PAUL HOLES: Yes, so, he went and he came up this way, and looped around from the victim’s house, and these shoe prints were in the victim’s backyard.
MICHELLE: This is an interesting development. I really don’t think I’ve ever been inside something like this.
PAUL HOLES: It’s unique. Village Homes was world-famous. François Mitterrand flew in in a helicopter to visit this area because of how novel it was. Students from all over, and developers, were coming here to take a look at it. And so that’s where you can see, you know, “Village Homes in Davis. We’re doing a development; let’s see what they’re doing and what we can incorporate into our thing.” It was featured . . . on the cover of Sunset magazine. Betty Ford rode her bike around here. I drove my wife through here, and she goes, “I’d never live here.”
MICHELLE: It is a little claustrophobic.
PAUL HOLES: It’s claustrophobic, and it’s a predator’s paradise. You can’t see anything. I mean, he can come in, he can attack, and he can leave, and nobody would ever know.
PAUL HOLES: The third victim—and I’ll take you by that after this—was in the neighborhood that’s right over there. So, the three Davis attacks are pretty close together.
MICHELLE: Yeah, they are.
PAUL HOLES: One of the interesting things is that this victim and the third Davis victim carpooled together. Their kids were at the same nursery school. And that’s the only known connection between victims that I’m aware of. But that’s never really been explored.
MICHELLE: Right.
PAUL HOLES: Nobody’s gone back to these victims to talk to them. Could the EAR have seen them together in a carpool and that’s why he chose them, or was it just coincidence because he attacked so close together?
MICHELLE: Right. Did each know that the other was a victim? You don’t even know that?
PAUL HOLES: I don’t even know that, no.
PAUL HOLES: So, EAR came out here . . . and now he’s tracking along on this side. And they kind of dismissed some of this at first; the initial officer that Corbett called out, Corbett tells him, “Hey, I’ve tracked these shoe prints,” and the officer goes, “Well, this is a common jogging path, and it’s so far away, I can’t see the offender ever parking his vehicle down here and then getting up here to attack.” Well, the shoe prints end up going down, following the path on this olive grove, down that way.
PAUL HOLES: So, here’s the other side of this olive grove.
MICHELLE: Okay. So, he might have been parked like on a shoulder right here?
PAUL HOLES: Nope. ’Cause the shoe prints continued.
MICHELLE: Oh my gosh. Isn’t that a little risky that he’d be seen?
PAUL HOLES: Late at night? This is pitch-black!
MICHELLE: Okay. And he’s probably wearing dark clothing.
PAUL HOLES: I mean, what does he do all the time? And he’s in neighborhoods, with houses. Walking around. That’s probably riskier than this.
MICHELLE: Yeah, I guess that’s true.
Holes drives deeper into UC-Davis property, with various research buildings spread out to the right and agricultural fields to the left.
PAUL HOLES: So, he tracks the shoe prints . . . all the way down to here. I can’t get through here. This is what’s called Bee Biology. They do a lot of bee studies here.
MICHELLE: Oh, uh huh.
PAUL HOLES: When I initially read this case file, I couldn’t make it out. I thought it was Boo Biology. And I’m thinking it’s on campus way over there, and I’m going, “This is nothing.” But when you look at where he says he lost track, the shoe prints ended up veering down to the left. What’s down here? Well . . . look here. It’s the airport!
MICHELLE: Oh!
PAUL HOLES: So, I’m now calling airports saying, “What kind of records do you have?”
They both laugh.
PAUL HOLES: My naive thought about flying is, you know . . . every time you flew a plane, you had to file a flight plan; you fly into an airport, they know you’re there, and everything else. But they told me, “No, no. Anybody can come and go here. We have no idea they’re here. If they come in after hours, they tie their plane down. They go do their thing, they come back, we’ll never know they’re here.”
MICHELLE: Is that right?! That is strange.
PAUL HOLES: So, here we’ve got this case, twenty-two hours after the case in Modesto occurred. The case in Modesto has the strange man being picked up at an airport, being dropped off, near new construction, seemingly heading toward the victim’s home.
MICHELLE: But why was that man so strange?
PAUL HOLES: The cab driver said he just had a single bag. And he just says, “Take me to Sylvan and Meadow.” And then, “Drop me off right here.” He gets out and just wanders to where the cab driver says there’s nothing there but houses being built. And then the next case . . . we have an airport connection.
MICHELLE: I’m trying to think of what kind of person would have a plane like that. Like, a small plane?
PAUL HOLES: Well, a small plane opens up possibilities. You know, these developers typically had your multiseat corporate jets. If you’re talking about somebody with a small plane, somebody who’s not a millionaire, you know, or somebody with huge resources, having a . . .
MICHELLE: Yeah.
PAUL HOLES: So, if you’re talking to these developers, and saying, well, “Would you fly? If you have developments across the state, would you fly there?” They answer, “Yeah, we would fly there. Flying an airplane is very expensive, but it was sort of an ego thing. So, we would want to be perceived as successful, because we have our own jet that we’re flying in. And yeah, occasionally we would go and check on our kingdoms that are being built.”
MICHELLE: Right. Hmm. Were there any other little clues from any of the cases that tied into a plane? Like, any kind of . . . didn’t he have, like, a navigator’s something?
PAUL HOLES: No, not that I can think of.
Holes is trying to locate the home of the third Davis victim. This attack, number thirty-seven, occurred on July 6, 1978, at 2:40 in the morning. The victim was a thirty-three-year-old woman—recently separated and in the bed alone—whose sons were sleeping in another room. The EAR used them as leverage, threatening to kill them if she didn’t do what he said. After raping and sodomizing the victim, he sobbed. A three-month hiatus would then follow, after which he resurfaced in the East Bay area.
PAUL HOLES: It was a corner house. I want to say it was the end. I don’t think these houses were here at the time. And there are no houses behind. And then you had the construction going on at the school. So, the attack occurred here. There was lots of construction going on in this area. . . . Here it is. So . . . this victim carpooled with the previous Davis victim.
MICHELLE: Wow. A lot of these scenes are a lot closer to each other than I thought they were. I mean, some aren’t, but . . . some, it’s interesting.
PAUL HOLES: Right. Well, neighborhoods. He got familiar with the neighborhoods. Danville is tightly clustered. Concord. Walnut Creek.
MICHELLE: Certainly, I mean, Rancho Cordova . . . weren’t some right next to each other?
PAUL HOLES: Yeah. Not quite right next to each other, but right around the block. You know, the house between.