Richard Shelby - Hunting a Psychopath: The East Area Rapist / Original Night Stalker Investigation

HUNTING A PSYCHOPATH

The

East Area Rapist /

Original Night Stalker Investigation

The Original Investigator Speaks Out

Richard Shelby

Copyright 2014 Richard Shelby

KINDLE ISBN: 9781632635112

HARDCOVER ISBN: 9781632635099

PAPERBACK ISBN: 9781632635082

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

Published by BookLocker.com, Inc., Bradenton, Florida.

BookLocker.com, Inc., 2014, First Edition

A Note of Thanks

I especially want to thank my wife, Ann, and our sons, Brian and Tom, for the patience theyve shown over the years that this investigation has been a presence in our lives. My wife deserves a special thanks and recognition for her strength of character in remaining home alone with two small children on those many, many nights I was called to duty.

A special note of appreciation and thank you to Valerie Wood is most definitely owed here. Without her assistance this book would never have been written. A published author herself, it was her unselfishly shared expertise that made this possible.

Also very necessary to this manuscript was the assistance of Margie Smith, retired 8th grade Language Arts teacher in Tulare, CA. Not only did she assist in the editing but she has been heavily involved in the investigation.

Much of my personal experiences with the investigation described in this book were shared with my partner Carol Daly. Thanks to her for our more recent conversations that helped many of those memories resurface. A big thanks to her husband, Ted, as well. Ted contributed some valuable details of which I had been unaware.

Two other people I would like to extend a special thanks to are Investigator Larry Pool and Investigator Larry Montgomery, both of whom have devoted many long hours investigating the Original Night Stalker homicides. Their expertise was always there when a need to discuss specifics of the investigation arose.

Special thanks to Sacramento Sheriffs homicide investigator Ken Clark, his two partners, and their supervisor, Sergeant Burns. Through their efforts alone, several persons of interest, from the original investigations, have now been eliminated by DNA.

Everyone interested in this investigation should give thanks to Russ Oase, a retired Federal Special Investigator, and KC, the expert in research. They have each expended thousands of their dollars and hours doing their part to bring this investigation to a successful conclusion.

Lastly, I would like to violate the norm by including a note of apology with these acknowledgements of appreciation. That apology goes to all those involved in this investigation and especially to the victims and their families. The apology is not for dredging up painful memories but for providing the "as yet unidentified suspect another moment of public attention. Hopefully, this attention will be his undoing.

Table of Contents

On October 5, 1976, as an inspector with the Sacramento Sheriffs Department, I responded to a report of a home invasion that had just occurred. A young mother and her three year-old son had been blindfolded, gagged, and their hands tied The young mother had been sexually assaulted. By the end of that day I had come to believe this was the work of a serial rapist. It was not long before this theory was confirmed. Ultimately, this suspect became known as the East Area Rapist. It was when he spread his brand of horror to Southern California that he became known as the Original Night Stalker. There are some who strongly believe he actually began his crime spree in 1974, in Visalia, California, where he was called the Visalia Ransacker. There is no solid evidence to corroborate this. In all, however, he is known to have assaulted at least fifty-three women and murdered twelve people.

Three books have been written about this as yet unsolved series of rapes and murders. The first one was written by Sergeant Crompton, formerly of the Contra Costa County Sheriffs Department. Using a mixture of fact and fiction, he wrote Sudden Terror. With some fiction used as a back drop, he laid out details of the sexual assaults and a great deal of the actual investigation. The second book was written by someone who apparently had read about this investigation, but was never actively involved, as was Sergeant Crompton. The third book is the one you are reading at this moment. It adds details missing in Cromptons book and revisits old ones. A fourth book titled Golden State Killer, which focuses primarily on the ONS, is now being thoroughly researched and written by Michelle McNamara, an investigative journalist for Los Angeles Magazine.

The longer a mystery remains a mystery the more attention it attracts. It is no different with this investigation. In seeking information many have gravitated to forums such as internet blogs. Sometimes the information shared is incorrect which only leads to more misinformation and ultimately confusion. It is my hope of eliminating some of that misinformation that has convinced me to make this manuscript public.

Having decided to turn what had been originally intended as a short informative essay, for a few informed individuals, into a book, I needed a platform. To that end I determined to relate the investigation as I experienced it. If done right, the reader will be able to grasp how investigations were conducted at the time and under what conditions. They would get a fairly clear picture of just what was going on, at all levels of the investigation.

By relying on my own experiences, notes, reports, conversations with other investigators, and more recent investigative efforts of which Ive been involved, I relate what I know of this investigation of the East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker and the Visalia Ransacker. There is no fiction in this narrative, and all opinions are mine and mine alone. They in no way reflect those of any agency, group, or person.

This is a true crime story which took place in California, from 1974 through 1986. There are those who will tell you it is about one, two, or even three separate crime stories. The crimes committed were sexual assaults and murders -- most taking place inside the victims homes. No one has yet been held accountable.

The sole purpose of this book is to help identify those responsible and not to entertain. Anyone expecting to find a book of crafted suspense and drama will be disappointed.

This book chronicles the investigation of the East Area Rapist in Central California, and the Original Night Stalker in Southern California, with references to the Ransacker of Visalia, California. Relying on memory, notes, police reports, sundry documents, and conversations with other investigators, it is as factual as I could make it. I try to make it clear when the information came from sources other than my own. It is, in essence, a report.

One crime story, or perhaps the first chapter of all of three, may have begun in 1974, in Visalia. There a prowler, known locally as the Visalia Ransacker, terrorized the community for two years by breaking into homes and peeking in windows. The crime wave graduated from nusiance crimes to an aborted kidnapping and the murder of the kidnap victims father. The crime series allegedly culminated in December, 1975, with the shooting of a police officer who confronted the suspect when he caught him prowling.

The second chapter (or what some believe to be the first chapter of the second crime story) began in June, 1976, in Sacramento County.

That suspect, like the VR, prowled extensively--except he was thought to be reconnoitering as much as peeping into windows. Eventually this suspect expanded his crimes to sexual assaults against women in their homes. Known as the East Area Rapist or EAR, he changed his method of operation slightly in the spring of 1977. Now he would strike when both a man and a woman were present. Late in that same year, he began to take his reign of terror to jurisdictions outside of Sacramento. In all, there were fifty-two known sexual assaults and two homicides attributed to the East Area Rapist when the series stopped in 1979.