But that one morning, October 5, 1976, when Bill drove away from the home, the fairy tale ended. An intruder—who must have been waiting for Bill to leave—entered either through that closing garage door or a bedroom window, and Jane and Bill’s picture-perfect, white-picket-fence lives detonated.
CHAPTER 3
DEFENSELESS
Jane sat and stared at the masked man holding the knife to her chest while standing by her bedside. He was angry and determined. He had gotten into the house without Jane’s husband seeing him, not to mention within seconds of the garage door closing. Had he actually snuck in as the garage door went up and Bill pulled out?
If so, what timing, what nerve.
How he got in didn’t really matter now. What mattered more than anything was that Jane had a knife to her chest, blood present, her son by her side watching this chilling scene unfold, and a man on some sort of a mission getting ready to make his next move.
What does he want?
“. . . I just want your money,” he said, holding that knife tighter to Jane’s chest.
It was somewhat of a relief for Jane to hear those words. Maybe he would take what he wanted and leave.
“Okay, I thought, maybe he just wants to rob me and be out of there,” Jane recalled.
Yet, that thought quickly dissolved and Jane knew he was lying when, without warning, he tightly bound Jane’s and her son’s hands and feet with shoelaces, gagged them both with clothing, and blindfolded each. In fact, the masked man hog-tied Jane’s three-year-old son and, unbeknownst to Jane because she could no longer see, perhaps placed him on the carpet in front of her bed or back in his bedroom down the hall—she just didn’t know.
Jane’s heart raced. She was blind. She could only hear the sounds of an intruder with a knife tying up her child and placing him on the carpet or moving him to another room, she didn’t know which.
Dead . . . we’re both dead. . . .
Before tying them up, he had torn the sheets off the bed and ripped them into strips in a “meticulous manner,” as Jane later described it. What he did was ritualistic, Jane later felt. He had a plan and was carrying it out. He’d certainly done this before and was banking on the success of those previous incidents.
What was he going to do to us? Kill us? Rape me? Rob us? Or maybe all three? I didn’t have the strength or opportunity to overcome him. He had the power and he had the control. We were at his mercy, totally his victims, with no way to defend ourselves.
Jane was not a large woman. She was not at all equipped to lodge a counterattack of any kind against a maniac brandishing a knife in her house.
Every detail would become important in the coming days. What would become a major part of this investigation later, it turned out, was where Jane and Bill lived, the type of house they lived in, and the layout of the neighborhood.
We lived in a middle-class neighborhood in Citrus Heights, California. Our small 1200-square-foot ranch-style home had three bedrooms, two baths, and a two-car garage. To get to the master bedroom, where he had come to attack us, you entered through the front door, passed through the living room, turned left down a short hall, and then you took a right down a long hallway. Paul’s bedroom was on the left, just before our bedroom. We had a small eating area adjacent to the small kitchen. Our large backyard was surrounded by a six-foot-high fence. An embankment, covered with vines, lined the rear of the yard. Homes on either side of us were approximately thirty feet away. This home was the first we ever owned, so we were excited about the purchase.
That fence, those vines, the somewhat hidden nature of the property, were actually among this attacker’s signatures. Yet, as Jane sat tied up and blindfolded on her bed, not knowing what he was doing to her son, all she could do was wonder why the room was now so quiet. It was as if her attacker tiptoed around. He was either tremendously light on his feet, or he had taken off with her boy.
Oh, no. God, no. . . .
Jane tried to gauge what he was doing by the sounds she could make out in the home.
Why is he so quiet? What is he thinking? What is he planning?
CHAPTER 4
HABITS
It is our daily routine—however essential to our lives—that makes us vulnerable to a home invasion. What we do, how we do it, and when we do it make us creatures of habit, simply out of necessity. After all, we never expect to wake up to a knife in our face. And the numbers of actual home invasions are so low, the crime so rare, that we could use the old adage “You’ve got a better chance winning the Lotto” as an argument. Yet, to the woman or family surrounded by the bad guy in their home at the time of the invasion, none of this matters. Numbers are insignificant. Statistics are nothing more than mishmash put into a computer by men wearing bow ties who are paid to produce the figures. Surviving the ordeal is all that becomes essential. And we’ve all heard the home invasion horror stories. These types of situations, however infrequent, generally don’t end well for victims.
Jane’s house became the perfect target for the East Area Rapist. She and her son Paul were the perfect victims for his madness.
(Photo courtesy of Jane Sandler)
Jane had no idea someone had been watching her every move for weeks, days, or months—however long this pervert had watched Jane and Bill’s house.
On an average day Jane got up around seven in the morning. This was about thirty minutes after Bill left for work. She enjoyed having what she called her “quiet time,” a cup of coffee before Paul generally got up about an hour later.
My daily routine was very hectic, juggling my school routine, arranging Paul’s day care schedule, and planning evening activities. When Paul woke up, he’d come running into the kitchen, rubbing his tired eyes, and then he would usually crawl up on my lap for some snuggling. . . . We usually had frozen waffles or Cheerios, as I didn’t have the luxury to fix a hot breakfast except on weekends.
After breakfast, I hurried to dress him, as it seemed we were always running late. I had to get to the campus for a class and take him five miles out of the way to his day care center. Paul would leave my arms and cheerfully go with his caretakers, who would meet us at my car.
My first class would start at 10:00 A.M., so I usually had time to grab another cup of coffee and chat with fellow classmates. After each class, I would go directly to the library to read or complete a homework assignment. I wanted to accomplish as much school work as I could so my evenings would be free to spend quality time with Bill and Paul.
Around 4:00 P.M., I would pick up Paul from day care. He was always so glad to see me and usually had some little gift to hand me that he had made during the day. Dinnertime was also hectic, as we would usually get home and I would try to have dinner on the table right away.
Bill and I usually went to bed between nine-thirty and ten o’clock after having put Paul to bed much earlier. We were always tired, so making love at night was not the norm. Often we were both just happy for hugs and a kiss good night. After all, we had another busy day ahead of us.
It was that one anomaly—Paul coming into the bedroom and cuddling with Jane, when he normally didn’t get up until a half hour later—that the masked intruder took advantage of. Had he known this? Had he actually waited for the morning when Paul and Jane were together in that bedroom?
These kinds of facts didn’t really matter to Jane as she wondered if this man was going to kill her and her child. Or rape her in front of her child.
This can’t be happening.
Jane said her “heart was pounding so hard,” she thought it would explode.
“Not having had a relationship with God at that time,” Jane explained later, “I was now in my ‘foxhole. ’ I started to pray, Please, Lord, don’t let him hurt us. Maybe he just wants to rob us and then he’ll leave. Please, Lord. Tell me this is just a bad dream.”
This guy—relying on something that would become even more important to him in the future—had absolute power and control over Jane and her boy. They were helpless.
Jane listened best she could and tried to figure out what he was doing. She would keep going back to one moment when she recalled this terrifying event later: “That ritual. His method of operation—tearing cloths and tearing sheets. And I just remember him, again, just this noise of tearing and ripping, and I’m wondering, ‘What is he going to do with these sheets? What is he going to do with these cloths?’ You know, ‘Is he going to hang us? What is he going to do? What’s his purpose?’”
Through her gagged mouth Jane tried to say, “Take . . . my money. . . . Please leave us alone.”
But any time she tried to speak, he’d scream through clenched teeth: “Shut up! Shut up! Or I’ll kill you!”
He spoke as though he had laryngitis. He was disguising his voice more than projecting anger, Jane would later suspect.
As Jane wondered what would happen next, he stepped over near the bed and began to untie the restraints on her legs.
“And I knew then why he did this and what he was going to do next.”
CHAPTER 5
MONSTER
In what can only be described as a bizarre move on his part (that would later become one of his signatures), the masked man took out a bottle of lubricant and began to masturbate as he kneeled in back of Jane and she lay on her stomach, her hands bound behind her back, her mouth gagged.
Then he made Jane, with her hands completely bound, masturbate him. And it was at that moment when she realized, as she was forced to do this, how abnormally small he was. His penis was the size of a button mushroom. Very tiny.
Jane doesn’t recall most of the details surrounding the rape itself, only that it was quick and she was in fear for her son’s life the entire time. She would have done anything to make sure this maniac did not hurt her boy.
“Because of my overwhelming fear and state of shock, I don’t remember much about the actual rape. I don’t remember if he ever climaxed, but I do recall that he had a small penis.”
More than the actual rape itself, it was the ritualistic nature of his movements and the intense terror that stood out to Jane. All of this became just one more part of what many would later say was a carefully planned procedure this guy had in place and relied on.
After he was done raping Jane, the masked man spoke: “Don’t move or I’ll kill you.”
Again, he sounded raspy and breathless.
When he got off the bed, Jane realized that her son was now next to her once again. He must have placed the boy back on the bed at some point.
Thank God, Paul was there. I felt a sigh of relief about that. But then the man who had just raped me, I thought he would leave. But he ended up staying in the house for a long time. It was the not knowing what was going on . . . his overpowering, his control. And I had no idea what he was going to do next. But again, he kept saying, “If you move, I’ll kill you.”
One might expect a rapist to finish and leave. Not this guy. After violating Jane, he went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Then Jane could hear him rummaging through the cabinets, clanging pots and pans, moving dishes around.
“I don’t know why,” Jane recalled. “It was like he was getting pots and pans out of the cupboard. I don’t know if he was cooking or what, but he just made a lot of noise in the kitchen. And then he came back once and then he went back into the kitchen, and then I had no idea what he was up to, what he was going to do next.”
CHAPTER 6
THE EAR
What Jane Carson-Sandler didn’t know as she sat on her bed—blindfolded, wondering where this guy was and what he was planning to do to her and her child next—was that she had just been raped by one of the most notorious serial rapists in U.S. history, the East Area Rapist (EAR). The guy targeted neighborhoods and methodically chose victims based on where they lived, law enforcement believed. Jane herself hadn’t heard about the rapes going on in and around her county. It started, so everyone thinks, back on June 18, 1976, at four in the morning, with an attack that occurred on Paseo Drive in Rancho Cordova, California, not too far from where Jane and Bill lived. By the time Jane was raped, the EAR had already raped six other women whom law enforcement knew about.
“I talked to a psychiatrist about [the EAR] at the Vacaville Medical Center,” said Larry Crompton, a retired lieutenant from the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Department, who would help to create a task force in the late 1970s to catch this guy, “and she had said she talked to her sex offenders at the prison and all of them said you had better catch him fast.”
Crompton asked why.
“Because he wants to kill.”
There was a pattern to the rapes that emerged right away. Crompton focused on this because it said a lot about who this guy was and the psychology behind his crimes.
“A lot of times he would tie the people up and then he would go back into the kitchen and get something to eat. Then come back and do what he did. And most of the time, before he started anything, he would have them masturbate him . . . while victims were lying on their stomach with their hands tied behind their back so tight they had no feeling in their hands. But he would still make them [masturbate him]. And one of the facts that all of them said was [that] he had been underendowed.”
Not a lot was reported in the media during the early days of the investigation because, according to several reports, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department asked the news media not to report the rapes, so they could have a crack at catching the lunatic without the public going into stage-four panic.
A stealthy approach, especially if the perp thinks cops don’t know what he’s doing, is the best possible way to catch a serial rapist when he first strikes.
After raping Jane, he would strike twice in one day on opposite sides of the same community, which in this case was separated by the American River, cutting a path through several neighborhoods near where Jane had been raped.
By then, the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department could not hold onto the secret any longer. They needed vigilance and, essentially, neighborhood-watch type of help.
Neighborhood meetings were held. People were outraged. Many sought to arm themselves. However, the more pressure the police put on this guy, the more brazen he became.
They had helicopters flying over at night with spotlights flashing into our backyards. Sacramento was in a panic state. The hardware stores were sold out of security devices. Everybody was talking about the East Area Rapist. I don’t care where you went. You were in the line at the grocery store, anywhere you were, they were talking about him.
And it was hard for me sometimes because I would go to a wives’ club event on the military base and I didn’t tell anyone about being one of his victims, because in the beginning I was very ashamed. I only told one friend and, of course, my husband.
What no one knew, of course, was that at this time the EAR was just getting started.
CHAPTER 7
AFTERMATH
Jane was crippled by fear.
“The fear, the fear, the fear.” This would become a word Jane later leaned on, again and again, to describe her terrifying ordeal.
She did not know what to do. It sounded as though her attacker, after brutally raping her, walked into her kitchen, made himself a sandwich, and then, after rattling some pots and pans around, went quiet.
Had he left? Was he still in the house?
During that time he would walk into the bedroom, stand before Jane, and state in that raspy, terrorizing voice of his: “If I hear a sound, I will kill you.”
The threats. The absolute terror he instilled in Jane as she lay in her bed, having just been raped, wondering what he was going to do to her and her son, was numbing.
Is he getting something to eat? Jane thought at one time while he was in the kitchen. How sick!
What seemed to her like hours had gone by and she hadn’t heard anything from him.
Is he gone? she kept asking herself. Then she’d remember what he had said, “You move—you make a sound—I will come bac
k here and kill you.”
Did that mean he was leaving? Or did it mean he was going into another part of the house?
After a long period of time, not hearing any rustling inside her home, Jane decided to take a chance.
I didn’t hear anything. I thought, I can’t lie here any longer. I just can’t lie here any longer. I’ve got to do something.
I knew that I could get my blindfold down a little bit with my tongue and I was able to see that it was light. And I looked next to me, and my son . . . he was asleep. So I was able to get my blindfold down with my tongue and then spit out my gag.
I woke up my son and we hobbled down the hall, passing the front door . . . but there was a chair that he had . . . propped up under the front door so we couldn’t get out that way. So we went around to the sliding door that led to the backyard, and then went around to the gate. . . .
Jane opened up the gate into the front yard and screamed as loud as she could. She looked beaten up. She was disheveled and in shock. She had been brutalized, and one could tell that just from looking at her.
A neighbor heard Jane’s screams and walked out her door. She then came across the street and into Jane’s yard.
“Oh, my goodness . . . ,” the woman said.
“Help me,” Jane muttered.
The neighbor took Jane and her boy into her home and called the police. Then she called Jane’s husband. “You need to get home in a hurry . . . right now. . . . Something’s happened.”
Several detectives showed up immediately.
“But I was in such shock that I, you know, I really didn’t want to talk to them,” Jane said later. “I couldn’t believe what had just happened. And my husband came and then a very nice female detective came and she took me to the emergency room.”
She Survived: Jane Page 2