Carl remained still and obscured in the dark. He let the man snake his way to the front hedges. He clearly had no idea Carl was there. Achieving maximum shock effect meant choosing the precise moment to speak. Carl waited until the man had risen slightly and was peeking over the hedges into the window.
“What are you doing here?” Carl shouted.
The man recoiled in shock. He screamed something unintelligible and took off in a panicked, almost vaudevillian run. Glenda had described her prowler as chubby. He was on the heavy side, Carl confirmed, with sloping shoulders and big legs. He ran awkwardly and not particularly fast. The chase ended abruptly when the man cut to the left and ducked into a neighbor’s alcove that was screened on one side. Carl planted himself in front of the alcove, blocking the way. The man was trapped. Street lighting gave Carl a chance to observe his girlfriend’s prowler up close. He was about five ten, 180 to 190 pounds, with short, fat legs and stubby arms. His hair was blond, combed over and stringy. He had a button nose. The ears were short and fleshy, his eyes squinty. His lower lip pushed out a little bit. His face was round and expressionless.
“What were you doing looking in my girlfriend’s window?” Carl asked.
The man looked away.
“Well, Ben, it looks like the guy’s got us here!” he said loudly, excitedly, as if calling to an accomplice off to the side.
There was no one there.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” Carl asked.
Getting no answer, Carl moved closer.
“Leave me alone,” the man said. “Go away.”
His speech was slow and dull now, with a hint of an Okie accent.
Carl took another step forward. The man responded by sticking his hand in his pocket. He was wearing a brown cotton jacket with woven cuffs; it was a style that had been popular years earlier but had since gone out of fashion.
“Leave me alone,” he repeated flatly. “Go away.”
Carl noticed a bulge in the pocket where the man’s hand was. The detail took a split second to compute; when it did, Carl’s instincts ordered him to stand back. It was the strangest, most unsettling sense, glimpsing for a moment the dark circuitry at work behind the dull-eyed mask. The round-faced simpleton in unfashionable clothes with the flat voice of an Okie bumpkin was, as evidenced by the move for what was most certainly a concealed gun, someone else altogether. Carl stepped aside. He noticed when the man passed him that his face was pale and unusually smooth; Carl felt certain that he was at least twenty-five years old, but oddly for someone who had, as they might say in Visalia, “reached his majority,” it didn’t appear he could even shave.
Carl watched the man walk north up Sowell Street. He kept swiveling around every few seconds to make certain Carl wasn’t following him. Even then, with jittery body language of suspicion and fear, the man’s pale round face remained inert, smooth, and blank as an egg.
Even further back, in September of 1973, Fran Cleary* had a strange encounter in front of her West Kaweah Avenue home. As she was getting into her car, she heard a noise and looked up, spotting a man with light blond hair and a smooth round face emerging from her backyard. As he jogged into the street, he noticed Cleary and did an about-face, yelling out, “Catch you later, Sandy!” before jogging northbound onto a perpendicular road and disappearing from view. Fran told her fifteen-year-old daughter, Shari,* about the incident, and Shari revealed that she’d seen someone matching the same description peeping into her bedroom window a week earlier. The prowler would pester them for two months, visiting the residence one last time in October.
From 1973 through early 1976, numerous other teenaged and young adult women in the neighborhood had run-ins with a window peeper who fit the same description.
But once the composite sketch based on Bill McGowen’s run-in with the Ransacker was released to the local press in mid-December 1976, he never struck Visalia again.
* * *
AND YET THE RANSACKER INVESTIGATION BARRELED ON FULL TILT. For an unsolved serial case to advance, it needs to go back. Early reports are pored over, hindsight wielded like a magnifying glass. Victims and eyewitnesses are recontacted. Dulled memories sometimes sharpen. Occasionally an overlooked clue shakes loose. Someone will remember an incident that wasn’t necessarily officially reported. They’ll have a name but not a number. Calls are made.
Visalia detectives in contact with Sacramento authorities in 1977 noted at least a dozen similarities between the two offenders. Among them: Both offenders ransacked. Both stole trinkets and personalized jewelry while leaving items of greater value behind. Both employed a similar manner of approach, climbing astride their sleeping victims and placing a hand over their mouths. Both used household items to create a makeshift alarm system. Both used a similar breaking and entering method, using a pry tool to chip around a doorjamb and bypass the striker plate. Both hopped fences; both were about five nine; both removed purses from inside the residence and dumped the contents outside. It was a compelling list. Visalia investigators thought they were onto something.
Sacramento County Sheriff’s personnel compared the two series and saw insurmountable differences. For starters, six of nine m.o. factors didn’t match. The shoe impressions differed. The shoe sizes even differed. The EAR didn’t steal Blue Chip stamps. And the physical descriptions were fundamentally different. After all, descriptions of the Ransacker pointed to a highly distinctive appearance: an outsize baby with stubby limbs and fingers and a smooth, pale complexion. The EAR was described as anywhere from medium to slight in build, with one victim going so far as to call him “puny.” In the summer months, he appeared tanned. Even if the Ransacker had lost weight, it seemed unlikely he was a shape-shifter.
Visalia disagreed and went to the press. In July 1978, the Sacramento Union published an article in which the possibility of a link was promoted and the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department was criticized for its closed-mindedness. The following day, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department struck back in the press, denouncing the Union for irresponsible journalism and accusing the Visalia Police Department of publicity seeking and desperation.
The Sacramento city police department, however, remained open to the possibility of a connection. Richard Shelby occasionally mined the avenue too. The Sacramento Sheriff’s Department asked local utility companies for lists of employees who had transferred from the Visalia area between December 1975 and April 1976. They found two. Both were subsequently eliminated.
Forty years later, official opinion is still divided, though more amiably so. Ken Clark, Sacramento’s current lead investigator, believes the two series are the work of the same offender. The FBI agrees. Contra Costa’s lead investigator, Paul Holes, does not. An endomorph does not magically become an ectomorph, Holes is quick to observe.
Orange County, 1996
ROGER HARRINGTON DEVELOPED ONE BELIEF THAT HE MAINTAINED steadfastly, despite the uncomfortable implications. He was quoted in an October 1988 Orange Coast magazine story, eight years after the murder of his son and daughter-in-law, as saying he was sure the motive lay somewhere in Patty’s background, not Keith’s. They’d been married only a few months. Patty seemed unassailable, but how much did they really know about her past? One detail made him certain the couple must have known the killer: the bedspread. The killer had taken the time to pull the cover over their heads.