Excitement's Crave - a line-by-line analysis.

[almagata]

Aug 11, 2016 2:24:57 GMT cityofchill said:

Aug 9, 2016 18:16:03 GMT almagata said:

CoC,

I agree that EC is a statement on American values that EAR was critical of. Do you think EAR was making a political statement by targeting people who were employed in specific occupations? If yes, then how do you explain that attacks on young girls? Was that a parallel to soldier behavior in Vietnam or something else?

That is a really interesting point, Almagata, and his choice of victims is something I do plan to discuss in my analysis of the poem. When I went back to the FDLE profile over the weekend, it really talked a lot about his victim choice and the level of violence inflicted on the women compared to the male victims. This got me thinking, and I ended up having to re-write the second part of Childhood's End with d'Ambrosia's words in mind. That's why I posted only part one, and have yet to post part two, Unmasking Character.

But your point about victim choice is absolutely relevant and important, and I think it does factor into EC in the sixth stanza with his euphemistic reference to his crimes and adding a Mafia Lord's wife "to his file." As the FDLE report noted, the EAR/ONS had a tremendous hatred of women, but targeted women of a certain social class. At one point the profile mentions the EAR/ONS targeting victims who he thought were "worthy" of him, which is a bit of a paradox since, in his view, these women were all "whores" and deserved to be raped and murdered. But this notion that the victim must be "worthy" of EAR/ONS appears in the poem as the Mafia Lord's wife — someone of stature who he can bring down a peg by proving that she is just another "whore." I believe EAR/ONS attacked these women as proxies of a woman or women from his own life whom he had tremendous anger and resentment towards. This tells me EAR/ONS probably came from a similar socio-economic background as his victims. 

As far as the attacks being a political statement...I tend to believe his choice of victim was much more personal, but I am certainly open to the idea. I do believe he saw a certain hypocrisy in middle-class and upper-middle-class women, who he believed appeared one way on the surface, but were all "whores" at heart regardless of money and status. The diamond knot tied in expensive embroidery cord that he left on the wrists of the Smiths might have been a comment on this — that you can "package" something in fancy wrapping, but what lies beneath the exterior is rotten. For him, that was what women, and especially women of status, were: common "whores" in pretty packaging. Charlene Smith, more than perhaps any of his murder victims, exemplified the idea of the woman of society who presents herself as one thing, but underneath that exterior, he sees her as just another "whore". But I think the idea of the woman of status who "pretended" to be more than the "whore" he believed she was caused him tremendous anger. I imagine he had watched Charlene and knew about her life and her extra-marital affair — confirmation, in his mind, of what he already believed to be true. Perhaps the woman in his own life who caused him all the anger he directed at women in his crimes also had an affair. It's hard to say, but I think one can speculate pretty confidently that his choice of victims tells us something about his own socio-economic background, and the tremendous hatred for middle-class professional women he showed in his crimes probably gives some indication of the kind of woman who planted all this hatred in his heart.


As for the young girls...it's harder to say. I think he believed all women were whores, regardless of age. But there is a discernable pattern of him choosing mostly working/professional women in their 20's and 30's. As for Vietnam, I really have no idea. Personally, I don't think he fought in Vietnam. I'm not even sure he was even in the military, on account of the hours he kept, but I do think he had a certain respect for the military and may have had a close family member who was in the military and taught him tactics, how to shoot, etc. 

The other aspect that I am intrigued by with his young victims is that he tends to take them outside.  He did not do this with all the young girls but he does with a number of them. It is almost like a deflowering ritual for virgins under the stars.  If EAR viewed all females as whores regardless of age and virginity, I'm surprised that he would make this differentiation for this subset of girls.  It's almost as if there is a another person performing these rapes who has a different fantasy that he is acting out. 

[biglebowskyoz]

Very interesting theory as I am starting to think that maybe ear possibly had an accomplice who was a relative...

Maybe one likes younger the other liked older and they were commiting the crimes at different times. So one week ear a would strike then next month ear b would strike. Sometimes they tagged along?

[Deleted]

Your East Area Rapist
And deserving pest
See you in the press or on T.V.

''The pest, in a sense, is a very superior being to us: he
knows where to find us and how—usually in the bath or in sexual
intercourse or asleep.''

Charles Bukowski (b. 1920), U.S.
author, poet. "Notes on the Pest," Tales of Ordinary Madness (1967).


Port and Play..........was my POI ever checked out?

[trabuco]

Aug 27, 2016 19:32:11 GMT @wynnewoodestates said:

Your East Area Rapist
And deserving pest
See you in the press or on T.V.

''The pest, in a sense, is a very superior being to us: he
knows where to find us and how—usually in the bath or in sexual
intercourse or asleep.''

Charles Bukowski (b. 1920), U.S.
author, poet. "Notes on the Pest," Tales of Ordinary Madness (1967).


Port and Play..........was my POI ever checked out?

Why was Sacramento deserving?

[Deleted]

Aug 28, 2016 5:31:12 GMT trabuco said:

Aug 27, 2016 19:32:11 GMT @wynnewoodestates said:

Your East Area Rapist
And deserving pest
See you in the press or on T.V.

''The pest, in a sense, is a very superior being to us: he
knows where to find us and how—usually in the bath or in sexual
intercourse or asleep.''

Charles Bukowski (b. 1920), U.S.
author, poet. "Notes on the Pest," Tales of Ordinary Madness (1967).


Port and Play..........was my POI ever checked out?

Why was Sacramento deserving?

Hell if I know.Let's find the guy first and then ask stupid questions.

[Deleted]

This is likely all old news here but I was thinking about it and just wanted to jot some thoughts here.

While I consider this poem a sham, I think that whoever wrote it was familiar with rehabilitation programs. The following line of course being the second or third from the first stanza.

All those mortal's surviving birth
Upon facing maturity,
Take inventory of their worth
To prevailing society.

This is a straight forward reference to the 4th step in AA's 12 Steps mantra, though the author obviously perverted the actual meaning and probably only used it because it sounded 'cool' to them. The actual meaning behind the step is about soul-searching and finding the inner strength to admit to our faults and accept that we are addicts powerless to a disease we cannot control. It is repeated in step 10 as a reminder to continue doing this as it is a part of the addict's rehabilitation to continue admitting to their faults made.

Here are the 12 Steps associated with alcohol and some drug recovery programs. Rehabilitation clinics sometimes combine the NA and AA treatment programs in order to condense separate meetings.  

1.We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2.Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3.Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4.Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5.Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6.Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7.Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8.Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9.Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10.Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11.Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12.Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

[Deleted]

More jotting, don't mind me ^.^

SELF-ANALYSIS QUESTIONNAIRE FOR PERSONAL INVENTORY

1. Have I attained the goal which I established as my objective for this year? (You should work with a definite yearly objective to be attained as a part of your major life objective).

2. Have I delivered service of the best possible QUALITY of which I was capable, or could I have improved any part of this service?

3. Have I delivered service in the greatest possible QUANTITY of which I was capable?

4. Has the spirit of my conduct been harmonious, and cooperative at all times?

5. Have I permitted the habit of PROCRASTINATION to decrease my efficiency, and if so, to what extent?

6. Have I improved my PERSONALITY, and if so, in what ways?

7. Have I been PERSISTENT in following my plans through to completion?

8. Have I reached DECISIONS PROMPTLY AND DEFINITELY on all occasions?

9. Have I permitted any one or more of the six basic fears to decrease my efficiency?

10. Have I been either "over-cautious," or "under-cautious?"

11. Has my relationship with my associates in work been pleasant, or unpleasant? If it has been unpleasant, has the fault been partly, or wholly mine?

12. Have I dissipated any of my energy through lack of CONCENTRATION of effort?

13. Have I been open minded and tolerant in connection with all subjects?

14. In what way have I improved my ability to render service?

15. Have I been intemperate in any of my habits?

16. Have I expressed, either openly or secretly, any form of EGOTISM?

17. Has my conduct toward my associates been such that it has induced them to RESPECT me?

18. Have my opinions and DECISIONS been based upon guesswork, or accuracy of analysis and THOUGHT?

19. Have I followed the habit of budgeting my time, my expenses, and my income, and have I been conservative in these budgets?

20. How much time have I devoted to UNPROFITABLE effort which I might have used to better advantage?

21. How may I RE-BUDGET my time, and change my habits so I will be more efficient during the coming year?

22. Have I been guilty of any conduct which was not approved by my conscience?

23. In what ways have I rendered MORE SERVICE AND BETTER SERVICE than I was paid to render?

24. Have I been unfair to anyone, and if so, in what way?

25. If I had been the purchaser of my own services for the year, would I be satisfied with my purchase?

26. Am I in the right vocation, and if not, why not?

27. Has the purchaser of my services been satisfied with the service I have rendered, and if not, why not?

28. What is my present rating on the fundamental principles of success? (Make this rating fairly, and frankly, and have it checked by someone who is courageous enough to do it accurately).

[gskhunter]

Just wondering– do any of you have a poi in mind when you read through the posts? If so, does it reinforce your belief that this is the guy? I have a poi...that's why I'm on here. I stumbled onto all of this by accident, and the more I read, the more I think I'm right. Just checking myself, because I would really like to believe I'm right, and I don't want that to cloud my objectivity...but this guy lost a sibling too...

[gskhunter]

Sept 29, 2016 13:10:03 GMT @masootz said:

Sept 29, 2016 1:33:51 GMT gskhunter said:

Just wondering– do any of you have a poi in mind when you read through the posts? If so, does it reinforce your belief that this is the guy? I have a poi...that's why I'm on here. I stumbled onto all of this by accident, and the more I read, the more I think I'm right. Just checking myself, because I would really like to believe I'm right, and I don't want that to cloud my objectivity...but this guy lost a sibling too...

be careful as human nature is to find patterns that match our expectations while unknowingly ignoring those that don't. i think some basics that build a strong foundation are - a poi that lived in around the attack areas, someone who fit the general profile (young white male), someone who has attributes that makes them more likely than the the general population such as a history of violence, bragging about the crimes or similar crimes, a job or lifestyle during that period that would fit the criteria, etc.

Actually, he fits the profile to a tee, and he traveled back and forth to Santa Barbara from OC doing construction, had family in the bay area and Fresno.  The thing about the sibling struck me, because there was also a sibling who died mysteriously.

[happycamper]

How old is he now?
Any military experience?

[cityofchill]

Hey everyone....

Just wanted to let you know I haven't forgotten the thread. I've been working on the final essay on the second stanza, Unmasking Character, for weeks now. I've also been working on the thurd stanza and an essay on the author's use of poetic devices and whatnit tells us about him. The upcoming essay on the second two lines of the second stanza is long and thorough, and I've only been able to work on it in snatches. I've also used Leslie D'Ambrosia's FDLE profile on the ONS as a source, and the more I write, the more the poem continues to open up. I don't think the poem is a hoax at all. I provide more detailed reasons for why I believe it was written by the perp in the next essay. I hope to post it some time in the next week or so. Thanks to everyone who has read and contributed to the thread!

[cityofchill]

Excitement's Crave, Stanza II, part IV
Childhood's End, Part II — Unmasking Character

Second stanza:

Choosing values becomes a task;
Oneself must seek satisfaction.
The selected route will unmask
Character when plans take action.

Introduction 


I apologize for how long it has taken me to finish my analysis of the second stanza. I've gotten a little carried away with my analysis in some ways, however I decided to go down this rabbit hole and have seen that there are so many side tunnels and passages. Some of them lead to a dead ends, while others bring me back to the main burrow. Still others have still got me looking for an end point.

It doesn't need repeating that 'Excitement's Crave' is not "good" poetry. It is amateur poetry, and even as amateur poetry, it's not particularly good. However, it is very surprising and unexpected in some important ways. That is why, after my first foray into this line-by-line with a relatively concise look at the first stanza, I've gon much deeper with the second stanza, and with the poem in general. Because while it may not be "good" poetry, it tells us a lot about the writer (who I do believe is the EAR/ONS), their motives, character, self-perception, perception of the crimes and victims, views about society in general, and many other interesting and useful details that helps add to the profile that so many of us have been struggling to put together. What is unique about the poem, compared to profiles based on his crimes and behavior, is that it is the only piece of evidence we have of him addressing an audience directly in his own words, talking about himself, his worldview, and his crimes. This provides a very unique opportunity to listen closely to what the author has to say about himself, and also to catch him in places where he reveals aspects of himself unintentionally. The thing is, once you go down that path, there is a temptation to keep going as far as you can. So while I started this effort intending to write seven essays on six quatrains and a tercet, the more I thought about the poem and compared it to what we know about the offender through his crimes, what the profiles tell us about him, and also the personalities of offenders like him tell us about serial sexual predators who assault people in their homes or fall into the category of "anger excitation rapists" or sadists, the more I became convinced that EC had to be his work. 

So here we are, at the two lines of verse that I believe are some of the most interesting and intriguing in the poem. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I am working on an essay devoted to a study of the "poetics" of EC, not because I think that the poem on its own deserves that kind of treatment, but given its provenance, I think it is worth discussing what the use of traditional poetic devices by the author means, because it is telling. In that essay, I am really going to break it down, but for now, I want to remind the readers that, although his poetry may not be good, it shows that the author does have a decent education, and has almost certainly studied poetry, probably at the college level, and perhaps participated in some poetry workshops. That information alone is significant in teying to achieve a better understanding of what kind of person the offender was. Of course it is the provenance of the poem that makes it interesting to read and analyze, and if there weren't any reason to believe it was written by EAR/ONS, it would have been condemned to the very large dustbin of bad amateur poetry and forgotten about forever. But it wasn't and it isn't, and putting aside all judgments of what good poetry is, it is possible to approach it in a different way — the way we are always told never to do by literary scholars — which is to psychoanalyze the author, learn about his state of mind, about his motivations, about his self-perception, and also to catch him with the mask off, so to speak, which is exactly what this particular essay is about: the second two lines of the second quatrain.

The Paradox of the EAR/ONS

My sense is that the EAR is not as disciplined and committed to rape and terror as he would have us believe, and as we sometimes like to think. He has powerful urges to commit these violent crimes, and he cannot control them. He wants the public to believe that everything he does is cold and calculated, and sometimes it is. But there are times when we can see the EAR/ONS spinning out of control, driven to commit unspeakable acts on innocent victims because of uncontrollable urges that I believe he is ashamed of. I will talk about this in more detail later, but for now, let's focus on the poem itself. The author spends the better part of the first two stanzas telling his audience how he has made a conscious decision to be what he is. This speaks of someone who not only sees themselves as being fully in control of their actions, but also someone who is proud of them. So why does he seem so conflicted, at times committing crimes with cold, methodical cruelty, and other times with white hot rage and complete disregard for caution or consequence? Why does he stop offending for years, only to strike once more in the most brutal way, before stopping altogether? Why does he refer to his actual crimes only twice in the poem, and then in a way that is only apparent if you know who the purported author is? Yes, he does use the the moniker "east area rapist" in the closing tercet of EC, but that seems to be his way of simply signing off, announcing his presence to his audience by putting his stamp on the poem, mimicking the popular cartoon Spiderman, who also signs off at the end of every episode as "your friendly neighbourhood spiderman." It is a sign-off full of irony where the signer has the ability to have a chuckle at his anonymity, his omniscience and omnipotence, and his dominance over a hapless public who are too dumb to ever figure out who he is. But I want to save my observations about the sign off for its proper place in this analysis — towards the very end. The point is that I don't believe he refers to himself as "your east area rapist" because he is proud of his status as a rapist. I think he is proud that he has been given a moniker — he has achieved a kind of fame — and he wants the reader to know that it is him writing, to ensure that attention is paid to the poem, that it is not shrugged off. He is taking a page from Zodiac here, using writing to cement his legacy, tell his story, shape his image, and perhaps most importantly, grab the attention of law enforcement and the public, thereby keeping himself in the spotlight. But there is an obvious disconnect between the writer and the rapist — between who he really is and what his perception of himself is and how he wants others to see him — and I think that is incredibly revealing and insightful.

So, before I dive into the actual verse, let me summarize my "thesis," as it were, for this essay: EC unwittingly paints a portrait of an offender who is more of a paradox and more conflicted about his crimes than we would like us to imagine — and also more than he would like to imagine. While his crimes tell us who he really is, the poem tells us that he doesn't necessarily see himself or want to see himself as that unhinged, sadistic pervert rapist who is driven by uncontrollable urges to prey on victims in their homes; to terrorize and assault them, claim ownership of their bodies, their minds, and their most sacred spaces. On the surface, EAR/ONS is all about control, both in his crimes, as well as in the stalking and surveilling he employs to commit them. He is methodical, patient, calculating, cunning. These are all aspects of the EAR/ONS that one can glean from studying his crimes, and it is also the way he wants to see himself — fully in control. And yet, he is not fully in control. He is driven by urges that he cannot control — his Excitement's Crave — which makes him careless at times, and shows him to be someone who cannot always control himself. He is the kind of offender who will scout a neighbourhood for weeks and months, zeroing in on multiple targets and conducting exhaustive surveillance in the time leading up to an attack. But this is also an offender who will kick down a door to get at his victims; the type of offender whose appetites have taken control of him to the extent that he completely loses sight of the risks, and is willing to do whatever it takes to satiate his urges. And if his carelessness puts him at risk of being apprehended, we have seen that he will use violence to evade capture. Rodney Miller is one example of this, and Brian and Kate Maggiore may be another. If he was their killer and they did come across him in a compromising position, he was not going to let them live to tell the tale. The Murder of the Offermans, and of Gregory Sanchez and Cheri Domingo are two other examples that seem to indicate that the perpetrator lost control of the crime scene, and did not hesitate to shoot his victims in order to maintain that control. So while, on the surface, EAR/ONS is all about control of self and of victims (and this is clearly the way he wants to portray himself in EC), when one takes a closer look, it is apparent that he does not have as much self-control as he thinks he does. I believe that an important reason for him skirting the issue of rape in EC is because he knows what a rapist is — someone who cannot control their deviant sexual urges. This does not coincide with his self-perception of someone who does what he does because of a conscious decision, and it is not the image he wants to project to the authorities and the world. He wants to be seen as someone who is fully in control of everything he does, and yet he undermines that image by essentially telling us that his craving for excitement — the "temptations" that "call" to him — are beyond his control and he is not choosing to seek satisfaction, but rather he "must seek satisfaction." He has no choice in the matter, because he cannot control the urges he feels. The themes of dominance and control that are so evident in his crimes may underly a deep insecurity about his inability to control himself. He is all about control, and yet he is out of control.


The FDLE Profile and 'Excitement's Crave'

I think this is the point where a foray into Leslie D'Ambrosia's detailed profile of the Original Night Stalker is useful and helps provide some important insight into the offender, his methods, personality characteristics, and self-perception, and how that compares to the author of the poem. Not only does a close look at the FDLE profile provide interesting parallels to the author of the EC, but there are also certain contrasts between the real EAR/ONS as profiled by D'Ambrosia and the writer of the poem that underscore two important themes I've been driving at in this essay and in others — particularly the offender's sense of his own importance and separation from "prevailing society", and also the conflict between his self-perception of someone fully in control as opposed to his actual criminal deeds, which are those of someone who is not in control at all — someone who "must seek satisfaction" at all costs.

Just like the author of EC, in the FDLE profile of the ONS, D'Ambrosia says that the offender will have a "grandiose sense of self importance and believes that he is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or higher status people" (Page 7). This grandiosity and inflated sense of self-worth and being "special" and above "prevailing society" is something I have noted in all of my essays on this stanza, and is something I will come back to again and again when I look at the other stanzas, because his inflated ego and hubris practically oozes off the page. From the way he separates himself from "All those mortals surviving birth," and adopts the third person perspective of a figure who is somehow above the fray commenting on a society whose values are transparently hypocritical and false, to the way he compares himself to legendary outlaws and criminals both historical and contemporary, demanding ransom money from the city he is victimizing in order to pay for a movie about his life, the writer of EC matches D'Ambrosia's description to a T. When the author does choose to obliquely reference an actual crime in the poem, he chooses one that he thinks is "worthy" of his stature — the addition of a mafia don's wife "to his file." Even his choice of a traditional form of poetry written in an ABAB CDCD, etc. rhyme scheme, in iambic quadrameter reveals so much about his self-perception and that trademark grandiosity D'Ambrosia speaks of. He employs the most elevated vocabulary he can in his poetry, even if he fails sometimes, and avoids direct mention of the actual rapes in any graphic detail because those details are beneath him. They are the side of himself that perhaps he doesn't like so much — the side he  has no control over, which is dominated by the perverse sexual urges that drive him to rape and murder innocent people.

Control, as I have mentioned, is something that the offender and the author of EC, struggle with. On the one hand, he is indeed "methodical," "articulate," and "intelligent" as D'Ambrosia tells us. "He had the ability to plan and organize his thoughts in advance...he planned his attacks very carefully, with great attention to detail," and "had the attention and ability to adapt his method of operation" (5). His crimes were all about control. The FDLE profile explains that the offender "was gratified with his ability to have complete mastery" over his victims, and that he thrived on "domination and control" (8,10). This theme of control that runs like a thread through most of EAR/ONS crimes is also an important paradox because, like EC, the control is only superficial — the imperative to "seek satisfaction" at all costs is what drives this offender and what D'Ambrosia describes as his "insatiable appetite" (11) for deviant sexual behaviour manifests itself in the constant loss of control over his own appetites, and is perhaps most gruesomely displayed in the way he bludgeoned his female murder victims. D'Ambrosia makes this clear when he explains the the offender "exhibited extreme anger and rage towards his female victims when he bludgeoned them to death." He "used excessive levels of force" on his female victims "which was exhibited in the form of frenzied attacks" (8). I find this to be an interesting and obvious contradiction in the offender's character. One the one hand, he is incredibly controlled and methodical in many ways, much of the time. However, he sometimes shows another side of himself that is unhinged and completely out-of-control, driven by rage. How do these two competing tendencies co-exist? Why does he seem so calm and in control during some crimes, rarely using more force than is necessary to subdue and control his victims, and so unbalanced and unhinged during others, displaying an almost rabid state of anger, sadism, and brutality?

Going back to the poem, the second stanza offers a window into these disparate forces operating within the offender. In the first line of the second stanza, we see the offender fully in control, speaking of consciously choosing his values as one would choose the options on a new car, but then in the second line the loss of control is vividly conjured in the imperative phrase "Oneself must seek satisfaction." Any notion of control over his actions is tossed aside here, with the only imperative being to seek satisfaction at all costs. The line is not a suggestion or a statement of preference; it is an indication of a driving need to satiate his craving for excitement the only way he knows how, seeking pleasure not out of choice — like he would have us believe in the previous line — but because he his driven by urges he cannot control. This begs the question: what made such a controlled and methodical offender lose control sometimes, especially when he morphed from serial rapist into serial murderer?

Unmasking Character

The second two lines in the second quatrain of EC are some of the most interesting in the poem, as far as I'm concerned. It has taken me a long time to get to them, but here we are, I hope my meagre gifts will allow me to give these lines the attention they deserve.

The selected route will unmask
Character when plans take action.

It doesn't take an English professor to notice the double-entendres and indirect references the author makes to himself and about his crime. Like the rest of the poem, the author only uses a kind of coded language to talk about his crimes. We know what he means he talks about "selected routes" that will "unmask / Character when plans take action." We know what plans he is referring to, we know that he is not using the word "route" arbitrarily, nor is he certainly using "unmask" without the very specific purpose of sending a message: "Here I am, your deserving pest!" but without ever once making any direct reference to a crime, or  revelling in his victims pain and helplessness, in the terror we know he loved to inflict on them. The author refers to his crimes once more later in the poem when he talks about "adding" a mafia don's wife to his "file." Again, we know what he really means when he talks about "adding" someone to his "file." And yet...

Sometimes what is not in a piece of writing is equally important as what is in it. Noting that EAR only speaks of his actual crimes in an indirect and euphemistic way has to make one wonder why. I gave one possible option in my essay EAR, American Outlaw — that he seeks fame and notoriety, but also realizes that rape will never allow him to be a Jesse James and achieve the kind of mythical status he seeks, and so he skirts around the crimes themselves in EC to keep his myth untainted by the reality of those crimes. After all, when it comes down to it, if one sets aside his meticulous planning, clever tactics, shadowy persona, elusiveness, and even his ability to strike fear into an entire city, he really is just a grubby pervert, peeping in windows, stalking and harassing women, attacking people when they are vulnerable, using his tiny penis to violate women. The author is self-aware enough in his poem to realize that speaking directly about his crimes is going to detract from the image he is trying to create, and ensure that he is always remembered simply as another rapist scumbag. He, of course, wants to be seen as something far greater — the mythical self-made man who rejects society's values and becomes an outlaw in the mould of a Jesse James. The EAR is aware that rapists are reviled, and paradoxically seeks fame as a rapist while also distracting the public from the rapes themselves.

But there is another possibility that can coexist with this conception of the EAR, and indeed compliments it and goes hand-in-hand with it — the EAR is actually ashamed on some level that he is a rapist. The author — and remember that I am proceeding under the assumption that EAR/ONS is the author — does not strike me as someone who is unequivocally proud of what he does. For all his bluster and bravado, he often comes off as someone who really is not fully in control of his own "excitement seeking." Think about some of his more "unorthodox" crimes — viciously attacking and sucker punching a woman as she unloaded laundry from her car, breaking her nose, and then brutally assaulting her; kicking down doors to get to victims; entering a house half-nude; aborting a rape when he became flustered that he may have kidnapped the wrong victim; aborting a rape when he became rattled by voices outside; shooting Rodney Miller, fleeing the Danville scene when he was spotted by a woken husband, fleeing the H/H crime scene after his own words spooked the victims enough that they made a daring escape, shooting Dr. Offerman and Gregory Sanchez (as well as their female partners, may they all rest in peace) when it appeared that they tried to fight him off during the crime. In one sense, EAR believes himself to be fully in control of his actions — the poem tells us clearly that a conscious choice has been made, and the crimes themselves are all about control...except on the few occasions when he seems to lose control of himself and takes mind-boggling risks to get to victims, and has to either abort the crime and flee, or could have easily been caught or otherwise thwarted had luck not been so consistently on his side. For a criminal who seems to believe he is fully in control of his actions, why does he hide from them by using euphemism and coded language in EC to speak about them only in passing, and in such an indirect manner? If he wants to be glorified as an outlaw, why not revel in his crimes?

I think one of the problems some people have had in accepting EC as the actual work of EAR/ONS is that it is not more manifestly "evil." People have an idea of what a criminal like our offender would write, and EC seems to be too introspective and philosophical; he goes on and on about values and society, and doesn't even make reference to himself in a way that is beyond a doubt until the final tercet. I'm not sure what we expect a psychopathic serial rapist who is morphing into a killer would write about in a poem, but many people, including police officers who worked the case like Jim Bevins, don't think this is it. I think that it is a natural human tendency to want to see evil where we know it exists. Let me elaborate...I think a lot of people dismiss EC as a hoax because it doesn't seem to be the poem of an evil deviant. People want the evil they know resides in the offender's heart to lift off the page and grab them by the throat, and in some ways, EC doesn't do that. However, when we really think about our offender — his crimes and the actions leading up to them; the FDLE profile by D'Ambrosia, and even anecdotal information from sources like Sudden Terror where we have an offender possibly making anxious phone calls where he speaks about wanting to stop but not being able to, crying, moaning, and saying strange things to victims in the midst of attacks — we see a more complex offender who is both in control and out of control; a Jekyl and Hyde-type who is probably articulate, intelligent, well-dressed, charming in daily life, but who fantasizes about committing deeds that most of us could never imagine.

While the author of EC tries to paint himself as a god-like being who has made the conscious decision to rape and terrorize, those of us who have studied this kind of offender know that the offenders may know right from wrong, and may choose to do wrong over and over, but they are driven, as D'Ambrosia says, by "intense sexual desires" (13), which are not easily brought under control. This makes EAR/ONS something of a paradox, and I think he is aware of it, and EC is an attempt to gain control over his own story and present himself, not as a man whose own perverted desires control him, but one who is fully in control of his desires, and who has made a choice to commit unspeakable crimes. The crimes of EAR/ONS are all about control, the poem is all about demonstrating that control — explaining to the public that he is fully in control of his own actions — D'Ambrosia talks at length about his need for control, and yet there is the other side of the perpetrator; the one who "must seek satisfaction," not because he has made a choice, but because his desires are actually in control of him. "Excitement's Crave" is another euphemism, describing the compulsions that drive him to rape and kill. But our offender, obsessed as he is with control, must show restraint in his poem. He cannot glorify his crimes in a way that would show him for who he really is — a rapist who may be more cunning, methodical, and careful than others, but one who is nonetheless powerless against his own deviant desires.

But let's go back to the second two lines in the quatrain, where he makes the first specific, if coded, reference to his identity. These lines are so enigmatic, so packed with potential meaning, that I could write pages of speculation about them. And in a way, everything I have written and will write about the poem is speculation. But I want my speculation to be informed by the actions of the offender, by what we know about him, by what is likely (for example, some of the traits ascribed to him in the FDLE profile), as well as what he says about himself in EC. I don't to go off the deep-end and start throwing everything at the wall, hoping something will stick. The reason it has taken me so long to write about these lines is because the more I think about them, the more daunting they become. I begin to question my own methodology, my thought-processes, my analysis, as my imagination goes down the rabbit-hole and dozens of possibilities present themselves. So, in the end, what can I say about these lines that is meaningful and interesting, but not so speculative that it becomes more about my own thinking than the author's?

Perhaps the best way to start is to parse the two verses, and tie them not only to the actual crimes of the EAR/ONS, but to the other parts of the poem. I have already spoken about them at great length as indirect and oblique references to the crimes — lines that fit well with the later mentions of the "mafia don's wife" who the author ruminates about adding to his "file." So what else do are these lines, and what more can be gleaned from them?

I have often thought of these two lines as EAR's treasure map. He has spent the first six lines separating himself from the rest of society — even from the world of the mortals — and portraying himself as one who sees the inherent flaws and hypocrisy of society and who has made a conscious choice to follow his own path by choosing a set a values that allows him to "seek satisfaction" his own way. He will not be one who works "for fixed pay" or deny the powerful cravings for excitement — the title of the poem being another euphemism for rape and torture, because that is the excitement craved by the offender. So if he has rejected the society around him, and chosen a set of values that allows him to seek satisfaction through some other means, what kind of person does he see himself as? The second two lines of the quatrain are the treasure map because he gives us a "route" to follow if we want to understand who he really is; what his "character" is. This is where the poem really begins to take shape as the work of EAR/ONS, and where he is able to revel in his anonymity and his crimes for the first time, without giving away too much or portray himself as the drooling rapist, driven by uncontrollable sexual urges. He wants the reader to see him as he sees himself: cunning, elusive, methodical, and fully in control.

"The selected route will unmask / Character" is a phrase that is dense with significance. Just as a the route marked on a treasure map leads one to the treasure, the "selected route" the author speaks of in EC will lead us to him, both literally and figuratively. As another poster pointed out, character can mean two different things in this sense — it can be a synonym for personality or the "morals and qualities distinctive to a person"; but it can also refer to the person themselves, as in identity, or "a person from a novel, play, or movie" (from the Google Dictionary). These two definitions are extremely interesting in a number of ways, and I think the use of this word by the author is intentional. But before I talk in more detail about the word character, let's double back to the beginning of the second line, because every word has meaning here, and taken together, they have a larger significance.

"The selected route" is another one of those very carefully chosen phrases the author of the poem uses to identify himself, and also to allude to his crimes and MO without being graphic or explicit. As I have already noted, the writer likes to dance around his actual crimes in this poem, and this is a revealing example of this. Anyone who has studied the crimes knows that the words "selected" and "route" are very significant to understanding the EAR/ONS crimes. The Q Man has done perhaps more than anyone in tracing those routes meticulously, and establishing patterns based on how the offender selected his route, and then used it to gain access to a neighbourhood and victims undetected. In the FDLE profile of the Original Nightstalker, D'Dambrosia says that the offender "spent a great deal of time searching for and conducting surveillance on his victims," (6) that he "searched for his victims, spending a great deal of time and covering numerous miles," and speaks about the ONS taking time to plan "travel routes," and how he "selected these communities to find a victim, and then through peeping would select a specific victim" (7). The words selected and route are as germane to the offender and his crimes as the actual assault. Everything the offender does leading up to the crimes is part of a meticulous selection process, from the route he will take into and out of a community, to the victims themselves, the houses he will target, who will receive threatening phone calls after the assault, etc. The only part of the EAR/ONS crimes that don't seem to be the process of meticulous selection are the assaults themselves, where he goes through the same rituals times and again, to the point where most of his actions during the actual attacks are interchangeable with the actions of most of the others. It is when he strays from his script that one can see how easily he is thrown off his game, how much of a slave he is to his sexual urges, and how easily he can lose control of himself and become driven by a frenzied rage that will eventually lead him to kill.

But the phrase "selected" is significant in more ways than just calling attention to the significance of his preplanning of the route he will take into a community to find and assault a victim. Like character, route also has other meanings that reveal more about the offender's thinking and his word choice in this instance. While a route can be synonymous with path, way, direction, it can also have a less tangible meaning, as in "a method or process leading to a specified result" (from the Google Dictionary). In this way, the "selected route" is not just the physical route that the offender takes to the crime scene, but also the entire method and process that leads the offender to the crimes and, in the larger context of the poem, the path the the offender has chosen "upon reaching maturity" — his decision to reject the values of prevailing society and make the choice to "pursue satisfaction" through rape and torture. The poem uses the verb select and its synonym to choose at key points in the early part of the poem to reinforce the larger point that the author is trying to communicate: that his actions are fully in his control. To choose and select implies a sense of agency and power. I believe that the poet is desperate for his audience to see him as one who does the choosing and selecting, because he wants to counter law enforcement's narrative that he is a lowly pervert who peeps in windows while he masturbates — that he is a drooling sex maniac who has no control over his urges and the actions he takes to satiate them. Instead, by writing that the "selected route will unmask / Character," he is deploying a counter-narrative where everything he does is the product of careful consideration and choice. By linking the selected route to his character, he not only gives himself the opportunity to "unmask" himself for a moment and show the informed reader that the writer of the poem is the same masked character (character a synonym of identity) who stalks the city of Sacramento hunting for victims; he also wants to make it clear that selection and choice are part of his character (as a synonym of personality), and that he is choosing to commit these crimes the same way he chose his values. In this way "The selected route" refers not only to the physical path the offender takes into communities to troll for victims, and then to assault them before disappearing "in the night," but also his entire process from fantasizing to stalking to choosing communities that meet his criteria, scouting those communities, selecting potential victims, conducting meticulous surveillance, and finally following his pre-planned route right to the victims' homes, and then following it back to a nearby vehicle or safe-house where he can lay low while the police fruitlessly searched for him.

These two lines are some of the most enigmatic and interesting ones in the poem, because the author is making specific references to his MO with the use of words like selected route, unmask, and plans. These lines are enough to make the hairs of one's neck stand on end if they know even the most basic details about the EAR/ONS crimes. I have already gone into detail about selected route and why that is significant, but the most vivid and chilling word in the stanza (and perhaps the poem) has to be unmask. On the surface, this is the author making specific reference to one of the most consistent features of EAR/ONS' MO — his use of ski masks and other kinds of masks to hide his identity from victims and also instil more terror into them during the attack. Wearing a mask dehumanizes a person by stripping away their most human feature — their facial characteristics. By wearing a mask in each and every attack, the offender is not only ensuring that he won't be recognized at some point in the future by a victim, but also increasing the terror factor by taking away the most human physical quality that a person has, thus giving him the appearance (as well as the behaviour) of a monster. The mask is absolutely central to EAR/ONS' MO, and while it may have initially been used strictly to conceal his identity, I'm sure it did not take long for him to see how much fear it generated in his victims.

I have spent some time now on the significance on "The selected route," the meaning of character, and how it underscores the theme of choice that the author is so keen on injecting into the poem to demonstrate his control, not only over his victims and the city of Sacramento, but also over himself and his actions. But what about that tantalizing word unmask, and his statement that somehow "The selected route will unmask / Character when plans take action." This takes me back to my idea about these lines mimicking a treasure map, in the sense that the author seems to be giving his readers a clue to his identity by explaining that if one can somehow follow his route, his character or identity will be unmasked. I think we know enough about this offender to know that he loves red herrings and leaving clues that investigators will puzzle over for hours, weeks, months, years. As a result, I don't believe that the author is giving the reader any substantial clue about his identity and how he can be "unmasked." Instead, I tend to see these two lines in a figurative sense that is still interesting and revealing.

For the author of EC to make reference to the mask is very insightful, because it demonstrates an awareness that the EAR and the masks he wears are inseparable. But what is more revealing is the way he mentions the mask. Again, like the other references to himself as the perpetrator of heinous sex crimes against helpless victims in EC, the author finds a way to inject the mention of the mask in a way that is surprising and also deflects from those crimes and how instrumental the masks are to the commission of those crimes. To understand how the mention of the mask functions in the larger context of the poem, it is important to look at its placement and function in the two lines: "The selected route will unmask / Character when plans take action." I find it highly unusual that the one time a mask is mentioned, it is in a verb form that suggests the removal of that mask. While possibly the two most significant words in this quatrain are separated by a line break, they are linked through what is called enjambment: the continuation, without a pause, of a sentence from one line of poetry to the next. The enjambment used here is not, in my opinion, simply used to maintain the poetic rhythm and syllable count established in the previous verses. Rather than separating the words by use of a line break, the enjambment actually calls attention to them, and links them together — and indeed the two verses together — to create a sentence of dense meaning and significance. As for the connection between unmask and character, the author is suggesting that his identity and/or personality can be revealed by following the selected route...when plans take action. These two lines are so dense with significance and possible interpretations that it is difficult not to get pulled down the rabbit hole into pure speculation. But let's see if we can walk carefully through these lines and avoid those holes, while still allowing informed speculation to guide us to an interpretation that makes sense based on what we know about the offender, and what the author tells us about himself in the poem.

First of all, which of the two meanings of character does the author intend? Or do they intend for both meanings to be inferred? Either way, they are creating a kind of treasure map, saying in a sense that through following their selected route, we shall come to know their character. Again, selected route can be interpreted in more than one way: it can be the physical route that the offender plans and plots to enter and exit a neighbourhood in order to gain access to victims. But the selected route can also be the offender's larger MO — everything he does to commit the crime, from the planning and preparation, to the crime itself. And then there is that verb so charged with meaning — unmasked. When one tries to put together all the double-entendres, dual meanings, etc., we can end up chasing shadows, guessing which meaning is intended and which is the result of being read into too much. All I am willing to say is that the wording of these lines are no accident; that this is the author being clever, toying with his audience, suggesting that the answer to who he is can be found by knowing what he does. This ties back to the theme the author has already established by this point — he has made a choice, he "must choose satisfaction." What is the result: The selected route, or rather the path he has chosen for himself will unmask / Character, that his, it will tell us the type of person he has chosen to be when plans take action, which is a riff on (and a rhyme with) One must seek satisfaction. To put a rather interesting spin on this, D'Ambrosia says of our offender in the FDLE profile that he spends hours, days, weeks fantasizing about the crimes, and then "He then actually (makes) a choice to move from fantasy to action and (makes) a plan to do it" (10). Put it all together and we have a stanza where the offender is telling us in a rather roundabout way — which seems to be his MO when actually addressing his actions in the poem — that he has chosen to be the man he is, and we can see exactly who he is through what he does.

Again, perhaps the most interesting thing about these two very interesting lines is not what he says about himself and his actions, but rather what he leaves out. When plans take action. That is the closest he comes to directly speaking of his crimes up to this point. And yet he seems to be so certain about himself; about his choice (even though he does describe the choosing of values as a task) and the imperative that he "must seek satisfaction." How can he speak so directly and confidently in one way, and yet also be so cagey and indirect when it comes to actually telling his audience what it means for him to seek satisfaction? Why can he sound so sure of himself when he tells in the second two lines that he is what he does, and yet only tell us that who he is will be revealed when plans take action? Where oh where is our psychopathic serial rapist who delights in the terror and torture of his victims? The one who loves to hold cities hostage, toy with his victims and with police? The man without a conscience? If this is the EAR speaking — and I believe it is — why can't he speak about his crimes in all their brutal glory?

Personally, I think he is ashamed of those crimes. Ashamed that he loses control of himself and his urges. In many ways, EC is a poem about having control and losing it. His murders follow the same pattern: gaining complete control over his victims only to lose control of himself in a frenzy or violent rage. I believe this guy is more complex than we give him credit for, and I believe that the long pause between Sanchez and Domingo and Janelle Cruz is not an accident. Nor is the ultimate cessation of murders after Janelle. This is someone who truly is a Jekyll and Hyde-type. He wants to believe that he has made a choice and is in full control. But his poem and sometimes his actions say otherwise.

On a closing note...

One of the key themes of EC is the way the author's inflated ego and grandiosity causes him to elevate himself above just about everyone. As I said earlier, his hubris is as tangible as the words on the page, and these qualities match perfectly with the FDLE profile of the ONS' probably character (there's that word again). For those who think that this poem is too introspective and simply does not match their idea of what EAR would write, consider not only the previous essays I have written, but also how much the poem hews to the personality characteristics of a narcissistic psychopath. I have pointed some of these instances out already, and will continue to do so as I make my way through the rest of the poem. But my question for the doubters is: how is it possible for a hoaxer to write a poem that so closely matches the character traits of the offender? Why would a hoaxer refer to the actual crimes so indirectly, when their main goal would be to try and imitate the type of poem they think the EAR would have written. Back in the 1970's, do you think a hoaxer would have such a refined knowledge of the characteristics of a psychopathic predator that they would be able to understand his self-perception so well that they could actually imitate the grandiosity and inflated sense of self-worth that D'Ambrosia would write in the profile of the ONS years later without falling into the temptation of writing explicitly about rape the way that almost anyone who had not studied serial sex offenders would assume that a poem written by a serial rapist would? What kind of hoaxer would have such a refined understanding of our offender's psychology that he could mimic his thought processes and motivations in such an uncanny way? Of course, we don't know exactly what EAR/ONS' thought processes were, but the details of his crimes that have come to be known since the poem was written, the details that have been revealed about his psychology and MO by profilers, LE, and FBI agents, as well as sleuths like Quester seem to indicate exactly the kind of offender who would write a poem like this. I am going to write an essay to state all the reasons why I believe that the author of 'Excitement's Crave' is also the EAR/ONS, but for the moment, I just want everyone reading this — doubters, believers, and those on the fence — to think about all the points that myself and other contributors to the thread have made about the poem and how it matches what is known about the EAR/ONS through his crimes, through his profile, and through the many studies that have since been done on this kind of sexual offender.

[cityofchill]

*Note...

I must apologize for the preceding essay and all the others I have posted. When I type them on my tablet, I make sure to bold certain words, italicize others, etc, All these formatting efforts are lost when I post the text into the reply box. I do plan to go back to the essays and fix them up, correct the many mistakes, expand on points I have failed to expand on so that I can get the post up quicker, cut other points that I go on for too long about, but it is pretty much impossible with the tablet. I have to log in via my computer to make changes to such long posts.

So, I apologize to those following this thread who find my posts long, difficult, ponderous, and error-filled. I will fix them up eventually. Right now, I just want to get them up. I have a good chunk of the analysis of the next stanza written, and it's not nearly as long as for the second one. I hope to post it soon.

Thank-you to everyone who reads and contributes to this thread.

cityofchill

[Deleted]

Aug 27, 2016 19:32:11 GMT @wynnewoodestates said:

Your East Area Rapist
And deserving pest
See you in the press or on T.V.

''The pest, in a sense, is a very superior being to us: he
knows where to find us and how—usually in the bath or in sexual
intercourse or asleep.''

Charles Bukowski (b. 1920), U.S.
author, poet. "Notes on the Pest," Tales of Ordinary Madness (1967).


Port and Play..........was my POI ever checked out?

Hey play, do you have a copy of that report on the public intoxication from Houston or a report number? Considerable assets have been brought to the table in order to exclude my POI via PI.

[trabuco]

Aug 28, 2016 16:39:48 GMT @wynnewoodestates said:

Aug 28, 2016 5:31:12 GMT trabuco said:

Why was Sacramento deserving?

Hell if I know.Let's find the guy first and then ask stupid questions.

You can be superior. Where to find us and how to find us. Those are some very vulnerable positions to find us. Bathing, having sex and sleeping. I wouldn't call that superior. Maybe unrelenting and determined to catch us with our back turned, naked and without. Easy prey for him. Nothing superior about that imo.