CA CA - East Area Rapist aka The Original Night Stalker 1976-86

[Twotays]

Thank you Kat913 There is a great article in Los Angeles magazine written by Michelle McNamara she wrote it in February of 2013. She was obsessed with this case and she is the one who coined the name Golden State Killer. She passed away recently and at the time of her death was working on a book about this killer. In an interview with her husband Comedian Patton Oswald he believes she was close to solving the case and has vowed to finish the book and is currently working with a historian to finish it.

I have read Hunting a Psychopath by Richard Shelby. Great book if you never want to sleep again. I have read several articles including Michelle McNamaras.

I took a two year hiatus from my book club, and apparently while I was away a women came in wanting to talk about EAR/ONS. She is convinced the Visalia Ransacker and EAR/ONS is the same man. She was also convinced he is back in Visalia and one of her neighbors.

This womens comment about him got me to thinking, if he was the Ransaker was he raised here? Did he come home to retire, raise a family etc? Some theories around town where that the Ransacker was either in the military or a military "brat" we are close to a Navel Air Base and have military personnel in our town. After the Snelling attempted kidnapping and murder they had Police staking out the neighborhoods that he frequented he was confronted by a police officer and before he shot at the cop he took off his mask the cop later said that everything happened so quick but he thought with the high pitched whinny voice and small frame that he was dealing with a teenager. The cop said this suspect was able to easily and quickly jump over a five foot fence, another similarity with EAR/ONS his ease in jumping fences and jumping down from roofs. In some of the Ransacker cases homeowners latter found things on their roofs, either things they thought were taken or other items that didn't belong to them. Small things of no real value. The Ransacker liked blue chip stamps, many homes reported theirs missing. I spoke to a friends mother who remembers when the Ransacker was working the city and she said that she found out about it from a friend who was one of the victims and that it was not widely talked about and she didn't really remember it being in the paper. She also said that her friend found the sexual nature of the break in embarrassing and didn't want many people knowing about it. She said in those days things like that weren't talked about and that before the Snelling murder most thought it was a creepy teenager and that several people were victims of the ransacking and they didn't even report it. I have heard some estimates that he may have hit over 100 houses. Visalia is the largest town between Bakersfield and Fresno, right now we have a population of over 120,000 in those days the population was about 30,000. It was a small rural farming community. I saw on a website about the ransacker a map of the reported homes he hit, he stayed in a pretty small area and tended to go back to neighborhoods he'd hit before multiple times, another similarity with EAR/ONS. With as many homes as he hit in a small area no one really saw him for sure, they said he did good recon, and again another similarity with EAR/ONS.

Would love to hear thoughts and theories from anyone else on the Ransacker and if you haven't heard about the Ransacker there is some information on line that is pretty interesting.

 

[dotr]

http://www.ear-ons.com/crimes_VR.html
Dates and locations hit by " The Ransacker "

[SIZE=+2]Visalia Ransacker Crimes 4/6/74 to 12/10/75[/SIZE]

http://www.ear-ons.com/crimes.html

Timeline
[SIZE=+2]East Area Rapist Crimes[/SIZE]

 

[mrcricket300]

Dish stacking and the Timeline makes it very likely that EAR was VR. I read somewhere that VR sometimes used lotion, another similarity with EAR

EAR must have lost lot of weight if he was really VR. VR was described as about 190 pounds, EAR was about 160.

 

[dotr]

Dish stacking and the Timeline makes it very likely that EAR was VR. I read somewhere that VR sometimes used lotion, another similarity with EAR

EAR must have lost lot of weight if he was really VR. VR was described as about 190 pounds, EAR was about 160.

All that running and jumping over fences might have caused him to lose weight.
Maybe he was quite young and still had " baby fat ", maybe played football in high school, or was taking some kind of medicine ( acne?) or drugs to cause him to lose weight.
If he was chubby, would Ransacker still be likely to have been in the military?
Maybe he still lived at home and ate more, and as EAR, lived away from home- perhaps creating the desire/ fetish to eat food at his victim's homes, (family thing)?

 

[Twotays]

VR's high pitched voice is another similarity between the two. Also VR went through all the cabinets in the house, he was quite a snoop. Victims said he must have spent a lot of time in their homes. In one home he displayed men's under ware down the hallway of the house, perfectly laid out. He seemed to like under ware. Most of the stuff he stole wasn't worth much. He took loose change, one earring from a set (to me that is almost trophy behavior) he would also mess with family photos which I believe was another habit of EAR.

my personal opinion is that we are dealing with someone with a high level of intelligence, he doesn't stand out and he does his homework. If VR is indeed EAR/ONS the volume of crimes he has committed with out being caught and in the case of VR not being seen with the exception of the Snellings and the cop is astounding to me. VR breaks in to some estimates over 100 homes and he is not seen? amazing. When I read the book Hunting a Psychopath, one of the things that struck me was the lack of neighborhood watch. he hit the same neighborhoods multiple times and after a crime when LE would canvass a neighborhood people would talk about a man in the bushes or a strange car, one man even said he went to his kitchen window to get a drink of water and he saw a man in all black with a stocking mask walking across his cross the street neighbors yard, when asked if he called it in he said no he pulled his blinds down and went back to bed. There where so many missed opportunities, if there had been more citizen involvement I think he would have been caught.

 

[Twotays]

These older areas of town have lots of trees, good size lots and not very many street lights. In other words DARK! we also have a system of "ditches" that run through town to help with flood control, there were also in those days walnut and almond groves through out the town. Many homes backed up to these groves or the ditch system which would be a good way to get into peoples yards and travel through town without being noticed. I believe EAR/ONS like homes backed to fields, railroad tracks etc.

 

[mrcricket300]

EAR must have had loads of free time judging by the amount of scouting and prowling he did, and he had access to multiple vehicles.

How old do you guys think he was? I always imagined him to be around 18-20 years old. He probably was a student, that kinda explains the free time.

 

[macrauchenia]

RH, in Michelle McNamara's article in LAMag, she mentions 5 myths about this case. One of the one's she mentions is the German Shepard.



Just another red herring.

Is it not true then that the murderer fed the dog Christmas leftovers at the December 30th 1979 crime scene? Does anyone know? Where'd that come from? Did he maybe have a DIFFERENT dog? (Dog-walking is such a clever cover for being out in a neighborhood walking at night!)

 

[macrauchenia]

Also, it seems like there were two things going on. There is the sexual part of the rape. Where the EAR seemed to have trouble with limpness and .... And there was the domination and terror which the EAR did not seem to have any problem with. The EAR would seem to be a likely candidate for BDSM. And not just some weekend warrior but possibly a well respected and revered member of clubs. I would like to ask if it matters who the EAR was terrorizing, whether male or female, does the sex even matter to him. If he knew your worst fear, reagardless if he enjoyed it or not, wouldnt that be the one he would choose. A women violated while the man watched or listened, helpless to save her. Knowing that their lives would somehow be frozen in that moment. Could the ear have even been gay? Or bi-sexual? And trying to get his own revenge against the "breeders"? San Francisco was having riots during this period.

Consensual sadomasochism such as in BDSM clubs is NOT equivalent to sexual violence! Clubs like these tend to be very good about kicking out people who don't play by the rules, people who go to far, people who are actual rapists. Otherwise they fall apart because the word gets around that it is not safe.

Someone like EAR/ONS would NOT get off on BDSM "violence" in the same way as his rapes. He CLEARLY liked REAL TERROR and REAL PAIN.

Sorry, I know that is an old post, but it REALLY bothers me to have people conflate kinky consensual sex with sexual violence. "Safe, sane, consensual" is a widespread motto for a reason!

 

[mrcricket300]

[FONT=&amp]Is it not true then that the murderer fed the dog Christmas leftovers at the December 30th 1979 crime scene? Does anyone know? Where'd that come from? Did he maybe have a DIFFERENT dog? (Dog-walking is such a clever cover for being out in a neighborhood walking at night!)[/FONT]

It was during his first murder as ONS
http://www.thequesterfiles.com/murder_1___2_--_manning-offerm.html

I agree dog walking is a good way to remain unsuspicious. EAR sometimes also posed as a jogger.

 

[mrcricket300]

EAR was a sexual terrorist. His main goal was to terrify his victims, he didn't care about sex itself.

 

[dotr]

Regarding the dogs that did not attack EAR, could it be possible that they would not attack an intruder who had a strong scent of the owner when he entered the house?
I.e.if EAR collected the victim's scent in some way on one of his pre- break ins to the home before an attack,( maybe while the owner was out with the dog), could he then apply that scent before a break in when the owner is home?
Would a dog hesitate to attack somebody who smelled like its owner?
Speculation.

 

[dotr]

For a guy to beat a dog to death, especially if it was still early in his crime wave, EAR must have done that before, imo.
Maybe the humane society has records of people who committed dog brutality in the area and from that time period, if so, maybe that information might help pinpoint the culprit?
speculation, imo.

2001
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/DNA-Links-70s-East-Area-Rapist-to-Serial-2935342.php

"This guy is about as bad as you can get," said Frank Fitzpatrick, director of the Orange County crime lab, which analyzed the genetic profile on the serial killings. "The speculation is that he was either arrested (for a different crime) or died or moved out of state."

Retired Sacramento County sheriff's detective Richard Shelby, who investigated the East Area Rapist cases, said yesterday he thought the suspect was still alive and might have a family.
"He called one of the victims," Shelby said. "It was 1990 or 1991. She talked to him for a minute. She could hear kids in the background and a woman."
Shelby believes the East Area Rapist first struck in 1974 with a burglary in which he violently beat a dog to death. Two years later, a couple of sexual assaults in the Sacramento area convinced police a serial rapist was at work.

The behavioral profile that police had already assigned to the Orange County slayings suggested the killer chose victims in upper-middle-class to affluent communities, that he was a skilled burglar and that his previous sexual relationships involved bondage and sadism.

 

[macrauchenia]

I wondered if the woman's penis size comment was just her way of getting back at her attacker. Is that something a woman would acually be thinking about while she was being raped? I'd hate to see the guy released without a DNA test when a cop said, "Whosa! He can't be the guy."

Penis size discrepancy could very well be related to flaccidity level - the same attacker's (seemingly erect) penis seeming to be different sizes based on greater or lesser rigidity - because it's well established that EAR had erectile difficulties (which is actually not uncommon in rapes, especially stranger rapes).

EDIT:

I don't think any woman bold enough to go to the police would lie re: penis size in an attempt to insult her attacker. I think they would likely try to be as helpful and honest as they could about anything that might help lock this guy up so they'd be safe from him. I know I would!

And of course eyewitness descriptions are often all over the place anyway, not just for a particular weaponized body part that the victims were probably looking at as little as they possibly could.

When you have all these creepy little details in so many of the crimes, the ransacker and the EAR and the ONS are almost certainly the same guy.

(All IMO of course.)

The EAR scares the hell out of me, it's his MO that I have had in mind all my life when I go double-checking all the doors and windows late at night. I really hope he goes to prison before he dies.

 

[macrauchenia]

It was during his first murder as ONS
http://www.thequesterfiles.com/murder_1___2_--_manning-offerm.html

I agree dog walking is a good way to remain unsuspicious. EAR sometimes also posed as a jogger.

Thanks, I had posted that before I found the questerfiles site (very helpful in its detail I think).

 

[mrcricket300]

Regarding the dogs that did not attack EAR, could it be possible that they would not attack an intruder who had a strong scent of the owner when he entered the house?
I.e.if EAR collected the victim's scent in some way on one of his pre- break ins to the home before an attack,( maybe while the owner was out with the dog), could he then apply that scent before a break in when the owner is home?
Would a dog hesitate to attack somebody who smelled like its owner?
Speculation.

EAR sometimes broke in to the intended victims' homes while they were away, to study the layout of their house before raping them weeks or days later. Maybe he also familiarized himself with their dogs during these break-ins? maybe fed them food? There's also another theory that he used dog whistle .

 

[Twotays]

EAR must have had loads of free time judging by the amount of scouting and prowling he did, and he had access to multiple vehicles.

How old do you guys think he was? I always imagined him to be around 18-20 years old. He probably was a student, that kinda explains the free time.

LE in Visalia from what I have read and heard think he was young, maybe late teens 18-19 approx. I read in an article that many of the ransackings happened on nights where there was a high school sporting event. I believe in those days there were only 2 high schools, like most small towns high school sports was a popular event, even now with 5 high schools the stands are pretty full most weekends. In my opinion he was a local, some have speculated he was either stationed here for the military base or was a military brat. I think he was raised here and new this town and its habits like the back of his hand. I think he perfected his stalking and breaking in skills. After the Snelling murder he took his act on the road.

 

[macrauchenia]

"Who was the young blond man with the white German Shepherd? Many have promoted him as being EAR on the prowl because what appeared to be 3 toed German Shepherd footprints were found at Offerman’s. Were they coincidence? This same young man appears to be the one who had knocked on a door on Berkeley months before because someone had stabbed his nosey dog when it intruded into a house’s yard where the family was temporarily gone. [The dog lived but needed 70 stitches.] It sounds like EAR did the stabbing and was not the young man with the dog. Recall the Windsor Court incident in which the family saw someone in their home when they pulled up. When they entered they found their poodle beaten to death."

(From http://www.thequesterfiles.com/murder_8___9_--_cheri_domingo_.html )

I wish we knew specifically WHERE the dog's 3-toed prints were found. I'd always assumed they were found INSIDE the Offermans' house in or near the kitchen, but as far as I can find, they were OUTSIDE the house entirely, possibly not even related to the murders.

The possibility of EAR/ONS having such an unmistakable dog as a companion is fascinating, and seems like it'd be helpful evidence regarding identity, so I really want it to be true. But it could very well not be true at all, just another red herring (but one far less blatant than the others, and probably not even deliberate).

 

[mrcricket300]

"Who was the young blond man with the white German Shepherd? Many have promoted him as being EAR on the prowl because what appeared to be 3 toed German Shepherd footprints were found at Offerman’s. Were they coincidence? This same young man appears to be the one who had knocked on a door on Berkeley months before because someone had stabbed his nosey dog when it intruded into a house’s yard where the family was temporarily gone. [The dog lived but needed 70 stitches.] It sounds like EAR did the stabbing and was not the young man with the dog. Recall the Windsor Court incident in which the family saw someone in their home when they pulled up. When they entered they found their poodle beaten to death."

(From http://www.thequesterfiles.com/murder_8___9_--_cheri_domingo_.html )

I wish we knew specifically WHERE the dog's 3-toed prints were found. I'd always assumed they were found INSIDE the Offermans' house in or near the kitchen, but as far as I can find, they were OUTSIDE the house entirely, possibly not even related to the murders.

The possibility of EAR/ONS having such an unmistakable dog as a companion is fascinating, and seems like it'd be helpful evidence regarding identity, so I really want it to be true. But it could very well not be true at all, just another red herring (but one far less blatant than the others, and probably not even deliberate).

I read somewhere that EAR stole the dog from some old lady's house. I don't know if it's the truth or not. EAR was probably smart enough to know that owning a 3-toed dog would get him identified easily, so he likely did steal it from someone.

 

[Twotays]

By most accounts he was a young man. I find it disturbing how violent he was. If you believe the VR was EAR/ONS he went from ransacking homes to kidnap and murder, it's reported when he dropped the Snelling girl to face off with her father that he kicked the girl in the head while she lay on the ground. When the police staked out the area he was known to frequent he shot at a cop when confronted. Then of course moved away and started his serial rapes and murders. He resorted to violence so effortlessly. The fact that he has never been caught is astounding to me. When you think about all he did, the casing of the neighborhoods, entering potential victims homes ahead of the crime, calling victims after his crimes, attacking witnesses violently, roaming neighborhoods on foot and entering peoples yards when casing and fleeing, re-offending in the same area and in some cases the same neighborhood. He had to have an enormous amount of confidence, it probably increased every time he got away with something. I think that is one of the most troubling aspects to me, someone this bold and violent is still out there.