GOLDEN STATE KILLER, EAR/ONS CAPTURED-DET. RICHARD SHELBY

in East Sacramento. Law enforcement failed to stop him before he transformed into a Southern California serial killer, committing some fifty three rapes and twelve homicides from nineteen seventy six to nineteen eighty six. After Detective Shelby's retirement, twenty years after the case had gone cold, he was contacted by

his old employer, the Sacramento Sheriff's Department. They had learned through DNA analysis that the East area rapist and the original Nightstalker were the same person, and they were reopening the investigation. Retired West Coast Chief of Special Investigation for the federal government Russ Oas, contacted Shelby and asked him to write down everything he recalled. Shelby was once again involved in the active investigation, his notes morphing into his

instrumental book Hunting a Psychopath. The East Area Rapist Original Nightstalker Investigation. The Original Investigator Speaks Out, published in twenty and fourteen. In twenty sixteen, the FBI re entered the investigation, utilizing advances in DNA technology, offering a fifty thousand dollars reward and asking for the public's help in capturing the serial killer. Joseph James DeAngelo was arrested April twenty fifth,

twenty eighteen, after a DNA match. The book they were featuring this evening and is Hunting for a Psychopath And my interview is with Detective Richard Shelby. The hunt for the psychopath is over. The Golden State Killer, East Airy Rapist, Original Nightstalker captured. Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much for a GREENUS interview.

knew he was stalking them, and for whatever reason. They were never actually attacked by him, so overall it was just a real lighter feeling. It just felt good about it. I didn't get jubilant like some people. I don't think any of the cops got that jubilant, but they were all very, very glad to hear it.

I think about that. That was a total squa Okay, it was totally surprise to me that they had done it, but not a surprise that it was gonna happen. And the way they did it was really pretty brilliant. Who was uh Paul Hols was a uh frenzy investigator as a scientist, he was one cause the one person described him our good, our geek guy, he knew what to

do about. He's the one who made the DNA profile on the here put it all together as if I understand correctly, He orchestrated that whole search through the DNA, I mean through the databases of the genealogy and they worked it out. And they took a months to do that, cause they'd go through thousands of names, all kinds of well anybody stand any genealogy research, no knows what's going on. And once that was done, they got up to the

current people once still alive. Then he got into the modern formats, the various programs, and there must be dozens of him out there and checking tax records, etc. It's when they sew that he'd when he when it aired down to him, they saw he'd been a cop at Exeter. Was not decited to say, and then they started getting their hopes something that just might be the guy they're looking for.

when you talk about the baton and the evidence. So take us back to nineteen seventy six and when you first became involved and you say you weren't involved in the you were involved in the fifth assault, and tell us how you worked it your way back and under whose instructions it was to do that, How whose initiative an impetus was this investigation, and but your procedure and going backwards and looking at other cases for similarities.

and we weren't really the team. We were a team for that particular case, but none of the others. And what I noticed on that was the guy. He the suspect knew the minute her husband was leaving for work. Could have been a collegionist by a doubt. He left like six point thirty in the morning. We used the dog to track him, first time that had been done. I based that one on a paddle'neil and homicide used

the dog. I thought he could do that, We could do that, So we got bloodhound somewhere and we followed the guy. And the suspect left the victim's house through the backyard open fence across the field. I think in one of the books out there says there was this crop going there was nothing growing there but weeds. They're about two foot tall with fat and the guy he had parked his car on a curb that I went and phrased that. The trail led to the curb, and

directly across from that curb was two houses. That's all on the other side of the curve was just again a feel it's probably I'd huddered, fee why if that? Well, as it turns out, in one of those houses across the street in their car, the guy and normally took his garbage out at eight o'clock in the morning, I think it was that morning he took it out ten minutes early. He saw this green bell air should be sitting there when he came out the regular time, the

shevy was gone. Das chuck me as some real planning, cause we got into it. We found out the several houses in neighborhood, including the victims, somebody had broken into them and taken Jolie, but left somebody else's jewel. He's taking joy from one house to another house and drop it off, take theirs, take it someplace else and drop it. In Jean's case, did he had taken her jewlie left somebody else's too. The other people getting hang up phone calls,

and she got, look these kind of calls. She got one call to the guy, so I'm gonna kill your husband, and then they stopped one week prior to the to the assault. So I took it upon myself cause I thought it it stunk like a serial killer, Assyria rape this out there. So I started checking around with the other detectives, said we didn't really have the system to speak of, and I found two more reports. It sounded

like the same guy. So I'm pretty sure in my own mind that that we had a an the cyrivial rapists going And it was October fifth, October ninth, there was another one that I heard about it. He m get see the damn thing to read about the report or anything for a while, and then the first part of November, and I think, is you were fifth something like that? We had two more, we had one or two third in the morning, oh about eleven o'clock at night,

eleven o'clock at night. Everything is the same except there was no actual section. So so at that point I had no doubt that we hadn't been there cerial rapists. As I said, die with Carol Herman, cause I think, uh, we still bouncing around and like I said, we don't really attain and told him, but I thought, and they agreed.

I went to the Lieutenant Route who was the exact lieutenant forre de Sectis, and told him about it, and he had worked at cerial rapists before he had even I remember he just stood up, walked out and started making preparations. Then it went upstairs to will be called the fourth floor where all the big wigs hung out, and they started I guess they they got an interest started doing something with it. But from that point and then they formed the task force. But I was with

with Root. I was I was to go to the crime scene and go backwards. I was to find out what these victims had in common, if anything could lead up, explain how he just guy managed to pick 'em what it was when he knew about the neighborhoods, And I managed to put it together that he proud these neighborhoods pretty thoroughly. And they all had a couple of things in common with The one thing they all had in common was they go to a public place like lunch rooms.

I think three of 'em were the same pizza parlor one summer in the same month, and they were three consecutive victims. Uh Alpha Beta market not in here, but outside of this county, had three three victims with connected with that market in some way, and that that kind of thing. A number of 'em had connections with the medical by connection, I mean they might've been to the hospital visiting a a a patient. They might have worked there. It might had a relative working there. They might just

gone down got prescription filled something. He would have put them at the hospital where somebody could see them coming and going. He and a number of them connected with schools, and every one of 'em, and this end of the state had a e Their house or house nearby was for sale, just rented, just sold, being remodeled, that kind of thing. So I mean tho those all down south to by the way, that the most of 'em applied

down there. And then of course we had four military bases, and there was indications he was military because of what he wore and how he born stuff. But then there was also indications he was a cop. There was indications that he was a in construction or a architect. You know, just goes on for every It was nothing the point of solid to any kind of occupation. And the guy knew what we were doing, and that I was convinced of.

I didn't know why we we test every cop we could in this county, because you can't really go outside the county start grabbing all the other cops and what are you gonna find out? Do they have the same blood type? Then what do you do? Nothing? And there's too many you can't fall 'em all around, and you gotta trust some of 'em, I guess somewhere down the line. So we never really had any solid idea what this guy did for a living being a cop wasn't surprising because,

like I said, he knew what we were doing. In one particular uh disturbis prowler calling it was, I went. I responded to that cause I was out that night and the lady said, I thought you were uh guys who were already here. I heard the police were ready ill, so he had a scanty. As it turns out, he could have found his victims, like I said, but just gone back to work, got their license plate, ran it

through DMV, and got their address. And there you go that all the neighborhoods had su similar markings through like nature areas or green belt areas. They call it main thorough affairs. He and he was all over the place, and then when they gave descriptions, they were everywhere. But most of these descriptions, in fact, all of them really came from from people who saw suspicious persons in their neighborhood. Suspicious generally being they didn't belong there, or they look

kind of funny or or something like that. And on the named back up on something else that we now know, King Clark and the second met a homicide was doing. He found a UH roll of microfilms he found and had a lot of reports from the seventies they thought

were gone. In December nineteen seventy two, the UH there was a a neighbor and said somebody kept going through their backyard and they and they were kicking open the gate and breaking the fence, and they went over their fence and to the other neighbor's yard and then there they beat a poodle to death. That was in seventy two.

Then in January seventy three there was a rate of two sisters and I I think it's the same guy because the first thing he said to was all I want is your money, which is what he told all the other victims. And then the girls shoot. They talk about you know, he had a small penis, couldn't maintain or couldn't obtain and maintain an erection, no real interest in sex, just like this guy was. And then we have a series of prowlers, our burglaries, the mo the uh.

The suspect would lock the front door and the other ways come in. He had opened two or three exits. He could spend hours in that house and he would take coins and piggy banks. They'd break him open and he did take stereos and the other expensive items and two dollar bills. He was seen three times and described as a kid. But they'll stopped at the end of

March and didn't come back up again. All we had cat burgers in there and this this area where they were curried in the car ranch Couldov and Carmichael and the same exact areas with the ease day of rapist would start hitting in seventy six, well in nineteen seventy four, who like say he ransackers starts and the same mo. There's no question about them. They're exactly the same. And the guy seemed on there and with the guise is about thirty years old, kind of heavy set. When he runs,

he lumbers, knees knocked together and then uh. He killed Professor Snelling in September of seventy five. In December seventy five, par say PD detecting mcgallan confronted him right their face to face, shine light in his eyes and his face, and the guy shot at McGowan and he shot the flashlight out of his hand. He actually hit the the lins dead center. That blew up McGowan's face and knocked him down.

was here. I don't know where he was living when he was here, but his parents are there. And then he went to buy saying all that stuff went on there. Well, he was an Exeter cop. Then he comes back up here, he goes sport for Auburn, PD, which is about forty miles out of Sacramento, and then you get these crimes in Cordova, and Citrus Heights and Carmichael. I learned something from that. Everybody says that all the pearls say the rapists won't hit near his own home. The iritibirg rapist

hit eight times around his parents' house. This guy he had at least four times around his parents' house. So that's something you know, may you to put in their little books.

One other thing about this gentleman, Well, he was here in Cordova. He killed four small dogs, Three were poodles. One might all four it might have been poodles. One of 'em I found one night when it in the guy's house. I I thinking back, I think it was a terrier, but I don't know. They was beating up so bad and was half one of the bed and testines were out in southern California. He hit a poodle in the eye. I guess the engined it pretty bad.

And I read the various reports that, uh, somebody walking to a German shepherd went to a backyard when when the shepherd came out, he had been sliced pretty bad with the knife and ran and Rancha Cordova, I there was two murders here and the majorities Brian and Katie

Majory and oh they they stumbled into somebody. It looked like they stumbled in the study rapist that they're they're not walking their dog in the evening and their dog ran and they went in the backyard to get it and gone through a broken down fence and it was a pool. They found a plu was filled into the to a swinging punt. Their swinging pool. And then this guy apparently realized he'd been seen. He came out and

murdered both of 'em. I know when when he left the scene, they witnessedit he had a smirk on his face. He is one sick puppy.

Very very interesting to talk about. I've never read about a case where so many reports of unusually small penis. I don't think this is going to help this guy's fan mail in prison though.

He could make phone calls. At first they would just hang up calls. Later they came on scene. And then he would you break it at night, And somebody said he's an expert at breaking in. Doesn't take anything to break into a house. Screwdriver, you can do it. But he'd come through a door or window. Very often. He would go to the house first and take the screen

off and just sit in the bushes. In one case, they could often put it back, but you could see the mud on the window where he'd opened and closed it. And when they're in bed asleep, he'd he'd come in and uh shine light in her eyes, awake him up. He'd always tell 'em only want I'm not gonna hurt you. All they want is your money. And when when the uh man was in the house, he'd have the girl

ti man. Then he would tie the girl. Then he'd retie the man, and he'd tie it super super tight, and there had the circulations cut off their hands and literally turned black, and the nerves that'd quit and flo some of those people who took 'em days to get the full use of the fuel their hands back. And then he would uh, he'd leave him the bed he'd ransacked, and he'd come back and he'd put take the woman out of the bed and some excuse about and didn't want them trying to get loose, and put her in

the living room floor. Then he would put dishes on the man's back. He would throw he's always talking in the husk wisp almost always talking in the husk, whisper through clenched teeth, and then he would uh, you know, t if you move, I heard somebody, I'm going to kill your girlfriend to cut a year off or something like that. And then he'd go back in and ransacked the house. And every few minutes you go back and

check on them, and eventually his assaulted woman. Sometimes he had the whole game, but there's nothing he didn't miss. Are the times just barely normal?

the sex. Well, she started talking and started telling about the size of the penis and tell me she was an expert. I didn't care about what it was. But she kept on and on, and she pointed to a quarter and actually and said it's no bigger than a no longer than it's about five inches long, and no bigger around that quarter. So that stuck with me. That was in my report as a matter of fact. But

they all had something like say like that. Then the description stays the same, and all of a sudden the registered nurses assaulted and she said it was bigger than we thought. It was circumcised. That was a shocker. Then the next couple victims said the same thing, and then the next couple victims said, now it's about three inches long and circumcised. Side what till he's got and the description of him, we're almost like always identical. He's always

pretty solid, pretty good shape. When he ran through the backyard and stuff. He just sleep fences like you know, like Superman or something. But he, uh, there's a couple all of a sudden he had a pot belly and that just happened all at once. Then he had a calloused hand. A couple of weeks later they had small soft hands. He don't go from one to dead in just a matter of a few weeks. And they uh

pretty much stayed the same, I think. And then in up in Danville in seventy nine, spending seventy nine, the man woke up, looked into the room and he saw this guy putting a mask on. Was this this uh intended dictim? I understand he's really large, like an athlete jumped up and then when they're confronted the guy, so his wife had a chance to get out in the suspect didn't quite know what to do cause they've been confronted.

The guy's a coward at heart. Anyway, when his wife is gone, read and take this guy's head and twist it off. He intended. Victim left and the guy went away, and the cops came with the dogs and they tracked him into some ivy give him crawling in the ivy he had it. It was so recent that the odor was too heavy. Had to take dogs back out and start over him. By then the guy was gone. Then he turned up in the go out of Santa Barbara County, and that was in the end of seventy nine, and

there's a couple there. He went there and did the same thing, separate him. The woman could hear him saying, I gotta kill him or we gotta kill him, or something like that. So she got up and s she's tied. Feet and hands are tied. But when he went to check on her her husband, she hopped over to the door and got out the door and blindfolded, she ran and fell against the door. So meantime, the sauce that comes out and grabs her and brings her back in. Then,

well that's happening, and her husband gets out. He goes out the same way. He goes out the back of the door, yelled at the neighborhood, didn't come out, and then jump behind an orange street when this guy came out. So the guy comes back in. Well, the woman's not gonna stick around over her head cut off, so she

goes back out and the buying is off. Her feet are gone by then, and she's naked running down the drive pick As it turns out, there's an off duty FBI agent living right next to him upstairs facing their house, reading a book, and he heard all this, so he came downstairs and the guy's on the bicycle rides right by him, and the f guy agent had no idea what this guy was. He would have shot him out

off the bicycle. But anyhow, he gets in his car, which couldn't start right away, and what he did They He finally spots him, follows him a few blocks and the guy drops the bike, goes over fence with no problem, and then heads off to a a nature area and cops all over and he got away. After that, he murdered every victim he had down there, and and I

I understand he was pretty brutal. He beat their heads and so hard they were unrecognizedable pieces of ball are on the on the floor and that kind of thing. I have. I read some of those reports. I didn't see any of that, but someone was talking about I forget who it was, and so probably the way it was. And then uh, he quit in eighty one, and then he came back in eighty six attacking ellow cruise to be her pretty bad. And then he's gotten heard no

more from him since since then. Uh. Down at Exeter and Vicelia, the Vicearia ransector. This guy was uncertain. Now there's two other murders down there are young girls close to Exeter. One of them a guy was convicted and one I can get the reports. He condicted nothing. He had a notebook found about ten feet from the girl, and they booked him on there and convicted him. He died in prison on that. And then the good Letta

they have another one teenage girls. He's also blooded and they uh, and somebody was seen running away they thought a teenager, but they made no connection between that murder, and uh, he stereo the rapists down there by the way they call the original life sucker. But what bothers me about this whole thing? And and and by say Ransacker, I've got a description of the guy given by McGowan, a under hypnosis one by uh the professor's melting daughter,

and I'm pretty similar. McGowan's is detailed. But nowhere up here do you find that description of the stereo rapist. Up here. He's always well, it's pretty solid, getting run of the jump fences and the down there the guy falls through them. I guess he's he's pretty lumbering. There is two in the descriptions and learn length. I just can't live with it, I I said, I think I said in the book. I know I've said more than once.

I'm convinced there is more than one rapist. I see nothing to indicate those guys knew each other, and they have a copycat rapist. It's not unusual. He stereo rapists had a copycat rapist. We know who he was, and we had not a shred of evidence to book him, not one.

Tell us about how you become involved again and what information has learned, and how they make the connection with the original night Stalker and the East Area rapists are one and the same.

been sheriff, I don't know now. Anyhow, they they he learned that they just made some more connections from the original livestocker down South. If I say er, I mean the uh. He used to rape his stuff here and they were putting together a task force. And you wanna know if I want to be on it, well, I dropped out of the on call reserve. I was just done so they they couldn't do it. I couldn't do it legally. But then I was interested in it. And like you say, information comes up. I can play around,

but I call myself a cheer leader. Cheer leader and rest lors came out, and then he asked me to help him with something. So when picked up somebody's garbage or something, then he had a good suspect. In fact, that guy was up to something. I don't know what it was. There was enough information to book him at the time, but he's nothing to do with the stay rapis it turns out. And then I started getting the information that was really good and it will held back

into this again. So I started working the thing again. The DA I mean the DNA. I knew of it. I knew kind of what it was, but that was really about it. And I was just then, Uh, I just sit back and waited hope something would turn up. Matter if I recollected UH samples and people, and one of 'em I had went to his garbage. I couldn't get the guy to help, went to his garbage and had to send three times cause the first three times

it came back for female. We were looking through the y and I had an I had a cousin his. They didn't know each other, and I got his and compared the two, so then I knew I had the right right people. As it turns out, it led to a UH killer on on death row, David Carpenter. He's a UH called a trail side killer. And nobody nest to have had anything to do with this series going on. It's just they had that freak and there every family

has one, I guess, and then we just will. I just sit back and waited, you know, for the DNA for somebody else to find it. Cause when I when I could, i'd I would collect it, send it in and pay the bill myself. Cause what they do is they'll collect the DNA First, the DOJ won't touch it cause I'm no longer scorn officer. The second orcadtybout, but they put it in a pile so they collect I don't know, I think it's a dozen and actual they take months and months and then they'll runt 'em all

at one time. So I just spent the money myself and had it done. That's so I knew it was over. Wow.

and his uh involvement go over twenty five years. Tell us, uh, you tell us a little bit more about the book itself, then, Y. You know you'd say in this book in the beginning, well, I'm not an author, and if you're expecting that kind of book, but I have to argue with you about that, because it's a very very exciting book because it really takes you behind the scenes of the investigator and the investigation and everything, all those details and all the incredible information.

You talk about the the Michelle McNamara's book and the quote that she uses for the for the title of the book in the dark what he had said, he said, he was very dramatic in his when he was in Sacramento, and he continued, but especially at that time, so just for the record. Tell us what he said about in the dark and in the dark in the night, you know, real clumsy, But tell us just a little bit about what he said and where that came from.

And he sounded really metal, dramatic, and I thought, this guy's been reading some porn someplace, or or I don't know, some kind of hard type of thing. And then he used it again a couple more times, and that's what Michelle picked up on. I don't know where he got it. Could have come out of a movie or a play, but I'll be gone in the dark like he was. He was trying to draw a picture like a drama. You'll you're not gonna be around and I'll be gone you never find me again. And he came to a

little k and that's what that was all about. On on the book. You're right, I did. We'll put a lot in there like that, a lot of enemies out of the chef's department. I didn't name any people in there, but didn't matter. They could figure out who's who. But it was it was no different than any other organization, you know, uh, law office or anything else. You got people that don't get along, you got ones to do.

There's always that kind of thing. We uh, we didn't really have an organization at the time when I got there. One of the guys I I talked to that was there in the fifties, late fifties, he described it to me as to go along and the stuff I talk about, some of the history of the chif Park. It came out out of him cause he was there and either he experienced it or he knows people that did. And when they were hiring people in the fifties up to very early sixties, they hired them for their brawn and

not their brain. I'm not saying anybody was dumb, but there really was a large cowtown and you're always fighting somebody. So that's what they were. After one uh death, he's long gone now. He had been in jail for fighting and they called there for him to ask him why. I said, well, this guy's missing my wife. Oh that's okay, and you gotn't fighting the bar cause over your wife. He did the right thing. Who does what they would

do today? But we because a Dwayne Load took over in seventy and he started changing this whole thing and organizing it, getting things together. He got real uniforms, but we were still behind in some organization. With detectives, it was uh. They had their their specialties robbery and homicide and so forth. But like in homicide, Carol Davy was working homicide, but she still got the sexual assaults. Alex Mangus was in there too, and she also worked sexual assaults.

There was only two women working detectors by the way, I think it was seventy six. Uh. Sandy Curtis came in and went longer, and more of 'em came into it. But we just happened to be standing in the lot of where we work. I think I put in the book about staying around the water cooler. That's just to give a focus point. All I know is that the captain came in and and picked five of us, and

so you're gonna go out and handle this. I think it's cause we were just standing there and I got picked because I'd been working that one series, and Carol got picked because he was female. I had work series through and it was about I don't when it was after that year. Soon after they they formed a sex assault detail for adults, and YE went for the kids

and things got organized. But when I was looking for any related reports to this guy, I started with gossip because they will talk about reports, and I picked right up one, two. But then they had to go back in the to the records. But I didn't do that until a couple other drimes occurred. But today it'd all be right there and they have it all mapped out, probably on a computer. Everything is so technological today.

People ask me, well, what kind of details Bill, Here's a sixteen year old girl turned around, find this freak stand by in here with an axe over her head. All she saw it was white eyes and white mouth. There's no other description. The first composite was the compositive composites. People were talking about suspicious persons they saw in the neighborhood. You know, I saw his profile, decide or that side

and that kind of thing. So they got them all together in the public spit too much pressure wanting to know what this guy looked like. We didn't know. So Captain Stoum put together the composite of all those composites to make a composite. To be least, that's the first one out there. And well, it's not really all that far off. It's it's just basically useless. They had a couple up and there. I think that actually you're pretty close. We know now we didn't before, but they were everywhere

in the world. There wasn't much you could do with those things.

the blonde description. So in light of the photos that you've probably already seen of DeAngelo, what do you think about what was in w that's the material that's in your book about that description.

she's afraid to. So she ticked out his legs and had him in hair and it was light brown and not much of it. Then uh, he left one and in August I think it was of seventy sixth he left the victim's house. He was naked from the waist down. Neighbor across the street and saw him. This is in the early morning, and he was She thought he was wearing white shorts. If he wasn't, he was just naked. Now we recovered I fulst and PDM pound to the

sixty one Valliant in UH January seventy seven. In March of seventy seven, the the UH yard that hauled it in the till yard was praying it for sale and they found a complete change of clothes in there, more than one and all the identifying marks were gone. And they found some forty five Ammo shotgun Ammo and two rank guys like hops Hues and they found a wig, a blonde wig. So I've never really known that this guy bore a wig. He probably did or all the time,

I'm guessing basically see the guy today. It's uh, it just really hard to say. I I don't know that he did wear a wig all the time. I saw a guy one night that I still think it was him. And if I can find a picture this guy from November seventy six, I'll pay if it was him or not.

It's it connects green Leaf and wood Park. But ten at night, and I see a guy walking towards this and it's just a little lad to be out walking like that. So, you know, driven, having driven squad cars for a lot of years, get picked up on it as we go by. I just I got it back, looks at him. I made a U turn, came back and he's gone. Now we're talking less than a minute. He had two places to go, wood Park or really run fast and down to the green Leaf, which I

don't think you could do. The house in the corner of wood Park and Dowey. The lights went out right there. There's a big tree out front. So I shot down through to the green Leaf. He wasn't there. I came back to the wood Park and I turned down just enough to see that nobody walking came back. I remember it right now, the lights on my on my car hitting that big tree. You know, I don't know what I thought. I saw it like. They went back to the dewey and I said, well, boys, get out, and

I took off. I had no intention of leaving, and went down about a block or so and I swung around, came back up on that on that street where the guy parked his car after the rape, when the wood park and I turned the street, stopping there, I turned right across the curtain, right into that field, and here this guy is walking right down the street going the other way. Everything in my head, you know, was saying

get him. I orda knew that I would have, and I was given a serious thought to getting out of the car and trying to stag that guy. And my partner, who's patently new, told me to get her gun out, must go. If I hadn't a knowing now what we know, if I'd done it, they'd take off the full board run and uh, I probably couldn't have caught him. I don't know what he had a car nearby where you live, I don't know. I suppose they could have got a b had out there. We could have found this car.

But I still think that was very rapist. And his hair was kind of a light brown, not true blonde. Actually kind of like you might think. This guy looked like he pretty well fit the physical So if I live the guy being five foot nine, this guy's probably eleven. That's something else this guy did on some of the race. I remember some of the duty was borning.

particularly brilliant. He did anything a coyute or a snake might do. Yeah, just called.

he did start younger than that. We just didn't pick up on it until he was thirty one years old.

He he was doing it in his twenties. They they were right on that age, and I was totally off by trying not to form any solid opinions of what this guy was, or what he looked like, or where he worked or anything. But I was certain of the age, or reasonably.

might wear. He was seen wearing a heavy jacket like the sailors, but always connected with merchant marine and once he had heavy gloves like that. We had a UH A suspect in a car registered out of the Coast Guard. Down in southern California. A Merchant Marine ring was stolen and go Letta just before the first double homicide down there, and up there we had a victim who's U lived literally right opposite the level levee but where the second

metal water treatment plant is. The next victim was the man who was a supervisor of that plant and he had been in the coast Guard. Then became a ring, so all all I could and then there was a UH evidence that they found a suspect print. They think it was his print in Goletta after the Offerman Manning homicide. Next to it was a small woman's footprint on a deck shoe. They don't know they were connected or anything else.

I just noticed the the uh, the navy thing. So what I kept wondering about there was nothing solid to go on, is this guy was I s I think he's probably Merchant Marine, or it could be Coast Guard. Well he was Navy, if I wasn't at all surprised, I thought he was a Navy. What I really thought was this guy he'd never been in the military, but had a fascination with it, or if he had, he

didn't pick up a whole lot for it. All the stuff he did, everybody said, well the special Forces through Well, the guy crawled like a bug or a snake out through the weeds. He was quiet, super quiet, and victims could barely hear him walk in the house if at all, And he spent a lot of time in the roof of the house. Nobody had ever looked up there. It took a while before I did, but I wasn't patrolling out there that much then, so I'm not surprised to

his military I didn't really think he was. I thought it was a fascination with it, and I suspected that vastination was with these special forces techniques in the military just had to be something he did in the sixties, probably because he had to join now to get drafted.

all over down south southern California. I don't they know each other, but according to the UH ancestry type stuff, he's got him down there, so almost anywhere he in Citrus Heights would be pretty relevant. Simply don't know. I don't know where where the house is located.

He was down here, right up here in this area by Bert Kay's walk. There was three streets gwentever here Merlindale and might forget together when they had a farm, no person and farm get whatever.

We had things at bar from the military. You put these little stakes in the ground. If somebody lost me as somebody feed 'em and it sits and lays off up just like dog boots. Same thing. Well, that night I went to one officer that the I feel like he was signed there. I I put him over by thorn would I figured, you know, safer for him over there. That night he hit on merlindale Gal's name was Linda's.

He's come out admitted, told the public whose he is. Anyway, Then I started going back through the doll like I did all there was going back to you there and talking to everybody and finding reports. Had I known what the reptrol officers knew, we would have had that place rat packed with cops that night, like that whole weekend. They had even chased the guy on foot one night and when one of the alleys strive there, so there wasn't any questions he was gonna hit there exactly when.

I don't know, I thought for some reason that weekend, but that was the area that I just didn't have the information trying to get it collect at all. Is something else.

s invited him along. Sid got to this house. It's a small house. The driveway and and next to his all concrete, and we walked up to a window on the side and the small window probably two foot by whatever it was, and it's about maybe five feet off the ground I can't remember, and you can see a dusty footprint right on the wall. But the guy going in that way, and it was like in the other

tennis shoe prints to be found in the street. So, based on everything I knew by this point, this was in May of seventy seven, the guy who that we're looking for, if he's picking these other houses, he'd go across the street. He'd take a house a second from the corner. So we went to the right to the east side, and we find a woman and her daughter living there and she's finding all kinds of things strange in her house. Phone hang up, phone calls for a while,

and they just quit. The week or so before, she found her door sometimes unlocked, sometimes so out of a jar. She found a uh vase or planet or something was on the table sitting on the floor. Had told me right there, then we had the right house. So we told her what to do about all this stuff and blocking windows and block and don't leave the key out of the format or doormat like she was doing. So they confirm it. We went across the street and nobody homes.

Who go in the backyard and there's a tree in the corner. Sure as hell, there's his footprints, a beer can and cigarette. But so we go to the guy next door who's home, and he said, yeah, I saw a blonde here. The guy walk out of there, who a couple of weeks eary ten o'clock at night said he was no taller, and that's that's I just convinced me the guy really was about five or five nine. And the guy walked out the Cedar Hurst down just a few days before this, maybe we hit the other

end of the Seedar Hurst. A man who had a new job came home, found his uh NEX schedule was gone, and the gun and the and the light stand had been unloaded and put back dead giveaway of the year. Well, a couple of people and detective cut holes of that, and he went and shut up about it was all over the radio, police police radio. If this guy was the guy here, if he was the one and he was listening to his own radio, or however he did it, he knew ahead the time. Many I I told Curtis said,

think ish'on not coming back. We we you know, we're not gonna do anything here, Notify patrol, notify the gallant what to do, and had the luck to win and so forth because precautions to take. And here's hell, all the prowling that neighborhood stopped and never came back. He knew, we knew, he knew we had at both ends. And it was not long after that he well, he hid in uh down the s Southern gall now s Southern Sacramento Parkway, Fourth Parkway. But all that. Not long after

that he he disappeared for the summer. I don't know where he went. There's all kinds of theories, but yeah, he was predictable as to win where he was gonna hit, and you could tell her where he had been, just because the neighborhood start prowling around yourself. There's all sorts of prowlers.

He could trus shoot his mouth off and he's walking up and down and tell us how till we were and this wouldn't happen italy, and on and on and on, and I made some comment turning me to shut up and left by the way. So the last form I had to attend, which is fine with me, that was early November or mid November, November seventy sixth. Then in uh late May seventy seven, he and his wife were assaulted.

And they're the ones who live right next to their water treatment plant, divided by that levees all and then h that was really about it. It did not happen next day like everybody said. It was seven months later. And because the next victim worked at that plant and had been the coast Guard Ani Marines, I'm not at all sure that this guy wasn't coincidental. Probably the year was at that meeting, saw that and decided to follow him home or whatever he did, and just put it

off for a while. And there's always the other option thing he's so strange. But I was gonna tell you he was in the roof from my house. I'm pretty sure my uh youngest son about to turn five, I think four or five. He came in one night and woke us up. And he was really scared. I remember that he crawled between us, and I remember what he

told us. We just couldn't wake up. And then, uh, the next morning he said there was a guy hanging upside down looking in the window, and he had on a one of those watchcaps, he thinks, but he had a little string of a beanie on the you know, little beanie, a little bobber thing. He said that bomber thing was bouncing back and forth. That's how he saw him. And then the guy shined a light across the room once and then he was gone. To day, he says, the guy was also on there. He get him on

the roof, walking back and forth, making all kinds of noise. Well, the next day we went out lucky and there's no prints, no marks of any kind. Where we lived in Kragova, off to the north of us, across the road, it's just all river rock and just dredged when the dreadgers came through looking for Goldman. All this big rock it and behind this was kind of an L shaped park. At each end of that park was a school. At one end it was like up to the fifth sixth grade,

and the other end seventh and eighth grade. It was ideal for this guy used to like to do his prowling around. So I'm pretty well convinced it was him at that time, somebody my son, but recently he was looking at one of those messy's boards on the Internet full of the trolls and one hand you. One of 'em was saying if Shelby's kid existed, and then so he he responded, yeah, and the kid did exist, and I'm him, and then somebody So I did a Google search in that roof. You couldn't hang upside down on

why I was sure you can't. I used to walk on it all the way down to the edge. Wasn't nest deep a roof, but it it happened. If it was him or not, I'd that money if there's a way to prove it. I don't know if he knew who I was, or he just uh happened to pick that copy did cause it was we were in the middle of the block. We weren't either end of it. He he, he's really lucky I didn't wake up fully.

Like I can promise you, I would use my head and call the Shehar's office and quietly manipulate if I called the shot from where I was in the office in the house, and head car has not come to that scene, but go a couple of blocks away, then walked and surround it. I would have blown the bastard away right through the roof, then justified it later a little different than it is today. I would be violating

somebody's rights if I'd known who it was. If I don't how bad he was gonna get, I would just shot him.

laughed at. Again. I hate to do this, but over his penis size. But really, what do you think of motive? And what do you think of this? Eighty one to eighty six break. What does it.

really beat him. I don't know what he was like before that, But then it was in the neighborhoods wherever he lived, in the same way when he got down south. It's a wild guess. I do know that somebody knows him. Said right about then, he started getting really fat, really put on the weight, if you think about it. He was getting a little bit older too, so it wasn't quite so he easy to go crawling through the bushes,

You're leaping over fences, that kind of thing. When he went back in eighty six, I'm I can only make a wild guess that he was down there for some other reason, and he just thought he would just have a little more fun one more time, and went out and brutally beat that young girl to death. But I mean, it's just I don't know enough about him, and nothing I saw in the investigation and would tell me what he was doing or why he told all almost all the diculams. I know he's from here. I know you

from there. I saw you at the prom, he told Jane. I saw it at the Officers Club, And it just one of the one place he asked the girls, where is the doctor keep his drugs? For the information in the house, he's searching it. He knows their doctors. He knows all that already. So he he never told any of them the truth about anything. He talked about his van by his camp by the river. He murdered somebody

in Bakersfield. He might have I don't know. And I say, why he stopped, why he said those things, the way he said those things, it's just a blow smoke. Why he stopped is just anybody's kissed. I don't know if he would even know, But evidently he really put on the weight in the eighties.

you thought it was imminent. But what was the biggest surprise for you?

each other. They might have been related. I'm not convinced. Yeah, that's not the case, cause the the VI, the physical descriptions of so Veri Dmos are exactly the same thing. Not many differences in those things at all. He uh, I don't know this this guy uh conundrum. I guess that he was a cop didn't really surprise me. I wouldn't have been surprised either way that he was in

the military. That didn't fully surprise me, although I didn't think he was, but there was it had been uh well, actually there's nothing to and they really strongly indicated he had any one particular occupation. Could you look look reports various things that they they all tied together on this train.

He was pretty clever. He had his disguises. I'd really liked to know where he got all those different cars and at least two of 'em had license plates Bridge Chunk cars on it was out of Low Die and one I don't know, somewhere else country across the county. He bounced around a whole lot.

kind of thing. He tried that all the time. And and like he talked about his van and l camping by the river, and I don't know he uh, he tried what he could. What he did do is he would throw a little red hearings. He left behind some school papers he probably took from somebody and left them out there a scene over and after you hear which town in Contra Costa County at some place, and it was called the school papers, the rant papers. Paul Hol's been a great deal of time effort running down the

uh uh a sketch in there. There was a housing development. I think he even figured out what house development was. He left behind a badge, was a state police badge or something up picture in that book up here what it is, and that couldn't be traced anywhere. He left behind a jacket. He was sold in three stores, one in Sacramento and two in San Francisco, the one in Sacramento never sold it on the two in Si Francisco. Who I think one of us said they might have

he changed masks all the time. He uh, he didn't think he could different kinds of cars. He just sometimes he would dress in the military uniform. Like once he had blout boots. He wore fatigues. The knight is the I killed across that dog beaten to death. They said they saw a sixteen eight year old black he had kid had fatigues, jump off the roof, run right across the backyard and rover the fence and gone, So that you know, that kind of stuff makes you think you're

looking for a kid. And any way, he talked, acted pretty often. Did I don't know. He's probably more sophisticated than I thought.

did avoid a lot of the things. Even though he had no idea of DNA, he still was careful do not leave evidence that he knew all that that time was available to be determined.

something else to connect it. But in nineteen ninety two, one my last management little management meetings, they had a new core here and he said he's rearranging everything and didn't have room's story or anything. He said he had a vial of the of the East. He stayed rape the sperm. He's gotta throw it out. My first thought was I'll take it home and freezing. Thought. I didn't want to grabbing my freezer. My wife would killed me anyway, So I just I didn't say anything. What did you know?

One of those do over things that I got a million, I'd take it if I had to, I'd go rind of a freezer someplace, I'd put it in there. Then today they could confirm and we know it is that they could confirm it the year and this guy did the same thing just by the sperm.

Pipe never never heard. I got the report somewhere, I just don't remember reading it. But then Holes took this stuff and then they pumped into some sort of program and did their They went surfing on the internet. I gather today there are some sites that people can put in their DNA hoping with someone to come along and

spot it and recognize the relative. Well, he went surfing and they found that they found some people that had I think ten or twenty markers that are similar, well how many markers, I don't know, if it's like they're the ten or twenty cousin or something. So they started doing actional geology research going back to these people, and they went back quite a ways and they they found

one person that looked pretty good up at Oregon. They tested him and it wasn't But then when they got to the to the living people, then they had to put that aside and start going through modern technology, the the the uh, various sites on the Internet and there's a bunch of 'em, and then there's a couple too, and Lexus and Nexus to cops use not and then

whatever real estate've got. And they started doing that, and they started narrowing it down to various people eliminated them, and they got they getting pretty close to nothing, which makes sense cause you can't have everybody involved. And then they got down to this guy, and then they saw he'd been a compet Exeter, and they got a little bit interested in there was a compet Aubert. You're pretty sure they had him. They just had to go ahead

and finish it all out. And Paul Hols has one engineer engineered that whole thing, and again they'd been working on it for about a year, been quite around probably though you'd never heard from Paul Holes anymore that he retired and just went off, you know, off the record. You don't seem or here he will now, I guess. But he and those case deserve a lot of kudos for this, I mean a lot of them.

the FBI, how optimistic it seemed they were. And then with the advances of DNA, with the familiar DNA advances specifically, and I was told by An Penn and another author about these advances in the last year or so, so it it seemed to me that there was this real optimism, not you know, just dramatic optimism for a book's sake or a television program's sake, or just to continue, you know,

the investigation and to reach out to the public. But it seemed like it was definitely optimistic that they would have results in this, and you talk about then they pray it, no go ahead.

but they're very, very enthused. In fact, the morning after the guy was booked, I got to call him the a's office and he said, was the first one he's gonna call it. He got really excited about it, pretty enthused. They feel really well. I think of it as we were working at the time, like we were new cars at the time, a new model, but we really got old fast. What's going on today was literally star trek.

Thinking back then today you got the new model, the younger guys, and they got all these bells and whistles and all the technology. Most of I don't even know what the hell with is much less I understand it, and it's what brought him down was modern technology. He was pretty clever. But back to your point, these guys were all pretty excited, and well a couple of I talk to you weren't that excited, but they were really glad to relieve. And one of them said the same

thing I did. Okay, this is over. What's the next one? Keep going from there?

But he wa, you're right, it's a positive achievement in the in today's climate and all the shooting's going on and so forth, he's finding few and who people wanna be a cop? Yeah, I looked it up. I remember looking up how many cops were killed ryan a duty back in the sixties and seventies. So I looked it up again recently. In uh late sixties, that started going up. They had four killed at one time he cast the junction.

By nineteen seventy four, it was two hundred and fifty six or fifty eighty year had been killed in one year. It's been going down ever since. I think it's down seventy, but that doesn't mean a whole lot. There's still so many people out here that anti cop unless they really need some help. So this has got to be a big boost. In fact, on those mess these boards, I'd been told repeatedly that the guy was the cop and the cops were trying to protect him. Every cop I

knew Woul had turned in his own father. If you had thought he was the theorepist, sure sure.

you know there's there's no chances getting off. He said, know that already, But then he'll he'll spill the beans on the whole thing.

then uh, the woman heard it too. It was he has ought over seventy seven and then they heard like, let me have the numbers wrong but they hit three knocks at the door and three knocks at the window, and then she heard him suspect whispering to a woman on the outside of the inside the window is whispering back. If they're communicating, why he didn't let her in? I don't know, But the question is who is that woman and why were they whispering? They never know. But this

guy was he married at that time? I don't know. But it's something nobody's ever bothered to to you, uh talk about. They just sort of ignore it. I always said, you could have six guys to on these crimes, and one of 'em just nailed on DNA. He's gonna get creative for all of them. And I'm surious defense lawyer, you'll jump on that one too. Anyway, back to your question.

programs that have been recent. Yeah, there's gonna be a lot of information about this story and a lot of people looking into every single conceivable thing. Where he lived, where he worked, what he did. This is gonna be big, isn't it.

He died in prison. One I'm going to pick up as his indications is whoever killed that girl killed one later, same guy. So this guy just gotta wrote it and died in prison. Then you go to southern California and I don't have the names. I I read the report on that when a young girl was budgeting to death near Goletta and a teenager was seeing running the area and he took some junk jewelry or something from it,

and they said, well, that's not the year. I bet it was, but those things are gonna be coming up. And now a woman's come forward. And Exeter when the guy was a compet and said, yeah, he put me in the squad car, he took me out here and rape me. So If that's true, you're gonna see some more of them coming up. So this guy's been really acting. A lot of people coming forward. E said it was a hot homicides. All the statue imitations there, they're long gone. Yeah, yeah,

So you're right. You're gonna hear a lot more about this case quite a bit, and then somebody's gonna write a book about the whole thing. And I wish them, well, you get into so complicated in depth. I wouldn't have the brain power for well.

other reports are attributing that her book was crucial. Just for the record, tell us about that.

What we did, both of us, was provided a platform for somebody who wanted to go there and work that case or know all about it. They could to read our reports. You either wanna either book, and they'll get pretty much all the information they need. This is what happened. If I wanna continue the investigation, this is what to do. McNamara came in and I talked to her many many times, and sometimes we're friendship and times sometimes we weren't. In her book, we were just getting over near the spot.

She didn't add anything new to that investigation at all. Happened nothing, and she didn't name a suspect. The person who gets credit for finding out who that is is Paul Holes and the guys on the team that worked with him to track back the DNA. That's where it all came from. So as the DA and Sacramento DA, Schubert said when asked if Mac and Mary help, she said, had a word. No, it had nothing to do with it.

All that is hype put up by her husband to call your Harper magazine the Hollywood and wants to do a movie that kind of thing. Yeah, I'll say this, My wife's so have to do it. But somebody ask me all these things, and being said about her solving the case, I'm thinking, you know, no matter how you package it, BS is still BS. Yeah, her her book in effect, you could read that book. She didn't like me at the particular time, and she readly liked Paul Holes.

But all three books are nothing more than the platform somebody that wants to jump in there and work that investigation. Yes, so again again, like you say, you go ahead. I just reemphasized it.

the thing is, it's an incredible book. It's an incredible book for the the true crime fan now is is more sophisticated, and I want people to know about this book that instead of a book that all it has is hype, We've got to go back to you, the integral part of the early investigation, the person that recognized things that other people didn't, and the person that presevered and fought on with this and kept this investigation. Like you say, you're still working this thing right to the

very end. So I want to congratulate you on the outcome of this, and also I want to thank you for coming on and talking about your again landmark book, Hunting a Psychopath, The stere Rapists, Original Nightstalker Investigation. The original investigator speaks out. I want to thank you very much Richard for this interview today.