Yeardley:  Previously on Chasing the Golden State Killer with Paul Holes. Paul showed us how much the East Area Rapist’s crimes were shaped by geography, such as access to backyards, scalable fences, single-story homes and neighborhoods he seemed to know intimately. But the investigation is about to enter a new and deeply unsettling phase. The public is aware there’s a predator in Sacramento area and the press is now regularly reporting on any updates or the lack thereof. At the same time, communities are gathering to talk about how to protect themselves. And all the while, Paul believes the offender was paying very close attention.

Paul:  He’s obviously following the case in the newspaper and he’s like, “Oh, you don’t think I can attack with a man present? I’ll show you.”

Yeardley:  In this episode, Paul walks us through one of the most chilling questions in the case. What happens when an offender is not only watching his victims, but watching the investigation itself. The crimes are escalating, the attacks are changing, and the illusion that communities can harden themselves and keep their families safe is fading.

Paul:  What I think about is DeAngelo walking out, following these people to their car, probably following them home, and him saying, “There’s a target right there.”

Yeardley:  Episode 4, the Town Hall Target.

Paul:  In March of 1977, Sacramento Bee has an article about the East Area Rapist. And in this article, it says, “The East Area Rapist has never attacked while there was a man in the home, although occasionally there have been children,” as I’ve talked about. So, what does the East Area Rapist do? Not the next attack, but the attack after that. He attacks with a man present. This is where now he’s been challenged. He’s obviously following the case in the newspaper and he’s like, “Oh, you don’t think I can attack with a man present? I’ll show you.” So, this is insight into this offender’s personality, into DeAngelo. So, attack #16, the last attack in that Cordova Meadows neighborhood, which was on a single girl in that neighborhood.

 Then he goes to the furthest east of the Sacramento area, this Orangevale area, and he attacks two co-workers who are having a relationship. They worked at Kaiser.

Yeardley:  They’re co-workers of each other, not DeAngelo.

Paul:  Exactly. The two victims worked with each other. I think they were probably having sort of a–, if you want to call it an affair that their employer couldn’t know about.

Yeardley:  Friends with benefits, maybe.

Paul:  There you go. Something along those lines. And this is where he, from the very beginning, how I explained that when there was a man present, he always had a gun, throws the bindings to the woman to bind up the male. He does this. So, he has already thought, “How can I attack with a man present, but minimize risk to myself?” So, he’s a tactician. He’s thinking ahead. So, in this case, one of the things that stood out, and his sexual assaults were typically very generic. And you said, what does that mean? [giggles]

Yeardley:  Yeah.What’s a generic sexual assault? [giggles]

Paul:  Right. And, of course, I don’t talk about specifics on the sexual assaults on any of the particular victims or some of the things that may potentially traumatize the victims by pulling up memory, but when I say generic sexual assault, he’s always leaving his upper garments on. Fundamentally, he’s just on top of the woman, what we’d call the missionary position. He’s just pulled his lower garments down to where he can sexually interact with the victim. There is some forced oral cop. There is some sodomy in some cases. He is not one that is physically beating the woman either ahead of time, during the sexual assault or after the assault unless they resist. And then in a few cases, he has punched the woman when they start to resist to get them back under control. He is not a physical sadist.

 He is not inflicting pain on these women from a violent standpoint. That would roll over into how we use the term sadist within the rapist or serial killer categories.

Yeardley:  Like a sexual sadist.

Paul:  Some people will say the sexual assault in and of itself is a sadistic act. Maybe in general parlance, you could say that. But the way that I use that term, that has a very specific connotation of the type offender. And DeAngelo is not a physical sadist. He’s a psychological sadist.

Yeardley:  Okay.

Paul:  And in this particular case, the first time that a male’s present, after the male is bound and the dishes have been stacked on him, he takes the victim out to the living area. And in this case, he does something he’s only done once, and it’s this time where he puts high heels on her, makes her straddle him up on the sofa as if he’s carrying out some sort of sexual fantasy with her. That really stood out to me as like, “Okay, so what about her is causing him to interact at that level?” I dug into, is there something about her that he knew ahead of time? Maybe he went to that pharmacy, saw her, thought, “Oh, she’s beautiful”, had fantasies about her, and now he’s living out his sexual fantasies in person with her.

Dan:  So, that article about the East Area Rapist has never attacked while there was a man in the home.

Yeardley:  Right.

Dan:  It’s three weeks later that the East Area Rapist attacks with a man in the home.

Paul:  And he has one attack in between. But you think he’s now got three weeks to strategize. How can I carry that out and prove to the world I can attack with a man present?

Dave:  It’s like a challenge to his competency and ability. And he’s like, “I’ll show you then.”

Paul:  Sure. You think of his psychology. He’s been challenged and he’s met the challenge. Getting back to the sexual sadist, he’s not a sexual sadist in terms of how he’s interacting with his victims, but he is a psychological sadist. And to illustrate that point, there was a case just a few weeks prior to this one in which a woman and her daughter were in a house. It was early morning, husband had just left to go to work. And now there’s a masked man inside this house. And he confronts the woman. She actually puts up quite a fight. She almost gets his gun away out of his pocket as he’s wrestling with her. But ultimately, he’s able to subdue her. And then her 7-year-old daughter comes into the room.

 And so, now, he binds the 7-year-old daughter up. He sexually assaults the mom. And we talked about cat burglars and how they can move around silently inside the house. Many of these victims, once they’re bound, they go– We could never tell where he was at. In this case, mom and daughter are laying next to each other and a lot of time has gone past. And mom asked daughter, “Are you okay?” And daughter’s response was, “shh, mommy.” And immediately he pushes down on the bed right next to mom’s head. He had been standing there the whole time and she could not sense that he was there.

Yeardley:  He was there because she’s blindfolded as well.

Paul:  She’s blindfolded, she’s bound. And, he would move away and come back. But this just really illustrates he’s loving inflicting that type of fear.

Yeardley:  Right.

Paul:  And there is an MO aspect to this type of strategy that he’s employing is that he would never really tell the victims, “Hey, I’m going now.” He would just constantly be moving around and coming back into the room and moving around. And he would frequently go out and take victim’s food, victim’s drinks out in the backyard and stay out there while he’s consuming, come back in, and then he would just disappear. And the victims never knew when he was gone. Some of these victims laid for hours after he had left because they were so scared, he was still inside the house. So, by the time the victims got the courage up to move and get out of their bindings, you could have multiple hours that have passed after he’s left.Well, by the time law enforcement is responding, DeAngelo was already in bed up in Auburn.

[music]

 So, this next case that I’m going to talk about, it’s a little bit fuzzy in terms of exactly what led up to this particular attack, in terms of the details. By attack #21, this is where everybody in Sacramento is scared to death of this offender that’s going around. And so, Sheriff’s Office is having to address the community. So, they were holding these huge town hall meetings, like, high school gymnasiums, completely filled up with people. And one of the Sacramento detectives, Carol Daly, remembers talking to the neighborhood in these town hall meetings, just giving an update, “Hey, this is where we’re at. These are the resources we’re expending. This is how you can keep yourself safe.”

 And an Italian male stood up and was kind of lambasting the husbands that allowed their wives to become victims of the East Area Rapist. Well, that Italian man and his wife become victims.

Yeardley:  Unbelievable.

Paul:  And so, if that is an accurate memory by Carol, then that tells me he chose that couple based on who the man was and was like, “I’ll show you who I am.” Now, Carol’s memory– she’s waffled a little bit. If that was the exact scenario when I was involved in filming a show before I retired and before the case was solved on the Golden State Killer, the producers researching the case determined that the town hall meeting in which this man had stood up was prior to any of the attacks that had men in them. And so, it was like, well, okay, so is Carol just not remembering this right, or is she remembering that it was a different town hall meeting than the one that she originally said it was? So much time has passed. You could see, for Carol, that’s like, “I think this is what happened.”

Yeardley:  But is it fair to say that this man– the same man who said, “How dare you. Your husbands, you boyfriends, who weren’t able to protect your women”, and then later becomes a victim, that those two people are the same?

Paul:  Yes.

Yeardley:  Right. So, whether or not it happened at the first town hall meeting or the 10th or whichever, it sounds like, this man, this Italian man, was chosen because of the comment he made.

Paul:  Yes.

Yeardley:  Right.

Paul:  So this is showing that vindictive personality.

Yeardley:  And that DeAngelo is really following this case closely.

Dave:  He’s at the town hall.

Yeardley:  That’s right, yeah.

Paul:  And I ended up– I went to the Sacramento Historic archives and I found a series of town hall pictures that the Sacramento Bee photographer had taken. The son of one of the Sacramento victims ended up getting heavily involved sort of in the online sleuthing aspect of his mom’s case. And so, we exchanged information. I ended up interviewing his mom a little bit. And then one of the things he wanted was these high-resolution scans I had of these photos. So, I gave those over to him. And those, of course, have now been distributed. So, people are looking at all these men in the audience and zooming in and saying he looks suspicious and blah, blah, blah.

[laughter]

Dave:  They’re like, “It’s the guy in the back with no pants on and a ski mat.”

[laughter]

Dan:  But there’s no indication in any of these photos. You can’t definitively say that’s DeAngelo right there.

Paul:  No, no. There is one of the online personalities that kind of circled a guy and said, “This looks like DeAngelo.” I sent this into Sacramento well before DeAngelo was identified. And they failed to follow up on. And I’m really the one that solved the case. I was like, “Nope, [Yeardley and Paul laugh] that’s not how this works.”

Dan:  So, you think about these town halls and this poor Italian gentleman and his wife, what they had to endure. But after that townhall meeting, what I think about is DeAngelo walking out, following these people to their car, probably following them home, and him saying, “There’s target right there.”

Paul:  Sure.

Yeardley:  And they have no idea.

Dan:  They are completely oblivious to it.

Paul:  Right.

Dave:  And the thing is, DeAngelo is a cop and he has access to information that regular folks do not have access to, like DMV records, license plate info, all those things that he’s going to be able to track people down more so than I as Joe Citizen can go try to do a Google on you right now. He’s going to have better access.

Paul:  I would say, back in the 1970s, like today, it is significantly tracked on who is accessing all this protected information, right?. And there’s audits that are done and–

Yeardley:  And keystrokes are tracked.

Paul:  Yeah. So, let’s say the stereotypical scenario of patrol guy pulls over an attractive woman, and now he goes and looks her up in the system, and next thing, he’s knocking on her front door wanting to go out on a date.

Yeardley:  I had a friend who was stalked by a patrol officer and got her home address from the DMV.

Paul:  Sure. But back in the 70s, I’m sure the ability to track who is accessing information within these law enforcement systems was nowhere near the capabilities of today.

Yeardley:  Sure, because it was on cards and stuff. You didn’t have computer keystrokes quite like we have now.

Paul:  Relative to today, they’re primitive, but there were computer systems. But a lot of what we did were on three by five cards too. I mean to your point Yeardley, that is true. So, he does 22 attacks up in Sacramento, then he goes down to Stockton and Stockton is an hour drive south of basically downtown Sacramento.

Dan:  How far a drive is that from Auburn?

Paul:  It’s going to be a several-hour drive from Auburn for sure. So, in this case, this couple lived in a very nice neighborhood called Lincoln Village West. It’s this lake centric master planned community. The wife and husband are asleep. Wife is awake at the time and there’s like a full moon outside and she hears something towards the sliding door. And she literally watches the East Area Rapist come into her bedroom. She opens up the door, walks in, reaches down, picks up what is basically like a duffel bag and sets it down inside the room. And she hears clinking that sounds like aerosol cans. To this day, we don’t know what that clinking was. But he sees that she’s awake. Flashlight comes out. And then prototypical attack male is forced to lay face down, bound up. She’s taken out to be sexually assaulted.

 During his interactions with the couple inside the room, while he’s sort of standing in the front doorway, the daughter, who I believe was 7 years old, gets up like I think to go to the bathroom and looks down the hallway and sees this masked man standing there and he sees her and he basically makes a statement to the effect of “Oh, I’m just playing with your parents. Right?” And daughter ultimately goes back to bed. He never does anything to her. Well, she ends up– she’s a witness and she saw him. So, she was put under hypnosis. And this is where part of the details about the East Area Rapist came from the 7-year-old girl under hypnosis where he had like a bull like tattoo on his arm.

Yeardley:  This is what the girl is saying.

Paul:  This is what the 7-year-old girl is saying under hypnosis. “He had this belt buckle that had like dueling pistols on it. He had a certain type of ring, of course he’s masked with a T shirt on and he’s got a– I think I describe it as like a belt with a scabbard or a sheath for a short sword.” None of those details about the tattoo or the tattoo definitely is, we can say, no, that is not present, you know, and this is just where this tool of hypnosis oftentimes provides details that you cannot put any faith in at all. With all these old cases I’ve worked, I’ve seen hypnosis being used and it’s like, well, how much reliance can I put on these details?Because people will pull in other memories and feed it as if it’s related to the case and it’s not.

Dave:  And especially with a child that age, forensic interviewers have the title for a reason, because there’s extensive training that goes into interviewing especially prepubescent children.

Paul:  Sure.

Dave:  Language development, cognitive development, all these things. And so, you have to worry about the questions that are being asked. If you’re not doing the questioning appropriately, the resulting information is completely unreliable and hard to defend in court. So, I think about that aspect as like, how do we get to these details? Is I want to know the five questions that led up to that disclosure.

Paul:  Sure. And that makes absolute sense. And that goes to Dave’s expertise in terms of how you interview a 7-year-old girl. In this case, I can’t tell you how much information like the bull tattoo or these dueling pistols, like the online sleuthing community just really gravitated towards those details and did all sorts of research and I’d be getting tips that bull tattoo is this particular military branch with select individuals that would have it. And it just was completely false information that people gravitated and latched onto.

Dave:  Or the belt buckle.

Paul:  Or the belt buckle. It’s like, how am I going to use this belt buckle to narrow the suspect pool? [Yeardley giggles] I don’t care who possibly manufactured it. Give me a list of people who actually have this belt or had the belt buckle.

Dave:  That live in this area.

Paul:  That has something that I can link to the case.

Yeardley:  Right.

Dave:  The guy’s car had tires on it. Thanks. [Yeardley giggles]

Yeardley:  Four of them.

Paul:  Yeah.So some of the interesting details about this case is that while this victim, the female, was being sexually assaulted, she felt a penis inside of her. And then she goes, “What the hell?” And she goes, “There’s a penis on top of me, outside of me.” And she’s going, this man has two. Well, he ended up using a strap on dildo in this case. And I believe the reason is that it already come out in Sacramento with some of the victims saying that he was under endowed. And so, that got out into the press. And so, I believe he’s now going to a different jurisdiction. And with this victim, he’s wanting her to relay, well, this guy may be normal. I don’t know how big the dildo was, but in essence can’t be the East Area Rapist. It’s just that his MO.

 Going against the male, putting the alarm system on the male, separating the woman, the way he’s binding is so distinctive. It’s like, oh, no, it’s the same guy. It’s also possible that he had fantasized about possibly assaulting a woman in this manner. And again, this is sexual experimentation. But just knowing the information about the actual size of his anatomy, I believe that the use of the dildo is more likely that it’s a way that he’s just trying to throw things off, that I’m a different guy than the guy that was up in Sacramento and then in this case, all the victims throughout the series. And obviously he is up close and is very closely interacting with these female victims in sexual manner outside of instances where they would say, well, his breath was a little stale. They all were saying when asked, he had good hygiene. But in this case, the victim said that his body odor was so foul, she felt that it was something that was emanating out of his pores.

Yeardley:  Wow.

Paul:  So, I sat down with this woman in Stockton, I interviewed her, and my go-to was always a certain Denny’s. [laughs]

Yeardley:  That’s where you were interviewing somebody about the worst day of their life?

Paul:  Yes. Meet up there, get some coffee, and there’s always a booth in the back where nobody is sitting around so you can talk openly. [Yeardley laughs] But I asked her, have you smelled that since? And she goes, no, but if I did, I would immediately recognize it. And to this day, I don’t know what it is.

Dan:  So I’m looking at the date, and we’re in early September. Right? So, if you think about that part of California, I’m guessing it’s pretty hot.

Paul:  Yes, very, very hot.

Dan:  Do you know what time this happened?

Paul:  This was at night. However, Stockton is technically Central Valley, and in September, it can be well up over 100, 110 degrees. And at night, it might cool down to 99.

Yeardley:  Yeah.

Dan:  Without knowing this neighborhood and the obstacles that DeAngelo had to overcome, I look at that body odor, and there are two types of sweat. Typically, you have eccrine sweat, which is really the watery based sweat. What we, as K9 officers, what our dogs really hone in on is the apocrine sweat. It’s stress or excitement kind of based, it comes from glands. There’s an odor tied to it. And what that is, that sweat interacts with bacteria on your skin, and it actually creates an odor. And it’s like crack cocaine to our dogs. Our dogs really key in on that. And what we encounter is, you know, people call it fear scent. That’s what people typically call it. There’s a definite odor to it. And our dogs are able to differentiate between eccrine sweat and apocrine sweat.

 So, they might see just normal jogger who’s running, who’s really sweating. They’re not going to key in on that guy. They’re going to key in on the source of this apocrine sweat that they’re sensing. I’m just guessing that maybe that’s what this woman was smelling. Was DeAngelo on his way there may have encountered something that caused stress. It’s very hot.

Paul:  Right.

Dan:  And there are a lot of factors that might create what she’s smelling there. Even though he’s got good hygiene.

Paul:  That’s one of the best theories or probably the best theory that I’ve heard about this particular attack and that odor. I didn’t even think about that.

[music]

 So, one of the other aspects about this case that’s very notable to me is that this neighborhood where this attack occurred, this is not right off the freeway. It’s technically right off of I-5, but I-5 I ended up researching this was not open. It was under construction at the time. And a lot of people come from Sacramento down to Stockton on I5. At the time, the freeway that was open was 99, and that was all the way across town. So, he had to come all the way across town to attack at this location, why?

 Versus well, I’m just going to go down to Stockton and jump off a freeway like he does out in the East Bay in many of those cases. It’s isolation and distance from the prime arterial road. Now that we know DeAngelo all the way from Auburn, why is he going out to this neighborhood? What is drawing him out there? During the time that the East Area Rapist is now starting to attack in Stockton, there was all sorts of witnesses that were seeing him on these levees, running around, and law enforcement would respond. Sometimes there was chases that occurred. There was a thought that in this lake that he’s possibly kayaking across it or using a boat in order to get across it. A lot of it is like, well, you can’t necessarily say, well, it’s all him.

 But there were other residents that had shoe impressions in the backyard. There was one resident in this neighborhood. It was a couple that they had gone on vacation. There was shoe impressions in the mud in their backyard. I actually interviewed the wife. The husband had died, but they had the old style, really deep shag carpeting. And she said, “Paul, I freshly raked my carpeting inside the house.” [Yeardley giggles] There was no impression. There was no shoeprints in that shag carpeting when we left for vacation and I came home and there was shoe impressions all over the carpeting. So, it’s like the East Area Rapist had kind of prowled around the house, had gotten into the house.

 Stockton PD actually staged some of their SWAT guys in the master bedroom closet, waiting for the East Area Rapist to show up and attack this couple.

Yeardley:  Wow.

Paul:  So could you imagine being in there [giggles] with their gun while they’re sleeping? Or at least pretending to sleep.

Yeardley:  I can’t imagine trying to be the couple trying to pretend to be asleep. That would just be a sleepless night. [Paul and Yeardley giggle]

Paul:  Again, he is trying. He’s thinking ahead. He’s looking to how I always say, “You always have to consider the offender from a risk management vantage point”. And in this case, the couple had a pool in the backyard. And out by the pool was one of those old-style landline handsets. Well, the rapist just took that handset and threw it up into the trees. And now it’s off the hook. And anybody from my early days knows you take one phone, you could have five, you could have 10 phones inside the house. If one is off the hook, you have completely disabled the phone system. And he would do that. In that very first attack up in Sacramento, he actually climbed up on a birdbath to try to cut the phone line leading in from the utility pole into the house.

 And it looks like the birdbath broke on him. So, he never was able to complete the task. But in other cases, he would go through the house and just rip the phone cords out of the wall or cut the phone cords, so even when the victims got out of their bindings, they can’t use their own phone. They would have to go to the neighbors. Either they used the neighbor’s phone, or the neighbors were calling the cops from their landlines.

Yeardley:  Right.

Dave:  And just the delays.

Paul:  Absolutely.

Dave:  Delay of not knowing if he’s still there and the delay of having to go to a neighbor and he gets away. While we’re on it, you had mentioned earlier that you’ve been to nearly all of these addresses.

Paul:  I’ve been to every single case between the East Area Rapist and original night stalker crime scenes, every single one.

Yeardley:  Try harder, Paul, try harder. [Paul and Yeardley laughs]

Dave:  You didn’t really try. [Paul laughs] My question is, you knock on a door of these houses, and I don’t know what you did, but I’m wondering if you ever knocked on any doors and said, “Hey, this is who I am. This is what I’m looking into. I was wondering if I could talk to you.” And they have no idea what has happened in their house or how it’s tied to you?

Paul:  No, I did not do that. So, what I would do is I would track the victims down. I would call them, and some of the victims still live in the house today that they were attacked in, and other victims never returned to the house they were attacked in. So, it’s very interesting to see how different people respond. What I found out and to illustrate, and it’s actually the second Stockton attack, and this is a couple that has gone public in terms of “Yes, we were attacked by DeAngelo.” The female victim worked for Barnett Range Developers. And I’ll explain later, but I was really looking at developers in the series to see if one of them could be my attacker. And I really wanted to talk to this victim, thinking that maybe she had interacted with him ahead of time.

Yeardley:  And by developer, you’re talking real estate developer kind of? Okay.

Paul:  Yes. Somebody that would build neighborhoods. So, I thought the best way to approach this couple was to call the husband up. So, I called the husband up, and I just said, “Hey, this is who I am, and I’m looking into the East Area Rapist’s case.” And there was the longest pause ever. And he tells me, “We buried that.” And I said, “Well, sir, I’d really like to talk to your wife because of her job at the time of the case.” And he was like, “Well, you can submit your questions in writing and mail them to me.” And it wasn’t email. It was snail mail. And so, I did. I put a letter in the mail. I didn’t hear from anybody for several months. And then all of a sudden, I get alerted.

 Polly got a phone call. It’s the victim, the female victim. I was like, “Oh, shit.” So, I scrambled into my office, and I talked to her, and she was like, “That’s my husband’s position.” Yes. She goes, “I want to catch this guy?” So, I ended up developing a really good relationship with her. But that was my first observation about, “Oh, these men are really struggling.” And then of course, I’ve talked to several other men since, I met with one of the male victims, and he’s literally crying in front of me. And then another male victim refused to meet with me in person, and he’s crying on the phone. But he is at least providing me some details that I needed as I was pursuing this particular investigative track.

 And so, that’s where, going through this, it’s like, “Oh, you know, there’s the trauma.” But also, as I talk about this next case coming up, there’s also a reason why the male victims had to be focused in on.

 So, this is the 25th case in the East Area Rapist phase of the series. It’s actually in between the two Stockton cases, but it’s not in Stockton. It’s actually backup in Sacramento. The male victim is a concrete contractor, and he was doing a job in the commercial area right next to that Cordova Meadows neighborhood where the East Area Rapist had that strong connection to. That morning, as he’s on that job site, his wife, who sort of handled the administrative stuff for his business, showed up at that job site. Later on, that evening, they’re attacked. Now, they live all the way across Sacramento. But I believe it’s possible DeAngelo observed this couple at that location at that job site.

Yeardley:  How would he have an opportunity to do that?

Paul:  I believe he’s frequenting that Rancho Cordova neighborhood.

Yeardley:  As a cop still?

Paul:  No, this is where he would be off duty in his personal life. It could just be he’s visiting friends that he knows in the area. Don’t know. But anyways, that concrete contractor and his wife become victims. And nothing unusual about how the attack occurred, but the interactions between the East Area Rapist and the male victim was very interesting. It’s very derogatory towards the male victim, much more so than any of the other male victims in the series. And this contractor was a little heavier set at that time. And as he’s laying there bound, the East Area Rapist would come and just slap him across the legs and call him fat boy as he’s walking past him. But what was significant, we know that these types offenders take souvenirs because they want to relive the crimes. They pull out the souvenirs with the sexually motivated crimes or masturbating to the souvenirs. In this case, the East Area Rapist stole the man’s baseball cap that had the name of the concrete company on the cap itself.

Yeardley:  Wow.

Paul:  And I’m like, “He just took a souvenir of the male.” Now, I don’t believe he’s going back and is getting sexual gratification because of that baseball cap. But in essence, he is going, “I own you.” Right?

Yeardley:  Right. It’s a reminder of the dominance.

Paul:  Absolutely. And so, I was like, “Was this couple chosen based on who the man was?” Is this the one instance where I’m like, “I need to go talk to this man.”

[music]

 So, myself and the lieutenant from Sac DA’S office, we go and we talk to him. And this was a year before the case was solved. And this male victim said, “Yeah, you know what? I was not happy with the way I was treated back in the day.” And he goes, “There was other things that happened after our attack that I never told law enforcement.” So, he proceeds to tell us that when he went back to work after the attack, he was at a different job site, not the one by Cordova Meadows. And he had this curb forming machine.And it had like a couple of handles as you would go and pour the concrete to form the curb. And across the handles of this machine, a length of twine had been laid. And he goes, “That twine was identical to the twine that was used to bind me and my wife up.”

Yeardley:  Oh, my god.

Paul:  And I go, I searched the job site. There was no source of that twine. That guy came back and sent me a message, in essence. So, here, now it’s like, is he tracking this guy? This guy is significant to him. And that’s where I believe, in this attack, that couple was chosen because of who the man was. I am absolutely convinced that many of the couples in this series were chosen based on who the man was.

 And I use the example – two guys walking down opposite ways in grocery aisle and they just happened to bump shoulders. And some guys will give each other sort of a hard look. [giggles] Well, if that happens to DeAngelo, he’s going to go, “Oh-

Yeardley:  You’re next.

Paul:  -okay, I’m going to come after you and I’m going to show you.”

Dave:  Because he loves being vindictive and he loves psychological torment.

Paul:  Absolutely.

Dave:  Yeah.

Yeardley:  But it also really speaks to the depth of his insecurity. To use your example, Paul, of being bumped in the supermarket. Unless it’s obviously deliberate and somebody’s trying to mess with you. You’re like, “Oh, I’m sorry.” That’s the hill you’re going to die on. You’re going to pick a fight with somebody who accidentally bumped into you?

Paul:  Sure.

Yeardley:  This guy DeAngelo, him having to go after these men because they’ve somehow made him feel less than says so much about him.

Paul:  It does. Yeardley, I think that’s sort of an interesting thought. You mentioned the term insecurity. After DeAngelo was caught, the last FBI profiler that profiled the unsolved Golden State Killer called me up, and her and I debriefed. And one of the interesting aspects about her perception versus mine of who DeAngelo was, is she said, “Well, he’s very insecure.” And I was like, “Well, hold on. He dominates his victims. He’s like the ultimate in terms of how he is controlling the victims. And, brazen, going in with men present with guns present in the house.” And this is where I started to recognize, okay, as a behavioral analyst, she’s looking at the internal psychology. And then, of course, there’s the external manifestation. And with DeAngelo, it’s likely he’s overcompensating because he’s so insecure.

Yeardley:  Exactly.

Paul:  But this is where now I get a report, let’s say, from a behavioral analyst, and I’m told, well, he’s going to be an insecure male. How does that help me in my investigation? [Yeardley and Paul giggle]

Yeardley:  He’s going to have toenails. [laughs]

Paul:  I need something that I can use. There isn’t a database where I say, “Give me a list of all the insecure males that live in this area.” [Yeardley laughs] I need something that can narrow the suspect pool. [laughs] Now, one of the significant behaviors that the East Area Rapist would do is he would separate the woman away from the male, take her out, lay her down, typically starting face down, bound with her wrist, behind her back, her ankles bound, and then he would turn the TV on and the TV. You know, think about TV in the old days, at 03:00 AM in the morning, there’s no shows being aired. It’s just that static, right?

Yeardley:  The snow.

Paul:  The snow. He would only have the static going, but he would keep the volume to where you couldn’t hear the volume. And in many instances, even with the TV on, he’s putting a towel, a blanket, an article of clothing over the TV screen to kind of mute the glow. And then he’s now proceeding with the sexual assault on the victim. Now, why is he doing this? Well, now, he can see the victim. He can see the fear in the victim. There’s the ability to actually see what you’re doing too. But I also think he is doing this because he enjoys looking at the victim while he is sexually assaulting them. And the fear in their face.

Dave:  That’s his reward.

Paul:  Yeah.

Dave:  Yeah.

Paul:  For sure. And this is what was stunning to me when I was allowed into his house.

Yeardley:  Into DeAngelo’s house?

Paul:  DeAngelo’s house. He gets arrested. We announce to the world he’s the Golden State Killer. Prior to that announcement, I was out at his house before Sacramento CSI and the FBI’s evidence response team were going to start their search. So, this, in part, they wanted to get my eyes and sort of my feedback as to what I’m seeing so that could help guide maybe some of their searching, since I knew the case so well. And also, it was– They knew how much work the team did in order to try to find DeAngelo. And so, in essence, it was like a reward.

 And when I got to DeAngelo’s bedroom and I’m standing in the front door and I’m looking around and I’m seeing his bed, I’m seeing a dresser across the room.And he literally had two targets from the firing range that was showing his pretty tight clusters of shots. And I don’t know what distance he was shooting from, but obviously he’s still very proud of his firearms proficiency. To the right, like, right inside the bedroom was his computer. And the computer monitor had a towel draped over it. Just like what he would do at his crime scenes.

Yeardley:  To the TV.

Paul:  To the TV. And I was like, “He is replicating the environment that he experienced during the attacks.” He is still fantasizing about those attacks.

Yeardley:  Because by the time DeAngelo is arrested, and we’ll obviously get to this, but there had not been an attack in years. Right?

Paul:  His last known case was May of 1986.

Yeardley:  Right. And he’s arrested in-

Paul:  2018.

Yeardley:  2018. So, that is haunting that you’re putting it. Fuck you. I can’t. [Paul  giggles]

Dave:  Old habits, right?

Paul:  Yep.

[music]

Yeardley:  Coming up on Chasing the Golden State Killer with Paul Holes. The East Area Rapist continues to terrorize victims even after the attacks are over. Phone calls, threats, and years of fear reveal another layer of his cruelty.

Paul:  Five years later, she’s working at a Denny’s in Rancho Cordova and she receives a phone call from the East Area Rapist.

Yeardley:  At work.

Paul:  At work.

Yeardley:  That’s so wrong.

Paul:  Sacramento Sheriff’s office early on in the series recognized that the East Area Rapist was calling his victims after the attacks. He has kept track of at least her, and I believe he’s probably kept track of other victims because there’s other victims that receive phone calls from him.

Yeardley:  That’s Coming up on Chasing the Golden State Killer with Paul Holes.

 Small Town Dicks Presents. Chasing the Golden State Killer with Paul Holes is an Audio 99 production. It’s written by Paul Holes and features Detective Dan, Detective Dave and me, Yeardley Smith.

 This series is produced by Jessica Halstead and Monika Scott, executive produced by Ben Cornwell and me, edited by Katie McMurran and Soren Begin with additional editing by Christina Bracamontes, sound supervision by Logan Heftel, design and social media by Andrew Polk. The theme music is composed by Logan Heftel.

 If you’d like to support the making of this podcast, please go to smalltowndicks.com/superfam and hit that little join button. Also, you can stream all episodes at smalltowndicks.com/goldenstatekiller. From all of us at Audio 99, thank you. Thank you for listening.

[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]