MICHELLE: Oh, okay. He was a nerd.
PAUL HOLES: He and his wife, Judy Corbett, are the ones that pushed this development. All these houses . . . we’re on the street, these are the backs of these houses. The fronts of the houses face a green common area. And that was to help facilitate more of the community feel. So, neighbors are coming out. They have gardens—community gardens; green spaces that are shared.
MICHELLE: So, if you were a student, you wouldn’t live here?
PAUL HOLES: Unlikely. I mean, you could, but at that time, these were new houses. Students couldn’t afford these.
Holes drives through the community looking for the home where the attack took place.
PAUL HOLES: So, our victim . . . lived in this one. Right here on the right-hand side.
MICHELLE: Hmm.
PAUL HOLES: And all of that on this side was actively being constructed at the time. So, you see the long, narrow cul-de-sacs, to which the city said, “Absolutely not.” And then the Corbetts had the fire departments bring the fire trucks out here, to show them, yes, you can turn around back here. I’ll drive around so you can kind of see some of the features of this place. Solar. All the houses were passive solar. That was big, back in the day.
PAUL HOLES: Here’s an example here. This is a pedestrian bridge over the open-swale drainage. And this is the way the EAR came up.
MICHELLE: How do you know that?
PAUL HOLES: Shoe prints. Corbett was telling me this area down here was like a sandbox. Every day, he raked it smooth. And after the attack, he’s out here, and there’s a shoe impression in his freshly raked sandbox. And he followed that shoe impression to the victim’s house, around the house, through the green area. And I’m talking to him, and he goes, “Well, I was in the Boy Scouts, and one of the things I really enjoyed doing was tracking. And I used to track all the time.” And so, he says, “I found these shoe prints and I felt I needed to track them.” So, he’s got more of an elevated ability than the average person. I wouldn’t say he’s some search-and-rescue expert, but . . .
MICHELLE: He kinda knew what he was doing.
PAUL HOLES: Yeah. So, then he’s saying, these shoe prints came down through here and went out this way.
MICHELLE: Huh.
PAUL HOLES: It’s like a common green area.
MICHELLE: Wait, so they kind of went in a loop, around?
PAUL HOLES: Yes, so, he went and he came up this way, and looped around from the victim’s house, and these shoe prints were in the victim’s backyard.
MICHELLE: This is an interesting development. I really don’t think I’ve ever been inside something like this.
PAUL HOLES: It’s unique. Village Homes was world-famous. Fran?ois Mitterrand flew in in a helicopter to visit this area because of how novel it was. Students from all over, and developers, were coming here to take a look at it. And so that’s where you can see, you know, “Village Homes in Davis. We’re doing a development; let’s see what they’re doing and what we can incorporate into our thing.” It was featured . . . on the cover of Sunset magazine. Betty Ford rode her bike around here. I drove my wife through here, and she goes, “I’d never live here.”
MICHELLE: It is a little claustrophobic.
PAUL HOLES: It’s claustrophobic, and it’s a predator’s paradise. You can’t see anything. I mean, he can come in, he can attack, and he can leave, and nobody would ever know.
PAUL HOLES: The third victim—and I’ll take you by that after this—was in the neighborhood that’s right over there. So, the three Davis attacks are pretty close together.
MICHELLE: Yeah, they are.
PAUL HOLES: One of the interesting things is that this victim and the third Davis victim carpooled together. Their kids were at the same nursery school. And that’s the only known connection between victims that I’m aware of. But that’s never really been explored.
MICHELLE: Right.
PAUL HOLES: Nobody’s gone back to these victims to talk to them. Could the EAR have seen them together in a carpool and that’s why he chose them, or was it just coincidence because he attacked so close together?
MICHELLE: Right. Did each know that the other was a victim? You don’t even know that?
PAUL HOLES: I don’t even know that, no.
PAUL HOLES: So, EAR came out here . . . and now he’s tracking along on this side. And they kind of dismissed some of this at first; the initial officer that Corbett called out, Corbett tells him, “Hey, I’ve tracked these shoe prints,” and the officer goes, “Well, this is a common jogging path, and it’s so far away, I can’t see the offender ever parking his vehicle down here and then getting up here to attack.” Well, the shoe prints end up going down, following the path on this olive grove, down that way.
PAUL HOLES: So, here’s the other side of this olive grove.
MICHELLE: Okay. So, he might have been parked like on a shoulder right here?
PAUL HOLES: Nope. ’Cause the shoe prints continued.
MICHELLE: Oh my gosh. Isn’t that a little risky that he’d be seen?
PAUL HOLES: Late at night? This is pitch-black!
MICHELLE: Okay. And he’s probably wearing dark clothing.
PAUL HOLES: I mean, what does he do all the time? And he’s in neighborhoods, with houses. Walking around. That’s probably riskier than this.
MICHELLE: Yeah, I guess that’s true.
Holes drives deeper into UC-Davis property, with various research buildings spread out to the right and agricultural fields to the left.
PAUL HOLES: So, he tracks the shoe prints . . . all the way down to here. I can’t get through here. This is what’s called Bee Biology. They do a lot of bee studies here.
MICHELLE: Oh, uh huh.
PAUL HOLES: When I initially read this case file, I couldn’t make it out. I thought it was Boo Biology. And I’m thinking it’s on campus way over there, and I’m going, “This is nothing.” But when you look at where he says he lost track, the shoe prints ended up veering down to the left. What’s down here? Well . . . look here. It’s the airport!
MICHELLE: Oh!
PAUL HOLES: So, I’m now calling airports saying, “What kind of records do you have?”
They both laugh.
PAUL HOLES: My naive thought about flying is, you know . . . every time you flew a plane, you had to file a flight plan; you fly into an airport, they know you’re there, and everything else. But they told me, “No, no. Anybody can come and go here. We have no idea they’re here. If they come in after hours, they tie their plane down. They go do their thing, they come back, we’ll never know they’re here.”
MICHELLE: Is that right?! That is strange.
PAUL HOLES: So, here we’ve got this case, twenty-two hours after the case in Modesto occurred. The case in Modesto has the strange man being picked up at an airport, being dropped off, near new construction, seemingly heading toward the victim’s home.
MICHELLE: But why was that man so strange?
PAUL HOLES: The cab driver said he just had a single bag. And he just says, “Take me to Sylvan and Meadow.” And then, “Drop me off right here.” He gets out and just wanders to where the cab driver says there’s nothing there but houses being built. And then the next case . . . we have an airport connection.
MICHELLE: I’m trying to think of what kind of person would have a plane like that. Like, a small plane?
PAUL HOLES: Well, a small plane opens up possibilities. You know, these developers typically had your multiseat corporate jets. If you’re talking about somebody with a small plane, somebody who’s not a millionaire, you know, or somebody with huge resources, having a . . .
MICHELLE: Yeah.