questersite

The Hunt for NORCAL Rapist– Step by Step

Posted on August 21, 2018 by questerg

It was my desire to upload the NorCal Rapist section of Quester Files all at once, at the end of my initial investigation. However, I will have to do so incrementally as information unfolds.

From phone calls, emails, snail mail, I have been able to deduce that nobody has officially worked the case for over a decade. More than one person at Martinez Police, though polite, were adamant that the Halloween case 1996 was not their case. They had never heard of it. I sohuld contact the sheriffs. Soon, however, I got a call back confirming they had found the case file in their records. They refused to confirm, even the basics that are usually contained in newspaper accounts or on America’s Most Wanted. The Martinez Gazette could find nothing, and I still need to wade through the archives of the Vallejo Times Herald to see if they did an article on it in 1996.

Of course, the basics of the street name, time, date, are standard items in the newspapers for when a crime is committed, and that is all that was requested. Newspaper accounts have related the street name in Chico, plus the time of the attack there in July 1997, but the date was absent and I still wait on that date to be confirmed. News reported on the Sacramento and Rohnert Park cases as well, so there is enough information to begin there.

I must also check to see if Vallejo Times Herald did an article on the February 1992 strike in Vallejo. According to Police Records, everything from that era was purged.

I also requested the case numbers so that I could check with the District Attorney’s Office about which cases were still active. After my site goes up, I need to forward any information that comes in to the jurisdiction that can still legally prosecute. Some refused to give the case number though it is only a reference number which the DA’s Office would need to check if the complaint was filed with them.

Solano County DA’s office was skeptical that DNA was filed against in the Vallejo case. I could not check with Contra Costa County since Martinez Police would not qualify anything, but I would suspect that the DNA was filed against. Davis refused to give the case numbers, so it is impossible to check with the DA in Yolo County. Sacramento filed against the DNA, so I am told, but (when I called) the man on the phone never heard of the case and suggested I email the DA office’s general email, which allows anybody there to answer. None did.

Geoprofiling will begin with those cases where enough information exists. Those that will be first are Rohnert Park. News cameras went out with the victim and it was easy to identify the condo complex as the 1300 block of Parkway Drive. Chico will be next– it occurred on West Sacramento Ave. Sacramento’s strike occurred on Ivycrest– it was reported in the news at the time and TV news cameras followed the events so that it is easy to identify the actual house. I do not identify homes publicly, so that information will be withheld.

Circumstances can always be qualified, but the privacy of the individual cannot be compromised. Anything of such a nature that compromises the identity of the victim I do not share.

I will be working press contacts, etc, to get enough information to put this case on the radar where it belongs. As the cases go up and gain notoriety more information will hopefully come in that will allow the dossier on this villain to be completed.

Please see previous posts on NorCal Rapist to get an idea of what this home invasion rapist and terrorist was like.

Vital information includes the street name of the attack, confirmation of the dates for Chico, Woodland, and Vallejo, and for Davis the street where the bank was located where NorCal was photo’d by the ATM camera when he drained the victim’s account on January 25, 1997.

A decade ago there was once a Myspace page on the crimes which has vanished. The information came from several of the victims. Hopefully, some of that information can eventually be found.

* * *

Since 1990 Gian J. Quasar has investigated a broad range of mysterious subjects, from strange disappearances to serial murders, earning in that time the unique distinction of being likened to “the real life Kolchak.” However, he is much more at home with being called The Quester or Q Man. “He’s bloody eccentric, an historian with no qualifications who sticks his nose into affairs and gets results.” He is the author of several books, one of which inspired a Resolution in Congress.

EAR-ONS Begins– Does Snelling Explain Zitka?

Posted on August 11, 2018 by questerg

Except with minor reservations the attack on Victim 1 (Zitka) on June 18, 1976, in Rancho Cordova had been accepted for 40 years as the East Area Rapist’s first strike. There were a number of hallmarks of the beginner. One of the most interesting was the fact the perp attempted to cut the telephone wire leading into the house from the pole running along the backyard fence. He failed when the birdbath he set under it (in order to stand on it and reach it) gave way. He then whittled the kitchen doorframe and got in the house. Yet therein he paradoxically did not cut the phone wires from the phones.

At the time, the investigating cops thought it a local kid.

However, the attack on EAR “Victim 1” is now lost in the center of a shuffled deck of crime cards. It now seems that EAR was the Visalia Ransacker and with this he was the perp who attempted to kidnap Beth Snelling in September 1975 in Visalia. In the process the Ransacker was pursued by her father, Claude Snelling, and the Ransacker shot him down and murdered him.

Between that September 1975 and June 1976 there aren’t any such home invasion crimes of a similar nature by the Visalia Ransacker. He appears to be up to his usual prowling, but no attempts to abduct a woman from her house. The EAR may or may not have been the October 21, 1975, rapist on the 2600 block of Dawes Street in Rancho Cordova.

Therefore we have an interesting transition period between September 1975 and June 1976. The 2 poles are Snelling on South Whitney Drive in Visalia and EAR’s first strike on Paseo Drive on Victim 1 Zitka in Rancho Cordova.

As more and more acrimony is being directed at Joe DeAngelo, the accused EAR-ONS, many are convinced he was the VR and hence the murderer of Claude Snelling. The EAR was most certainly the perp against EAR Victim 1.

Therefore it is very likely that the attack on Victim 1 in Rancho Cordova on June 18, 1976, was the first major strike EAR/VR committed since the botched Snelling assault. The amateurishness (in appearance) of EAR’s attack on Victim 1 requires therefore some interpretation. Was it intentional to make it look like a newb was beginning a crime spree? Or is this attributing too much cunning to EAR? Or is it the result of lessons learned?

For those who continue to follow the case– how neatly can the transition period between VR and EAR be sewn together? How can one work into the picture the October 1975 rape (originally regarded as his first for about a year in 1976-1977)? Or should that case be thrown out?

* * *

160M Dollar Painting and D.B. Cooper.

Posted on August 5, 2018 by questerg

Say half in earnest, half in wondert, I reposted on Twitter the article introducing the Willem de Kooning stolen painting and the mystery of its discovery in the possession of a humble small town Arizona couple’s bedroom, provoking people to consider the picture of the couple (photographed therein) and the remarkable resemblance of the man to D.B. Cooper.

PhotoELF Edits: 2011:08:02 — Save – Overwrite — crop; paint; resize 2011:08:02 — Save – Overwrite — crop; paint

The 160M dollar painting “Woman in Ochre” was stolen on Thanksgiving 1985 by a couple who committed a genuinely high-risk heist in an art museum. The woman waylaid the guard with questions while the man went into the display room and cut the painting out. They sped off in a red sportscar.

The man was said to be about 54 years old. The woman was younger.

Go back in time to Thanksgiving (Eve) 1971. D.B. Cooper, said to be about 40 years old, makes the high risk heist of skyjacking Northwest Orient’s local milk run flight from Portland to Seattle. He extorts 200K from Northwest, takes off with the crew as the sole passenger and somewhere before Portland, as the airliner flew back south, jumps out of the plane and is never seen again.

Rumors persisted that at La Center, Washington, a small plane was seen days before the skyjacking to make landings in a field, answering the signals of the headlights of a car. Was this a rehearsal for escape? Did Cooper have an accomplice?

D. B. Cooper planned the skyjacking meticulously. He told the captain how to fly the plane with its flaps down at the right angle, and knew that of all airliners this one in particular had a rear door that could be opened in flight. From there he bailed out never to be seen again.

The couple who had the 160M de Kooning, Jerry Alter and Rita Alter, kept meticulous records. On their public school pay they had traveled around the world to 140 countries, and had about 1 million bucks in their bank account. They lived a quiet, private life, and never spoke much with the other residence of the small town.

Jerry Alter also looked remarkably like D.B. Cooper.

So what do you think? Do you think the link should at least be looked into?

* * *

Clickbait Solution– The Bermuda Triangle and Rogue Waves.

Posted on August 3, 2018 by questerg

In my first book Into the Bermuda Triangle (2003 McGraw-Hill) I introduced the theory of rogue waves as follows:

“The oceans of the world are always in motion, but the unpredictability of this movement is more true in the Triangle than anywhere else. Dr. Hans Grabber, of the University of Miami extension on Key Biscayne, is the world’s foremost authority on rogue waves. “Rogue Wave” is rather self-explanatory: it doesn’t travel with the pack, it is volatile and its actions are unpredictable. Dr. Grabber’s studies have lead him to be able to predict where rogue waves are most likely to strike. Among the most probable areas are those near strong currents, like the Gulf Stream, and on the leeward side of islands, of which the Bermuda Triangle can boast thousands (the Bahamas are comprised of 700 islands on their own). As an example of their volatility, he notes that in 1994 a huge rogue wave slammed into Daytona Beach, Florida, on what was an otherwise calm and perfect day weather-wise. Other examples of rogue waves involve the Bahamian cruise ship Europa which in November 1999 was slammed abeam. These rogue waves have been noted to attain heights in excess of 100 feet, as seen in the case of the Dutch passenger liner Rotterdamn which was hit by one back in 1977.”

This paragraph above contained in Into the Bermuda Triangle (2003 McGraw-Hill) was basically more than enough attention given to the subject. In addition to this, and indeed coming years before it, was a page on my original Bermuda Triangle website on the disappearance of the s.s. Poet in 1980 in which the US Coast Guard speculated that rogue wave might have hit the vessel abeam and sent her keelover.

They had reason, for all the evidence indicated that Poet vanished north of Bermuda on October 26, 1980, around this time the ketch Wandering Angus was capsized by a rogue wave that came from nowhere. However, Bart Dunbar, the skipper survived to tell the tale. By comparison the huge (520-foot) grain ship vanished.

Rogue Waves would tend to exist in the area of the Gulf Stream where the warm stream collides with the colder climates of the Atlantic off North Carolina. In the Marine Board of Investigation report on the Poet’s disappearance, the US Coast Guard explains the North Wall Phenomenon.

“The North Wall phenomenon is one of rapidly increasing wind and seas in the area of the northern boundary of the Gulf Stream where the sea surface temperatures can change dramatically. In such a region of large surface temperature contrast, a potential for damaging and volatile weather frequently exists. When cold air flows over this narrow zone of warm water, the air is rapidly warmed and rises. The rising air displaces the heavier, colder air aloft which descends generating strong, gusty winds at the surface.”

Illustration of s.s. Poet from Into the Bermuda Triangle (2003, McGraw-Hill)

The theory of “rogue waves” is an old one, and it may apply to only a few cases of boats sailing in susceptible waters. But for those to claim “scientists” have solved the Bermuda Triangle mystery with the theory is pure clickbait. It is the product of skimming my old book and taking only one theory out of many. As the word “disappearance” implies, there is no evidence. No one can investigate a disappearance; only the circumstances surrounding a disappearance. No “scientist” could possibly have been involved in the egregious clickbait claims. There is no evidence for “rogue waves” except in a few cases where the crew survived to tell of it.

Investigating the circumstances of hundreds of disappearances in the Triangle opens the door on a number of disturbing theories. There is no single solution.

Boats and ships of all sizes vanish all over the area of the Triangle, many over shallow water, and leave no trace to suggest anything but mystery. That is why the Bermuda Triangle has its reputation to this day.

I longed for the time when I might distance my name from the Triangle, but had I not removed my original website a few years ago to place only a sample on Q Files perhaps I could have prevented this absolute rubbish from getting out there.

* * *

The ZODIAC– Signs of Frustration

Posted on August 2, 2018 by questerg

I know my HorrorScope updates are frustrating for some, but they serve a purpose. They reflect the frustrations of actually outing a major serial killer and solving a cold case. The genre has been choked books that claimed “Solved” and present nothing but hypothesis and accusation.

As the recent solution to EAR-ONS has shown, the people are tired of that. Cold case investigators and the public want solution for real . . .not just claims of it for S&M purposes. Few in the reading audience buy into the claims on a book’s cover anymore. They don’t believe for obvious reasons– the claim of “solution” has failed way too many times.

As more web sleuths get refined in their search for cold case information, they have become more in tuned to what is required in a thesis to start the process rolling for investigating a person of interest. They understand the power of DNA. Compare now this experience with your usual run of the mill cold case accusation “solved” book and it is apparent the authors merely stews in their own theorizing and don’t have enough except to incite some curiosity. The subject of the book really only rates “person of interest” status and not “solved.” With today’s ability to chase down DNA, it is easy to mark a person of interest off the list. Books that rely on just causing suspicion about an individual are now obsolete.

For me, it is not enough that I have moral certainty and even hand printing from a much later date. I wish vintage hand printing circa 1964-1967. This has caused the delay. It is one needed both for the thesis promised to Law Enforcement and for presentation to the public in my own thesis.

Another delay is that I said I would deliver a thesis outlining how I came to Zodiac and why there is no doubt even without DNA that this man presented herein is the infamous, bragging Zodiac Killer. This thesis could be up to 30 pages. It is to stimulate a behind-the-scenes official investigation.

Although everybody wants the case solved, there is human nature. We have to accept it. I’ve already been warned in another case that the wagons are being circled around it because I have inquired about it. Everybody wants these cases solved, but some want to be the one to solve it. It is the nature of the beast. You work within this atmosphere. You do not rail against it.

Books that promise “solution” based on mere suspicion are easy to put out. Unequivocal solution takes times and intricate steps. I don’t mind the delays, as frustrating as they are. And the updates, as frustrating as they may be, help to impose upon you as well that the solution, absolute and unequivocal, is preparing to be presented.

In the next blog post let’s discuss what must be done to “officially solve” the Zodiac’s identity. Actually, DNA legally cannot do it on its own in this case.

* * *

The True Mindset of NorCal Rapist

Posted on July 28, 2018 by questerg

From my last major blog on NorCal Rapist the reader no doubt got the impression I dislike the “psychological profile” that has been asserted about him– namely that he deluded himself into believing that his home invasion rapes were consensual. This psycho profile has been asserted only once, so it is not something dominant, but sadly this one time is the only time there has been any kind of in depth review of this lost case.

I dislike this profile because it is false. But more than this it is a certain type of falsehood that creates a very dangerous effect– it minimizes NorCal’s evil.

Fortunately such psycho profiles are fading, put in place in an era in which metaphor was still heavily being used by psychiatry as a base off which to theorize. A particularly horrid example is the metaphor of the bed. In the 1950s it was a metaphor for “mother.” So when a kid wet his bed he was subconsciously saying he hates momma. Yet later it was discovered that when certain allergens were taken away from the child, the bed wetting stopped. The rather obvious deduction was made: bed wetting was the result of the “sneezing” of an allergic bladder.

But before such strides were made in medicine, can you imagine how many children and how many mothers were given a guilt trip over the event of bed wetting?

In 2005, Dr. Richard McNally (Harvard) and Dr. Grant Devilly (Duke), testified before the supreme court in order to bring it up to date on the recent outlooks within the business of psychology. McNally declared of “repressed memory” that is did not exist. It was the biggest “bit of folklore to ever infect psychology and psychiatry.”

Yet for 100 years psychologists believed that people could forget (repress) traumatic experiences. Though individually none had ever treated a case of it, collectively they must have believed that it was always some other shrink that had the cases. When the data was finally collated, it was discovered no psychologist ever had a case. On the contrary, real studies showed that victims of traumatic experiences wanted to forget them but couldn’t (not surprisingly).

These are just two examples where past theories that had been used to interpret real life events had crumbled to actual data collation and logic.

Even with the minimal amount that is known about NorCal rapist’s dialog with his victims, and what can be deduced (so far) about his modus operandi of selecting them, it is clear he knew well that he was breaking and entering, terrorizing and raping his victims against their will. His sarcastic little tauntings make it plain, just as his image in the ATM camera testifies to his intent.

While draining one victim’s account in 1997 (using her ATM card), he put back in place the smiling Mardi Gras mask to conceal his features. He turned this way and that to reveal he had a mask on and had outguessed those who would see this film and try and follow him.

NorCal knew well that he stalked, bound and gagged, terrorized, raped, and robbed his victims . . . and he enjoyed it for those reasons. He took the necessary precautions to avoid being followed. With his last victims he took them into the shower and tried to wash them clean.

Either the Martinez victim or the idea of attacking on Halloween excited him enough that he broke his pattern and struck on a weekday night. Here he wore a plastic skull mask. This bit of drama began a new pattern in him. At the next victim he would wear the jubilating Mardi Gras mask. It fit with the theatricality he had displayed, it blended better in the early morning at the ATM while he robbed the victim.

Two months after his Halloween 1996 strike the movie Scream would premiere. It would feature a similar MO– someone lurking outside the house, peeping in the windows and mysteriously appearing inside dressed in a Halloween costume and ghost mask. This perhaps helps you envision him in action . . .except in real life. A month later at the end of January 1997 he would wear the smiling Mardi Gras mask and strike in Davis, California. This was the closest together of all of his attacks– Martinez, Davis. He was on a roll now. In July he would strike in far away Chico, another college town like Davis.

Something had clearly changed in him after his first taste of theatricality. His first victim had been in June 1991, the second in February 1992 (at which he wore nothing more dramatic than a ski mask). Martinez was his third, Davis a few months later his fourth, Chico his fifth . . . but the roll stopped here.

(The year of his aborted Woodland strike has been lost; still searching for it.)

He then vanished again until 2000 and returned to Davis. Did he have victims in the interim? I don’t know. He threatened his victims at the end that if they went to the police there would be trouble. He reminded them that he knew what they looked like. They didn’t know what he looked like. Some may have been cowed from going to the authorities. But his threat above, confirmed by Victim 1, makes it plain he knew this wasn’t consensual.

NorCal was a premeditative, cautious, and self indulgent rapist. The home invasion serials are the most careful, cleverest, and hardest to find. It’s time to get much more information out there of this performing, taunting rapist.

* * *

EAR-ONS– The Trial(s) in Sacramento and Tribulations in Orange County

Posted on July 20, 2018 by questerg

Months ago in my article Justice Means Just Us I touched on a few points of what it was like to be behind-the-scenes investigating EAR-ONS. It was not a popular case until recently, and there had to be a lot of pioneering just to be able to put in place the actual crimes of the villain. There had only been one TV doc back in 2009, and the books that had been published thereafter were all self published. Those sell a few hundred copies at best. Until the 48 Hours TV spot in April 2017, which used my investigation as source at the urging of Michelle Cruz, there was nothing of significance on TV since 2009.

In between, there were two websites that offered basic information and for one a tip line. After my website went up in 2015, an avalanche began. Not only was I able to communicate freely with investigators in a couple of jurisdictions, I learned how dedicated they were to finding EAR-ONS. Orange County’s DA Homicide Cold Case Unit were particularly dedicated. They were (and are) located in Santa Ana at the police department. They are not involved in what follows. I want that made clear.

With my first contact with the FBI, I realized there was something implicit in the attitude of law enforcement. They weren’t going to tailor any information for those on blogs and message boards. Believe me, I had already learned from experience (from bizarre emails) that there was some strange communal reinforcement among the cranks on message boards that by chattering about the case during the years of its obscurity they had made it famous. In fact, their rivalrous attitudes scared official investigators more than in other cases. I’ve discovered that the alias nature of the boards makes it a perfect breeding ground for people who are outrageously obtuse, incredibly rivalrous, and as such remarkably spontaneous. They seem to have their own inbred concept of expertise and relevance.

Unfortunately, someone catered to the rivalrous nature that dominated this realm, and this book I’ll Be Gone in the Dark is sluiced with statements so boastful in nature that the misconduct of what they implied against Orange County was lost on the writers. Despite the hype of publicists, Michelle McNamara did not have a broad knowledge of the EAR-ONS case. Apparently she just spent most of her time off and on trying to pillage Orange County’s records. Statements are made in the book that she obtained (“borrowed”) and went through without oversight 37 boxes of files that are variously attributed to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department lockers or to the Prosecutor’s office.

Months ago I warned in my article what a defense attorney could make out of such claims. Those and other statements and actions imply missteps on the part of Orange County’s handling of evidence. McNamara also claimed to have obtained a copy of EAR’s DNA profile and this was published in the book as the hook for outing EAR’s identity. My article deals with how this was inaccurate DNA and probably completely bogus DNA.

However to the ultimate point here– a former assistant DA for Orange County has now written a letter to Sacramento’s DA, Anne Marie Shubert, warning her not to combine the Sacramento cases and the Orange county cases. His reason: “past prosecutorial missteps” in Orange County which had gotten murder charges overturned. His warning may be politically motivated, but there are no questions that such things happened in Orange County back in 2012, and the egregious boasts in McNamara’s book imply that evidence and police files were free for “borrowing” by a civilian in the 4 murder cases they had for Original Night Stalker– the East Area Rapist.

Both DeAngelo’s defense attorneys and the prosecutors know of the statements in the book.

In my article I warned how the prosecution would have to be prepared to defend against the claims in McNamara’s book, not just the boastful and rivalrous statements regarding the documents she obtained but they must also expose the false assertions that she had been heavily involved behind-the-scenes and was therefore really in any position to get what is claimed in the book. From statements in the book, she apparently did little else between 2011 and January 2016 except try and get more folders of files from Orange County. She conducted a few interviews in between and mostly tried to use the bogus DNA she had to trace EAR’s family.

The superficiality of the book rankled those who had truly been involved, especially when it was coupled by the outrageous promotions. But now it could get worse. The boasts in the book could jeopardize the case against Joseph DeAngelo. It is not enough that the DA’s office in Sacramento says the book had nothing to do with solving the case. They should take heed from the warnings and combine as many of the cases as they can against DeAngelo in Sacramento and begin to take to task the misinformation. . .

There is much that McNamara probably would not have admitted to in her book had she lived to publish it herself. A living author would have been ruined by some of the claims, and then the exposure of the DNA as false would have completely exposed any author as having been superficial. But the book was written and published by others who seemed more interested in one-upping the rivalrous nature of the message boards. And they seem to have been blind to the ramifications of their claims that they had, through McNamara’s files, enough admissible evidence from the official lockers to be in a race with the police to catch EAR-ONS.

Now the sham is going to have to come out in open court just to protect the labor of decades of those who really sought the ultimate Night Predator. McNamara NEVER had EAR’s DNA. He was NEVER German-English as she asserted in a 2011 podcast based on the false DNA she had. And it is (hopefully) unlikely that she was trotting out the doors at Orange County with a minivan full of restricted evidence.

Famous crime sprees have had dozens of books written about them, giving the dedicated reader much information to balance and determine on a curve who really was an investigative reporter in their books. Unfortunately, there’s only been ONE for EAR-ONS. Had I’ll be Gone in the Dark been only one of a couple dozen books that followed before the case was solved, it would have long been dismissed as a shallow and ill thought installment. But sadly I fear the combined DA’s will have to deal with it, and this will mean dividing trials.

* * *