Davis

Davis is presented as both a site of three East Area Rapist attacks in 1978 and a place where the case’s geography seemed to resist easy explanation. Its apartments, new residential development, open drainage features, and nearby airport became part of Paul Holes’s attempt to connect the attacks to the offender’s wider movements, while the surviving clues left any explanation provisional.

Place in the Attack Pattern

Holes divided the East Area Rapist’s attacks into four broad geographic phases: Sacramento, a second phase involving Modesto and Davis, the East Bay, and then Southern California. Davis mattered in this sequence because the offender alternated between it and Modesto rather than simply moving in one direction. The two cities are about 110 driving miles apart, and the second Modesto attack and second Davis attack occurred only 22 hours apart. Holes thought the pattern might reflect a reason connected to work, rather than an effort to mislead investigators; that was an investigative interpretation, not an established account of the offender’s purpose.

The broader pattern of neighborhood reconnaissance provides context for why place mattered. The East Area Rapist often favored single-story homes near open spaces and greenbelts, and reports described prowling, illegal entries, missing small objects, and increases in hang-up calls in the blocks around later attacks. Holes also noted that single-story homes could be easier to observe from the outside and offered fewer constraints on movement through a house than two-story layouts. Davis, however, included a conspicuous exception to that general pattern: the first attack described there took place in a multistory apartment building.

The 1978 Attacks

Attack thirty-four occurred at approximately 3:50 a.m. on June 7, two days after the East Area Rapist’s first attack in Modesto. The victim was a 21-year-old University of California, Davis student living in a multistory apartment building. Larry Pool later characterized that kind of dwelling as a structural anomaly in the known series: it was the only time the offender was known to target such a building. The attack differed from the usual pattern in other ways too. Investigators noted a nylon stocking rather than a ski mask and a limited set of known weapons, details that suggested it might have been more impulsive than many other attacks. The case was nevertheless identified as part of the series through its language and a signature feature of the assault.

Holes considered whether the student might have been followed after catching the offender’s attention, rather than selected through the more typical process of prowling and entering nearby homes. The possibility remained conjectural. A witness had reported what might have been a black Camaro leaving the parking area, but Holes was unsure whether the car was connected to the offender. The apartment building’s location among student housing and bicycle traffic supplied context for the hypothesis, not proof of how the victim was chosen.

The second Davis attack described in detail, number thirty-six, took place around 3 a.m. on June 24, one day after attack thirty-five in Modesto. The victim was a 32-year-old housewife; her husband and their ten-year-old son were also at home. The attacker restrained the adults, confined the child in a bathroom, searched the house, and stole seventeen rolls of pennies before leaving. This attack occurred in or near Village Homes, a recently developed neighborhood whose features later drew Holes’s attention as he revisited the case.

A third Davis attack, number thirty-seven, occurred at 2:40 a.m. on July 6. The available account identifies the victim as a 33-year-old woman who had recently separated. Together, the attacks place Davis within a tightly clustered period of movement between cities, though the surviving account does not establish a single motive or route that explains all three.

Village Homes and the Footprints

Village Homes offered a distinctive physical setting. Its houses faced shared green areas, with community gardens and open spaces intended to encourage a sense of neighborhood life. The development used passive solar design, and a pedestrian bridge crossed an open drainage swale. Long, narrow cul-de-sacs and active construction were also part of the landscape during the period of the attacks. The shared spaces connected homes, but they also created routes through the development and beyond it.

The evidence Holes revisited included shoe impressions in a freshly raked patch of ground. Michael Corbett, one of the development’s creators, had experience tracking from his time in the Boy Scouts and followed the impressions from the area near the victim’s home through the green space. The prints continued along a path past an olive grove and toward University of California, Davis property. Holes traced their direction to the vicinity of the airport. This physical trail gave the location unusual importance: rather than ending at the edge of a residential street, the route appeared to extend toward a place from which someone could travel farther afield.

The implications remained uncertain. Holes noted that people could arrive at the airport after hours, secure a plane, and leave without necessarily generating records that would identify them. That possibility gained interest because a cab driver in the nearby Modesto case had described taking a strange man from an airport to an area of new construction. The proximity of airport-related clues in the Modesto and Davis investigations raised the possibility of air travel between the attacks, but it did not establish that the same person had flown or that the footprints belonged to someone using a plane.

Investigative Meaning

Holes connected the geographic sequence to another unresolved clue: a map or diagram associated with the case that a construction-industry expert considered professionally drafted. He also discussed the possibility that the East Area Rapist’s movements and the diagram might relate to development work. Features at Village Homes, he noted, were distinctive enough that a landscape architect familiar with the project recognized them. These observations supported an avenue of inquiry into construction or land development, but they did not identify the offender or demonstrate his occupation.

Davis therefore functions in the narrative as a place where several different kinds of evidence meet: an atypical apartment attack, a rapid alternation with Modesto, a tracked route through planned green space, and an airport nearby. Each clue makes a particular explanation seem possible while leaving gaps between possibility and proof. The city’s significance lies less in providing a final answer than in showing how investigators tried to read movement across a landscape—and how even a trail of footprints could point toward, but not resolve, the identity and resources of an unknown offender.