Part 23 (1/2)

”I wouldn't,” he said.

Holly went silent.

She removed her clothes as he instructed her. She asked if he had a condom.

The intruder said he did not. Did she?

No.

He said he had not had s.e.x in six months and had been tested and was ”clean.”

Holly asked to go to the bathroom. He accompanied her, holding a handful of her hair. When she could not urinate, he turned on the faucet for her. Still no help.

Back in her bed, he kissed her neck and chest, working his way down to her v.a.g.i.n.a, where he performed extended c.u.n.n.i.l.i.n.g.u.s. He said he hoped she could reach o.r.g.a.s.m, and only stopped when she faked one.

He then tried to kiss her. When she resisted, he briefly inserted two fingers into her v.a.g.i.n.a before ordering Holly onto her stomach.

She, too, was complimented on her ”nice a.s.s.”

He perched behind her as he had with Iverson, and applied some Vaseline to her back before masturbating onto it. When he finished, she directed him to a box of tissues, with which he wiped off her back.

Before leaving, he asked her to get dressed again, and covered Holly with her blanket.

”He was very calm, almost trying to be nice,” she later testified.

”Good night, Darla,” he said as he left, getting her name wrong. He also warned her to keep her front door locked.

Six days later, at 2:50 a.m. on a Sunday morning, Pacific Beach resident Tammy Watkins,* twenty-three, was surprised by a man in a black mask who jumped out at her from a closet as Watkins walked into her bedroom.

She screamed.

”Stop screaming or I'll hurt you,” he said, holding a knife to her throat. Watkins didn't answer, and began to cry.

”I'm not going to hurt you if you do as I say,” he continued, and directed her to her bed.

”Okay, now sit here like a good little girl. Don't move. I'm going to the door,” he told her in a voice Watkins described in court as ”sort of soft and husky . . . gentle and nice.”

He didn't touch Tammy. He just left, and did not return.

Approximately eighteen hours later, just after 9:00 that Sunday night, twenty-year-old Marsha Wilson* was alone in the Pacific Beach house she rented with four other young women. She heard a knock at the door. When Wilson answered it, an arm suddenly went around her neck. She felt a knife under her chin. He pushed her to her knees and told her not to scream or she would get hurt.

As before, he guided Wilson to a bed and told her to take her clothes off. He lay down beside her, still wearing his ski mask.

Later in court, Wilson was asked if the intruder said anything.

”Like, 'relax,' you know,” she said. ”Just basically trying to calm me down in a really nice kind of a sort of comforting tone.”

When she asked him his age he said he was twenty-four.

He fondled her and performed c.u.n.n.i.l.i.n.g.u.s. Then as he m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed to erection, she asked him not to sodomize her, and if he had a condom.

He answered that he did not want to hurt her, and yes, he did have a condom, which he put on before subjecting her to a very brief v.a.g.i.n.al rape.

Afterward, he told Wilson he'd never raped anyone before and that he didn't enjoy it and wasn't going to do it again. He added that she need not worry about him returning to harm her, either. He wouldn't be coming back.

He did wait two months before striking again, this time choosing a different venue, the San Diego State University district, about five miles inland from Pacific Beach.

Victim number five was nineteen-year-old Tina Mitch.e.l.l,* who awoke at 2:45 a.m. on Friday, July 16, 1993, to find the rapist's hand over her mouth. He had come through the front door and into her bedroom, ignoring a second bedroom, where her roommate slept with her boyfriend. Neither awoke during the incident.

The ski-masked intruder told Mitch.e.l.l that if she did not scream she would not be hurt, and to nod if she understood him.

She nodded, and he removed his hand.

When he ordered her to undress, she protested.

He shoved her, not violently.

”He told me just follow along and I'd be okay,” Mitch.e.l.l testified.

She took off her nightgown and underwear and let down her hair, as instructed. He complimented Mitch.e.l.l on her figure, and mentioned that she looked tense. He told her to lie on her stomach so he could give her a back rub.

He was polite and solicitous about her well-being throughout, Mitch.e.l.l said.

After about five minutes of c.u.n.n.i.l.i.n.g.u.s, he tried to kiss her, but was rebuffed. He put two fingers into her v.a.g.i.n.a, as he had with Dana Holly. But instead of simply masturbating, he stroked himself to erection, put on a condom as Mitch.e.l.l requested, and v.a.g.i.n.ally raped her. The a.s.sault lasted less than three minutes.

Afterward, he pulled the covers up around her, and wished her good night as he left.

He returned to Pacific Beach for his next a.s.sault. Unlike the other victims, Kim Caldwell, thirty-two, an airline sales agent, did not care if her ident.i.ty was known. In fact, she insisted on it, going to the San Diego Union-Tribune with the story of her physical and emotional ordeal.

”A primary reason rapists continue to rape-not why they rape, but why they continue-is because women live in fear,” she told reporter Kathryn Balint. ”Rapists know that and they rape and they rape and they rape. I believe that women need to fight back.”

Later in court, Caldwell would describe how she was awakened in bed at 3:00 a.m. on Tuesday, August 17, 1993, by a man in a ski mask on top of her. He had a knife at her throat, and was saying, ”Kim, wake up!”

She fought, furiously.

”Calm down, calm down, calm down,” he kept saying to her. Then he began ma.s.saging her shoulders with one hand as he continued holding the knife at her throat with the other.

He told Caldwell, as he had told Molly Iverson a year earlier, that his name was Johnny. Iverson had thought him to be in his late twenties; Caldwell guessed he was thirty to thirty-five.

”Johnny” told Caldwell he had been watching her for a long time.

”He said he had watched me when I came home at nights,” she testified. ”He watched me when I usually got something to eat in the kitchen . . . and he watched me in the living room watching television. And he said that his favorite time to watch me was in the bedroom when I was reading. He said he did that a lot.”

Her attacker told Caldwell to remove her one garment, a T-s.h.i.+rt, pushed her down on the bed, and began kissing her neck and b.r.e.a.s.t.s and performing c.u.n.n.i.l.i.n.g.u.s. He kept telling her to relax and, over and over, that she had to achieve an o.r.g.a.s.m.

He strove ardently to kiss her lips, but she clenched her teeth in refusal.

When he reached to put his fingers in her v.a.g.i.n.a, she grabbed for the knife he laid aside. He noticed her movement, and took the knife back from her. Then he placed the blade between her legs, but he did not touch her with the weapon or threaten her with it.

Finally, he pulled a condom out of a f.a.n.n.y pack, and put it on, only to lose his erection. ”Johnny” went back to fondling and kissing her until he was hard once again, and then quickly raped Caldwell v.a.g.i.n.ally. Once finished, he removed the condom, tied a knot in it, and placed it in a Baggie back in the f.a.n.n.y pack.