12-26-75 addresses the "Mongoloid" description confusion
Jun 5, 2018 9:13:59 GMT
qmanfan, crackerjack, and 5 more like this
Post by greyclay on Jun 5, 2018 9:13:59 GMT
A lengthy post, but hopefully a valuable one.
I have made 3-4 (much shorter!) posts like this, as have many others.
These posts have been trying to help put this issue to rest, but it keeps reappearing at least on a weekly (and sometimes a daily) basis.
At the very least I hope this thread can just be linked to the next time the description of the VR as a "Mongoloid" comes up.
We wanted to expand on something that we discussed in episode 17 regarding the long-term effect of law enforcement statements that the VR was not the same offender as the EAR. This goes back to episode 11, and the discussion of the “Burgess” brothers as VR and Snelling suspects. One of the brothers matched the prowler description given by the Biology student we called “Mike,” who was home for the holiday break in December, 1975, when the original composite and description of the VR ran in the Visalia Times-Delta. “Mike” contacted VPD, and shared his story of confronting a prowler in the fall of 1973 or 1974 at his girlfriend’s house. Further statements were taken from “Mike,” his girlfriend, and a neighbor in January and September, 1976. In September, all three positively identified “Peter Burgess” as that prowler by sight, and “Mike” also identified his voice, and accent from a tape.
“Peter Burgess” admitted to being that prowler, but denied being the VR, or ever entering any houses. His brother denied all involvement with the VR and Snelling cases. VPD were able to confirm their alibis, and completely clear both of them. They were cleared by the time the first EAR story broke in November, 1976. At that point, VPD knew that their offender had moved north, and they requested reports of the EAR cases from Sacramento. That should have been the end of the “Burgess” story, but it wasn’t.
It appears that the “Burgess” story has lingered for two reasons. First, VPD never told “Mike” that “Peter Burgess” had been cleared, and he continued to believe that the prowler he encountered was the VR, and that’s the story he told for 40 years. Second, VPD gave Sacramento some of their reports on the VR and Snelling cases, hoping they could spot a common suspect. Instead, the EAR Task Force became singularly focused on “Peter Burgess.” We’re not sure how, but they failed to understand that “Burgess” had been cleared, and was not the VR. Vaughan and McGowen assumed that the task force was looking at the VR descriptions given by “Jane Smith,” Beth Snelling, Agent McGowen, and “Jane Smith’s” father, but instead, they were obsessed with an unrelated prowler. This could have been easily cleared up with a simple conversation, but, as we reported again in episode 17, the task force refused to talk to VPD after their initial meeting in May, 1977.
More recently, starting about 20 years ago, cold case detectives and a private investigator realized the disconnect between the “Peter Burgess” description, and the actual contemporaneous VR witness descriptions. The “Burgess” brothers were contacted, many times, by multiple investigators to confirm their elimination. That included voluntarily giving DNA samples, and going over the process that cleared them. They did this again, and again, for 20 years as the rumors died out then reignited, and new investigators came on the cases. They have been hounded and accused of murder for 40 years, and they were, and are, 100% innocent of any involvement in the cases. We confirmed all of this with one of the brothers, Sgt. Vaughan, current VPD, and Larry Pool when we first started looking at the Exeter/VR connection.
Quoted: ["I snipped the description out of a presentation I gave to the working group to save me typing. Ofc McGowan’s description is on the left, the student’s description is on the right."]
So, why was Paul Holes still telling work groups, TV producers, pro boards, and podcast audiences in 2017 that “Mike” saw the VR, and thus, by implication, that “Peter Burgess” was the VR, and killed Claude Snelling? We have absolutely no idea.
This is a version of the same story told by Richard Shelby over many years - the VR was identified, but VPD just couldn’t make a case against him. This always refers to the same cleared suspects, the “Burgess” brothers. You could drive a truck through the logic hole here. Why would VPD have contacted Sacramento the moment they heard about the EAR if the “Burgess” brothers were still viable suspects? As you’ve heard from the newspaper accounts, Vaughan and McGowen were, and remained POSITIVE that the VR was the EAR. They never wavered. This is so simple, and easy to understand, and Vaughan has been repeating it to an endless number of investigators for 40 years.
We know for a fact that Holes had multiple copies of the VPD reports showing the positive IDs of “Mike’s” prowler, so Holes did know exactly who “Peter Burgess” was. We’ve been told by several people that they explained to Holes that “Burgess” had been cleared, multiple times, across 40 years, and that “Mike’s” prowler description was irrelevant to the VR and Snelling cases. Yet, Holes kept using “Mike’s” story, and description as a major part of his evidence to prove that the VR was not the EAR. You know whose story and VR description Holes did not tell? Beth Snelling’s. We may have missed it, but we can’t find one time prior to DeAngelo’s arrest, that Holes brought up that home invasion kidnapping and murder. He consistently omitted every detail from the one person who spent the most time with the VR, and the attack that most closely resembled the EAR’s MO. In fact, last year on the podcast “Casefiles” Case 53, Bonus Interview #2, Holes said:
“There are two very credible witnesses that saw, or face to face with him, in decent lighting, saw his face. Saw entire physique, his entire build. And they both consistently describe him as: He had this, you know, round face, with pug nose and funny looking ears, and kind of a hunk neck. And just rounded shoulders, and fat through the hips, and fat through the thighs, and fat butt and short, fat fingers.
One of the witnesses was Officer McGowen gets shot by the Visalia Ransacker, and the other was a 22 year old Anthropology student. You know someone who at least has some training in taking a look at humans, right? More so than the a… (trails off) And this person, this anthropology student, he says that he looks kind of “mongoloid” to him. He had mongoloid-type features, and his behaviors were weird, and he’s acting… he’s talking in a high woman’s voice… and, he’s acting kind of scared, and “Don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me,” and screaming like a woman when he’s being confronted. That is not who the East Area Rapist is… The East Area Rapist is a dominant personality. Once he gets the women and men under control, he is dominating them.
While we agree that Beth did not get a good look at his face, that’s about all we can agree with there. In fact, that entire statement was, and is shocking to us. Did Paul Holes know next to nothing about the VR, or was he intentionally telling about a quarter of the VR’s story when asked for his evidence that the VR could not have been the EAR?
Let’s break down some of the problems with that statement.
1. There were four credible witnesses who saw the VR’s “entire physique, his entire build,” not two. They were, in order, “Jane Smith,” who was shoved aside by him as she encountered him on the stairs of her family’s garage apartment in July, 1975, Beth Snelling, who was awakened by him lying on top of her, smothering her. He dragged her from her bed and house, and Beth watched as he shot her father, and calmly walked away. She watched the VR until he was out of her sight. She was able to see him well in the dark because the bathroom and outdoor porch lights were on. The VR was also seen by VPD Agent McGowen who had him at gunpoint, and got in the shootout with him, and “Jane Smith’s” father, who heard the commotion next door, and witnessed the VR running in his backyard, and diving over a hedge.
2. The “Anthropology” student, “Mike,” was a 20 or 21 year old biology undergrad at the time he saw “Burgess,” not specially trained in identifying humans. Also, for the very last time, “Mike” did not see the VR.
3. The physical description Holes attributes to McGowen, is not from McGowen’s dictated report from the night of the incident, it’s from another officer’s report written after McGowen’s hypnosis session in January, 1976. There is no question that details of “Mike’s” December, 1975 and January, 76 descriptions of “Peter Burgess” got mixed into that hypnosis report, which again, was not written by McGowen. We’ve read on the podcast, and posted McGowen’s December, 1975 description of the VR. It’s consistent with that of Beth Snelling, “Jane Smith,” and “Jane Smith’s” father. Those are the descriptions of all of the confirmed witnesses who saw the physical build of the VR.
4. The statement that the EAR was a dominant personality, and that the VR was not, relates to Holes’ additional “proof” that the VR was not the EAR - that they were not the same type of offender. Apparently, Holes was unaware of the EAR attack on August 29, 1976. The mother of his teenaged target refused to be tied up, and fought with him even as he was beating her with a billy club (which matched the description of one stolen by the VR in 1975). She said if the EAR had been unarmed, she could have handled him. She also said that as they fought, his voice got higher, and shaky, like he was nervous or scared. That was 8 months after the McGowen shootout. It seems that the offender’s bravado melted away when confronted by an assertive adult, even an unarmed woman. He didn’t win when he was confronted in the last Danville or first Goleta attack either. The EAR’s command of his victims relied on surprising victims in their sleep, threatening them with a gun and/or knife, promising he just wanted money to keep down their panic, keeping them tightly restrained with dishes on their backs, and if confronted with real force he ran, and/or shot the threat. The EAR was a terrifying psychopath, but that didn’t make him personally brave, or some kind of superman. He expressed fear, panic, and loss of control at multiple scenes.
Also, we disagree with Holes about the nature of the VR. Let’s compare a Holes Q&A pro-board quote from last spring with Beth Snelling’s report:
Holes: “The EAR was also a very dominant personality while the VR lacked this characteristic in these interactions.”
Beth Snelling: “He stated ‘Don’t scream, or I’ll stab you.’ " As Beth was pulled out of her bed, the suspect stated, ‘You’re coming with me, don’t scream or I’ll shoot you.’ Beth recalled that this was the last time the suspect spoke. She kept asking the suspect, ‘Why are you doing this’ and ‘where are you taking me,’ but the suspect remained silent.
Stated further that the voice was very demanding and deliberate and it was not wavering, or shaky, or nervous.
Stated further that she had a feeling the suspect was in command of the situation, and did not appear to be undecided on any of his moves.
They heard her father call out from inside the house, ‘Hey, what are you doing? Where are you taking my daughter?’ Beth stated that the suspect made no attempt to run at this time, but stood there and pointed the gun at the back door waiting for her father to come outside.
Beth went on to relate that as her father ran back into the house, the suspect pointed the gun at her head, then dropped it to his side and kicked her three times in the face.”
The VR was conclusively tied to the Snelling homicide by the ransacking gun used, just as the VR loot left at the scene of the McGowen shooting connected him to that event. To argue that the VR was was less dominant than the EAR, or a different type of offender is either uninformed, or intentionally misleading. We don’t understand Holes’ motives for saying it, and we’re not going to guess at his intentions. However, giving the physical description of a unrelated prowler, and failing to mention a kidnapping murder does not feel like a good faith argument to us.
We are incredibly frustrated that the “Burgess” brothers have been hounded and accused of murder for 40 years, but also terrified that “Peter Burgess” may now be used by DeAngelo’s defense to cast doubt on his guilt in the Visalia and Exeter cases. The standard is high for raising an alternate suspect in front of the jury, but recent statements from Task Force investigators that imply that “Peter Burgess” was the known, and un-prosecuted VR will only help the defense case. The identification and arrest of DeAngelo are not enough for us - our focus is on building prosecutions against him in Visalia and Exeter.
“Peter Burgess” admitted to being that prowler, but denied being the VR, or ever entering any houses. His brother denied all involvement with the VR and Snelling cases. VPD were able to confirm their alibis, and completely clear both of them. They were cleared by the time the first EAR story broke in November, 1976. At that point, VPD knew that their offender had moved north, and they requested reports of the EAR cases from Sacramento. That should have been the end of the “Burgess” story, but it wasn’t.
It appears that the “Burgess” story has lingered for two reasons. First, VPD never told “Mike” that “Peter Burgess” had been cleared, and he continued to believe that the prowler he encountered was the VR, and that’s the story he told for 40 years. Second, VPD gave Sacramento some of their reports on the VR and Snelling cases, hoping they could spot a common suspect. Instead, the EAR Task Force became singularly focused on “Peter Burgess.” We’re not sure how, but they failed to understand that “Burgess” had been cleared, and was not the VR. Vaughan and McGowen assumed that the task force was looking at the VR descriptions given by “Jane Smith,” Beth Snelling, Agent McGowen, and “Jane Smith’s” father, but instead, they were obsessed with an unrelated prowler. This could have been easily cleared up with a simple conversation, but, as we reported again in episode 17, the task force refused to talk to VPD after their initial meeting in May, 1977.
More recently, starting about 20 years ago, cold case detectives and a private investigator realized the disconnect between the “Peter Burgess” description, and the actual contemporaneous VR witness descriptions. The “Burgess” brothers were contacted, many times, by multiple investigators to confirm their elimination. That included voluntarily giving DNA samples, and going over the process that cleared them. They did this again, and again, for 20 years as the rumors died out then reignited, and new investigators came on the cases. They have been hounded and accused of murder for 40 years, and they were, and are, 100% innocent of any involvement in the cases. We confirmed all of this with one of the brothers, Sgt. Vaughan, current VPD, and Larry Pool when we first started looking at the Exeter/VR connection.
Quoted: ["I snipped the description out of a presentation I gave to the working group to save me typing. Ofc McGowan’s description is on the left, the student’s description is on the right."]
So, why was Paul Holes still telling work groups, TV producers, pro boards, and podcast audiences in 2017 that “Mike” saw the VR, and thus, by implication, that “Peter Burgess” was the VR, and killed Claude Snelling? We have absolutely no idea.
This is a version of the same story told by Richard Shelby over many years - the VR was identified, but VPD just couldn’t make a case against him. This always refers to the same cleared suspects, the “Burgess” brothers. You could drive a truck through the logic hole here. Why would VPD have contacted Sacramento the moment they heard about the EAR if the “Burgess” brothers were still viable suspects? As you’ve heard from the newspaper accounts, Vaughan and McGowen were, and remained POSITIVE that the VR was the EAR. They never wavered. This is so simple, and easy to understand, and Vaughan has been repeating it to an endless number of investigators for 40 years.
We know for a fact that Holes had multiple copies of the VPD reports showing the positive IDs of “Mike’s” prowler, so Holes did know exactly who “Peter Burgess” was. We’ve been told by several people that they explained to Holes that “Burgess” had been cleared, multiple times, across 40 years, and that “Mike’s” prowler description was irrelevant to the VR and Snelling cases. Yet, Holes kept using “Mike’s” story, and description as a major part of his evidence to prove that the VR was not the EAR. You know whose story and VR description Holes did not tell? Beth Snelling’s. We may have missed it, but we can’t find one time prior to DeAngelo’s arrest, that Holes brought up that home invasion kidnapping and murder. He consistently omitted every detail from the one person who spent the most time with the VR, and the attack that most closely resembled the EAR’s MO. In fact, last year on the podcast “Casefiles” Case 53, Bonus Interview #2, Holes said:
“There are two very credible witnesses that saw, or face to face with him, in decent lighting, saw his face. Saw entire physique, his entire build. And they both consistently describe him as: He had this, you know, round face, with pug nose and funny looking ears, and kind of a hunk neck. And just rounded shoulders, and fat through the hips, and fat through the thighs, and fat butt and short, fat fingers.
One of the witnesses was Officer McGowen gets shot by the Visalia Ransacker, and the other was a 22 year old Anthropology student. You know someone who at least has some training in taking a look at humans, right? More so than the a… (trails off) And this person, this anthropology student, he says that he looks kind of “mongoloid” to him. He had mongoloid-type features, and his behaviors were weird, and he’s acting… he’s talking in a high woman’s voice… and, he’s acting kind of scared, and “Don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me,” and screaming like a woman when he’s being confronted. That is not who the East Area Rapist is… The East Area Rapist is a dominant personality. Once he gets the women and men under control, he is dominating them.
While we agree that Beth did not get a good look at his face, that’s about all we can agree with there. In fact, that entire statement was, and is shocking to us. Did Paul Holes know next to nothing about the VR, or was he intentionally telling about a quarter of the VR’s story when asked for his evidence that the VR could not have been the EAR?
Let’s break down some of the problems with that statement.
1. There were four credible witnesses who saw the VR’s “entire physique, his entire build,” not two. They were, in order, “Jane Smith,” who was shoved aside by him as she encountered him on the stairs of her family’s garage apartment in July, 1975, Beth Snelling, who was awakened by him lying on top of her, smothering her. He dragged her from her bed and house, and Beth watched as he shot her father, and calmly walked away. She watched the VR until he was out of her sight. She was able to see him well in the dark because the bathroom and outdoor porch lights were on. The VR was also seen by VPD Agent McGowen who had him at gunpoint, and got in the shootout with him, and “Jane Smith’s” father, who heard the commotion next door, and witnessed the VR running in his backyard, and diving over a hedge.
2. The “Anthropology” student, “Mike,” was a 20 or 21 year old biology undergrad at the time he saw “Burgess,” not specially trained in identifying humans. Also, for the very last time, “Mike” did not see the VR.
3. The physical description Holes attributes to McGowen, is not from McGowen’s dictated report from the night of the incident, it’s from another officer’s report written after McGowen’s hypnosis session in January, 1976. There is no question that details of “Mike’s” December, 1975 and January, 76 descriptions of “Peter Burgess” got mixed into that hypnosis report, which again, was not written by McGowen. We’ve read on the podcast, and posted McGowen’s December, 1975 description of the VR. It’s consistent with that of Beth Snelling, “Jane Smith,” and “Jane Smith’s” father. Those are the descriptions of all of the confirmed witnesses who saw the physical build of the VR.
4. The statement that the EAR was a dominant personality, and that the VR was not, relates to Holes’ additional “proof” that the VR was not the EAR - that they were not the same type of offender. Apparently, Holes was unaware of the EAR attack on August 29, 1976. The mother of his teenaged target refused to be tied up, and fought with him even as he was beating her with a billy club (which matched the description of one stolen by the VR in 1975). She said if the EAR had been unarmed, she could have handled him. She also said that as they fought, his voice got higher, and shaky, like he was nervous or scared. That was 8 months after the McGowen shootout. It seems that the offender’s bravado melted away when confronted by an assertive adult, even an unarmed woman. He didn’t win when he was confronted in the last Danville or first Goleta attack either. The EAR’s command of his victims relied on surprising victims in their sleep, threatening them with a gun and/or knife, promising he just wanted money to keep down their panic, keeping them tightly restrained with dishes on their backs, and if confronted with real force he ran, and/or shot the threat. The EAR was a terrifying psychopath, but that didn’t make him personally brave, or some kind of superman. He expressed fear, panic, and loss of control at multiple scenes.
Also, we disagree with Holes about the nature of the VR. Let’s compare a Holes Q&A pro-board quote from last spring with Beth Snelling’s report:
Holes: “The EAR was also a very dominant personality while the VR lacked this characteristic in these interactions.”
Beth Snelling: “He stated ‘Don’t scream, or I’ll stab you.’ " As Beth was pulled out of her bed, the suspect stated, ‘You’re coming with me, don’t scream or I’ll shoot you.’ Beth recalled that this was the last time the suspect spoke. She kept asking the suspect, ‘Why are you doing this’ and ‘where are you taking me,’ but the suspect remained silent.
Stated further that the voice was very demanding and deliberate and it was not wavering, or shaky, or nervous.
Stated further that she had a feeling the suspect was in command of the situation, and did not appear to be undecided on any of his moves.
They heard her father call out from inside the house, ‘Hey, what are you doing? Where are you taking my daughter?’ Beth stated that the suspect made no attempt to run at this time, but stood there and pointed the gun at the back door waiting for her father to come outside.
Beth went on to relate that as her father ran back into the house, the suspect pointed the gun at her head, then dropped it to his side and kicked her three times in the face.”
The VR was conclusively tied to the Snelling homicide by the ransacking gun used, just as the VR loot left at the scene of the McGowen shooting connected him to that event. To argue that the VR was was less dominant than the EAR, or a different type of offender is either uninformed, or intentionally misleading. We don’t understand Holes’ motives for saying it, and we’re not going to guess at his intentions. However, giving the physical description of a unrelated prowler, and failing to mention a kidnapping murder does not feel like a good faith argument to us.
We are incredibly frustrated that the “Burgess” brothers have been hounded and accused of murder for 40 years, but also terrified that “Peter Burgess” may now be used by DeAngelo’s defense to cast doubt on his guilt in the Visalia and Exeter cases. The standard is high for raising an alternate suspect in front of the jury, but recent statements from Task Force investigators that imply that “Peter Burgess” was the known, and un-prosecuted VR will only help the defense case. The identification and arrest of DeAngelo are not enough for us - our focus is on building prosecutions against him in Visalia and Exeter.
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