The College Student Theory, by cityofchill
Feb 19, 2015 1:23:20 GMT
xiulan, dbw, and 4 more like this
Post by Deleted on Feb 19, 2015 1:23:20 GMT
I've always thought the EAR was a student at ARC or CSU Sacramento, perhaps attending under the GI Bill. I wrote a fairly long long post that laid out my case for this belief, but deleted the post with the intention of starting a separate thread with it, because it did not fit so well where it was posted. However, I accidentally copied something else before pasting it into my notes and lost the whole thing. Took me quite a while to put together, too.
I laid my case out in point form, and they included things like:
- WITNESSES and victims consistently put the age of the attacker right in the bracket that most college students would also fall into.
- DBW had an encounter with an individual at ARC who was possibly stalking his girlfriend. From what DBW tells us, this girlfriend was probably the intended victim of attack #9, where the offender grabbed the wrong girl and aborted the assault after realizing she was not an ARC student. Our perp clearly had some familiarity with ARC and at least one of its female students.
- BOTH ARC and CSU Sacramento are in EAR hotspots and CSU is a very short distance from Rancho Cordova. If our guy lived on or off-campus, RC would have made sense as the first place he would hit because of its proximity to CSU. I would imagine that many students make/made RC their home due to its proximity to the CSU campus. This could also explain his familiarity with RC even if he did not grow up there. If he went to CSU and lived on-campus, biking or running along the American River would have taken him into the heart of Rancho Cordova. If he went to ARC, he was within walking distance of many of the places where assaults took place. He could have lived in any number of neighbourhoods nearby where the EAR is known to have operated. Both schools make sense as possible institutions he attended. It could have been either/or/both, but my hunch is CSU Sacramento (I take this back. I actually have no reason to believe he went to CSU over ARC and several Sac locals have made good cases for why ARC may make more sense if he was a student at the time), possibly on a scholarship for swimming or another sport, possibly under the GI Bill. Because there is a lot of cross-pollination between post-secondary institutions and their students, especially if they are close to each other geographically , he could have certainly attended one school and still been familiar with students who attended the other. He may have also taken classes at the school he was not attending full-time.
- THE EAR almost never struck during the summer in Sac between '76 and '79, when he would have been off school and perhaps living with family in another town/city or busy with a summer job.
- FULL-time student is perhaps the only pursuit I could see him engaged in where he would be able to keep the hours he kept and not have to work. This is especially true if he had an athletic scholarship. Even today, varsity athletes are often given a pass on grades. The GI Bill also could have paid his way, or perhaps his parents.
- THE notion that he was a student attending under the GI Bill is another theory that could explain his tactical and strategic sophistication. I simply cannot believe that a teenager was that sophisticated a criminal. He either had lots of experience as a burglar (and even that would only explain his uncanny ability to gain entry to homes undetected - it would not account for his ability to do extensive recon, to utilize varied geographical features as tactical allies with amazing profiency, to take control of a crime scene and the people in it so quickly and effectively so many times, etc.). I'm not sure how this kind of thing works in the US, but is it possible for him to have done basic training and perhaps even done his three years or whatever in the service and then attended college in his early-to-mid 20's? Could he be a professional soldier getting his college degree? He also could have possibly been a veteran of Vietnam who enrolled in college full-time after finishing his stint in the service. Is it just coincidence that there are two US Forces bases and two post-secondary education centres (both of which have been tenuously linked to EAR) in the east part of Sacramento?
- THE years during which we know the EAR was active are from '76 to '79 - three years, or the time it takes most students to get a BA. There are also some signs he may have been in the area as early as '75, which would make sense for a four-year H.BA, or a three-year BA that took him a extra year because he was spending so much of his time doing...well, we all know what he was doing with his time and it wasn't studying. Notice when and where his first murder takes place - In 1979, during the summer. The place and time are significant because it shows he has moved on from Sacramento and the Bay Area. The Contra Costa attacks are also significant, especially if you dont believe he lived in that area - and I don't believe he lived in CCC. The EAR may have been feeling the heat in Sac, but he was compelled to keep offending. So he branched out to nearby areas like Modesto, Stockton, CCC, which were a short drive from Sac, but where he didn't have as much heat on him.
I have other ideas that could point to him being a full-time student during the time of the EAR attacks in NoCal, but these are a few of the more compelling. I simply think it is close-to-impossible for him to have been gainfully employed in almost any profession considering the amount of time he spent planning and prepping for his crimes. The timeline also fits - about three-four years in Sac before moving on to a full-time job that did not allow him the freedom to be constantly scouting new victims. Hence, his focus on a few murder victims per year after spring of '79 rather than the dozens of actual and potential rape victims he went after between 76 and 79. He could still satiate his freakish desires, but would not need as much spare time to do so. He switched to part-time murder because graduation demanded he get a full-time job and could no longer be a full-time rapist.
The only other way I could see him making a living that would allow him to offend as often as he did between '76 and '79 is as a professional burglar. We know he was an expert housebreaker and that he broke into many houses where no one was attacked. He may have been active as a professional burglar outside his purview as a rapist, and the money he stole could have kept him afloat. It may have been an arrest in '79 that made him head south in search of other victims. This is the only other way I could see him supporting himself (perhaps drug dealing is another) during his reign of terror as the EAR. But one would imagine that such a prolific criminal would have been caught eventually and one would hope that the cops were paying close attention to house breakers who fit the physical description of the rapist. The stats tell us that, other than assault, burglary is the next most common crime for a serial rapist to have committed. With our guy, he did both at the same time.
I've heard some great theories about jobs our guy could have had that would have given him knowledge of neighbourhoods and the ability to come and go without generating suspicion, but the problem is that all of these jobs require an individual who can show up and work 6-8 hours per day, every day. Based on what we know about our guy during the years he operated as the EAR, could you really see him doing the 9-5 thing, even on a contract basis? I can't. And that is one of the ways I used deduction to arrive at him being a full-time college student during his EAR phase.
What do other members think?
I laid my case out in point form, and they included things like:
- WITNESSES and victims consistently put the age of the attacker right in the bracket that most college students would also fall into.
- DBW had an encounter with an individual at ARC who was possibly stalking his girlfriend. From what DBW tells us, this girlfriend was probably the intended victim of attack #9, where the offender grabbed the wrong girl and aborted the assault after realizing she was not an ARC student. Our perp clearly had some familiarity with ARC and at least one of its female students.
- BOTH ARC and CSU Sacramento are in EAR hotspots and CSU is a very short distance from Rancho Cordova. If our guy lived on or off-campus, RC would have made sense as the first place he would hit because of its proximity to CSU. I would imagine that many students make/made RC their home due to its proximity to the CSU campus. This could also explain his familiarity with RC even if he did not grow up there. If he went to CSU and lived on-campus, biking or running along the American River would have taken him into the heart of Rancho Cordova. If he went to ARC, he was within walking distance of many of the places where assaults took place. He could have lived in any number of neighbourhoods nearby where the EAR is known to have operated. Both schools make sense as possible institutions he attended. It could have been either/or/both, but my hunch is CSU Sacramento (I take this back. I actually have no reason to believe he went to CSU over ARC and several Sac locals have made good cases for why ARC may make more sense if he was a student at the time), possibly on a scholarship for swimming or another sport, possibly under the GI Bill. Because there is a lot of cross-pollination between post-secondary institutions and their students, especially if they are close to each other geographically , he could have certainly attended one school and still been familiar with students who attended the other. He may have also taken classes at the school he was not attending full-time.
- THE EAR almost never struck during the summer in Sac between '76 and '79, when he would have been off school and perhaps living with family in another town/city or busy with a summer job.
- FULL-time student is perhaps the only pursuit I could see him engaged in where he would be able to keep the hours he kept and not have to work. This is especially true if he had an athletic scholarship. Even today, varsity athletes are often given a pass on grades. The GI Bill also could have paid his way, or perhaps his parents.
- THE notion that he was a student attending under the GI Bill is another theory that could explain his tactical and strategic sophistication. I simply cannot believe that a teenager was that sophisticated a criminal. He either had lots of experience as a burglar (and even that would only explain his uncanny ability to gain entry to homes undetected - it would not account for his ability to do extensive recon, to utilize varied geographical features as tactical allies with amazing profiency, to take control of a crime scene and the people in it so quickly and effectively so many times, etc.). I'm not sure how this kind of thing works in the US, but is it possible for him to have done basic training and perhaps even done his three years or whatever in the service and then attended college in his early-to-mid 20's? Could he be a professional soldier getting his college degree? He also could have possibly been a veteran of Vietnam who enrolled in college full-time after finishing his stint in the service. Is it just coincidence that there are two US Forces bases and two post-secondary education centres (both of which have been tenuously linked to EAR) in the east part of Sacramento?
- THE years during which we know the EAR was active are from '76 to '79 - three years, or the time it takes most students to get a BA. There are also some signs he may have been in the area as early as '75, which would make sense for a four-year H.BA, or a three-year BA that took him a extra year because he was spending so much of his time doing...well, we all know what he was doing with his time and it wasn't studying. Notice when and where his first murder takes place - In 1979, during the summer. The place and time are significant because it shows he has moved on from Sacramento and the Bay Area. The Contra Costa attacks are also significant, especially if you dont believe he lived in that area - and I don't believe he lived in CCC. The EAR may have been feeling the heat in Sac, but he was compelled to keep offending. So he branched out to nearby areas like Modesto, Stockton, CCC, which were a short drive from Sac, but where he didn't have as much heat on him.
I have other ideas that could point to him being a full-time student during the time of the EAR attacks in NoCal, but these are a few of the more compelling. I simply think it is close-to-impossible for him to have been gainfully employed in almost any profession considering the amount of time he spent planning and prepping for his crimes. The timeline also fits - about three-four years in Sac before moving on to a full-time job that did not allow him the freedom to be constantly scouting new victims. Hence, his focus on a few murder victims per year after spring of '79 rather than the dozens of actual and potential rape victims he went after between 76 and 79. He could still satiate his freakish desires, but would not need as much spare time to do so. He switched to part-time murder because graduation demanded he get a full-time job and could no longer be a full-time rapist.
The only other way I could see him making a living that would allow him to offend as often as he did between '76 and '79 is as a professional burglar. We know he was an expert housebreaker and that he broke into many houses where no one was attacked. He may have been active as a professional burglar outside his purview as a rapist, and the money he stole could have kept him afloat. It may have been an arrest in '79 that made him head south in search of other victims. This is the only other way I could see him supporting himself (perhaps drug dealing is another) during his reign of terror as the EAR. But one would imagine that such a prolific criminal would have been caught eventually and one would hope that the cops were paying close attention to house breakers who fit the physical description of the rapist. The stats tell us that, other than assault, burglary is the next most common crime for a serial rapist to have committed. With our guy, he did both at the same time.
I've heard some great theories about jobs our guy could have had that would have given him knowledge of neighbourhoods and the ability to come and go without generating suspicion, but the problem is that all of these jobs require an individual who can show up and work 6-8 hours per day, every day. Based on what we know about our guy during the years he operated as the EAR, could you really see him doing the 9-5 thing, even on a contract basis? I can't. And that is one of the ways I used deduction to arrive at him being a full-time college student during his EAR phase.
What do other members think?