I'll Be Gone in the Dark

by Michelle McNamara

  Elaine’s father was dead. Her mother lived in Sacramento. Two days after the exhumation, Walnut Creek detectives asked to speak with her. Elaine’s younger sister came in from out of town for the meeting. The detectives told the mother and sister the news: we’ve identified Elaine.

  “The family buries her,” says Holes. “A week later, Mom dies.”

  We leave Walnut Creek, heading north. Mount Diablo, a mass of strange protrusions towering above valleys cut precisely into planned communities, recedes. Black mountain cats are said to slink among the high rocks on Mount Diablo. Mysterious lights have been glimpsed. In 1873 a live frog was found partially embedded in a slab of limestone 228 feet underground, according to local legend. In late August and early September, just after the first fall rain, hundreds of male tarantulas emerge from holes in the ground. They skitter through mint-scented mountain sage in search of burrows delicately draped in silk, where females are ready to mate. Visitors armed with flashlights flock to the mountain around sunset or just after dark, the best time to see the tarantulas. Bats wheel over gray pines and live oaks. Great horned owls hoot solemnly. Beams from flashlights weaving across trails sometimes catch a piece of earth that’s moving; closer inspection reveals the scuttling of saucer-size tarantulas. The male tarantulas never return to their holes. They mate as much as they can and then die, from starvation or cold.

  We cross the bridge to Solano County, where we’ll turn east toward Davis.

  “On a clear day, you can see Sacramento from here. And the Sierras,” says Holes.

  He lives halfway between Sacramento and the East Bay. On weekends he often finds himself visiting the crime scenes.

  “I like to drive,” he says. Whenever he’s in Southern California, he visits the crime scenes there too. During trips to Disneyland with his family, when the kids grow drowsy, his wife oversees naptime at the hotel while Holes takes a drive. To the Northwood subdivision in Irvine, to 13 Encina, where Janelle Cruz lived, or to 35 Columbus, where Drew Witthuhn cleaned up his sister-in-law Manuela’s blood.

  “Each time I’m trying to look for Why here?” Holes says. “Why this?”

  DAVIS

  [EDITOR’S NOTE: This section features selections from the audio transcript from the trip to Davis.]

  PAUL HOLES: This is how the EAR would have traveled down to the East Bay. Along I-80, right here.

  MICHELLE: If you had to guess his point of origin, in terms of where he went to school . . . I won’t keep you to it. I’m just curious.

  PAUL HOLES: If I were to guess? Sac State. If he was college-educated. Locationwise, if you take a look at where his attacks are, you know, you have the whole Rancho Cordova cluster. You have the attacks along La Riviera. You have the attacks that are right there, right by Sac State. Sac State seems likely. Now, you have some community colleges up in the Sacramento area that he could have gone to. Uh, high school? Uh . . . whew. There’s so many possibilities.

  MICHELLE: I mean, you don’t feel like, maybe he grew up in Goleta?

  PAUL HOLES: I wouldn’t say that, but when I look at the Sac cases, and—this is one thing I want to show you at some point—when you do a flyover of the order of his attacks in Sacramento, you see very early on, he is literally crisscrossing Sacramento. He is showing intimate familiarity with the area.

  MICHELLE: He’s not showing up just to go to Sac State.

  PAUL HOLES: No, no. I think he has a history up in Sacramento. Now, does he have a history in Goleta? I mean, anything’s possible. We don’t know. But down south, Goleta is—for me—that’s ground zero down south. And there’s something in Irvine. Some reason why he has two cases there.

  MICHELLE: And that are not far apart at all.

  PAUL HOLES: No. No. Ventura and Laguna Niguel are the two outliers. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Holes is referring to the Dana Point case here; some people mistakenly consider Dana Point part of Laguna Niguel.]

  PAUL HOLES: Davis/Modesto, to me, is significant.

  MICHELLE: Modesto was just once or twice?

  PAUL HOLES: Twice.

  MICHELLE: Okay.

  PAUL HOLES: So, when I did my initial geographic assessment, I broke the EAR into phases. The first phase being up in Sacramento. Second phase being Modesto/Davis. Third phase being East Bay, and then the fourth phase being down in Southern California. When you get to this phase two—I lump Stockton into Sacramento because the EAR goes back to Sacramento after Stockton, but then once he hits in Modesto, he doesn’t go back to Sacramento until after he comes down into the East Bay. And he’s toggling back and forth between Modesto and Davis. It’s a hundred ten driving miles between those two cities. And between the second Modesto attack and the second Davis attack, it’s just twenty-two hours’ difference. Why is he toggling back and forth? I think it’s work-related. He’s not doing this to throw law enforcement off. I think there’s a work-related reason why he’s being sent to Modesto and having to go to Davis, and going back and forth.

  MICHELLE: There’s only a twenty-two-hour difference?

  PAUL HOLES: Twenty-two-hour difference.

  MICHELLE: Wow. I didn’t know it was so close in time.

  PAUL HOLES: And it just so happens, in those two cases, and only those two cases . . . In the Modesto case, you have the cab driver that picks up the strange man from the airport, who he drops off and is last seen headed toward new construction under way that’s just south of where the victims are attacked. And in the Davis case, that’s where the footprints lead back from the victim’s house to the UC-Davis airport. Shoe prints. That’s what I’m going to show you. So, is it possible that you’ve got the EAR flying into Modesto for that one attack, and then flying up to UC-Davis for the second attack?

  MICHELLE: For work?

  PAUL HOLES: For work. And, what does that say about who he is?

  MICHELLE: Yeah.

  PAUL HOLES: Well, your common joe ain’t flying an airplane.

  MICHELLE: No.

  PAUL HOLES: Your common joe ain’t producing a diagram that is, “How should I lay out this land?”

  MICHELLE: Right.

  PAUL HOLES: It takes somebody with resources. Because when you read the case file on the EAR, you don’t think this is somebody of wealth, right?

  MICHELLE: Right.

  PAUL HOLES: I don’t get that. This seems contradictory to that. But that’s what the EAR was about. Everything about him was misdirection.

  MICHELLE: So, you’re leaning toward thinking he had more resources?

  PAUL HOLES: I think he has . . . well, I think if this turns out EAR was doing this not for just a school project, but he’s actually looking at developing land and working for a developer, he’s at least minimally hooked in to the company at a level where he’s got a lot of say in that company.

  PAUL HOLES: So, this is Village Homes in Davis. Village Homes is a very famous development. What I’m showing you is, coincidentally, an aerial photo of Village Homes as it was in between the first and second Davis attacks. So, literally, they just happened to take this picture eight days before attack number thirty-six. This is what it looked like. And look at all of this new construction that’s going on just north of the attack. I’ll take you out and show you the whole airport thing.

  PAUL HOLES: The Stockton victim I’ve been talking to, she worked for a major developer in the Central Valley. The victim did a lot of work for him. She ended up leaving his company when she got pregnant. I was showing this diagram [the “homework” evidence map] to a friend of mine who works in development. He told me, “This was done by a professional. . . . He’s drafting these symbols.” Now, this is an opinion that’s coming from a forensic expert in the construction business. So I put a lot of credence in that opinion.

  MICHELLE: I think you’re right. I don’t believe this is a fantasy.

  PAUL HOLES: I don’t think so. You know, you have a landscape architect from UC-Davis going, “There’s unique features in here that are only seen in Village Homes.”

 
; MICHELLE: Oh really?

  PAUL HOLES: Yes. And you’ll see this when we go out there. Village Homes is a very unusual development. So, you have the EAR going and attacking there. Could it be possible that the EAR is going to Village Homes and when he sees some of those features, he incorporates those in this diagram, for whatever he’s working on?

  MICHELLE: Right. As something he would submit, along the lines of “Hey, we should do this,” or something like that?

  PAUL HOLES: Yeah.

  Holes arrives at the apartment complex where the first Davis attack took place.

  This attack, number thirty-four, occurred at approximately three fifty a.m. on June 7, 1978—two days after the EAR’s first attack in Modesto. The victim was a twenty-one-year-old UC-Davis student who lived in a multistory apartment building, which Larry Pool would later deem a “structural anomaly”—as this was the only time the EAR was known to have targeted such a dwelling.

  He entered the second-story apartment through the patio sliding glass door. He was particularly violent with this victim, punching her several times in the face after she initially resisted. While raping her, he forcefully shoved her face into the floor, leaving her with a broken nose and a concussion.

  Certain factors suggest that this attack may have been more impulsive than most of the others: he was wearing a nylon stocking instead of a ski mask; the only known weapons were a nail file and a screwdriver; and the assailant appeared to be wearing his T-shirt inside out. The crime was undoubtedly an EAR attack, however, based on verbiage and the signature element of the rapist placing his penis in the victim’s bound hands and forcing her to masturbate him.

  PAUL HOLES: Alright, so the first Davis one was the college girl that was attending UC-Davis. A textile major.

  MICHELLE: This is the one where they thought they saw him peeling out of the parking lot?

  PAUL HOLES: Yep. It was a black Camaro, or something like that. But I’m not sure that was him.

  PAUL HOLES: So, this has changed. I actually lived here once myself.

  MICHELLE: Oh, wow. Is this technically campus housing?

  PAUL HOLES: These are off-campus dorms. I think they were different back in the seventies. This has even changed since I was here.

  Holes stops and lets the car idle.

  PAUL HOLES: This is all college kids. Russell Boulevard, you see all the college kids biking. So, if he’s up in Davis for any reason, I think this would be a case where he’s seeing somebody that he follows back.

  MICHELLE: Oh, okay.

  PAUL HOLES: He sees a girl that, for whatever reason, catches his eye, and then he figures out where she lives. I don’t think he’s prowling or burglarizing. This is atypical from his . . .

  MICHELLE: Usual thing.

  PAUL HOLES: Yeah.

  They move on to the second location, which was the scene of attack number thirty-six. The second of three Davis strikes, it occurred around three a.m. on June 24, 1978—one day after EAR rape number thirty-five, in Modesto.

  The victim was a thirty-two-year-old housewife whose husband was in bed with her. Both were bound. Also present was the couple’s ten-year-old son, whom the attacker locked in the bathroom. He rummaged through the house before returning to the female, moving her to the living room, and raping her. Prior to leaving the house, he stole seventeen rolls of pennies.

  PAUL HOLES: We’re now entering Village Homes.

  MICHELLE: Okay.

  PAUL HOLES: All the streets are named after Lord of the Rings.

  MICHELLE: Oh. Really?

  PAUL HOLES: Yep. The developer, Michael Corbett, was heavily involved in Lord of the Rings.

  MICHELLE: Heavily involved meaning . . .

  PAUL HOLES: Well, big fan.

  MICHELLE: Oh, okay. He was a nerd.

  PAUL HOLES: He and his wife, Judy Corbett, are the ones that pushed this development. All these houses . . . we’re on the street, these are the backs of these houses. The fronts of the houses face a green common area. And that was to help facilitate more of the community feel. So, neighbors are coming out. They have gardens—community gardens; green spaces that are shared.

  MICHELLE: So, if you were a student, you wouldn’t live here?

  PAUL HOLES: Unlikely. I mean, you could, but at that time, these were new houses. Students couldn’t afford these.

  Holes drives through the community looking for the home where the attack took place.

  PAUL HOLES: So, our victim . . . lived in this one. Right here on the right-hand side.

  MICHELLE: Hmm.

  PAUL HOLES: And all of that on this side was actively being constructed at the time. So, you see the long, narrow cul-de-sacs, to which the city said, “Absolutely not.” And then the Corbetts had the fire departments bring the fire trucks out here, to show them, yes, you can turn around back here. I’ll drive around so you can kind of see some of the features of this place. Solar. All the houses were passive solar. That was big, back in the day.

  PAUL HOLES: Here’s an example here. This is a pedestrian bridge over the open-swale drainage. And this is the way the EAR came up.

  MICHELLE: How do you know that?

  PAUL HOLES: Shoe prints. Corbett was telling me this area down here was like a sandbox. Every day, he raked it smooth. And after the attack, he’s out here, and there’s a shoe impression in his freshly raked sandbox. And he followed that shoe impression to the victim’s house, around the house, through the green area. And I’m talking to him, and he goes, “Well, I was in the Boy Scouts, and one of the things I really enjoyed doing was tracking. And I used to track all the time.” And so, he says, “I found these shoe prints and I felt I needed to track them.” So, he’s got more of an elevated ability than the average person. I wouldn’t say he’s some search-and-rescue expert, but . . .

  MICHELLE: He kinda knew what he was doing.

  PAUL HOLES: Yeah. So, then he’s saying, these shoe prints came down through here and went out this way.

  MICHELLE: Huh.

  PAUL HOLES: It’s like a common green area.

  MICHELLE: Wait, so they kind of went in a loop, around?

  PAUL HOLES: Yes, so, he went and he came up this way, and looped around from the victim’s house, and these shoe prints were in the victim’s backyard.

  MICHELLE: This is an interesting development. I really don’t think I’ve ever been inside something like this.

  PAUL HOLES: It’s unique. Village Homes was world-famous. François Mitterrand flew in in a helicopter to visit this area because of how novel it was. Students from all over, and developers, were coming here to take a look at it. And so that’s where you can see, you know, “Village Homes in Davis. We’re doing a development; let’s see what they’re doing and what we can incorporate into our thing.” It was featured . . . on the cover of Sunset magazine. Betty Ford rode her bike around here. I drove my wife through here, and she goes, “I’d never live here.”

  MICHELLE: It is a little claustrophobic.

  PAUL HOLES: It’s claustrophobic, and it’s a predator’s paradise. You can’t see anything. I mean, he can come in, he can attack, and he can leave, and nobody would ever know.

  PAUL HOLES: The third victim—and I’ll take you by that after this—was in the neighborhood that’s right over there. So, the three Davis attacks are pretty close together.

  MICHELLE: Yeah, they are.

  PAUL HOLES: One of the interesting things is that this victim and the third Davis victim carpooled together. Their kids were at the same nursery school. And that’s the only known connection between victims that I’m aware of. But that’s never really been explored.

  MICHELLE: Right.

  PAUL HOLES: Nobody’s gone back to these victims to talk to them. Could the EAR have seen them together in a carpool and that’s why he chose them, or was it just coincidence because he attacked so close together?

  MICHELLE: Right. Did each know that the other was a victim? You don’t even know that?

  PAUL HOLES: I don�
��t even know that, no.

  PAUL HOLES: So, EAR came out here . . . and now he’s tracking along on this side. And they kind of dismissed some of this at first; the initial officer that Corbett called out, Corbett tells him, “Hey, I’ve tracked these shoe prints,” and the officer goes, “Well, this is a common jogging path, and it’s so far away, I can’t see the offender ever parking his vehicle down here and then getting up here to attack.” Well, the shoe prints end up going down, following the path on this olive grove, down that way.

  PAUL HOLES: So, here’s the other side of this olive grove.

  MICHELLE: Okay. So, he might have been parked like on a shoulder right here?

  PAUL HOLES: Nope. ’Cause the shoe prints continued.

  MICHELLE: Oh my gosh. Isn’t that a little risky that he’d be seen?

  PAUL HOLES: Late at night? This is pitch-black!

  MICHELLE: Okay. And he’s probably wearing dark clothing.

  PAUL HOLES: I mean, what does he do all the time? And he’s in neighborhoods, with houses. Walking around. That’s probably riskier than this.

  MICHELLE: Yeah, I guess that’s true.

  Holes drives deeper into UC-Davis property, with various research buildings spread out to the right and agricultural fields to the left.

  PAUL HOLES: So, he tracks the shoe prints . . . all the way down to here. I can’t get through here. This is what’s called Bee Biology. They do a lot of bee studies here.

  MICHELLE: Oh, uh huh.

  PAUL HOLES: When I initially read this case file, I couldn’t make it out. I thought it was Boo Biology. And I’m thinking it’s on campus way over there, and I’m going, “This is nothing.” But when you look at where he says he lost track, the shoe prints ended up veering down to the left. What’s down here? Well . . . look here. It’s the airport!

  MICHELLE: Oh!

  PAUL HOLES: So, I’m now calling airports saying, “What kind of records do you have?”

  They both laugh.