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I’m glad that in the end it was Sacramento that pulled off the Hail Mary on the East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker— The Night Predator. EAR’s pattern in Contra Costa and then So. Cal always indicated he was not permanently based nearby, but had maintained a home base somewhere else— most likely still in the Sacramento area. For his Contra Costa period most certainly he was still in the Sacramento area since the attack on Victim 43B strongly suggested his MO. Now we know, of course, why he simply couldn’t uproot himself permanently and go where he wanted.
For those who dedicate their time to following true crime, much in the revelation of the identity of the alleged EAR is not completely surprising. When discovered, the Green River Killer was head of his own neighborhood Bible study; BTK was on his church council and the local dog catcher; John Wayne Gacy had been a precinct captain in the Democratic Party in addition to his regular, respectable job.
Assuming that Joseph James DeAngelo is the key, let us consider EAR’s crime spree to see what we can unlock. I made part of Q Files a chalk board, a place to write-up points by both induction and deduction, and a place to come back after testing them to add thereto or erase. I had promised a very public investigation because there was little on the case in the public forum when I began. Aside from EAR’s identity, one of my prime concerns was trying to unravel the location of the lair and the intricate details of his prowling MO. Both of the latter could in turn reveal EAR’s identity as well. I eventually came to hear from individual LE investigators their theories on EAR’s lair and stalking modus operandi. I’m happy to say the consensus was basically right in principle, but we had the wrong direction. There will be some irony here, some joy, mirth, and frustration as we continue.
For me, I had tracked EAR boots-on-the-ground in order to figure how he stalked a community, selected a house, and came and went. For me, the only viable witnesses remaining were the neighborhoods— in essence discovering how he stalked and prowled would give us the clues we needed to take it further. The neighborhoods stand as silent witnesses that haven’t changed. They aren’t subject to memory loss or contamination. He had to deal with the topography and the logistics of how to assail and escape from a given location so facelessly. I would have to do the same.
In late 2014 the bulk of my initial investigation went up on The Quester Files here, the greatest part dedicated to the cases and then to my analysis based only on the known evidence and clues. I mentioned no person of interest. However, in 2015 I electrified the web when my first POI became public under the initials RP. No one knew that behind the scenes his selection was a sudden shift from my initial prime POI because of age and another factor— Placerville. Reinterpreting the map below of the East Area Rapist’s attacks put him in the lead.
The map that had inspired and beguiled. The EAR’s strike locations and comfort zones in the East Area. On this map the areas where the POI had grown up were marked by exclamation points. But Placerville remained the home base. The strikes certainly indicated a perp using Highway 50 and the main thoroughfares off it, and one even coming from the east, from the foothills. The main thoroughfares are marked in various colors.
I was certain and had always expressed my certainty that EAR had to be the unsuspected in order to have avoided the dragnet back in the 1970s. RP was outside the suspected age bracket and from Placerville 35 minutes away up in the foothills of the Sierras. Yet he had grown up in Carmichael. His family maintained apartments there. They had connections in auto-wrecking and VW dealerships. He was a loner and night owl who became a security guard after not being able to achieve law enforcement. All of this fit, but the most piquing aspect was Placerville. I felt this was truly the answer for why the dragnet never uncovered him. He wasn’t a cheap punk He was an honest citizen. But most of all he was far away.
The map and my interpretation and commentary on it was enough to bring in a flood of visitors. I know Richard Shelby was one, and then soon thereafter Sacramento Sheriff lead detective Ken Clark contacted me for my input. A while thereafter Roy Ellison, the supervisor of Orange County Cold Case Homicide, also contacted me for ideas, and I was able through my charm or not-so-charming ways to encourage Roy to follow through on RP to DNA testing. Erika Hutchcraft followed through. The process took 3 months, but RP was eliminated by DNA.
My research and presentation had nevertheless ingratiated me to official investigators. Placerville was new, novel and it could explain a lot. To a lesser extent a “lair from afar” would remain crucial to me. This scenario, which included “weigh station” lairs (local hangouts), also had appealed to Roy. Nothing indicated EAR lived in the East Area during his attacks. Rather the location of attacks right near to main thoroughfares suggested the opposite. It looked as if EAR knew the area for business reasons, or had grown up there, but had not necessarily lived there during the crimes. I was back to my original Prime POI, who was 33 (in 1976) and an auto wrecker by trade. By conventional wisdom he fit better. He had never lived in the East Area. His “lair” was closer than Placerville, but still outside the dragnet— in the Florin area about 7 miles south of La Riviera, with another south of Rancho. It required boots-on-the-ground to refine him more than I had, and so after a few months of OC working on connections I sent the dossier to Ken Clark. He immediately began triaging him. I had my highest hopes for him.
Some official investigators I learned also favored a lair south of Highway 50. And auto wreckers were looking better and better. I learned that the Cordova Cat (1972-1973 cat burglar), highly suspect to have been EAR before he turned rapist, had also shielded his car’s identity with plates lifted from a car that had been wrecked before his burglary. In doing so, he made his own vehicle untraceable as he drove around and got gas and tires for it with the victim’s gas credit card. This was one of EAR’s MO’s too.
Although I had submitted my prime POI last year, I only recently updated Lair of an Arch Rapist, and Scoping the Lair was uploaded to accentuate the possibilities of a lair in the south. I was frustrated and distrustful of any EAR sketch. The Cordova Cat information seemed a game changer. It ruled out all my POIs but my prime one who was now old enough to have been engaged in crime years before 1976. I wanted a phenotype or refined DNA to be used. I had been led to believe that bogus DNA claimed to have been leaked and published did, at least, accurately reflect the scarcity of EAR’s family connections. I was fact-checked by LE and instructed how DNA family tracing really works for my articles Ethnic EAR and Loner in the Genome back in early March. Little did I know Sacramento would soon be able to pull a profile on EAR by doing something similar to what I was presenting (using my cousin’s as an example in my article of how civilian databases can work). My prime POI was still under triaging when Sacramento’s DA and sheriffs arrested and charged Joseph James DeAngelo for being EAR-ONS. My seven year investigation was over now, and I was grateful to leave it behind.
It is not my point here to go over my defeats. It is to use them to highlight the irony of victory, to praise that intuitive instinct in all the investigators involved who followed the “lair from afar theory” and continued with it while I returned to sift through my deep list of POIs connected to auto-wrecking. DNA cut to the chase, but it did not remove the circle that was enclosing once again around the foothills via the old gumshoe method of sleuthing. Although RP was obviously the wrong candidate, so many couldn’t shake the allure of a foothills lair, including me. Clearly, there’s a reason, one we can all appreciate now. It turns out that my Placerville/Sierra foothills analysis has proven to be closer to the mark. . .in principle at least. Wrong highway (50), and wrong town. But, amazingly, during the crime spree of the EAR, DeAngelo lived in Auburn, the first Sierra foothills town up Highway 80, Sacramento’s northern highway to Tahoe. He was a cop and trained mechanic instead of a security guard with the same mechanic’s training.
The ski mask, of course, marks Auburn here as opposed to the blue circle marking Placerville. The red circles mark strike areas and East Area Rapist “comfort zones.”
But now to the map immediately above. The earlier Placerville theory had to be put in place first so that we can truly appreciate the even greater lengths a perp based in Auburn went to pull off the crime spree of the East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker. It is an inversion of what the first map suggests, and it tells us much of the cunning of the perpetrator.
The first map above, of course, truly does suggest a perp based towards the south, one who knows the East Area but doesn’t necessarily live there, for the northern area (Foothill Farms) is a place he attacks late in his game (Victims 25, 28) as if it is a bit far for him. Either from Placerville or the south, Foothill Farms most certainly is far.
In fact, the Foothill Farms’ attacks were the closest to the lair for anybody coming from Auburn. EAR had been a master of evasion, and actually began his strikes in Rancho Cordova, the furthest town in the East Area from Auburn. More clues come to us from this pattern than his cleverness. Indeed many clues cascade from the choice of Rancho. The fact he chose Rancho Cordova first shows how heavily he went to disguise his lair, and moreover heavily favors now the theory that he had indeed been the Cordova Cat.
Let’s put a rough chronology in place. In my blog I had said that if we can get all the street names and dates of the attacks of the Cordova Cat, we could get a handle on whether he was doing the Mojo Turn or Kibitzing. Yet though not knowing those dates yet, we do know now that DeAngelo lived in Citrus Heights in 1972-1973 during the crime spree of the Cat. The Cordova Cat hit Rancho first in 1972. If DeAngelo was the Cat, it means the Mojo.
Here’s the Mojo— To hit Rancho first the Cat would have to drive down Sunrise Blvd and then into Rancho, hit several homes, then continue west on Folsom Blvd, north up Watt Avenue, hit the Ancil Hoffman Park area and the Whitney/Mission area (Carmichael) and then continue on up to hit Citrus Heights’s southern area near Carmichael before returning to his lair further north in Citrus Heights. These are the areas the Cat struck. In essence, this is the “Mojo Turn.” It gives the appearance he starts in Rancho and strikes back and forth (kibitzing) when, in fact, it is one big circular sweep back to his lair.
The map highlights the Mojo Turn starting in a Citrus Heights lair. By striking in Rancho first the perp is always putting the hounds off his trail. The strike points indicate comfort zones for the Cordova Cat of 1972-1973.
At the time above, DeAngelo was an intern at Roseville Police Department, the town just north of Citrus Heights. Apparently he didn’t make the grade as a permanent officer. In May 1973 he becomes a police officer in the small town of Exeter, California, just a few miles east of Visalia. This is about 4 hours south of Sacramento. It was such a small town that he was one of only 8 police officers. Small town police forces seemed to be his level, and he had family there already. During his tenure there the strange and similar ransackings that had earmarked the Cordova Cat were taking place in nearby Visalia, in a very restricted part of it just off the local main highway (198). However, the Visalia Ransacker is outside of the scope of this page since this concentrates on the EAR’s MO 1976-1979.
In 1976 DeAngelo returns to the Sacramento area. Now he moves to the foothills in Auburn, California, where he had become a police officer on another small town force. The East Area Rapist begins on June 18, 1976, also in  Rancho Cordova. He hits similar areas that the Cordova Cat had hit, and in one case even the same victim (No. 6). The East Area Rapist then hits in Carmichael. Then Rancho. Then Carmichael’s Crestview area. Then Citrus Heights further north. Then Rancho again. Then Carmichael again. Then Rancho the next day. Then Citrus Heights. Then Fair Oaks. . .You get the point. It looks like kibitzing back and forth.
Exeter’s newspaper Sun introduced their new police officer in an August 1973 article: “James DeAngelo Jr. believes that without law and order there can be no government and without a democratic government there can be no freedom. Law enforcement is his career, he says, and his job is serving the community.”
In short, it appeared that EAR knew the area and was still based nearby. Logical. How did he evade the dragnet then? No one knew. And Sheriff Lt. Richard Shelby had made it plain that they had “turned every asshole upside down” looking for him. Still they didn’t find him.
You get an idea now why by the time I introduced my Placerville lair theory in 2015, it was greeted with such favor. Reinterpretation showed that as time went by, and many more attacks accumulated, it is clear the EAR is sticking close to the main thoroughfares— the polar axis of Manzanita Avenue/Fair Oaks Blvd. He doesn’t get too deep into the East Area. Even the Rancho strikes are near main thoroughfares. It looks like he knew the skin of the area, perhaps had grown up there, but wasn’t based anywhere nearby.
My reinterpretation explained how a perp could evade the dragnet. Coming from a long distance explained why the victims were still essentially off main thoroughfares— even the first in Rancho. It reflected kibitzing. It reflected the heavy southern leaning of EAR’s comfort zones. EAR liked to drive. All knew that. What is a 35 minute drive to and from the foothills compared to the hours involved in going to Modesto and Contra Costa County? Did he begin with his long distance MO intact? I had asked. It seemed logical too.
The release of the information pertaining to the Cordova Cat by the SSD on February 27, 2018, was a boon answered. It gave us EAR’s prehistory, the prehistory that investigators had long believed he had in order to be so experienced in 1976 with prowling and home invasion. Coupled then with DeAngelo’s alleged guilt as EAR, the Cat connection gives us a cat burglar who was based in Citrus Heights 1972-1973 and yet hit Rancho first, then Carmichael— the Mojo Turn. This now sheds light on the shrewdness of EAR’s choice of doing the same thing. Though he did not do the “Turn” since he was only striking once at a time, he carefully laid down the same appearance of kibitzing back and forth when he was doing no such thing. We have one so careful at evasion that he strikes as far from his home base as possible in order to disguise his lair.
I also suggested that a potential (temporary) lair could have existed on Moraine Circle, and those links are now turning up. Analysis of First 8 Strikes; The Maggiore Double Murder; Moments in Crime. Especially Prowling MO. Other “weigh station” lairs will no doubt be found in Rosemont (predicted by Ken Clark), Greenhaven, and Concord, among others.
Starting in Rancho should actually be viewed as a mistake, since it would normally have alerted SSD that the same predator was again afoot and all the records on the Cordova Cat would have been pulled. But by an unchancy turn of fate, the original detective on that case had already died and no one in SSD in 1976 knew there had been such a cat burglar (detectives did not share cases back then) that struck both Rancho and the East Area. It took Sgt. Ken Clark (within the last few years) to find the records and analyze the pattern and reintroduce the crime spree of the Cordova Cat to the public in hopes of finding an early mistake or clue that would lead to EAR’s identity, for it certainly seemed they were one and the same.
It is true that DeAngelo actually grew up in Rancho Cordova. But if he is EAR as alleged I don’t think he returned to Rancho because he had grown up there. He had already lived in Citrus Heights years before and had enough familiarity with the East Area. But still he returned to Rancho. It wasn’t the Mojo Turn this time, but the same choice of a beginning place equally shielded the direction from which he truly came, and as attacks built up it pointed more to a local perp or some perp in the Highway 50 area. Amazingly, during this time DeAngelo, the alleged perp, he is holding down a police officer job in Auburn.
I came into March of this year clutching my head doubting all the sketches and composites, still waiting on the triaging of my prime POI. I was in the wake of the elimination of 3 others, but still very hopeful that my auto wrecker would turn out to be the culprit or a link to him. Then I was seriously shaken by the release of the Haskell Avenue Incident on February 27, 2018. This incident had occurred on May 16, 1977, and it and SSD analysis fit well with the events of that night. It seemed that this prowler had to be EAR. It disturbed me because soon after this prowler’s harrowing encounter with a sheriff (Marlin Weinberger), the same type of foreign car observed in the Incident is heard to pull into Sandbar Circle. Soon a prowler is afoot there.Victim 21 would be hit in a couple of hours. Why would EAR need to hang around the East Area and potential hot spots for hours if his lair was nearby or even 7 miles away? Like with the Placerville theory, this action yet again pointed to a lair at quite a distance. EAR came from a distance and once here he had to remain or call it quits for the night and go home on a long drive unfulfilled. My prime POI was only 7 miles south of Highway 50, close enough to go home and return, perhaps even with another car. After all, there was a chopper circling overhead looking for the prowler. Yet EAR didn’t.
Little did I want to consider my original foothills theory would be correct in principle— not Placerville but as it stands it was Auburn. The sequence of events of that night indicate EAR had to hang around in order to strike a victim within two hours time. With a lair in Auburn, this would be a must. See The Next Couple Dies.
DeAngelo certainly had energy and as the alleged EAR we can say he was devoted to his “hobby.” He was married and regularly doing his duty in Auburn as a police officer and anti burglary expert. EAR strikes two victims on DeAngelo’s wedding anniversary, November 10 (No 10 and No 27). By the end of his crime spree in the Sacramento Area he is driving long distances to Contra Costa County to do the same thing there. DNA was preserved there from the rapes and proves that. Adding EAR’s Modesto, Davis, and Stockton attacks, it seemed fairly certain that the perpetrator had never moved from the Sacramento area. He was merely driving long distances. Who would have suspected a full time married cop was capable of this grueling routine?
On the contrary, the pattern once again favored some form of the automotive business or construction. When the traveling became obvious, construction had become a dominant contemporary theory. Decades later I added the wrecker theory or someone with the ties thereto.
EAR used many different cars and license plates from wrecked vehicles to cover his prowling. The Cordova Cat had done this once. Like the lair from afar, I popularized the auto-wrecker theory and even after the Placerville theory fell, auto wrecker still looked good. The lair, I had to believe, was just somewhere else. I should have stuck to the foothills scenario. But what pointed to Auburn? Nothing in the pattern truly did. Maybe that should have been the clue.
But one clue always stuck out with EAR and with the Cat as well. He tended to use older smaller, foreign cars— frequently associated with VWs. Instead of wrecking, these could have indicated a small time amateur used car dealer. These are, actually, the cheaper used cars easy for a mechanic to fix up and flip for a small profit. We now know DeAngelo was a qualified mechanic. He was in a perfect position as a cop and mechanic to buy cheap little foreign cars, available at impound auctions and wrecking yards (where a nice assortment of used cars was always advertised). As a mechanic he could fix them up, drive them a bit, use them in his alleged attacks and then turn them over. Amateur used car sales were fairly easy and quick back then. As a cop he  could lift any plates he wanted when answering accidents. Or he could do so at the wrecking yards and in conjunction with enforcement towing.
He unquestionably devoted an inordinate amount of time to his stealthy hobby by night. This photo shows him in Auburn for a PR event on June 8, 1979. On Monday June 11 EAR would strike Victim 46 on  Allegheny in Danville, Contra Costa County. We can also see why he so frequently did not wear a mask with a mouth hole— he had a mustache.
Close to a month later on July 21, he was nailed for shoplifting in Citrus Heights. (He was careful to not even shop in Auburn for his stuff.) It is a great irony that a man so cautious was nailed for something so petty as dog repellent and a hammer. I suspect he had always been shoplifting his ski masks and equipment— no trail of sales to him. No way to get suspected.
One of my POIs had longstanding connections from youth on up to the owners of one of Sacramento’s major auto supply and sporting goods stores, with an outlet for grocery delivery. Perfect fit. He could use the masks and guns and then return them and they are back on the rack or in the case. He had grown up near someone I knew through the EAR-ONS case. Former police chaplain Todd Gearou went with me to his old neighborhood to speak with his neighbors. So much fit. He had even been discovered burning clothes in a neighbor’s fireplace (sometime in 1977). His life thereafter was one of wandering and general delivery addresses. His face particularly “creeped out” some DA special investigators. But later it was discovered that he was in the military on a certain date EAR struck.
The reason why I touched on that vignette, which was actually a very humorous episode in my investigation, is to accentuate that EAR needed all these angles (sporting goods store, autos, guns, knives), and an investigator needed him to have some connection to a large source of them in order to trace him. But DeAngelo, if EAR, cheated all these leads. He must have shoplifted everything he used, thus cheating any investigator of picking up on his trail. We have to consider that some of the cars he used were borrowed from an impound, plates switched, and then driven only for the night.
The shoplifting had a devastating effect. He was fired. He didn’t even want to answer the charges. So he was summarily removed. I can well imagine he didn’t want to answer questions about “Why?”
This was July 1979. After this EAR is gone from Sacramento. He pops up in Goleta in October. In So. Cal the Original Night Stalker uses the same prowling MO as EAR did in Contra Costa. The reader can consult Prowling MO. His occupation is publicly unknown at this time, but in 1989 he is listed as an auto mechanic, not so surprisingly. He buys his current house in Citrus Heights in 1980. Curious. He returned to the hot bed of where he is alleged to have been king of the night. He still traveled far to commit his murders until the summer of 1981. Then he stops. One last time he returns to a comfort zone in Irvine (possibly while living in Long Beach) and now a 40 year old man he takes by surprise a 19 year old girl, and it is a gruesome repeat of his earlier murders. Dental records will have to confirm who she is despite being found dead on her own bed.
A middle aged EAR returned in 1986 to follow his earlier MO exactly. The end result was Janelle Cruz’s murder. (Photo courtesy of Michelle Cruz.)
If all the allegations ring true, it seems undeniable DeAngelo perfected a vast crime spree without any traces leading to him because of: 1, he was the unsuspected; 2, he used the “lair from afar” method. He was outside of being suspected and outside of the dragnet. A local cop still could have become a suspect (some did), but one way up in the foothills in Auburn would not have been.
Yet we should not over credit him. How much of his MO was truly well thought out and how much is due to him being the unsuspected because of the location of his lair? He was stupidly stubborn sometimes and remained in danger areas. He may have been recognized by Brian Maggiore due to law enforcement contacts. Otherwise it was foolish to go berserk like he apparently did. He only seemed to kill out of rage and identity protection (at this time), and it didn’t seem to faze him. But the way in which he did it with the Maggiore Double Murders was desperate and haphazard. His neighbors (today) behind him said that he used to walk in circles in his backyard and cuss himself out. This sounds strangely similar to how EAR behaved with Victim 9 when in a rut. He did have “anger management” issues, they have said. So much we thought was an act may have been genuine.
With No 9 as with other victims EAR tried to sound much younger, in a rather lame way. He told her that he had to go before his parents get back. With Victim 2, the sadist hissed into the shivering 15 year old’s ear that he “wanted to fuck her” ever since seeing her at the junior prom. She didn’t buy it. To another, he told them that his “mommy” didn’t like to see the bad news of his crimes on the TV. But did it matter these excuses were lame? EAR seemed to project he knew he was the unsuspected. Why not play whichever way he liked for the moment?
Yet if DeAngelo committed all the EAR crimes, he showed brilliance at evasion. As an anti-burglary cop he would know to throw the hounds off the trail. EAR wore waffle stompers on his first few strikes. These are not a prowler’s ideal shoes. He uses tennis shoes starting with Victim 7. He, in fact, gave the appearance he worked outside and was slowly learning prowling, refining his knowledge of it by the footwear he chose. He almost exclusively wore tennis shoes after Victim 7 with only a couple of exceptions. This is at odds with anyone but a beginner.
DeAngleo liked to bike and fish. Dare we say this may explain why EAR’s one strike in Pocket was near the fishing spot Minnow Hole?
He was an incredibly active man, and we can certainly see that in EAR’s crime spree.
In conclusion, it seems all the crimes to which he is now alleged to be connected, amounting to a vast spree, was both enjoyable to him and convenient or he made it convenient. If he is the Visalia Ransacker, then he killed Claude Snelling over the same short tempered motive that caused him to allegedly kill the Maggiores and possibly try to kill Rod Miller. It was just killing to him. In 1979 it became a sport that he carefully refined in the months between each attack. Every motive seemed based on thrill. If all turns out to be true, he was a thrill burglar, thrill rapist, then thrill murderer. The three lives of the Cat.
Seamlessly he merged back into normal, everyday life as a somewhat nice but moody neighbor and a bit of an eccentric at work called “Crazy Joe.” He was an old guy. Give him a break. No one would ever have believed he had been a cop. . . let alone the shrewdest and most prolific night predator in history. The real life Michael Myers. It is said that when arrested he said: “But I’ve lived a good life.” He couldn’t understand why this was happening. He had a roast in the oven. What will happen to that?
Form and spirit of evil are not the same thing. Everything written about EAR-ONS prior to the arrest of the alleged criminal has been written about his spirit. We had nothing else but a spirit to chase. Like I wrote in the introduction of this investigation, we like our villains to express the spirit of evil that we form in our minds based on their evil deeds. We are often dismayed when seeing the real form. We want them to be like the Phantom of the Opera, some hideous villain. When we rip off his mask we want to see his grotesque form, one worthy of all the evil he has done. But it is always some old wino, “Crazy Joe,” or smirking punk. Worst of all, it’s just a person. Perhaps the form of evil dismays us the most because it is our own form. After all, it was only his hobby.
The phantom has materialized, we are told, free now from the Kodachrome colors of Swingin’ 70s nights. The hiss is gone. The threats snarled through clenched teeth, the gymnastic qualities of an unusual night prowler, all absent. It’s “Crazy Joe” down at the Save Mart. Hey, Joe! You missed your roast in the oven. But the State most likely has another roast planned.
I don’t think anybody is going to say “poor Joe.” But I don’t think anybody likes the form that has taken shape. The elusive Night Predator is the guy down the street.
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