The big secret, all savvy shoppers know, Rakuten makes your money go further. Shop with Rakuten to get cash back on top of seasonal sales. Discover fashion, tech, beauty and more at hundreds of your favorite shops. Like boots, eBay and Lego. It's free and super easy to use. Just shop as normal and stack cash back on top of sales and savings. Join for free at Rakuten.co.uk or download the Rakuten app. That's r-a-k-u-t-e-n, Rakuten.co.uk. Every day I fantasize about him getting caught. Every day, 427 years. I fantasized about who would call me what would it look like, what would it be, Ava Sparry showing up, how validating it would feel, how good it would feel, how good it would feel to not have to wonder who he was for the rest of my life and be scared for the rest of my life. Finally, he was caught. And now, Nicole would get to face him in court. I had been waiting for so long, so I was excited to testify. I mean, I planned this out in my hand a thousand times. Waller was going to try to defend himself by saying he was just a regular guy, a husband, a dad, a safety employee, not a masked rapeist who stalked and terrorized women for more than 15 years. But the evidence seemed to say otherwise. Nicole would testify against him. She was a victim, a survivor, but of course, she was so much more, and she wanted Roy Waller and the court to know it. I wanted to make sure he understood that I have built an amazing life in spite of him, that I also never forgot what he did, and that what he did was truly life-changing and massive. And I just thought, you know what, I'm not actually the unfortunate one. You have to live as you. That's awful. What must have happened to you? In December of 1991, just six months after Nicole was sexually assaulted, another major rape trial took place in the US. Thirty-year-old William Kennedy Smith went on trial for the rape of 29-year-old Patricia Bowman at the Kennedy Family Compound in Palm Beach, Florida. It was a, he said she said case and one of the first trials to be televised. Nicole watched it. Smith got a lot of airtime. Bowman, however, was never shown. Broadcasters placed a blue dot over her face, and all but one news outlet kept her name private. I thought, why the hell are you hiding her? He's the one who's accused of raping her on a beach, but he is walking around looking like some celebrity. The jury quickly decided that William Kennedy Smith was not guilty. A few days later, Patricia Bowman decided she had nothing to hide, and she showed her face in an interview on ABC's Primetime Live with Diane Sawyer. I'm not a blue blob. I'm a person. I have nothing to be ashamed of. Smith's trial and Bowman's decision to talk about it publicly made an impression on the call. I remembered the blue dot, and it really irritated me. It just flies in the face of everything that I stand for and believe in about this type of crime, about any crime. I don't think we talk about any of these issues enough openly as a society, and then who gets blamed, who gets the scarlet letter, who gets the shame, the victim of the crime, not the perpetrator of the crime. Society is telling you, you cannot communicate about this, you cannot talk about this, because we are not comfortable with it. From Sony Music Entertainment and Perfect Kidns, you're listening to Hunting the Boogie Man. I'm Peter McDonald. This is Episode 5, Unmasked. How would you describe Roy Waller? I'll call him a sociopath in the sense that he's a guy who portrays himself as one way, and then is statistically sexually assaulting women with this mindset that there somehow lovers. It's so bizarre to me that he's a father. He's a husband. That's prosecutor Chris Orr, an assistant chief at the Sacramento County DA's office, and one of the two prosecutors who took Roy Waller to court. Chris has dark curly hair and a disarming smile. We were sitting in a sound-proofish room on the second floor of the DA's office, downtown. One of the cases in Davis involved a woman who heard a creek upstairs, and I can't think of all the times I've heard the creek upstairs. She knew she was home alone, and she just went up to go check it, and literally the man jumps out and takes her away, and it's actually assaults her. He's the type of guy that is so confident that he can get away with it. In Sacramento, you know, he again, he scares a woman as she's jumping out of the shower, telling them that I can get away with this, and I never get caught. I think he was becoming more and more emboldened, and is the thing of nightmares. He is kind of the boogie man in the night that you are truly afraid of. I think he's more like a wolf in sheep's clothing. That's prosecutor Keith Hill, Chris's partner on the case. When you see him in court, he could be in my fantasy football league. But then when you read about what he has done in the police reports, it almost seems unbelievable. Keith is tall, wears glasses, and has a cheerful way about him. We were all curious about how and why Waller committed these crimes. This guy could do these horrific crimes to so many people and get away with it for so long, while still portraying himself as, well, he was an environmental engineer at a major university. He owns a home, he has a family. He's not the guy that you think is going to be out in the middle of the night, toting a rape kit, breaking into a house, and just terrorizing his victims. It's really hard to put those two things together, and that's one of the things as the trial attorneys we had to overcome. We had to very clearly and solidly prove that he is, in fact, the wolf. The boogie man that we want to believe doesn't exist, and then you're confronted with the reality that they do, and one of them sitting right here in court. And so Chris and I knew that when it comes down to it, this case is going to be all about the DNA. This would be the biggest case in the prosecutor's careers. Orrensick investigative genealogy, FIG, as it became known, was a watershed in crime solving. This breakthrough was as big as when DNA revolutionized investigations by matching suspects to crimes and allowing for cases to be linked. But the future of FIG partly depended on how the prosecutors would handle the trial. Right away, there were issues. The defense wanted to know who is the relative that tied this case together. What database did you use? How did you build your family tree? And they wanted to know all that, and we said, no, so I want to protect the privacy of that family member. Their argument was that even though FIG cracked the case, it wasn't relevant in proving Walters guilt. Orrensick investigative genealogy just generated leads. It didn't reveal anyone's DNA or private information. Among the hundreds of thousands of white men of a certain age in Northern California, who could be the North Cal rapist, it cut through the noise and possibilities of a 30-year investigation. And in 45 minutes, shine to light on Roy Charles Waller. But investigators still had to go to Waller's house in Benisha, dig through his trash, and prove he was their suspect by matching his DNA to the DNA from the crime scenes. FIG just gave them the right tip. It's a court said, you don't have to give it up. And that now has become the precedent in California. FIG wouldn't even be mentioned at trial. As soon as Waller was arrested, investigators descended on his neatly kept home, where they found handguns and rifles, but little else. But a large storage unit he rented was like his secret man cave. He had a lounge chair, TV, and porn library. And beneath piles of disarray, they found five ready-to-go rape kits, four zipped into black bags, and one in a plastic storage bin. One of the cases in Contracosta involved Halloween. And inside what we described as rape kit evidence bag number two, there was a mask, a scream-type mask. In rape kit bag number three, there was three other Halloween masks. It's unbelievable he kept it all. One of the mysteries about the NorCal rapists, MO, was how he selected his victims. Evidence in the storage unit showed that he found many of them by scouring postings for roommates, often Asian women. He'd then contact them using a pseudonym. So we had evidence that Warner Park had received a phone call from a guy named Bob Smith, whose voice was the same as Mr. Waller's. Nicole had been right about Bob Smith. His call was really about figuring out when he could break in. While there also became a catfisher, he adopted the online persona of a young Asian woman named Wendy Wang, who was looking for an apartment to rent. There was emails where he said hi. My name's Wendy Wang. I'm looking for a roommate. You know, I'm interested in living with you. I'm concerned about security. Do you have a security system? What about a dog? Do you have a boyfriend that comes over frequently? I mean, there was thousands of these. Wendy Wang's emails were easy to trace. Waller forwarded them to his personal email address, Wall in the mud, from his days as a landscaper. Detective Avis Beary told me that Waller also staked out women's homes and hid in his car or the bushes to record voyeuristic videos. She also thinks he frequently broke into these homes. He was choosing his victims. He was working 24-7, I feel like, you know, trying to find his next victims. He had piles of printed maps, map quest directions, leading to women's homes, dating back to the early 2000s. In the margins, he'd take notes and rate women on a scale of 1 to 10. Like two Vietnamese, two Taiwanese, two Chinese. And some highlighting. And there were pictures of floor plans and paths of how to get in and out of homes. Detective Avis Beary estimated that Waller had staked hundreds, maybe over a thousand women in his lifetime. His porn library included videos of him having sex with women in a locked room in the basement of his office building at the University of California Berkeley. As far as investigators could tell, none of the videos appeared to be rapes. But as the prosecutors prepared for trial, they worried that Waller's decades of stalking women, his obsessive catfishing, his pattern of breaking into women's homes, his five rape kits, and the six they carried with him, suggested one terrible thing. There's a lot of cases we don't know about. So we actually asked a number of detectives and investigators to actually find the women that lived at that address or find the names and then cold call them and say, hey, I'm just trying to check did anything ever happen. Can't get enough of the story of Margot Freshwater. Do you need more than the episodes can provide? Real quick, we just launched a free true crime newsletter and community page to go along with our binge shows, including the crimes of Margot Freshwater. And you can access it at the link in our episode description or at patreon.com slash the bench. You'll get behind the scenes reporting, case updates, and a chance to chat with one of the shows creators and other fans. The newsletter comes out twice a month. It's totally free. And it's where the story continues. I'll see you there. Just hit the link in the description or head to patreon.com slash the bench. On Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. The calls didn't result in any new cases being discovered. Detective Avisperi told me that the women couldn't remember meeting him or a windy Wang. The whole thing was frightening news to them in fact. Investigators decided to halt their work trying to identify more cases. It wasn't helping and it might have been causing more harm than good. The evidence in Waller's storage unit was proof that Nicole had been right all along. He was a fully developed predator when he attacked her in 1991. If only the public had been warned. Roy Waller was arrested on a Friday and would be a reigned and Sacramento County Superior Court on Monday. Nicole and her husband Carlos drove to Sacramento to see it. Oh, I have to be in a room with them. I'm about to be in a room with this person for the first time in 27 years. Before the arrangement, they went to the DA's office for a meeting with some of the other survivors. Some Nicole knew from filming America's most wanted. Others, she was meeting for the first time. Then they walked up the street to the courthouse. The courtroom was very packed and small wasn't that big. So I was kind of looking around like where's the door? Where are they going to bring him in? On one side was a jail cell with a door at the back. And then also we heard a click to a door and the place went quiet. Waller and in Orange jumpsuit walked into the cell. He'd been told not to look at any of the victims in the gallery. Waller's defense attorney, Joseph Farina, had just gotten the case. The judge read out all the charges and Waller stood still. I'm staring at the back of his head like the whole time. Then all of a sudden he turned around. That was the first time I ever saw his face and it was really fast. And I was so close to him that I was like, oh my god, there he is. Nicole and his survivor next to her gripped each other's hands. Nicole's husband, Carlos, felt a surge of anger. I want to jump across and grab my the throat and pull him down. It was just, let's go buddy. And he sort of scanned the gallery and then he settles in and he notices myself and the other victim and just stared at our eyes for split second. And I was frozen and I thought my blood left my body at that. I was so terrified. That's I could see it on his face. I can like see his thinking bitch I should have killed you that night. Then Waller walked out. Almost two years passed before Nicole and Carlos saw Waller again. But for a case this complex with nine victims, 46 counts, six jurisdictions, evidence dating back almost 30 years and a pandemic in the middle. The prosecutors told me two years was swift. An in-house investigator at the DA's office, Terry Castiglia, wrangled all the witnesses and tracked down the evidence. The DNA was their main evidence but Waller's MO was another. The similarities from case to case to case it was just incredible. Prosecutor Keith Hill made an MO chart for the jury. Among other things, the rapist always wore a mask. Used a weapon, found the women, said he only wanted money and kissed them. But the prosecutors had to decide if the MO was unique enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Waller was the rapist in the cases that did not have DNA. The 1992 rape in Sonoma, the one Nicole spotted in the newspaper, was one of them. Ultimately, the prosecutors decided that one wasn't entirely provable. But the double rape in Davis in 1997, which also had no DNA, might be. That was the case where the rapist wore a mask and taunted the ATM camera. Could they prove that was Waller? We had gotten his computer from his home. And with his computer, he, like everybody else, saves all your old photographs. We have photographs of him at Hoover Dam from around the time frame of when this was committed. And the photograph has the same neck bend, the same look, and is identical, except for it doesn't have the mask over the top. So we showed those photographs of him just normal to his relatives, friends, his ex-wife and asked who is this, who is this, who is this. And then we also asked him about the masked one. And to a T, each of them were like, that looks like Roy. The prosecutors charged Waller with the 1997 rape in Davis. The trial began in October of 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic, and lasted about three weeks. The juries all in masks, we're all in masks. The witnesses were behind Plexiglass. The prosecutors called dozens of witnesses, including two of Waller's ex-girlfriends, his ex-wife with whom he had a daughter, and of course, the victims. On the third day of trial, Nicole testified. I don't think I was nervous. I think I was just excited to like, finally be able to talk to a jury. It was a little bit of a disappointment because the jury was sort of spread all over the courtroom. The trial was held in the largest courtroom in the building, but the pandemic era distancing rules meant that very few people were allowed in, and the jurors had to spread out. Some were in the jury box, others in the gallery. Roy Waller's often signed with the defense attorneys, and then because of his COVID, Roy Waller had a mask on the entire time. Never took it off, which was really not satisfying. I mean, I planned this out in my head a thousand times, when I wanted to go look up, look up motherfucker, look up, look up, look up, and he just would not look up. Prosecutor Chris Orr asked Nicole graphic questions to establish the facts of the rape. Then Waller's defense attorney, cross-exameter, she said it was hard. Her testimony lasted a few hours, and then she drove home. I know it was funny with him. We were making jokes about the phone. It was a tiny plug-in, and he's like, I'm a bit old. I said, yeah, so am I, and we both laughed. You know, and that kind of thing. I threw him off a little bit, but I don't think he expected me to be funny. It's such a hard thing to do to go up there and tell your story, even though you've been looking forward to it, it's still not, I can't imagine it's easy. No, it was hard. It was very hard thing to do. As a witness, Nicole wasn't supposed to attend the trial or read about it, but Carlos could. He reserved a seat for November 12th. That day, the trial schedule showed both sides moving to closing arguments, but then a curveball. The DA's office sent out breaking news. And then Carlos read the email at him and all of a sudden he's like, so they have another witness. They have a witness, so it's defense is not resting. I'm like, God, who are they calling? That was Roy Charles. What? What? This guy's really going to do this. Prosecutors Chris Orr and Keith Hill thought this was a recklessly arrogant move. We were kind of high-fiving because that's the worst thing a defendant can do. You know, it should take the stand, but that goes with that type of person that is thanks to their in control and that's out committing these crimes. He thinks he could control what's going on in the courtroom. Nicole didn't think he'd reveal much, but there was a chance he might answer some of the questions she had. Like, did something happen to him as a child that twisted him into doing this? Did he have any remorse or genuine empathy? 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Head to factor meals dot com slash binge crimes 50 off and use the code binge crimes 50 off to get 50% off and free breakfast for a year. Eat like a pro this month with factor. New subscribers only varies by plan. One free breakfast item per box for one year while subscription is active. Instant access to over 60 other jaw dropping true crime stories. Plus subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series on the first of every month, every month. Search for the binge channel on Apple podcasts or head to get the binge dot com to subscribe today. The binge feed your true crime obsession. Carlos was there when the rapist took the stand. Waller's attorney Joseph Farina started by asking some softball questions to portray Waller as a loving husband and father. The kind of person who couldn't possibly be a rapist. Then he began a multi hour Q&A about all the evidence of rape and Waller's storage unit for which Waller had an explanation. The first one was the most innocuous. I'm paraphrasing but the tone was Roy tell us the real reason you have all these panties in a bag. Waller said they belonged to a girlfriend with an addiction to buying lingerie. He held onto them. The next question verbatim this time was Roy did you ever engage in consensual role playing involving the use of ropes or restraints or handcuffs? Why yes Waller said one of his girlfriends had been very wild. And paraphrasing again Roy what about all these craigslist ads where Asian women are asking for roommates. Why do you have so many of those? Oh those Waller said well you know he was just trying to help a female friend find a new apartment which didn't explain why he had so many of them over many years. Roy what about this scar on your arm and under your eye? Did you sustain those when women you were trying to rape stabbed you? No no no those scars are from a game of paintball. The Cole's husband Carlos watched it all in dismay. I'm like God this guy is such a slime ball he's such a slime ball. Roy why do you have so much duct tape because it's so useful Waller said and there was a sale. But why do you have single roles inside different bags along with zip ties rope masks neoprene gloves condoms and tactical pens for breaking glass? Waller said the police officers investigating him had created the rape kits to frame him. He just had a narcissistic attitude about himself like that he knew he was going to get out of this. I guarantee he thought he would get away with it. May the hairs on my neck stand up for sure. Then Waller's attorney asked the question everyone was wondering about. How on earth did his genetic material appear inside women's vaginas and on their covers pillowcases and bodies? To that Waller didn't have an explanation. He said he'd never been to those places or seen those women. So it must not be his DNA. Then it was prosecutor Chris Orr's turn to expose Waller as a liar. His colleague Keith showed the jury lengths of rope from one of Waller's rape kits. Keith's holding up the ropes. I'm asking Mr. Waller about the ropes and Mr. Waller says those are for women because they like to be tied up. I'm like sorry women like to be tied up he's like yes. I'm like so these are ropes for you to bind women. He's like my girlfriend. I'm like well your girlfriends are women correct. So you use these ropes that we found in your storage unit next to the handcuffs, next to the panties to bind women. And eventually he said yes. It was that was one of my favorite parts of the trial because Chris was just crushing him on cross examination. How did he explain the DNA? That was the very first question I think. Yeah. And he says that's not my job. I leave that to my attorneys. Yeah. Who had no explanation? Yeah he totally just put them on the spot. When he said I'm leaving that up to them. Of course his attorneys had no justification or defense for it because well there wasn't one. The close husband Carlos thought Waller's decision to take the stand backfired. What did you think was going to be the outcome of this trial after that testimony? I mean I knew I knew 100% he was going to be guilty. At the closing arguments Waller's defense attorney didn't have much of a defense. The DNA evidence was undeniable even though Waller denied it. And Waller's own family member said that was him in the ATM photos. Prosecutor Chris Orr had one more piece of evidence up his sleeve though. Something the jury didn't know about yet. There's a quote. Who is it, Bikers? Daniel Webster? Confession is suicide and suicide is confession. It goes there is no refuge from confession but suicide and suicide is confession. Nicole was in the courtroom for the prosecution's closing argument. They all sent put the video up on the up on the screen of Roy Waller trying to commit suicide in the cell. I'm shocked because I had no idea this happened. So here he is you know and they're showing us and the the jury is just watching this riveted you know and then all of a sudden it goes dark and then one by one our pictures come up each victim comes up on the wall. I thought it was brilliant. The jury was sent away to delivery. There were 46 counts. Nicole thought it would take a few days but it took them fewer than eight hours. The following afternoon everyone rushed back to the court house. They bring the jury back in and by the way even though Nicole was public about what happened to her at the trial and in the court documents she was referred to as endo. I will just never forget it because he just went you know that I've been in the bubble back to my bubble and he reads off this long charge and I just broke down in the courtroom because I had been waiting so long to hear those words in that courtroom for me. So I of course are trying to follow the rule you know trying to cry very quietly. The judge had forbidden any outbursts in the courtroom but Carlos and Nicole's friends who were watching it on a private zoom feed at home didn't have to suppress their reaction. It was like we were watching the Super Bowl and your team just scored the one he touched on and everyone is on the same team. It was kind of like that like everyone's chopping up and down and I five in and it was like that guy and it was just like smiles and you know everybody knew that this was a huge moment for Nicole. And as soon as I heard mine get the first one guilty I'm like oh all 46 he's going down all 46 he's guilty Chris turned around and just looked at me and kind of nodded at me hit his mask on he just nodded at me and smiled I can tell he was smiling and I was just like yeah fucking got him. All through the case prosecutors or and Hill had hammered home that the DNA evidence against Waller was inarguable. When the trial was over everyone flooded out to the sidewalk in front of the courthouse there were news cameras everywhere. One of the jurors came out and when one of the questions they asked him was how did how did you come to your verdict so quickly and he said the DNA don't lie. The DNA don't lie had been the prosecutor's catchphrase at trial. In a few weeks Waller would be sentenced. The judge invited Nicole and the other victims to read victim impact statements beforehand. Nicole had been thinking about what to say for almost 30 years. I asked her to read it for me. All the way I've thought about this moment every day since the morning of June 23rd 1991 when I was mercifully kept alive. I will not easily forgive the damage my family that said that night caused. My family has suffered greatly and although my mother lived long enough to see the arrest in her Raymond of Roy Waller. She was not able to fight long enough to see him convicted which was her dying wish and indeed her constant wish every single day. For 28 years before she died in 29 I hope to be believed fully and to stand near him in a court room to make sure I did my part to see him punish for what he did to me. It has been my wish for every moment in my life to be in court to hear the words guilty for what he did to me that night. Roy Troll's Waller is quite simply a monster. I will not waste time, emotion or any more of my life hating him. I will not waste one more second of my life thinking about him after this day. That day Nicole thought she'd shut the door on Roy Waller for good. The judge sentenced him to almost 900 years in prison, one of the longest prison sentences in US history. On the one hand it was a ridiculous number. On the other it reflected the totality of the harm he'd brought. Does the victim impact statement you read in court still represent what you think can feel? Yeah I mean I think for the most part yeah I mean and yes I've said goodbye to the Roy Waller that I want to say goodbye to. But there was an aspect of Roy Waller that Nicole couldn't say goodbye to because she was curious about him and because he was the only one who had the answers to questions that still haunted her. Right after he was convicted I immediately wanted to sit down and meet him in prison. I wanted to sit down with him. Next on hunting the bogeyman. Why do you want to meet with him? I'd like to understand how he pulled all this off, what made him this way, what happened to him, what made him be this monster that he is. But I also have a tremendous number of questions of him. Logistics questions. Do I expect that he would ever meet with me? Unlikely? And Nicole finally meets the man who linked her case to the NorCal series. In my case he could have been there multiple times before this attack. I think that that's very realistic. Unlock all episodes of hunting the bogeyman. Add free right now by subscribing to the Binge podcast channel. Not only will you immediately unlock all episodes of this show, but you'll get binge access to an entire network of other great true crime and investigative podcasts. All add free. Plus on the first of every month subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series. That's all episodes all at once. Search for the binge on Apple podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page. Not on Apple? Head to getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. Hunting the bogeyman is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and Perfect Catoons. It's hosted and reported by me, Peter McDonnell. From Perfect Catoons, I'm the executive producer. From Sony Music Entertainment, the executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch. The series was sound design and mixed by Matt Gurgel. We used music from Audio Network. The show's production manager was Sammy Allyson. Our lawyer is Allyson Sherry. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rassick, and Jamie Myers. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave a review. It's the best way to support us. Thanks for listening.
