فصل 07

7

Visalia

[EDITOR’S NOTE: The following chapter was pieced together from Michelle’s notes and early drafts of “In the Footsteps of a Killer,” a piece Michelle wrote for Los Angeles magazine, originally published in February 2013 and later supplemented online.]

ONE FRIDAY MORNING IN LATE FEBRUARY OF 1977, RICHARD SHELBY was at his desk at the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department when his phone rang. On the other end was a Sergeant Vaughan of the Visalia PD. Vaughan thought he had potentially useful information for their EAR investigation.

From April 1974 until December of the following year, Visalia had been plagued by a rash of bizarre burglaries committed by a young offender they dubbed the Ransacker. The Ransacker struck as many as 130 times over a period of less than two years, but there had been no activity since December of 1975, and the EAR series began in Sacramento just six months later. Moreover, there seemed to be a host of similarities between the two offenders. Perhaps it was an angle worth exploring.

THE RANSACKER WAS AS PROLIFIC AS HE WAS WEIRD. HE OFTEN HIT multiple homes in one night—sometimes four, sometimes five, once as many as a dozen. The Ransacker targeted the same four residential neighborhoods repeatedly. He preferred personal items like photographs and wedding rings, leaving behind things of greater value. Investigators noted that he seemed to have a thing for hand lotion.

But he was a perv with a mean streak, and with an apparent bone to pick with the domestic unit. If there were family photos around, he’d tear them up or hide them, sometimes breaking the picture frames, sometimes stealing the photos entirely. He’d pour orange juice from the refrigerator onto clothing from the closet, like a bratty child with a bad temper. He’d thoroughly trash the place. This seemed to be his paramount objective over theft, hence his moniker. For good measure, he’d remove cash from its hiding places and leave it on the bed. He’d stick to stealing trinkets and personalized jewelry, piggy banks and redeemable Blue Chip stamps. He unplugged appliances and clock radios. He liked to take single earrings from pairs. The Ransacker was big on spite.

The sexual element of the Ransacker’s burglaries was evident in his penchant for rifling through female undergarments, often leaving them strewn about or posed. In one instance, he piled them in a baby’s crib. On another occasion, he neatly laid out the man’s underwear in a line down the hallway, extending from the bedroom to the bathroom. He had a knack for knowing where to find anything in the house that could be used as lubricant—with a particular affinity for Vaseline Intensive Care hand lotion. He was also shrewd; he’d almost always leave more than one point of escape open so that if the homeowners returned before he was finished, he’d have multiple exit options. He’d implement his own makeshift alarm system by placing items like perfume bottles or spray cans on the doorknobs.

In the early morning hours of September 11, 1975, the Ransacker’s criminal path made a frightening pivot.

It was around two a.m. The sixteen-year-old daughter of Claude Snelling, a journalism professor at College of the Sequoias, awoke to find a man straddling her, his gloved hand cupped tightly over her mouth. A knife was pressed against her neck. “You’re coming with me, don’t scream or I’ll stab you,” the ski-masked intruder whispered in a raspy voice. As she began to resist, he produced a gun: “Don’t scream, or I’ll shoot you.” He led her out the back door.

Snelling, alerted by the noise, ran out onto the patio.

“Hey what are you doing, where are you taking my daughter?” he shouted.

The intruder took aim and fired one round. It hit Snelling in the right side of his chest and spun him around. Another shot was fired, and this bullet struck Snelling in his left side, traveling through his arm before piercing his heart and both lungs. He staggered into the house and was dead within minutes. The assailant kicked his victim three times in the face before running away. He was a white male, about five ten, with “angry eyes,” the intended victim reported to police.

Ballistics tests revealed that the handgun used in the crime was a Miroku .38 that had been stolen in a Ransacker burglary ten days earlier. Investigators also learned that in February of that year, Claude Snelling had returned home to find a peeper crouched beneath his daughter’s window. He chased the subject, but lost him in the darkness.

EVIDENCE STRONGLY POINTED TO THE RANSACKER. NIGHTTIME police presence was ramped up, with surveillance units assigned for nocturnal stakeouts. One residence of particular interest was a house that had been targeted three times before on West Kaweah Avenue, in an area of heavy Ransacker activity. On December 10, Detective Bill McGowen startled the Ransacker outside of the house; the suspect vaulted a fence and a chase ensued. When McGowen fired a warning shot the suspect gestured in surrender.

“Oh my God, don’t hurt me,” he squeaked in an oddly mannered, high-pitched voice. “See? My hands are up!”

The baby-faced man turned slightly, sneakily, and drew a gun from his coat pocket, promptly firing it at McGowen. McGowen fell backward and things suddenly went dark. The bullet had struck the officer’s flashlight.

ON JANUARY 9, 1976, VISALIA POLICE DETECTIVES BILL MCGOWEN and John Vaughan rose early and drove three hours south to Parker Center, the LAPD’s headquarters in downtown Los Angeles. McGowen had recently come face-to-face with a criminal whose ability to elude authorities defied the laws of logic and whose capture, it’s fair to say, consumed the entire Visalia Police Department. His encounter with the Ransacker was considered an important break in the case, and so arrangements were made with a special investigative unit of the LAPD for McGowen to undergo hypnosis, with the hope that new details might be elicited.

At Parker Center, the two Visalia detectives met with Captain Richard Sandstrom, director of the LAPD’s hypnosis unit. They briefed Sandstrom on the details. McGowen drew a diagram of the residential neighborhood where his confrontation with the Ransacker took place. A police artist created a composite sketch based on McGowen’s input. The group then convened to room 309. Diagram and composite were laid on the table in front of McGowen. At 11:10 a.m., the hypnosis session began.

Sandstrom quietly encouraged McGowen to relax. Legs were uncrossed, fists unclenched, breathing deepened. He directed the detective’s memory back a month, to the evening of December 10, 1975. That night a half-dozen police officers had been deployed in the neighborhood around Mt. Whitney High School, some in fixed, hidden locations, others on foot, and one in an unmarked vehicle. The goal of the coordinated stakeout was to “detect and apprehend” their greatest adversary, the Visalia Ransacker.

The night before, McGowen had taken a call of particular interest. The caller identified herself as Mrs. Hanley from West Kaweah Avenue. She was calling about shoe tracks. Did he remember what he’d told her about checking around for shoe tracks? He did.

In July the Hanleys’ nineteen-year-old daughter, Donna, had encountered a ski-masked intruder in their backyard. Upon reporting the incident, she was advised by McGowen to check her backyard periodically for shoe tracks and alert him if any turned up. Well, they had.

On the basis of this information, McGowen was assigned to stake out the residence the following evening.

In his chair at the Parker Center, under the hypnotherapist’s guidance, McGowen’s mind eased back into that night.

He chose to position himself in a front-facing garage at 1505 West Kaweah Avenue. He had a feeling the Ransacker might return to the Hanley house, where his tennis-shoe impressions had been observed under Donna’s bedroom window.

At seven p.m. McGowen set up his simple surveillance operation. He kept the garage door open. All the lights were shut off. He sat in the dark, watching the neighbor’s house through a side window but also keeping an eye out for anyone passing the garage. An hour went by. Nothing moved. Another half hour passed.

Then, around eight thirty p.m., a crouching figure crept by the window. McGowen waited. The figure appeared in the garage doorway and looked around. Possibilities cycled through McGowen’s head. The homeowner? A fellow officer? But his eyes had adjusted to the dark and he could see that the figure was dressed in black and crowned with a watch cap.

McGowen observed as the figure moved along the side of the garage, toward the rear of the structure. The subject had a large, ungainly frame, oddly proportioned. McGowen walked outside and followed, shining his flashlight on the figure as he fiddled with a side gate.

Vaughan, his colleague, took notes as McGowen, under hypnosis, recounted what happened next. The surprise confrontation. The chase into the backyard. The scream like a woman’s scream.

“Oh my God! Don’t hurt me!”

“Was it a woman?” Sandstrom, the hypnotist, asked McGowen.

“No,” he said.

McGowen kept his Kel-Lite flashlight fixed on the figure running from him and shouted repeatedly for him to halt. The Ransacker appeared to be hysterical, screaming “Oh my God, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me!” over and over, darting this way and that, finally diving over a short slate fence into an adjacent yard. McGowen grabbed his service revolver from his holster and fired a warning shot into the ground. The Ransacker froze and wheeled around. He raised his right hand in surrender.

“I give up,” he quavered. “See? See, I’ve got my hands up.”

Remembering the moment during hypnosis pulled McGowen into a deeper trance. He fixated on the face illuminated in the beam of his flashlight.

“Baby. Round. Soft-looking baby.”

“Doesn’t even shave.”

“Very light skin. Soft. Round. Baby face.”

“Baby.”

Standing at the fence, McGowen must have been exhilarated. The grueling eighteen-month manhunt was over. He was seconds from collaring a criminal who’d remained so cunningly invisible that more than one officer had wondered if they were chasing a ghost. But the Visalia Ransacker was real. And a bad man. Yet their evil adversary was hardly intimidating in the flesh. A doughboy, McGowen thought, haplessly plodding around begging in a high-pitched whimper for McGowen not to hurt him. McGowen didn’t intend to hurt him. He was a religious man, an old-fashioned, by-the-book cop. The thrill was in knowing the nightmare was over. The creep was toast. McGowen started over the fence to arrest him.

But the Ransacker had raised only his right hand in surrender. With his left hand he withdrew a blue steel revolver from his coat pocket and fired with unambiguous aim straight at McGowen’s chest. Fortunately McGowen had his flashlight at arm’s length in front of him—muscle memory from police training more than anything else. The bullet struck the lens. The force of the shot knocked McGowen back. His partner, alerted by the gunfire, sprinted into the yard and saw McGowen motionless on the ground. Thinking he had been shot, he ran to where he thought the Ransacker had fled, radioing for help at the same time. Suddenly he heard movement behind him. He whipped around. It was McGowen. Powder burns streaked his face. His right eye was red. Otherwise, he was fine.

“There he goes,” McGowen said.

Seventy officers from three different agencies sealed off a six-square-block area. But nothing. The awkwardly built man-child ran away and disappeared into the night—a moth swallowed by the dark—leaving behind a sock full of collectible coins and jewelry, and two books of Blue Chip stamps.

MCGOWEN’S ACCOUNT OF THE RANSACKER’S DISTINCTIVE APPEARANCE and his bizarre manner was consistent with reports of previous close encounters Visalians had with the near-ubiquitous Peeping Tom.

They decided he never went outside during daylight hours. He was that pale. The few people who’d glimpsed him remarked on his complexion. It’s hard to maintain the skin tone of a fish’s underbelly in Visalia, a farm town in central California where temperatures top 100 degrees in the summer. To understand why his pallor marked him as unusual, it helps to know that Visalia is heavily populated with descendants of Dust Bowl refugees. Native Visalians follow an internal clock set by nature. They remember the epic floods. Anticipate the droughts. Lean against pickups and watch ash fall from wildfires torching chaparral and timber forty miles away. The outdoors isn’t a concept but hard fact. Sun damage is shorthand for knowledge and trust. It says, I understand what it means to hedge a citrus tree; I know that to “chop cotton” means to hack weeds from cotton plants with a hoe; I’ve drifted down the St. John’s River on an inner tube, alkali dust from my feet dissolving into water the color of weak coffee.

His paleness conveyed no such local familiarity. It was uncommon and therefore suspicious. It suggested a cloistered life spent plotting. His pursuers in the Visalia Police Department didn’t know who he was or where he shut himself away. They knew he moved around at night. They had a good idea of what drew him out.

To the teenage girls closing their bedroom curtains, he registered as a glint in the shadows. A flicker of stray light that made them pause. But it was hard to see clearly at night. It was sometime in the winter of 1974 when Glenda, a sixteen-year-old who lived on West Feemster, was pulling her curtains shut and happened to glance down, noticing a marbly, moon-shaped object in the bushes. Curious, she raised her bedroom window for a closer inspection. The moon-faced object returned her stare, a screwdriver clenched in its left hand.

Like that, he was gone. Where hard, small eyes had been, there was darkness. Skittering sounds could be heard, like some creature with a muscly tail running from light. Bushes rustled. Fences thudded. The clambering grew fainter, but it didn’t matter. A distress call drowned out everything else. At the time, in 1974, Visalia businesses closed at 9:00 p.m., and trouble was mostly confined to men huddled around irrigation ditches fighting over water rights. But there was no mistaking the sound when you heard it. Movies don’t capture the effect of the real thing. It’s impossible to reproduce in a studio. Conversations stop. Heads jerk. Eardrums pound with dread, for nothing signals terror like a teenage girl’s wild, unrestrained scream in the night.

The paleness of the stranger’s face wasn’t its only unsettling feature. A week after the prowling incident, Glenda’s boyfriend, Carl, was waiting for her outside her house. It was an early autumn evening, warm still, already dark. Glenda’s house was similar to others in the middle-class neighborhood near Mt. Whitney High School in southwest Visalia: single-story, solidly built in the 1950s; at roughly 1,500 square feet, not especially large. Carl sat on the lawn, his presence shadowed in contrast to the glow cast from the brightly lit picture window fronting the house. From his cloaked position in the yard, Carl observed a man emerge from a path that bordered the canal across the street. The man was ambling along but stopped short when his eyes locked on something. Carl followed his absorbed gaze to the window, where Glenda, dressed in a halter top and shorts, was talking with her mother in the living room. The man dropped to his hands and knees.

Carl had been at Glenda’s when she spotted the prowler outside her bedroom; he’d chased him into a neighbor’s yard before losing him in the dark. He knew he was looking at the same man. Even knowing that couldn’t prepare him for what happened next. On his hands and knees, as if magnetized by what he saw in the window, the man began a military-style crawl toward Glenda’s house.

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.