Does she live alone?
Does she have a roommate?
Does she have a boyfriend?
Burglarizing their home,
going through their personal possessions,
serves his fantasy
that this is actually a consensual relationship
and he's getting to know them.
Welcome to "very scary people."
I'm Donnie wahlberg.
The norcal rapist terrorized northern California
from 1991 to 2006,
his cruel violence causing lasting trauma
and tragically altering lives.
This twisted deviant studies his victims...
Their patterns, their habits.
He slips into their homes when they're away,
memorizing the rooms and planning his ambush.
Elusive and careful, for a long time,
it seemed like norcal was unstoppable,
but he left key evidence at every scene.
Who is the norcal rapist, and how has he been able
to get away with his reign of terror for so long?
This is part one of "the phantom predator."
For over 27 years,
the individual who came to be known
as the norcal rapist victimized women
across northern California.
And why has he been able to get away for so long?
We want to find the bad guys, and we want to put them in jail.
It's not always that easy, unfortunately.
You always are thinking, you know,
"will they ever get this guy?"
It's something that never left my head, still to this day.
It could be 10 seconds, it could be an hour of thinking about it,
fantasizing about getting a call
that he was caught every day of my life for 27 years.
It began in 1991.
Cold cases often become a journey for justice
for law enforcement,
prosecutors, crime victims, their families,
and, in many cases, for the communities
that were so deeply affected by that crime.
Who was I in 1991?
I was a fairly typical 21-year-old.
Had a pretty active social life.
Had a lot of friends.
I was a hairstylist.
I've always been a very hard worker,
so I worked a lot of hours,
and that was pretty much my life.
Life was good
for 21-year-old Nicole earnest-payte.
She had a really good job.
She owned her own condo in rohnert park,
which is about 30 miles north of San Francisco.
I did not have a roommate.
My ex-boyfriend had moved out.
I had the mortgage to pay,
so I actually had put an advertisement
out for a roommate,
but I was living alone for about...
Probably about six weeks.
It was a Saturday,
and that's the biggest day of the week for hairstylists.
I had been working all day,
and I came home to my condo completely exhausted.
Nicole gets home from her long day.
She sinks into the sofa.
She doesn't have much furniture since her boyfriend moved out,
and she just starts watching TV.
Before she knows it, she's passed out on the sofa.
I woke up to a masked man
who had his arm around my neck,
my shoulders... the top of me, like this.
And he very calmly said, "don't make a sound.
I have a gun. I'm not going to hurt you.
I just want your money."
And I was thinking in my head,
"okay, he's just here to Rob me."
Having a gun pointed at you by a masked intruder
in your own home is terrifying,
but for Nicole, the nightmare is just beginning.
He eventually took me upstairs
and then told me to get on the bed facedown.
I was bound.
He was really careful to make sure I wasn't harmed...
You know, that my hair wasn't in the duct tape.
And then he put a pillowcase around my head.
I really did, at this point, still think he was
just there to Rob.
I could hear him rifling through stuff.
There was a specific item that he was looking for
that I had borrowed
that I no longer had in my home
and had not been in my home for weeks.
"Where is it? I know you have it.
Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Where is it?"
And that's when I knew, "oh, my god.
He's been in my house.
He must have been, or has been watching me or something."
Stalking is an obsessive and compulsive activity
where somebody is delving into private matters
of somebody else that are not their business,
and they create a world in their own mind
where there is much more going on between them
than the other person even knows.
He's turned on music
and started saying, "these could be our love songs.
These are our songs."
And I just thought, "oh, my god!
He actually thinks I'm his girlfriend or something."
In his mind, he believes, because of the amount of time
he has invested in watching this woman
and being in her apartment or her house,
that he really knows her.
He has a personal relationship with her,
but she does not have a personal relationship with him.
I had been facedown the whole time,
and then that's when he cut me loose and turned me over
and started to take everything off.
And that's when I realized I wasn't getting out of it.
I was raped multiple times throughout the night.
And I thought that he was eventually gonna shoot me
and kill me.
I kept visualizing my parents getting that phone call,
which is, to this day, the only thing that makes me still cry.
I can't explain how terrifying it is as a 21-year-old woman
to think the torture my parents are gonna have to go through.
He had stolen my atm card,
so I knew he wanted to get to the bank.
As he was leaving, he said,
"you should lock your doors from now on.
Somebody might come in and try and hurt you"
and then walked out the door.
And that was like a knife in my chest
because it was mocking me and basically laughing, like,
"what an idiot that she left her back door unlocked."
To assault somebody and terrorize her for hours
and then say,
"you know, you really should lock your door.
Somebody might come in and try to hurt you."
That's almost gloating,
and she probably wondered for the rest of her life
whether her doors had actually been locked or not.
I called my mother. She was so calm.
She just kicked right into gear
of "I need you to call the police, sweetie."
They escorted me to the hospital.
A few days later, I had the formal sitdown
with the detectives from rohnert park.
They just didn't believe it at all.
They thought I made up the story.
The entire time they were interviewing me,
they were questioning every bit of it as though
I was this crazy person making up this horrible story.
It was the most horrendous experience
I've ever been through.
They came short of calling me, you know, a whore.
What Nicole went through was her worst nightmare...
Being raped, but then not being believed
and then knowing that this masked intruder
was out there somewhere,
maybe ready to come back and get her,
was absolutely debilitating.
But Nicole was determined that this was not going to break her.
I wanted to make sure that I picked myself up.
I picked myself up very quickly
and marched right back into my life,
but it was very altered.
For quite a while, I wouldn't go anywhere alone
because I was convinced
that he was watching and would come back.
December 1991, a 42-year-old woman in sonoma
was awakened at about 1:30 in the morning
by a man wearing a mask.
I thought, "oh, my god. This is the same person."
21-year-old Nicole earnest-payte
is sexually attacked
in her own home in rohnert park, California.
It's June of 1991,
and then, six months later, another attack.
When this happened again in sonoma,
and I read it in the paper, I thought, "oh, my god.
This is the same person."
December 1991,
a 42-year-old woman in sonoma, California,
was awakened at about 1:30 in the morning
by a man wearing a mask.
According to the sheriff's spokesperson, Spencer crum,
he tied her up and he raped her twice.
After he raped her, detectives say that he drove her
to a local atm,
where he forced her to withdraw money,
and then took her back to her house.
Crum said that DNA evidence was collected at the scene,
and the victim said it felt like someone was stalking her
because he knew so many things about her life.
How do we collect DNA in rape cases?
Well, you can collect it from a lot of trace evidence
from somebody's body, whether it's a hair follicle
or whether or not it's saliva, semen, blood,
any type of bodily fluids.
And even if somebody touches something,
there is organic DNA material on a knife
or the handle of a pistol
a rapist or a murderer might use.
And if the rapist leaves his DNA at a crime scene today,
there is no doubt in my mind
that that person will be brought to justice.
So you have these two separate sexual-assault cases,
one in June of '91 and then the next in December,
and they are both in sonoma county but 20 miles apart.
There are similarities, but there are differences,
and then you have another attack that happens in 1992.
In 1992, I was living alone in vallejo.
I was going to school to be a firefighter,
and I was working for fedex.
I also was trying to get my EMT certificate,
so I was pretty busy.
My sister had just bought a brand-new house
that just got built in vallejo and said,
"do you want to just live there by yourself?"
And I was like, "okay."
Little did she know that a sexual predator
was tracking her movements.
It was on February 13th,
around 8:20, 8:30 in the morning.
I walked out of the bedroom,
and then there is this guy in the bathroom
with the black ski mask.
So I ran into the bedroom.
He jumped on me, and I was trying to fight him,
and he had a knife, so I grabbed the knife.
I didn't know, but... You know, what I was doing
because he was on top of me and, you know...
And I just was trying to...
Just trying to do whatever I could to...
To escape, you know?
And I know he did say, you know, "you cut me."
When he put his hand over my mouth,
I couldn't breathe anymore.
I couldn't fight anymore.
And then he, um... He tied my arms and my legs up.
You know, he raped me probably three times, for sure.
It was just like I was just, um, kind of numb, you know?
Yeah, I-I remember at times just told him to just kill me,
get it over with.
I wasn't exactly scared of dying.
I was just... just scared of, you know, what was gonna happen.
What was he gonna do next?
Because, to me, laying there and going through that...
Probably dying would have been better
than... him being there, so...
So I was just...
Doing everything I could to just...
...to survive.
I think most of us can't even imagine what it would be like
to go through something like these victims endured
and how life-changing it is for them,
how it changes their... Their perception of the world
and that they don't feel safe anymore.
I know he was talking a lot.
He was asking me questions, but I never...
Never seen his face.
He took a shower.
He used my hairbrush.
He was going through my purse, and he had my phone book.
I remember him saying, you know, "if you call the cops,
I'm gonna call this person.
I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that."
Before the attacker leaves, he takes a necklace
that she's wearing off her neck.
Why?
So that he has a trophy of his conquest.
It is sick.
Trophies become memorabilia for that individual of a time
that was very important to them, very erotic for them,
very satisfying for them, so, with that in mind,
they don't easily part with their trophies.
As soon as I was able to untie myself,
I called the cops
and then I called my neighbor.
Cops came right away.
One of the cops said that he probably was
in my house before the incident.
What he did was cut a hole through the drywall
in the garage and stuck his hand through the drywall
and then opened the door, you know, and unlocked it,
'cause... 'Cause it was locked.
This was clearly a well-thought-out crime
and one he had clearly prepared for to...
To open up a piece of sheetrock to require that sawing
and then to be able to come back in later
in order to conduct the crime
so the victim would not hear them coming in.
He literally planned it and executed it
just like it was a military operation.
The watching and the stalking
is incredibly creepy.
It's such a violation of privacy,
and to be watching not just as a voyeur
because somebody enjoyed watching
but to be watching with the intent of figuring out
how to commit further crimes against that person
is incredibly creepy.
Every day was a struggle, but I just kept going.
I had a lot of therapy, and I said, "you know what?
This person is not going to put me in my own jail."
But what he did will always be with me.
With any crime,
there's going to be mistakes made by the suspect.
All I can say is that there was evidence left at the scene.
It was a particularly horrific crime.
It's just the stuff that horror movies are made out of.
Police have three different rape cases
happening in three different northern California towns.
You have different agencies.
You'll have different jurisdictions
that were working these crimes in different counties
where these rapes happened.
Investigators are looking to collect physical evidence,
whether it's a rape swab it for DNA
or in the instance where he was stabbed and his blood...
There's liquid DNA
right there to help track down the perpetrator.
Halloween night in 1996 in Martinez,
and this involved a woman who was basically on her couch.
Just late that night, she hears the doorbell.
She thinks, "oh, it's probably just a straggler."
And she gets up and answers and opens the door
because, of course, she assumes
it's just a late-night trick-or-treater.
She answers the door...
...and there's a man in a skeleton mask.
Totally in fitting with a Halloween costume,
and he wastes no time.
He jumps on her, attacks her.
It's just the stuff that horror movies are made out of.
It's just terrible.
He overpowers her.
He gets inside the house.
He binds her like the other three people,
and he rapes her repeatedly.
One thing that investigators told me
that was really of note for that case
was he was very evidence-specific.
Some people, in the heat of the moment,
are just gonna not think twice about evidence
left behind or anything like that,
where he wound up taking, like, bedding
and trying to cover up his DNA profile, potentially.
And, like the first attack,
he once again steals the victim's atm card.
Then, several weeks after the attack,
he takes his emotional torture a step further.
Police say that he actually phones the victim at work.
And he apologizes.
Calling her work to see how she was or to...
Ostensibly, to apologize was another act of terrorizing her.
It is an expression of dominance and power and control.
"See? I can find you again any time I want to."
Once the Martinez assault happened,
they had another DNA profile, and it's at that point
where the investigators from contra costa county say,
"hey, this DNA matches another sexual assault
four years earlier in 1992."
And they had these separate individual sexual assaults
happening that had very similar kind of m.0.S...
You know, bindings, multiple sexual assaults.
But this is the first time they said,
"okay, we got a singular person doing these crimes."
He was an intelligent criminal,
planning these assaults,
and so he would stalk in order to get enough information
to really be able to confidently go into this person's home
and stay there for hours,
knowing that he was going to be able to not be interrupted.
This is the worst type of case
for law enforcement to solve.
Stranger rapes are very rare.
Normally, a sexual assault happens with someone you know,
which makes it easier to solve, frankly,
because you have a narrowed list of people
who could be the suspects.
But here these are total strangers.
Nothing to go on.
It starts in the early '90s,
when DNA investigation is sort of in its infancy,
and it's bouncing around from different counties,
different jurisdictions for police.
It's harder to find those common links
and those common threads.
When he went to the atm, he was caught on surveillance
wearing a clear, plastic Halloween mask.
Criminals... They're gonna make mistakes.
They think they're smarter than we are,
but that's not always the case.
Investigators working the norcal rapist case
are gathering evidence left behind at the crime scenes.
Detectives are studying the similarities
in the norcal rapist's m.0...
How he threatens, the weapons he uses,
and the atm cards he steals from the women after each attack.
Investigators are building a profile
to narrow down possible suspects,
and now they've got his DNA.
But norcal is about to strike again.
It's January 25, 1997, when the rapist strikes again,
but this time it's different.
It's a pair of roommates
who live together in Davis, California.
They hear a noise downstairs.
They don't make anything of it
and just go back to their individual rooms
and go to sleep.
I was an investigator, detective,
at the Davis police department in 1997.
And was called to the scene the morning
of that particular sexual assault.
He was well planned when he did this violent crime.
He brought things with him, we know...
The binding materials,
most of which he took with him when he left.
He knew what he was doing, what he wanted to do,
and he carried it out in a very detailed manner.
He did a number of things, including turning on a radio
to cover any sounds that were being made.
He put a blanket over a window so nobody could see in.
He put a chair in front of the door,
wedged it in so that nobody could walk in on him...
That sort of thing.
Something interesting is happening here
with these rapes in '96 and '97.
It would appear his m.0. Is actually evolving.
The first three of his victims were all Caucasian women,
but, starting with number four, they are petite Asian women.
He could have simply discovered a sexual preference
for Asian women.
However, Asian women are very often petite
and slight and weigh very little,
so there's a vulnerability aspect
because they tend to be so small.
He is making sure he risks nothing in being overpowered.
He knew how he wanted to interact with his victims
in the way he approached them and the things he said to them.
I think he had a picture in his mind of his relationship
to these victims, and I do believe, in his heart,
he wanted to leave them thinking that he was not such a bad guy.
The pattern does continue,
because one of the victims that he tied up and terrified...
He took her atm card
and made her give him the pin, and, remember,
that relinquishing of the security pin
is part of the power and control.
Was it about the money? I don't think so.
It was almost like adding insult to injury.
"Now not only have I been inside your body,
I'm getting inside your bank account.
There is nothing left of you
that I haven't touched, which I can't control."
And getting that card and taking her money
was really almost like the torturous icing on the cake.
"Even after I've left, I'm going to victimize you."
The main thing is use whatever you can to try
and identify who this guy is.
We put out a letter to all the banks stating we knew
that the victims' card were taken,
along with their pin numbers,
so first we had to find out if the cards were used
and, if so, where were they used?
So, here we worked with the banks, the security system.
We knew the cards, of course, that the victims had.
We contacted those people, and in fairly short order...
I'm talking over a two-, three-day period...
We knew where the cards were used and what was drawn out.
So when he went to the atm,
he was caught on surveillance at that time,
at about 7:30 A.M.,
wearing a clear, plastic Halloween mask.
Police have surveillance video
of the rape suspect using a victim's atm card.
A mask distorts his face.
So, could this be the break in the case?
Could this surveillance video help police pinpoint
the man who had been raping people
in northern California for six years?
Not only do they have an idea what he looks like,
but they have blood from the stabbing.
Now they can check the DNA from that blood
and see if it matches the other rapes.
Police from all of these multiple jurisdictions
in northern California, from rohnert park to Davis,
they'd all been loosely working
to solve their individual crimes.
At one point, the norcal rapist slipped up
and allowed himself to be caught on camera.
We were able to get a photo of him while he was using the atm.
Unfortunately, he was wearing an opaque mask
that would distort the features of your face,
so we weren't able to get a clear understanding
of what this person looked like.
The norcal rapist... What he has going for him
is that he's kind of hiding in plain sight.
He's operating in his comfort zone.
He cases these girls. He stalks them.
He knows their routines.
This is the kind of case,
really, from a victim's standpoint,
like, this is your worst nightmare.
I think a lot of crimes are crimes of happenstance.
You come across it and you do something.
This is clearly not what the norcal rapist did.
He planned his crime.
He knew exactly what he was doing,
and he victimized these women
in some of the worst ways you can think.
This instilled fear in the communities.
I mean, people changed the way they lived.
They no longer felt like being at home alone or locked doors
that maybe they didn't lock before.
It's terrifying to know that somebody like that is out there
and they haven't been able to catch him.
Just shocked that it was that close to home.
Mm, it's a little scary.
And it impacted vast areas, numerous communities,
simply because of the fear instilled
by the crimes committed.
In 1997, I was 21,
and I was a college student at chico state.
I had a job as a counselor at that time.
I was studying psychology.
I was really close to graduating.
My life was fun.
Maki is bright.
She loves going out and socializing with her sister...
A confident young woman.
I was living by myself
in an apartment called paradise apartments,
and I had actually just broken up with my very first boyfriend.
And this is important because it means
he's not gonna be coming over to her apartment.
She is probably very vulnerable.
When an offender stalks a victim,
burglarizing their home,
going through their personal possessions,
being able to look at their photographs,
it increases his comfort level because he knows the floor plan.
He knows how to get in and how to get out.
I'd come home, and things would be out of place.
I'd notice that my photo albums would be moved
or certain things weren't exactly where I had put them.
And I thought it was my ex-boyfriend
going into my house.
The night of the attack,
me and my sister had gone to the bear in chico.
It was a really popular place to go dancing.
I actually got home late,
and then I went into the kitchen to make myself some toast,
and I looked at my sliding glass door
and felt like somebody was there,
but then just kind of dismissed it quickly, thinking,
"oh, it's nothing," and then decided I would go to bed.
It was only a couple hours later that I was woken up
with a gun to my head and his hand covering my mouth,
and he told me to, you know,
shut up and not scream or he'd kill me.
His hand was over her mouth,
and he very clearly threatened her
that if she screamed, if she made a sound,
he would not hesitate to kill her.
I thought I was gonna die.
He starts tying her wrists
and her ankles with zip ties and ropes.
I remember when he was binding my wrists and my hands,
I'd I... I left a little bit of space
so that I had wriggle room.
I just pretended like I was holding a ball in my hand
so that I would have the ability to escape.
He covered my eyes in duct tape.
He kept going in and out of the room.
He was going through my things.
All I could think of was how to get free.
So every time he'd leave the room,
I'd work harder on loosening the bindings
and trying to get the tape off of my mouth.
It was a fight-or-flight response,
and I decided to fight.
Maki is determined, and she actually does succeed
in freeing herself of those restraints.
I just kept putting saliva all over the duct tape
so that it would be easier to tear off.
I got free, but then he came in
and... and tried to make the bindings tighter.
I just remember him being really angry.
Is he going to get his revenge
on her escape attempt by killing her now?
Some offenders will flee if the victim physically resists,
while others will increase violence
and severely injure the victim.
When something like that happens,
you just think of the worst,
and I thought for sure I would be dead.
I didn't think I would survive that night.
He walked into the room, and I was able to see his face,
and I just told him, "you better run.
I'm gonna get you. You better leave."
1997, maki Anderson is fighting for her life.
The norcal rapist ties her up.
Notwithstanding being tied up, she breaks free.
He finds her. He ties her up again.
But she continues to try to escape.
The second time that I got free,
I was able to sit up. My arms were free.
My face was uncovered.
And he walked into the room, and I was able to see his face.
I just told him, "you better run.
I'm gonna get you. You better leave."
And it looked like he was going to,
and then he changed his mind and started charging me.
And I grabbed the scissors and stabbed him.
I didn't have it in me to kill him.
I could have killed him,
but I didn't have it in me to kill him.
That seemed to only upset him.
He got really angry, and...
And he was more forceful after that.
Maki is a fighter. She has tried to escape twice.
She's managed to stab her attacker.
But he still seems determined to rape her.
In order to prevent myself from getting raped,
I lied and told him I was pregnant.
I told him, "please don't hurt the baby."
I kept bringing up "the baby," and, fortunately, it worked.
I-I was... I was sexually assaulted,
which, you know, is still bad, but I was spared rape.
In maki's case, for her to say she was pregnant,
it did humanize her for him in that moment.
People have to dehumanize their victim
in order to be able to commit crimes against them.
Whatever his association was to pregnancy,
there had to be something positive in there
that made him draw some kind of a line
in terms of what he was going to do.
I was so tired by then.
It had been hours.
And I started nodding off because he was gone
and I was just waiting.
I didn't know if he was gonna come back in again
or if he had left.
I just kept working on trying to get free,
and I just got the tape off of my mouth and got my hands free,
and then I got my legs free and threw on some clothes
and jumped out the bedroom window
and ran to the manager's office to get help.
And she brought me into her office
and called the police right away.
They came within seconds.
I was able to give them a good enough description
in order for them to draw a sketch
of what he could look like.
Thanks to maki's bravery and quick thinking,
police finally have a sketch of the norcal rapist.
Not only do they have an idea of what he looks like,
but they have blood from the stabbing.
Now they can check the DNA from that blood
and see if it matches the other rapes.
It was particularly after the chico assault happened,
where he left blood DNA at the scene, where that matched up,
and then I think it was at that point they were like,
"okay, we have a serial rapist here on our hands."
But now that you know it's a serial rapist there,
that's why it's important, then,
to bring your resources together.
You have the information.
DNA linked the different scenes in different areas.
Now you've got to do the link analysis.
Find other things that link in.
Investigations are Jigsaw puzzles.
It's getting enough pieces
that you can identify the person responsible.
These offenders are not perfect 100% of the time.
They make mistakes.
Investigators are trained to look for those subtleties,
those mistakes that even serial offenders make.
There are no perfect crimes. People make mistakes.
Criminals are no different.
They think they're smarter than we are,
but that's not always the case.
I lived in fear for a really long time.
I constantly was looking in my rearview mirror
while I was driving, trying to figure out
if he was following me or not.
It was hard.
It... it hasn't been an easy journey.
But I'm glad I'm alive.
One of the victims actually told me...
She said, "every time a male
comes in to where I work,
if he's about the right age and about the right everything,"
she says, "I think to myself, 'is that him?'"
and so to have to live your life that way,
always looking over your shoulder
and always wondering, it has to be...
It has to be really difficult.
For cops, you want to bring closure for that person.
You want to arrest the bad guys.
Those victims will always be forever scarred.
Their life will never, ever, ever, ever be the same.
So, in a lot of instances where people have long crime sprees
like the norcal rapist,
they think they're safe because they haven't been arrested.
It's never too long.
It's never too late.
The long arm of the law is gonna find you.
It almost is like a ticking time bomb
because you know it's going to happen again.
You don't know where, and you don't know when.
The norcal rapist has gotten so confident
with his 15-year rape spree
that he is beginning to screw up.
He's made a big mistake.
Right now a serial rapist is on the loose.
And Sacramento police have new evidence
this guy has been attacking women for years.
I have said many times that DNA is the greatest tool
ever given to law enforcement to find the truth.
This technology's groundbreaking.
It's eye-opening.
It was like, "holy cow.
This is the person that I've been wondering about
for the last 12 years."
By 1997, the norcal rapist had committed
at least seven vicious attacks.
News of his rampage spread fear throughout the communities
of northern California.
Women did not feel safe in their own homes.
No one knew when he would strike next.
Could forensic science finally break the case
and give detectives the evidence they needed to make an arrest?
The hunt for the norcal rapist continues
in part two of "the phantom predator."
I'm Donnie wahlberg.
Thanks for watching "very scary people."