“the responsible”

“the responsible” is the stark term chosen in the Danville police reports for the unknown perpetrator later associated with the East Area Rapist cases. Its importance lies in the contrast it creates: the reports could not supply a name or a face, but the phrase plainly assigned responsibility for the crimes. Michelle McNamara made it a private shorthand for the East Area Rapist, returning to its unblinking certainty while confronting the case’s many uncertainties.

The Reports’ Choice of Words

Police reports commonly refer to an unknown perpetrator as a suspect, an offender, or simply a man. The Danville reports instead used “the responsible,” a choice McNamara found stark and unambiguous. Its tone seemed reproachful, as though the page itself were pointing a finger. The wording does not identify the person behind the attacks; it gives the unknown figure a description defined by culpability rather than appearance or status.

A Private Shorthand

McNamara says the term became her own shorthand for the East Area Rapist. She returned to it during sleepless nights spent turning over what she calls a hoarder’s collection of murky half-clues and indistinct facial features. Against evidence that remained incomplete, the phrase offered a plain statement of what was known: someone was responsible for the crimes. Its force came not from solving the case, but from refusing to let uncertainty about identity soften the fact of responsibility.

The Language of the Case

The surrounding reports describe an offender who watched neighborhoods as well as individuals. In Sacramento, he used canals and drainage ditches, and investigators recorded signs of prowling, illegal entries, missing small items, and a rise in hang-up calls near homes later attacked. Such details accumulated without yielding a clear identity. In this context, “the responsible” marks the distance between recognizing a pattern of deliberate actions and knowing who carried them out.

Force and Limits

The phrase’s moral directness is not the same as evidentiary certainty about a person’s identity. It names the perpetrator by the responsibility attached to the crimes, while leaving unanswered how he selected victims and learned about their homes. McNamara’s attachment to the term reflects that tension: the case offered fragments rather than a recognizable face, yet the reports’ wording resisted turning the unknown offender into a neutral abstraction. It kept culpability in view without pretending the mystery had been resolved.