I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer

The man was white, in his late teens or maybe early twenties, about five eleven, with a slender build and very blond, straight hair that reached his neck. He was clean-shaven. He was wearing an Ocean Pacific–type shirt with light blue trousers, corduroy or maybe denim.

At around eleven p.m. that same night, Tammy Straub* and her daughter Carla* were jogging on Merida Way when they spotted a suspicious young male with a German shepherd gazing toward the garage of one of the houses. He stood completely still, his back to them, as though he were frozen. The man appeared to be in his twenties or early thirties, five ten and well built. His hair was blond, and he was wearing white or beige tennis shorts and a light-colored T-shirt. A composite sketch was later made.

Detectives learned that, on the afternoon before the murders, Realtor Cami Bardo* had been conducting an open house at the big red barn. While she was engaged with another party, a white male between thirty-five and forty years old walked in and, without saying a word, began exploring the house. Before she was able to break free from her conversation, the man left.

When the viewing was over, Bardo inspected the house and noticed some metal fragments in the kitchen. In retrospect, she realized that they looked consistent with a locking device from the rear door of the house.

Bardo described the strange open-house visitor as having bright blue eyes and short, light-brown hair that was curly and sun-streaked. He was tan, stood about five nine, and was wearing a green alligator shirt and faded Levi’s. She met with the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s sketch artist and a composite was drawn.

Initially, police considered the possibility that drug dealers had broken into the home and killed the couple, but those close to the victims dismissed this idea as ludicrous. Neither one did drugs. Detectives then focused their crosshairs on Cheri’s ex-husband. After grilling him relentlessly, they vetted his alibi. It checked out.

Over the years, locals dubbed the phantom responsible for the thwarted attack and two double murders the Creek Killer. Because all three couples targeted were unmarried, some speculated that the killer was a religious zealot who sought to punish those he deemed to be living in sin. Meanwhile, Santa Barbara investigators remained convinced that their killer was a local punk named Brett Glasby.

First eyed by Santa Barbara investigators as a potential suspect in 1980, Glasby was a local hood well known for his nastiness and violent temper. No one had a kind word to say about him. He was a mean bastard. An accomplished burglar, Glasby was tangentially connected to victim Robert Offerman: he and some thugs he ran with were the prime suspects in the savage beating of a janitor who worked in Offerman’s office building. Glasby lived in the target area and also had access to a .38 Smith & Wesson—the same type of gun used in the Offerman/Manning homicides. But ballistics tests ruled the gun out, and no physical evidence ever connected Glasby to any of the crimes.

Brett Glasby himself was murdered, alongside his brother Brian, in 1982. The two were vacationing in Mexico when they headed to the beach in San Juan de Alima for what they thought was a drug deal. Once there, they were robbed and shot to death in what turned out to be a setup. The Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department maintained that Glasby was likely responsible for the Offerman/Manning and Sanchez/Domingo double homicides, and they stuck to this conclusion even after Orange County’s cold-case unit linked the crimes by m.o. to the Original Night Stalker—whose last known crime was committed in 1986, four years after Glasby’s death.

In 2011, years after previous failed attempts, a DNA profile was successfully developed from degraded genetic material recovered from a blanket at the Sanchez/Domingo crime scene. It conclusively linked the Goleta cases to the East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker.

Like Joe Alsip, Brett Glasby turned out to be just another red herring.

*

NO ONE EVER TOLD DEBBI DOMINGO THAT HER MOTHER’S KILLER might have claimed other victims. She found out only in the early 2000s, when cable true-crime programs began profiling the Original Night Stalker cases. By that time, Debbi was working as a prison guard in Texas, seven years clean after nearly a decade of addiction to methamphetamines. Her life had been thoroughly derailed after her mother’s murder.

On that day in July, when fifteen-year-old Debbi had first learned of her mother’s death, she called her grandmother and told her that her mother was dead.

“Debbi,” her grandmother replied, “it’s not nice of you to joke like that.”

She moved to San Diego almost immediately after. Her mother’s side of the family gradually receded from her life. Shortly after her mother’s death, she’d overheard a family exchange that would haunt her. “Linda,” her grandmother told her aunt. “I’m so glad it wasn’t you. I don’t know what I would do if it had been you.”

Over the years, Debbi has reached out to her grandmother and to her aunt, hoping to rekindle a connection. They’ve never responded.

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Orange County, 2000



OLD-TIMERS AT THE ORANGE COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT WOULD see Larry Pool’s furrowed brow, the victims’ photos pinned to the board above his cubicle, the binders accumulating around him like a dreary fortress.

“Guy’s dead,” they’d tell Pool flatly, as if repeating a basketball score from last night’s game. “Or a lifer. Those guys never stop.”

“Those guys” were psychopaths, serial killers, monsters. Whatever you called them, the conventional wisdom was that extremely violent serial offenders didn’t stop killing until they were forced to by death, disability, or imprisonment. Pool’s target had last struck in 1986. It was 2000.

“So why do you care?” The old-timers would needle Pool. The attitude rankled him. It ignited his rectitude and made him double down on a belief he kept to himself: he was going to catch the guy.

Santa Barbara didn’t yet have DNA, but the m.o. was strong enough that Pool included it in the series of murders along with Cruz. October 1, 1979, to May 5, 1986. Ten bodies. Two survivors. The scope of the case gave investigators a lot to work with. They decided to hold off contacting the media until they’d exhausted leads. They didn’t want to tip the killer off. Pool agreed with the old-timers that a guy this prolifically violent might be doing time somewhere on a serious charge. He scoured arrest records. Peepers. Prowlers. Burglars. Rapists. They exhumed an ex-con’s body in Baltimore. Zip. Nothing.

Pool kept the search command roving in his brain. One day he flashed back on the first autopsy he ever witnessed, near the end of Police Academy training. The body was removed from the bag and laid onto the steel table. The deceased male was five eleven, with dark hair, brawny. And hog-tied. He was wearing women’s shoes, hosiery, panties, and a stuffed bra. The cause of death was toluene poisoning; he’d been sniffing glue out of a sock while indulging in some kind of autoerotic experience. Pool could see ejaculate on the panties. The sight made an impression on the straitlaced Pool. Looking back, he wondered if maybe their killer sometimes experimented with binding himself when he didn’t have a victim. He thought back and placed the autopsy in October 1986, five months after the last murder.

He dug up the hog-tied guy’s history. There was no criminal record; no link to the other crime locations. He’d been cremated. If he was their guy, Pool thought, we’re toast. Pool gathered coroners’ reports from May 5 through December 31, 1986, in every county in Southern California and began combing through them. Leads failed to develop. After a while, going to the media didn’t sound so bad.

The October 1, 2000, edition of the Orange County Register ran the first article about the DNA link: “DNA May Point to Serial Killer in the Area.” Pool was described as having ninety-three binders of material on the case in his office.

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