I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer

by Michelle McNamara

  During a break from work not long after the attack, Phillip walked over to the other victims’ home and introduced himself. He didn’t tell Fiona until years later, but he and the other husband would meet sometimes in the early morning hours to ride around in a car together, scanning yards and empty lots. Speeding up. Slowing down. Looking for the outline of a figure slinking along hedges. The two men’s bond was unspoken. Few men would experience what they had, would understand the shattering rage of lying face down on a bed, bound and gagged, as your wife whimpers from another room. They hunted a man whose face they didn’t know. Didn’t matter. The action of moving forward, their hands unrestrained, of physically doing something, was all that did.

  * * *

  AN EXCERPT FROM AN ARTICLE PUBLISHED ON FEBRUARY 28, 1979, in the now defunct chain of suburban weekly newspapers known locally as the Green Sheet might help convey what Sacramento was like in the 1970s. THREE RAPE TRIALS LOOM is the headline, with the subhead, “Questions of Publicity.” The first paragraph: “The public defender’s office will attempt to prove publicity about the East Area Rapist makes it impossible for three men charged with multiple rapes to get a fair trial in Sacramento County.”

  In February 1979, the East Area Rapist hadn’t attacked in Sacramento County in ten months. Signs indicated he’d moved on and was prowling the East Bay. Yet the article describes how the Public Defender’s Office was conducting phone surveys of Sacramento residents, trying to gauge “to what extent an aura of fear exists in this community because of the East Area Rapist.” The Public Defender’s Office worried that the East Area Rapist’s top-dog infamy would poison the jury pool, that jurors would convict their clients—the Woolly, Midday, and City College Rapists—in a misguided attempt to punish the unidentified offender whose moniker still caused such terror that many potential survey responders, upon hearing the caller’s question, didn’t get past the four words “the East Area Rapist” before hanging up.

  It might help convey what Sacramento was like in the seventies to know that in an article about three serial rapists overshadowed by a fourth, a fifth at-large serial rapist isn’t even mentioned. The Early Bird Rapist was active in Sacramento from 1972 to early ’76, when he seemed to go underground. Four years of break-ins and sexual assaults and approximately forty victims, and yet a Google search shows references to him only in relation to the EAR.

  A woman wrote me an e-mail about a close encounter she believes she had with the East Area Rapist when she was a teenager. She and a friend were taking a shortcut to their high school in Arden-Arcade, a neighborhood on Sacramento County’s east side. She remembers the morning was cold, and believes it was either

  fall or winter of 1976 or ’77. They decided to walk down a cement path that ran along a creek and ended up hitting a dead end, a fenced-in backyard. When they turned around a man was standing twenty feet from them. He wore a black ski mask that covered his face except for his eyes. He started toward them, keeping one hand in his jacket. The woman, thinking quickly, reached her hand up and felt around for a lock on the fence. The gate pushed open, and the two friends ran screaming into the backyard. The homeowners, alerted by the racket, came out and herded them into the house. She remembers being interviewed by investigators at the time. She was writing to tell me that the masked man was built differently than I’d described in my magazine article about the EAR. The man she encountered was extremely muscular, the woman wrote. “Overkill so.”

  I forwarded the e-mail to Shelby, now retired from the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department. “Probably did see the EAR,” he wrote back. “However muscle description sounds like Richard Kisling perfectly.”

  Richard Kisling? I looked Kisling up—yet another serial rapist once active in the Sacramento area who, like the EAR, wore a ski mask and tied up the husbands while he raped their wives.

  Sacramento’s was not an isolated problem. US crime rates show a steady rise in violent crime throughout the 1960s and ’70s, peaking in 1980. Taxi Driver came out in February 1976; the bleak and violent film was hailed as an encapsulation of its time, to no one’s surprise. Many retired cops I talk to, from Sacramento but other places too, uniformly recall 1968 to 1980 as a particularly grim period. And unlike some other places, Sacramento, a city built by pioneers who forded rivers and passed over snowy mountain ranges to get there, is known for its flinty survival instincts.

  My point is not to declare a plague but to underscore prominence

  : in a city inhabited by tough locals and lousy with violent offenders, one predator stood out.

  It might help convey what Sacramento was like in the 1970s, and something about the EAR, to know that whenever I tell an inquiring native that I’m writing about a serial rapist from Sacramento, no one has ever asked which one.

  Visalia

  [EDITOR’S NOTE: The following chapter was pieced together from Michelle’s notes and early drafts of “In the Footsteps of a Killer,” a piece Michelle wrote for Los Angeles magazine, originally published in February 2013 and later supplemented online.]

  ONE FRIDAY MORNING IN LATE FEBRUARY OF 1977, RICHARD SHELBY was at his desk at the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department when his phone rang. On the other end was a Sergeant Vaughan of the Visalia PD. Vaughan thought he had potentially useful information for their EAR investigation.

  From April 1974 until December of the following year, Visalia had been plagued by a rash of bizarre burglaries committed by a young offender they dubbed the Ransacker. The Ransacker struck as many as 130 times over a period of less than two years, but there had been no activity since December of 1975, and the EAR series began in Sacramento just six months later. Moreover, there seemed to be a host of similarities between the two offenders. Perhaps it was an angle worth exploring.

  THE RANSACKER WAS AS PROLIFIC AS HE WAS WEIRD. HE OFTEN HIT multiple homes in one night—sometimes four, sometimes five, once as many as a dozen. The Ransacker targeted the same four residential neighborhoods repeatedly. He preferred personal items like

  photographs and wedding rings, leaving behind things of greater value. Investigators noted that he seemed to have a thing for hand lotion.

  But he was a perv with a mean streak, and with an apparent bone to pick with the domestic unit. If there were family photos around, he’d tear them up or hide them, sometimes breaking the picture frames, sometimes stealing the photos entirely. He’d pour orange juice from the refrigerator onto clothing from the closet, like a bratty child with a bad temper. He’d thoroughly trash the place. This seemed to be his paramount objective over theft, hence his moniker. For good measure, he’d remove cash from its hiding places and leave it on the bed. He’d stick to stealing trinkets and personalized jewelry, piggy banks and redeemable Blue Chip stamps. He unplugged appliances and clock radios. He liked to take single earrings from pairs. The Ransacker was big on spite.

  The sexual element of the Ransacker’s burglaries was evident in his penchant for rifling through female undergarments, often leaving them strewn about or posed. In one instance, he piled them in a baby’s crib. On another occasion, he neatly laid out the man’s underwear in a line down the hallway, extending from the bedroom to the bathroom. He had a knack for knowing where to find anything in the house that could be used as lubricant—with a particular affinity for Vaseline Intensive Care hand lotion. He was also shrewd; he’d almost always leave more than one point of escape open so that if the homeowners returned before he was finished, he’d have multiple exit options. He’d implement his own makeshift alarm system by placing items like perfume bottles or spray cans on the doorknobs.

  In the early morning hours of September 11, 1975, the Ransacker’s criminal path made a frightening pivot.

  It was around two a.m. The sixteen-year-old daughter of Claude Snelling, a journalism professor at College of the Sequoias, awoke to find a man straddling her, his gloved hand cupped tightly over

  her mouth. A knife was pressed against her neck. “You’re coming with me, don’t scre
am or I’ll stab you,” the ski-masked intruder whispered in a raspy voice. As she began to resist, he produced a gun: “Don’t scream, or I’ll shoot you.” He led her out the back door.

  Snelling, alerted by the noise, ran out onto the patio.

  “Hey what are you doing, where are you taking my daughter?” he shouted.

  The intruder took aim and fired one round. It hit Snelling in the right side of his chest and spun him around. Another shot was fired, and this bullet struck Snelling in his left side, traveling through his arm before piercing his heart and both lungs. He staggered into the house and was dead within minutes. The assailant kicked his victim three times in the face before running away. He was a white male, about five ten, with “angry eyes,” the intended victim reported to police.

  Ballistics tests revealed that the handgun used in the crime was a Miroku .38 that had been stolen in a Ransacker burglary ten days earlier. Investigators also learned that in February of that year, Claude Snelling had returned home to find a peeper crouched beneath his daughter’s window. He chased the subject, but lost him in the darkness.

  * * *

  EVIDENCE STRONGLY POINTED TO THE RANSACKER. NIGHTTIME police presence was ramped up, with surveillance units assigned for nocturnal stakeouts. One residence of particular interest was a house that had been targeted three times before on West Kaweah Avenue, in an area of heavy Ransacker activity. On December 10, Detective Bill McGowen startled the Ransacker outside of the house; the suspect vaulted a fence and a chase ensued. When McGowen fired a warning shot the suspect gestured in surrender.

  “Oh my God, don’t hurt me,” he squeaked in an oddly mannered, high-pitched voice. “See? My hands are up!”

  The baby-faced man turned slightly, sneakily, and drew a gun from his coat pocket, promptly firing it at McGowen. McGowen fell backward and things suddenly went dark. The bullet had struck the officer’s flashlight.

  * * *

  ON JANUARY 9, 1976, VISALIA POLICE DETECTIVES BILL MCGOWEN and John Vaughan rose early and drove three hours south to Parker Center, the LAPD’s headquarters in downtown Los Angeles. McGowen had recently come face-to-face with a criminal whose ability to elude authorities defied the laws of logic and whose capture, it’s fair to say, consumed the entire Visalia Police Department. His encounter with the Ransacker was considered an important break in the case, and so arrangements were made with a special investigative unit of the LAPD for McGowen to undergo hypnosis, with the hope that new details might be elicited.

  At Parker Center, the two Visalia detectives met with Captain Richard Sandstrom, director of the LAPD’s hypnosis unit. They briefed Sandstrom on the details. McGowen drew a diagram of the residential neighborhood where his confrontation with the Ransacker took place. A police artist created a composite sketch based on McGowen’s input. The group then convened to room 309. Diagram and composite were laid on the table in front of McGowen. At 11:10 a.m., the hypnosis session began.

  Sandstrom quietly encouraged McGowen to relax. Legs were uncrossed, fists unclenched, breathing deepened. He directed the detective’s memory back a month, to the evening of December 10, 1975. That night a half-dozen police officers had been deployed in the neighborhood around Mt. Whitney High School, some in fixed, hidden locations, others on foot, and one in an unmarked

  vehicle. The goal of the coordinated stakeout was to “detect and apprehend” their greatest adversary, the Visalia Ransacker.

  The night before, McGowen had taken a call of particular interest. The caller identified herself as Mrs. Hanley* from West Kaweah Avenue. She was calling about shoe tracks. Did he remember what he’d told her about checking around for shoe tracks? He did.

  In July the Hanleys’ nineteen-year-old daughter, Donna,* had encountered a ski-masked intruder in their backyard. Upon reporting the incident, she was advised by McGowen to check her backyard periodically for shoe tracks and alert him if any turned up. Well, they had.

  On the basis of this information, McGowen was assigned to stake out the residence the following evening.

  In his chair at the Parker Center, under the hypnotherapist’s guidance, McGowen’s mind eased back into that night.

  He chose to position himself in a front-facing garage at 1505 West Kaweah Avenue. He had a feeling the Ransacker might return to the Hanley house, where his tennis-shoe impressions had been observed under Donna’s bedroom window.

  At seven p.m. McGowen set up his simple surveillance operation. He kept the garage door open. All the lights were shut off. He sat in the dark, watching the neighbor’s house through a side window but also keeping an eye out for anyone passing the garage. An hour went by. Nothing moved. Another half hour passed.

  Then, around eight thirty p.m., a crouching figure crept by the window. McGowen waited. The figure appeared in the garage doorway and looked around. Possibilities cycled through McGowen’s head. The homeowner? A fellow officer? But his eyes had adjusted to the dark and he could see that the figure was dressed in black and crowned with a watch cap.

  McGowen observed as the figure moved along the side of the garage, toward the rear of the structure. The subject had a large, ungainly frame, oddly proportioned. McGowen walked outside and followed, shining his flashlight on the figure as he fiddled with a side gate.

  Vaughan, his colleague, took notes as McGowen, under hypnosis, recounted what happened next. The surprise confrontation. The chase into the backyard. The scream like a woman’s scream.

  “Oh my God! Don’t hurt me!”

  “Was it a woman?” Sandstrom, the hypnotist, asked McGowen.

  “No,” he said.

  McGowen kept his Kel-Lite flashlight fixed on the figure running from him and shouted repeatedly for him to halt. The Ransacker appeared to be hysterical, screaming “Oh my God, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me!” over and over, darting this way and that, finally diving over a short slate fence into an adjacent yard. McGowen grabbed his service revolver from his holster and fired a warning shot into the ground. The Ransacker froze and wheeled around. He raised his right hand in surrender.

  “I give up,” he quavered. “See? See, I’ve got my hands up.”

  Remembering the moment during hypnosis pulled McGowen into a deeper trance. He fixated on the face illuminated in the beam of his flashlight.

  “Baby. Round. Soft-looking baby.”

  “Doesn’t even shave.”

  “Very light skin. Soft. Round. Baby face.”

  “Baby.”

  Standing at the fence, McGowen must have been exhilarated. The grueling eighteen-month manhunt was over. He was seconds from collaring a criminal who’d remained so cunningly invisible that more than one officer had wondered if they were chasing a ghost. But the Visalia Ransacker was real. And a bad man.

  Yet their evil adversary was hardly intimidating in the flesh. A doughboy, McGowen thought, haplessly plodding around begging in a high-pitched whimper for McGowen not to hurt him. McGowen didn’t intend to hurt him. He was a religious man, an old-fashioned, by-the-book cop. The thrill was in knowing the nightmare was over. The creep was toast. McGowen started over the fence to arrest him.

  But the Ransacker had raised only his right hand in surrender. With his left hand he withdrew a blue steel revolver from his coat pocket and fired with unambiguous aim straight at McGowen’s chest. Fortunately McGowen had his flashlight at arm’s length in front of him—muscle memory from police training more than anything else. The bullet struck the lens. The force of the shot knocked McGowen back. His partner, alerted by the gunfire, sprinted into the yard and saw McGowen motionless on the ground. Thinking he had been shot, he ran to where he thought the Ransacker had fled, radioing for help at the same time. Suddenly he heard movement behind him. He whipped around. It was McGowen. Powder burns streaked his face. His right eye was red. Otherwise, he was fine.

  “There he goes,” McGowen said.

  Seventy officers from three different agencies sealed off a six-square-block area. But nothing. The awkwardly built m
an-child ran away and disappeared into the night—a moth swallowed by the dark—leaving behind a sock full of collectible coins and jewelry, and two books of Blue Chip stamps.

  MCGOWEN’S ACCOUNT OF THE RANSACKER’S DISTINCTIVE APPEARANCE and his bizarre manner was consistent with reports of previous close encounters Visalians had with the near-ubiquitous Peeping Tom.

  They decided he never went outside during daylight hours. He was that pale. The few people who’d glimpsed him remarked

  on his complexion. It’s hard to maintain the skin tone of a fish’s underbelly in Visalia, a farm town in central California where temperatures top 100 degrees in the summer. To understand why his pallor marked him as unusual, it helps to know that Visalia is heavily populated with descendants of Dust Bowl refugees. Native Visalians follow an internal clock set by nature. They remember the epic floods. Anticipate the droughts. Lean against pickups and watch ash fall from wildfires torching chaparral and timber forty miles away. The outdoors isn’t a concept but hard fact. Sun damage is shorthand for knowledge and trust. It says, I understand what it means to hedge a citrus tree; I know that to “chop cotton” means to hack weeds from cotton plants with a hoe; I’ve drifted down the St. John’s River on an inner tube, alkali dust from my feet dissolving into water the color of weak coffee.

  His paleness conveyed no such local familiarity. It was uncommon and therefore suspicious. It suggested a cloistered life spent plotting. His pursuers in the Visalia Police Department didn’t know who he was or where he shut himself away. They knew he moved around at night. They had a good idea of what drew him out.