The Original Night Stalker

Part Two: Original Night Stalker

The criminal known as the East Area Rapist continues his assault upon women in the Sacramento area, but over time, his modus operandi begins to evolve.

We left off near the end of 1976, and the East Area Rapist had been born. The cat was out of the bag, and now the Sacramento area was painfully aware of it.

Eight victims had been accounted for. Seven of them horribly raped, victims at the hand of this insane, methodical psychopath. However, now that the case was beginning to get heavily publicized in the local news, that wouldn't deter this psychopath in the slightest.

He attacked again, on November 10th, 1976, this time attacking a high school girl that was home alone. He had assaulted and bound her, and grew irate with her upon asking her a rather simple question. He said that she looked familiar, and asked if she went to the nearby American River College. She said no, that she was still in high school, and the perpetrator seemed to not believe her. Investigators aren't sure whether this was a moment of clarity for the attacker or him trying to confuse them yet again, but he seemed to abandon the attack after learning this.

Investigators later learned that the victim's family had lived next door to a similar family, whose older daughter greatly resembled the victim. This daughter *had* gone to American River College, unlike the victim. This began to fuel the belief that this perpetrator would stake out multiple houses at a time, likely striking at one when opportunity presented itself. It's possible that the East Area Rapist was beginning to confuse his crimes, but the confusion would not last long.

At around this time, after the case had gone public, the investigators began to link the investigation to the medical field. At this time, the rate of doctors-per-civilians was rather low, making the medical field not a very common theme. But this early into the investigation, there had been four links to the medical field surrounding our nine victims. One victim's family had a doctor, one had an RB, one of the victims was pregnant, and another lived next door to a doctor. In the latter case, with the victim living next door to the doctor, investigators found footprints leading around the neighbor's house, which fed into the theory that the East Area Rapist was staking out multiple houses at a time.

This, of course, also isn't including that many of the victims had "accidental injuries," which investigators used as fuel for this theory's fire. Many of the victim's suffered small cuts from the perpetrator's knife, and he often traced his knife along their abdomen in a similar fashion as morticians. He would never purposefully maim these women, but investigators saw a link between his already-violent actions and these pseudo-sadistic "accidental injuries."

Needless to say, having nearly half of your current assaults linked to one profession isn't something an investigator is going to pass up easily.

At around this time, the 7th victim, whose story I recounted in the introduction of the first episode, found an odd piece of potential evidence. A spoon, found underneath the couch in her living room. Many would try and reasonably rebut this as a silly piece of evidence, but it leads us straight into our first real suspect.

Investigators had released a BOLO alert, also known as a "Be On The Lookout" alert. The BOLO alert was for someone of the similar dimensions to the East Area Rapist: five-foot-nine, 170 pounds, young, with blue eyes and either blonde or brown hair. One of the suspects brought back was a man named Art Pinkton, who matched the description nearly to a 'T.' He was a bit older than the perpetrator had been described as, but that didn't stop investigators from being astonished at the likelihood of this being their serial rapist.

Pinkton was found with a serrated steak knife, a seperate pocket knife, three screwdrivers, a round file, two rocks, a business card for a psychiatric social worker and... oh yeah, a spoon in his pocket. This was too unlikely a coincidence for investigators to overlook, so he was brought in and investigated further. They discovered that Pinkton had been arrested about ten years prior for a series of rape charges. Ever since his release from prison, he had been classified as a mentally-disoriented sex offender, and hadn't been able to get a job due to his societal status. Investigators reasoned that this gave him plenty of time to pursue the type of stalking that the East Area Rapist was known for.

Obviously, Pinkton denied all involvement in the assaults. But, peculiarly, his family didn't feel the same. One of his sisters, along with her husband, came forward to investigators with potential evidence. They told of how Pinkton was obviously mentally unbalanced, and how he had spoken of his desires to kill someone in the past. Apparently, according to these distressed family members, he had gone as far as lying in wait with a gun for a chosen woman to walk by, but she had decided to do something different that day, saving her own life.

Pinkton's sister offered up his tool box up to investigators, hoping that some evidence could be found and her brother could be helped. Unfortunately, there was nothing in his tool box linking him to any crimes, just old, half-rusted tools. Pinkton was released, due to lack of evidence.

Lead investigator Richard Shelby, the author of "Hunting A Psychopath," one of the best books on the subject of the East Area Rapist, personally linked Pinkton within two city blocks of two separate rapes in San Diego, both of which matched the M.O. of the East Area Rapist. But there was no evidence or reason for him to keep Pinkton locked up, so he had to release him.

Police officers, who were staking out Pinkton's house for any sign of activity, had reported and seen nothing on the night the East Area Rapist struck again, seemingly eliminating him as a suspect. He would move away from the area a little while later, further proof against him.

Years later, after DNA testing became commonplace, Pinkton's DNA was matched up against that supposedly left behind by the East Area Rapist, to no match. Investigators became comfortable knowing that they hadn't let the perpetrator slip away, but Pinkton found himself in trouble just a few years ago for the death of his own brother.

With the serious lack of other suspects, the upper police brass became desperate to appease the public with an arrest or a track on a supposed suspect. Despite some of the lead investigator's resistence, a correlation was made between our perpetrator, the East Area Rapist, and another similar serial offender known as the Early Bird Rapist. Both had been plagueing the Sacramento area, but had completely different M.O.'s and almost an antithetical physical description.

The East Area Rapist was described as lean and fit, whereas the Early Bird Rapist was not so, more round and not fit in the slightest.

The police brass decided to pursue the two as the same, leading to a slight bungling of the early investigation. We don't know how many potential suspects were let go or eliminated because they didn't match the physical description of the Early Bird Rapist, which DNA would prove as an entirely separate case years later.

The perpetrator would strike again on December 18th, at yet another high-school aged girl that had been left home alone. And just like the prior assault, this victim lived next to an older, similar-looking girl. The perpetrator would ask many times when her parents were expecting back, implying that he had been watching the house for quite a while.

Everything seemingly went by-the-book for this perpetrator here. But found at the scene was a band-aid, which didn't belong to the victim or the victim's family. This band-aid had a small amount of blood found, identified as type-O, which later would go on to be a source of confusion for the investigation.

At around this time, the police decided to hold a public forum to address the public about their understably-serious concerns. Many of the nearby citizens came out, and were addressed by the investigators in charge of the case.

This public forum has become the linchpin of the East Area Rapist myth, to many. So many rumors have been thrown out about it, that the East Area Rapist attacked one of the citizen dissidents the very next night, and that a potential suspect can be spotted in a theorized photo from the forum. I haven't found anything to substantiate these rumors, although they DO have some basis in reality.

The fact is, a man with a thick Italian accent did stand up and berate the police force for their ineffectiveness and their inability to find the perpetrator. Many of the myths regarding the East Area Rapist claim that the man, in a primal act, puffed out his chest and declared that he would never allow such a terrifying thing to happen to his wife. I cannot claim that this is truth, and it seems to be a thing of fiction, dramatized by somebody somewhere.

Another rumor persists that this Italian native and his wife were attacked a day later, in a power move perpetrated by the East Area Rapist. That is a myth. Him and his wife were attacked, but it didn't happen for nearly seven months.

The Original Night Stalker was anything if not patient.

Another interesting note can be learned from the public forum. Investigator Richard Shelby, one of the lead detectives, had made a note of officers to search after anything interesting. Even at this point, in early 1977, it was common practice for criminals to revisit their crime scenes and taunt investigators. It wasn't too far-fetched for Shelby and the other investigators to stake out the public forum in hopes that it would attract the rapist himself.

One of the police officers pulled over a tan Volkswagen Bug. The reason that the officer was so interested in the driver was because of their physical nature: they stood a five-foot-nine, about 175 pounds, and had dark with greenish hazel eyes. Upon further investigation, Shelby and the detectives discovered that he was an employee of the Department of Justice, in some capacity. He wasn't able to be arrested, due to the innocent nature of his presence there, but the presence of such a suspect can't be overlooked.

Many theories have persisted that the East Area Rapist was present at the night of the public forum, but incredibly, they can't be discounted.

1977 had officially started, and he attacked again on January 19th and January 24th. This was shortly after the public forum, in which many had been aware of what, exactly, the investigators had been looking for. During the public forum, the investigators told the public that the perpetrator had been using an icepick in his assaults, despite later recanting that information.

However in these assaults, timed right after the public forum, the perpetrator began using an icepick as a weapon. Many find it more than a coincidence, and a likely reminder that the East Area Rapist was presence at the town meeting.

The police force began a specific task force aimed at catching this serial offender. In addition to a handful of detectives focused primarily on identifying and finding this attacker, there were an equal amount of "X-Ray Units," plainclothes officers that would prowl the area of the assaults at night. They would utilize the same tactics as the East Area Rapist, by marching around the same type of areas, climbing through trees and shrouded areas, etc. They found many suspects, likely deterring other similar crimes, but were unsuccessful in catching the man they were looking for.

This podcast is really a slippery slope. I try not to inject too many of my opinions in the matter, because I would love for this to be a fact-based analysis of the story not judged by my emotion. But this is a case that's hard to narrate chronologically, because there is so much information that can be gleamed throughout each case. And, because there are so many incidences that happened, I don't want the podcast to get bogged down with case files and irrelevant details.

Needless to say, the East Area Rapist continued on his tear throughout 1977. He would strike again on February 7th, against an unsuspecting mother. This mother was one of the bold that fought back, perhaps for fear that something would happen to her young daughter in the very next room. She nearly freed herself and won over the assailant, even going as far as taunting him for his less-than-impressive man parts afterwards. Detective Richard Shelby would later write in his book that this woman was a personal hero to him, and still is. Can't blame him, really... this woman sounds like an absolute badass in the face of such horror.

He struck again on March 8th. He was now attacking his victims at an unrelenting pace, on victim number 14 in just a matter of months. This time it was a 37-year woman that was woken up at around 3:00 AM with a bright flashlight in her face. This was becoming a hallmark of the East Area Rapist... he would wake up his victims with the intimidating, confusing glow of a handheld flashlight, and begin the threats before they even had the chance to come to their senses.

It wasn't two weeks later, on March 18th, that he would strike at a 16-year old that was arriving home from her job at Kentucky Fried Chicken. At this point, it was becoming apparent that the perpetrator didn't care for the victim's age, ethnicity, or health. He was attacking women in their early 40s just as often as he was assaulting teenage girls. Our perpetrator wouldn't even care if they were pregnant, as had been the case in a few of this incidences.

However, it was two weeks later that the East Area Rapist would take the next step into sadism.

April 2nd, 1977. It's 2:30 AM, and a woman is awoken to the shaky, bright blur of a flashlight in her face. Before she can jump up, a voice speaks down to her in gritted teeth.

"Don't make a sound," he says. "Do you see this gun?"

She can't, but that doesn't stop her from saying "yes." No one in this situation, outside of a fictional action hero, would say otherwise.

The perpetrator orders her to wake up her boyfriend, who is asleep next to her. The boyfriend wakes up in a start, but the perpetrator shines the flashlight in his face now. He commands the woman to tie up her boyfriend, and shows her some shoelaces that have been laid out ahead of time.

She follows through with the demands, tying up her own boyfriend to the perpetrator's satisfaction. The perpetrator, wearing the atypical outfit of a ski mask with a dark jacket and dark pants, demands through gritted teeth to know where their money is, or else he's going to kill them like he did a family in Bakersfield.

The two victims are obviously worried about making it out of this situation alive, but none more so than the woman. Unlike the boyfriend, she has two kids sleeping in nearby bedrooms... a son and a daughter, both under ten years old.

The perpetrator takes the boyfriend's wallet and leads the woman into the living room, telling the two that he doesn't trust them to be in the same room. The boyfriend considers trying to free himself, but the perpetrator comes back into the bedroom with an impromptu failsafe. He brings with him dishes, which he decides to stack atop the boyfriend's back while he begins his ransack of the house.

If the boyfriend tries to move, almost at all, the dishes come straight off of his back and onto the floor, a loud enough noise to alert the perpetrator from rooms away.

The perpetrator does the same thing to the woman while he searches the house, stopping multiple times to untie her and rape her. In-between the random looting and sexual assault, the perpetrator decides to indulge in the family's kitchen leftovers, matching what we've heard of the East Area Rapist before. He would come back and put some of her high heels on her before continuing, almost at random.

It's worth noting, at this point, that the suspect had been robbed months beforehand, of what we cannot say. During this attack, the family poodle, a breed of dog already notorious for being poor guard dogs, did almost nothing. It didn't even bark. Many have attributed this to the East Area Rapist scoping out the house beforehand and becoming "known" to the dogs. This wouldn't be the last time this point would be addressed.

After the hours of torment and abuse, the rapist had left, but it goes without saying that these two victims had been traumatized beyond belief. But at this point, it was quite obvious that our criminal was not only learning from his mistakes, but he was escalating at a truly unrelentless pace.

The investigators began to learn more about the motives of the East Area Rapist throughout this time, but he was still an enigma to them. Psychologists had narrowed down the possible job descriptions to including utility employees, as many of the eyewitnesses to the criminal had seen him checking meters in neighborhood houses days, if not weeks, in advance.

The psychologists were narrowing down the description of the killer even further, including the likelihood that he would live 10-15 miles from where the crimes took place, and would most likely bike to work every day. Funnily enough, the investigation squad working under Richard Shelby found a likely suspect who completely fit the description.

This man had once worked for the city of Visalia, living just outside of town. He biked to work constantly, and had for years. Two days after the Visalia Ransacker was nearly caught by Detective McGowan, before shooting out the officer's flashlight, this utility employee filed for a transfer. Where to, you may ask? A suburb just outside of Sacramento, about 10 to 15 miles away from where most the crimes were centered.

Detective Shelby & Co. investigated the man, taking Detective McGowen with them to question the suspect. Neither could come up with any definitive proof on the suspect, eventually eliminating him because of his physical proportions... the East Area Rapist was described as thin and athletic, whereas this man was not. He biked to work every day, that much was certain, from his gigantic, tree-trunk legs, Shelby notes in his book, but he was most definitely not the man they were looking for.

However, this type of coincidence can't be overlooked. In a case that is frought with "what ifs," this man remains one of the biggest, at least in my eyes.

The identity of the East Area Rapist eluded all of the detectives working on the case. Neighborhood eyewitnesses were reporting strange dealings in the days leading up to assaults, noticing a trend of sightings that would plague a neighborhood. People described a man running from the area of the crime just minutes afterwards, or of normal, foreign-looking cars driving around the neighborhood constantly in recent weeks.

One of the many deterrants to finding the criminal was the overall description of him. A vast majority of the sightings had the basics down: he stood about 5-foot-9, 170 pounds, with either blue or hazel green eyes, and normal-looking features. All of the victims even reported that he was in-shape, lean, very young, and most likely shaved his legs, as they would be very brittle during the sexual assaults, similar to a man's face just days after shaving.

But one of the things that drove investigators crazy was the unreliability of the suspect's hair color. Many spotted a victim with dark brown hair, and others would report a man with light brown hair. Many said he was blonde, but a few later cases would even report a young man with odd-looking gray hair. A few of the investigators began to realize that this suspect, who most likely had a constant amount of supplies at his disposal, was probably using an assortment of wigs to confuse possible descriptors.

It apparently worked, because he was never caught and the East Area Rapist was nowhere near finished with his spree of terror.

The East Area Rapist, now bored with attacking single women, began to set his sights on couples. He would attack another couple on April 15th, in an almost identical manner to the one before. Then again on May 3rd. And again, just two days later, on May 5th, to a pair of friends that weren't even a couple.

One of the couples consisted of a man and a woman who worked at a pharmay together, and another had just gone through a dental procedure and was taking a generic brand of codeine for the pain. The perpetrator identified the off-brand drug name, and demanded to know where the victim's codeine was. This indicated that he was knowledgeable in pharmaceuticals, and furthered cemented the theory that he was related to the medical field.

The perpetrator continued to strike. He attacked a couple on May 14th. And then on May 17th. And again on May 28th.

During the last two, he began to give larger, broader threats. He threatened to start killing people if he saw news of the attack on TV or in the newspaper. He demanded for the victims to tell the "pigs" - presumably the cops - that he was serious.

Of course, they wouldn't have to. The East Area Rapist would tell them himself.

That phone call was just one of many that the East Area Rapist made to law enforcement in the year after he started his attacks. By that point, in December, the East Area Rapist had become an urban myth, growing to infamous proportions in the Sacramento area within just over a year.

After the incredibly frequent attacks in May, the East Area Rapist had disappeared for a few months. The investigation continued, with the police zeroing in on many different suspects that included a local preacher with shady character flaws and a local Air Force brat with enough anger and mental issues issues to put him on a watchlist for future crimes, to say the least. But they had no success. As is with every lead in this investigation, it eventually turned up empty.

Sacramento began to breathe a sigh of relief, hoping that the criminal had eased away for at least the time being. But their peace was short-lived, as the East Area Rapist came back in full force in September, attacking yet another couple. This time, however, he attacked not inside the confines of Sacramento, but about an hour south in Stockton, California. He wouldn't make this a habit, moving back to Sacramento just a few weeks later.

Several things continued to repeat themselves. Dogs would refuse to bark at this masked intruder. The perpetrator would often be considered foul-smelling, with several of the victims indicating that he either had strong body odor or incredibly bad breath. Also, his small penis was noted again and again.

One of the things that began to get noticed was the perpetrator's abhorrence of heat. In many of the houses, the East Area Rapist would either turn off the heater or try to dismantle it entirely. Investigators didn't think much of it at the time, but when it's taken into account alongside his frequent breaks to step outside or go to the fridge, it's likely that he had some physical aversion to heat or even maybe an illness that plagued him. Taking us back to the bloodhounds from the first episode, that identified either a drug dealer or a physically sick person, it's beginning to look like our suspect was suffering from something. Of what, we have no idea, but it would help explain his absences throughout his criminal career.

Investigators began to notice something else entirely: very rarely did the suspect ejaculate. These most likely weren't rapes of a sexual nature, and this swung the case fully into the sadist camp of thinking. The perpetrator wasn't utilizing these crimes for his own perverted desires, but most likely in an effort to cause these victims pain. This would also explain the taunting phone calls placed weeks, months, and years later. Many of the local newspapers began to run with the theme that, because the perpetrator wasn't usually interested in his victims sexually, that he was likely a closeted homosexual.

During the attack on October 1st, back in the La Riviera and Rancho Cordova area of Sacramento, the East Area Rapist woke up a pair of young lovers. The couple had a shotgun leaning against a nearby wall, and the Rapist tried to goad the young man, just 21 years old, into going for it. He was challenging his victims and taunting them at the same time, because investigators later found that the bullets from the shotgun had been taken out ahead of time and lined up underneath the bed.

The East Area Rapist was now breaking into homes and dismantling the defense systems these couples had in place to protect themselves. He knew what he was doing, and he was trying to emotionally torment these victims in addition to the physical torture.

He would attack couples again on October 21st and 29th, with the same M.O. Then he attacked an elder mother and her teenage daughter on November 10th, but both victims insisted that no rape had taken place. On December 2nd, he attacked a sleeping mother just minutes after her husband had left to go hang out with some friends.

1978 began, and he would until January 28th to attack his next victims, a pair of teenage girls that were home alone for a few hours that night.

Things were going just as the East Area Rapist had likely imagined. But the water of the investigation would get a little murkier just a few days later.

*gunshots*

It's February 2nd, 1978, at around 9:00 in the evening. A pair of gunshots break the cold silence of the night, alerting this friendly neighborhood to danger.

Then, a woman's screaming. It's not coming from a house, from from outside. A backyard, in a neighborhood of Rancho Cordova, where the majority of the East Area's Rapist strikes have been occuring.

Some brave, concerned dare to look. At least one or two rushes to the phone to call 911, but are interrupted just a moment later.

*gunshots*

Brian and Katie Maggiore were a young couple living in Rancho Cordova in the early months of 1978, having both moved there just months prior. Brian was a sergeant in the Air Force, having been previously stationed in Alaska. He and Katie were both alumni of Fresno High School, presumably high school sweethearts.

Brian was just 21 at the time he was shot and killed, and Katie was 20 when she died, just moments later.

The two had been married for a little over two years, and had been living at an apartment in Rancho Cordova for mere months. Katie had been living in Fresno while Brian was stationed up in Alaska, so the two were probably excited to be together. They had a small dog named Thumper, whom the two were walking on this fate-filled evening of February 2nd.

Very little is known of how or why these two love-birds were singled out by this shooter. One of the main stories repeated over and over again is that their dog, Thumper, likely a little poodle of sorts, somehow slipped loose and took a run into a neighboring backyard. The two gave pursuit of their small dog, according to this story, and ended up in the wrong backyard.

It's possible that they stumbled upon a secret of sorts: maybe they encountered our Rapist as he was unmasked and stalking another house. Perhaps they knew who he was, and could identify him as one of their many neighbors. Many lean on this being a part of this shooting, because the East Area Rapist hadn't killed anyone as of yet, and the shooting didn't match his modus operandi in the slightest.

However, we do know for a fact that somehow, Brian and Katie ended up coming across a shooter, who chased them through a couple of backyards before catching up to them and killing both.

To this day, the murder of Katie and Brian Maggiore has only been linked to the East Area Rapist, but not confirmed. The only evidence found was a small pair of ligatures found near the scene... ligatures similar to those that the East Area Rapist brought with him to his crimes. A nearby neighbor had nearly avoided becoming a third victim, when one of the stray bullets came in through his living room window and missed him by inches.

A couple of witnesses recalled seeing a suspect similar to the East Area Rapist fleeing the scene of the crime. But this suspect was taller, standing well-over six feet, and had been wearing cowboy boots and a leather jacket, items never before associated with the Rapist.

Another suspect had been spotted hours prior, with this one much more resembling the East Area Rapist. He stood the proper height and wore the traditional blue ski jacket associated with the Night Stalker. But this suspect had been seen with a small mustache, and the Rapist had never been spotted with facial hair during any of his crimes.

This is when the investigators began to believe that there was either an opportunist in the area, or it was likely that the East Area Rapist had an accomplice.

By this time, in 1978, police were used to the idea of copycats trying to pass off their crimes as East Area Rapists crimes. They presumed that they'd get away with their crimes, but relied on the media for their information and often got important details wrong that led to their capture.

However, during one case of the East Area Rapist breaking in and terrorizing a young couple, they had reported hearing a car honking multiple times outside, on the street. On more than one occasion, this led to the Rapist taking a break and stepping outside for a moment or two. They even reported hearing the doorbell ring a few times in quick succession, leading to another break from the rapist.

Investigators didn't know what to do with that information at the time, but now with two suspects alleged in the Maggiore murders, they began to seriously debate the prospect of the East Area Rapist having an accomplice.

It wouldn't explain WHY the crimes were committed, but it would help them to expain the HOW.

The police had long been investigating how the East Area Rapist was able to cover so much ground. They had long suspected that he scoped out most of his targets during the day, using a disguise or a job to pose as a friendly, neighborhood worker.

Many of the houses he struck were located nearby other houses that were for sale, leading to a thought that he was involved in real estate. But then that idea quickly spiraled into another, that he would scope out the empty houses that were for sale first, learning to see what kinds of windows the nearby houses had in common, the types of locks, the floorplans, escape routes, etc.

Quite a few of the houses in the area were also under construction, or were having some type of work done. At more than one of the East Area Rapist's crime scenes, they found paint marks, which implied that the perpetrator might have been involved in construction or painting. Paired up with the knowledge that he often had strong body odor and was physically fit, it seems to be a pretty solid theory.

But another theory came from the victims themselves, after the crimes had been committed. We already know that in the weeks leading up to the assaults, the victims would get phone calls from the perpetrator. Only occasionally would he actually talk to the victims, often in quick, veiled threats before hanging up himself. He would usually call his victims afterwards, taunting them, and the police would try and "trap" the phone, so that they could trace the call. But almost every single time, after successfully trapping the phone, the calls would stop.

A few of the victims reported that, after they had been assaulted, they would try and make calls but the line would go dead. This was back in the day when homes still had land lines, so they would call out the phone company to repair it, only to have the same results, regardless of the phone. Even when they would change their number, the problems would persist.

On one occasion, the victim had been getting hang-up phone calls in the weeks leading up to her assault. Just two days before her assault, she had the phone number changed, but that didn't stop the caller. She found it likely that the perpetrator worked for the phone company, and had access to the phone numbers of the victims.

Police began to get worried, because none of their ideas were working. Despite nearly coming across the Rapist multiple times, none of their tricks were working. While many would theorize this as the East Area Rapist being a cop himself, or having access to the police, Detective Richard Shelby notes that it's probably more likely that the suspect had a police radio on him, and could overhear whenever the police were planning on trying to trick or capture him.

The East Area Rapist, at this point, was becoming the thing of nightmares. He now had upwards of thirty victims, not including their families he had terrorized in the process. And while he was still called the East Area Rapist by the area of Sacramento, he would soon set his sights elsewhere. After the murder of the Maggiore family, the East Area Rapist all but disappeared from the Sacramento area, returning at random intervals over the next few years.

For now, the East Area Rapist turned his attention south, focusing on cities like Danville, Fremont, Concord, and San Jose. It would still be some time before he moved down to the Los Angeles area, but he would slowly start to make his way there.

For all of the atrocities committed by this assailant thus far, the worst chapters were yet to come.