PAT: Hey, it's Pat. Just wanted to call
and congratulate you. That is such awesome news.
WOMAN: In '77, the East Area Rapist began attacking couples.
The sex was not his thing. The terror was the thing.
I felt shamed. Did I wear something?
It was a time where somehow it always came back to being
the woman's fault.
MAN: Michelle would have very vivid dreams.
WOMAN: "There's a scream..." (READS PROMPT)
MAN: When I would wake her up, she'd be still half in the dream.
WOMAN: We don't know who may be, like,
slinking by us covered in blood.
It was a hard pill to swallow that he got away
with these things.
MAN 2: The guy's getting more and more brutal as he goes.
He wants to kill and he is going to kill.
(RADIO STATIC)
DETECTIVE: Test, test, test, test, test.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(TAPE CLICKS)
WOMAN: Hello?
Hello?
(HEAVY BREATHING)
EAST AREA RAPIST:
Gonna kill you...
(WOMAN SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY)
EAST AREA RAPIST: Gonna kill you...
Bitch.
(WOMAN SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY)
-EAST AREA RAPIST: Bitch-- -(TAPE REWINDS)
-(WOMAN SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY) -EAST AREA RAPIST: Bitch--
-(TAPE REWINDS) -Bitch--
(WOMAN SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY)
MICHELLE MCNAMARA: He was a lunatic.
EAST AREA RAPIST: Bitch.
MICHELLE: Unseen. So doubly feared.
WOMAN: Hello?
MICHELLE: The danger of taking a wrong turn in the catacombs
-always looms in this case. -(TAPE REWINDS)
EAST AREA RAPIST: Fucking whore.
MICHELLE: I turned to the retired detectives.
I lamented that I felt I was grasping at straws.
"My advice?" one said.
"Grasp a straw,
work it to dust."
♪ ("AVALANCHE" BY AIMEE MANN PLAYING) ♪
♪ Well, I stepped Into an avalanche ♪
♪ It covered up my soul ♪
♪ When I am not this hunchback That you see ♪
♪ I sleep beneath The golden hill ♪
♪ You who wish to conquer pain ♪
♪ You must learn Learn to serve me well ♪
♪ (MUSIC STOPS) ♪
It definitely goes down as one of the biggest mysteries.
That's for sure.
Just everything about it is a mystery. Um...
And it has such a boogeyman aspect to it, you know.
He does feel like a ghost sometimes.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MICHELLE: By 1979, the East Area Rapist
appeared to have stopped.
It's quite possible the East Area Rapist
takes a summer vacation just like you do.
Let's hope he forgets to come home again.
Our task force was-- was shut down.
And we were told that, uh, now he's gone.
He's no longer our problem.
MICHELLE: Crompton's bosses nearly danced with relief.
But in reality, the East Area Rapist
had only moved 400 miles south,
where he would become known as the Original Night Stalker.
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MICHELLE: Goleta is a bedroom community
outside of Santa Barbara.
Despite its safe reputation,
few people would brave San Jose Creek
alone at night.
PAUL HAYNES: Uh, Michelle and I, it was in, uh, 2013.
We drove out here to Santa Barbara.
And, uh, we visited each of the scenes
associated with the killer's, uh, activity in this area.
(MICHELLE READS)
We definitely spent time under this bridge
and probably passed through this area multiple times.
His footprints were seen throughout this neighborhood.
He-- he had a unique pattern.
So, there was evidence of him roaming
in that whole vicinity.
(LEAVES RUSTLING)
MICHELLE: Investigators felt like they knew the night
that changed him.
October 1st, 1979.
That was the night a Goleta couple
on Queen Ann Lane awakened to a blinding flashlight
and a young man's clenched-teeth whisper.
The woman was ordered to tie up her boyfriend.
Then the intruder tied her.
He led the woman into the living room
and made her lie face-down on the floor,
throwing a pair of tennis shorts over her head as a blindfold.
They heard him enter their kitchen
chanting to himself, (WHISPERING) "I'll kill you.
I'll kill you. I'll kill you."
A surge of adrenaline
allowed the woman to escape her bindings
and flee out the front door screaming.
MICHELLE: (CHUCKLES) Right. Yeah.
The couple's next-door neighbor was an FBI agent.
Alerted by the woman's scream, he came outside just in time
to see a man furiously pedal past
on a stolen silver Nishiki 10-speed.
STAN LOS: I saw him come out of the driveway,
and he went this way.
MICHELLE: So you just said, what, "Stop," or something like that?
-STAN: I yelled at him, yeah. -MICHELLE: Yeah.
STAN: I got in my car. He was in front of me.
I could see the reflector on the bicycle.
-MICHELLE: Mm-hmm. -STAN: Just gaining on him real quick.
MICHELLE: Yeah.
STAN: And he came a couple hundred yards
and he dumped the bike on the sidewalk
and he climbed over a fence.
MICHELLE: Uh-huh.
Stan Los would later catch shit from local cops
about why he didn't shoot the guy.
STAN: "Why didn't you shoot him?"
MICHELLE: Oh, well...
STAN: See, but all I had at that point was a lone scream...
MICHELLE: And a kid on a bike.
-STAN: ...and a kid on a bike. Or a person on a bike. -MICHELLE: Yeah. Yeah.
MICHELLE: He couldn't have predicted that the next time
he'd emerge a few blocks over...
he'd be a full-blown killer.
MICHELLE: They're lucky.
-When you think about it, I mean, no one... -STAN: They are.
MICHELLE: After that, no one, uh, no one survived.
This is a classic East Area Rapist-style attack.
They don't recognize that it's the same guy
that's been attacking up in-- up in Northern California,
you know, so they have this standalone case.
MICHELLE: So much wasn't considered relevant then.
But rewinding is important.
HAYNES: Among the ways in which the East Area Rapist
victimized those whom he targeted was stealing items
that were personal and irreplaceable,
items like wedding rings,
jewelry that appeared to be inherited.
Michelle felt that if she could find,
somewhere in the wild, one of those items,
that could be the thread that leads her
to the East Area Rapist.
MICHELLE: I came across sort of very similar cufflinks
with the same initials that looked the same.
And I bought them, and at that point, I knew
I needed to give it to an actual detective,
you know, to see if we could find out where these came from.
LARRY POOL: Are you recording at this point?
MICHELLE: Um, I just wanted to make sure I was. Yes.
POOL: Any ideas that you have,
I'm completely open to them.
-MICHELLE: Okay. -POOL: So...
MICHELLE: I had an interview set up with Larry Pool,
the Orange County investigator
who has led the cold case task force since the mid '90s.
Every investigator I know that's been given
the opportunity to examine this case feels that
it's the case that they want solved before they die.
MICHELLE: I take a chance at the end of our conversation
and reach into my bag for the cufflinks.
Well, I have to tell you, I-- We're just--
I have insomnia sometimes.
Sometimes at 3:00 in the morning,
I would just start googling and look for things.
-POOL: Me too. -MICHELLE: Um... (CHUCKLES)
So, you know, 50 times, nothing happened.
Then, lo and behold, I found some cufflinks.
So, it's slightly unusual.
'Cause you never know.
POOL: I will, uh...
MICHELLE: No, you can have them.
-POOL: I can. -MICHELLE: Yeah, yeah. Yes.
-POOL: -(MICHELLE LAUGHS)
MICHELLE: I didn't know if I was gonna make you mad that I did that.
POOL: Not at all.
-(POOL LAUGHS) -MICHELLE: (LAUGHS) Oh, good. I'm glad.
He was overjoyed because he's been s-- You know,
searching for kind of out-of-the-box ways
to solve this case anyway, and hadn't thought to do this.
He tracked down the victims for, on a weekend,
they thought they were the cufflinks.
And so, we were incredibly excited.
Turned out that they're not the actual cufflinks.
Um, so-- so that kind of trail ended.
But it kind of opened up this-- it definitely opened up
a relationship with these detectives in which I would...
The first time I heard about this woman
named Michelle McNamara.
Larry Pool brought her name up.
And, uh, he said there was this true-crime writer slash blogger
who's interested in doing an article
for Los Angeles Magazine on this case.
At this point in time, I'd been involved
in the East Area Rapist case for two decades.
But the public just was unaware of it.
The hope is-- is that maybe by having greater
public attention, the right person
will come forward and give the right tip.
Michelle called me shortly after that.
MICHELLE: Do you have any source material
that you could give me?
PAUL HOLES: And I'm being very standoffish.
You know, I have had things that I've said
taken out of context put in the press.
So, I was giving very vague answers.
And then she would follow up and say, "Oh, no, hold on.
Isn't this true?"
And she'd bring up a fact about the case.
And I was going, "Hmm, she knows, she knows her stuff."
I started telling her things about my investigation
off the record.
Three months after the very first attack
down in Goleta, Santa Barbara, there's a double homicide
right next to the San Jose Creek.
MICHELLE: Right.
HOLES: The Horinek-Himmel attack is October of '79,
and then Offerman-Manning attack is at the end of December '79.
And they are within a few blocks of each other.
MICHELLE: On the morning of December 30th, 1979,
Santa Barbara County sheriff's deputies
responded to a call at the condo
of osteopathic surgeon Dr. Robert Offerman
and his new girlfriend, psychologist Debra Manning.
Their good friends had arrived for a tennis game
and found a sliding glass door open.
HOLES: Our offender goes in.
He gets both Offerman and Manning bound face-down
in the bed. And then he leaves,
like he typically would do, to get the dishes
or whatever else.
MICHELLE: Something he did with the rapes was-- was like he tied you up,
and then he would go and eat in your kitchen.
At the Offerman condo, it was right near Christmas,
and he had taken out the turkey and eaten it.
HOLES: He goes back in to check on the victims,
and Dr. Offerman has slipped his bindings
and gets up and charges him.
(GUNSHOTS)
HOLES: The offender shoots Offerman,
then goes and shoots Dr. Manning
in the back of her head, and then runs off.
Because this case went sideways, he never got a chance
to sexually assault Debra Manning.
MICHELLE: Do you know what kind of haunts me is,
do you know what book was on Offerman's night table?
Offerman was reading something like, How to Be Assertive.
HOLES: Oh, really?
MICHELLE: Yeah. It was just kind of like, oy.
LARRY CROMPTON: I had, uh, heard of the murders
in Southern California.
So, I call Santa Barbara.
I said, "I think the Original Night Stalker
is the East Area Rapist."
And they said, "Don't know what you're talking about.
We don't have anything like that down here."
And then, uh, in February, I was sent down to San Diego
to take a class.
And there happened to be a Santa Barbara deputy
in the class. And I got talking to him.
And he said, "Yeah, yeah, we had the, uh,
the double homicide."
"A matter of fact," he said,
"they had an attempted rape before that."
And I said, "What?"
So, I got those reports, and the tie-ups.
And, uh, the ski mask.
It all was there.
I know that it's the same person.
MALE REPORTER: According to sheriff spokesman Bill Miller,
the department sent an investigator
to Santa Barbara last week
to look into the December shootings
of a physician and his psychologist girlfriend.
MALE INTERVIEWEE: Two people were murdered.
Uh, but what they have there is just the evidence
at the scene which, uh, is a strong indication
it could be the same man.
MALE REPORTER: However, when I talked to Sergeant William Baker
of the Santa Barbara Sheriff's department,
I got a very different view.
SERGEANT WILLIAM BAKER:
MICHELLE: Until we put a face on a killer who remains
a question mark,
he will continue to hold sway over us.
I wonder at times if I need to step back.
"He can't hurt me," I say,
not realizing that in every minute spent hunting him
and not cuddling my daughter, he already has.
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Hey, I'm Nancy.
NANCY MILLER: Michelle ultimately came up with
the name "Golden State Killer" 'cause it makes sense.
He terrorized up and down the state.
It was an effort to recognize that he was a predator of...
people's vision of California, of their dreams.
MICHELLE: He had kind of, like, floated under the radar.
Whereas the Zodiac or
you know, Son of Sam got all this attention.
And I thought, this guy had ten times more victims
than those people. And he was ten times worse.
And we should know about him and we should all care,
and we should get justice for these people.
NANCY: The night that we put that story up,
it exploded.
In the sharing of it, it just got bigger and bigger and bigger.
Roger Ebert tweeted about it.
It was her first major piece of writing.
NANCY: What Michelle did was introduce herself
as a really important figure, a sympathetic figure,
and the person that we needed to get to know,
almost in a memoir way that would help bring
these sort of disparate collection
of tragedies together.
It was so beautifully, and, like, personally written.
It was like every case was-- Happened to someone
that was a friend of hers.
It wasn't just the usual reporting.
It was also like a very subtle call to action.
I hadn't read anything that well-written in this field
since probably Truman Capote.
It was just, you know, one of those things
where the hairs on the back of your neck stood up.
THOMAS MCNAMARA:
You know, that's when...
things really started for her.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
I called Michelle, and I said that I would be
the right person to represent that book
if she wanted to turn it into one.
I think the best way to sell this is for you to come
to New York and meet with the publishers.
JENNIFER BARTH: Daniel Greenberg said
he was gonna send the proposal for a true crime book
that would transcend the genre.
The thing that drew me to it the most was the way Michelle
humanized all of the victims.
And the fact that Michelle herself is one part of the story
was so interesting.
And that was what I thought truly set it apart.
I remember being at Shutters at the Beach.
Me and Michelle and Alice.
And then, Michelle got the call that she had sold the book.
And we were very, very excited.
I ordered up champagne.
And Alice was jumping up and down the bed
because Mommy was so excited about something.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MICHELLE: Alice, can you come down
and sit on the couch for a second?
CAMERON CLOUTIER: Sorry. (LAUGHS)
MICHELLE: Um, Alice, come down, okay?
You want to go see Mercedes and--
ALICE MCNAMARA: We go watch--
-(COUGHS) -(CHUCKLES)
-What? -Let's go Peppa Pig.
You are watching Peppa Pig. But Mommy's talking.
I go watch Peppa Pig.
Okay. Can you, um...
(COUGHS)
...but...
-yeah. I don't know. Um... -(ALICE COUGHS)
CAMERON: So, where would you start with this, then?
(SIGHS) Gosh.
Op. Gosh.
-(BABBLING) -I-- hey.
You go watch Peppa Pig, and then I'll put your clothes on,
and we'll go.
You go. Go put on your clothes, thank you.
Go put on your clothes.
(ALICE BABBLING)
Um...
I mean, I would just recanvass those neighborhoods.
I would look through every police record
from year before and a year after.
I mean, I think there's things you can do.
Again, it's just time, energy...
NANCY: After we finished that piece, it was like, "Whew,
we're done."
I was, like, kind of traumatized.
I had weird dreams.
I don't think I realized how toxic and scary it would be.
But I was done.
Like, I'm gonna go now work on a piece
about tacos for the next issue of Los Angeles Magazine.
Michelle had to continue.
She was like, "I got to keep going.
I've got to keep-- I've got to keep go--
I've got to keep working on this."
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(MESSAGES PING)
(COFFEE BEANS CLANG)
(PHONE BUZZING)
HOLES: Michelle and I, we were developing this--
this friendly relationship.
So, when her article was released,
I was holding my breath.
And I get to the end of the article,
I was like, "Oh, thank God."
She kept her word.
I could trust her.
We had more phone calls...
and agreed to establish some-- some email communications.
And it was really at that moment
in which it clicked between Michelle and I.
She proved herself to me.
And I basically opened wide open,
in terms of this is where I'm going with my investigation.
(HOLES SIGHS)
what I've got is I've got just your general list of the cases
and the attack times.
When you take a look at the homicides down south...
MICHELLE: Mm-hmm.
HOLES: ...um, all the victims appear to have been bound,
though he sometimes left the bindings
and later on, he took all the bindings.
MICHELLE: And do you think he took the bindings
because he was evolving and kind of learning
and didn't want to leave evidence?
HOLES: Well, that-- that's a possibility.
MICHELLE: Mm-hmm.
Well, and also you said, interestingly, I mean,
before you were talking about how he killed defensively.
It seems by the time the Smith case in Ventura
came around, he wasn't doing that anymore.
It was more pure rage, "I wanna murder these people."
HOLES: Yeah.
MICHELLE:
HOLES: You can kind of see the comings and goings
of the people...
without anybody really being suspicious
about what you're up to.
MICHELLE: So do we know where the back of the house is?
HOLES: Yeah, that's it.
MAN: This is the victim's backyard.
MICHELLE: Lyman Smith was a well-known attorney
on the verge of a superior court judgeship.
His wife Charlene was an interior designer
with a jewelry business.
JENNIFER CAROLE: It was a regular Sunday,
and my younger brother Gary
had gone up to mow the lawn at my dad's house.
But then he went into the house,
and he could hear the alarm going off.
(ALARM BEEPING)
And Gary thought, "Oh, crap.
They're just getting up right now,"
which is weird 'cause it was noon or one.
It just kept buzzing.
So, he walked back to the bedroom.
He saw they were still in bed, and he still did the, like,
"Ooh, I need to give them privacy."
But at the same time thought,
"This is weird. They're not moving,
and the alarm's still going off."
So, he walked around to my dad's side of the bed.
(ALARM BEEPING)
He turned off the alarm and lifted back the cover
and saw that color of what I imagine was dried blood.
He also knew they weren't moving and there was big trouble.
He put the cover back and picked up the phone
that was there by the bed and called 911.
We started to learn a lot more about what had happened
in the house and how they died, how they'd been murdered.
And it was a lot worse than anybody thought.
HOLES: The offender is able to get Lyman face down and bound.
Probably had Charlene bind Lyman.
He's even using the-- the blanket
tucked up underneath his arms
to make it even that much more difficult
for Lyman to be able to escape out of the bed.
Instead of leaving the room and moving
the woman out to the family room,
like he typically would do,
I think he is sexually assaulting Charlene
with Lyman still in that bed.
At some point, he goes and retrieves a log
and bludgeons them to death.
The homicides up to this point in time were shooting deaths
because he was reacting defensively.
This is the first time that it goes the way he wants,
and he probably realized a huge psychological release
from accomplishing this task.
Five months after the Smith homicides,
we see the next attack in August of 1980
down in Laguna Niguel
with Keith and Patrice Harrington.
This case identically mirrors the Smith case in Ventura.
MICHELLE: Going into a gated community to pick that...
HOLES: Yes.
MICHELLE: Keith was a fourth-year medical student.
His wife of four months, Patty, was a registered nurse.
HOLES: Keith and Patrice Harrington.
They're found face-down in their bed.
They'd been bludgeoned to death with an unknown type weapon.
MICHELLE: A metal fragment consistent with brass
was found in Patty's head wound.
That suggested that someone picked up
one of the newly installed brass sprinkler heads
from the yard and slipped inside the house.
In a subdivision with a manned gate,
it was high-risk.
It suggested the killer's pleasure
was in part derived from raising the stakes.
HOLES: And then six months later,
in February of 1981,
the Original Night Stalker shows up in Irvine
and attacks Manuela Witthuhn.
RON VEACH: Investigator Veach
with the Irvine Police Department.
The time is approximately 14:05.
Investigating an apparent homicide,
which occurred sometime, uh, during the last evening hours.
MICHELLE: Manuela was wearing a brown velour robe
and was partially wrapped in a sleeping bag
which she sometimes slept in when she was cold.
RON: Uh, the sleeping bag was placed
over the top of her head.
And, uh, she was struck over the head, uh,
with an object,
causing a hole in the, uh, bag itself.
MICHELLE: The lamp's absence gave police a good idea
of the heavy object that was used
to bludgeon Manuela to death.
HOLES: In Manuela's case,
she had been sexually assaulted,
bound, and then bludgeoned to death
just like the previous victims.
It's just now we don't have a male present.
-MICHELLE: Mm-hmm. -POOL: In that offense.
MICHELLE: Right, right.
DREW WITTHUHN: My brother Dave, he had a respiratory infection.
So, the recommendation was that he get checked in
the hospital for a couple days.
He had an incredible dose of survivor's remorse.
He said over and over, "If I would've been home,
this never would've happened."
Couple days after the funeral, I went over
and stayed with my brother.
He, you know, was having a few beers,
and I noticed he was getting a little, uh, you know,
he was, uh, drinking a little bit.
And he just all of a sudden, He just said, you know,
"Drew, they think I killed her."
DREW: He said-- Well...
And I didn't know what to say to that.
So, I just said, "Did you?" (LAUGHS)
I mean, it just kinda came out.
MICHELLE: Right.
DREW:
MICHELLE: Right.
"I would never hurt my wife.
I would never have anything done to her.
No, not in a million years. I loved her very much."
And I believed him.
(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS)
MICHELLE: The murders of Manuela Witthuhn
and Patty and Keith Harington shared similarities,
-both big and small. -(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS)
A forensic match between the cases didn't exist,
but a feeling did.
A sense that a single mind was at work.
(READS)
BARTH: It was a dark place,
you know, that she was taking you.
And I remember one time she sent me some pages,
and in the header, she wrote,
"Don't read this alone at night."
She just kept finding more and more sources
who wanted to speak to her and more avenues
to sort of chase down, and I could see how beguiling
and, um, seductive it was, and how, um...
(CLICKS TONGUE) ...addictive.
-VICTIM'S FRIEND: You're a good interviewer. -MICHELLE: Oh, I am?
-VICTIM'S FRIEND: You are. -MICHELLE: Oh, good.
VICTIM'S FRIEND:
MICHELLE: Um... No, I mean...
And, um...
In some ways, I'm, you know,
Michelle's voice was a part of the proposal
and was a really strong part all along, and so, you know,
that way was a given that that would be in the book
in some form.
But I know there was part of her
that that-- that was something she was navigating.
She wasn't a big "me, me, me" person.
She was much more interested in other people
than in talking about herself.
MICHELLE: Oak Park. (SIGHS).
Oak Park. Shit.
Oak Park borders the west side of Chicago.
Ernest Hemmingway, who grew up there,
famously referred to it as a town of wide lawns
and narrow minds.
But that wasn't my experience with the place.
We lived in a drafty three-story Victorian
on a cul-de-sac in the center of town.
MAUREEN STRATTON: Michelle was our baby sister
and she was born when I was 12 years old.
So, there was a big gap between Michelle
and the rest of us.
I just moved from playing with dolls
to having a real... (LAUGHS) ...doll myself."
And my mom was more than willing to pass her off.
MAUREEN: In some ways, Michelle was an only child
because we were just up and out.
(MICHELLE READS)
MARY RITA SKRINE: Because she was so much younger than everyone else,
I really think she found her voice early.
And I think she just became
an independent thinker and spirit.
I mean, she came out strong.
She came out strong-willed.
(GIRLS CHATTER)
BOB MCNAMARA: Once Michelle got to high school,
which is kind of a typical time to get rebellious,
Michelle and my mother
had developed into a very complicated relationship.
Michelle, I think, viewed our mother
as more an enemy than, you know,
someone who was supporting her.
MARY RITA: Well, I think Michelle, being the youngest,
wanted more physical affection and more attention
where my mom was pretty-- pretty reserved.
MAUREEN: I mean, there was never any question
that she loved all of us deeply and was, uh,
really did anything she could to support us.
But, you know, she did have, I think, sometimes a--
a difficult time giving a direct compliment.
Their communication was just very different,
and they would not back down.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(KEYBOARD CLACKING)
MICHELLE: We button-pushed our whole lives.
We had a summer cabin on Lake Michigan,
and I remember one afternoon as a kid playing in the waves
as she read a book in a chair on the beach.
I realized the waves were just high enough
so that I could remain underwater
and then rise for a quick breath
when the wave was at its highest,
shielding me from view.
I let my mother straighten up and scan the water.
I let her put down her book.
I let her stand.
I let her run toward the water preparing to scream.
Only then did I pop up nonchalantly.
Her lifelong nickname for me, only half-jokingly,
was "the little witch."
(READS)
But I felt her expectations, the transference of hope,
and I bristled.
I both yearned for her approval...
and found her investment in me suffocating.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
HOLES: I believe that Golden State Killer
has a comfort using these waterways.
We saw that up in the Sacramento area,
and when he gets to Santa Barbara,
he's going back to a region
in which he's previously attacked twice
along this geographic feature, this creek.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MICHELLE: On the morning of July 27, 1981,
a realtor found their bodies.
Cheri Domingo, a Natalie Wood lookalike,
was an old fashioned romantic who loved to dance.
Her boyfriend Gregory Sanchez was a computer programmer
who coached little league and rode a motorcycle.
KIM STEWART: Uh, Domingo-Sanchez,
again, they're in bed.
It's in the middle of the night.
That is a horrific fight. Very violent.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
HOLES: The offender enters the backyard
through a side gate.
And it appears Gregory has got a sense
that there's a prowler outside.
Because when he enters the master bedroom,
Gregory Sanchez is already up facing him.
Offender pulls a gun and shoots Gregory.
However, Greg gets up.
Now the offender gets into hand-to-hand combat
with six-foot-three Greg Sanchez.
KIM: It's a terrible fight.
The suspect ended up bludgeoning Greg,
and he ends up in the closet
where he's later found deceased.
And Domingo is severely bludgeoned.
When I, years later, spoke to the criminalist,
she was just still greatly disturbed
by the amount of, uh, damage done to her.
HOLES: The offender's semen was found,
but a very small amount,
and it was found on the comforter.
So it's unknown what type of sexual interaction he had,
but he definitely got to the point
where he left some semen behind.
(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS)
MICHELLE: Five years later, he murdered 18-year-old
Janelle Cruz.
Manuela and Janelle lived in the same subdivision,
just two miles apart.
His female victims was just the latest
unlucky stand-in for the lustful sneering women.
Mother, wife,
who formed a disapproving circle around the killer
in his daydreams.
The act of bludgeoning was arousal.
Alchemized to hate.
♪ (MUSIC STOPS) ♪
DEBBI DOMINGO: (ON PHONE) My mom and I,
people all the time referred to us as sisters.
-MICHELLE: Oh! -DEBBI: And she loved the beach, she loved--
she loved the outdoors. She was a California girl.
MICHELLE: Yeah, yeah.
DEBBI: She was-- she was amazing.
When my mom was killed, I was a kid.
-MICHELLE: Mm-hmm. -DEBBI: I'm thinking right close
to the end of my 10th grade year.
You know, she-- she would set a curfew,
and I would break it.
And she would set a rule, and I would just throw it out the window.
Bless her heart, I don't know how
she kept from wringing my neck.
-(MICHELLE CHUCKLES) -DEBBI: Um, and, um, so about,
I want to say right about two weeks before she was killed,
we got in a humungous fight.
And we ended up having this crazy screaming match.
And the last thing I said to her was,
"Why don't you just get the hell out of my life?"
And I slammed down that receiver.
And those are the last words I spoke to her.
-MICHELLE: Hmm. Yeah. -DEBBI: She didn't know, you know?
-MICHELLE: Yeah. -DEBBI: She didn't know how to handle me
-and, bless her heart... -MICHELLE: My-- my-- Your-- It's-- it's interesting
'cause my-- my mom and I
had a very complicated relationship,
and-- but we could never yell at each other.
She would always slip envelopes,
um, under my bedroom door... (LAUGHS)
...that had, you know, I just remember so clearly,
"You're vain, thoughtless, rude."
Like, all these terrible things, but she could only write it out.
She wouldn't be able to say it to me.
DEBBI: Well, yeah. Yeah, 'cause we were totally different...
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MICHELLE: At my wedding,
my mother and I had our biggest blowout.
I put a lot of time, too much probably,
into the planning.
At the dinner, I seated small groups of people
who didn't know each other together.
The only thing I told them
was that they had one thing in common
and had to figure it out.
My mother came up to me
as I was making my way to the bathroom.
She gestured at the tables.
"You have too much time on your hands," she said.
I'd been avoiding her because a friend of mine
made the mistake of telling me that earlier in the evening,
she'd remarked to my mother that she thought
I was the best writer she knew.
"Oh, I know. I think so too," my mother said.
"But don't you think it's too late for her?"
I went to the ladies' room, locked myself in a stall
and allowed myself to cry for five minutes...
then went back out...
(READS)
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
PATTON OSWALT: Hey, sweetie. It's Patton.
The new pages you sent me are amazing.
I just have a couple little tweaks, but, man,
that was a really cool read, especially that last paragraph.
Oh my god.
Hey. It's Patton. I'm in Miami.
I'm in Toronto. I'm on my way to Iceland.
My wife is ten times smarter than me.
She is thinking and operating on this way elevated level.
And I'm just noticing when things fart
and pointing at it
until she tells me, "Don't-- don't point at that,
all right?" "Okay."
MICHELLE: Who's that, Alice?
Who is that on the TV?
Daddy.
MICHELLE: Is that Daddy?
Daddy. (BABBLING)
-♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪ -(PHONE PINGS)
MICHELLE: Reading galley of Patton's book...
(READS)
SARAH STANARD: Michelle was, um...
she was so hard on herself.
Her writing and, "Am I doing a good job as a mom?"
And Patton was working a lot.
PATTON: So, yeah. I-- I'm gonna--
I'll just meet you at Barnes. Uh, I-- I got to do a signing.
About to do a video shoot here for Spin Magazine.
I'm so close to finishing this goddamn movie.
(COOING)
PATTON: Got your email. I am doing the errands now.
You want her to go to a two o'clock class?
I'm gonna do these as quickly as I can.
Call me if you-- if you think of anything else
for me to get, goodbye.
Hey, it's Patton.
-MICHELLE: Hi! -PATTON: Driving home
-as fast as I can. -MICHELLE: You're on a horsey.
PATTON: Hey, it's Patton. Just got a call
from my guys at CAA.
-They can get me-- Get us... -MICHELLE: You're on a horsey.
PATTON: ...uh, this-- for this Thursday, uh,
two tickets to go see Prince at the Forum.
PRINCE: ♪ ...Had to end Purple rain ♪
CROWD: ♪ Purple rain... ♪
MICHELLE'S FRIEND: Happy birthday, Michelle.
AUTOMATED VOICE: Hello. This is a refill reminder
from CVS Pharmacy for Michelle McNamara.
We show that the following prescription numbers
are due for refill.
THOMAS: Hi, Michelle. This is your father
calling to wish you happy birthday.
Ah, to be 41 again.
How sweet it is. Talk to you soon.
ALL: (SINGING) ♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
BOY: It's two plates.
ALL: ♪ Happy birthday, dear Alice ♪
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
KIM: You know, Michelle...
Michelle was a brilliant investigator.
Aside from being a good writer,
she had a real investigative mind.
She didn't just tick the boxes.
She was a creative thinker about crime.
MICHELLE: I mean, I was shocked, frankly,
when Larry Crompton told me that he called Santa Barbara
and he was told over the phone the murders never happened.
-I-- I was shocked. -KIM: Yeah.
MICHELLE: He said, "Listen, it was a different time."
A lot of things went wrong because people--
You didn't even share information
among your coworkers, which is crazy.
KIM: They could've solved these cases.
There is no question.
And I think people would be very surprised
how these investigations can simply go off the rail
and never go anywhere.
MICHELLE: So everyone that I talk to seemed to grumble
a bit about Santa Barbara. (LAUGHS)
Do you feel like that's kind of a past thing?
KIM: When I was working in Santa Barbara,
there were a tremendous amount of burglary,
prowling, and rapes.
To me, the numbers of rapes we had was just astonishing.
And a lot of it was written off as,
"Well, it's a university town. What do you expect?
What do you expect?" Well.
MICHELLE: But I never understood
Santa Barbara as-- Was different
than other jurisdictions.
Did it have to do with, "We don't want bad publicity?"
What do you think it was?
Well, Reagan's ranch was about 15 miles up the coast.
HOLES: At that time, Ronald Reagan
was in the process of declaring his candidacy
-for president... -MICHELLE: Mm-hmm.
HOLES: ...and they did not want any of this negative stigma.
MICHELLE: They didn't want the publicity.
HOLES: They didn't want the publicity.
And then we had Montecito, where, you know,
every famous person on earth has at least one house.
So, it shows you the money
and political influences there.
I remembered asking the sergeant,
"Why-- why do you not publicize these, uh,
sexual assaults that we have?"
"Oh, well, the sheriff, uh, made an agreement
with the board of realtors that we would not publicize
certain crimes."
MICHELLE: Oh, God.
KIM: "Because property values will go down..."
MICHELLE: Wow.
KIM: "...and they don't want people afraid
to come here and buy."
'Cause Goleta was growing.
So, when we get into the period of the homicides,
we were, psst, quiet.
(PHONE BUZZING)
(KEYBOARD CLACKING)
MARY RITA: Hey, Mich. It's Mary Rita.
We just went to see dad.
Yeah, he was totally sedated and out of it.
But, um, obviously the next 48 hours are critical.
We will keep you posted.
All right, thanks. Bye.
(PHONE CLACKING)
(PHONE PINGS)
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
SECURITY EMPLOYEE:
-This is North Star Security at 323-730-4935. -(PHONE CLACKING)
-♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪ -(MESSAGE PINGS)
(KEYBOARD CLACKING)
MICHELLE: We've just installed a massive security system
(OVERLAPPING) in our house to keep us sane... This is probably little paranoid
but better safe than sorry.
I noticed the screen on one of the front windows was off.
(OVERLAPPING) My assumption is that... I meant to mention this earlier,
but I'd prefer if none of us...
I wanted to be sure, in case some crazy man
out of a horror movie is trying to get in.
Something I think about surprisingly often.
I know I'm being paranoid, but it...
(READS)
DRIVER: You guys own a gun?
-MICHELLE: No. -DRIVER: You should get one.
MICHELLE: I know-- Well, no. Patton's, like, blind as a bat.
I'm jittery.
We're the worst people in the world to have a gun.
He likes to shoot guns.
I just-- We can't have one in the house.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(KEYBOARD CLACKING)
(GUNSHOTS ECHOING)
(PHONE PINGS)
THOMAS:
KATHLEEN CONROY: At the time that he died,
she literally got in
just after he had kind of...
lost,
you know, consciousness or whatever.
And so she didn't really get that-- that last moment
with him.
So, there was a lot of shock for her.
BOB: Michelle and my dad had a very special relationship.
They were just, you know, simpatico, I would say.
After he had passed, she had told us
the inscription on the book she planned to use was
"To my father who believed."
But, uh, you know, she just kind of kept--
kept at it and kept working.
And, um, in hindsight, she probably should have, um,
slowed down a little bit and taken a little--
taken a little more time.
NANCY: You've been now studying this for so long
and looking at it as a puzzle
that horror doesn't really affect you anymore.
MICHELLE: Well, I'm not sure. (CHUCKLES)
-NANCY: Really? -MICHELLE: I-- yeah. I mean, I'm,
yeah. I mean, I-- I still don't probably have
a good night's sleep, you know, every night.
And, um, thank God for Ambien.
But it doesn't make for, like, a peaceful existence.
That doesn't mean I'm stopping it,
but I certainly think it's kind of wormed its way
in-- into my brain a bit.
DREW: Well, and you could tell.
-MICHELLE: Yeah. -DREW:
MICHELLE: Yeah.
For my brother, this cloud of suspicion
just seemed to never go away.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Some very professional, well-meaning people
were investigating this crime.
But they had no suspect.
So, he always had to remain a person of interest.
I don't know how he emotionally dealt with that day after day,
year after year.
Manuela was killed in 1981, and it wasn't until 2000
that my brother no longer was a person of interest.
I just picked up the paper on a Sunday morning.
Opened it up, and there's my brother's picture.
They made a-- a DNA connection
between Manuela's killing and others.
-DREW: -MICHELLE: Mm-hmm.
DREW: But to have that cloud of suspicion...
-MICHELLE: Right. -DREW: ...over you for so long.
MICHELLE:
DREW: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
-MICHELLE: -DREW: Yeah.
DREW:
MICHELLE: When the crime labs began incorporating DNA testing
in the early '90s, Orange County decided
to prioritize homicides involving sexual assaults.
Every inch of fabric and millimeter of cotton tip,
held promise.
In 1996, Mary Hong was one of the criminalists
tasked with concentrating on cold cases.
An older criminalist took her aside.
Fifteen years on,
he still hadn't forgotten his old suspicion.
(READS)
This case was the very first cold case
that I started to work,
and that was in 1997.
I was working for Contra Costa County
as a young criminalist.
I had just started DNA training.
One day, I found this file cabinet
that I never saw anybody go to.
What really stood out was this red E-A-R
written on each tab.
That's when I learned about the East Area Rapist.
I was fascinated.
We won't be able to do anything
because it's long past statute of limitations.
But I just want to kind of figure out,
you know, maybe I can identify the guy
and solve this series.
I end up calling Larry Crompton.
CROMPTON: I got a phone call.
And, uh, fella said, "Uh, I'm Paul Holes.
I'm with the crime lab in Contra Costa."
And I said, "Paul, I know of five homicides
in Southern California.
I know it's our rapist that did it,
but nobody will talk to me, and nobody will help me."
HOLES: I was told that the Orange County Sheriff's office
has been doing some DNA work.
So I did call up, uh, Mary Hong,
but our DNA profiles were different technologies.
We couldn't compare 'em.
It took four years before we got that technology online
and could revisit the East Area Rapist case.
MICHELLE: The tubes that advanced the mystery
closer to an answer were opened and tested.
When the results came in, Paul Holes called Mary Hong.
"Same guy," Mary said.
HOLES: With the Ventura case,
Lyman, Charlene Smith,
we have semen evidence.
In Patrice and Keith Harrington, we have semen evidence.
With Manuela Witthuhn, we have semen evidence.
Domingo-Sanchez, Janelle Cruz,
five of cases all have semen evidence
in which DNA testing showed it was the same offender,
the same DNA profile.
And of course, in my jurisdiction
in Contra Costa County, I had three cases
in which I still had evidence from the sexual assaults
that matched the five DNA-related cases
to the Original Night Stalker series.
And that connection was made back in March of 2001.
We believe he is responsible for no fewer than 12 murders,
50 rapes, um, between 1976 and 1986.
We don't have a name, and-- and that's the goal.
We need to match name to the DNA profile.
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DANIEL GREENBERG: Uh, hey Michelle.
♪ (CHIMES RING DISTANTLY) ♪
(PHONE PINGS)
-♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪ -(WATER BUBBLES)
RADIO HOST 1: 7:07 on an early Thanksgiving morning,
the 26th day of November.
-Happy Thanksgiving. -RADIO HOST 2: Happy Thanksgiving.
RADIO HOST 1: Yes, Happy Thanksgiving everybody.
Real nice to have you with us...
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(ELEVATOR DINGS)
WOMAN: Hello?
(RADIO STATIC)
Hello?
(DOOR CREAKS OPEN)
-(RADIO STATIC) -WOMAN: Hello?
(RADIO STATIC)
(HEAVY BREATHING)
EAST AREA RAPIST: Gonna kill you.
(WOMAN SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY)
EAST AREA RAPIST: Gonna kill you.
(RECORDING DISCONNECTS)
(PHONE CLACKING)
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS) ♪