I'll Be Gone in the Dark(59)
The EAR’s first attack in the East Bay took place in Concord and is just a 10-minute drive from my hotel. Holes and I dispense with small talk and dive right into discussing the case. The most obvious first question is, what brought him here? Why did he stop attacking in Sacramento and, in October 1978, embark on a nearly yearlong spree in the East Bay? I know the most common theory. Holes does too. He doesn’t buy it.
“I don’t think he got scared out of Sacramento,” he says.
Proponents of the “scared away” theory point to the fact that on April 16, 1978, two days after the EAR attacked a fifteen-year-old babysitter in Sacramento, police released enhanced composite sketches of two possible suspects in the Maggiore homicide—an unsolved case in which a young couple was mysteriously gunned down while out walking their dog. After the sketches were released, the EAR stopped attacking in Sacramento; only one more rape in Sacramento County would be attributed to him, and it
wasn’t until a year later. One of the Maggiore sketches, the thinking goes, must have been uncomfortably accurate.
Holes is unconvinced. He has studied and is well versed in geographic profiling, a type of analytic crime mapping that tries to determine the most likely area of offender residence. In the late seventies, cops might stand around a map with pins stuck in it and idly speculate. Today, geographic profiling is its own specialty, with algorithms and software. In predatory crimes there is usually a “buffer zone” around a criminal’s residence; targets within the zone are less desirable because of the perceived level of risk associated with operating too close to home. In serial crimes, geographic profilers analyze attack locations in an attempt to home in on the buffer zone, the ring around the bull’s-eye where the criminal lives, because offenders, like everyone, move in predictable and routine ways.
“I’ve read a lot of studies about how serial offenders do their victim selection,” Holes says. “It’s during their normal course of living. Say you’re a serial burglar and you drive to work like a normal person every day. You’ve got an anchor point at home and an anchor point at work. But they’re paying attention. They’re sitting like we are here”—Holes gestures at the intersection we’ve stopped at—“and they’re noticing, you know, that might be a good apartment complex over there.”
The geographic distribution of attacks in Sacramento follows a completely different pattern than in the East Bay, Holes says, and that’s significant.
“In Sacramento, he’s crisscrossing but he’s staying within that northeast, east suburban area. Geographic profilers call him a ‘marauder.’ He’s branching out at an anchor point. But once he moves down here, he’s becoming a commuter. It’s obvious he’s traveling up and down the 680 corridor.”
Interstate 680 is a seventy-mile north-south highway that cuts through central Contra Costa County. Most of the EAR’s attacks
in the East Bay occurred close to I-680, half of them a mile or less from an exit. On a professionally prepared geo-profile map, I saw the East Bay cases represented by a series of small red circles, almost all just right, or east, of 680, red drops cleaving to a yellow vein.
“You’ll get a feel for it as we drive up and down 680,” says Holes. “I think he’s branching out because he’s got a change in life circumstances. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s still living in Sacramento but now commuting for work and taking advantage of being out of his jurisdiction and attacking.”
At the word “work” I perk up. I’ve sensed from our recent e-mail correspondence that Holes is onto something regarding the EAR’s possible line of work, but he remains oblique about the specifics. Even now, he waves me off, anticipating my question.
“We’ll get to that.”
Holes didn’t grow up here. He was just a kid in 1978. But he’s worked for the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office for twenty-three years and has visited the crime scenes countless times. He’s also dug into what the area looked like back then. He’s pulled permits. Studied aerial photographs. Talked to locals. He possesses a mental map of the area circa October 1978, which he overlays over the current one as we drive. He slows and points to a cul-de-sac. The homes are located just behind the house where the EAR’s first attack in Concord took place.
“These weren’t here then,” says Holes. “It was a vacant field.”
We pull up and park at a corner house in a quiet residential neighborhood. A photo attached to the first East Bay file shows an attractive couple with their one-year-old daughter; the little girl wears a polka-dotted birthday hat and a summer dress, and the parents each have a hand on a ball they’re holding up in front of her, presumably one of her gifts. The baby is smiling at the photographer, the parents at the camera. A month and a half after the photo was taken, on October 7, 1978, the husband was awakened
by something touching his feet. He opened his eyes, startled to see a figure in a dark ski mask looming over him.
“I just want money and food, that’s all. I’ll kill you if you don’t do what I say.” The intruder held a flashlight in his left hand and a revolver in his right.
Holes points to the dining room window where thirty-five years ago the EAR slithered in and made his way to the foot of the couple’s bed. The little girl wasn’t bothered and slept through the ordeal.