The 20-year-old telephone operator, Gayle Redick,* (names followed by asterisks are fictitious) had been living away from home for about a year and was renting a room at a studio club (a women’s residence) in Milwaukee. Within hours of the alleged attack, she had told her parents and a friend who reported the incident to the police.

Years later, Redick was still able to describe the evening of March 2, 1966, in painfully vivid detail.

“I was 20… working full-time as an operator for… [the] answering service… working an evening shift…

“I was walking home from work. It was a spring night – it was nice out, and the bus wasn’t coming… It wasn’t that far… I was walking home from work, yes, and he was following me. He had… some big black car… I think it was a Riviera. He kept pulling up at the curb, and I kept walking. I thought it was just somebody trying to pick me up – you know how guys used to do that years ago.

“Finally, he parked the car and he got out. He walked up to me, and he asked if I was Gayle Redick. He said he knew Carey,* who worked with me, and he said she had mentioned my name to him. He knew [where] I worked… he knew everything about me… And he was wondering if I wanted to work for him part-time. He asked if I wanted to type… something to do with subscription forms – it was for the school, I know… He told me he was going to school – he was a student at Marquette Law…” (In her original, handwritten statement to police, Redick said that Cianci had first called her, offering part-time employment, and then picked her up after work; more recently, she has denied that account, explaining that it was written while she was still in a state of shock – she says that her first contact with Cianci occurred when he approached her on the street.)

“There was something very odd – the look in his eyes… I don’t know. I kept saying, ‘There’s something different about him,’ but yet he was very smooth, very good mannered, well dressed; the type of person that would impress anyone – like a businessman – and I figured he was a well-educated person. Maybe that’s why I trusted him…

“He said he was going to take me to his office to show me what I would do…

“I wasn’t going to go, I remember. I told him I had to change my clothes, I went back to the studio club, and I wasn’t going to go. And he parked out front of the studio club, and I kept thinking I needed the money… I changed my clothes – I put on a dress; and he sat out there for half an hour or so.. I needed the money, it was a part-time job, and I figured if he knew Carey I could trust him. So I took a chance… And finally I went. I told him I was willing to do typing…

“We were on the expressway, and I asked him where he was taking me – it seemed so far. And he just said, ‘We’ll be there in a minute. It’s not that far… My office is over there.’ I told him, I said, ‘This isn’t an office.’ He said his office was in his house, and through the front door there was an office there – like a study or den…

“I wasn’t worried though, because he hadn’t really made any advances to me or done anything. You know, it seemed all business. Then he offered me a drink… I think it was a rum and Coke – that was what I drank at the time. After I drank that drink, I felt funny – everything was all hazy. I felt like I was drugged. I don’t know how it feels to be drugged, but that’s the way it felt.

“Then he started coming toward me, and trying to kiss me and trying to make out with me. And I told him I didn’t even know him. He just kept talking, and I can’t remember too much more… He pulled me into the bedroom – it was all in such a haze… It was more or less like I was here, and I was there. I was out, and I wasn’t. Everything was far away and spinning – it didn’t seem like it was really happening…

“I told him that I’d go to the police, and he said that I’d make a fool out of myself… that he would get away with it because he knew every nook and cranny – he was going to law school. He laughed and said that he’d get away with it. He said he could do anything he wanted…

“I started fighting him off. I started screaming – I remember screaming. Then he got the gun. The gun was in a nightstand by the bed, tucked in a drawer. He put it by my head and told me if I screamed one more time he’d blow my brains out. He said, ‘Look out the window – there’s a ravine there, I could throw your body down there, and no one would ever find you.’

“It was a terrible experience – that’s all I can say… Finally, I couldn’t fight him off any longer… and he raped me…

“When he went to the bathroom, I called a cab. I was going to call the police, but I thought if a police car drove up, he would kill me. All I could think about was to get out of there, to get to some place safe… and sleep – that’s all I could think of. I was in a state of shock…

“When the doorbell rang, he got all excited, and he said, ‘Who’s that?’ And I ran – I pushed him aside and I ran, and I opened the door. The cab driver had come to the door. He acted very cool in front of the cab driver. He says, ‘We had a wonderful time, and I’ll call you… We’ll go out to dinner sometime.’ I remember that very plain.”