Criminology - A Victim Speaks Out

Episode Date: March 3, 2018

In this second episode of season 2 of Criminology, you are going to hear from various people associated with this case. Jane Carson Sandler was the 5th victim of the monster and she joins us to talk about her experience and how her life was changed. You'll hear from Carol Daly and Richard Shelby who were some of the original detectives on this case. Their insight into how the investigation was conducted and the effect on the community is very impactful. And of course, we have to continue to go in-depth on the crimes committed by the East Area Rapist / Golden State Killer/ Original Night Stalker. As you will hear, his crimes become increasingly vicious and he displays some extremely odd behavior. You can help support the show by going to patreon.com/criminology   An Emash Digital Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. I want to welcome everyone to episode two of season two of criminology. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Morph. And we're glad that you came back with us for episode two. Morph, episode one was jam packed with information. Every episode we do is going to be like that this season.

Every episode is going to be over an hour. So it's going to be a big jam-pack case, and this episode is going to be no different. So before we get into it, I want to remind everybody about our new Patreon. If you want to help support the show, go to patreon.com slash criminology. We wanted to give our Patreon supporters a big shout out and tell them how thankful we are. We wanted to say thank you to Tracy Benedictson Holden, Carter Somerville. Jen Wendell Crenshaw, who jumped out at our highest level. We really appreciate that.

Jason Worley, Brendan Wool, Aaron Pullen, thrash metal show, who's one of our biggest supporters on social media. They jumped out at the highest level. We really appreciate that. Lisa Davies, Kimberly Schlinky, Kay Cole, Jen Hut, Melissa Nottingham, and Kathy Felt. Our last Patreon shout out today goes to Becky Joe Malone. She happens to be my sister-in-law, and it's her birth. today so I just want to say a very special happy birthday.

We really appreciate all you guys, all your support. You're really helping the show and we wanted to let you know that. And don't forget about CrimeCon. If you're still on the fence, make that decision. You will not regret it. And if you're going to sign up on the website, make sure you use the promo code, criminology. You'll get 10% off your badge.

I'm pretty excited about going to CrimeCon. I know you are too, Mike. and we've had a lot of people on social media telling us that they want to go and they're looking forward to stop by and talk to us. So that should be pretty exciting. So I hope to see a lot of you there. So in episode one, we told you that season one of criminology, the Zodiac case, is being turned into a book by Wild Blue Press.

We're pretty excited about that. And a lot of people told us they want to know where they can find the book. So if you're interested in that book, you can check it out, do a pre-order. All you have to do is go to Wild Blue. Blue Press.com slash Zodiac Preorders. And that's wildbluepress.com slash zodiac preorders. And since we've teamed up with Wild Blue Press, they'd like to offer our listeners a free audiobook download.

To take advantage of a free audiobook download, go to wildbluepress.com slash audio hyphen books. When we left off at the end of episode one, we had just introduced you to Jane Carson Sandler. Hello, everyone. My name is Jane Carson Sandler, and I am the fifth victim of the East Area rapist. On October 5th, 1976, Jane would be the fifth victim in a series of brutal home invasions and rapes. And while we can go to the reports to give you the details of what happened to Jane, we thought there'd be no better way to share her story with you. then to have Jane tell it herself.

My husband was stationed at McClellan Air Force Base, and he would leave every morning, oh, I'd say maybe around 6.30 to go off to McClellan. This one particular morning, I heard the garage door close, and I knew he had just left for work. And the next thing I knew, there was footsteps running down the hall with a flashlight coming toward my bedroom.

My son had just gotten into bed with me, and we were snuggling, when I thought, wait a second, and I yelled out my husband's name, and I said, what's the matter? What did you forget? And then when I looked up, there was a flashlight. In my eyes, and a man stood there with a ski mask on. a leather jacket, leather gloves, and he was holding a large butcher knife. He, first thing he said is when I started to say something, he said in clenched teeth, shut up, shut up, or I'll kill you.

Shut up or I'll kill you. He then proceeded to tie both my son and I up with, I, shoelaces, he gagged us, he blindfolded us, and then he started tearing sheets or towels, I wasn't sure what they were, and opening up my dresser drawers and closing them. But I'll never forget the tearing and the fear, thinking, what on earth is he going to be doing with those strips of cloth? I thought, well, God, are you going to hang us? What is he going to do? So fear was the main emotion that I felt this whole time. Then he would leave and go around the house and then come back again.

And again, his behavior was very, very bizarre. He picked up my son and he moved him. And this is when the fear really began, because I had no idea where he was putting him, what he was going to do with him, and that was just so terrifying. So he then untied my ankles and raped me. I do not recall much about the rape

because the whole time I was just in a panic about where's my son. My heart was beating so fast I think it was going to come through my chest. So I wasn't really paying much attention to the rape. and the next thing I knew, I felt my son next to me again. So he put him back, which was such a tremendous relief. Then he told me, told us again not to move or he'd come back and kill us. He went into the kitchen. I could hear him, I don't know if he was cooking or what,

but he was rattling pots and pans in the kitchen, and then you come back again and it was just so scary, so frightening. And I didn't know what his next move would be, and I still didn't know what he was doing with the cloths or the towels that he had torn. So it was about, oh, I don't know, maybe about 15 minutes after he had left the bedroom for the last time

and we didn't hear anything, I could see. I was able to get my blind. fold down a little bit and I could see that it was getting light outside. So I decided to take a chance and escape. So my son actually had fallen asleep. So I woke him up and I said, we've got to get out of here. We've got to get out of here. So we basically hoppled down the hall and tried to get out the front door.

but he had taken a chair and propped it up under the door. So we went back to the sliding door, going out to the back patio, and that was actually opened. And hobbled around to the left, to the front fence, screamed, and a neighbor from across the street came over and took us into her home, called the police, called my husband, and who were both there right away. And the last thing I wanted to do was talk to, a male policeman.

And then my angel, Carol Daly, showed up. She was the female detective that was assigned. She took me to the emergency room and sat with me there for I would bed over an hour. And then I had my rape exam, which was also not a very pleasant experience. I had a male doctor and after the rape exam I had to have a morning after pill to be sure I wasn't pregnant

I had to have a shot of penicillin to be sure I didn't have a venereal disease and you know one minute I was laughing just so thrilled to be alive and then the next minute I was crying and sobbing just thinking

oh my goodness you know what we had just been through but again just so thankful to the Lord that, you know, our lives were spared. At this time, there was no news about a serial rapist in Sacramento. Nobody knew that this had been going on. But it was right after my rape that they put two and two together in the respect that there was a rapist that was breaking into people's homes

prior to coming back. and raping them. And it had been probably, I would say maybe two or three weeks prior to my attack, I was robbed. Someone had come in my son's bedroom window and taken all of my rings out of my jewelry box. So I mean, that was pretty bad, but I really, you know, we didn't know that in a couple of weeks he was going to return. and rape me.

But what he did, I guess, when he was in the house the first time, is he was able to look at photographs in the house, and he could see that I would, in the military, maybe my husband was in the military, or he got a lot of information about us. And where he saw me, to begin with, you know, I have no idea. I have no idea.

Nor do I have any idea is why he moved my son. Did he move it to be, you know, a nice, guy to just, or did he just move him so he had more room on the bed when he raped me. There's two questions that I hope to sit across the table and ask him at some point. Jane went on to describe her attacker. I do remember that he had on black high top sneakers. And, and again, he was holding this large butcher knife. He had the black, he had this brown or black leather jacket on.

gloves, the ski mask, of course. I don't remember the color of his eyes. I'd say he was maybe six foot tall and moderate build. You know, I would not heavy at all. And I'd say he was probably, I was 30 at the time. I'd say he was maybe a couple of years younger. Jane was also able to estimate how long her attack went on. and shared some of the things that really stood out to her.

Maybe 45 minutes to an hour. One thing I want to tell you about him, too, you know, he spoke through clenched teeth. So he was a white, I'm sure he was a white male, but he spoke through clenched teeth. So there was no voice recognition. And again, I do not remember the color of his eyes. I just, but I do remember the size of the knife. He took the knife a couple of times and scraped my chest. He didn't cut me with a knife, but he scraped me to the point that I did have some blood on my chest.

And, of course, I didn't know what he was going to do with that knife. Well, for Jane, her ordeal didn't end when this man left her home after the attack. I had phone calls afterwards where he would hang up, which was, again, very, very, very terrifying. because I just completely, you know, hated my home when I returned from the hospital. I wanted to move as soon as I could because I had just felt, you know, so violated. And then I felt so violated the fact that he kept going in and out of my drawers and looking at my underwear drawer. And so, but we weren't able, you know, to move for another year.

So we had to wait for my husband to get orders. As you can imagine, picking up. up the pieces for Jane after her attack was not an easy thing to do. You couldn't talk to people about this. I only told one close friend, and of course my husband knew, because you didn't, you know, back 41 years ago, you didn't talk about rape. That was something to be ashamed of. That was, you know, something that people didn't discuss. So that was really very difficult. My saving grace was going to the rape crisis center in Sacramento. and meeting other women that had been raped as well.

And then I realized I wasn't going crazy because all of my weird feelings, you know, had been, other women shared the same results. That they, you know, they were scared. They were eating more. They were biting their fingernails. They were, you know, just unusual behaviors that, you know, normally one wouldn't have.

But when I met with these other women, I realized that everything that I was experiencing, they had experienced as well. So that was certainly a saving grace for me. Jane went on to talk about the aftermath of her attack, both for her personally and for the community. When they finally realized there was a serial rapist, then it seemed every day after my attack,

and I was number five. He, it seemed every day in the paper there was another rape, another rape. And this just went on and on and on, 27, 29, 31. And every day, and Sacramento completely shut down all of the stores were sold out of all their locks, if you can imagine, and people were buying guns, and the hardware stores were, their shelves were empty. And one thing that I'll never forget that was so frightening was at night then my husband

and my son and I would sleep together in our king-sized bed in our bedroom, but we didn't know if he was going to return. And every night it seemed that we're a helicopter flying overhead with a spotlight in the area, you know, trying to find this guy. So that's one thing I don't like now is to hear a helicopter. It always brings me back to, you know, laying in bed and listening to the hovering sound of the helicopter. And, of course, any two, whenever I see someone with black high top sneakers, that always

reminds me of the rapist. And also, too, watching anyone with a ski mask on, I haven't skied because that's, you know, just is very scary to me, too, to see a ski mask. So any time I'm watching a television program and someone's got a ski mask on, which they do a lot of times, you know, I have to shut off the television. Jane hasn't dwelt on what happened to her over 40 years ago. If anything, she pushed through it to become the person she is today. And I am very fortunate that I was number five because it became much more violent after my attack with other women.

And then, of course, with men in the home as well. And then, of course, the rapes led to the murders. so we definitely need to get this monster identified. And now I call myself a thriver. I've gone from being a victim to a survivor to a thriver. I read this book by Rick Warren. It was called The Purpose Driven Life. And I thought back about my attack,

and I thought I've got to do something positive with this. and that was when I started to do public speaking about it and I realized if I keep this a secret then how can I help anyone else that's experience something similar so I started doing public speaking I wrote a book called Frozen in Fear I started doing some interviews my first one was dark minds

with Matthew Phelps on his program. And I would speak to women's groups and talk about the backpack that I was carrying for so long, full of hate and revenge and anger. And, you know, it was just getting heavier and heavier. So I had to forgive the rapist and let all that go because he wasn't the one hurting I was. and there's such a freedom, Mike, and not having any more secrets.

And I just, my message that I had really received from reading Rick Warren's book is to take this terrible experience and, you know, turn my pain into power and make my message, reach out and do what I can to help other women. So that's really what I've been doing. That's very fulfilling for me, and only through the grace of God have I been able to do that. Well, a couple of years ago, I was in New York, and I'm just trying to think what program we were being interviewed for. And I met Debbie Domingo, whose mother and her mother's boyfriend were brutally murdered. I met Michelle, whose sister was brutally raped and murdered.

and I met Carol Daly, who was the detective that took me to the emergency room 41 years ago. So, oh, my gosh, what a reunion. And, again, we're all like sisters now. We keep in touch. It's just amazing. They are so special. And, you know, I'm not sorry I was raised because I looked at all the good that's come out of that. And last June we all met at Debbie and Michelle and Mike and myself.

We were all on panel at a crime conference in Indianapolis, which was just an amazing experience. I don't normally get emotional when I tell my story because it's like I'm talking about someone else. I keep my pain, I guess, compartmentalized in some part of my brain. but when Debbie started talking about the death of her mother, then I really teared up. It was so emotional. But these women are just amazing, and I just feel honored to be part of their life.

My dream is to up for all of us, plus the detectives, plus Paul Holz, plus Larry Crompton, plus Carol Daley plus Richard Shelby and you and Mike and, I mean Mike and Debbie and Michelle and, oh my, to all do there when they bring this, oh, I have so many words for him. I never know which one to use to bring him in. My fear is that one of us is going to say, I know him, I know him. and that just is such a scary thought. But years ago, after he raped me, if I had been able to get with him after the rape,

I would have had him tied up on a pole. I would have had him gagged, not blindfolded. And then I would take a knife and I would walk very slowly toward him and unzip his fly, even though he has a very small penis, I don't even know if I could find it, I would unzip his fly and I would just cause him fear, because that's what he caused me. Now, I wouldn't do anything to harm him, just mentally, emotionally. Now, today, I don't feel that way.

I just want to sit across from him at a table. and again my question you know where did you move my son why did you move my son you know where did you see me you know why it's almost like why me why was I one of your 50 rape victims so that's how that that's my dream is that he will be caught and I will get a chance to um to sit with him and to question him Jane went on to write a book about her ordeal called frozen in fear and it's a very personal book that surprisingly delves into not the rape so much, but more about how Jane went on to make her life whole again. And I can't recommend this book enough. It was very therapeutic, Mike, to write that book back in 2014. I had wanted to write a book ever since my assault back in

1976. I thought, I've got to write a book. I have to write a book. But at that time, the name of my book was going to be, who was it that raped me? And it just never seemed the right time over the years. I was busy with my nursing. I was busy with my military career. I just never said, okay, this is it. I'm going to write. But 2014, for some reason, I didn't have a lot on my plate.

My husband was very supportive. He fixed the meals. I sat at the computer, and I just started writing. And that's when it really helped me. to come to terms with what really had happened and and my Christian beliefs now, my Christian values now and the fact that I really was able to forgive him. And again, Mike, that's not something that everyone can do and I understand that. And I'm not, I just know that it was a very freeing experience for me to be able to do that. And it's a process. It's not something like,

you know, oh, I'm going to forgive him. No, it, it's a, it, it's a very freeing experience for me to be able to do that. And it, it, it's a process. It's not, it It takes a long time, but I was finally able to get to that state. I was lucky enough to meet Jane at CrimeCon in June of 2017 when we worked together to spread awareness of this case. And she's honestly one of the most confident, positive, and strongest people I've ever met. And I can't even tell you how many people came up to her in tears after she spoke on stage about her story. It was just amazing. And you heard Jane mention a lot of people that she's met. along the way. Debbie, Michelle, Paul Holes, Larry Crompin, and so many other people that were involved

in this case. And we're going to hear from a lot of these same people this season on criminology. Jane's case was different than the ones that we discussed in episode one. Her attack started around 6.30 a.m. And in the first four attacks we talked about, the assailant was gone before the sun even came up. Jane's attacker didn't leave. her house until almost 8.30 a.m. Yeah, Mike, that definitely seems odd. You would think a guy like this would have tried to get away under the cover of darkness. But at the time he walked out of that house is when most people were leaving for work.

It seemed pretty risky. I think it's possible he waited patiently until her husband had left for work. Remember, in all the attacks that we've discussed up to this point, all the victims were lone females. Yeah, Morv, I think what you're saying makes a lot of sense. You know, it's very possible that he feared that a man would be tough to handle. So that's a possibility. But in later attacks, we're going to see that he's not deterred by men being in the house. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered.

I wonder which emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until, New technology allowed investigators to do but had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020. Blood and Water. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Police got to Jane's house on Wood Parkway and Citrus Heights a little bit after 8.30 a.m.

And this was the first time that he had attacked in the town of Citrus Heights. And Citrus Heights is about seven or eight miles away. from the previous attacks that occurred in Rancho Cordova and Carmichael. Police didn't want to waste any time and they quickly brought in some tracking dogs. The dogs immediately seemed to pick up the assailant sent, tracking him around the backyard and up close to Jane's son's bedroom window. Jane mentioned her home had been broken into in the weeks before the murder. At the time, police thought it was probably kids since nothing valuable was taken.

It was pretty obvious at this point, that wasn't the case. And this bedroom window had been the entry point for that burglary. From there, the dog raced through the backyard and to a fence. The handlers lifted the dog over the fence and continued the search on the other side. The dog tracked ascent through a partially overgrown field and into a part of the field that was being developed and cleared. This field came out to the edge of a road named Shadowbrook Way. Later questioning of neighbors revealed that a woman had seen a strange man in that area in her driveway on Shadowbrook way just a few days before Jane's attack. When she made eye contact with the unknown man, he stared at her for several seconds and then walked to a dark green car parked nearby, got in and drove off.

She thought the car was possibly a Vega. This woman described the unknown man as being about 5'10 with dark hair, around 170 pounds, and possibly being in his 30s. Interestingly, neighbors told investigators that they had seen an unfamiliar dark car parked in the same spot as the Vega on the very morning of Jane's attack. Neighbors had noticed that they're around 7 a.m., but when they left for work sometime after 8 a.m., it was gone. Police theorized that Jane's attacker had parked in the spot and walked through the field before close. climbing Jane's fence and entering her home. Back in Jane's house, further investigation revealed that two black shoelaces had been tied together and used to bind Jane.

They also found white shoe laces in the home that didn't belong to Jane. After Jane received treatment, she was able to provide other details. She specifically mentioned, as you heard her say, that her attack was very poorly endowed. He had been wearing dark clothes and a ski mask with eye holes only. Jane was also able to detail how the attacker held the knife in his left hand and that he only spoke through clenched teeth. In late August or early September of 1976, the street Jane lived on called Wood Parkway started to experience some unsettling incidents. Several neighbors had reported prowlers, burglaries, and hang up phone calls. And while it was concerning, these incidents didn't seem to be of major importance until after Jane's attack.

It was at this point that police knew they had a serious problem on their hands. Yeah, Mike, it seemed like the entire neighborhood was being targeted for abuse, whether that came in the form of phone calls, the prowling, burglaries, or the rape. And you heard Jane mentioned just how happy she was when Detective Carroll Daly got involved in investigating her attack. This was something that we heard time and time again from several people who we reached out to for the podcast, just how well treated they were by Carol and how she helped them cope with what had happened to them. Here's Carol herself. My name is Carol Daly, and at the time that this case started in 1976, I was a detective with Sacramento County Sheriff's Department in Sacramento, California. The time that these cases started, I was assigned to the homicide detail, and once they realized,

that they had three or four of the cases that were all alike. They called me into start interviewing the victims of these cases. And one of the reasons that they did is when I came on the department in 1976, women weren't used in patrol. So when we hired on, we either went to detectives or we went to custody in the jails or we worked in the courthouse. And I was assigned to detectives. So for several years, prior to that, I had been involved in investigations of sex crimes,

basically child molest, incest, all crimes against children, and then I had also worked rape cases. So they pulled me out of homicide because of my background of working sex crimes to start interviewing the victims. And I think Jane Carson was the, she was number five, and she was one of the first victims that I interviewed, when we realized that we had a series going, a task force was formed. And the task force was formed of crime scene investigators, patrol officers, detectives, anybody that was associated with a crime, they were on the task force. And so every time a crime, a rape was committed that we attributed to the East Area rapist, this task force came out.

So it was the same people responding to the scenes each time. so we kind of knew what to look for and what to ask because we were more familiar, you know, with the case. Doing rape investigations is a real sensitive issue, and I always explain to the victims when I'm talking to them. I'm going to ask you very, very personal questions about things the rapists may have done to you, and I want you to tell me everything. And I tell them the reason that we want to know absolutely all of the details is that each thing that he did could be a separate felony. And so we're going to stack the felonies. We're going to stack the charges against the rapists, you know, whenever he's identified.

And that also helped when you explain to them why you're asking so many detailed questions and why you're trying to extract from them everything that the rapist did because very, very embarrassing things that the rapist did. And so you just have to kind of get them into your confidence. and I do think they were able to open up maybe a little bit more with me. Even at that, there may have been some little intimate thing that they wouldn't share with anybody. We asked Carol just how much involvement she wound up having with the victims in this case. Oh, I talked to all of them that were in Sacramento County. So we had a total of 27 cases in the Sacramento County.

County, we had four of the cases, three of the cases were in Sacramento Police Department jurisdiction, which is just bordering, you know, our county. And then I traveled to Stockton when they had their first rape there and interviewed that victim. So from the time that I came on, we went back through the cases. And so I've had contact with every one of the victims that occurred in Sacramento County. So Carol describes how she wound up talking to 27 victims. And we've said up front, morph, how many victims there are. But just the fact that Carol had interactions with 27 gives you an indication of just how big this case is going to be. And not just that, Mike, but you can also hear Carol talking about how she went into other counties and had to meet other victims.

So that tells you just how far reaching this case would become. And from talking with so many victims, it was much easier for investigators to gather a lot of information. about this predator's M.O. throughout this series. Basically, his M.O. was entering the house, and it was either through an unlocked door, or sometimes he had pre-planned the rape, gone into the house before the people came home, and then waited for them to come home. So he made his entry, sometimes through unlocked doors, unlocked windows. On some of them, he confronted them outside.

On one of them, he kicked in a front door. But he was always dressed in a ski mask, always had gloves on. and his body was covered. When he came in, he would immediately shine a flashlight into the victim's eyes, have her or the couple turn over on their stomach, tie the male, and then he would tie the female up, and he would bring shoe strings or ties with him, and he would tie them up. He would always talk through raspy, clenched teeth when he entered

and confronted them. It was, do as I say, or I'm going to kill you. And then if the victim was alone in the home, he would say, I'm not going to kill you. I just want your money. I'm not going to hurt you. I just want your money. And, of course, that ended up not being the case because they were all ended up being victims of the rape. So it was the way that he entered the house, the way he was dressed.

And the length of time, I have never, in all of the sex crimes and rape cases that I worked, I had never been involved in a case where the rapist stayed in the house as long as he did. And usually a rapist will come in and his goal is to rape and then get out and get away as fast as he could. But because he came in and he secured his victims, he had them all tied up. He had total control over them with the threats that he was making with a gun with a knife pressed against the skin. And he had total control over them. And even when they thought that perhaps he had left and they would start to move around, He would come back and say, don't move, don't move.

I am still here. I'm going to kill you. He would wander throughout the house. He would rummage through things. He would go into the kitchen. He would eat some of the food. One case, he went out on the patio and sat and consumed some food or drank a beer. And so he knew that he had total control over the victims, and he wasn't worried about anybody coming in and finding him.

So it was the length of time that he spent. And then, of course, by the time he had gone back and forth and threatened them about moving, when enough time had gone by and they again started the move and realized that perhaps he had left, or maybe they heard a car leave, then they would try to get free. So it was so much different than any other rape case I had ever worked. Shortly after I became involved in the investigation, we did a sheet for the victims to fill out. Where do you shop? Where do you go to church?

Where do you do your entertainment? Who are your friends? Where do you travel? What kind of car do you drive? Where have you lived? Where does your family live? Where did you go to school? We researched the background of every victim to find something common.

We look for, are they all blonde? Are they all tall? Are they all short? You know, there was no common denominator. We didn't find anything. I think in just about every case, he at least rummaged through the refrigerator, or rummaged through the kitchen. It was a cavalier attitude on his, like, you know, this is, this is my domain. I am in charge. And I personally, I don't think rape was his goal. I think

his goal was to cast as much fear and terror in the woman and in all of the victims that he could. I think the rapes were just secondary. However, the rapes were brutal, and some of them were more brutal than others. I saw a pattern of accelerated aggression in his anger. And as the cases went on, our biggest fear was that our next call was going to be to a homicide. Carol Daly's partner was Richard Shelby. If you remember from episode one, Richard recounted for us about being called the scene of a possible home burglary, in which a teen suspect had been witnessed fleeing the scene. It was clear that Richard Shelby was on the same page as his partner, Carol Daly, following James attack. This guy's getting more violent.

It seemed police didn't want to start a panic in Sacramento County, so at the time, they tried to keep things quiet, thinking that they would quickly catch this guy. But that didn't happen. And it was only a matter of time before the public got wind of what was going on, and you can imagine the terror. I have not experienced any fear in this community before or since the Syria rapist. And part of that is because when the rapes first occurred, Sheriff Lowe wanted to keep it very quiet in the community. He didn't want the word to get out because he was sure that we were going to catch this guy. And then a couple of the high influential people through the media got wind of these rapes and went to him. and said, we have to know about these.

And so he promised them that every rape that we would have, they would know about. So I think that was good because it alerted the community, but it also put more and more fear in the community because sometimes it was every day, every other day, a rape was coming out, and it always made front page headlines. And so there was a tremendous amount of fear in the community. We saw gun shops were selling guns, guns were flying out the window. hardware stores were lose, you know, were out of stock on a lot of their locks. People were doing everything they could to protect themselves. And there was so much fear in the community that you had

PG&E workers and smud workers would not even go into people's backyards because people were confronting them with guns. Burglary went way down because themselves and burglars knew that, you know, they would face a gun if they went into a home. In fact, we did have one case. where a burglar was shot and killed and the guy was exonerated, the citizen was exonerated, because the judge said there was so much fear in the community that at that time, anybody would have taken the same steps. And so, yes, there was a tremendous amount of fear. There was a lot of, I don't want to say, gossip,

there were a lot of rumors in the community as to what the rapist was doing and what he wasn't doing. and when we got wind of the rumors that were going around, and one of them was that he was cutting the nipples off the breast of the victims, we said we have to do something to make sure, just to allay some of the fears in the community. So we set up group community meetings where we talked about the rapist demo, how he would get into the houses. We did a lot of safety education classes, teaching groups,

talking to the schools, trying to educate the community as much as we could. Once we realized that we had a series of rates going, we organized the response team. And we started using patrol officers in plain clothes who rode bicycles in and around the Rancho Cordova area because that's where the rates started and along the American River Drive. Of course, they started at Cordova and then he moved east. We had officers that would be on bicycles and plane clothes riding a ride in a race. around and there were sometimes when we know the rapist was spotted but he was so quick he was so agile he was gone before anybody could even locate him at the

time that we were doing the investigations the daughter of the assistant director of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory they were probably the world's best computer system at that time and his daughter was attending the state Cal, you know, Shaq State University during the rapes. And she lived in an area where some of the rapes took place. And so he consequently offered us the use of all of their computers, which were the largest in the free world at the time. And the parameters were established. We set up parameters for the age and the description of the suspect. DMV was contacted for assistance. Computer tapes of all Males within California driver's licenses were taken in to the computers.

And list of all males matching the description were established. And list of males were turned over to the task force, which were prioritized by description and everything. We had a full-time district attorney that was assigned to work with us. We had members of the Department of Justice who were doing charts, intelligence, and investigations. and the Sacramento crime, our crime lab at that time didn't have a full-time serologist. So all the blood, saliva, semen, and sperm that we collected on the rape cases were sent to the Department of Justice. And as a result, Sacramento County Crime Lab hired a serologist who worked exclusively with the task force in helping us with the evidence. And in the beginning, we knew that we had a type A blood with a PGM factor of 1-1 and a non-secretor.

And so we were able to eliminate 98 out of 100 people men that we stopped just by doing the blood testing. And at the time, over 1,000 suspects freely. We had two on gods so we could do their blood type and their PGM factor. see if they were secretors or not. And so we were eliminating a lot of our suspects at that time that way because everybody said, oh, he has to be a law enforcement officer. He has to be military because he was so agile and the different things he was doing. And he seemed to know what was going on.

We had officers that willingly came forward who matched the description and would give their blood type and everything. One of the victims saw a car driving by when she was washing her car. And we took that information description of that car and we sent it to Livermore Laboratories. And there were more than 409,000 Pintoes registered in the state of California. And we narrowed it down and there were 500 vehicles that were checked out in Sacramento County. So to what length did we go on this investigation to try and identify this guy? There was no end to what we tried to do.

We checked out all of the UPS workers. We went to the start of shift and employees willingly chewed on the gauze and gave up for their blood type. We had 100% cooperation. We had an ongoing list of suspects that couldn't be eliminated by blood. And so at the time of a rape, we had officers that went immediately to their homes to try to figure out where they were, and we eliminated a lot of them that way. There were 10 police agencies at the time that we were working that got involved in. this investigation, so the confusion of cross jurisdiction. We took aerial photos by the CHP

helicopter of all the victims' residences so that we could track and, you know, look at his path of escape. We eliminated 6,000 suspects were checked out. There's still a lot of suspects being eliminated. At the time, the size of his penis was a real issue, and so we checked with medical specialist to see about people, men who were treated for abnormally small penises, that didn't go anywhere. We used dogs to try to track him. It seems like he always went to a car. At the time that we were doing these investigations, a new technique came out where we could fingerprint a victim's body. And I don't know if you know how that works, but you kind of blow through a pipe with iodine fuming. And you put a

on the victim's body and it'll bring up fingerprints. Well, it really has to be done quite quickly. I would get a call at the house. I'd probably drive 80, 90 miles an hour to get to a crime scene so I could run in and let the victim know what we were doing. I only did it twice and it was actually, it's embarrassing for me and it was embarrassing for the victim and she is standing there, you know, undressed. trying to take fingerprints off.

And actually on one of the situations, we both ended up giggling because it was just kind of ridiculous. We didn't do it anymore after that. And now they don't use that technique anymore because it could cause cancer. So when we say, did we try everything? Yeah, we tried everything that we could. We worked with in excess of 50 psychics. So we had people calling us saying that they knew that they could help us.

We served in excess of 20 search warrants during that time, but there were many, many people who gave us consent to search. And there's the suspects stopped on the street. And if they had a ski mask, they did a consent to search. We would check for fibers in the ski mask. And if they had gloves, taking hair samples. We did. I don't think there was anything at the time that we did not do. So you can really get a full understanding of the length that investigative.

went to in order to try and get the upper hand on this rapist, from using psychics to checking with doctors to try and identify patients with penis disorders, to attempting to pull fingerprints off of the victims themselves. And you have to remember, this is way before DNA, way before many of the techniques that investigators have at their disposal today. But this is what investigators had at their disposal back then. One of the things that law enforcement tried to do was hold town hall meetings to let the public know what was going on and how to be vigilant in protecting themselves. It was at one of these town hall meetings that a male in the crowd stood up in disbelief. That one of the public meetings, we were talking about, you know, the rapist coming in and there was a,

you know, a man and a woman in the house or there's two women and there's been more than one person and he was able to secure them all and, you know, get them tied up and commit. the rape and be in the house for such a long time. And the gentleman in the audience stood up and he said, there is no way. There is no way that that could happen that some man in the house would not be able to overpower him or do anything. And I mean, he was like calling us liars. And it was several weeks later that he and his wife were victims of these terrier rapists. And let me tell you, they became our biggest supporters. They understood and they knew what we were talking about. And it was really helpful.

Now, I've been in contact with them, and they're still married. They had relocated to another home, and they said they don't want to go public about anything, but they were able to put it behind them. It did not define who they were, very, very strong people, and I just admire them so much. It was interesting because we know the rapist was at that community meeting. We know that he probably followed them home. And what you hear from Carol Daly is nothing short of shocking, morph, to think that the predator that had been committing these attacks would be at this town hall meeting and target the very man that had stood up in disbelief. And in a future episode, we will cover the details of the attack on that family that would occur in May of 1977.

Carol Daly also told us about how the cases weighed on her over the years and just how upsetting it was that they weren't able to catch this predator. There was so much notoriety in the community. And even as an investigator, you would be out in the community. And of course, people knew us because we were on TV. We were at the public meetings. And the question is, haven't you caught those guys yet? Haven't you caught those guys yet? Even then towards the end, coming into the sheriff's department to come to work, you know, patrol all.

officers were to say, you haven't you guys caught that guy yet? And so it was, it was frustrating to everyone. And of course, the fingers were pointed at us. What are you doing? What are you not doing? And let me tell you, we did everything within possibility in trying to investigate this case. And I have three pages of things that we did that we had never done to this extent in any investigation. So when he left our jurisdiction and went into another jurisdiction, there was not good communication between the agencies because they said, you couldn't catch him, we're going to catch him. And of course, now history shows that no matter who was involved in this investigation, no matter how much work has been done over the years, the case has still not been solved.

And I formed a victim support group. We had a psychologist come in and talked to the ladies at forward I tried to set up a support group for the man none of them would come they don't want anything it's it was very difficult for the men and of course out of all of these rates probably 97 90% of the relationships and after I left the case I really I didn't stay on top of it I wasn't a part of it all I did was answer questions then when we heard that the DNA matched up and our rape cases up here were matched up with the homicides down south. It was a very sickening feeling because I knew that's what we were thinking was going to happen here,

that somebody was going to be killed and just the tragedy of it all and knowing that so much hard work, so much effort went into these investigations still, we didn't solve the case. You know, it was interesting, and as all of the publicity came about again, going back out to a couple of the areas where the rapes had occurred, and it was surprising how close. Because you forget, I'm after 40 years, you know, I can drive through a neighborhood, and I remember, you know, a rape here or a murder there. I went back to one of the rape victim's homes, and I looked at that home, and it was a nice neighborhood, but her house, It was like the house died with that rape. It was really scary. So I'm sitting there looking at the house, and I had a media crew with us,

and the next door neighbor came out. He was a probation officer. He's retired with a probation officer with working probation at the time of the rapes. And he said, oh, yeah. He said, I remember the East Area rapist. I remember the fear in the community. And he said, we were watching it on television. And he said, my wife said, oh, that is really a nice neighborhood.

We should try to live in that neighborhood because it was a lovely neighborhood. And they were living, I think they were in an apartment at the time. So when they bought, they ended up buying the house next to where one of the rapes occurred in that neighborhood. And he said, look, he said the screen to the bedroom that is torn where the rapist got in is still on. they had never, they had never replaced that screen. So for over 40 years, Carol Daly has been a part of this community and this case. And I personally think hearing from her allows us to have a real understanding of just what happened with this case over 40 years, both inside the investigation and within the community itself. And going back to the attack on Jane Carson Sandler for a minute, she didn't seem to have any enemies.

She was a respected nurse in the military. There was seemingly no reason why anybody would have targeted her. Jane did have one encounter prior to her attack that made her feel uneasy. In early October, shortly before her attack, Jane had been to a club on Travis Air Force Base to meet up with some friends. She went to the restroom and down a dark hallway near the restroom, a man approached her. She felt uneasy. He then began talking to her, mentioning that he hadn't seen her there before and he asked her for her name. Jane didn't want to make eye contact with him, and she hurried by him saying that she was with friends and that her husband was a captain.

As she went by, she could see the man was short and thin. She heard him say, sorry, I didn't mean anything. There was no way to know if this brief encounter was related to Jane's attack, but one specific thing that Jane's attacker had said during the attack on her was, do it like you do with the captain. So the timing and the fact that Jane specifically told a strange man that her husband, as a captain seemed interesting. And as we mentioned before,

Jane Carson Sandler was the fifth in what would become a long line of victims. Jane's attack happened on October 5th, 1976, and you heard her say that phone calls came into her after she was raped. But phone calls alone were not going to satisfy this guy. He needed to terrorize in person.

And it turns out he didn't wait long before attacking a six victim. Back in Rancho Cordova, word was slowly getting around that there had been some sexual assaults in the normally quiet part of town. And while very concerning, it had not reached a full panic mode yet. On October 4th, the day before Jane was attacked, a resident on the 2,600 block of El Segundo Drive, witnessed a prowler in their backyard. But at the time, the incident didn't seem overly important, and the prowler vanished into the night. A few days after this prowler was seen, only a couple of houses away, a 19-year-old woman had the

house to herself. It's not known if the young woman knew of the prowler or of the other attacks in the area. But her home had previously been broken into three years earlier on March 7, 1973. A burglar had pried open the home sliding glass door. nothing of substantial value was taken. In fact, it didn't seem like the break-in had even been worth the burglar's time. All he had gotten were some coins and a single earring from a set that the young girl had owned when she was 16. But you would think having suffered a break-in once before, this family may have taken stronger measures for added security.

On Saturday, October 9, 1976, this 19-year-old girl went to bed just after midnight. At about 4.30 a.m., she heard someone whispering her name. She thought she was dreaming, but she wasn't. Before she was fully awake, a gloved hand was on her mouth. She then felt something sharp pressed against her neck, and she heard a low hissing voice say, don't scream or I'll kill you. A man then forced her over onto her stomach, at which point he tied her hands tightly behind her back with shoelaces. He then blindfolded and gagged her using cloth material and towels. At this point, all the 19-year-old had seen was a flash of a man in a ski mask before she was quickly turned onto her stomach. He asked her for money and told her that he needed a fix,

an indication that he possibly was a drug user. The man was taking quick, rapid breaths, like he was overly excited. He then dragged the young woman from the bed and marched her blindly out of her room. Terrified, she had no way of resisting and helplessly walked with him. It was then that she realized that the intruder had walked her out of the house and onto the patio. He then ordered her to lie down. He leaned over her and she could feel his breath on her face. He told her, I've been dreaming of you and added, I've always wanted to fuck you. At this point, her assailant tied her feet together. She heard him walk into the house and then return a moment later. Then he walked out into her yard. She wasn't sure what he was doing or what he planned to do. After going into the home and coming

back out again, he came over to her and asked her for money. He told her, you better have money. As he stood by her very closely, he stopped talking. It was then that despite being blindfolded, she could tell he was masturbating. The man then whispered to the helpless woman, you better let me do this. He turned her onto her stomach and placed his penis into her hands that were still tied behind her back. After a moment he untied her feet

and then he sexually assaulted her. And this would begin a cycle where he would intermittently return to the inside of the home before returning and raping her multiple times. The terrified and helpless victim laid there on the patio

on top of a carpet. She could hear her attack her rustling bags. Then he came over and drug her and the carpet she was lying on to a spot on the patio where there was a post and he tied her to it. She felt his hands grab hers and he started pulling off the rings that she was wearing. He then told her that he was leaving and not to scream. He warned her that he lived right down the street and he would know if she screamed. Then there was silence. After she felt her assailant had left, she started wiggling to try and free herself. She was able to get her blindfold and gag off and removed herself from the patio post. Her hands remained tied tightly behind her back, and she couldn't free them.

So she decided to make her way back into the house. Once back in the house, she made it to the kitchen phone, but quickly realized that the phone line had been cut. She tried a second phone in the bedroom and found that it too had been cut. And at this point, she was feeling defeated to the point where she collapsed and decided to wait for someone to find her. And luckily, about two hours later, a friend came to her house and discovered her still partially bound. And you just have to think about, number one, this entire ordeal. And then number two, more specifically, you know, how long that two hour wait, must have been for this poor girl.

The friend got the victim free and then brought the 19-year-old back to their house to call police. While they waited for the police to get there, the victim couldn't help but want to clean herself up, and she then took a shower. Who knows what physical evidence she may have washed away, but her reaction seems totally understandable. Police arrived at the victim's home, a single-story house, a little after 9 a.m. They quickly determined that the point of entry was the death.

dining room window. The screen covering it was found discarded in a bush. They found a candy dish on the ground, but it was discovered that it belonged to the victim's family, and the attacker had moved it as he made his way in through the window. They also found torn strips of towels and signs of ransacking in the home. The police talked to the victim and tried to get some more information out of her, but she couldn't add much. She had been wakened so suddenly and didn't have much time to gather details. She was able to tell them that the man that had raped her was wearing a ski mask. She felt he was white and sounded like he might be in his mid-20s. He stood about five foot 10. In the end, it seemed as if the assailant had gotten away with very little, not much more

than a metal box with some cash in it and some jewelry. But there was one very interesting clue found inside the home. The assailant had taken clothesline from the victim's yard and had used it to tie several bedroom doornobs together, running it across the hallway back and forth from door knob to door knob. And this may have been done so that if anyone else was home and tried to exit their bedroom, they wouldn't be able to. But there was no one else home that weekend. So this may have been a clue that the attacker had not been watching her home closely leading up to the attack. While police were finishing up at the crime scene, something odd happened. A young male neighbor of the victims walked up to investigators. He made it a point to tell the police on scene

that from his elevated bedroom window that he could clearly see down into the victim's bedroom window. He asked if the victim was all right. Police immediately were suspicious of the young man and questioned him more. As they question, this young man, they noticed that he seemed more interested in trying to peek into the victim's home to see what was going on than he wasn't talking with them. The man explained that his home had been recently burglarized and it was at this point that he produced a small bag of cheap jewelry and rings and stated that his parents were out of town and that he had found it in his mother's room but didn't think.

it belonged to her. The police listened to what the man had to say, but they were interested in him as a suspect. He was about the right age as the victim described and had the same physical stature. The odd mention of being able to see into the victim's room just seemed weird to police. They decided that this young man had to be looked at further. And it didn't take them long to find out that this young neighbor owned a dark green Vega. And as we talked about, a dark green Vega had been spotted near the scene of Jane's home and attack number five. So this man was put under surveillance and watched very closely. But as later attacks would happen, this man would still be under surveillance and police would have a record of him

being at home at the time the attacks occurred. But to play it safe, the police also had a tracking dog approached the young man, but the dog didn't hit on this young man. But even through all that, police were still very interested in this guy. And it wouldn't be until years later that they would use DNA to actually rule him out. But you can definitely understand why they were interested in this man to begin with. The 19-year-old victim was left to wonder why she was attacked. Had her rape been committed by the same burglar who had broken into her family's home three years earlier? Was he a neighbor or a friend? Had he been a schoolmate at Cordova High School where she

had graduated from just a couple years before? After all, the rapist had awakened her by calling her name. One interesting possibility was that she had been going to dances frequently at nearby Mather Air Force Base. And to get on base, she needed to provide her name and address. Perhaps somebody from the base had tracked her. The possibilities were endless. And maybe she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. So we have to recap, up to this point, we have six attacks all on women with no men present in the home. The homes were primarily single story homes and for the most part, the victims were all awoken in bed or were awake in bed when attacked. And that's the time when you are at your most vulnerable. In most of the attacks, a knife was used,

But in the first attack, he also had a small gun. And in the third attack, he used a baton, possibly a military training baton. And Mike, you brought up an interesting point about no men being in the homes. Just to add to that, another thing we see here is that the attacks one, two, and six, the victims have been left alone while their parents have gone away. And this is going to be something that we'll see again and again in these cases, which is this guy striking repeated. when victims are left alone for a stretch of time.

Is he getting lucky in catching them alone, or does he know somehow or have advanced knowledge that the victims will be alone? We also have to consider a possible military pattern with these early victims. The first victim was the daughter of an Air Force man. Jane, victim number five, was in the military, and the sixth victim had frequently gone to dances on the base.

So at this point, the Sacramento Sheriff's Department knows they have a problem. You heard Carol Daly and Richard Shelby earlier, and now the problem is expanding. He's criss-crossing the county and has struck three different towns at this point. So for investigators, they didn't know where he might strike next. It turned out the next attack, number seven, would happen back in the town of Carmichael a little over five miles from the previous Carmichael attack. On October 18th, 1976, sometime around 2.30 a.m., a young boy on the 4,900 block of Kipling drive awoke to the sound of his dog barking.

The 10-year-old boy made his way to the sliding glass door, opened it, and let his dog out. As he let the dog out, he flipped on the outside light. He was still groggy, but it's at this point that he saw something terrible when he looked out into his backyard. Standing in front of him was a masked man. The boy's dog raced out the door heading right towards the dark figure. The masked man retreated and raced towards the fence, and he climbed to the top of it. The man sat on top of the fence for a second looking at the small dog barking below,

and the horrified 10-year-old just inside the sliding glass door. At this point, the man decided that neither the dog nor the boy was going to stop him from carrying out what he had planned, and he jumped back down into the yard. The dark figure started casually walking back towards the 10-year-old boy. And this kid did not waste any time. He slammed the sliding glass door shut and locked it before racing into his mom's bedroom screaming. The boy is hysterical by the time he gets to his mom's room and he's doing everything he can to try and wake her up. And when he finally does, she thinks that he's just had a bad dream.

And this actually sounds like the scene from a horror movie, like it came straight out of Halloween. But this really happened. And they say that truth is scarier than fiction, and this is proof of that. And in a horror movie, what you think would happen next happens here in real life. She picks up the phone and starts to dial the operator when suddenly they hear a loud thump in the kitchen. This guy had just gotten inside through the kitchen window. The mom had actually dialed the operator, but it just ran. and rang. She had just hung up the phone and started to call her friend when she heard footsteps coming

down the hallway. And when she looked up, the door busted open. Standing there in front of her is the masked man and he's nude from the waist down. And this situation is about to go from bad to worse very quickly. The intruder moved into the room quickly, holding a short, thick, bladed knife. He quickly raised the knife to the 32-year-old mother's throat and in a hissing growl through clenched teeth told her, shut up. He then warned her that if she didn't do exactly as he told her to, that she would die. He added that her son would die too and they would be butchered to pieces. While this is going on, the family dog is barking. And this made the mass intruder a little bit nervous. and he told the victim that he was going to kill her if she didn't shut the dog up.

He forced the woman to move the dog into another room. And at this point, he asked her who was in the house. And she told him that it was just her, her 10-year-old son, and a four-year-old daughter who was asleep in another room. She also added that her husband was out of town. At this point, the masked man seemed to relax. little bit. But even so, he walked over and yanked the phone cord out of the wall. He then walked out of the room and returned a few seconds later with a towel. At that point, he ripped the towel into strips. And during the tearing of the towel, the woman sensed that the intruder was becoming angry again.

As soon as he was done tearing the towel, he yanked the woman up by her arms and spun her around so that her back was to him. He tied her arms behind her back, tightly at the hands, using string that he had torn out of her window blinds. At this point, he tied the woman's 10-year-old son to the headboard of her bed using towel strips and a necktie. And somehow, whether purposely or accidentally, the man caused a deep cut on the boy's foot. Once the young boy was secured, the man scooped the bound mother up and started to drag her out of the room. at this point the young boy helplessly tied to the bed called out to his mother and told her he was afraid of dying the masked intruder responded by throwing a blanket over the young boy's head and told him if you move i'll kill you

and i can't even imagine what this poor 10 year old boy is going through at this point having this happen and then watching his mother being taken away it would definitely be traumatizing and it's pretty clear to me morph that this man has no conscience whatsoever. I mean none. To do something like this to a young child and to terrorize his mother in front of him tells us about the kind of man that's underneath that mask. And once he threw the blanket over the boy's head, he had something terrible in mind for the mother. He once again started to remove the woman from the bedroom. And as he walked her down the hallway towards the family room, he warned her that if she tried to make a move, it would take seconds off of her son's life. The man warned her that if she cooperated,

no one would be hurt, and he would be gone shortly. And this man is nude from the waist down at this point, so you have to think that she probably didn't believe what he was telling her. She would later recount for police that as he whispered through the mask, that she thought he may have been stuttering slightly. Once they got to the family room, he shoved her down on the couch and asked her where her money was. She responded by telling him that she had cash in her purse inside an envelope that was intended to be a donation for the Heart Association. She told him that she didn't have any other money. He then tied her feet together using strips of towel and left her there on the couch before walking off into another room. Once the man walked off,

She could hear him going through drawers and cabinets, but it wasn't long before he walked back in and leaned down close enough to kiss her. He whispered, you're beautiful. At this point, the 32-year-old woman sensed that things were about to get worse, and she blurted out the words, please don't hurt me. I'm pregnant. But her plea got no response because he then blindfolded her with a strip of towel and stuffed a piece of cloth into her mouth as a gag.

Later, she would tell police that the rag had some unknown sweet taste on it, but she wasn't sure what it was. At that point, he lifted the woman off the couch and brought her into the bedroom, throwing her on the bed next to her son. She had to feel some relief being reunited with her son, but unfortunately, that relief was very short-lived. After throwing the mother on the bed, the man started a rifle through their dresser drawers. When he was done, he again grabbed the woman and forced her into the family room. This time instead of putting her on the couch, he threw her down roughly onto the floor. The man leaned into the helpless mother and slowly unbuttoned her shirt. The man pushed the woman back on the floor and then removed her underwear.

While he's doing this, he was telling her that she had a beautiful body, and he asked her if she had done a lot of sunbathing. This is pretty disgusting. Here this man is undressing her, and she has to know what he's about do, but he's making small talk and trying to compliment her. But she's tied up, blindfolded. There's not much she can do to stop him at this point. She then felt the man's mouth on her.

He had removed his mask, but she would never get a look at the man underneath the mask. At this point, the woman was sexually assaulted, and after he finished, he got up and walked out into the kitchen. When he returned, he placed the blade of his knife against the victim's face and he angrily told her that she had lied about the money she had as he found more cash in a desk. At this point, he sounded as if he was stuttering heavily. He pulled the knife away from her face but placed it on her body, running the very sharp tip of it up and down over her hips, stomach, and shoulders finally winding up at her throat. He then warned her that if she didn't do exactly as he said,

that he would kill her and her two children. At this point, he rolled her onto her stomach and he placed his lubricated penis in her hands, which were still tied behind her back. And he told her to play with it. This was becoming a very clear part of this man's M.O. after this happened the man became interested in the ring she was wearing he started pulling on them but they wouldn't budge her hands and fingers had become so swollen from them being tied so tightly that he couldn't get them off at this point he told her i'll cut her fucking fingers off she was now able to talk since the gag had been removed during a sexual assault and she screamed out begging for him to use soapy water to get the rings off evidently she had no doubts this maniac really would cut her fingers off to get the rings The man actually took her advice and ran over the sink to get soap and water. He came back and soaked up her fingers, but they still wouldn't come off due to the swelling in her hands.

He finally decided to remove the bindings from her hands in order for the swelling to go down. After a bit of struggling, the rings came off. But once he got them off, he once again tied her hands. After she was re-secured, the masked rapist once again sexually assaulted her. And this woman would later recount for investigators that she was so desperate to get out of this situation that she blurted out something to the man that caught him by surprise. She told him that he was a good lover. And when she did this, the man stopped the sexual assault on the spot. He responded by saying, nobody ever told me that before.

Most people laugh at me. So trying to keep the conversation going and put a stop to this assault, she carried on the conversation asking him if he liked to be complimented. He replied, yes, but most people make fun of me, especially since something happened to my face. So this went from the middle of a sexual assault to a conversation. And it really seemed to confuse the attacker and caught him off guard. He then asked her where her clock was and she told him it was in the kitchen. At this point, the man walked away and the woman could hear him rummaging through the refrigerator and then she could hear him eating. Now, so far in these first seven attacks, we've seen that this guy has some very odd traits in his MO.

And taking a break to eat at some point inside these victims' homes is one part. of that MO. At this point, the house fell silent. The bound woman felt as if the attacker had left, and that maybe what she told him had caused him to lose interest in raping her. But she was wrong. Without warning, the man was back and was on top of her.

Once again, she was sexually assaulted. Finally, after this round, he tied her legs to a table and walked down the hallway. She heard him talking with her son, who was still tied to the bed, and she once again heard him tell the boy that if he moved, that his mother would be killed. So Morif, I feel like we can't stress this enough.

This guy is simply despicable, right? He's a monster terrorizing women and children. And after talking to the 10-year-old boy, he walked back out and asked the mom when her husband would be home. And he warned her that if her answer didn't match her sons, that he would kill everyone in that. house. She told the man that her husband would be back on Friday. Once she answered, he raped her again. She was raped repeatedly. She was about to pass out from the assault and the shock. She told the man she

was cold and he threw a blanket on her. She lost consciousness for what only seemed like a moment. Suddenly she came to and the house was eerily quiet. The next thing she knew, she could hear a car start up outside. It sounded like it was a large American car. And although she wasn't sure, to her, it sounds like it may have been parked near a large open field in the back of her house. So the man had finally left. The attack was over, but it had lasted over two hours. After a while, the victim was able to free herself and then her son. Amazingly, her four-year-old daughter had slept peacefully through the entire attack. The police were summoned and they arrived at the house. They immediately questioned the dazed and horrified woman. And she was able to give them some

pretty good details despite what she had just gone through. She was badly shaken. But she told police that her attacker was about 5-8 to 5-10 and around 160 pounds. She said that he had dark hair and blue eyes and one other trait that immediately caught police attention. And the trait was that this man had an extremely small penis. This attack reeked of the attacker who had been striking the east area of Sacramento County in the six previous attacks. In addition to the unusually small penis, there were a lot more similarities in the M.O. The attacker had a mask. He talked through clenched teeth. But one thing the victim reported that was different was that he seemed to have a stutter. But other things continued

to line up. The victim had a one-story home, and like Jane's yard in attack number five, it backed up to a large field. Once investigators looked around outside, they found empty beer cans at the crime scene that did not belong to the victim. And one thing worth noting was that the victim had recently sold her house, but had not yet moved out. A realty sign was noted in the report as being on her lawn. And this is very important because houses being for sale where attacks occur

is another theme that we're going to see again and again. Next, police question neighbors. One neighbor told investigators they had heard dogs barking at about 2.30 a.m. Another resident told police that they had seen headlights near the open field in back of the victim's yard at about 9 p.m. the night before.

about five hours before the attack. Still another witness recounted seeing a Lincoln Continental with a dent on one side. They described the driver as being a white male in his mid to upper 20s or early 30s. Another area resident reported that somebody had opened the fence in his yard that led to the field. It seemed that a lot of activity was going on leading up to the attack on the mother and her 10-year-old son. And unfortunately, almost everybody in the area, with the exception of the victim, herself, was aware of it. Police determined after talking to neighbors and residents that the assailant had likely parked in the open field, walked about 100 yards across the field to the victim's backyard, and then scaled her seven foot tall fence.

He likely left the same way exiting through her garage. Police were able to cast part of a tire track in the field, but all it told them was that the tire likely belonged to a large American-made car. police did come away with a couple very promising clues in this attack, though. One of the neighbors had made note of the license plate on the Lincoln parked in the field. They thought it was T-O-R-505. And there's been some confusion over the years as to the background of that plate number. But the common belief is that the plate belonged on a car that was owned by a man who died in February of 1976. There's been no clear answer as to how it came to be on the car that witnesses saw.

The other major clue that was found while processing this crime scene was a set of fingerprints found on a closet door inside the home. These prints have never been identified. It's possible that they do belong to this rapist because he did move around the home during the attack without gloves on. A few days later when the victim was cleaning her house in the aftermath of the attack, she found a bent spoon under her couch cushion. It wasn't hers.

It was bent in the way that a heroin user may bend a spoon, but test revealed no signs of any drug residue on it. In the early 1990s, well over a decade after this woman was attacked, and after she had moved and changed her phone number several times, she received a phone call that she was sure was from the man that had raped her in 1976. The caller whispered into the phone, Do you know who this is? She could hear what sounded like a woman and children talking in the background,

but she couldn't tell if the voices were coming from a television program or not. Including this latest attack, the Easterer rapist, as he was finally being called, had attacked seven times. He had crisscrossed the eastern part of Sacramento County and was striking at will in multiple towns. on the same day of this attack, October 18, 1976, the following article ran in the Sacramento Bee. Jill Bradshaw is angry. She is afraid.

She's frightened because three women who live near her have been raped. Jill Bradshaw is not her real name, but like other women in the area, she's afraid to identify herself. Her one serene Rancho-Cordova neighborhood is in the clutches of fear caused by a faceless man who wears hooded masks and rapes, dispoils, degrades, and sometimes robs.

Law enforcement officers refer to him as the East Area rapist. Since last year, the white man described as being between 5 feet 8 inches and 6 feet tall, 25 to 35 years of age, clean with dark, neatly cut hair, and a medium build, has raped 8 and attempted to rape 2 East Area women. Last month alone, he raped four women and attempted to rape two others. Two of his victims were in Del Deo and two others in Carmichael. All the rapes have occurred between 11 p.m. and 6.45 a.m. There have been no men in the homes of the victims, although sometimes children were present.

The rapist has entered the homes through unlocked windows in all the cases except one. This man is not the only rapist in Sacramento, but according to Sacramento County Sheriff's Department, He is a repeater with a high tendency toward violence. As a result, the residents of the Sacramento communities have taken steps to protect themselves against the rapists. Some husbands have canceled overnight trips. One man is installing iron bars on his windows and doors. Other men are instructing wives or girlfriends in the use of handguns, and still others have installed burglar alarms and floodlights around their homes.

Fear has tightened its grip on the communities of Deldeo, Carmichael, and Rancho Cordova. Rumors are rampant. Publicity about the rapes was minimized because the Sheriff's Department feared widespread panic would result and because they hope to entrap the rapist. The reason we started calling him the East Area rapist is we had a B reporter named Holloway, and he kind of came in like you see on TV shows and roamed the halls of the detective division, and just was a great friend to law enforcement. that we would share information, and if we couldn't share it, he would keep it confidential.

And so he was a very trusted person. So as he was walking by, here's a group of detectives talking about some of the different addresses and looking at where the rapes occurred. And he said, oh, they're all in the East Area. And so he was dubbed the East Area rapist. You would think that the attack on this mother and her 10-year-old son would have satisfied whatever kind of sick, twisted urge was driving this guy. But unfortunately, it didn't.

He had other ideas. And later on that same day, October 18th, 1976, he would seek out another victim. That story on the next episode of criminology. We just want to give a special shout out to Scott Fuller, who did the voice of the newscaster reading from the news article that you heard. and you'll hear more from him on upcoming episodes of criminology. You can check out a great podcast he hosts called What Happened to Jody and a new one he has on the way called Frozen Truth. We just want to mention our book one more time that will be coming out through Wild Blue Press.

It's about the Zodiac case that we covered on season one of criminology, and the book again is called Criminology True Crime Podcast Presents the Zodiac Killer. If you want to learn more about the book or look into pre-ordering it, you can do so by going to wild bluepress.com slash zodiac pre-orders. Again, that's wildbluepress.com slash zodiac pre-orders. And remember, if you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching Criminology Podcast. And you can join the discussion about the podcast called Criminology Podcasts,

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