't started, and she said he had not got that justification yet, but he would. It was already known that when things didn't go according to plan, the East Area rapist escalated to violence. He didn't cope when things were out of his control. Crompton felt something would eventually happen to give him his justification. 20 minutes south of Concord, down the Interstate 680, past both Walnut Creek and Danville, lies the city of San Ramon. Prior to the mid-60s, San Ramon had been a tiny village, but when the Interstate 680 was built, land developers saw the opportunity for a new city. In 1970, Western Electric purchased 1,700 acres of land, and over the next eight years, a variety of housing, stores and light industry was built.

In 1978, a further 585 acres of land opened up, which became Bishop Ranch Business Park. There was a lot of construction work going on that year, and the city was growing further. From 75 to 78, the population of San Ramon grew 15%. The community was mostly upper middle class. Attack 40 occurred in San Ramon on October 28, 1978. A married couple and their young son were preparing to move out of their rental home on Montclair Place into a new home they just purchased. They had already moved most of their belongings to their new home.

It was their last night in the house on Montclair Place. At 4.30 a.m. in the morning, the couple woke to a man standing directly over them, shining a flashlight in their eyes. He had entered the home through the unlocked, going to be. garage door. The attack that followed mirrored previous attacks. When he forced the survivor out of the bedroom, he told her he had seen her at the lake. She didn't know what he was talking about, so she asked him, what lake? To which he replied, whisper, whisper motherfucker motherfucker. He was walking around the house wearing no pants. He went to the

thermostat and turned it down to 63 degrees, which is 17 degrees Celsius. When she told him she needed a glass of water, he got one and threw it in her face. The rape was brutal. He commented on a ring the survivor was wearing, which he ended up stealing from her before he leapt through the back sliding door. The description on the police report read, light olive skin, dark hair, medium build, large upper body, a little extra weight on his stomach, Legs, white complexion, not muscular, especially dark hair, moderately hairy. Close set eyes. Small, distinctive nose, Romanesque.

Small, not full lips. Possible mole on the left side of his chin. He had a double chin and a short neck, but not a neck like a football player. When he walked, he kind of scuffled his feet. He seemed very confident and sure of himself. He was unafraid. 510 to 6 feet tall. The East Area rapist had cut the phone line in the bedroom,

but they had another phone in the living area that he didn't cut. With that phone, the survivor dialed 911, the first time the emergency service has been mentioned in this case. At the time, some areas were serviced by 911 and some weren't. The couple paid 28 cents extra per month for the 911 service, but when the survivor dialed the number, she was greeted by a recording telling her that 911 didn't service her area. She hung up and rang the switchboard for the local police.

This time the San Ramon police responded. They were unaware of the East Area rapist. They treated the scene as an isolated burglary and rape. They found scrape marks on the board fence where the rapist had entered the yard and several shoe prints with a zigzag pattern. Casts were made and they showed a shoe size of nine and a half. Torn towels were found in strips and white shoelaces were found near the kitchen floor. More shoelaces were found in the bedroom.

There was an empty cause beer carton on the kitchen counter. The carton didn't belong to the household. Cubboards and drawers were open everywhere, but the house was nearly empty due to the move, so there wasn't much to see in them. Several fingerprints were collected from the scene and San Ramon police began comparing them to those of friends and family. No match was found. It was hard to deny the East Area rapist had chosen this location for a reason. The Interstate 680 was just two blocks to the west.

Montclair Place was a quiet court which backed onto an open strip of land for the Power Pylong Corridor. Across this strip, the Cross Valley Trail ran along the edge towards a middle school. A resident who lived between the Power Pylong Corridor and the middle school saw a man jump his fence after the attack, leading police to believe the East Area rapist had parked his car in this area, almost ten minutes walk away. This theory was bolstered when they discovered the cut phone line in the bedroom. He always cut the phone line when he needed extra time to get away. He may not have seen the other phone line in the living room.

Four days after Attack 40, a woman who lived six blocks south of the attack watched out her window as a man entered her backyard. Quote, I saw this fellow jumping over our six. foot vents, approximately 5'10 and 160 pounds with hazel eyes and sandy hair, very muscular in the arms and shoulders. After that he walked towards the patio. He didn't see me. I went into the kitchen and my dog jumped up and hit the screen door. He almost went through it. There was no response from this fellow. He didn't flex a muscle, didn't walk or step faster. I yelled, what are you doing here. He turned his head and in a phony, deep voice, said, just passing through. Was he nervous? No,

absolutely not. He was very composed and unafraid of dogs. In short, a cool customer. When police attended, they found one of her window screens had been pried open. Someone was supposed to attend and draw up a compass at sketch of the man, but no one ever turned up. It would take nine days for attack 40 to be officially linked to the East Area rapist. The survivor underwent hypnosis. She described a vehicle in her street leading up to the attack. It was a Toyota Salika, cream color with shiny hubcaps and two red stripes down the side. But the license plate was registered to a 1973 Chevrolet Vega that was junked a year earlier.

It was junked at Castile Auto Parts in Windsor, California. junked cars were known to be kept in fairly secure locations, protected by guard dogs. Only two people were allowed to remove plates, the owner being one of them. A composite was developed of the person driving the car seen by the survivor. Not only was the East Area rapist using many different types of vehicles, he was changing the plates on the vehicles, if this was in fact him. Around this time a suspect came to the attention of Contra Costa detectives. According to Detective Crompton, a man who worked for a major newspaper contacted a deputy and told him about a guy who delivered newspapers for them, who previously lived in Sacramento.

He was delivering papers in the Concord area at the time of both attacks there, and he was also delivering papers in the San Ramon area during the time of that attack. On all three nights of the attacks, the man had taken off from work. He was 5'10, 185 pounds. When investigators looked into him, they feel like that. He found he had been in the Marines and was highly athletic and light-footed. He had been diagnosed with having a split personality and felt women were subservient. He was wanted on a felony wife-beating charge from Los Angeles. They arrested him, checked his blood and found him to be blood type 8.

Another promising lead in a long list, but again it amounted to nothing. He was later eliminated as a suspect. In early November, members of the Walnut Creek PD, Concord, PD and the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department met with the California Highway Patrol to discuss using their helicopter in the event of another attack. The California Highway Patrol agreed and the helicopter remained in the area for three days over the weekend of November 9th, 1978. They didn't have the means or funds to have the helicopter on standby permanently so it was agreed

that they would follow the pattern of the East Area rapists to date and used it over a weekend. It was made available from 10pm until 6am for the three nights. That weekend, everyone held their breath and waited for the East Area rapist to strike. But he didn't. As November became December, Contra Costa law enforcement agencies breathed a sigh of relief. It had been over a month since the East Area rapist had attacked in their county. But niggling in the back of their minds was the fact that Sacramento Police had also seen breaks between attacks before. Was this the country?

arm before the storm. Detective Larry Crompton made arrangements to go to Berkeley, 30 minutes southwest of Concord, as they were dealing with a serial rapist of their own, who had been labeled Stinky. Crompton was interested to learn how they were doing things down there. Berkeley had a task force set up in search of Stinky, who was known for his foul breath, body odor, and a gasoline smell. He had raped over 47 women, and although he hadn't been arrested, they believed they knew who he was. They just didn't have enough evidence to charge. him at the time. While Crompton was in Berkeley, an investigator mentioned two rapes to him that had just been committed in San Jose, California. Larry Crompton's ears pricked up. When he heard the details

of the two rapes, he knew immediately that the East Area rapist had not taken a month off. He had just travelled 40 miles south from San Ramon, where he had last hit, into Santa Clara County. If Santa Clara County had heard about the East Area rapist, they didn't know to pick up the phone to alert Sacramento or Contra Costa counties. Larry Crompton on why agencies were not working together. Quote, in the 70s and the early 80s, when things were occurring, you didn't really get two agencies involved. Whichever agency was working that case, they pretty much kept it to themselves. Back then, agencies were not used to working closely together. departments then did not have the manpower to get involved across many things

what would happen is if someone like this was hitting in one area and then moved to another area it was usually a case of oh they've gone we don't need to worry about it anymore but the point we got to with this case was that we would be thinking no wait he hurt people in my area so wherever he is he's still my concern I was supposed to catch him that is hard to get out of your head Crompton also made it clear that in those days, some agencies didn't even investigate rape if the survivor didn't know who the rapist was. San Jose was one of those departments. Crompton, quote,

They just put it off to the side. So for this reason, I didn't know about the San Jose rapes until that conversation in Berkeley. Attacks 41 and 42 occurred four weeks apart in San Jose, the largest city in Santa Clara County, and the spot where the Interstate 680 ends, from which you can either continue south towards Los Angeles or northwest towards San Francisco. In many ways, the area mimicked the geography profile seen before. Both attacks occurred just off exit 5, providing an easy escape onto the interstate. An elementary school, large park and in numerous walkways were in the vicinity of both attacks. Attack 41 occurred on November 4th, about 3.30 a.m.

A woman was home with her young son. Her ordeal mimicked those of the survivors before where no man was present. The East Area rapist kept her in the bedroom, having no reason to drag her from the bed. He didn't approach her son. The insults and threats were the same, and when Crompton finally read the police report in December, he noticed that the rapist told a knife to the survivor's throat and told her he was only after food and money. He said he was hungry and just wanted to eat. The survivor reported that the rapist had a smaller than average penis, but she wasn't able to describe what he looked like.

Attack 42 was on the same side of the Interstate 680 and only 10 minutes by foot from Attack 41 four weeks earlier. It occurred at 4.30am on December 2nd, 1978. This time, the East Area rapist attacked a young Japanese couple. He came prepared, with his own pre-tied ligatures. He tried prying a door into the garage where he couldn't get into the house. So he knocked a small hole in the glass of a bedroom window right near the lock, like he had done many times before. It's clear this was the work of an experienced burglar.

Breaking a fairly small, neat hole in a pane of glass is no easy feat. It was also something that the East Area rapist would do prior to his attacks, or no one was home. It was discreet enough to go unnoticed and allowed him to quickly and easily enter the house later. But during this attack, when the rapist attempted to remove the rod from the window rail to get in, it got stuck. He then went to the sliding glass door leading into the living room. He broke the glass near the lock, reached in, unlocked it, and entered. He wasn't deterred by the several failed attempts.

He wanted to get in, and he didn't stop until he succeeded. This time, when the rapist waved them with the flashlight, the survivor screamed, and her husband jumped out of bed and lunged towards him. The husband felt the full force of the barrel of the rapist gun hitting him twice on the shin. Don't move, motherfucker. You try that again, motherfucker, and I'll shoot you. All I want is food and money, and I'll leave in my van. He stood in front of them holding shoelaces in his gloved hands.

He hit the husband on the legs again with his gun, and he ordered the survivor to tie him up, after which he angrily retied him. They told the rapist there was food in the refrigerator. and money in the hallway under a cupboard. He left the room and started rummaging. He ripped towers in the kitchen and returned to blindfold both of them. He dragged the survivor out of the bedroom to the lounge kitchen area and then placed dishes

on her husband's back. They both felt he had a really low voice, but they found it difficult to determine if it was real or if he was putting it on. In this attack, he showed a strange tenderness towards the survivor and was concerned and was concerned to whether or not she could breathe with the gag in place. This was not the first time Crompton had read these notes in an East Area rapist attack. He was constantly changing between death threats and kindness. He then addressed the survivor by name, whispering,

I've been watching you for a long time. After raping the survivor, he continued to threaten to blow her brains here. He walked to the kitchen and started pacing up and down. Then he started crying and sobbed, you motherfucker. you motherfucker everything fell silent and she thought he had gone so the survivor made a run for her husband lie still or I'll kill you

she fell back down to the ground dishes fell to the floor in the bedroom and the rapist ran down the hallway towards her husband just try that again motherfucker and I'll shoot your wife first then you this happened twice both times the husband got a gun to the side of his head and another threat. The rapist went back to the kitchen and continued crying before the house fell silent again. This time he was gone. He had eaten a packet of biscuits and stolen the husband's

gold nugget wedding ring, the six-pack of Cores beer, and a digital clock radio. Zigzag tennis shoe footprints were found. When Crompton read the police reports of these two San Jose attacks, there was no doubt in his mind the East Area rapist was responsible. Both cases were marked inactive by San Jose police almost straight away due to the survivors not knowing their attackers. But when Crompton discovered them, they were added to the East Area rapist investigation. Case File will be back shortly. Thank you for supporting us by listening to this episode's sponsors. Thank you for listening to this episode's ads. By supporting our sponsors, you support case file to continue to deliver quality content. Shortly after Attack 42,

in December 1978, an early survivor of the East Area rapist received a phone call. Would you be interested in speaking to me while I masturbate? The East Area Rapist was still terrorising early survivors. When word about the two San Jose attacks got back to Concord Police, Sacramento sheriffs and Contra Costa sheriffs, it seemed to the whole of Northern California went into high alert. A full feature article with the title, rape's aftermath raises issue of suburban safety was run in the Contra Costa Times. A neighbour to the survivor of Attack 40 in San Ramon was interviewed.

Quote, I figured you can get hysterical or you can get locks. I got locks. I wasn't going to let the rape take over my life. Other neighbours felt very differently. One described the rape as feeling like a death in the family. The neighbourhood was close-knit and family-orientated, and before the attack, she described it as one where you felt you didn't even have to lock your doors.

Another neighbour with teenage daughters admitted they never locked their doors, as she felt having her husband home was the best deterrent. She had since changed her mind. Over the next seven months between December 9, 1978 and July 5, 1979, the East Area rapist yo-yoed up and down the Interstate 680. He never returned to Concord, and he never returned to Concord. San Jose. He avoided those areas but stayed on the same path, never veering far from the exit of the Interstate 680. It was just seven days after Attack 42 in San Jose that the East

Area rapist returned to Contra Costa County. Crompton had only found out about the San Jose attacks days before when the call came in for Attack 43, the first attack in Danville. In 1978, Danville had a population of just over 25,000 people. It had only seen structured housing development since 1947 and had experienced rapid growth for its small area. Just after 5am on the morning of December 9, 1978, Danville police received a call. A 32-year-old woman had been attacked in her home.

Danville police immediately alerted Contra Costa Sheriff's Department and 20 deputies plus Larry Crompton and his team attended the scene. The survivor was preparing to move out of her home, which had been for sale for two months. She had gone to bed around midnight, leaving her stereo on in the living room. Most of the items in the house were packed in boxes, which mimicked Attack 40 in San Ramon. The survivor was careful to lock her doors before going to bed, as she had been broken into a couple of months earlier, but that burglar had actually been caught.

detectives found her story no different to those before she was awoken with a flashlight and tied up while hearing don't scream don't make any noise i won't hurt you all i want is money and food for my van put your hands behind your back if you make a sound i'll kill you then the ransacking began followed by the rape he called the survivor by name the survivor's patio door had been pried and the cord to her phone in the bedroom cut, suggesting he had parked a little further from the house on this occasion. They found strips of orange towel nodded at both ends, and white shoelaces cut and nodded. The house wasn't ransacked to the degree of others, but had still clearly been gone through. The survivor's driver's license was missing from her purse, possibly how he

was able to call her by name. The survivor was also missing two rings, an antique stick-pin brooch, and two pendants. They found the stereo unplugged, and next to the cord they found one of the missing rings. Two bloodhounds were dispatched, and they immediately picked up the East Area rapist's scent. When the dogs entered the bathroom, they both behaved erratically, in the same way that the bloodhound had in Sacramento. This type of behaviour indicates they had picked up minute chemical changes, suggesting that the person they were tracking had either a serious disease or was a heavy drug use.

user. Both dogs followed the trail. Half a mile from the home in a side street by the railway track, both dogs lost the scent at the same spot. A criminologist saw some pages lying on the ground at that spot. They were all torn from the same spiral notebook and had holes punched down the margin. During the neighbourhood canvas, investigators found that residents had seen a suspicious vehicle parked in the exact spot where the dogs lost the trail and the pages were found. On the pages were two long pieces of writing and one map. These are known as the Mad is the Word essay, the General Custer essay, and the punishment map. Sometimes they are referred to together as the homework.

It's believed the East Area rapists dropped them either from a bag or from his car. The Mad is the Word essay is handwritten in fully joined copperplate handwriting. It runs over two pages with the first page a little messier than the second. It appears to be a personal journal or note written in anger about the writer's sixth grade teacher. If the age the East Area Rapist was thought to be is correct, he would have been in the sixth grade in the 1960s, a time when male teachers were relatively rare. It reads as follows, Mad is the word that reminds me of sixth grade.

I hated that year. I wish I had no what was going to be going on during my sixth grade year, the last and worst years of elementary school. Mad is the word that in my head about being a sixth grader, my madness was one that was by disappointments that hurt me very much. Disappointments from my teacher, such as field trips that were planned and then cancelled. My sixth grade teacher gave me a lot of disappointments which made me very mad and made me built a state of hate in my heart.

No one ever let me down that hard before and I never hated anyone as much as I did him. Disappointment wasn't the only reason that made me mad in my sixth grade class. Another was getting in trouble at school, especially talking. That's what really bugged me, was writing sentences, those awful sentence that my teacher made me write. Hours and hours I'd sit and write. 50, 100, 150 sentence day and night. I write those dreadful paragraphs which embarrass me, and more important, it made me ashamed

of myself. but in turn, deep down inside, made me realize that writing sentence wasn't fair. It wasn't fair to make me suffer like that. It just wasn't fair to make me sit and wait until my bones ached, until my hand felt ever horrid pain it ever had. And as I wrote, I got madder and madder until I cried. I cried because I was ashamed. I cried because I was disgusted.

I cried because I was mad, and I cried for myself. Who kept us having to write those lame sentences? My from sixth grade will scar my memory for life, and I will be ashamed for my sixth grade year forever. The General Custer essay, clearly torn from the same notebook and written in the same handwriting, appears to be an essay written on the general, possibly for a school project. This type of essay is consistent with those written in middle school or early high school. On the other page was a map. It is referred to as the punishment map because the word punishment appears to be scrawled on the back.

Upon first looking at the map, it's clear it's a sketch of a neighbourhood, detailed with curved roads, houses, parklands, a lake and watercourses. It includes symbols and some parts have been rubbed out. This is not a quick drawing. It's very detailed. Here is Contra Costa District Attorney Investigator Paul Holes describing his investigation into these pages. It will be handy to access the show notes and click on the links to look at these items as we go over them. The Matt is the Word essay.

You know, you start reading it and you start to see, well, this is a kid that has some psychological issues. And, you know, he's very, very upset about what his sixth grade teacher did and having to write sentences. And he just kind of devolves emotionally as he writes this essay. This is somewhat psychologically consistent with who our offender might be. And then this diagram, I didn't know what I was looking at with the diagram. But on the back of the diagram, there was some writings. And there is one word that had been scrawled on the back of it. And I'm looking at it.

I'm trying to figure out what it says. And I just happen to have one of my clerks come in. I say, hey, what does this word say? And she immediately goes, oh, that says punishment. it. I was like, huh. And then pretty soon you start to recognize, well, he's writing girls' names down, like Melanie or Jen or Jerry, then come from maybe Melanie or Snelling or something like that. And you start to see this guy's thinking. This looks like he's fixating on girls. He's starting to plan, well, I'm going to come from here. These dare are rapists. That's what. what he was doing in terms of his victims is he was punishing his victims. I mean, he's an anger retaliatory offender and he's punishing him. So psychologically, that was making a lot of sense.

And it added up between the murder, the mad is the word, psychology, this thinking that he's doing and he's doodling on the back of the paper on the back of the diagram. But it really wasn't until I started looking at that diagram that things started to add. up even more because initially what I did is I decided, well, this diagram must be somehow associated with construction, thinking the guy could have been a carpenter or something along those lines. I ended up reaching out to a victim in Stockton because in the case file it said that her husband had reported she would frequently go out to construction sites. And so I thought, well, maybe She's out there on construction sites and the offender sees her and follows her home and attacks her. When I finally got in touch with her, and there's a whole story behind getting in touch with her,

but I finally get in touch with her, and I send her that diagram, she ends up sending me back a written analysis of the diagram. She absolutely dissected it. Turns out she was a high-level person for a development company in Stockton. And she looked at this diagram and started to point out how this is not something that an amateur would do. These, take a look at the curvilinear fashion of the roads, look at how he's interspersing single-family, multi-family housing, taking advantage of water drainage. And she really got into some significant analysis of this diagram and pulled out a lot more detail than I ever thought was there.

And then her boss, I ended up putting the diagram in front of him. And there's two little symbols in the lower right hand corner, which just looked like stick houses. And I just thought, yeah, I just thought there were some stupid little juvenile type of attempt at drawing a stick house. And then he wrote back and he laughed at me. And he goes, no, those are two different side elevations of a gable-roofed, two-story house within a table. hatched garage. These were industry-specific symbols. And then you look at some other things. I had a civil engineer point out drainage markers that crossed the road, as well as some shading that was going on indicating sloped features within the diagram, saying this guy

is taking into account drainage issues on this particular parcel of land. And pretty soon, different things added up to where there is more sophistication in the diagram than what it looks like to me at the beginning. Their industry specific, their practitioner specific, this is not something that's necessarily taught in school, it's something that you pick up by working on the job sites or in that field. And there's symbols, the symbol that's the furthest to the right in the lower right-hand corner, he draws that symbol without picking the pencil off the paper. There's another symbol, which would be a truck that's backed into the right-hand corner, he draws that's

backed into the strip mall in the upper part of the diagram, he draws that symbol without picking the pencil off the paper. He's showing that he's done this before, and you start looking at the shading and some of the flourishes that he puts in the shading, the artistic aspect. Again, it appears that this is something that he's somewhat practiced that. He's probably not drawing this diagram to the fullest extent of the skills that he has, because that's not the purpose of this diagram. This diagram is merely a brainstorming session. He may have been doing for himself. However, I think there's some markings on the diagram that might indicate he was collaborating with somebody. For example, the most obvious is the two different handwritings in the lake. Now,

could that be the same person? Yes, but it also could be one person writing and another person writing. And then you start paying attention to some superfluous marks with the pencil like under one of the commercial buildings, you see the pencil being drawn over and over like a circle. And you're imagining, why would he do that? Well, that's somebody talking to somebody else saying, and right here, you know, so you start seeing this, there's possibly an exchange of ideas going on between two people. Now, what's setting that is, you know, somebody online was like, I can't believe, you know, something out of a spiral notebook would have been used in a professional presentation.

Well, that's not what this diagram was. This is, and when you talk to people, it's like my contacts in Stockton. I've got this one woman who's just, I mean, she knows everybody. She was in the marketing for subdivisions back in the day. She also worked for savings and loan companies that loaned the developers money. And she would say, hey, this is how we did business back in the day, is we would go to the bars. or we'd go to restaurants, you know, like people do today, right? And they're having drinks and dinner and they're talking concepts, you know.

A lot of business was conducted at each other's houses. So you can imagine, you know, let's say our offender is at his house and he's got a business partner, probably a friend, but they're, you know, in business together. Hey, I've got this idea or I've got this plot of land. And he grabs an old school spiral off his shelf, opens up to the next. next clean page, and now they're talking about how to lay out a subdivision. And then they're done with that. Our offender happens to be somebody, I believe, was taking notes when he's out prowling. We have two cases in Sacramento where pens are dropped and recovered by law enforcement at the crime scene. Why does he have ballpoint pens? Because he's taking notes. So he probably

has a pad of paper that he's taking notes on, which would mean that, well, the reason why he has possibly a spiral with them is because he was using that for notes and he grabbed that spiral with that diagram that he had done previous tore those three pieces of paper the two essays in the diagram folded them up probably tucked it in the pocket of the spiral and then as he's escaping he always wore a mask he had gloves now he's approaching his vehicle he's taking those off and he would typically have a duffel bag or a doctor's bag or something like that he opens that up and puts those items in as he's approaching his car and the paper inadvertently falls out. That's the theory that I think is going on there,

and that kind of explains why he would even have it in the first place. So that's how I think that all, that evidence just kind of manifested itself. Immediately following Attack 43 in Danville, newly appointed Contra Costa Sheriff Richard Rainey set up his own task force to handle the East Area rapist. Larry Crumpton was promoted to Sheriff's Sergeant. The task force included officers from Concord, Walnut Creek and Pleasant Hill Police Departments, the California Highway Patrol and the Alameda County Sheriff's Office. They continued to communicate and consult with Jim Bevons and the Sacramento Task Force.

At the time, Contra Costa County was dealing with at least 30 reports a day relating to the East Area rapist. Larry Compton, quote. Airplanes equipped with powerful searchlights were sent aloft to search neighborhoods the elusive rapists seem to favour. The sheriff's office and affected police departments issued lock, light and look warnings to fearful residents. Seminars on rape prevention and self-defense for women sprung up throughout the county. The fear that he put into people, he just emanated fear. It was knowledge that he wanted to kill somebody, and his victims realised it. That's why nobody fought him. With news of the attack in Danville breaking, police became aware of three other incidents linked to the

East Area Rapist. Within hours of the Danville attack, three houses for sale were visited by a suspicious male who matched the description of the East Area rapist. At midday, he visited an open house in San Ramon. He introduced himself to the real estate agent as Greg Pippen and said he worked for a San Jose property investment firm. He said he was looking for a house for a friend. He had no business card and did not behave the way the agent expected a property investor to behave. He pulled a ringed a notebook from his pocket and took notes as he checked window and door locks. He left after making a low offer. The real estate agent was glad to see the back of him and his orange BMW.

Three hours later, the same man attended a different open house in Dublin, 10 miles south of Dearnville. He introduced himself in the exact same way, but this time said he was looking on behalf of his brother and sister-in-law, who lived in Concord. He mentioned he worked for Sunshine Investments. The agent watched as he went to the backyard where he checked the lock on the side gate and looked over the fence. Again he made a low offer and drove off in the same car, an orange band W.

A couple of hours later, at another house in Dublin, the open house had finished and the agent was gone. But seeing as the sign was still up in the yard, the man pulled up in his orange band W and knocked on the door. The couple living there didn't let him in, telling him the agent would be back the following day for another inspection. he left. Crompton looked into these incidents. He discovered that there was a property investment company in San Jose called Sunshine. That company had just two salesmen, and both men were in their 50s. No one by the name of Greg Pippin had ever worked there, and the company had not done any inspections on the San Ramon or Dublin properties. Crompton contacted the state realty board to see if there was a Greg Pippin licensed as a real estate agent. Four Pippins were located, each with a

different first name. All were eliminated. They were in luck when they located an orange BAMW owned by someone with the last name Pippin, but his blood type didn't match, so he was eliminated. A couple of weeks later, Crompton received the call from an officer in San Ramon. A couple had come home to find a long piece of white nylon rope hidden under a cushion on their sofa. One of their wedding pictures had been taken out of an envelope and placed on top of the other contents in the drawer. The couple had a ritual they followed every time that they got home. They were well aware of the East Area rapist and checked every lock and every window in their house multiple times a day. The evening they found the rope, Crompton and another

officer arranged for the couple to stay elsewhere, and they spent the night in the house, hoping the East Area rapist would attack. But Crompton left at 4.30 in the morning when nothing except barking dogs was heard during the night. This following attack has not been numbered, as there are some doubts as to whether it's an East Area rapist attack. Just over a week after the Danville attack on Tuesday, December 20th, a woman and her 12-year-old twins were asleep in their Rancho Cordova home. She was sure she locked the doors. She awoke to a man sitting on top of her.

She screamed, and he punched her in the face, leaving her with a nasty cut lip and a black eye. His threats and actions matched the East Area rapist. He bound her wrists with robe cut from a tent in the garage. He ransacked her house and stole $3,000 worth of jewelry. She said he ransacked the house for a long time, at least half an hour. When he returned to the bedroom, he stood staring at her back for a long time. He then left without raping her.

No one reported seeing the East Area rapist for three months after that. In March, 1979, a memo was sent to the Contra Costa Task Force, recommending that the chief reduced the number of officers involved. Crompton and the others weren't happy about it, but the word came from the top and they didn't have a choice. Their superiors believed the East Area rapist had moved on. It was no longer their problem, so the task force was reduced. The three-month gap in attacks had convinced them it was over,

but they hadn't learnt from the past. The East Area rapists had taken breaks before. It was only three days after the numbers in the task force were officially reduced, that the East Area rapist struck again. Attack 44 occurred at 1am on April 5, 1979, in Fremont, Alameda County, south of Contra Costa County. For Attack 45, the East Area Rapist headed 35 miles north, back to Contra Costa County.

It occurred on June 2nd, 1979, in Walnut Creek, just south of Concord. Attack 46 was back in Danville on June 11th, just two blocks from Attack 43, the first attack in Danville where the homework papers were found. The East Area Rapist crawled through the only unlocked window in the house. Attack 47 was back in Walnut Creek on June 25th, just a few blocks from the previous Walnut Creek attack. The survivor of this attack was just 13 years old. Her sister and parents were asleep in the house and had no idea what had happened. Some of the survivors of these latest attacks had been broken into prior with nothing of value taken,

and many of their neighbours had been receiving hang-up phone calls. Attack 48 was the final attack in Contra Costa County. It occurred on July 5, 1979, in Danville. The previous two Danville attacks were within two blocks of each other, but for this attack he moved a good 10 blocks north over a fairly major road. This time, the couple the East Area Rapist had his sights on, actually had their sights on him. Being well aware of the East Area Rapist,

this couple formed a plan for what they would do if they were attacked. Their plan was that the husband would charge at the East Area Rapist and attack him while his wife ran for help. Both of them had played the scenario over in their heads, but neither thought they would actually have to carry it out. Early that morning, July 5th, a neighbour heard someone on their porch, but didn't investigate. Just before 6am, the husband awoke to a rummaging sound in their room.

In the reflection of a mirror near their wardrobe, the husband saw the East Area rapist pulling a mask over his face. He threw himself out of bed and yelled at the top of his voice for his wife to get out of the house. The East Area rapist dropped shoelaces to the floor which he had taken from the husband's shoes. This was about to be another situation where the rapist was not in complete control of the situation. The husband yelled at him, who the fuck do you think you are? The rapist took two steps backwards. The husband blocked him from exiting and his wife ran out of the bedroom towards the front door. The husband was much bigger than the East Area rapist. He continued

yelling, get the fuck out of here now, you can leave. His wife ran outside and screamed for help. The couple's neighbours heard the screaming and immediately called the police. The East Area rapist didn't launch at the husband. He made no move for a weapon either. He just stared directly at him through the jagged holes of his mask. The husband saw the rapist's eyes were deep-set and boyish, with large irises and strangely full lashes. The rapist never uttered a word.

and had never made a move. He continued staring. The husband made a run for it, and the East Area rapist quickly escaped. The location was full of police just minutes later. Tracker dogs immediately followed the rapist's scent, which was only minutes old. But the trail disappeared,

and officers realised they had missed him again. Crompton thought back to what Dr. Emily had told him. You had better catch him. He wants to kill, and he will. He just needs to. justification. He hadn't gotten justification yet, but he would. To be continued, soon.