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

by Michelle McNamara

  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 cloth
ing.

  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.

  PAUL HOLES: My naive thought about flying is, you know . . . every time you flew a plane, you had to file a flight plan; you fly into an airport, they know you’re there, and everything else. But they told me, “No, no. Anybody can come and go here. We have no idea they’re here. If they come in after hours, they tie their plane down. They go do their thing, they come back, we’ll never know they’re here.”

  MICHELLE: Is that right?! That is strange.

  PAUL HOLES: So, here we’ve got this case, twenty-two hours after the case in Modesto occurred. The case in Modesto has the strange man being picked up at an airport, being dropped off, near new construction, seemingly heading toward the victim’s home.

  MICHELLE: But why was that man so strange?

  PAUL HOLES: The cab driver said he just had a single bag. And he just says, “Take me to Sylvan and Meadow.” And then, “Drop me off right here.” He gets out and just wanders to where the cab driver says there’s nothing there but houses being built. And then the next case . . . we have an airport connection.

  MICHELLE: I’m trying to think of what kind of person would have a plane like that. Like, a small plane?

  PAUL HOLES: Well, a small plane opens up possibilities. You know, these developers typically had your multiseat corporate jets. If you’re talking about somebody with a small plane, somebody who’s not a millionaire, you know, or somebody with huge resources, having a . . .

  MICHELLE: Yeah.

  PAUL HOLES: So, if you’re talking to these developers, and saying, well, “Would you fly? If you have developments across the state, would you fly there?” They answer, “Yeah, we would fly there. Flying an airplane is very expensive, but it was sort of an ego thing. So, we would want to be perceived as successful, because we have our own jet that we’re flying in. And yeah, occasionally we would go and check on our kingdoms that are being built.”

  MICHELLE: Right. Hmm. Were there any other little clues from any of the cases that tied into a plane? Like, any kind of . . . didn’t he have, like, a navigator’s something?

  PAUL HOLES: No, not that I can think of.

  Holes is trying to locate the home of the third Davis victim. This attack, number thirty-seven, occurred on July 6, 1978, at 2:40 in the morning. The victim was a thirty-three-year-old woman—recently separated and in the bed alone—whose sons were sleeping in another room. The EAR used them as leverage, threatening to kill them if she didn’t do what he said. After raping and sodomizing the victim, he sobbed. A three-month hiatus would then follow, after which he resurfaced in the East Bay area.

  PAUL HOLES: It was a corner house. I want to say it was the end. I don’t think these houses were here at the time. And there are no houses behind. And then you had the construction going on at the school. So, the attack occurred here. There was lots of construction going on in this area. . . . Here it is. So . . . this victim carpooled with the previous Davis victim.

  MICHELLE: Wow. A lot of these scenes are a lot closer to each other than I thought they were. I mean, some aren’t, but . . . some, it’s interesting.

  PAUL HOLES: Right. Well, neighborhoods. He got familiar with the neighborhoods. Danville is tightly clustered. Concord. Walnut Creek.

  MICHELLE: Certainly, I mean, Rancho Cordova . . . weren’t some right next to each other?

  PAUL HOLES: Yeah. Not quite right next to each other, but right around the block. You know, the house between.

  MICHELLE: Right. I mean, and if you’re walking away without your pants on, you either live there or your car is right there. Or you’re kind of crazy. Or all of the above.

  PAUL HOLES: Well, one of these guys I spent a lot of time on,

  a serial killer by the name of Phillip Hughes . . . in his interviews with the psychiatrist, he admits to, when he was in high school, leaving his house in the middle of the night—parents had no idea—he’d be nude, and he’d break into other houses in the neighborhood to steal the clothing from the women.

  MICHELLE: And this was before he’d actually been violent with anyone?

  PAUL HOLES: Yeah, as far as we know. He had killed some animals. You know . . . the whole serial-killer triad thing [the theory that torturing animals, setting fires, and bedwetting past early childhood predict sexual violence in adulthood].

  MICHELLE: Right.

  PAUL HOLES: But this was at the high school age. I think there’s a certain . . . thrill to being out without the clothes on.

  MICHELLE: Right.

  PAUL HOLES: Now, there could be a practical thing too, you know? Let’s say it’s his first attack, and he’s going, “Well, how am I going to deal with the pants? I’m just not going to wear them. I don’t want them in the way.”

  MICHELLE: Right. Yeah, that’s why it’s interesting to me that in a lot of the murders, he killed them with whatever was handy there.

  PAUL HOLES: Yeah. He had a gun, but in terms of the bludgeoning, he used what was there.

  MICHELLE: Is there anything about people who bludgeon that’s different from people who do other stuff?

  PAUL HOLES: Well, bludgeoning and stabbing in essence are the same thing. You know, it’s very personal. You’re taking out a lot of violence, a lot of anger, on that person. Now, strangulation . . . beating with your fists or strangling, that’s all . . .

  MICHELLE: So anything you do with your hands is kind of out of the same thing?

  PAUL HOLES: Yeah, it’s all the same. Versus killing with a gun—it’s less personal. And it’s easy. Anybody can kill anybody with a gun. You can kill from a distance. But when you’re in physical confrontation with the person, that’s a personal thing. You know, you read about these guys who are looking in the victim’s eyes as they’re strangling them . . .

  MICHELLE: Right.

  PAUL HOLES: You know, and they feel Godlike because, in essence, they are controlling whether this victim lives or dies.

  Fred Ray

  I’M NOT ENJOYING MY SECOND CUP OF TERRIBLE COFFEE IN A CAFÉ in Kingsburg, California, twenty miles southeast of Fresno, when I’m given an explanation to a mystery that’s puzzled me for years. The man who provides the answer, Fred Ray, is tall and laconic and possesses a slightly nasal drawl befitting a descendent of generations of Central Valley farmers. When Ray isn’t using his long fingers to emphasize a point, he folds his hands and rests them gently on his chest like a scholar. His mostly brown hair is enviously abundant for a retired detective who’s being asked about a thirty-five-year-old double murder he once investigated. I formed a certain ungenerous impression when Ray first loped in with his battered briefcase and Dust Bowl twang. He wanted to meet on the early side to avoid the high school crowd, he told me, but I spot no one under seventy in the tiny café, which consists of a handful of tables covered in thick, clear plastic, shelves of Swedish knick-knacks (Kingsburg is known as Little Sweden), and a narrow glass counter displaying scattered pastries. Two of the café’s few patrons are Ray’s wife and then his pastor, who
asks me where I’m from even though I haven’t been identified as an out-of-town visitor. I tell him I’m from Los Angeles.

  “Welcome to the state of California,” the pastor says.

  But my impression of Ray changes abruptly early in our conversation, when he’s describing his time as a detective with the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office, in particular his experience

  interrogating a certain kind of troubled kid. Outwardly the kids, young white males mostly, presented little threat. The laid-back pace of an old-money coastal town trickled down to them, even if they didn’t live in upscale Hope Ranch, with its horse paths and private beach, but the trailer park on Hollister. These were Garys and Keiths, shaggy-haired late-seventies burnouts who started but never finished Dos Pueblos or San Marcos High. They dragged beat-up armchairs into the avocado groves and hid out smoking homegrown weed. They surfed Haskell’s Beach all day and gathered around bonfires at night, drunk and feeling safely out of reach; they knew the cops would never hike down the sage-scrub-covered bluffs to break up a beach party. Their troubles were petty stuff. Minor aggravations. Except that Ray discovered a surprising number of them engaged in a chilling pastime, one they kept secret even from each other: they got a thrill out of breaking into strangers’ homes in the middle of the night.

  They were prowlers. Peepers. Burglary was an afterthought. What they took pride in, Ray learned from talking to them, was their ability to get inside a house, crawl along a floor, and stand unnoticed in the dark, watching people sleep. Ray was amazed at the details they would share with him once he got them started.

  “I always had a way of getting guys to talk to me,” Ray says.

  “How would you do it?”

  He opens his hands. His features soften almost imperceptibly.