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You are now listening to True Murder The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zupansky, Good Evening Murder.
On his Mind. Serial Killer is the true crime story of the Original Nightstalker aka East Area rapist, who first terrorized Rancho Cordova Sacramento areas in northern California as a serial rapist. Moving on to Southern California, he became the serial killer and rapist he had worked to become. The original night Stalker carried out the murders of at least
twelve people in and around southern California. The serial rapist and murderer moved about freely as law enforcement has been able to catch a break and have to this date been unable to apprehend him. A very deadly criminalist man was prepared to do whatever it took to be free. Many active and retired law enforcements still worked the case that had been come cold. The fbis once again joined in the chase. It has been forty years since the
first known attacks in northern California. It has been thirty years since the last senseless murder of a young woman in Irvine, California. How much longer will the families have to wait for justice in this case? Will we ever match the DNA to a name? Will we ever see who has been un the mask? The book that we're featuring this evening is Murder on His Mind Serial Killer, with my special guest, author and Pen Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for agreeing to this interview.
And Penn, thank you.
So much for having me. I appreciate it.
Thank you very much. This is one of the most captivating crimes in US history, So thank you very much for this very very unique perspective. Now let's get right to how you came to be the author of this book, Why you wanted to write Murder on His Mind, Serial Killer, Why it was important to you, tell us about your background, and why you wanted to write this book. Why was it important to you?
Well, ultimately it became extremely important to me, and as I go through this whole journey, it has actually become even more important. I am from Sacramento, which is where these crimes began in nineteen seventy six, and I was working downtown Capitol Mall, so I was around the entire time. He was attacking all over Sacramento, mostly in the East part, and I kept telling myself, well, he's an East Sacramento so I should be okay. And I kept wondering, Tea,
are they going to catch them? And they didn't. Eventually he went away, but I didn't know that he hadn't been caught. But this is a case that kept coming up for me over and over again, unfortunately, and it was not on my list of things to write about. Sort of became a compelling thing to do.
Tell us about your early life in Sacramento and the neighborhood that you lived in, and also include the time we're talking about nineteen seventy six, and some of our audiences younger. We always have to remind them to keep the context of this and as you provide in the book, the times what were they like? And everybody talks about a more innocent time, But tell us, as you do, how you grew up in the neighborhood and your early life. What was it like.
Well, in the early when I was born at Meath, the Air Force based. Interestingly enough, there were a lot of different connections that way to Sacramento girl that I was, and I went to all the neighborhood schools in the South area. Back then, they were building all the sort of like the back to the Future time frames that you see in the film. In the fifties, they were just building houses left, right and sideways because the baby boomers were having three and four kids apiece, and so
all the fields were being transformed into neighborhoods. Larchmont living is what I call it. And so all of a sudden there was just all this gross and it was pretty quiet really, because these were all new neighborhoods. There were cows and fields nearby. None of the freeways that you see down there today were completed yet, other than Highway ninety nine and frontage roads. You step to drive Frontage Road to get from South sax to Folsome Lake
through Rancho Cordova. So it was a different time, and people were not worried about kids running around in the neighborhood and being out all day and gone and come back for dinner or come back when it's dark. So that's pretty much how it was.
Right now, you say that you never lived in fear, You never as part of the rest of the society. You trusted people, and you didn't imagine any kind of horrible thing happening to you. But now, despite that, in nineteen seventy one, you had an incident. So, as you do describe in the book, tell us about this incident that changed everything for you in that way.
Well, I had at the time, being a fourteen year old in seventy one, I was still not allowed to go too far off my block when it's starting to get dark outside. But I had gone kind of a little farther away and was on my way home and it was starting to get dark, and all of a sudden had this terrible feeling something bad was going to happen,
And amazingly enough, my instincts told me to run. And if I hadn't run, I probably would have gotten caught by two men who were in a truck who ran or who were following me and actually ended up chasing me. One of them jumped out of the truck and started chasing me down the street, and I thought, my god, I can't get home. I'm too far away.
What do I do?
And so I ended up running up to a friend's house, hoping they were home, and I put myself between the screen door and the front door. And that was also a good choice because that made the guy chasing me stop cold in his trap. And I started banging on the door and yelling, you know, open the door, somebody's chasing me, and he just stood there. I glanced over my shoulder, and what was amazing to me in retrospect was that he just sort of stood there like he
wasn't concerned that anyone was going to see him. He was just waiting to see if someone's going to answer the door, and if they weren't, he was ready to, you know, complete whatever he was going to do. And luckily someone was home and they did let me in. But back in the day, once again, whoever this was, they didn't leave. They got back in the truck. We looked out the window, kind of peeked out of one
of the windows. It was a friend of mine and her mother, and we looked out the window and they were just sitting there like they weren't concerned about a license plate being written down, or they weren't gonna They were contemplating what they should do, and I think probably they decided that coming into the house was a bad idea. So it was really the most frightened I think I've ever been in my life.
Now, just a product of the times, a different, different system and people looking at things differently. What did those people do in respond in terms of calling police? And then later when you recounted a story to your parents, what did they do to report to the police.
Well, everyone did. Everybody did absolutely nothing, amazingly enough. You know, I still had no idea, you know, she maybe we should call the police. I was just sort of like, oh, this is a horrible, awful thing that happened. I called my mother and I told her, and she sent my dad out front without telling him what had happened. She sent him out front to watch for me to run home.
Probably an hour after this occurred. But we didn't tell my father because I didn't want to get in trouble for being out too far away from home and Also, my neighbor never called the police either, So it was sort of a conspiracy of silence back then away because those are things we didn't talk about. Those were things we just didn't at least in this particular instance. In our neighborhood, people didn't pick up the phone and call when weird things happened.
So you you had a you say, you had a pretty good look at the guy chasing you, relatively, but you didn't really get a good look at the driver whatsoever. So tell us what would the basic description of what you did? What did you see in terms of this perpetrator? What was the description you would have for the rest of your life imprinted in your mind? And then how did you feel after this attack? Like I say, you write, did it everything changed? Well? How did it change? How did your behavior? Right?
Well, I was a lot more careful. I all of a sudden it was scary to be out in the dark, or it was a you know, scary experience to be too far away and to always be real careful. I've I'm careful ever since about where I go, what I do, whether I get in my car, I look in my car, I have my keys in my hand when I'm ready to get in the car. I mean, just everything changed, and it was such a frightening experience. Amazingly enough, it was something that I didn't talk about, probably for the
next thirty five years or so. I never I had a description of the guy with nobody to tell. I never talked about it because it was some you know, frightening experience that I didn't want to discuss, I guess, and I couldn't babysit after that. I was too afraid to be in a house that I wasn't aware of my surroundings, you know what I mean, right, So it just was such a terrifying experience.
I can't tell you now as you do in the book You start because it is important. November fourth, nineteen seventy six, and this is a story that was extensively reported with reported on by the Sacramento b So he cite this news article man hunted a suspect in eight rapes and they talk about the first well, the first report that you put in the book. So tell us
about again. We won't talk about what you were thinking about in nineteen seventy six, five years after your attack, because it's just we will explain that a little bit later. But let's talk about what was reported. What was known. You mentioned Richard Shelby. He has been on the show before with talking about his book Hunting a Psychopath, So let's talk about this first report. What's in there? Talk about that.
Well, basically, apparently there was a blackout with news media for the first I think it was eight months, and nobody put anything in the paper. I think they were worried that they would maybe scare them off or I don't know what they're thinking was exactly at the time, but they didn't tell the public that this had been occurring.
And it came up at a meeting one of those meetings with about five hundred people at del Dale's School, and Carol Daily was there and she had to answer questions about the fact that there'd been a rapist out there attacking people and no one had really mourned the public. Basically, they had this okay, sorry, go ahead, no go ahead.
So continue what in terms of this, why the explanation for why they suppressed this information, and what was the information now that they were released into the public, and what kind of cautionary steps were they outlining for people.
Well, they asked the news Needa to hold back on reporting the case because they thought the publicity would ruin stakeouts basically, So it came to light at this meeting and the Sheriff's department had to answer questions about what was going on. So they did at that meeting go into it extensively about the fact that he wore a mask, and they talked about how he dressed and just you know, basically a cat burglar type and he would find out if there was a husband in the home. And at
the time he was attacking just females alone. And so that was in the news article, but it literally was a first attack was in June, and this article didn't come out, like you said, until November.
Now, at the time, what did you know, what did you realize? I know in this book you compiled all the information, but in November nineteen seventy six and in nineteen seventy six in this area, what were you aware of in terms of these attacks and what was the response from people that other people in the community towards these Well.
There's a lot of different things on the Internet that tell about the public's reaction at the time. I mean, they sold out of logs they sold out the I mean, people were buying guns. There was all kinds of panic going on because after a while, I mean, when he gets to what was fifteen and then twenty, and it just the numbers kept going up. But when I first saw any news articles in the newspaper, that's when I became aware, obviously, and I you know, again, I was
trying to be careful. I was a female living alone in an apartment and I was nineteen at the time, so I just was aware that somebody was out there, and it's not a real comfortable feeling. I remember thinking, oh my god, you know so, But everybody felt that way. So everybody, I think, was probably pretty careful or as much as they could be. When I started downtown in
one of the jobs I got. The same day I started the job, there was an article in the newspaper when Elvis died same day, and right underneath the article for Elvis was an article about the Easter AIA rapist. And that was by then nineteen seventy seven, so he'd been doing this for more than a year, and it continued for another year. So it was a long stretch.
When did you make a connection, because when did you make a connection that not about your own attack being associated with the East Aia rapist, but when did you make the connection that this person may have been living, going to school, some of the conclusions that you come with later. When did you come to.
This Well, you know, at the time that this stuff was going on, I had no idea that, of course, like everybody else, what he was going to become and how he would be to murders when he Like I said, it was a long haul where we heard about this guy for a couple of years and then all of a sudden it just stopped. So I went about my life for a while, and interestingly enough, I ended up knowing some people who were murdered, and of course no
one had any idea who murdered them. It took the next twenty years approximately for people to connect that the East Area rapist and the original Nightstalker were one and the same guy. And I found that out probably in two thousand, two thousand and one, because I was watching TV one day while I was cleaning the house, and all of a sudden it came up on the screen and there were the pictures of people that I knew, and I was like, Holy that's when I realized that
the guy hadn't gone away and hadn't gotten caught. He just continued on to be a serial killer. And that's when I went, oh God, and it was too scary. And then, I mean, for quite a few years after that, every time I looked up information or tried to learn about it, it was just too scary for me. It's very awful.
Now you say it was too scary, but was there also some recognition that you may be close to realizing the proximity, the close proximity.
Well, we have no proof really of where he came from. I mean, no one knows who he is, so they don't really know. It's a lot of speculation. But as I studied the cases and I studied what he did, and I studied where he came from, that he used waterways or different avenues to leave crime scenes. He rode
a bicycle, he probably went on foot. I thought it was a very smart thing for him to do because while law enforcement was probably looking for him originally on the road, a lot of times, he wasn't anywhere on the road, so he was able to get away.
Now, you basically did a re examination of this entire case using Larry Crompton's Sudden Terror book, Richard Shelby's Booking Cyclopath.
Other Actually I hadn't read Richard's book until after I wrote mine. I had read Larry Crompton's book, and I thought, well, okay, at least that gave me some peace of mind about imagine that peace of mind over this case, just the details. I needed details. I wanted to know more about it because it hadn't been solved, And so I did read Larry's book, and of course I researched it every which
way I could. But mostly what I did was look at maps and trace where the creek access where I grew up went, and how you could travel all along the access roads and creek accesses and so on, because I knew Sacramento really really well well. I grew up there. I walked everywhere. I went to a lot of the places that I'm sure that this guy had been to. So so I used moups and I looked it up.
Now you also provide this this journey that you talk about as well of discovery, and I call it a re examination of this case. But I think you use the term biogeographical. It's like geographical profiling in terms of what you do, and you provide the photos for that as well, and the examples and the explanations of where
this person could escape. For those people that don't know and don't know anything about East Air a rapist, you can tell us about some of the characteristics like the jumping over the fences, which is again described in both of those gentlemen, these detectives' books. But right, tell us what you thought. You obviously you look for escape routes, but the other ways that they did escape from gathered from the information that you looked at. So tell us what you found.
Well, I you know the attacks that he did first, A lot of them, not all of them, but a lot of them were very close to levy roads, river access roads, you know, bike paths and things that were out there in the East area. He went down creek beds, and he just had scoped out the areas so well ahead of time. I mean, he stalked different areas. Actually geographically he looked at areas. I think it was really
important to him what the geography looked like. It had to be all part of his scenario, and so he found those similarities in different neighborhoods when he started as the East Area rapist, when he went down to Contra Costa County, when he went down to the Bay areas, and also when he ended up in southern California going through the santas A Creek area. So a lot of the time, not all of the time, but a lot
of the time that's what he used. So it was interesting to see how successful he was at that.
So you're saying that what you do say in the book is that there's he grew up in a neighborhood very much like where you grew up, very very similar, and so began to understand and you do understand his mindset in terms of being able to get away, being able to blend into another neighborhood and obviously no one noticing anything untoward when they did see this person, So they had that ability, like you say, like a phantom. Ye,
it's because of that his knowledge. And then you say when he moved to another part of California left that when you looked and you examined, you could totally read the DNA has the connection anyway, But you say, the most important thing was this comfort zone for him in this familiarity and similarity, wasn't it right?
I think so. I think when he went to a neighborhood, it didn't matter really where it was located in California. The places that he went, when he saw the neighborhood that he was most comfort you know, had his most comfort in, he knew it. I mean, he could look around and go, Okay, this is it, this is where I want to be, and then he would pick out maybe the house or watch to see who you know inhabited the houses, and then pick out a victim. So I think that, you know, the geography was the driving
factor in most of the cases. I think there were times he probably picked out a victim maybe at American River College in Sacramento, or and then figured out where they lived, if it was a condo or wherever it was. But I think that for the most part, in the majority of the cases that he ended up attacking and then actually murdering, a lot of the times it was
the right geography. I think Manuela withten I don't know how to say her last name very well, but her neighborhood, in particular with the park across the street and the creek beds, there was also an easy escape when Janelle Cruz was murdered. That just there was a lot of similarities about what he saw, how he felt when he was in that neighborhood, and I really do think that the geography had a big part to play in where he went.
Now you also basically profile this person as well, and you estimate and speculate of his age at a certain times or when this began. And then you also include, as Richard Shelby does, the Visalia Ransacker and for those listening East Area rapists one in the same with original Nightstalker because it predated Richard Ramirez known as the night Stalker,
and this Viselia Ransacker from nineteen seventy four. So tell us what the feature was or the signature at that time early in the evolution as you say of this person, and why you include the Visili and why you're certain that they're all one and the same person.
I'm not certain for this right well, I'm not certain that the Viceli Rundsacker had any connection. Really, nobody can prove it. Nobody has proven it. I don't know, but I did include it in the book because everyone talks about it. Is it connected? Is this the same guy, you know, So what we do is talk about, Gee, if it was the same guy, and we don't know, did what? What did he do? He was a peeper, he was He broke into people's houses, He took things that were not of any real value. It was just
sort of it seemed like he was practicing. If it was in fact the same guy, And the timeframe for that and those attacks was in nineteen seventy four, in nineteen seventy six, and he six months after he left by Celia, he ended up in Sacramento. If that was really him, So we don't know, but I included it because it's a question that a lot of people ask. There's a lot of controversy and speculation about g did he start in seventy four and how old was he?
And maybe he was just a kid. He was eighteen nineteen twenty years old.
You include in your book too, some material that I wasn't aware of, unless somehow I missed this, but it is a very profound part of your book is the poem and the letter, the two page letter that you include that believed it was the East Area rapist and what was contained in there, especially about the sixth grade teacher. So and you clude this, you put this as part of an exhibit in your book, So tell us both.
Like everyone else who writes about it, right, Yeah, he sent the letter Excitement Excitement's Crave to the media and they it's just one of the things that they've attached to him. One of my biggest questions was after reading it, g you know, I had a lot of us had a mean sixth grade teacher. I mean, I'm not alone in that. A lot of s did back then, a lot of male teachers back then, especially sixth grade teachers.
But he talked about it in a way that was very frustrating for him, and he was just really irritated. And it really if it really is from the Easter a rapist, if it really was him, I thought, geez, you know it really there were so many things that made me feel like he came from the same neck of the woods that I did. And again, there's no proof. We don't know. Maybe he is from East Sacramento, maybe
he's from Citrus Heights, I don't know. But I had the strongest feeling that I could just see this guy with the Morrison Creek a place to play where we used to play. As children, we all used to go down there and make rafts and catch pollywogs, and you know, so I can just see this guy back in the day, they didn't have any fences a lot of the time.
At the backyards. You can see into people's houses. You can see into their yards from back at the creek beds, and you know, just the geography is one of the things that I still try to follow because even in the neighborhoods where he went, there were also schools, always schools, and creeks, and behind the school fences are houses and you can see into the backyards there. So it just seemed really realistic to me that he, you know, could
have done exactly what we did as kids. And he's the same age group that I'm in, probably a little bit older.
Now. How much as you examine this case, in this killer, let's unfortunately have to talk about his not only his mo which he seemed as you write and has been written before, that he can change that mo slightly. Neither smokes or he drinks, so some people thought, jeez, he brought some beer to the crime scene. He may have smoked, it looked like it. He left matches, but let's talk about the particulars that he evolved from again rapist to murderer.
And then the challenge, it seemed, because what you write and was very interesting, is how you think he was affected by media reports, and especially by media reports concerning Ted Bundy.
Tell us about that, right, Yeah, Well, I know a lot of serial killers follow the media attention that they get and read the articles and maybe learn from it or change their mo and apparently this gentleman. Early on it was said that he went after women alone, and then eventually he changed to including a male and a female in his attacks for his rates and pretty much stunned his nose that everybody, law enforcement included and said, oh, you think I'm just taking women down, but really I'm
gonna I can do whatever I want. And so he, I think, enjoyed the fact that he could control two people, at least two people, and moved on from there. So he did change his mo based on what law enforcement said to media or what media reported, and eventually with the murders he did the same thing. There were adjustments that he made and what he did and whether he took a weapon with him or whether he left anything
behind it. He started gathering shoelaces and things that he had used at the crime scenes and took it with him, including the weapons.
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And right now, my listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free. That's right free. Just go to ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder. That's ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder. One more time for free go to ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder. Now an, I wanted to talk about DNA and DNA, as we know, we've covered in this program many many times, and everyone knows DNA was nowhere, not even a thought back in the seventies, not much of a reality till
early two thousands. So let's talk about what happened with DNA after this case went cold for many years in terms of we did talk about connecting the two east of the two series of crimes in different parts of California, So that's been done. But you also talk about in this book about the FBI once again joining in in the chase. So tell us about DNA and the FBI again in twenty sixteen joining this.
Well, I'm not an expert on DNA, obviously, but I have tried to listen to everything I could get my hands on and read everything I can find about the advances that they've made over time, and it rapidly progressed from about two thousand and on to the point where they can probably tell a lot more about what this
guy really looks like now. Back in the day, like were mentioning Ted Bundy when they were prosecuting him, they couldn't be one hundred percent sure that bite marks were made from his teeth, but now they I'm sure would be able to. They couldn't tell that hairs pulled from the masks that were probably his because they were like
his hair and eye witnessed testimony. They weren't really one hundred percent sure, So there was nothing that they could definitively connect to Ted Bundy with DNA at the time.
And I'm sure if the original Nightstalker followed Ted Bundy's crimes or Easter A rapists at the time, they were plastered reports or plastered over the Sacramento b papers and everywhere about Ted Bundy's crimes, and so he could read about, you know, what was going on, and I'm sure that he probably tried to be aware of anything that could
possibly get him caught. But DNA's progressed so much since then that I know that if they ran any tests on the hairs from Ted Bundy and the white marks and stuff these days, they could say one hundred percent that it was him. They would have as DNA from saliva or anything that they got off the body or in the crime scenes, but back then they didn't have that ability.
Right now, why the interest, why the renewed interest from the FBI, and why, well do they think they come to this?
Well, what's interesting is is, you know, when I started researching this, it was probably about twenty thirteen, to the extent that I was really trying to figure out what had gone on and why they hadn't caught him yet, And that was really my only interest at first. And when finally I had heard that they were going to
become involved again, it was twenty sixteen. So between when I started researching it and they made that announcement, I had begun writing my book, and when I started writing my book in it's probably the end of twenty fifteen, the FBI wasn't involved. The law enforcement people that I talked to in different counties didn't have cold case units. I said, well, what happens if somebody calls in a tip?
You know, since you don't have a cold case unit, And they said, well, you know, we followed the tip. I mean, you know, they're homicide detectives. That's what they do, but there was no formal you know, they don't have the money for cold case units. So it was an interesting thing for me to hear that the FBI was going to come back into it and they were offering a reward for information, and they have been actively involved in the last year. Yeah, these cases are still open.
So.
You know, it's interesting to see. The reason I think they're involved again is because they had solved through DNA a case back in New York. I believe it was from what I understand, and they thought, well, gee, maybe we can solve this case through DNA, and so they're trying to do that.
You do include a case of Derek Lee Todd, a serial killer, and how some advances are you say, a re examination of the DNA evidence or any forensic evidence now many years later has yielded these kinds of results right.
Well, in his particular case, I think that eyewitnessed the accounts originally thought that he was a Caucasian man and they were completely wrong and he ended up being an African American. So it was an interesting case to look at DNA because when they did, they discovered that he was African American. They were looking for the wrong race altogether. So I included that because they really did, they were able to say by then through.
This bio.
I'm trying to remember the name of it that doctor Freudacus had created where they can actually tell now they have it to ancestry and all these other places where you can tell where you came from, and you can tell what you look like, and you know all the different characteristics. And he even said that eventually you might as well just throw your driver's license on the floor, because eventually they're going to know who did what immediately from DNA and DNA profiling.
No, now we again, I got to ask you for some of the details of this because again we can't don't have time to go through all the murders unfortunately, but there are some features that you outline and hear that include everything, all the information that you've gotten. I think it's important to include this signature that this rapist killer having the husband there, dragging her the woman to another room. Some of the features him talking in the
other room, mentioning his mother tell us. Just take one example, even the murder of doctor Robert Offerman and doctor Deborah Manning, just some of the pictures that no forced entry, some of those things. To describe what this killer did just for example.
Well, in that particular case, I don't know that it's I don't think he was able to actually put into practice what he normally did as normal routine, because he ended up shooting both of them. I think that he had a hard time keeping them under control. Possibly, I'm not sure, because he ended up shooting them, so it didn't look like he was able to create the same
environment that he typically liked. I think he was more able to control from that point on, from the Smith murders in nineteen eighty on, to do what he wanted to do. The only other exception would be Greg Sanchez apparently fought and went after him too, and that was in the Sanchez Domingo murders. But he did maintain trying to use couples as his victims. He ended up a couple of the women at the end were alone, and so he did have the last two murders were women alone.
He did features Sorry, go ahead, I was just going to say. When he was doing the rapes and Sacramento, he would put dishes on the mail's back and tell him if he heard the rattle, he would bring a finger, or bring a piece of their or kill the person in the other room, his wife or a significant other. So he did do those kinds of things so that he could hear if anybody moved to try to control the scene.
Now you mentioned March nineteen eighty, let's talk about that. Then, Lyman Smith forty three, wife Charlene thirty three, beaten to death in their bedroom. So when he has the time, what does he do, What does he use as a weapon.
Well, it appears that he would use whatever weapon was there that was an opportunity for him. In the particular case of the Smith murders, he had probably scoped out the house and realized that there was a log pile right outside the bedroom, and he used a log to beat them, to bludgeon them. He probably I say also too that I think that he got some of these ideas from Ted Bundy. There was a murder that Ted did that was real similar in using a fireplace log.
He also in the Janelle Cruz murder, ended up she ended up. Basically, it was a really gruesome scene and he overkilled, but she ended up laying across the bed diagonal. And it's one of the things that was apparent in the Chiamega murders with Ted Bundy, so you know he didn't really he used to bring a gun and a flashlight. Those kinds of things are a knife, but the thing that he killed with changed depending on the scene.
Now you talk about something will take you back to nineteen seventy one. You say there was a man in a van and another man, and the blonde haired man ran after you and chased you, and certainly you already intuitively knew something was up, so instinctively you start running before the actual chase, and so luckily he could get away. You get that much of a distance and then you
did the right thing. Then in your examination, in this re examination that is your book, Murder on His Mind, Serial Killer, you talk about Larry Crompton and some reports about two people being involved in prior incidences that you talk about the two days before an attack. Tell us about what you found regarding two men.
Well, it has been mentioned by Detective Shelby as well, the possibility that there were two people seen running from different crime scenes or different burglaries, that kind of thing, and also it was repeated in the Maggiori murders in round of Cordova, that there were two suspects and then all of a sudden they seem to have vanished, meaning now all of a sudden they say it's just one guy. And so I was curious about that. And I'm not saying too that the men who chased me had anything
to do with the East Area rapists. We have no clue who they were. I just found it interesting that the guy who did chase me and the person in the truck there was an age difference between the guy driving. That's all I could tell you. It is an impression of the guy being older. The guy who chased me looked very much like a composite that eventually I was to see and I thought, wow, this is really odd that he looks a lot like the guy who chased me. And back in those days, I mean, we were just
teenagers and the guy who chased me was young. But so I have no clue who chased me in whether it was connected at all. I just thought, wow, this is really weird, you know, because the guy could run so fast and was, by the way, I was on
the track team, so that probably helped me too. Sure, but yeah, you know, I have no idea if the two gentlemen who chased me that day were connected with the Easter A rapists, but it does repeat the descriptions of two people several times over time by different detectives. So I just found that very curious and interesting.
And as such, you theorize. Again, no one knows, but you're entitled to theorize, and you have good reason to be able to put things together and make inferences. So tell us what you think might have been the reason why there was two and how do you think these two people are related?
Well, I, you know, it's interesting. I thought, well, gee, you know, is it a far stretch to think that if it was two guys and there was an age gap between them, that it's an older brother and a younger brother that started out together, just kind of trying to, I don't know, break into house, is what if was the case? And then it got entirely too serious and one of them continued on and the other one didn't.
I just tried to look at every I try to be open minded about the possibilities and where this guy came from and why they did what they did, or whether it was just one person. So you know, I don't know. The jury's still out so to speak on whether it was one person or two in the beginning. I think it eventually evolved to be just one person if there had been two in the beginning. So that's just my thought.
You also include information like that, according to Shelby, you spoke of East Area rapist calling one of his victims for a minute. What could he have said and what did they experience in terms of anything noteworthy voice wise, I'm not.
As I don't know as much about the particulars on the phone calls. I know that he called people before he attacked. I know he called people after he attacked. I know, back in the day a lot of people did do crank calls. That was back when you only had a landline. A lot of the kids got bored. They would do, you know, call people up and do stupid stuff, or they would you know, say weird things or mean things like about you know, I'm in are you in the house alone? I can see you that
kind of thing. I mean, so that wasn't unusual. But I know that they have his voice recorded, and I know that that has to be authentic. But again, there were so many people who did those kinds of crank calls back in the day, right, you know, it's hard to say who did what and whether who's the EASTERI rapist and who isn't.
So you include Leslie d Ambrosia, Florida Department of Law Enforcement a criminal investigation analysis you included how much did it reinforce what you were thinking?
Well, it's well, you know, the society in general, I mean, has learned so much about serial killers in the last thirty years. I mean once, once upon a time they thought that they didn't stop, but BTK and others have proved that to be incorrect. They'd stopped for twenty thirty
years sometimes. And so what was interesting about her analysis and was that it was done and it was sometime after nineteen eighty six because they had well what they did was they knew eventually that quite a few of the murders were connected, and so they contacted Leslie de Ambrosia for and in depth. It's like fifteen pages long that tells what her impressions were based on all the
information that she knew at the time. So you know, she talks about how they all the murder victims died as a result of excessive beatings to the head with blunt force instruments, and talks about how they were tied and and it also talks about who she thought the guy was, what he was like, you know, what motivated him and so on, and what did you take.
Sorry, what did you take away in terms of your comparison the person that you you thought in your mind, this brother team that you even say in the book that you thought at one time it might be somebody that you sort of knew. So what did this report do, this profiling that she does, this analysis, What did it do to confirm what you say.
I don't think that I actually knew anybody that I think that it's possible we went to the same schools, but not that I really actually knew who this person was. But you never know. But in her comparisons, you know, basically she thinks the same thing I do. As far as the geography, I've spoken to several people who actually think that's a pretty solid piece of information, that the geography was important. But let's see, I'm looking for something
to quote for you here. He would be further described as manipulative, a chronic liar, unremorseful. I've put some profiles in there, and some diagnoses actually of conduct disorder, things like that. He does not suffer from delusions where there's no sense of reality, and he would know the difference
between right and wrong. But he was very methodical and he took care in the murders, in particular not to get blood spatter on himself after the first After the Smith murders, he planned his attacks very carefully, with great attention to detail. He probably rehearsed his attacks either literally or in you know, in a fantasy. That's like what VTK did. I mean, he was all into fantasy. He
basically looked at every phase of his crime. I mean, the weapons he would use, transportation, travel, roots, just all kinds of different things were pre planned. So it talks about, you know that he enjoyed inflicting pain, and it just goes on to really give you an in depth analysis of who they think this guy is.
Now you also talk about again the comparison of Ted Bundy, but more so the idea that the killer and rapist that Bundy becomes, he emulates that in a lot of ways you compare him to in terms of what he did and overkill and with weapons like logs, like after and you say, right after certain things are reported, he strikes. Accordingly, tell us a little bit more about these connections that you found.
I want to understand exactly what the last part of your question was.
Well, you were talking about certain certain events that were reported about Ted Bundy, and then as a result, East Area rapist would respond.
Right, well, what's interesting. You know, I don't know how closely the timelines follow with Ted Bundy. I just know that when you look at what was being written about Ted Bundy in the newspapers, it was during the same timeframe that this perpetrator had started to also rape and
do all the things he was doing. And I also know that when I read about the Chiomega murders with Ted Bundy and what he did to some of the victims there, it sounded so similar to what the original night Stucker did, in particular in Janelle Cruz's case at the very end that was his last attack after being quiet for five years, and it was so overkill, and it really did sound like what I've read about what Ted Bundy did to his victims in that case, and
so I thought, wow, this is amazingly similar. And I'm sure that when you I mean, you bludgeon someone, you know, it's similar, but it's just the way that he left the bodies, just everything about it. And what was interesting to me too was the date that he came out of his five year retirement there and he showed up on the same day that The Deliberate Stranger was on television,
and that was the movie about Ted Bundy. And this guy comes out of nowhere and attacks Janelle Cruise like that within twelve hours of that movie being shown on national television. It's found it really odd.
Well, I think they lends credibility. That's why I mentioned it as a question to you, because I think it lends a lot of credibility to be falling around well arguably the most famous serial killer of all. And will be noted that next year, Zac Efron will play Ted Bundy in a movie. So even Hollywood's got that idea. So why wouldn't do it this? Pardon me?
I said, they needed to do it again, right, sure, find another kind of play Bundy.
Of course, and at the time they chose Mark Harmon. He is sort of the equivalent of Zach Effron, the boy next door or the good guy, so they had to play that, so, and certainly it is feasible that he could follow Bundy like the nordoriety, really enjoy the notoriety like Bundy, but yet just hold off getting caught and you know, electrocuted. So well, what was interesting things?
Yeah, well what was interesting about Ted Bundy is he really it's amazing he didn't get caught sooner. But his crime scenes were he dumped the bodies everywhere this original Nightstocker, he controlled the scene. He picked out what his crime scene was going to be, and it was in a home and that gave him privacy, and so he he really did take a look. If he was looking at what Ted did, he said, Okay, here's what I need to do differently, because I'm not going to get caught.
I'm the guy who's not going to get caught. And so he really did analyze what he needed to do to be the guy that didn't get caught.
And also, as you go along in that vein, is that when Bundy, as some people say, went from organized to disorganized when he went into this frenzy when he went to Florida and two in one day and really wasn't very careful at all or methodical and seemed much different killer that this guy wanted to have that as his feature was control and whenever he lost control, he learned.
From that, didn't he Yeah, he did, yep.
And made adjustment supportingly.
If he's still alive. And he actually did decide that after nineteen eighty six he had to not do this anymore because it would be better for him if he wants to remain free. He decided not to do this anymore, and he probably got married or maybe a few times had kids. I mean, like BTK, did he settled down like some of them do, and you think they're your next door neighbor and they're a nice guy. You know he fits in?
Sure, sure, And your theory is again no one knows. But your theory is that he is still alive. And the reason why there's still hope in this case is what well, I still well.
I think that because of the DNA analysis and the ability to track, you know, to discard different people who are persons of interest and go, Okay, it's not him, and they just keep going through the lists or going through who they find to be a worthy suspect. I think that they really are pushing hard to try to solve it, So that's the hope. But I don't know. I think that statistically from what I heard, I think the FBI was saying that there's statistically about a ninety
two percent chance that he's still alive. And if he is, then you know, obviously, if we keep pushing on the case, he'll be found. But he also, here's the flip side of that, he could never be found. We may never know who this man is. We may never ever know, and so you know, that's that's the bad part of the mystery.
So in this investigation, I don't want to criticize anyway, but how much do you think any law enforcement agency cares about this case? Are those? Are there people in the FBI or otherwise that this still has a hold on other thinks?
Right?
Right?
I think there are. I think there's a lot of people out there who are working really hard. There's detectives in Orange County, the DA's down there, There's people in every county that he struck in that really do care and really have this case on their mind. They really do want to solve it. So, yes, I think that there's a lot of different people, not just retired law enforcement, but and then there's also a lot of people like me who are trying really hard to figure out or
you know, where is he from? Where is he now? What? You know, how do we find him? And so, and it's kind of scary. I mean, you know, this is a case that scared me to death for a long time. And the only reason I talk about it is because I think that, well, for a long time, there wasn't a lot of publicity. Now there's quite a lot in the last couple of years, which is not a bad thing. It's almost like this guy he was never talked about.
They talked about everybody but this guy, and so now it's his turn to be sort of under the microscope. And again, because of DNA advances, they really did feel that they could solve it the FBI. So yes, there's a lot of dedicated people still on it.
And as you mentioned too, I was surprised, or I'm not surprised, I guess I just wasn't aware of the legions of people that are interested in this case to this day. And they could say this resurgence of the case and importance it would seem is very very encouraging and very welcome, I would say, because if the story like the Zodiac had become where so many people can
be aware of that story. This one has all the elements that Zodiac has in terms of interest and certainly compelling case for many many, many people spoke.
The difference is that he is more deadly than the Zoe. Yeah yeah, and he really, you know, he really could still be out there enjoying his life, and you know, he really the people that he murdered, they deserve to be here. The people that he took their lives from had families and people who cared about them, and they deserve to know.
Absolutely. That's an important case for a lot of people, and I applaud you for your effort to add in a big way to that, to try to find out who this is.
Right and And really the reality for me is in getting this book out here. And I kind of rushed this one out the door really quickly because I, you know, the the law enforcement people who investigated this case so long ago are getting older. A lot of the people that you want to interview or talk to are getting older, and so for me, all of a sudden, I was in a hurry. I had no idea I wanted to even write the book, and then all of a sudden, I was writing the book, and like I said, it
was I felt compelled to do so. But to get the word out basically was my intention here, to honor the victims and their families, to just add my two cents as it were, about where I think he could have come from, whether or not you might know him.
Whoever's out there listening, who knows a guy that could fit the descriptions or the information that I've put in this book and of course the other books that are out there too, and just try to have people open their minds to you know, he maybe he isn't from the East Sacramento, maybe he's from over here, or you know, there's there's a lot of speculation on this case and a lot of people are trying to figure out what fits.
I just I hope that you know, if somebody knows someone that fits this description, they might call the FBI or call somebody that can help.
Absolutely, I want to again applaud you for this and for those that might want to contact you or find out about this work. Is there a facebook page website? Can you tell us about that?
There is a Facebook page for and Pen. There's also a WordPress site and pen thirteen at WordPress. There's also an email address and pen thirteen at gmail dot com. So there's places that you can go and inquire and certainly the books available a couple different places as well.
Absolutely, I am writing another as well. Okay, tell us about that, tell us about that book.
I don't want to get into it at the moment because it's but I am writing something more.
So, like I said, yes, absolutely, okay, well great, well, we look forward to you being able to tell us some information about that now. We look forward to that. I want to thank you very much and for coming on and talking about Murder on his Mind, serial Killer. It has been fascinating. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much for having me. I truly appreciate that.
Well, it's been my pleasure. Thank you very much, and hope to talk to you again soon about it.
Sounds good this book.
Thank you very much. Good night, good night,