The Golden State Killer - Part 1:  A Horror Beyond Belief | #460

Summary

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RedHanded Podcast

The Golden State Killer - Part 1: A Horror Beyond Belief | #460

Release Date: July 23, 2026
Hosts: Hannah & Ceruti

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Episode Overview

In this gripping first installment of a three-part deep dive, Hannah and Ceruti unravel the terrifying timeline and psychology behind the Golden State Killer, one of America’s most prolific and elusive serial offenders. Tracing his crimes from early burglaries through a reign of rape and violence that haunted California for over a decade, the hosts detail his shifting MO, the impact on individual survivors, and the systemic failures that let him evade capture for years. The episode pays particular attention to the emotional devastation wrought on victims and communities, as well as the culture of indifference towards sexual violence in the 1970s, setting the stage for the killer’s evolution from ransacker to murderer.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Golden State Killer: Introduction & Impact

• Opening narrative paints the chilling picture of Chris Pedretti’s attack while practicing piano at home (03:10).
  • Quote: “Chris was far from alone. Years later, she would realise that she was just one of at least 49 women who had been sexually victimised by the same man.” – Hannah (06:45)
• The killer’s multi-county reign: Ransacking, rape, and eventually murder across at least 11 California counties (07:24).
  • "From Sacramento to San Francisco to Los Angeles. This worm in a human costume killed 13 people and robbed over 120 homes." – Hannah (07:24)

Multiple Names, One Predator

• The Golden State Killer was formerly known by many names:
  • Visalia Ransacker, Rancho Cordova Prowler, East Area Rapist, Diamond Knot Killer, Original Night Stalker, and finally, the Golden State Killer (08:07–08:33).
  • Quote: "I only knew of three of those names. The East Area Rapist, the Original Night Stalker, and the Golden State Killer." – Ceruti (08:33)
• MO evolution: Not just murder—he started with burglaries, escalated to sexual assaults, and eventually to killing. His methods and appearance changed over nine years, complicating investigations (09:00, 09:12).

Barriers to Justice & Law Enforcement Failures

• Jurisdictional challenges: Fragmented police and sheriff’s departments across counties made information sharing difficult. Ego and rivalry prevented crucial cooperation (10:23).
  • “There’s already from the off two agencies who aren’t that great at working together.” – Hannah (10:23)
• Cultural indifference toward rape: Rape had a three-year statute of limitations, and was not treated as a violent crime, with many survivors’ stories ignored, minimized, or met with shame (39:21–41:13).
  • Quote: "Rape is not considered a violent crime. It's barely considered a crime. It's really quite shocking." – Hannah (39:21)

Michelle McNamara & the Power of Armchair Investigation

• True crime writer Michelle McNamara championed the unification of the case under the name "Golden State Killer," connecting previously fragmented reports (18:48–19:56).
  • Quote: "Michelle had a lot of cases that she'd researched... The Golden State Killer was by far the one that she spent the most time on." – Ceruti (21:37)
• Her blog True Crime Diary and relentless research were instrumental in reframing the story as a statewide crisis and inspiring renewed investigation (21:11–22:20).

The Early Years: From Ransacker to Rapist

• First phase (1970-75): Began as the Visalia Ransacker: burglaries, odd thefts, animal cruelty, psychological boundary-pushing (27:41–32:43).
• Notable escalation: In 1975, the ransacker fatally shot Claude Snelling during a botched abduction attempt (33:32–35:11).
• After Snelling’s murder, the ransacker relocated and became the East Area Rapist, shifting his focus to sexual assaults (35:44).

Operating in the Shadows: Signature Behaviors

• Meticulous surveillance: Stalking, hiding in homes for hours before attacking. Victims noted small oddities weeks before attacks (52:45).
• Dominance and psychological terror: Killing large dogs (especially German Shepherds) to demonstrate power, moving items in homes to unsettle victims, making survivors doubt their own perceptions (30:52).
  • "He was in it for the thrill of knowing that people were terrified of him." – Ceruti (32:43)
• Sadistic rituals: Forcing women to perform humiliating acts, balancing items to punish movement, shifting from solo women to couples to maximize helplessness and emasculation of men (85:22–87:42).
  • "The East Area Rapist's biggest high was the feeling he got when he made men feel helpless." – Ceruti (75:22)

Victim Testimony & Trauma

• Chris Pedretti (Victim #10): Story of a lifetime of silence, shame, and identity reduction to a number among dozens (03:10–06:45).
• Phyllis Henneman (Victim #1): Provided a powerful courtroom statement in 2020:
  • Quote: “Life as I knew it irrecoverably changed that day… The ringing of the telephone invoked terror, Afraid I would hear his voice again when he called to taunt me, as he did in January of 1978.” – Phyllis Henneman, impact statement (49:15–51:13)
• Jane Carson (#5): Survived an assault with her child in the home, forever haunted by the experience and the attacker’s personal taunting (51:13).

Profiling, Police Theories & Forensic Roadblocks

• Early criminal profiling misunderstood his behaviors, missing connections between ransackings and sexual assaults (69:56–70:59).
  • "They do have profilers. 11 different profilers. Profiles were made of him. They just weren't helpful because they... didn't have all of the totality of evidence." – Hannah (70:35)
• Forensic evidence limited, e.g., blood type found at a crime scene only narrowed it to 35% of the population (76:24).

Escalation and Community Panic

• Sacramento’s reign of terror: By 1977, attacks increased to a frenzied two per month. Police were forced to end their media blackout under enormous public pressure (59:30–61:23).
• Victims evolved: From solo women to couples, with new rituals to maximize power and psychological scars (74:37).
• Towns lived with chronic fear: Sleeping in shifts, porch lights on all night, skyrocketing lock sales, and civic exhaustion (71:29–73:12).

Psychological Analysis & Power Dynamics

• Analysis suggests a deep crisis of identity and masculinity, with small penis fixation impacting his behavior and modus operandi (57:07–59:30; 88:23–92:45).
  • “He just has zero concern about anyone catching him in the act.” – Hannah (55:57)
  • "The compulsion to rape, to dominate, to break in, to, you know, just destroy lives is so, so strong in him." – Ceruti (63:07)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote/Highlight | |-----------|---------|-----------------| | 06:45 | Hannah | "Years later, she would realise that she was just one of at least 49 women who had been sexually victimised by the same man." | | 21:37 | Ceruti | "Michelle had a lot of cases... The Golden State Killer was by far the one she spent the most time on." | | 29:50 | Hannah | "He just wants you to know that he has been there." | | 32:43 | Ceruti | "He was in it for the thrill of knowing that people were terrified of him." | | 39:21 | Hannah | "Rape is not considered a violent crime. It's barely considered a crime. It's really quite shocking." | | 49:15 | Phyllis Henneman (via Hannah) | "Life as I knew it irrecoverably changed that day… The ringing of the telephone invoked terror, Afraid I would hear his voice again when he called to taunt me." | | 75:22 | Ceruti | "The East Area Rapist's biggest high was the feeling he got when he made men feel helpless, attacking their pride, exposing their inability to protect those they loved." | | 92:45 | Ceruti & Hannah | “It’s like... stripping away of identity and meaning and purpose for a man. And. Yeah, the negative consequences... Not all men, but some men like this, of course. ...The majority of women who are killed by men, it is as a consequence of emasculation. And why is that so much more powerful than anything else?” |

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Important Timestamps

• Chris Pedretti’s Attack & Police Response: 03:10–06:45
• Discussion of Names/MO Evolution: 08:00–09:30
• Jurisdictional Investigation Barriers: 10:23–11:40
• Rise of Michelle McNamara: 18:48–22:20
• Visalia Ransacker Escalates to Killing: 33:32–35:11
• Cultural Attitudes to Rape in 1970s: 39:21–41:13
• Victims’ Survivor Statements: 49:15–52:45
• Police Profiling and Forensic Limits: 69:56–70:59, 76:24
• Sacramento Panic & Media Blackout Ends: 59:30–61:23
• Sexual Dysfunction, Power & Escalation: 57:07–59:30, 88:23–92:45

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Tone and Language

The hosts’ tone throughout is empathetic, darkly humorous, and deeply invested in victim advocacy, refusing to sensationalize the killer while highlighting survivor resilience and systemic failings. Their conversation is unflinching about the details of trauma, the misogyny of police responses, and the enduring damage inflicted on individuals and communities.

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Preview for Next Episode

The episode closes with Hannah promising a transition into the killer’s “serial killing years,” noting that even more grisly details and psychological insights are to come, but reaffirming focus on victims—like survivor Phyllis Henneman and her powerful assertion of agency:

• Quote: "I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become." – Phyllis Henneman (99:43)

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For further details and the continuation of this disturbing but essential story, tune into Part 2.

Transcript

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[Ceruti]

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[Hannah]

The thing about pianos is unless you have the money, space and brass balls to pull off a Steinway ground in your home, the more modest upright pianos that are a lot more common are usually up against walls. It's actually really rare for a piano not to be backed into a corner in people's houses.

[Ceruti]

Even though I keep seeing all of these interior designers are like way to make your house look cheap. Push all your furniture up against the wall. And I'm like where else would my furniture go if it's not up against the wall? Well, quite.

[Hannah]

And there is something about a piano not against a wall like an upright that feels a bit Sort of like village hall, you know.

[Ceruti]

Though I do have to say, when we bought our house, none of the furniture was pushed up against the wall. And I was like, what were these people doing? Apparently making their house not look as cheap as I've made mine look.

[Hannah]

So the knock on effect of wall

[Ceruti]

piano, other than looking cheap, it almost

[Hannah]

always means that the pianist has their back to the entrance to the room, even if they're not totally turned away from the entrance. Maybe if they even side on whichever one it is, the musician is going to be concentrating on the keys, reading their sheet music. Or maybe if they are a true virtuoso, they might even have their eyes completely closed.

[Ceruti]

Danger.

[Hannah]

So it makes sense all that considered, when in 1976, 15 year old Chris Pedretti decided to skip the school dance and practice her scales instead, she didn't have an eye on the door. There was no one else in. Her parents were at a party and her sister was at work. Chris's best friend had nipped around for a bit, but left pretty soon. Chris Pedretti was alone, or so she thought. And there's nothing better to fill the silence of an empty house than music, especially when you're making it yourself. So Chris happily played away, pausing only once when she thought she heard fabric ripping behind her. But she dismissed it and carried on tinkling those ivories. Her best friend had only just left 10 minutes ago. Usually we get a couple of hours of home alone before our mind starts

[Ceruti]

playing tricks on us, you know, minutes for me. Absolute minutes for me. So Chris Podetry didn't see the 5 foot 11 man wearing a red ski mask slip through the door and creep up behind her. As she played, she was suddenly startled by the very particular feeling of a knife being pressed against her throat, accompanied by a guttural voice pushing through clenched teeth that said, make a move and I'll kill you. The intruder pulled out Chris's sister's shoelaces and tied Chris's hands behind her back. Then he stuffed a cloth pulled from his pocket into her mouth and pushed her from the piano into the back garden. As he shoved her towards the Pedretti family picnic table, the predator hissed, if you say anything or flinch, I'll push this knife all the way in and I'll be gone in the dark. In Rancho Cordova, California, was hours of torturous defilement. The man in the mask demanded that Chris masturbate him with her bound hand. And he moved from the outside into the house over and over again. In between assaults on the terrified teenage girl. The man would prowl through the Pedretti house, leaving Chris tied up alone, having to guess when he was coming back. He raped Chris on her parents bed, twice in the living room and whispered to her, isn't this good? And then the man in the red ski mask vanished.

[Hannah]

I'm Hannah.

[Ceruti]

I'm Ceruti and this is red handed.

[Hannah]

Chris's parents took her to the police station when they found out what horrors had befallen their girl. But that was the only time they ever spoke about it. Her parents waited outside the room while Chris gave her statement to the police. A dark cloud of shame loomed over the whole family. Chris's father insisted that none of them were ever allowed to tell anyone what happened that February night. And just two days after her ordeal, Chris was shipped off to Bible camp. And if that trip to Jesus Town was supposed to cleanse Chris's soul, it had the opposite effect. The only thing she could focus on was how could a benevolent God have allowed such a thing to happen to her? And that was that. Not a word was spoken. The church bells all were broken. And Chris Pedretti never played the piano again.

[Ceruti]

There is nothing more isolating than a big, horrible secret. But Chris was far from alone. Years later, she would realise that she was just one of at least 49 women who had been sexually victimised by the same man. She would even meet some of them. And when she did, she wouldn't use her name to introduce herself. Instead, Chris Pedretti used a number. Hi, I'm number 10. The 10th victim of the Golden State Killer.

[Hannah]

Through the 70s and a bit of the 80s, one man ransacked, stole, peeped, creeped, beat, bound, sliced, shot, raped, bludgeoned and murdered his way through 11 of California's 58 counties. From Sacramento to San Francisco to Los Angeles. This worm in a human costume killed 13 people and robbed over 120 homes. And those are just the ones we know about. There are so many reasons why that just has to be the baseline number and there has to be way more, but we just don't know.

[Ceruti]

It seems incredibly unlikely that all of the ones that have been connected to him are all there is.

[Hannah]

Totally. It's, I would say, almost impossible for that to be the case. But for other various reasons, they're very difficult to keep track of. He has had many names over the years, which also makes it quite difficult. The Visilia Ransacker, the Rancho Cordova Prowler, the East Area Rapist, the Diamond Knot Killer, the original Night Stalker and Finally, the Golden State Killer.

[Ceruti]

Yeah. Interesting. I only knew of three of those names. The East Area Rapist, the Original Night Stalker, and the Golden State Killer. But yeah, when you have a diabolical career that spans quite as long as his did. And also, I don't know this case as well as you. Obviously you've written this script, but an MO that seems to change.

[Hannah]

That's exactly it.

[Ceruti]

It makes sense that you would have a multitude of monikers and you know,

[Hannah]

he's operational for nine years. Nobody stays looking the same for nine years. Like, there's a one point where he drops a bunch of weight and starts operating in a different area. So the descriptions are different.

[Ceruti]

Yeah.

[Hannah]

Even though they're. And also like, this is my map. California's fucking massive.

[Ceruti]

Right.

[Hannah]

And he will do. He will drive over 300 miles.

[Ceruti]

Yeah.

[Hannah]

Like overnight to strike in different places.

[Ceruti]

Yeah, absolutely. And look, this is our third serial killer in a row. We know that it's because we're obviously doing the North American road trip. And we, we started off in Canada, we went to Mexico, and now we are in. In the usa, in California specifically. And we have said obviously it doesn't. It. It's not worth repeating again how difficult serial killer investigations are because of, well, the very nature of them, as we talked about in Robert Pickton. But here what you have is versus somebody like Robert Pickton, who hunted in the same area continuously, had the same killing ground. Not quite a dump site, but you know what I mean, the same dump site. He was also disposing of the bodies. This is the other layer upon which serial killing investigations are incredibly difficult. The transient nature of them and the fact that he was willing to go to these lengths to geographically spread out his kills couldn't be a more difficult investigation than this.

[Hannah]

I totally agree. And also the US Is also tricky because you have the police department, which is town by town, and then you have the sheriff's department, which is county by county. So there's already from the off two agencies who aren't that great at working together. And that's just on a county. It's not even a state level, county level.

[Ceruti]

And yeah, we've seen this countless times before as well. The idea of, like, who's going to be in charge of this investigation and whether it's going to be local police department, whether it's going to be the sheriff, whether federal investigators are going to get involved, and there's this ego as well as that difficulty that for some reason law enforcement officers seem to have in some cases in some situations like this where there's not that joined up working, which we've seen time and time again.

[Hannah]

And I do think as things progress and links are made between different crimes in different parts of California by either a sheriff's department or a police officer, it happens a couple of times where they'll contact another county and say we think, we think we're looking for the same guy. And the other county says no we're not. We don't have your problem. We don't have this problem that you have been unable to solve for two years. We're much better at policing than you are. There's a lot to contend with

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[Ceruti]

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[Hannah]

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[Ceruti]

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[Ceruti]

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[Hannah]

but we are going to have to use all of his different names throughout the story because he actually doesn't kill till quite late on.

[Ceruti]

Yeah, yeah.

[Hannah]

And I've just found it easier to sort of tell it phase by phase.

[Ceruti]

Yeah. Yeah. And actually that's the other name. It is obviously an amalgamation of the two, but it's the Eron's Killer. Right. The East Area Rapist Original Night Stalker.

[Hannah]

Yes. Which I actually think is one of the major reasons that this case is one that people don't talk about that much. It's not a very good name because you look at it, you don't really know what that is.

[Ceruti]

Yeah. Aeron's Killer.

[Hannah]

Yeah. Whereas like BTK doesn't really matter that you don't know what it is.

[Host - Advertisement Voice]

It's short.

[Hannah]

But Erons you're like. That obviously stands for something.

[Ceruti]

Yeah. And also obviously just to add another layer of like why this was such a difficult case, we're talking about in the 70s and 80s. We're talking about when obviously serial killing. If we can say this was at its Peak in the US and also nowhere near a level of sophistication in terms of law enforcement's like resourcing, investigating crimes like this.

[Hannah]

No one really gave a shit about rape.

[Ceruti]

Yeah, there's also that which big problem

[Hannah]

in the investigation also. But that's. We'll get there.

[Ceruti]

Yeah, let's take it one step at a time. We're in.

[Hannah]

We're in for the long haul. There's no other choice. It's the only way we're gonna get it done.

[Ceruti]

Yeah, guys, we're in for the long haul because this is actually gonna be a three parter. We haven't done one in a while. But if you know anything about Aerons original Nightstalker, Golden State Killer, it is a story that goes on for a long time and it is worthy of us splitting it up and doing it properly.

[Hannah]

Yes. And it's told by so many different people, not all of whom get to the end.

[Ceruti]

Yeah.

[Hannah]

So the last name on our list of names, the Golden State Killer, that was actually the work of original true crime addict and compulsive armchair investigator Michelle McNamara, who was married to the guy who voiced Remy the Rat in Ratatouille.

[Ceruti]

Yes. Patton Oswald.

[Hannah]

I think Golden State Killer. I'm absolutely no shade to Michelle, obviously. I don't actually think it's that good either. It's better than Erons, but it doesn't quite bring you in. But the reason she called it the Golden State Killer is like, that is the name for California because that's where all the gold is. Why the state motto is Eureka, I found it gold.

[Ceruti]

Yeah. It is confusing, isn't it? Because it's like, I don't mind Aerons. I'll be honest, I don't mind Aerons, but I think it's obviously because I know what it stands for. So it has like an impact with me. East area doesn't work because he doesn't stay in one area. The original Night Stalker. That is quite a scary name, I'll give you that. But it's already associated with Richard Ramirez, who was the Night Stalker. And then people are like, oh, no, but this guy was the original Night Stalker. Anyway, let's not serial killer geek out. What I'm saying basically is that I don't mind Erons, but I know why Michelle McNamara goes with the Golden State Killer because she's highlighting the fact that he was working all over California, Right?

[Hannah]

Yes. And she frames it as this is a Californian story. And that is how she got quite a lot of like journalistic Welly behind her was by. And she pieces together all of these. Because I think until Michelle really. Paul Holz is he. Don't get me started on Billy fucking Jensen. Michelle is. I think we talk about this a lot and we are asked this question a lot of armchair investigators. And when it gets taken too far and it's, you know, civilians, people with no training who are sometimes taking things into the real world and that can be really dangerous. Yeah, Michelle does do that. And it's controversial, but I don't think if the metric of to become an expert in something, you have to do it 10,000 hours or something like that. She's done her 10,000 hours. I think Michelle McNamara was absolutely an expert. Does that completely mean what she goes on to do was ethically right? I don't think so.

[Ceruti]

Well, something to look forward to discussing.

[Hannah]

But what is. Michelle is like frontline way before anything else. Also before people even add on the original Nightstalker, that happens way later. So people were just calling him the ear for a really long time. And I think that that is just. It's just. It's not. No ring.

[Ceruti]

No.

[Hannah]

I'm not particularly scared of an ear if I don't know what it stands for.

[Ceruti]

No. So Michelle McNamara, change that via her blog, True Crime Diary, where she spent years connecting the dots between the expanse of this man's crimes, which spanned most of the state that she called home. Michelle had a lot of cases that she'd researched over the years. The Golden State Killer was by far the one that she spent the most time on. There was so much evidence, so many crime scenes, so many signature actions, so many tennis shoe prints in California and back gardens. Michelle was convinced that the man could be found and that the mystery could be solved.

[Hannah]

And we have been asked so many times that it takes every fibre of our beings not to roll our eyes at whatever journalist, producer, man in pub is attempting to demonstrate they actually care what women think. But Michelle was on the front lines long before the True Crime podcast Boom. Or everyone used to say after the advent of Serial. Do you remember that? That's just how every podcast in the world was described in every article under the sun. Anyway. Michelle was narrowing down suspects, interrogating theories, pouring over police files, tracking down engraved cufflinks and weaving narratives together. She did it every night. And we like, like people have weird hobbies, people do all sorts of shit, but we like true crime for the same reason that 50% of men could beat Serena Williams in a game of tennis. And every single Liverpool fan thinks that if they got the chance to set foot on the pitch at Anfield, they would score. And also why you would. You've never met someone who didn't think they were funny. Point being, we all secretly think that if we were given the right circumstances and the right amount of clues, we could solve something that no one else has managed to. We all secretly think that all a problem needs is us.

[Host - Advertisement Voice]

The thousands and thousands of posts concerning

[Ceruti]

the Golden State Killer on message boards frequented by Michelle all all came from people who felt the same. But Michelle took her investigation into the real world, speaking to police, victims, witnesses and everything in between. But just like being an England fan, every time she thought about giving up, packing it all in and tracing her family tree until another country to support cropped up the case, breakthrough equivalent of Harry Kane would make her believe again.

[Hannah]

Michelle is far from the only person who's agonised over this case. Of course there are the web sleuths, but this one has also stumped entire generations of police officers and sheriffs who are haunted by their failure to track the Golden State Killer down. Over his nine known operational years, it became clear that the man who would go on to become the Golden State Killer absolutely loved leaving clues. He would take cash out of hidden holes and leave it in plain sight. Steal one earring from a pair, eat half a pie or a melon just to make sure that someone knew he had been there. But even though his MO was so specific, so repetitive and so widespread, authorities just failed every time to catch up with him.

[Ceruti]

We often obsess about the last crime a person commits if they aren't caught in the act. We always ask what makes a killer stop killing, but perhaps we've got it all the wrong way around. Especially when it comes to murder. It's really unlikely that the perpetrator knew for certain that they were going to go through with it the very first time. And as investigators, the first time is likely to be a lot more useful than the last because the killer hasn't learned yet. They may have been careless. They almost certainly would have left a trace behind or made a mistake. So for the Golden State Killer, we're going to start at the beginning. And most timelines pertaining to the Golden State killer start in 1974, but he was definitely up to no good long before that.

[Hannah]

And if you open your Slack messages, I have sent you what I have found to be the most useful resource on the entirety of the Internet, which is a timeline. I have found it to be the most useful. It's in the sources list. But if you don't already know who did it, listeners don't go and look at it because you'll ruin it for yourself. From 1970 to 1971, Exeter, California, which is apparently the citrus capital of the world, experienced 16 ransackings. And then about four hours down Highway 99, a similar series of cat burglaries happened between 72 and 73. These break ins were accompanied by several reports of a young man wandering around harassing people with a shirt on but no trousers. And he was just getting started. In the first six months of 1973, the gold rush era town of Rancho Cordova started to hear quite a lot of bumps in the night. And before we go on author's California, very big, massive. And all of these towns are quite difficult to tell apart because they're already similar, similar population sizes. But people use the names of the county and the names of the town or like neighbourhood kind of interchangeably. So to be able to pull it all apart and figure out what town they're actually talking about, that's why I've got my map, because I was completely unable to get my head around any of the sort of California geography. And also it's entirely possible that I just don't actually understand the linguistic geographical rules of California. And I'm sure I'm going to make a lot of people quite upset by getting something wrong, but I'm doing my best. But if you need a hook, a geographical, locationy hook to hang this case on, Rancho Cordova is it. No matter where he roamed, somehow the Golden State killer would always find his way back there.

[Ceruti]

For years, Rancho Cordova residents would come home to things having been moved, underwear, drawers, rummaged through. But very rarely had anything actually been stolen. A couple rang the sheriff's office twice in one night to report a man jumping from a neighbouring roof and then over a fence. After the second call, the very grand sounding night watch commander went round and he didn't find any Spring Heeled Jack, but he did find a bloody stick in the garage door. And then to his horror, a disemboweled dog. It was a familiar horror. This was the latest in a long line of crimes. This was the 50th home that had been trespassed in just the first six months of 1973. And dog deaths had featured in a fair few of them, usually German shepherds.

[Hannah]

Yes, quite an alarming preference for a German shepherd. And our next stop from Rancho Cordova, leave it behind for now. The next stop on our Golden State terror train Is Visalia home to about 30,000 people back then, three hours to the south of Rancho Cordova. It's still quiet now. The subreddit how is living there? Basically says that it's hot and it gets boring after you've been there for a while. And maybe people lock their doors there now, but they certainly didn't in 1974. Visalia actually was a burglar's paradise for a lot of reasons. The neighbourhood was full of alleyways, running behind people's houses and distinctly lacking in street lights. As the Vasilia ransacker picked his new hunting ground, he kept his old habits waiting, watching, hiding in the bushes and running off the second he was spotted. When he did steal, it would usually be a personal item, an engraved ring or an earring from a pair really liked hand lotion. But it's never about the thing. He just wants you to know that he has been there. And I think why I found not. I think I know why I found this so unsettling is that feeling when you know someone has been in your room and like, that is so uncomfortable. And, yeah, I've also been spending quite a lot of time in quite a lot of unfamiliar bedrooms recently. And what happens so consistently in the stories that we have from victims is that they're always asked, like, was there anything off? And all of them say things that we've all dismissed a hundred times, but you think it's weird, but you're just like, ow, is the wind?

[Ceruti]

Yeah, of course. I mean, we've spoken about this before. You'll have a normalcy bias. Like, our minds don't immediately jump to the feeling that if something is slightly off or something is slightly wrong, that it must be some massive explanation for it. We'll look for the most ordinary explanation. Must be, I just moved it when I was tired or I've just lost it, or something has happened. Because that's your brain's way of protecting yourself from having to overanalyze every single thing, because we'd never function if we did.

[Hannah]

Yeah, my brain doesn't do that anymore. I'm broken.

[Ceruti]

And again, what he's doing, though, going in, stealing very personal items, moving things around, like you say, it's to make sure that people know he's been there, because this is all about dominance. And it also, I think, directly correlates with him murdering dogs, particularly focusing on dogs like German shepherds, because, again, it is like this ultra domineering dominance play that he's partaking in, which is typically what you see with serial killers is going after cats. If anything, killing dogs is a bit more unusual in this world. But why is he doing it? Again? It's like, what are burglars actually scared of? They're not scared of alarms. They're usually scared of dogs, especially big fucking dogs like German shepherds. And he's like, even that's not going to protect you. I don't care. And I'm not just going after the little Chihuahuas and the easy kills. I'm going to kill a German shepherd because I am an alpha. I am a fucking apex predator. That's the. The mindset he has, and that's what he wants his victims to think.

[Hannah]

Ding, ding, ding.

[Ceruti]

And so, yeah, we have lots of stories like this from various people that were trespassed upon by this man. Once, he apparently took out all of the male underwear from a bedroom drawer and left it meticulously placed in a line down a corridor, like stepping stones across a stream. Which, again, if he had any suspicion that maybe, you know, if I just move some things around, people are just going to be like, oh, you know, I just moved it. Nobody's thinking when they see that, oh, I just did that, or the dog just did it, or something weird happened. The kids are playing a trick that is so bizarre. There is no ignoring it. Then there was another occasion, the only one that we know about, where he actually stole a gun. And this was the only time he seems to steal something like that in the 120 times he broke into a Vasilia home.

[Hannah]

Yeah, he would have had so many opportunities in California to rob firearms, and he only does it once.

[Ceruti]

The Ransacker clearly had no interest in going undiscovered. The facilier Ransacker wanted you to know that he was there, and before he was there, that he was watching. Nothing he ever did was for financial gain. He was in it for the thrill of knowing that people were terrified of him. And again, that makes sense. It's. You know, there are obviously people who are going to be motivated when they're burglars to steal for money. That's what they're there to do. That's not what's getting him off. What's getting him off is the fear, the dominance. And even if he's not there to witness it firsthand, it's just knowing. It's knowing that these people's sense of peace in their own home is now gone.

[Hannah]

Yes. And he does that in towns and cities all over the state, and nobody knows that it's the same guy?

[Ceruti]

Yeah. On the 11th of September, 1975, the Ransacker took his villainy to levels that he didn't even know he was capable of. He snuck into a home on White Lane and into the bedroom of 16 year old Beth Snelling, and he climbed on top of her as she slept. The teen was startled awake by a hand being clamped over her mouth and a ski mask in her face.

[Hannah]

You're coming with me, he said, adding, don't scream or I'll stab you. As he forced Beth out of bed and out the back door towards the garage. In the process, Beth's father, Claude, woke up and came to Beth's rescue. He rushed outside and chased off the man in the ski mask. This was actually the second time that these two men had ended up in an on foot pursuit. Just a month before, Claude had spotted a man hiding in the flower bed just beneath his daughter's window. This time, Claude wouldn't be so lucky. As he confronted the man grasping his daughter, the masked intruder pointed a gun at Beth and then kicked her in the face before running off, shooting at Claude twice. As he made his escape, Claude, a university lecturer, collapsed. And by the time he made it to hospital, it was too late.

[Ceruti]

The gun that killed Claude Snelling was the one that the Ransacker had swiped from another Vasilia home 10 days before. Now, the Vasilia ransacker had racked up 85 home invasions and one homicide in just 15 months. And then the Ransacker just, well, stopped ransacking.

[Hannah]

I really don't think he meant to kill Claude. I think he panicked and that's why he stopped.

[Ceruti]

Local police staked out houses where footprints had been found in gardens, where doors had been found mysteriously. Open window screens had been removed and found in bushes waiting for him to return. It was obvious that whatever was driving the Vasilia Ransacker to offend so prolifically was compulsive. So everyone on the case grimly agreed sooner or later, he would be back.

[Hannah]

What the Vasilia PD didn't know was that a month after Claude Snelling was killed, the cat burglary started up again, 230 miles away. And Rancho called over the place he just couldn't stay away from. After his brief hiatus in Visilia up north, he hit four homes in one night. And three days later, at the very house law enforcement had discovered the disemboweled dog months before. Adopting his old identity, the Rancho Kildova prowler wore white gloves and a medical mask as he sexually assaulted a mother and two daughters whilst bound together as he held them at knifepoint. And what we will see become very regular in his attacks was in between defilements. He would leave his victims bound, often blindfolded and gagged, and walk through their house opening drawers and generally rummaging around, searching the same nooks and crannies again and again and again. And the police report for this particular attack tells us that he repeatedly told the woman and her two children to shut up, even when they weren't making any noise. And that's something he would do for years to come. And this is. Has I've dreamt about this? He wants you to never know when he's coming back. Like, that's the whole thing. And he does that to. It's that. That fear of not knowing what's happening next is always worse than the actual thing. Like the monster's not scary once you can see it.

[Chime Disclaimer Voice]

Yeah.

[Ceruti]

It's the anticipation of the horror.

[Hannah]

So that's what he's doing. And this particular woman, so she's in her bedroom and it's been long enough that she thinks he's gone. So she tries to get up and one of her daughters says, don't move, don't move, he's still here. And then she just feels him sit next, back down next to her. From this house, he also stole two jade rings. And although people started to call him a fetish burglar in Rancho Cordova, no one connected him to what he was doing down south. No one was able to understand just how terrifyingly massive this crime spree had become, because nobody was talking about it.

[Ceruti]

Many of the women and men who were raped and terrorised by this rapist were too ashamed to discuss their stories openly with the press or with anyone else. Like Chris Bedretti's family. The tragedy and horror was kept as a big, horrible secret by many, which means details of specific attacks can be quite hard to come by. Equally, even when we do have access to police reports, rape really wasn't taken that seriously back then. So the official records are often incorrect.

[Hannah]

There are quite a few where they get, like, glaringly obvious things just straight wrong in the police report, which means there's various different versions of the same night. And it's quite difficult to know which is true and also which is obviously completely their right. If they don't want to release their names, they're not going to release their names. So a lot of people go by pseudonyms or like Michelle McNamara, for example, will give a victim a Different name.

[Ceruti]

Yeah.

[Hannah]

Tracking all of those things is basically impossible

[Ceruti]

now. We're going to comb through that hard later on, but for now, just know that at the time, the statute of limitations for rape in California was just three years, the same as robbery. After three years had passed, no one was a victim of rape anymore. As more and more rapes racked up, the press did get a hold of a few stories and described the rapist as gentlemanly. One of the police reports told the reader that other than rape, no one was actually hurt.

[Hannah]

Rape is not considered a violent crime. It's barely considered a crime. It's really quite shocking.

[Ceruti]

That is shocking.

[Hannah]

Yeah.

[Ceruti]

I mean, if you are convicted of rape, I assume there's still a prison sentence, all of that. It's just like, are they just not investigating it or is it even. Just like, not even deemed to be that criminally a big problem?

[Hannah]

I think what it is certainly when we get into the, like, east area rapist, Sacramento terror, when it's 50 women, maybe. No, almost certainly more 50, 51 is generally what people say in the space of two years, then people have to start talking about it because it's this extraordinarily prolific thing. But until that happens, it's just this blanket acceptance that rape is just something that happens and women have to deal with it.

[Ceruti]

Yeah, it's shocking to me because, look, and I'm obviously not qualifying this as being any less horrific a crime, but I could almost understand if they were just like, you know, we know that the marital rape laws and things like that didn't even. Didn't even come into existence until very, very recently, even in this country. I could understand if it was like, oh, we just don't take rape that seriously if it's in a domestic setting or whatever. But it's like people. Someone's breaking into homes and raping teenage girls. Like, how is that not seen as, like, something that law enforcement is taking incredibly seriously? It's very alarming. And I guess the only reason I can think is obviously the culture is very different. People would also be much more ashamed to talk about these things as we've covered. But Also, it's the 70s and everything's on fire, and they're just like, we got people murdering people left, right and center. But yeah, it is shocking for our modern sensibilities to think that it's not even like a, oh, it's a. Oh, it's a he said, she said gray area question mark. It's like somebody broke into the house wearing a red ski mask. And tried to rape my 16 year old. That is bonkers.

[Hannah]

And there's a really good podcast series by the LA Times which is called the man in the Window. And in one of the more sort of like discussion based episodes, there's a whole episode about the attitude towards women and sexual violence in the seventies in Sacramento specifically because there was also a big pushback to the women's lib movement and this sort of man hating lesbian narrative was everywhere also. So it was there was a lot of pushback for women saying anything about anything and it was just very much that cultural environment. And in the episode, I think the lady who made the podcast, the journalist whose name has escaped me, she's in the show notes she says that when she started to read about it, what captivated her was how shockingly the women were treated and how rape just did not seem to bother police at all. It only starts to become a priority when it is happening so often they're powerless and that's what people are terrified of

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[Hannah]

Six weeks after he murdered Claude Snelling, he was back in Visalia again. And all in all, he burgled 110 houses. The night he made his grand return, Visilia Police Detective Bill McGowan spotted the ski masked man crouching under a window, just like he had under Beth's and God knows how many others in the last year. And a bit officer McGowan slowly approached the peeper, waiting to see what he would do, his big moon face shining in the moonlight. Officer McGowan didn't creep quietly enough and the prowler skittered off. McGowan held his police issue torch in one hand close to his head, and fired a warning shot into the night air. A childish little voice came out of his escapee as he begged, My God, don't hurt me. And he raised his right hand as if to surrender and said, look, my hands are up. As he used his left hand to draw his own gun from his coat pocket. And then it went dark.

[Ceruti]

Not because Bill McGowan had gone into the light, but because the prowler's bullet had by some miracle struck his torch and not his head. The impact threw Bill backwards as the reinvented ransacker made his escape. Detective McGowan was otherwise unharmed, but Claude Snelling's murderer couldn't have known that as he scampered off down one of Vasilia's many alleyways. The area was later cordoned off and searched by 70 officers, but not one of them found a single trace of him. But now a police officer had looked him dead in the eye. And a monster is always less scary when you've seen it. Apropos of that fact, on the 9th of January 1976, Officer McGowan was driven all the way down to Parker Centre, the HQ of the lapd, to milk that fact for all it was worth via a hypnotist.

[Hannah]

Once he was good and under, Officer McGowan relived his chance encounter with the facili aroundsaka. And when he was asked to describe what the gunman looked like, one word came out of Bill's subdued brain. Baby. Baby face, baby voice. It was clear that the man terrorising the town didn't even shave. And he was shockingly pale, which in California is a difficult look to maintain. The police started to try and piece together who this ghost man, moonface with big legs could be. Maybe he managed to stay so pale by never going outside in the daylight. Dr. Joel Fort had his own ideas. Criminal psychiatrist, Manson interviewer and expert witness in the Patty Hearst's bank robbery trial knows what he was talking about. And he told the investigators that they weren't looking for a thief. They were looking for a sexual predator fixated on the prowl, not on the lute. What he had was a compulsive paraphilia, not something that can be picked up and put down. And that meant whoever the baby faced villain was, he would not be able to stop. And Dr. Sausage Joel had another interesting tip for the force. Generally speaking, voyeurs operate about 20 minutes from their homes, which made it pretty likely that the man they were searching for lived in nearby Exeter. And Dr. Joel was bang on. But the accurate prediction was of absolutely no use to anybody for decades. People with deviant and irregular sexual drives are very good at hiding. They have to do that to survive.

[Ceruti]

And toward the end of 1976, the Vasilia Ransacker moved on. And with his new beat came a new name, the hysteria rapist, which unfortunately was shortened to the ear. But his terrible reimagining wouldn't stop him from taking the terror up a significant notch. And sacramento would never be the same again. The first victim of the ear was Phyllis henneman. Years later, she would introduce herself to a group of other victims searching for justice. As number one in that search for justice, Phyllis was afforded the chance to give an impact statement in 2020. And this is what she said. On June 17, 1976, I went to bed not knowing that in just a few hours, my life as I knew it would change. I was a normal young woman of 22, happy and carefree. The only dark spot in my young life was the death of my mother 18 months earlier. I was vivacious, fun loving, a little shy, and I loved life. My father was in Massachusetts visiting his sister, and I was alone in the house. Early on the morning of June 18, 1976, he henceforth called the devil incarnate, Broke into my home, blindfolded me, tied me up, threatened my life with a knife, and raped me. Life as I knew it irrecorably changed that day. That once happy girl became fearful, suspicious, hypervigilant. My sense of safety was shattered. The ringing of the telephone invoked terror, Afraid I would hear his voice again when he called to taunt me, as he did in January of 1978. Noises in the night disturbed what little sleep I could manage. I had an alarm system installed in my home and suffered greatly if ever I had to spend a night alone. Years of living like this have adversely affected my health.

[Hannah]

Four months after Phyllis was attacked early in the morning, Jane Carson's husband, an officer in the air force, left his wife and 3 year old son in bed and left for work. A while later, as Jane lay there, she heard rapid footsteps in the corridor. Assuming her husband had come back to get something, she half shouted, jack, is that you? It was not. A man in a green ski mask had slipped through the nursery window Moments after Jack left the house. And then he waited for an hour. He had been there a fortnight before. He knew how the house worked. He appeared at Jane's bedroom doorway and said, shut up. I want your money. I Won't hurt you. Neither of those things were true. The east area rapist put Jane's son on the floor and then tied Jane up on her bed and raped her, asking her, is this like the captain? Her husband is a captain in the air force. He wants her to know that he has been watching. He also told Jane to shut up at least 50 times. And as he raped her, to put some emotion into it, he left through the same window he came through, taking about 10 of Jane's rings with him. Jane's son, who'd been on the floor the whole time mistaking the ligatures his mother had been bound with for bandages, asked her, has the doctor gone? Jane Carson was number five. She, too, would get the chance to read an impact statement, but not until she was in her 70s.

[Ceruti]

The attacks continued in the Sacramento area with a terrifying pace. The police department appointed Carol Daly to interview the rapist victims. They all had almost identical stories. There'd be something off in their houses a few weeks prior, the kind of thing that we all notice but just ignore, like a garage door being open when you're sure you left it closed, or a screwdriver being out of place, or a drawer being rummaged through, or just something not being quite right then. Having cased the house, the east area rapist would make his entrance, often hiding in cupboards or wardrobes or behind doors, sometimes for hours on end. Victims reported his stumpy fingers, big legs, clenched jaw, childish squeak and repeated demands to shut up. More often than not, he would force his prey to masturbate him with their bound hands. And he had a particular penchant for hand creams as lube. And, yeah, again, like, you know, it doesn't take. Doesn't take a psychiatrist to figure out what's going on here. I mean, the idea of him making it very obvious to the victims that he's been watching them, that he's been casing them, it's all part of the terror. It's like, this isn't just randomly happening by chance because you happen to be at home. This is happening because I planned it.

[Hannah]

Absolutely.

[Ceruti]

And you are. Again, I am the dominant one here. I am the predator. I am the apex, and you are just my victim. And also, this idea of him breaking into the houses and not immediately going through with the attack, but hiding for an hour, hiding for longer. That's also part of the enjoyment for him because it's very voyeuristic. He gets to watch them. He gets to watch them proceeding with their lives as normal, feeling safe. In their own house. And knowing they don't know I'm here. Their worst nightmare is hiding in this house. I am here. And then knowing that, he gets to decide at which moment he jumps out of that cupboard or wardrobe or whatever to destroy that person's life. There is so much complexity. And look, I don't want to sound like I'm, like, fetishizing him or anything, but what I'm saying is there is so much to the psychology of what's going on here with him and his need for power, for dominance, and to assert that onto his victims. It's like, it's quite something.

[Hannah]

And he was always completely unhurried, which is part of the same thing. There is nothing that can happen to make me stop doing this.

[Ceruti]

That's the scary thing. Think about any horror film. Think about any film that's even remotely scary. The villain in that film, the monster in that film that is truly scary is not the one that is chasing you. It's the one that's walking slowly because they know that you can't get away.

[Hannah]

And he knew he wasn't gonna get caught.

[Ceruti]

Yeah.

[Hannah]

And the longer he goes and the more lives he ruins and the less the police can do anything about it, the more inflated he becomes.

[Ceruti]

Yeah. Because he's absolutely buying into his own myth making and his own legend that he is writing and the police are reinforcing by not catching him.

[Hannah]

He just has zero concern about anyone catching him in the act. He would but do things like balance perfume bottles on door handles. So if it's turned, he can hear it fall and he can leave. Which apparently is like a jungle war tactic, like one would have used in combat in Vietnam, where everyone has just come back traumatized from.

[Ceruti]

Yeah.

[Hannah]

It was obvious that he watched his targets for some time before launching his attacks. He would often know how to turn off outside lights or disconnect air conditioning units. He always knew where to park and which windowpane was loose. This isn't an opportunist. He also felt very strongly about lighting. He would move women from their beds into their living rooms. Once in there, he would turn on the TV and drape a blanket or a towel over it to soften the room. And all of these are very consistent details in the witness statements that we have. What's more important than any of those things is that all of the victims agreed the east area rapist had a really, really tiny penis.

[Ceruti]

Yeah. I mean, even the fact that he is asking some of the victims, like, is it good for you? Is it as good as your husband? Like, yeah, I think it screams of a lack of self esteem in that sexual department.

[Hannah]

Oh, you bet.

[Ceruti]

You know, it's this idea, like, I don't know, you've got different types of rapists, right? You've got the power assertive rapist who is usually this like macho, has this macho image of like aggression, hyper aggression towards their victims. And then you've got the power reassurance rapist who is more like, is it okay for you? They've got these fantasies of like love, almost like the girlfriend experience. Which is maybe why the media are calling him deplorably like the gentleman rapist because of the way he's like posing these questions. Of course, it's not actually an enjoyable experience in any way or a romantic experience for these women, as if that even needs mentioning. But like, is he in some way tying that to it? But it flies in the face because it flies in the face of the terror that he's trying to insist.

[Hannah]

Exactly what he wants is for the women to be terrified. And later on when he starts targeting couples, he wants the man to feel helpless. That's what he's after.

[Ceruti]

Absolutely. And that's what it screams of. It screams of a man who has a total lack of any sort of dominance or power or control or self esteem in his life, particularly with regards to his relationships around women. And it makes sense that that's why he also starts targeting the men. It's not enough anymore for him to just know, oh, you'll get back and find that this horrible thing has happened to your wife and you couldn't protect her. I'm gonna do it in front of you and you won't be able to stop me. It's the same as killing the German shepherds. It's the ultimate. I am the top dog. I am the apex. I am the alpha. It's very sadistic. I would say he's much more linked to a sadistic rapist than any of the other types.

[Hannah]

I absolutely agree. And next week we've got a little bit of a window into his brain and then episode three will have a real deep dive of his life. But I absolutely agree that this is all about power. I'm not even sure it's about a hatred of women. I think it's a very severe crisis of identity.

[Ceruti]

Yeah, I think it's a thing he can't have. I'm guessing that he, he struggles to connect with women in real life because they're probably taking one look at the blank look in his eyes and running away from him. And this is a way to. To dominate, to have that total, total dominance that he obviously so craves. And yeah, horrific stuff. But as we're going to see, if we think it's bad now, it's only going to continue to escalate. By May 1977, five almost identical attacks had occurred in the Sacramento area in what can only be really described as a frenzy. Sacramento was terrified and the police ordered a total media blackout. But they couldn't keep the lid on it forever. People were desperate and a town full of desperate people is the last thing that any police department needs. On 18 October, the ear struck twice in just 24 hours, one of which was in a fancier neighbourhood than his usual haunts, which may have been maybe in a bid to get some sort of press attention. I also wonder if he's challenging himself there a bit because obviously he realizes if you go to lower income areas, there's gonna be less security, possibly there's gonna be maybe an easier way for you to get in and out of these houses. Maybe he's challenging himself going into a more like high profile area. He's gonna know people are on alert. These are the people. If anyone is gonna have the top notch security systems in place. Can I do it? Who knows?

[Hannah]

Oh, no, I totally agree. He's. He's pissed off because nobody's talking about him anymore.

[Ceruti]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's like, I need to go after.

[Hannah]

You should raise the stakes.

[Ceruti]

Yeah. Someone who's gonna, who's gonna get me the front page. And if it was because of the front page desire, then it worked because the Sacramento Bee brought the blackout to a crashing end with the headline man hunted for eight rapes. And a press conference was called. The Sacramento PD were running out of options.

[Hannah]

Yeah. It's the last thing they want to do, but they have no choice.

[Ceruti]

Yeah.

[Hannah]

Because it is so out of hand and people are so terrified and they are so. I've really struggled to like, I think adequately describe the feeling of panic that was in Sacramento for two years of this. Just absolute. I mean, I keep using it, but I can't think of anything else. Reign of terror.

[Ceruti]

Yeah, of course. And I think what's also quite unusual about the Stereo Rapist, if we're sticking chronologically to his monikers, is that typically we start to see, and I know he hasn't, he's not a serial killer yet, but we typically start to see violent offenders like this escalating. Right. So the gap between the Attacks get shorter and shorter and shorter as they're starting to spiral into that sort of devolved state. And that's usually when they end up getting caught. What's very unusual here is that he's very early in his career and although he hasn't turned into a serial killer yet, he's already in that sort of frenzy mode that typically comes towards the end of a serial killer's career.

[Hannah]

Yes. And he didn't mean to kill Claude Snelling. I do believe that that was an accident. And it shits him up. He stops for a while when that happens. I'm certain he thought he'd killed Bill McGowan, but he would have just found out later that he didn't. But I think he. I think that's also kind of what the dogs is about, is just seeing if he can.

[Ceruti]

Yeah.

[Hannah]

And I do think, I would say the sort of east area rapist, Sacramento sort of panic years are where he very consistently does the same thing. He just does it more frequently and he stops when he doesn't feel like that's enough anymore.

[Ceruti]

Absolutely. I was actually going to say what you can see in full force here with the frenzied nature of the attacks and how quickly they're coming is that compulsion to rape, to dominate, to break in, to, you know, just destroy lives is so, so strong in him. And I wonder if that's what then exacerbates the move into the serial killing. Because it's like when you're seeing this level of frenzied attacks, what you're seeing is that compulsion is there, that drive is there to carry out these attacks. But it's almost like he's not getting enough from it. Which is why you tend to see serial killers devolve towards the end of their careers. Because the kill isn't giving them the same hit like a drug. They're having to take more and more and more of it to get that same initial effect at the beginning. And maybe that's what's happening here with the rapes. He's upping the stakes. He's going into more high risk neighbourhoods. He's doing more and more rapes back to back. He's even on the front pages now. But it's still not giving him that payoff that he needs psychologically, emotionally, sexually anymore. And maybe that's what then is like, okay, now the next step up is I start killing and then I go into pairs. I make sure the husband is at home. I'm doing it, I'm adding more risk factors to it to give me that same thrill. But yeah, it's, it's very interesting in a horrible way.

[Hannah]

That's why we're here.

[Ceruti]

Yeah,

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[Hannah]

And the very next day, after the Sacramento Bee round that headline, the east area rapist struck yet again. Wearing a leather hood this time, he took a teenage girl at knifepoint to a willow tree half a mile from her house in Citrus Heights, telling her like he had told Chris, make one move and you'll be silent forever. And I'll be gone in the dark. The girl's parents had only just left the house. Don't you go to American River College. He hissed, pressing his knife against the girl's throat. But his reconnaissance wasn't quite so meticulous this time. Because she didn't go there. But as she told him, she looked very like her neighbour who did. And when this poor nameless girl was interviewed by lead detective assigned to the ear, Richard Shelby, she claimed that she had not been raped, but her underwear was left lying at the foot of the willow tree. And I can totally understand why she would be too ashamed to admit what had actually happened to her. And like, Richard Shelby does his goddamn best, but he is also a man like and she's a teenage girl. And on top of all of the attitudes towards rape not being a violent crime, etc. Etc. Etc. Women who have been raped are seen as damaged goods and they're too scared to be that.

[Ceruti]

And Detective Shelby was far from safe himself. A fact he discovered when his four year old son ran into his bedroom in the middle of the night crying that there was a man at his window. The 44th ear attack happened just four blocks away from Shelby's home. The ear was closing in and making a point that he had no problem targeting law enforcement. He even told his victims so threateningly saying, tell those fucking pigs, if I hear about this, I'm going to go out tomorrow night, people are going to die.

[Hannah]

He had killed before, but that was never the point. Claude Snelling was collateral damage for him. He was escaping. But now the east area rapist was threatening calculated murder for the first time. Detective Carol Daly was better with the victims than six foot three Richard Shelby was. It was her who interviewed almost all of the east area rapist victims. She drove them to their rape exams and she bought them sandwiches. Afterwards, Carol ran community meetings for the women of Sacramento. And these started off as kind of self defense. 101 sessions with Carol advising that they not be shy and they should try and hurt him. They should injure to incapacitate is what she tells them. As the months rolled on, and then the months turned into years, with the police still no closer to catching the east area rapist, Carol Daly changed her tune. She started telling her charges not to struggle, just do what he wants because he is too dangerous. She started keeping a loaded gun under the front seat of her car. No one in Sacramento was communicating with Vasilia law enforcement, who were struggling to solve the 110 vasilia ransackings. Which seems to us, with all of the information we have now, like a very obvious misstep. But they are hundreds of miles apart. And although the east area rapist crime scenes show symptoms of the ransackings, the rifle through draws, etcetera, There were really important differences.

[Ceruti]

Yeah. I mean, look, we have to appreciate how far law enforcement and our understanding of forensic psychology and criminology and all of those things have come. Like, at this point, they didn't even have things like profiling or the behavioral analysis unit or anything like that. It's only really after that that they start to realise that, okay, somebody who commits rapes, that's not their starting point. They started somewhere before that. And usually where they've started is things like breaking and entering. And, yeah, while there is a lot of mistakes obviously made by law enforcement, the fact that they're not taking the rape seriously enough, et cetera, until there's, like, a critical mass of them, I also find it hard to blame them for just not psychologically understanding that these things were connected.

[Hannah]

They do have profilers. 11 different profilers. Profiles were made of him. They just weren't helpful because they were. They didn't know everything he was doing when they were being made. So they were kind of sending them off down the wrong rabbit holes because they didn't have all of the totality of evidence.

[Ceruti]

Yeah. And even then, profiling, I suppose, would still have been in its infancy in terms of understanding what they're doing.

[Hannah]

Yes. And the FBI had only very recently started sort of giving up their information with local police departments, so there was a lot of administrative problems.

[Ceruti]

Yeah. And actually, yes, they did start the BAU in 1972, so it would have been around. But, yeah, you're right. Like, how many. How many resources they would have had to reach out to all of these cases. And also, if I'm right, my understanding of watching criminal minds, local pd have to ask for the help before the FBI will get involved.

[Hannah]

Oh, yeah.

[Ceruti]

Unless it's obviously crossing state lines, which if they don't even understand what's going on, they're not going to be quick to do so. Coming back to the story and coming back to the differences between the Vasilia ransacker and the ear Ear rapist, The east area rapist, the ransacker, wasn't violent. He was described as stocky with having especially big legs. But nobody described the Ear in that way. The east area rapist was slim. Whatever inspired him to leave Vasilia also made him drop a bunch of weight. Now, you're just gonna have to wait until next week. Not even next week, actually, until week three to find out what that was. But the police were helpless, totally at the mercy of the Ear. He raped at least 51 women in the Sacramento area in just two years, and there was nothing the police or the sheriffs could do about it. They were powerless. Whatever they tried, they just couldn't touch him. And they were looking in all the wrong places. Now, we very rarely think of rapists as being intelligent because of it being such a depraved act. We associate it with force and a loss of control. Maybe. But rape is all about control, and authorities were profiling the Ear all wrong. Sacramentans kept their porch lights on all night, and lock sales went through the roof. Families started sleeping in shifts, and a reward of $10,000 was offered. But it was no good. Living with the fear that you might be next became the new normal. A brittle weariness descended on Sacramento. They were starting to feel like a city beyond help.

[Hannah]

It's not that the law weren't trying. They really, really were. They tried everything, Even a psychic who ate raw hamburger meat and chanted up a storm and still came back with a big fat nothing.

[Ceruti]

Shocker.

[Hannah]

The police department and the sheriff's office investigated thousands of tips from locals, and there were some really weird ones that deserve special mentions. One woman rang in a guy who worked at a local shop as a suspect because, quote, the man's penis is very rough, like it's been used to death. She's not a victim. She's just a. But she's like, I'm sure it's his haggard cough.

[Ceruti]

Exactly.

[Hannah]

Every tip, every clue, every new attack brought more questions and zero answers. What could the connection between all the victims be? How did he pick them? What was his criteria? How did he choose his houses? And they just couldn't get any of it. Every time detective Shelby thought he was closing in on something, another attack or another clue or another shoelace in a garage would shred his theory to tatters. Throughout his reign of terror, the east area rapist averaged two rapes a month. Every woman lived in fear that she would be next. Clearly, he was becoming more and more confident, taking more risks, taunting investigators, and changing his victim profile all the time. He started with women alone, girls alone, and then he moved on to women with children, and then he started to target couples.

[Ceruti]

That's unbelievable. Two rapes a month. That is just staggering. I mean, if somebody told you two people win the lottery every month, you'd be like, my chances are pretty fucking good. In just Sacramento, two people a month win the lottery. You'd be like, buying fucking lottery tickets. No wonder people are so fucking terrified.

[Hannah]

And how. I cannot imagine how exasperating it must have been. I think Richard Shelby is, for the most part, a goodie. There are some terrible investigators on this case who treat women awfully, but I can actually.

[Chime Disclaimer Voice]

No, I can't.

[Hannah]

I can't imagine how exasperating it must be to have all of this evidence and all of these clues, and he's doing the same thing over and over again, and you can't even touch him.

[Ceruti]

Yeah, and also it's. It's. It's the volume. The volume of the rapes, but it's also the idea of, like, you know, in previous cases we've had. We've had people where they know the type. The type of woman that he's going after. So women will dye their hair, they'll change their appearance to. To not be a target. Here it's like, whoever. Yep. There's nothing. There's no parameters. It's just, do you have a home? Are you a woman? See you there. So, yes, as Hannah said, he moved up to start targeting couples after he broke in. He would force the woman to tie up her partner, stacking plates on their back so that he would hear if they moved, and leave them with no choice but to listen as he raped their wives. Which again, of course, as we have talked about, is all about power, control, and when it comes to men, emasculation and humiliation. It's everything that presumably he has felt time and time again. And he's doling out to all of these men and all of these women. The hysteria rapist's biggest high was the feeling he got when he made men feel helpless, powerless, and unable to protect their loved ones. And a small break in the case did come when one sacramentan woman was found to have some of the ears blood in her hair. Detective Shelby sent the sample straight over to the crime lab, who confirmed that whoever the east area rapist was, his blood was a positive along with 35% of the population, which didn't narrow it down enormously, but it was the best Shelby had managed so far. And he needed something to give because the attacks were showing absolutely no sign of slowing down.

[Hannah]

What are you supposed to do, take everyone's blood in the whole country? In February 1977, a family whose name we don't know heard a crash in their back garden. The east area rapist hopped over their fence and banged into their smoker as he did so. Hearing the Noise, the family's 18 year old son ran out of the house to chase him away. His father was right behind him. His son hopped over the fence in pursuit of the sandy haired man in tennis shoes on the ends of his unusually thick legs as he descended out of sight. And then his father heard a loud crack and then another. His son had been shot. At hospital it was discovered that the teen had holes in his stomach, his intestines, his bladder and his rectum. And I actually don't know if he survived, but even if he did, his life never would have been the same after injuries like that.

[Ceruti]

A month later, the Ear started making phone calls to the police department. Three to be precise. In the first two he just said, I am the Ear. The third time he used his full name, I'm the East Area Rapist. Presumably he realised how shit Ear sounds.

[Hannah]

I hope in my heart a bit of him was always a bit upset that they never came up with a better name.

[Ceruti]

Yeah, so yeah, he says, I am the East Area Rapist. I have my next victims stalked and you guys can't catch me. He did seem to be starting to fray though. Ear victims started to report that he was hyperventilating and even sobbed during his attacks, managing to splutter out variations of I'm sorry Mummy through his tears in a childish voice, and once even saying, I hate you, Bonnie. The Bonnie reveal is coming. I promise we're not going to just leave that out there, but not for now.

[Hannah]

The Bonnie element is so satisfying, I promise.

[Ceruti]

Yeah. And again, I'm not surprised at all to hear him crying to him, saying, I'm sorry Mummy. Like again, it all just connects to this feeling of this man who has perceived notions of emasculation, powerlessness, a lack of dominance, a lack of assertion and this deep seated rage that he feels. And yeah, it's almost like he's been created. I think this is the thing I find difficult with the Stereo rapist Aerons, the Golden State Killer, is that it is such an unbelievable story of a man who Gets away with it for so long and has such a complicated variety of, as you said at the start, signatures and perceived motivations. And like his escalation, it almost seems like a Hannibal Lecter style, like created character. But he's real. Like, you just don't see killers last as long as this to go from, I don't wanna say strength to strength, but pursuit to pursuit the way that he does and get away with it for quite so long.

[Hannah]

There are two schools of thought on that. Like, I think because of this element of these devolving attacks where he has this very gravelly clenched teeth voice and then sometimes he slips and he has this Charlie squeaky voice. Some people think that that is an indication that he's sort of falling apart a bit, sort of mentally. I don't think it is. I think he knows that that's what people will assume if he starts doing those things. I'm not actually convinced he ever lost control. He would apparently also stutter on L words, which, whether he was faking it or not, was something he passed on to one of his victims.

[Ceruti]

And again, I don't want to add to the mythologising around him.

[Hannah]

No, I don't think so.

[Ceruti]

But perhaps there's also an element there of him knowing that something is working here, where he is carrying out different sorts of attacks. You know, even though there is that strain of similarity that runs through all of his home invasions, that kind of thing. But he knows to switch things up mildly. Even though he wants all of the crimes attributed to him. We know that he's enjoying the attention. But maybe, maybe this is me adding too much to it. He thinks by switching up that character of pretending to be sobbing one minute, to be incredibly assertive and dominant one minute, and then to be stuttering. Does he think he's leading the police in all sorts of various different directions? Because they're sort of. He's giving them so much more to even think about profiling.

[Hannah]

I certainly think that he changes the evidence he leaves behind, for example, which he especially does when he starts killing. I think he does do that to throw them off. And I also wonder if there's an element of if I appear to be totally unhinged and if I appear to be someone who has been a victim of abuse at the hands of my mum, then I'm not the bad guy, it's not my fault. Or they will think slightly less hideously of me or something along those lines. I think it's all top level manipulation. I don't think any of it's real.

[Ceruti]

Yeah. Because that's the thing. It sort of flies in the face of him wanting to be this sort of, like, dastardly devil character that just invokes huge amounts of fear. Like, it's almost surprising to me if it is a fake out that he's. That he's letting slip or allowing this vulnerable side to him. Because everything he's done up until now is like, don't you dare think I'm weak. I will kill the German shepherd. I will rape this woman in front of her husband. I'm gonna do everything I possibly can to assert that I am the most powerful, the most scary. So it's interesting, if he's faking it, that it is with vulnerability. So then is it really that it is slipping out? But then how does he. If he is crumbling and falling apart, which some people suspect, which does in a way make sense, how does he pull it back together and then carry on doing this for years and years and years? It is very remarkable.

[Hannah]

I'll tell you on week three. So let's get back to Fiona. She and her husband hadn't lived in their new Sacramento house all that long, so Fiona hadn't figured out all of its intricacies. So when the garage door that she was so sure she closed stood open, she thought it must just be the wind. It wasn't. As the east area rapist had Fiona bound with shoelaces, naked on the living room floor, he brutally raped her and told her, if this is on the TV or papers, I will kill two people. Scares my mummy when it's on the news. Tennis shoe footprints were found in Fiona's garden, and there were tire tracks between her house and Highway 99 that ran behind it. Fiona developed a stutter after the attack and a paralyzing fear of the dark. Something that I'm sure many of the victims of the east area rapists had to deal with. And I think that's what is. So the statute of limitations of rape only being three years, the implication there is that, like, it doesn't affect you for the rest of your life, but, like, of course it does.

[Ceruti]

Yeah.

[Hannah]

Another thing that the Sacramento police department and the sheriff's office get quite shockingly off the mark. But as a reflection of the times when the men are bound and forced to listen to their wives or girlfriends being raped, they're not described as victims. They're described as witnesses in the police reports. But, of course, they absolutely were victims.

[Ceruti]

Yeah. Again, it comes back to, you know, wrapping our heads around this Case that, yeah, you know, talking 50 years ago, it's horrific that this is ever how these kind of things were dealt with. And yes, as Hannah said, of course, these men were victims. None more than Victor Hayes. On the 1st of October, 1977, he was only 21 and woke up to a bright torchlight being shone directly into his eyes. As he tried to adjust his vision, Victor realised that the man wasn't just holding a torch. He also had a gun. Victor had his own gun between his mattress and his headboard. But the ear got to it first. Victor realised there was nothing he could do to protect himself or his girlfriend sleeping beside him. She was only 17. The ear rolled Victor over, shoved his face into the mattress, tied his wrists and ankles with shoelaces and balanced a salt shaker on a pot lid on his back and swore he would blow his fucking head off if he heard the kitchenware slip. And again, look, he has been very easily doing this for a very long time without putting in his way a real obstacle, like a man being in the house. He doesn't need to do this. This is why. It's a signature. He doesn't need to do this. He doesn't need to go and attack women and helpless teenage girls when there is a man in the house, he could easily do it in the middle of the day when they're alone. He's doing this to prove a point.

[Hannah]

Exactly.

[Ceruti]

The ear then took Victor's girlfriend into the living room and violently raped her. I also do think it's quite interesting there why he doesn't do it in the same room. And I think it's because he can't.

[Hannah]

I think it's because he doesn't want the man to see how small his penis is.

[Ceruti]

Exactly. I don't think he'd be able to get to where he needs to be, physiologically, if there was another man looking at his penis.

[Hannah]

No, I don't think so either. And later on, when they catch the fucker, it makes a big difference that he moves the women, because what that. So no one gives a fuck about rape and the illegal system after three years doesn't count. So, you know, a lot of the women who give impact statements, he's not even charged with their rape. So they're being given this narrative that they're not victims. But because he moved them from bedroom to living room or bedroom to kitchen, that is transportation for kidnapping and that is federal. No statute of limitations on that. So that's what they charge him with. A whole bunch in the end, fucking Hell, so it's a good thing that he did.

[Ceruti]

I mean like, yeah, kudos to them for like doing that. But I'm also like, maybe just like don't have a three year statute of limitations.

[Hannah]

I mean, they don't now I know

[Ceruti]

they're just like, we have to work around this horrible system that we put in place. Fucking hell. But yeah, I think, I think it does. I'm glad that legally that pays fruition for these victims in the most horrific way possible. But I think, yeah, there is a lot psychologically there, I'm assuming, around his feelings of humiliation, around his member and around other men particularly. So, yes, he moved Victor's girlfriend into the living room where he violently raped her. Victor remained motionless, powerless, just listening. Over the next hour, the ear returned to Victor to taunt him eight times and whispered, sharon is next. Victor's girlfriend wasn't called Sharon, but his mum was.

[Hannah]

The emasculation of that night followed Victor for his whole life. The east area rapist was getting off on making men feel small, attacking their pride, exposing their inability to protect those they loved.

[Ceruti]

It is really attacking both sexes on their deepest fears. Women, on feeling vulnerable, feeling exposed, even in the place when you're meant to feel the safest, in your own house, lying next to your husband or boyfriend. And men, on a feeling of absolute emasculation of you cannot protect your family, you cannot protect your loved one. I will do whatever. Not even just your wife or girlfriend, maybe even your mum. He is really getting to the heart of like, at a base level, what is terrifying to each sex.

[Hannah]

And while we're all male, fragility. The Sacramento Bee printed that the east area rapist was a schizophrenic with a mini penis. Which has really got me thinking about why penis size is such a big deal and why it has so much power. And you know, can someone actually be driven to murder because of a penile insecurity? And then I remembered our Patreon bonus on the murder of Linda Casey. And they absolutely can. Like, she was murdered because she insulted a man's penis and then he killed her. But can a serial rapist become a serial rapist for the same reason? I don't know. I think it's a different thing altogether. And like, big dick good is actually quite a new concept in the West. Ancient Greeks hailed a small penis as a sign of sophistication, while a long shlong was seen as a barbarous one. Like, this is not. It has not always been this way, but we use it to describe powerful, like your big swinging dick, like dick measuring contest. Like we use it all the time and it's constantly being reinforced. Where big dicks do look better is on screen. They're more impactful. So the 70s was the beginning of video porn. So maybe it was more at the front of mind from 70s onwards than it had been previously. The first time a man might be made aware that he is not measuring up to his peers is most likely in a school locker room. And until ubiquitous porn consumption, that was kind of it.

[Ceruti]

And I also think it's something to be said before that you just met someone, you got married, your husband had the dick he had. It's too late. Yeah, your husband had the dick he had. And that was what you dealt with. And there wasn't sort of this, like you said, there wasn't this porn culture, all of that. And then coming into the 70s, you've got, you know, free sex movement, all of this. And I'm not saying this is anyone's fault that this happened. That could easily some woman just like laughs at his dick. That's enough. That spirals him into this feeling of. Already he is dealing with these feelings of emasculation, lack of power, lack of dominance, etc. And obviously it's not simple. Enough of those reasons are solely responsible for why he turns into a crazy rapist and killer. But I think it feeds into a lot of obviously the signatures that we are seeing with him.

[Hannah]

And it is much easier to discover that you may be below average nowadays. But the most convincing argument I found about why men are so worried about measuring up, as it were, is devastatingly obvious. The point at which a penis grows most in a person's life is puberty, right? So it's the literal process of leaving boyhood behind and becoming a man. Therefore, bigger penis. The bigger the penis, the more of a man. Why the old O Greeks felt differently is a question for the classics degree I will literally never do. So let's just leave that one. So let's run with it. If we're saying that penis size is about identity, I've seen some essays about emasculation that argue if your identity can be taken away from you by someone else's achievements or how they treat you, then it isn't really your identity, it's something you use to manipulate the people around you. I just, I half. I get what they're saying, like, but it's all about security, isn't it? And like, feeling secure in being a man is something I'm never going to be able to understand because I'm not one. So I don't think it's particularly like identity is completely formed by sense of self and sense of other. I don't think it's quite fair to completely sort of strip away the impact other people can have on your sense of self. But if you are emasculated by other people, usually women, that is a you problem. But even that argument falls down because the consequences of emasculation are a lot more significant than literally anything else. Women die as a result of it and there's not even a female equivalent word. So, like, I'm really interested in this, like, why is. And I don't have the answer, but why is emasculation. Why is that feeling in particular so strong?

[Ceruti]

It's like you said, stripping away of identity and meaning and purpose for a man. And. Yeah, the negative consequences of what can happen when a man loses those things. And not all men, but some men like this, of course. I think it's. Yeah, I guess that's the best I can do.

[Hannah]

Yeah. I've really struggled to like, develop any further sort of argument of, like, why? Because I think I would argue that the majority of women who are killed by men, it is as a consequence of emasculation. And why is that so much more powerful than anything else? I can't answer. But it is.

[Ceruti]

Now, before we leave you hanging off a cliff of confusion, we have a double homicide for you. Our protagonist, if we can call him that, killed Katie and Brian Maggiore on the 5th of July as they were walking their dog. These killings weren't linked to the Ear for a couple of decades. And you can see why. It's very, very different mo very different situation, and they weren't linked even after a very significant event that we will meet you at either next week or the next week after that, which means that there really isn't that much out there on them.

[Hannah]

Yeah, I feel so guilty in a way that, like, there are so many victims in this that I just can't do any justice to because the information just isn't out there.

[Ceruti]

We can only do what we can do. And actually I'm surprised that for a case that took place 50 years ago, there's this much information at all.

[Hannah]

So this is the best I've got on his first double homicide and I think his first intentional kills. So they were a married couple and they were out walking their dog. They're minding their business. They come across the east area Rapist somehow There's a bit of a story about him waiting at a service station and people watching him act quite suspiciously, like buying Motorola but no petrol. And he's just there a bit too long. But it's never confirmed that that's actually him. It's just, you know, something that gets rung in on the day. And Brian worked at an air base near that service station in Rancho Cordova, just like Fiona's captain husband. Brian and Katie were only 21 and 20. They were newlyweds and just living their lives. All we know is that they crossed paths with the Ear somehow and he shot them both dead. Neither of them live to tell the tale, so we don't know what happened to them and I don't know what happened to their dog either.

[Ceruti]

Then a little while later, six hours away in Santa Barbara county, started to feel like something was seriously wrong. In September 1979, a German Shepherd Malamute mix darted behind a house in Galita and let out a yelp before collapsing at his owner's feet when he realised that his dog's belly had been sliced open. The dog did survive, but only after 70 stitches. His owner spoke to the lady who lived in the house to see if she had any idea what could possibly have sliced his dog open in her back garden. But they couldn't find anything.

[Hannah]

They're looking for like a lawnmower blade or something and there's nothing. So what that means is he was waiting and he sliced that dog open a split second.

[Ceruti]

Yeah. One week later, a couple in the same town were awoken by a flashlight. And it was like any other east area rapist break in, except hundreds of miles from Sacramento. He ordered the woman to tie up her boyfriend. Then he tied up the woman after moving her into the living room as she lay terrified on the floor. He paced around the house, stomping, swearing, slamming drawers and muttering I'll kill them all over and over again.

[Hannah]

Unbelievably, both of these victims, who, again I don't know their names, managed to escape the house. And by a stroke of magical luck, their neighbour just so happened to be an FBI agent. And he spotted the tennis shoe clad man lurking outside their house and rang it in as the east area rapist hopped over the fence and escaped on a bike. Most scholars of this case agree that this was the first time he was intentionally planning on killing. None of his victims would survive him again.

[Ceruti]

Interesting. Yeah. I wonder if he was planning on killing for the first time or whether he realized as an FBI agent next door they got away and this was the first time he. I could have been caught. Next time, I leave no witnesses. I hope so.

[Hannah]

Who knows? Next week we will be full force into the serial killing section, and we've got more grisly details for you to be laid out. And I in no way want to come across that I haven't told more rape stories. Great sentence, because I don't want it to ever seem like I don't think it's a serious crime. But because the murders are next, there's just so much more information on them. And if you look at any sort of timeline of this case, burglary, ransacking, then he does a lot of rapes and then it's the murders. And that's the bit I talk about.

[Ceruti]

Yeah, I mean, I think no one can accuse us of not thinking rape is a heinous crime and deserves to be spoken about. And all of these victims deserve that. I think it's. We're also dealing with a case that's 50 years old where they didn't think that the rapes were particularly pertinent. So we can only deal with the information that we have. And, yeah, I think. I think it's interesting that he moves from rapes to killing. And it's either, as we said, this sort of escalation to continue to feed himself psychologically and sexually, or it's a more practical reason. And it's like, I'm not going to leave any witnesses behind. But with that argument, I find it harder to maybe wrap my head around because he is practical in many ways, but he is also motivated by his emotions and by his sexual desires and his need for dominance. And what would have served him when he wasn't killing his victims was leaving behind a living trophy. Because leaving behind that mentality which we've seen from the Vasilia ransackings, this fear he leaves behind in his victims, even if he's not there to see it every day, just knowing I ruined that person's life and they're still out there and they have to deal with it. To someone like a serial killer or, you know, somebody like that, we know killing is nothing. It's like. It's like discarding a piece of tissue in the bin. Like, I'm not thinking about it. I don't give a fuck about that person. It is surprising to me that he escalates in. In some ways psychologically to killing, because it's taking that person. I'm not saying, obviously this is a preferable. I'm saying to him taking that Person out of their misery, they're dead now. They don't have to deal with the consequences and the fear that I wrought on their life, because that's what he wants when he's doing the rapings and the ransackings. I want you to be scared for the rest of your life because of what I did to you. When he starts killing, he takes that away. So I guess he gets some emotional payoff from it as well, because otherwise he wouldn't take that step of snuffing out a person's life. But it is interesting that evolution is interesting because they feel like two very different types of offender, and that's why he gets away with it. Yeah.

[Hannah]

And I. Yes, I agree. I think possibly in the Sacramento years, I think he sort of graduates from cause. Yes, it's about fear. That's what he wants. And then in Sacramento, he learns. He's like, oh, I can terrify a whole city. I don't even have to get them all. They are all terrified of me.

[Ceruti]

Yeah. And I guess the escalation to killing gives him that payoff with other people as well, maybe.

[Hannah]

Yeah. Because he's learned that if he does it frequently enough, everyone knows.

[Ceruti]

Yeah. All right.

[Hannah]

And I'm afraid the victim list next week will get longer. So in an attempt to give you a bit of a light at the end of this tunnel, I'm gonna leave you with a quote from Phyllis Henneman's victim's impact statement that I previously left out, which is, she's a fucking badass, by the way. We're gonna hear from her more, but this is how she closed her statement in 2020. I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become. And we will be seeing Phyllis next week and the next. Don't have nightmares I've had.

[Ceruti]

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[Hannah]

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[Ceruti]

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[Hannah]

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