فصل 24

24

Sacramento, 2014

HOLES DUG RELENTLESSLY INTO WALTHER’S BACKGROUND. THE LOCATION of Walther’s family’s home on Sutter Avenue in Carmichael was a central buffer zone around which the EAR preyed. In the midseventies, Walther helped his mom in her job managing low-income apartment complexes in Rancho Cordova; one of the complexes was next door to an EAR attack. Holes learned that in May 1975 Walther was in a bad car accident in Sacramento that resulted in scars on his face. Victim number seven had tried reverse psychology and told the EAR he was good at sex. He responded that people always made fun of him for being small, a presumably truthful statement, because he was indeed underendowed. The EAR also mentioned to her that “something happened to my face.”

Four attacks were a half mile from Del Campo High School, where Walther went to school. The father of one of the victims taught at the continuation school that Walther transferred to after dropping out of Del Campo. Walther worked in 1976 at a Black Angus restaurant that two victims mentioned to detectives was a frequent dining location for them.

Walther began working for the Western Pacific Railroad in 1978; the job took him to Stockton, Modesto, and through Davis (on his way to Milpitas), just as the EAR began branching out in those areas. In August 1978, he received two speeding tickets in Walnut Creek. The EAR’s East Bay attacks in that area started two months later. A court date related to one of Walther’s Walnut Creek traffic tickets occurred two weeks before the attack there.

In 1997 Walther was pulled over for running a stop sign. Two steak knives were found in a duct-tape sheath in his waistband. Court documents from his domestic violence arrest reveal that he threatened his ex-wife, saying, “I’m going to cut you up into little pieces.”

“Be quiet or I’ll cut you up,” the EAR said. He frequently threatened to cut off ears, toes, and fingers.

Walther was either dead or making a Herculean effort not to be found. Holes repeatedly called coroner’s offices to ask if they had any similar-looking John Does. Finally, he tracked down Walther’s only child, an estranged daughter. A detective from the Contra Costa Investigations Unit told the daughter they were looking for her dad because he was owed money from a jail stint he did in 2004. The daughter said she hadn’t spoken to Walther since 2007. He called her once from a pay phone, she said. He was homeless in Sacramento at the time.

Holes asked Sacramento law enforcement agencies if they could dig up any paperwork at all on Walther; transients frequently have small interactions with police. If Walther was homeless in the Sacramento area, his name was probably jotted down on some report. Maybe the notation never made it into the system, but it was buried there somewhere. Finally, Holes got the call.

“We don’t have Walther,” the officer said, “but his brother is listed as a witness in a crime. He lives in a car behind a Union 76 in Antelope.”

Holes took out a copy of the brother’s property deed, which he had in his file on Walther. There was no mortgage associated with the house, as it was passed to the brother through his father. Holes was confused.

“Why would Walther’s brother be homeless?” Holes asked out loud. There was a pause on the phone.

“Are you absolutely sure it was Walther’s brother you were talking to?” Holes asked.

Soon after, the Sacramento Sheriff’s Office called Holes, the call he’d been waiting for. They’d approached Walther’s brother with serious expressions and a mobile fingerprint device, and he’d crumpled and thrown up his hands. He confessed. The thumbprint confirmed it—the homeless man was Jim Walther. They swabbed him and rushed the DNA sample to the lab.

Holes was taking me on a driving tour of the relevant East Bay locations when he stopped the car and pointed out the exact spot in Danville where Walther was found sleeping in his parked Pontiac LeMans on February 2, 1979. Holes still has questions that nag him. Why would someone go underground for eight years just to avoid a thirty-day sentence?

But the most important question, the one he spent eighteen months investigating, has been answered.

“He wasn’t the EAR,” Holes said. He shook his head. “But I tell you, he was the EAR’s shadow.”

We stared at the spot.

“You’re sure they did it right?” I asked about the DNA test.

Holes paused for a fraction of a moment.

“Sacramento is very, very good at what they do,” he said.

We drove on.