Hunting the Bogeyman | 3. The Rollercoaster

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Binge Crimes: Hunting The Bogeyman
Episode 3: The Rollercoaster
Original Airdate: November 17, 2025
Host: Peter McDonnell (Sony Music Entertainment)

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Overview

Episode 3, "The Rollercoaster," delves deeply into the evolving investigation of the NorCal Rapist—focusing on Nicole Earnest-Payte’s struggle for justice, the dogged efforts of multiple detectives, setbacks and breakthroughs in forensic technology, and the emotional highs and lows experienced by survivors and investigators alike. The episode traces the journey from Nicole’s assault and the initial skepticism about her claims to the ultimate linking of her case to a broader series of attacks, culminating in the emerging hope brought by forensic genealogy. It is a powerful study in perseverance, institutional inertia, the complexities of multi-jurisdictional crimes, and the relentless search for answers.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Nicole Earnest-Payte’s Confrontation with Law Enforcement ([02:13]–[02:52])

• Nicole returns to the Rohnert Park police station in 2006 after her status as the NorCal Rapist's first identified survivor is publicized.
• She directly criticizes the police for their initial inaction and disbelief:
  • Nicole (C): “Maybe if this department had investigated a little bit better, maybe the following nine women wouldn’t have been attacked. Maybe you should have believed me. Maybe you should have talked to Sonoma.” ([02:33])
• Emotional weight and survivor advocacy are highlighted, laying the groundwork for the episode’s theme of institutional accountability.

2. Detective Kay Lapelt’s Involvement & Early Missed Opportunities ([04:46]–[09:33])

• In 1997, Detective Kay Lapelt, on the brink of retirement, responds to a double assault in Davis, CA.
• Crime details: Rapist moves mattresses, binds victims, threatens exposure—exhibits MO consistent with prior unsolved cases.
• DNA mishandlings and departmental limitations slow case progress, but Kay persists:
  • Kay (E): “I had promised our two victims that I would work on this case and do everything I can to catch this guy.” ([07:44])
• Kay collaborates with cold case investigator Paul Holes; their cross-county partnership sets important precedents for investigative persistence.

3. The Power and Limits of DNA & Multijurisdictional Hurdles ([09:33]–[13:19])

• Holes and Kay, operating under varying degrees of institutional support, push for deeper DNA testing—sometimes against direct orders.
  • Paul Holes (G): “My bosses were starting to clamp down on me in terms of my cold case pursuits... But Paul didn’t listen.” ([10:19]–[10:35])
• Only through their collaboration is Nicole’s 1991 assault linked to the NorCal Rapist series:
  • Paul Holes (G): “I assign it to a DNA analyst, and she is able to generate DNA from the semen evidence in the case and link it to the NorCal Rapist series.” ([12:52])
  • Personal twist: the analyst becomes Paul’s wife ([13:12]).

4. Nicole’s Years in the Dark ([13:19]–[14:12])

• Nicole is left uninformed about developments in her case for years due to jurisdictional boundaries, despite the evidence linking her experience with others.
• Illustrates systemic communication failures affecting survivors.

5. Avis Beery and the Sacramento Breakthrough ([16:18]–[22:10])

• Detective Avis Beery becomes involved in 2006 when new evidence arises, including a vehicle of interest: a white Toyota 4Runner.
• Massive investigative operation, "Operation Forerunner," is launched. Investigators track down hundreds of 4Runner owners, acquiring DNA samples with no success:
  • Avis Beery (D): “We got over 100 DNA samples, and all of those were cleared...we knew that we were dealing with kind of a needle in a haystack.” ([19:43])
• Beery’s approach centers survivor support:
  • Avis Beery (D): “I absolutely believed her. And I felt terrible to my core that somebody would not believe her...you don’t lose anything by believing your victim from the get go.” ([20:43])

6. Media, Publicity, and the False Hopes of "America's Most Wanted" ([22:21]–[25:49])

• To broaden the manhunt, the case is featured on “America’s Most Wanted” in 2008. Nicole, her husband, and friends hope public attention will prompt a break.
  • Nicole (C): “Somebody’s going to recognize this guy. Someone’s going to recognize a pattern or have a gut feeling or spidey sense or something and call and it’s going to be the right person.” ([24:29])
• Although the show airs on Nicole’s birthday and they celebrate with a cake, no actionable leads result, leading to disappointment and emotional fatigue.

7. The Lingering Unknown and Psychological Toll ([26:14]–[28:07])

• Nicole describes her unease at seeing a stranger who could fit the rapist’s description; the case remains unsolved, dominating her thoughts and those of investigators.
  • Nicole (C): “How awful to be a sociopath. How awful would it be to be that angry?...But what I would always think about is what happened to you, what harm came to you? How did you get like this?” ([26:39])
• Detective Beery recounts her own obsession, always watching for the suspect’s vehicle, living with the ongoing uncertainty.

8. Breakthroughs in Forensic Genealogy ([28:21]–[36:01])

• Paul Holes, now a full-time cold case investigator, collaborates with Beery in searching for next-gen investigative methods.
• The episode explains “YSTR genealogy” as a way to potentially learn the suspect’s last name. Monica Tchaikowski, an investigative analyst, runs the YSTR profile—"Waller" emerges as one possibility ([31:32]), but it remains too common to narrow a lead.
• Shift to more advanced forensic genealogy, using lessons from solving the Golden State Killer (GSK) case with genetic database searches and genealogist Barbara Rae Venter.
• After the GSK arrest, DA Ann Marie Shubert demands the same strategy for the NorCal Rapist.
  • Ann Marie Shubert (C): “We found the needle in the haystack, and it was right here in Sacramento.” ([35:43])

9. Episode Cliffhanger & Tease ([36:01]–[36:28])

• The genealogical approach is slated to be applied to the NorCal Rapist case, with detectives expressing hope and anticipation:
  • Paul Holes (G): “Ann Marie is going I want this done on NorCal Rapist.” ([36:01])
• Preview of next episode: the suspect identification and arrest.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Nicole Earnest-Payte’s powerful rebuke:
  “Maybe if this department had investigated a little bit better, maybe the following nine women wouldn’t have been attacked. Maybe you should have believed me.” ([02:33], Nicole)

• Kay Lapelt’s steadfast commitment:
  “I had promised our two victims that I would work on this case and do everything I can to catch this guy.” ([07:44], Kay Lapelt)

• Paul Holes on institutional resistance:
  “My bosses were starting to clamp down on me...because I was just constantly putting requests in on these old, old cases.” ([10:19], Paul Holes)

• Avis Beery’s victim-first philosophy:
  “You don’t lose anything by believing your victim from the get go. If you run your investigation the way you’re supposed to, you’re going to figure out that this is BS or it’s not. It’s that simple.” ([20:43], Avis Beery)

• Nicole’s commentary on empathy and justice:
  “How awful to be a sociopath. How awful would it be to be that angry? ...But what I would always think about is what happened to you, what harm came to you? How did you get like this?” ([26:39], Nicole)

• Paul Holes on the excitement of forensic genealogy:
  “That’s where you get excited going, okay, I got the guy's last name.” ([30:46], Paul Holes)

• Ann Marie Shubert after the Golden State Killer arrest:
  “We found the needle in the haystack, and it was right here in Sacramento.” ([35:43], Ann Marie Shubert)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:13] Nicole Earnest-Payte confronts the police
• [04:46] Detective Kay Lapelt describes the Davis case
• [07:44] Kay’s vow to victims and persevering across retirement
• [10:19] Paul Holes describes institutional resistance
• [12:52] Key DNA link made in Nicole's case
• [13:19] Nicole left uninformed about case developments
• [16:18] Entry of Detective Avis Beery and Operation Forerunner
• [19:43] Avis on the needle-in-a-haystack challenge
• [20:43] Avis underscores the importance of believing victims
• [24:29] Nicole expresses hope after America’s Most Wanted
• [26:39] Nicole reflects on the psyche of the perpetrator
• [28:21] Paul Holes transitions to the DA’s office for full-time cold cases
• [31:32] Use of YSTR genealogy, "Waller" surname attempt
• [33:01] Solving the Golden State Killer via advanced genealogy
• [35:43] Ann Marie Shubert celebrates GSK arrest
• [36:01] Decision to apply forensic genealogy to the NorCal Rapist

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Tone and Style

The episode maintains a tone that is investigative and empathetic, blending technical forensic detail with human stories of persistence, trauma, and hope. Speakers convey a mix of frustration, obsession, and cautious optimism, matched by a sense of hard-won camaraderie among survivors and tenacious investigators. The narrative is fast-paced, rich in specific case anecdotes and broader commentary on the evolution of criminal investigation.

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For listeners or readers new to the series, "The Rollercoaster" is essential for understanding both the breakthroughs and setbacks in the hunt for the NorCal Rapist—an era-spanning chronicle marked by relentless victim advocacy, procedural innovation, and humanity on all sides of the criminal justice system.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

You can listen to all episodes of Hunting the Boogeyman ad free right now by subscribing to the binge. Visit the binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page or visit getthebinge.com to get access. Wherever you listen the binge feed your true crime obsession, the bench. In 2006, when the news broke that Nicole was the first survivor of the Norcal rapist, she went back to the Rohnert park police station to give them a piece of her mind.

[C]

I had like lightning bolts coming out of my eyes towards them.

[B]

When she got to the police station that day, she learned that Detective Diane had left a long time ago and the other officer had retired. But for her own sake and the sake of other victims, she had a message to deliver.

[C]

Maybe if this department had investigated a little bit better, maybe the following nine women wouldn't have been attacked. Maybe you should have believed me. Maybe you should have talked to Sonoma.

[D]

Maybe.

[C]

Maybe you should have brought in bigger, bigger and heavier resources. I don't know. Maybe if you had done any of those things, we wouldn't be sitting here today.

[B]

From Sony Music Entertainment and Perfect Cadence, you're listening to Hunting the Boogeyman. I'm Peter McDonnell. This is episode three, the roller coaster. When the NorCal rapist attacked in Sacramento in 2006, the public alarm bell finally rang. If you lived in Northern California, make sure to lock your doors, turn on your outside lights, and if you can help it, don't sleep alone. The hunt for the NorCal rapist had been supercharged.

[E]

Tonight. New leads in the investigation into a serial rapist.

[B]

Someone out there knows who he is.

[E]

Police say the first victim was assaulted in Rohnert Park.

[B]

He's smarter than the average crook. He. He's covered his tracks for 15 years.

[E]

Detectives have linked all of these cases with DNA.

[F]

Fear hangs in the air.

[B]

I would be afraid because I don't think he'll stop. At some point in my conversations with Nicole, I realized that she still didn't know how her case was finally linked to the series. Neither did I. So I decided to find out. The answer takes us back to 1997, the year the NorCal rapist attacked two women in Davis, California. A detective named Kay Lapelt, who was just days away from retiring, caught the case. I drove to Davis to meet him. K is now in his mid-80s and has a white handlebar mustache. He looks like the Quaker Oats guy. I parked next to his vegetable garden and he opened the screen door to invite me inside. He was busy making Cornish hens for dinner. There was a heat wave and his hundred year old farmhouse had no ac, but it was cool enough. He poured me some water and we sat in his dining room to Talk.

[E]

It was January 25th of 1997 and a Saturday morning and I was called here at home and told about a sexual assault. Our crime scene investigator was already there taking photographs and such. But I met with the victims. We walked through the apartment together and my instruction to them is don't touch anything, but tell me what's out of place.

[B]

The answer was a lot. The rapist had pulled two mattresses downstairs and onto the floor of the living room. He apologized for binding them. He also warned them not to tell anyone or their names would be publicized and they'd be ashamed. And he threatened to come back and harm them. They called the police anyway. The women had done sexual assault kits, but somewhere along the line, the DNA testing got messed up. Kay didn't want to point a finger at anyone, but I sensed he had someone in mind. Kaye decided to focus on the case and delay his retirement for a while. Then he found a major clue.

[E]

We learned that their cards, their ATM cards, had been used shortly after he left the apartment.

[B]

In all of the rapist's previous thefts, he used black spray paint to blind the ATM security cameras. He did this at the first bank he went to in Davis. But when he drove across town to the next bank, his behavior changed.

[E]

In that one, he approached the ATM and he's wearing. Later, we found a copy, an exact copy of what the mask was.

[B]

The mask was clear, but it eerily distorted his face. He went up to the ATM camera, his head cocked to one side, and looked right into the lens.

[E]

It's kind of like taunting. You know, catch me if you can.

[B]

The ATM images of the NorCal rapist were the closest anyone had come to seeing him. But they made him look so freakish, even his family might not have recognized him. A few days later, Kay caught another break.

[E]

I got a call from an FBI agent in San Francisco that, hey, this mo, that sounds familiar. And she. She turned me on to, I think it was the 1992 Vallejo case.

[B]

Kaye learned of many of the other cases in the series, the ones Paul Holz had helped connect. Based on MO alone, Kaye was 99% sure that the attack in Davis was part of the series.

[E]

I had promised our two victims that I would work on this case and do everything I can to catch this guy.

[B]

He kept that promise, too. When Kaye finally retired from the police department and went to work part time as an investigator at the DA's office, he took their case with him. Then one day in 2000, he was working outside in his front yard when a sergeant from Davis PD pulled up and rolled down the window.

[E]

Hey, Kate. We had a rape and he wanted to tell me about it. He actually kidnapped the victim out of the apartment, put her in the car, took her to the bank and raped her in the car, then returned her to her apartment. Do you think this could be part of that series?

[B]

The rapist had never struck twice in the same town before. Was he getting sloppy or bolder? Did it mean he lived in Davis or nearby? In Woodland or in Sacramento? The sergeant gave Kay a copy of the police report. Kaye read it.

[E]

That's him.

[B]

The two attacks in Davis were strikingly similar. In both, the rapist wore a mask, used bindings, threatened and apologized, and spent a long time with the victims. Stranger rapes tend to be fast, but NorCal rapist attacks lasted hours. Fortunately, there was DNA evidence in the case. Kay helped definitively link it with the others in the series. And during this entire time, from 1997 to 2000, Kay had been working with Paul Holz.

[G]

He's developing various suspects.

[E]

During his efforts, I went up to Oregon, followed leads. I went to San Quentin prison, talked to other suspects that we were eliminating.

[G]

These suspects as he's getting samples, these.

[B]

Two investigators K. @ the end of his career, Paul, in the middle, met in Davis for a roundtable discussion about NorCal. The DA's office where Kay worked part time, granted him permission to keep pursuing it if he wanted to. Paul had no such permission. At that point in his career, he was going rogue. Paul had tried to hide his obsession with cold cases from the higher ups at the sheriff's office. But word was getting out.

[G]

And my bosses were starting to clamp down on me in terms of my cold case pursuits. In part because some of the staff had complained about how I was killing them because I was just constantly putting requests in on these old, old cases.

[B]

They told Paul to stay in his lane, stick to the regular casework, stop running extra DNA tests at the lab and keep an eye on the budget. But Paul didn't listen.

[G]

This type of predator is going to reoffend, and that's what he did. And Kay's digging and finds out about an attack of a 21 year old woman named Nicole in Rohnert Park.

[B]

This was how they found her.

[E]

I was convinced that the Rohnert park matched our mo.

[G]

He feels strongly and I felt strongly, this sounds like the same guy.

[E]

I wanted to tie it in, yes or no. And the only way to do that was with DNA.

[B]

By now it was 2001, 10 years after Nicole was attacked.

[G]

Then there was a case right after that in Sonoma that was like identical.

[B]

That was the second attack in the series, the one Nicole read about in the newspaper, and then called the reporter to say that's the same guy. The Sonoma case hadn't been formally connected by DNA either. So Kay reached out to Rohnert park to see if they had any DNA evidence in Nicole's case. And Paul reached out to the Sonoma pd.

[G]

So I end up having the evidence tech from Sonoma bring their evidence to the lab to see if we could tie this to the same offender in this Sonoma case. Though we unfortunately were not able to find DNA evidence.

[B]

Kay told me he couldn't remember the details of his communication with the Rohnert park PDF, but he didn't need to. Paul had copies of Kaye's written reports.

[G]

Three months after this roundtable, he writes, as of this writing, I have not received any information from Rohner Park PD concerning their DNA evidence. In April of 2002, a year later, Kaye writes, after many requests, Rohner park located their DNA evidence and agreed to release it all to him. To Kay.

[E]

Yeah, they didn't care anymore. I went to Rohnert Park.

[B]

Kaye picked up the evidence in Nicole's case and drove to the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office crime lab, where he handed it over to Paul.

[G]

I assign it to a DNA analyst and she is able to generate DNA from the semen evidence in the case and link it to the NorCal Rapist Series.

[B]

There's a nice twist to this story, too. Is this DNA analyst. Do you know this person? Very well?

[G]

I do, yeah. Today, she's my wife.

[B]

In the world of law enforcement, the jurisdiction where the crime occurred is usually in charge of communicating with the victim. And if that changes, they formally introduce the victim to a new point person. But from 1992 to 2006, Nicole said she didn't hear anything about her case. And when she finally did, it wasn't from Ronald park, even though Paul helped link Nicole's case to the series. For these jurisdictional reasons, to this day, Nicole and Paul have never met. But later in this story, I'll introduce them. By the summer of 2006, the hunt for the NorCal rapist had led nowhere. Finding his trail would require some major new clues, which is exactly what police in Sacramento got that October.

[E]

Well, this is some good new evidence that they released today. And hopefully this is finally, after 15 years, going to lead them to this attacker.

[D]

That's what they're hoping.

[A]

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[F]

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[B]

The new evidence police found in 2006 fell into the hands of a veteran sex crimes detective at the Sacramento Police Department named Avis Beery. Hey, Detective Beery, not sure if you can hear me. Yes, now I can hear you. Avis was sitting on her couch after a long night of work, computer on her knees. A few years ago, she retired from the Sacramento PD and became a sexual assault investigator for the DA's office. At some point, which nobody seems to know, the bad guy in this story became known as the NorCal Rapist. I asked Avis when she first heard that name.

[D]

I was actually on vacation, and when I came back, my team was like, oh you, you're never gonna believe this. We got a double rape. And I was like, oh man, why do I always miss the good stuff? Like, that's a really terrible thing to say. But like, when you're in law enforcement or, you know, homicide and you get like a triple, it's terrible. But at the same time it's like, wow, this is a good case, you know, so we're a little weird, all of us. But like, that was a, that was a really exciting case for somebody who is a sex assault detective.

[B]

And it was a much bigger case than Avis realized. When they uploaded the suspect's DNA to the FBI's CODIS database, it matched seven other cases.

[D]

I was shocked. So then the red handle gets pulled by the brass because we've got rapes from across Northern California spanning from 1991 all the way to 2006.

[B]

First Avis compared the DNA to all of her local 290s sex offenders and to parolees, but there was no match. So she kicked it up a notch.

[D]

We worked with a DOJ profiler, I worked with a handwriting analyst. I worked with a geographic profiler.

[B]

All of that led to nothing. She had two big new clues, though. The first one was that a surveillance camera on a neighbor's garage caught a few frames of a white Toyota 4Runner driving by at the same time of night that the victim said the rapist left. And no one in the neighborhood recognized the vehicle. With help from the dmv, Avis compiled a list of everyone in California who owned a 4Runner. There were thousands. So she narrowed it down to the owners of White 4 Runners in seven counties.

[D]

Where I believed this suspect either lived or. Or worked or both. Packets were made for every vehicle. Show with a picture of the registered owner, accurate information that shows where they've lived, any kind of data that we could get. We named this, by the way, Operation forerunner.

[B]

The Sacramento PD offered investigators overtime pay to take one or more of the 300 packets and on their days off, track down and interview the suspects. Each packet had the same list of mandatory questions.

[D]

Can I look at your vehicle? Who drives this vehicle besides you? Have you had any work done on your vehicle?

[B]

The last question was, would you be willing to provide a DNA sample?

[D]

Well, we got over 100 DNA samples, and all of those were cleared because, you know, they obviously all came back that they didn't match norcal rapist profile. You know, we knew that we were dealing with kind of a needle in a haystack.

[B]

After months of work, they couldn't find the proverbial needle. And the tab for Operation Forerunner for overtime mileage and DNA tests had swelled to the hundreds of thousands of dollars. With no new leads, Operation Forerunner slowed down. Avis let Nicole and the other survivors know she'd still do everything in her power to find him.

[D]

I tried to be really selective about what I told the victims because it's a roller coaster for me. It's opening up a wound for them. You know, sex assault victims never, I don't think, ever really totally heal from. From their wounds.

[B]

I was curious what Avis thought when she read Nicole's case for the first time.

[D]

I absolutely believed her. And I felt terrible to my core that somebody would not believe her. For what reason? Well, when I speak with other investigators, I always tell them, you don't lose anything by believing your victim from the get go. And if you run and there's no reason to be an a hole to your victim. If you run your investigation the way you're supposed to, you're going to figure out that this is BS or it's not. It's that simple.

[B]

The second new clue Avis had was just as good as the forerunner. One of the victims in Sacramento saw the NorCal Rapist without his mask on and he looked just like Nicole had thought, except after 15 years, he put.

[D]

On a lot of weight and I said, well, you know, he must be married because he's obviously out of shape.

[B]

The survivor worked with the sketch artist to create a new composite. The NorCal Rapist was now in his 40s, with light brown spiked hair, clean shaven, with full cheeks and wide cheekbones. He looked like a bully from the 1950s or like an angry biff from the movie Back to the Future. Avis called Nicole and she told me.

[C]

That she was trying to get more national publicity on the on the case because she's like, we don't know where this guy lives. He could live anywhere.

[B]

Which was why Avis decided to pitch the NorCal rapist case to the producers of America's Most Wanted.

[H]

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[B]

Hello friends. Guess who?

[E]

That's right. It is I, the replacer. Once again, I've been called on so you can play. Play the new Call of Duty Black Ops 7. With three expansive modes, 18 multiplayer maps, and the tastiest zombie gameplay you've ever frickin seen.

[B]

Call of Duty Black Ops 7 available now. Rated M for mature. In 2008, America's Most Wanted covered the NorCal Rapist case. A twisted serial rapist in northern California in has been working on perfecting his.

[H]

Bizarro fantasies for some 15 years now.

[B]

He's called the NorCal Rapist. And tonight we're hot on his trail. Avis, Nicole and another survivor were interviewed.

[C]

Somebody's going to recognize this guy. Someone's going to recognize a pattern or have a gut feeling or spidey sense or something and call and it's going to be the right person.

[B]

It's how big cases sometimes get solved. In 1995, David Kaczynski recognized his brother Ted's use of language in the Unabomber's manifesto published in the New York Times and Washington Post. In 2024, Luigi Mangione was caught when a worker at McDonald's recognized him from Images Online. The NorCal Rapist episode of America's Most Wanted aired on Nicole's 38th birthday. She and her husband Carlos threw a party. Here's Carlos. When AMW came out, I thought, oh.

[G]

We'Re gonna get him with this.

[B]

What a birthday gift that would be. Nicole's friend even brought a cake decorated with his composite sketch behind gray bars of icing.

[C]

And then she handed me a giant butcher knife and I cut into his face. It was.

[B]

There were so many people who watched America's Most Wanted that Detective Avis Beery was almost certain they were going to get a lead on it that would finally crack the case. Somebody would recognize his car, somebody would know his face.

[D]

But it didn't work.

[B]

None of the show's tips panned out. The hunt for the NorCal rapist stalled again. I think we both kind of our hopes got shot down a little bit. After maybe a year or two after America's Wanted came out, Nicole and Carlos moved on with their lives. But a few years later, when their son was in elementary school, a new dad at drop off caught Nicole's eye.

[C]

And I looked at him and I kept staring at him. And he just had this presence about him. And he had kind of similar skin, similar characteristics. And I went home and I said, carl, Carlos, it wouldn't surprise me if it was him. We don't know who this person is. And I sort of stayed away from that person. He made me uncomfortable.

[B]

Whenever Nicole thought about who this nameless predator was, she also wondered what it must be like to walk around in.

[C]

His shoes, how awful to be a sociopath. How awful would it be to be that angry? How awful would it be to be that unhinged? It did not negate the fact that I wanted him in prison for the rest of his life. But what I would always think about is what happened to you, what harm came to you? How did you get like this?

[B]

As far as Anyone knew, the NorCal Rapist's attack in Sacramento in 2006 was his last. Had the publicity scared him? Did he relocate? Did he die? If he was still alive, Avis wanted him to slip up, drink too much, and get a felony dui, get caught breaking into someone's home. Any felony would do because by law, he'd have to give a DNA sample which would instantly unmask him as the NorCal Rapist. But Avis had to move on to other cases. Whenever she saw a forerunner on the highway, though, she'd get right up next to it and peer inside.

[D]

Is that my suspect? You know, is that him driving? I would, you know, catch up. Look at him. Write down the license plate. Double check it. Did we see this one? Did we check it? You know, it was just always an unknown, and it really drove me crazy to think about it. And it's like it's a roller coaster.

[B]

By 2017, the odds of catching the NorCal Rapist had diminished. More than a decade had passed since his last known attack. When Avis got a phone call, Paul.

[D]

Contacted me and said, hey, can we sit down and meet and talk about NorCal?

[B]

Paul had left his job at the sheriff's office. His clashes with the higher ups had taken a toll.

[G]

I was just like, oh, I see the writing on the wall here. They're looking out for the sheriff's operation. And I'm going, that is not my passion.

[B]

My passion here meant solving cold cases. So Paul called his friend, the elected DA of Contra Costa County, Mark Peterson.

[A]

And I said, hey, what about a job?

[B]

Can you start a new department for me where I can do what I really want to do, which is solve these cold cases, literally.

[G]

I created my own position in the county and slid over to the DA's office.

[B]

When Paul drove to Sacramento to meet Avis, he was a full time cold case investigator. Avis gave him a copy of all of her files. The NorCal rapist case had hit the same dead end as hundreds of thousands of homicides and stranger rapes worldwide. Detectives had the offender's DNA, but they didn't know who it belonged to. There had to be a way around this dead end, that's what Paul was looking for. One possibility was a form of genealogy using a male offender's Y chromosome to try and find his last name.

[G]

Well, the Y is inherited from the male's dad.

[B]

The process is called YSTR genealogy. Here's the idea behind it. In most societies, the the male's surname gets passed down like a dominant gene. So if you can find one of your suspect's male ancestors, it might tell you your suspect's last name. But the process is hit or miss. The Y chromosome has more than 800 of what are called short tandem repeats, or STRs, which are unique sequences of genetic material. Usually, though, Paul only had a small sample of a suspect's STRs, sometimes as few as 10. When he uploaded them to a website called ysearch.org the site would spit out a list of potential surnames for the suspect based on the markers that matched. Sometimes it was a very long list, but sometimes it was not.

[G]

And that's where you get excited going, okay, I got the guy's last name.

[B]

At this point in Paul's career, he was teaching classes on DNA to investigators.

[G]

There are specific things I had to teach, but then I also added things. And one of the things I added was, well, think about doing this YSTR type searching in your case. Well, one of the individuals that had seen me talking about this was this investigative assistant, Monica Tchaikowski.

[B]

Monica was an investigative analyst at the Sacramento County DA's office. When Paul told his class that YSTR genealogy might be useful in breaking the logjam of a cold case, Monica's first thought was to try it on the NorCal Rapist.

[G]

She's probably the only one of anybody I've talked to about this that actually took the time to do it.

[C]

We had a YSTR profile on the NorCal case. You know, we plugged in the data into the website, and it gives you possible surnames. There were, you know, dozens of them, but one of them was the last name Waller.

[B]

She told Paul. But there was a problem.

[C]

That name was more common than you would think.

[G]

I was researching, you know, various men with Wallers, you know, generally in the Bay Area. Nobody really popped. And I just was like, you know, I know I'm just going to be spinning my wheels here.

[C]

We weren't able to narrow it down.

[B]

Monica put the NorCal rapist case to the side. She and Paul were busy working with a small and secret team on a shot in the dark experiment to identify a serial killer. The experiment made use of a more powerful, precise and complex type of genealogy than YSTR. Paul had come across the idea in 2017, when a genealogist named Barbara Ray Venter used a woman's DNA profile and genealogy to identify her true name. The woman had been kidnapped as a baby. The process worked, and Paul thought, huh.

[G]

I wonder if anyone has ever done that to solve a homicide.

[B]

No one had. So Paul contacted Barbara Ray Venter and pitched her on the idea. Together, they formed a team with an FBI lawyer named Steve Kramer, Monica Tchaikowski at The Sacramento County DA's office, her boss, Kirk Campbell, and a few others. Their quarry was the Golden State Killer. A white man in his 60s or 70s with blue eyes. He killed 13 people and raped 51 women and girls. Since the beginning of his career, Paul had tried everything to solve the case. This was his last ditch attempt before he retired. The first part of this novel's strategy was easy. They uploaded the DNA profile of the Golden State Killer to a public genealogy database using a fake name. It was like putting your last, best bet into a slot machine and pulling the handle. The jackpot would be if the DNA profile matched one of the Golden State Killer's parents, siblings or children, because then it would be easy to triangulate and find him. But they didn't hit the jackpot. It wasn't even close. They found a third cousin. Barbara Rae Venter told them that locating GSK's identity was still possible, but it was going to take some time. The team worked obsessively for months, hunting for GSK's closest ancestors by building enormous family trees all the way back to the 1700s in Italy. They pored over birth certificates, obituaries, and old newspapers. They visited graveyards to look at headstones. It took them three thousands of hours, but then they found him. Joseph DeAngelo, a 72 year old former cop who lived with his daughter and granddaughter in Citrus Heights, a suburb of Sacramento. Genealogy had given them the perfect lead. Within hours, Undercover police surveilled DeAngelo and took a secret sample of his DNA. It was him. To avoid an armed standoff, they staked out his house and waited. Eventually, an oblivious DeAngelo ambled out to a side yard where there was nowhere to run, and they swarmed him. Handcuffed and in shock, he pleaded to be let free because he had a roast in the oven cooking. The next day, Ann Marie Shubert, the elected DA of Sacramento county, held a press conference.

[C]

We found the needle in the haystack, and it was right here in Sacramento.

[B]

Forensic investigative genealogy had cracked one of the biggest, coldest cases in US History, and everyone on the team knew which case would be next.

[G]

Ann Marie is going I want this done on NorCal Rapist.

[B]

On the next episode of Hunting the Boogeyman, the team zeroes in on a suspect.

[D]

He looks a lot like the composite.

[B]

And they make an arrest.

[C]

Oh my God, they caught him. They caught him.

[G]

Don't tell anybody we got norcal.

[B]

Don't want to wait for that next episode. You don't have to unlock all episodes of Hunting the Boogeyman ad free right now by subscribing to the Binge Podcast Channel. It's easy, really. Search for the binge on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page, not on apple. Head to getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. As a subscriber, you'll get binge access to new stories on the 1st of every month. Check out the Binge channel page on apple podcasts or getthebinge.com to learn more. Hunting the Boogeyman is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and Perfect Cadence. It's hosted and reported by me, Peter McDonnell from Perfect Cadence. I'm the executive producer from Sony Music Entertainment. The executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch. The series was sound, designed and mixed by Matt Gergle. We used music from Audio Network News. Clips are from TV 50 News and CBS News Sacramento. The show's production manager was Sammy Allison. Our lawyer is Allison Sherry. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Racik and Jamie Myers. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave a review. It's the best way to support us. Thanks for listening.

[F]

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[C]

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