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Moments in Crime. We have very few moments in crime that give us a window into the soiled soul of the East Area Rapist. Those moments we have are his attacks. Sewn together the crimes turn him into a nightmarish predator from a horror film. But in like manner he becomes nothing but a walking effigy without any real character development.
The Night Predator followed such a routine, followed such a rigid script, that to recite a few of his attacks back-to-back is to give the same moment. To put them all together is merely to amplify the creep’s unflinching methodology and cowardly evil. We need more than this. We need more because EAR knew during these moments he was speaking to victims who were thus witnesses. They would tell the police all they knew and had experienced. These are not unguarded moments. All too often they are performances. We need the unguarded moments.
To backwork his stalking MO, as I laboriously did in 2012-2013, is to reveal the presumptuous calculating mind of a predator as he slithered in the underbelly of so many communities, narrowing in on his prey. But this is still largely an anodyne revelation. It reveals the logistics of his stalking game.
Details. We need details from the crime life of EAR-ONS that come at times when he wasn’t performing for his captive and terrified audience. Recently, the release of the Haskell Avenue Incident gave us some of these moments. But more recently we have been given a valuable chain of incidents, a linked chain of moments in crime, both in conversations and in The Air Force Couple, an excellent podcast by Mike Morford.
These are the details gleaned from the sheriff canvas of the neighborhood following the double murder of Brian and Katie Maggiore. These give us a vivid picture of EAR as he crawled through a  neighborhood rather than the commanding image we have of him fully developed and looming over his victims as a horror movie incarnation. We must go back now and link events together.
The strange cat burglar the Cordova Cat began around the area of Coloma Road in 1972. This icon, left, shows his original territory. In 1973 he expanded to the newer Cordova Meadows subdivision to the west (click on the icon to bring up the next map). In 1976 the strange East Area Rapist began in the same area as the Cordova Cat. In 1977 all evidence now suggests he expanded to Cordova Meadows as well.
It was late summer 1977. In the 2600 block of Sobrante (2 =numbers correspond to points on the 2 maps below) a young man in his 20s was living the ’70s lifestyle— he had two women in their 20s as roommates in his small house. Don’t be judgmental. Don’t think the worst. This was the Swingin’ 70s! They had been having problems with prowler activity. Then there started those strange hang-up phone calls. Someone was there on the other end. This wasn’t a one-time mistake on a caller’s part. They had received enough calls off and on over several weeks to know someone was on the other end. Then he’d hang up quietly. Weirdo.
(3) Right across from Sobrante is the main road of La Loma. A young couple moved into their house here in the 2700 block in the autumn of 1977. They too were reporting “significant prowler” activity. Then over the Christmastime they repeatedly found their doors and side gate open. They were certain someone had entered their home while they were away. Yet strangely nothing was missing. In late December 1977 they were finally robbed. It was very disturbing, to say the least, when they realized that some of the wife’s undergarments had been stolen. What kind of creep is this?
(4) Toro Court is just across the street, a little lagoon off La Loma. About this same time (late 1977) the 25 year old single female began to experience heavy prowler activity. Her gate was constantly found open. Then she found shoe prints in the dirt outside her bedroom window. That did it. She secured the gate so it couldn’t be opened. Nevertheless, whoever was prowling her yard was intent  on getting in. He even damaged the gate just to get in, so it couldn’t be secured again. On the window of her bedroom, above where she found the shoe prints, she found he had drawn pictures using “bodily fluids.” Bloody wanker.
(5) Over behind Toro Court on Sobrante again. A married couple in their early 20s had reported a burglary in October 1977. Now they reported they had seen an “unusual” man in their backyard.
(6) The main cross street is Capitales. Now in mid January 1978 a young woman living alone in the 2600 block started experiencing heavy prowler activity. She continued to get many hang-up phone calls. She was sure someone was on the other end.
(7) Also on the 2600 block of Capitales a young married couple in their early 20s started receiving hang-up phone calls in the last week of January 1978.
(8) A few days later a young woman residing in the apartments on La Verta Court started getting hang-up phone calls at 8 p.m. every night.
Click on the photo to see the text relating to the first 8 incidents.
(9) A few days later a single woman in her 30s on El Chorlito realized her house had been entered while she was away. But it seemed nothing had been taken. It was very unnerving because she had left when it was dark already and, of course, returned home later that night.
(10) At the 10100 block of La Gloria it was the same story. Starting in the last few days of January 1978, a woman and her two daughters had been receiving hang-up phone calls at 8 p.m. each night. This night, February 2, 1978, they’d had a week of them. Right on schedule they received another at 8 p.m. They were getting tired of this.
(11) On the night of February 2, 1978, a woman living alone in the 2500 block of Capitales suffered an attempted burglary. Someone had tried to get in her backyard glass slider but she had a secondary security device on it. Prior to this she’d had a lot of prowler activity, just like the others on Capitales in the 2600 block.
(12) About 8:45 p.m. or so Brian and Katie Maggiore were on the north sidewalk of La Alegria, the street just north of Capitales. They were walking their poodle Thumper. They were almost at West La Loma ready to turn right (north) and head to La Gloria.
A jogger runs past on West La Loma heading south. For a moment he saw a man standing in the shadows by the corner house on the south side of La Alegria and West La Loma (13). He had brown curly hair, a brown jacket, and was about 5’10.” He paid little attention as he jogged past.
Katie and Brian continued north on West La Loma and then turned right on La Gloria. It meets  up with La Alegria again. They were on their way back to their La Verta Court apartment.
At 9 p.m. or thereabouts there was some confrontation between them and a man. This occurred at the 10100 block of La Gloria right across the street from the house (10) where the three females had received a hang-up call at 8 p.m. that night. The end result is that Brian and Katie ended up in the backyard of the house across the street, then into the backyard of the house behind it on La Alegria because the fence was down from storm damage. They were both shot down. Brian was first. Then as Katie ran down the side of the house to the side gate, so she could escape onto La Alegia (this house’s front was on La Alegria), the villain shot her in the head, jumped over her and onto the house’s driveway. Here he was seen by young Karl Nollsch, a neighbor who had heard the shots and had come out on his driveway a couple of doors down La Alegria. He saw a masked man in a brown jacket. When the masked man saw Nollsch, he turned and ran the other direction (east).
These are the circumstances preceding the Maggiore Double Murder. Hereafter from this night forward no resident reported any more hang-up phone calls, prowling, or home invasions. The last hang-up phone call had been to the residence at 10100 block La Gloria right across the street from where Brian and Katie had fled.
The reader can appreciate why Sacramento Sheriff Department detectives came to believe that EAR was the perpetrator. Hang-up phone calls and prowling are events highly suggestive of the East Area Rapist’s method of sizing up a community and then individual victim preparatory to striking.  Everything says it is “our man.”
However, nothing says he intended murder. In fact, a sequence of events can be put in place to show he was merely prowling. He must have tried to enter the house along 2500 Capitales earlier and failed. His next prowl spot was probably (10), the house on La Gloria. The easiest way there was to walk up West La Loma. It seems highly likely that he was the man in the brown jacket standing in the shadow of the overhead tree by the bushes. Like the jogger, he too heard Thumper’s chain jangle. He waited. After the couple walked north and faded into the night he walked down La Alegria to the other side where La Gloria merges into La Alegria. A few houses up and there is the house he is interested in. . . .
. . . .Somehow the confrontation takes place here. Somehow Katie, Brian and he came face to face in some manner that required he kill them, and that he make sure he had killed them. They had to die.
Critical Clue discusses the Maggiore Double Murders in more detail. The purpose of this article is to put together a view of EAR in between his strikes when he is not the master performer, but rather when he is the slithering prowler avoiding the light of normal contact with life. The events tell us much. The image we are given here is disturbing but enlightening. The prowling and other events do not convey the evil menace that towered over his captive victims, but the arrogant and strange pervert devoting an excessive amount of time to peeping and snooping. This is a loner, a bloody wanker who must have have had a lot of time on his hands. I cannot imagine this guy had a girlfriend or lived with anybody. He doesn’t seem the calculated, evil villain. Rather he seems the twisted and somewhat genuinely demented malcontent, the arrogant freak incapable of any real committed, industrious life.
From a logistical point of view, the chronology above tells us how long he used hang-up phone calls in advance. They may also have had more than one purpose based on his intent for the night’s prowl. An unanswered phone told him who wasn’t at home— a good time to enter the house. For those who picked up, it told him this was a good time to watch them from afar to see if they are worth pursuing. The La Gloria residence had picked up, and it seems he went that way after his failed attempt to gain entrance on Capitales.
Most interesting of all, the last call at 8 p.m. tells us he was close by. The murders took place a little after 9 p.m. His last hang-up call was at 8 p.m. Within that hour he had already gotten to the neighborhood and tried to jimmy his way into a house on Capitales, failed, walked around to West La Loma, possibly was the man in the shadows on West La Loma, and then walked to the area of La Gloria. In order to have done all this within an hour after the 8 p.m. hang-up phone call he hadn’t come from afar.
I don’t understand the jogger’s curly brown hair report for this West La Loma lurker, but it could be he had already worn the ski mask before when trying to pry the door on Capitales and had taken it off since then and this disheveled his hair. Everybody who was out there that night, including the jogger, was identified. Everybody, that is, except this lurker in the brown jacket.
 
Is either image above a good image of this crawling night prowler? The sketch left is considered the best of the Maggiore Double Murder suspect. But it came from an eyewitness who came forward a month or so later. It’s hard to imagine he had such neat hair after ripping off his ski mask. The identikit at right is of a “suspicious” man seen in relation to Attack No. 22. in May 1977. There is, of course, a general similarity between the sketch and the identikit. The fuller hair could be mistaken for curly after a ski mask had been removed.
There is one curious thing here about which we might as well speculate. It is the fact that EAR was absent all summer 1977. The theory now is that he had injured his shoulder after the above referenced Attack No. 22 (May 28, 1977) and was the suspicious man who had applied for help at American River Hospital two days later (May 30, 1977), fearing he had broken his shoulder. With an injured shoulder, EAR was without his rare gifted ability to gymnastically vault over fences. In fact, our last clear view of him doing such maneuvers is with Victim 20 (May 14, 1977) and the Haskell Avenue Incident (May 16, 1977), both before the possible shoulder injury on May 28, 1977.
While laid up and recuperating, he may nevertheless have kept up his hang-up phone calls. The trio on Sobrante were receiving them regularly in the summer of 1977. Rather than vault over the side gate of the Toro Court residence, he repeatedly forces the gate open, even damaging it. EAR seems very shy now to vault and jump fences.
It would seem logical to speculate that this frustrated perv, limited in his activities due to an injured shoulder, remained close to his lair. While he healed during the summer he began to prowl close by and make the necessary hang-up phone calls as he refined his targets. Yet he is incapable of striking.
Healed, he strikes Stockton in September 1977 and continues to refine Cordova Meadows in the autumn while he strikes a few other victims outside of his usual comfort zones. All of EAR’s strikes in the autumn and winter of 1977 reflect his desire for new comfort zones. His last strike before the February 2, 1978, murder fiasco is on College View Way on January 28, 1978. Coincidentally his prowling storm intensifies here in Cordova Meadows afterward, as if this is the next target area. And this area, of course, is a new zone for him, in keeping with his post summer 1977 pattern.
It all seems to fit. And altogether we see the blank space in EAR’s crime spree. We see a lone, frustrated pervert, obsessively dedicated to his prowling and sizing up of victims.
After the murderous fiasco here, EAR never returns to Cordova Meadows. He hits as far away as is feasible. His next victim is in Stockton again. After this he hits other cities— Modesto and Davis.
Although they are disputed strikes, EAR seems to strike only two more times in the Sacramento area, and it is curious that they are both in Rancho Cordova. This is curious because the tragic events of February 2, 1978, indicate the EAR had a lair in Rancho Cordova.
EAR beats a strange retreat.
The Google aerial above highlight’s EAR strange retreat. He first intended to flee west, but Karl Nollsch takes him by surprise and he turns around. Yet he still doubles back and heads west on Capitales. Then he heads north on West La Loma, passing La Alegria, then La Gloria, then he turns right on Las Casas and doubles back again east. He follows Las Casas to its extremity in the north, where it dead ends in a deeper part of Rancho Cordova. This is a block over from where he had taken  Victim 8’s car and ditched it after his aborted attack on her in 1976. The only way out up here is to jump fences and get on the canal. Then 3 other communities of Rancho are open before you; two if you cross the canal and one if you follow it to the west. This last one takes you back to the northern arch of La Loma.
From the above tracing of the killer’s retreat, we must deduce that EAR came by foot to begin with. Since he made it to the area rather quickly after making his last hang-up call of the evening (at 8 p.m.), he must have been close indeed. But from where? Had he just come down La Loma from the neighborhoods by the levee? He wouldn’t want to be seen walking straight back  to his lair. The closest red herring direction is Las Casas and then jump fences.
I did not wish this article to address the fact that Katie Maggiore had a stalker. This page is not for in depth theorizing on the motives for the double murder, but if EAR was the stalker then we do have a few glimpses of him during his moments in between crime. We should introduce some of Katie’s encounters here.
By the time of their murders, Katie Maggiore had quit her job at the Regal gas station at 8651 Folsom Blvd, just south of La Riviera. The reason: she had a stalker. This is not a word flippantly used. She was scared enough that she reported him to the authorities. A man (age unknown) would park across busy Folsom Blvd and watch her. Sometimes this would go on for a couple of hours. He drove a blue VW. During this time (though not when the VW was across the street), both she and a female coworker were getting calls at work. The caller was a male. He only said: “Your turn is coming” and then hung up. Naturally, this type of call only made that weirdo sitting outside look more disturbing. Finally, one day after this guy had sat out there for a couple of hours in his blue VW, Katie got up, went out and started walking across the busy thoroughfare. He started his beetle and pulled out before she could get too close. Later, he returned. Two weeks after this she quit her job. A couple of the other workers at the gas station also received calls from a male telling them about the rapes to young women at other gas stations; then asking them what they knew about this. This was definitely considered bizarre, but the full force of these events didn’t hit anybody until after her murder.
Did the stalker kill her?
After EAR became established as the most probable murder suspect, a few theories have been proposed. One is that he was the stalker (he was associated with VWs), but that the murder was not intended. It was merely incidental that they encountered each other that night. Katie may have told Brian that this is the weirdo she saw watching her at work. Brian, with the Air Force security police, may have thought that he was there to stalk her. He confronts him.
It seems hard to believe that EAR would kill him based on confrontation alone, but Brian may have demanded to I.D. him, telling him he was with Air Force police. This then would become dangerous. Perhaps he just went into a rage because he was challenged. The Haskell Avenue Incident proves he could do that.
Another theory is that the couple came across their killer while he was peeping or lurking outside the 10100 block residence that had been receiving the hang-up phone calls. Still, EAR could simply flee and return another night. Here is where it may come into play that Katie had recognized him and he was her weird stalker.
There seems no reason for them to have died unless one could I.D. him somehow. Yet Katie really didn’t have his license plate and didn’t know his name. Perhaps it was just his demented rage.
There is no need to go into the theories in detail here. There are others. But the fact that the perp out there that night needed to kill them, and that all the clues and evidence put together declare this perp to have been EAR, one has to wonder if he was not the stalker in the blue VW. EAR was associated with a VW more than any other car.
The East Area Rapist did not know his victims and they did not know him. Not in any real sense of the word. If a few pretty women had attracted his attention incidentally he may indeed have followed them to within a distance of their home, intending to prowl later. But, of course, this is not knowing them. Knowing a victim means there is some link that a detective can uncover if they look into the past of the victim, a link that leads to the perp. Seeing someone from a far and being attracted to them is not providing a traceable link.
It is this last kind of link that EAR may have had with a few victims. He may have prowled their neighborhood merely to get at them or he may simply have stalked them for a while dreaming of intent, like the nut in the blue VW did Katie. Consider what the single 25 year old female in Toro Court must have meant to him?
With or without the Katie Maggiore stalker episode added we get a good glimpse of the East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker behind the scenes. He was a slithering, demented, self indulgent and arrogant predator.
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