The report’s wording “The responsible”

The report’s wording “The responsible” is a stark label for the unknown East Area Rapist, drawn from Danville police reports and adopted by the narrator as private shorthand. Unlike a neutral designation such as “the suspect” or “the man,” it fixes attention on responsibility: the person behind the crimes is unknown, but responsibility for them is not left ambiguous.

Origin in the Reports

Police reports about an unknown perpetrator have to name the person they describe. The Danville reports could have used “the suspect,” “the offender,” or “the man”; instead, their writer chose “the responsible.” The book presents the choice as unusually direct, with the tone of reproach and the force of a finger pointing from the page.

The phrase acquires a second function when the narrator reads it. It becomes private shorthand for the East Area Rapist, a compact name to return to while lying awake at three in the morning and cycling through indistinct faces and what the narrator calls a hoarder’s collection of murky half-clues. The wording does not solve the mystery or identify a person. It gives the investigation’s scattered evidence a steady grammatical subject: someone acted, and that someone bears responsibility.

A Name Amid Fragmentary Evidence

The reports describe not only attacks but preparations around them. The East Area Rapist moved through neighborhoods using canals and drainage ditches; investigators found signs of prowling and illegal entries in nearby homes, missing small items, and increased hang-up calls within a few blocks before attacks. He appeared to survey several possible victims and learn when people were home. Against this pattern, “The responsible” names the agent behind the reconnaissance as well as the crimes, without pretending that the reports could yet establish his identity.

The phrase also belongs to a period when the public account of the attacks was unstable. After Jane Carson’s October attack, police asked local press not to publicize the crimes, hoping to keep the offender in the east side area where investigators wanted to catch him. In the silence, false rumors spread about the attacks. When the East Area Rapist attacked twice in twenty-four hours on October 18, public concern intensified; the next day, The Sacramento Bee ran a story identifying a manhunt for a suspect in eight rapes, ending the blackout. The report’s severe wording offers a counterpoint to that shifting atmosphere: it does not amplify rumor or supply a face, but assigns responsibility plainly.

Responsibility and the Victim’s Account

The book’s use of the phrase sits alongside its criticism of accounts that scrutinize victims more harshly than offenders. In his book about the case, Larry Crompton judged Kathy’s demeanor during a police interview and described her later life in an unflattering way. The narrator rejects that treatment as lacking compassion and understanding, noting that a request for water when the attacker demanded something of her could have been a way to stall. The contrast is not presented as a direct connection between Crompton’s wording and the Danville reports. Rather, it clarifies the ethical distinction the phrase helps hold: responsibility belongs to the perpetrator, not to a victim’s manner of speaking or response to terror.

Kathy later contacted the Sheriff’s Office to object to her portrayal. Paul Holes and a female colleague invited her to meet them; Holes recalled that she was shaking and barely made eye contact. His account also marks the distance between a victim and an investigator who had studied evidence from her case but had never met her face to face. Beside these scenes, “The responsible” reads as more than a label for an unidentified man. Its bluntness resists the diversion of attention away from the person who committed the crimes, while the book’s treatment of Kathy insists that naming responsibility must not become another occasion to judge the person harmed.