Okay, so here’s a quick trivia question for you. Who in our society receives marriage proposals from women who have never met them, get their faces plastered on t-shirts, appears on the covers of popular magazines, and has even appeared on trading cards, similar to baseball cards? (If you were going to guess famous Hasidic Rabbis, you’d be wrong, although, there are “Famous Rabbi Trading Cards,” and I’m not making that up.) The answer unfortunately is serial killers. As a culture, Americans have what can only be described as a somewhat unhealthy obsession with serial killers. Sadly, there are no shortage of choices for one to choose from when trying to find a serial killer who is right for you.

If you asked most Americans if they could name the first five presidents, or the last five vice-presidents, or any of the supreme court justices, I truly believe that the average citizen would struggle to succeed in this endeavor. However, if I asked most Americans to name five serial killers, most would probably succeed. Most of us in our somewhat twisted society would be able to at least recognize the following:

The Zodiac Killer Ted Bundy The Green River Killer (Gary Ridgway) Charles Manson John Wayne Gacy

These individuals have been reported on, catalogued, profiled, documented on television, as well as having their stories told through the movies. If that’s not enough for you, their stories are all over the internet. We are at the point where many of us know the backgrounds and lives of these vicious murderers better than almost any other individuals in our pop culture. Whether that’s a good thing or not is a story for another day, but the fact is, as scary as all of the above individuals are or were, and one of them, The Zodiac Killer, was never even caught, they pale in comparison to perhaps the most evil and cunning serial killer our nation has ever produced, the so-called Golden State Killer.

When you are discussing serial killers, there is a huge difference between those who have been caught, and those who were never brought to justice. From a psychological perspective, it eats at us to think that somebody got away with a series of horrific crimes, and never had to face justice or the survivors of their carnage, or the families of those they killed. However, it is even more disturbing to think about a “monster” who was never caught, and could still be lurking out there, somewhere, just looking for the right opportunity to strike.

Typically, when the authorities are out on the streets hunting these dangerous predators, we imagine them to be both brilliant, as well as crazy. We conjure up a vision of a sadistic mad-man roaming the streets, looking for blood, always one-step ahead of the law, tormenting the public, and far too clever to be caught until he is good and ready. However, once these fiends are finally captured and brought to justice, a strange humanizing effect begins to take place. Once caught, these killers appear to us to be meek, and milquetoast like. Gary Ridgway, the “Green River Killer,” and Wayne Williams, the “Atlanta Child Murderer,” terrorized the citizens of Seattle and Atlanta respectively, conjuring up fears and nightmares throughout the communities where they stalked their prey. However, once they were caught, while certainly scoring high on the “creep-meter,” they certainly wouldn’t give one pause if one were to pass them on the streets. Capture by the law will cut a serial killer down to size every time.

Wayne Williams, the “Atlanta Child Murderer,” appeared to be even more benign than Ridgway. Williams was a doughy looking cherub who allegedly killed 29 children, teens and young adults in the Atlanta area between 1979 and 1981. He literally held parents and children in the city of Atlanta captive, however, once he was caught, he appeared to be far less intimidating.

Most certainly it is the serial killers who we do not identify, the ones who are never caught that leave us with a type of chill in our bones that no CGI laden horror movie can hope to replicate. Certainly San Francisco’s “Zodiac Killer” is a classic example of how terrifying a serial killer can be. Zodiac struck fear into the hearts and minds of Northern Californians in the late 1960s when he claimed seven victims, killing five. He tormented the press and the police with his coded letters and terrifying threats to kill children. Zodiac could make the hair on your neck stand up for sure, but even he doesn’t hold a candle to the most prolific serial predator in California history.

As somebody who has had more than a passing interest in serial killers, I was amazed to discover one night that as my wife and I were watching Cold Case Files with Bill Kurtis, there was a brutal serial rapist and killer who I had never heard of, who absolutely and completely haunted both Northern and Southern California between 1976 and 1986. He was never caught, and he seemed to cease his reign of terror just as suddenly as he had begun. Not only has he never been caught, or identified, there hasn’t even been a halfway decent suspect brought into a police station. At least as far as the public knows, he has rarely reached out to the police or the media the way “Zodiac” and “Son of Sam” did. However, he followed his case in the press closely, and would often react to whatever the police and media reported about him.

(This is allegedly the voice of the East Area Rapist, calling one of his victims. If this doesn’t scare you, then you literally don’t have a pulse. You Tube)

When you have a serial killer who rarely makes contact directly with the press or the police, and they are never identified, it’s hard to know what to call them. However, a woman by the name of Michelle McNamara, a true crime writer, and semi-professional sleuth, became obsessed with the man who had done so much damage to so many lives in California from 1976 to 1986. McNamara interestingly enough, was the wife of actor/comedian Patton Oswalt. Sadly, McNamara passed away shockingly in her sleep in 2016. She had been working on a book about this unknown fiend. She decided that one of the problems with this particular predator was that nobody was sure what to call him. In Sacramento, he was known as the East Area Rapist. In Los Angeles, he became known as the Original Night Stalker. (At the time, nobody knew that the two individuals were actually the same person.) It was McNamara who dubbed the serial attacker, “The Golden State Killer.” This name seems to be sticking.

The story of the Golden State Killer is the story of three extended criminal sprees, occurring in three different areas in California, over an approximately 13 year span, by what would appear to have been the same person. Some of the proof that links these crimes to one man is circumstantial, other links are concrete.

From April 1974 to December 1975, the town of Visalia, California was plagued by a bizarre series of burglaries attributed to a perpetrator known as the Visalia Ransacker. For a little over a year, the Visalia Ransacker engaged in a series of bizarre break-ins, typically when nobody was at home, and stole oddities such as piggy banks and blue-chip trading stamps, but at the same time he left cash and jewelry. He would also leave out women’s underwear laid out on the bed. There were two items that he would definitely steal if he got the chance, and they were guns and ammunition. The “Ransacker” grew more bold and attempted to rape a young woman in her backyard. He was accosted by the girl’s father, but unfortunately, the “Ransacker” shot and killed the father and fled. The police came close to catching the “Ransacker” one night, shining a flashlight on him, but he shot at one of the police officers, hitting the flashlight, and then he escaped, never to “ransack” in Visalia again.

One of several police sketches of the East Area Rapist. Did this bold criminal begin his career in crime breaking into people’s houses in Visalia as the “Ransacker?” (You Tube)

There’s no proof that the Visalia Ransacker is the same person as the East Area Rapist, but circumstantially, there are many similarities. Shortly after the “ransacking” in Visalia ended, a man began breaking into homes in the east of Sacramento, hence the name, East Area Rapist. Over 50 rapes were committed, and on at least one occasion, two separate rapes occurred in one night. When the press reported that the rapist only attacked women who were home alone, he began to break in to homes where there was a man present. He would tie the men up and stack dishes on their backs. He would then take the women into another room, and he would tell the men that if he heard the dishes move, he would kill everybody in the house.

One night, a man stood up at a town meeting where the break-is and rapes were being discussed. He claimed that he couldn’t believe that a man would just lay there while his wife was raped, and that he would kill the man if he entered his house. Later, the East Area Rapist broke in to that man’s house, and raped his wife.

The East Area Rapist was also known to stake out houses. He would remove screens, and unlock windows. He would also walk through the homes, and if he saw a gun, he would empty the ammunition. He would take souvenirs from his victims, and would often call them, taunting them, and sometimes threatening them. Several times the police almost caught him, but he was always able to escape.

Incredibly, the rapes seemed to stop just as suddenly as they had begun. First though, a young couple out walking their dog approached a young man acting in a bizarre fashion. The couple fled, but the young man hunted them down and shot them dead. Law enforcement officials were confident that these murders were committed by the East Area Rapist.

Approximately a year after the murder in Sacramento, a couple reported a break-in in Southern California. The M.O. was almost identical to that of the East Area Rapist. The couple was lucky to survive, but the next 10 victims were not so fortunate. The suspect in these cases became known as the Original Night Stalker.

It’s hard for many of us to remember, but police departments didn’t always share information, especially when crimes were committed in multiple jurisdictions. Nobody officially connected the Sacramento rapes with the rapes and murders that took place in Southern California several years later. It wasn’t until 2001 that the two different crime waves were linked by DNA evidence. Law enforcement officials now knew that the EAR and ONS were one in the same.

In 2016, the FBI reopened the case, and is hoping that by publicizing the evidence, somebody will come forward who may have information that would lead to either the capture or at least the identification of the man who terrorized California for over 10 years. So far, no information has been found that would lead to any positive ID. The EAR/ONS was estimated to be about 20-30 at the time that his crimes were committed, so he certainly could still be alive.

For better or worse, the era of the serial killer seems to have been replaced by today’s spree killer. The ISIS sympathizer, the “angry loner,” the disgruntled employee, these are the obsessive-compulsive time-bombs that walk amongst us in our society, waiting for something or someone to set them off. Is this an improvement over the era of the California bred serial killer? We seem to be less enamoured with the spree killer as opposed to our macabre fascination with serial killers. I’m not sure why that is, but I can tell you that in just the time it has taken me to write this blog, I feel like I need a “Silkwood shower.” Make sure you check your downstairs windows before you go to sleep. I mean, just sayin’.