“the God”

“the God” is the Trawler’s reverential name for Robert Mallory, a private designation that recasts a vulnerable young man as the imagined beneficiary of the killer’s crimes. The expression links a series of abductions and murders to a prolonged campaign of watching, messages, and staged “gifts”; its eventual meaning reverses suspicion of Robert by revealing him as the object of the Trawler’s obsession and manipulation.

Name and Intended Recipient

The Trawler uses “the God” in letters to Robert that begin in the summer of 1980, after Katherine Latchford disappears, and continue through early fall 1981. These messages do not identify victims or explain the crimes. Instead, they address Robert as a figure being watched over and promised “gifts,” “sacrifices,” and “treasures” scattered across the city. The language establishes a one-sided relationship: the Trawler and his supposed friends watch Robert, while Robert is cast as someone destined to discover what they have left for him.

The letters’ address is intimate in tone but radically unequal in knowledge. Their writer knows enough about Robert’s movements to tell him he has been spotted, yet withholds the names and circumstances that might connect the messages to the crimes. Robert therefore receives declarations of attention without the information needed to understand their source or significance. The title “the God” elevates him within the Trawler’s private narrative, but gives him no actual control over it.

A Role in the Trawler’s Ritual

The expression belongs to a staged narrative in which the Trawler and his companions select neighborhoods and houses, follow potential victims, and search for animals. The killer describes victims as offerings for “the God”; the murders and the preparation of bodies become “projects” presented as gifts to the figure he has named. In the Trawler’s account, “the God” is not an ordinary religious reference but the imagined recipient that organizes the violence and gives it a ritual frame.

That frame also connects the killings to the home invasions. In the periods between murders, the Trawler describes returning to invasions and rearrangements that function as tests of potential targets. Waiting and following people, he claims, help keep him in control and distract him from his pain. The repeated sequence—from surveillance and selection to a supposed offering—makes the name part of a self-authored system. Its structure is the Trawler’s, not Robert’s: the supposed deity is a figure around whom the killer arranges his actions, not an accomplice shown to have designed them.

Suspicion and Reversal

When a newspaper publishes excerpts from the Trawler’s verified letter, the language of “the God” helps make the crimes seem like parts of a coherent, if horrifying, design. The account describes the killer and his friends moving around the city, watching women, choosing targets, and leaving what they call sacrifices. The coverage confirms that the phrase belongs to the Trawler’s vocabulary, but it does not establish Robert’s identity as its recipient for the reader in that moment. Nor does the article explain the fate of every person connected to the case; its account leaves important questions unresolved.

The later letters change what the expression means. Abigail Mallory releases the fan notes sent to Robert over the period from 1980 into 1981, and their voice is recognized as the Trawler’s. The notes contain no specific victim names or references to home invasions; they instead promise gifts and assure Robert that he is being watched over. The Trawler had become intimate with people in Robert’s circle and left mementos, photographs, and posters for his classmates. These disclosures establish the distinction between the killer’s fixation on Robert and responsibility for the crimes: the letters make Robert their target of attention, not their author.

Robert had not recognized the connection between the letters and the criminal acts. According to Abigail, he at one point suspected that they might come from a group of women or from a former girlfriend. What had appeared to be a private, unsettling correspondence was part of a much wider pattern: the Trawler and his followers had watched Robert for nearly a year and a half, and continued to watch students closest to him after his arrival at Buckley. The grand title had concealed a mundane but frightening fact—that its so-called god was being stalked.

Consequences and Significance

The name’s most consequential appearance comes after Robert’s death, when the Trawler claims that the “gift” left in the house on Benedict Canyon was a sacrifice for “the God.” He insists that Robert had no wrongdoing connected to the crimes and resents the suggestion that Robert was responsible. The letter identifies Audrey Barbour as the offering and confirms that the Trawler and his companions had prepared a soundproofed room in a house Robert sometimes visited. The revelations shift the meaning of the location and the messages alike: what had seemed to implicate Robert instead shows how the killer used Robert’s presence and reputation as part of his own narrative.

The phrase thus operates as an instrument of misdirection. It makes the Trawler’s crimes sound like offerings to a powerful figure, while the evidence reveals a killer imposing that role on someone he watches and idealizes. The contrast between the name’s apparent elevation and Robert’s actual lack of knowledge exposes the gap between the Trawler’s elaborate story and the people trapped inside it. “the God” is less a description of Robert than a title in the Trawler’s private script—one that briefly deepens suspicion before helping to explain why Robert was himself a victim of the obsession.