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IT WAS JUST BEFORE 11 a.m. on a quiet Friday morning, September 14, 1973. The streets were quiet. Not even casual traffic. Carol Deringer (alias) had just put down to nap their 18-month-old son. Although only 28 years old, she had had some serious medical issues of late. Finally recovering from her surgery, this was a very peaceful Friday morning to enjoy. Her husband was at work, and it was time to relax. With this small starter home, they had a small yard but it backed onto the grassy playing field of an elementary school behind them. On this Friday it was a breezy vista of autumn silence.
The early 1970s was a time more aware of the crime epidemic than any other time because it was something relatively new. It wasn’t something haunting the urban scene, the place most violent crimes had previously been limited, the tenderloin of any major city. It was now flowing into the suburban areas. In the wake of the antiestablishment movement and the assassinations of the 1960s, the 1970s basically had an apocalyptic attitude. The world was going to hell in a foreign car. We, the younger, had to hear from our elders how there was a time when you didn’t need to lock your doors or your car. Everything was better before hippies, drugs, and devil worshipers . . .and hip huggers. This was the world that had been conditioning Carol and everybody else for the last few years.
A few minutes before Carol had gone to her master bedroom to put her son to nap, there had been a man in her backyard, who was now gone. She dismissed it or wanted to dismiss it as a utility repair man. But as a precaution she now had a handgun.
She tucked her son in and now she heard a knock on the front door. She thought it must be a religious solicitor. She ignored it and went to the kitchen. It wasn’t long before she heard strange sounds coming from the back of the house, from the master bedroom area where she had just put to nap her son. She quickly went back. But it wasn’t her son. A man was at the window removing the screen. She noticed that the gate in their fence that opens to the school property behind them was open. The man was haggard looking, drawn and sick in appearance, with bags under his deep set eyes. There was, of course, a menacing look to him. Yet when he saw her staring at him, he ducked and ran down the side of the house toward the front, and not out toward the back gate.
Carol quickly went through the house, locked every window and door and put the chain link on the kitchen door to the garage. She wouldn’t even go out to lower the garage door. She had the overhead door up because she was doing laundry. But she wasn’t going to take a chance with a guy like this out there. Carol was quickly on the phone with her husband and told him what had happened. She was going to remain calm. She thought the guy had left, but if she heard anything else she would call the sheriffs.
Only moments had passed after she hung up when she heard the kitchen door knob. She looked. It was turning. The door started shaking. It caved in behind, angry, vengeful force. The chain lock held at first, but then with one massive thrust the door burst open and the chain lock bolts were ripped out of the door frame. Carol raised the handgun and gave out a shout, warning she was armed and if this jerk entered she would shoot. The shadow of the predator turned and she heard him walk out of the garage. She was instantly on the phone with the sheriffs.
On guard while the minutes ticked fretfully away, she looked about— eyes darting at the windows, back quickly to the door, and ears listening for every sound from the bedrooms out of view. She stepped into the family room and looked back into the backyard. She now heard the screen door on the sprung kitchen door squeak and push open. She turned and took a few steps and there the man rushed through the door and grabbed her hand with the gun. They struggled.
This guy was a freak. He looked in his 20s, with nicely combed hair, sunken cheeks, bags under his eyes like he was sick, but with thick lines around his mouth. As their clutched hands struggled with the gun, she noticed this weirdo was wearing women’s white dress gloves. Her eyes fixed on the gun, she saw how his small gloved hands slowly turned the weapon on her. Just before the muzzle pointed at her she pulled the trigger. The shot went wild over her shoulder. The assailant fled out the broken kitchen door, and Carol passed out. It wasn’t for long. She jolted awake, alone and dizzy, but she quickly started writing down the description.
This is what she described. He was a White Male Adult, close to 27 years old, medium brown hair to shoulder but neatly combed; only about 5 foot 8 inches tall (in shoes) and 140 pounds. Thin build. Big, thin nose, offset by sunken cheeks, narrow deep set eyes with bags, mark or mole on lower right corner of mouth, pock marks on chin. “Appeared to have a generally sick or tired look.” He was, however, dressed well. “Brown, possibly corduroy jacket, hip-length; Blue scarf in right pocket of jacket; Beige shirt and trousers; White shoes [type unspecified] Ladies white dress gloves.”
As she sat there in their dinette, she went though an identikit with a sheriff. This brought form to what she had seen.
During the crime spree of the EAR/ONS (beginning 1976), this incident had already been completely forgotten. No significance could therefore be attached to it. But with its recent rediscovery by sheriff detectives going through old records, it could explain a lot. They were looking for the past, the prehistory to the notorious East Area Rapist who as the Original Night Stalker had turned murderer in So. Cal and eventually became California’s if not America’s most prolific and cunning serial predator. Every attempt to identify this night predator had failed. But he had left too many clues that he was an adroit and already experienced cat burglar by the time he hit his first official victim on June 18, 1976. Home invasion crimes are not common because they are high risk crimes. And the detectives’ purpose seems to have paid off in spades.
First they discovered the forgotten crime spree of the Cordova Cat, a strange cat burglar who had plagued Rancho Cordova and Carmichael/Citrus Heights over 1972-1973, striking in the same neighborhoods as the EAR would, and in one case he had even robbed a future EAR victim (No 6 on El Segundo). He had a similar MO (even using hang-up phone calls and pulling the plug on forced air furnaces). Then the crime spree seems to have abated by late 1973. Either it stopped or was very intermittent as if the villain had left the area.
Second, the detectives found the Sarda Way assault case files, and with this its possible significance to the Cat stopping his burglaries in 1973. Was the reason this incident? Had there been a solid composite made of his appearance now because he had failed with Carol?
Due to his aggressiveness (and unrelenting), it was believed at the time that his motive was rape, possibly even murder afterward (since he wasn’t masked). The wise guys— the criminalists and shrinks— will note that cat burglary often devolves into sexual assault. It seems a justified point of view. On more than one occasion, the Cordova Cat had watched his victims asleep in bed. In one particular case, he fondled the breasts of a sleeping victim. The actions of the perp at Sarda Way fit with those of a cat burglar now ready for a heavy case of rape. But he botched it largely because of an armed victim.
The Cordova Cat seems to have vanished after this. Maybe there was a strike here and there. But he may have become a traveling cat burglar and pent up, budding rapist.
The greatest significance of this incident, however, is not to the Cordova Cat directly. It is to EAR. The East Area Rapist showed both extremes. He was a careful cat padding about his victim’s home, and he was a bull in a china shop, kicking in doors and plowing through windows when in the mood. He was a careful night prowler, but at times he seemed to be an odd door-to-door solicitor. When nobody answered, this solicitor went in the backyard.
This is exactly what happened to a teen girl on Locust Avenue in early January 1978. After the doorbell had rung, she answered and surprised the man that somebody was home. He too was dressed in a corduroy jacket. If homeowners answer the door, he had a strange excuse. At Locust Avenue it was lame (though unspecified). At a residence on Viceroy (May 1977), the man claimed he was with the American Pet Association. He asked if the resident had their dog spade. Afterward he walked away and a neighbor later clarified that he had approached only to that resident’s house. He wasn’t going door-to-door. There is no composite made of the Locust Avenue suspect, but there was one made of the Viceroy Lane suspect (to be released soon). After the Locust Avenue Incident, the sisters were raped (in about a week) on nearby College View Way; after the Viceroy encounter, the victim was raped on nearby Merlindale Drive.
So in its way the Sarda Way incident may be a bridge. It seems SSD detectives have uncovered EAR’s prehistory in the Cordova Cat, but this so far does not explain why he quit and where he went for a couple of years before returning to Sacramento’s east area and Rancho (then mimicking the MO of the Cat only now adding rape, sadism and terror to his lineup). The Ripon Court Shooter composite (February 16, 1977) also suggests a much healthier looking perp but essentially the same one that struck on Sarda Way. Many believe the shooter was EAR.
So where had EAR gone 1974-1975? It is not a theory I like, but it must be objectively entertained here. This is the strange crime spree of the Visalia Ransacker (1974-1975). He too was an adroit but odd cat burglar striking the small farm town of Visalia 4 hours south of Sacramento off Highway 99. He limited himself to a very small part of the town, indicating he wasn’t that familiar with Visalia. The Ransacker also graduated to an attempt at rape, then killed the victim’s father when interrupted, then fled. Frustrated, did he return to Sacramento and take out his passions the next month in a vile, “profligate” rape on Dawes Street in the heart of the old Cordova Cat’s prowling grounds in Rancho Cordova? It was silent all around everywhere until June 18, 1976, when EAR takes his first “canonical” victim only blocks away on Paseo Drive.
An entire section of Q Files must be dedicated to chronicling the connection, so it was necessary here to place up the Sarda Way Incident on its own page. We must see if it is a bridge to EAR. If it is, it finally helps us to put a face on this phantom night predator. That in itself would be enormous progress.
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