November 7, 1981

November 7, 1981 is the date of the North Canon Drive attack, a rupture in the social world Bret Ellis has been trying to understand and a decisive turning point in the novel’s account of Robert Mallory. The evening begins with a planned birthday visit between Robert and Susan Reynolds; it becomes an emergency in which Susan and Thom Wright are injured, Robert takes them to the hospital, and Bret is drawn into a confrontation that will shape the public story of the attack.

Plans for the Evening

The account of the night is assembled from police reports, eyewitness accounts, and testimonials, rather than presented solely through Bret’s immediate perspective. Susan had arranged for Robert to arrive at her family’s North Canon Drive home at eight o’clock. Her parents, Donald and Gayle Reynolds, planned to dine out, leaving Susan and Robert alone until around eleven. The visit was meant to mark Robert’s eighteenth birthday: they expected to spend time in Susan’s bedroom watching television, though whether Robert would stay overnight had not been decided.

Before Robert was due, Susan showered and began getting ready. She was listening to Hall and Oates while drying her hair when she thought she heard a noise downstairs. Already anxious about Debbie Schaffer’s disappearance, and not sufficiently calmed by the Valium she had taken, she called Robert, but he did not answer. She reasoned that he might be on his way early, then heard another noise and called for her parents, despite knowing they were out. The ordinary uncertainty of an expected visitor briefly offered an explanation for what she heard; when nothing followed, she convinced herself there was no one downstairs, but eventually went to investigate.

The Attack and the Hospital

An intruder attacked Susan inside the house. When Thom, who was at Hillcrest, heard her screams, he raced to North Canon Drive in his Corvette, arriving barefoot and in a bathing suit and T-shirt. The front door was locked, but he found an open sliding glass door at the back and entered. Susan warned him that the attacker was still inside. The intruder then confronted Thom, who was badly injured in the struggle.

Robert emerged from the house carrying Thom and did not wait for the police or ambulance. He placed Thom in the front seat of his Porsche, and Susan climbed in beside him. He drove them to Cedars-Sinai, where attendants took Thom and Susan into emergency care. Before she was taken for treatment, Susan asked Robert to call the restaurant where her parents were dining and have them paged. Robert did so; Donald and Gayle arrived at the hospital about twenty minutes later. The night’s planned birthday visit had become an emergency in which Robert was both present at the scene and the person who transported the injured couple to care.

Bret’s Account and the Night’s Aftermath

At nine o’clock, Bret was packing to leave the house on Mulholland for a motel on Sepulveda Boulevard, unwilling to risk another night there, when Donald Reynolds called. Donald said Susan had asked him to tell Bret that she was worried about him and thought that they might all have been targeted. Bret immediately asked where Robert was. Donald explained that Robert had taken Susan and Thom to Cedars-Sinai, where Thom was in surgery and barely expected to survive, and that Laurie Wright had arrived in shock. When Bret learned Robert had already left the hospital and returned to Century City, he thanked Donald and hung up before the call was finished.

At the Century Towers, the valet and front-desk staff later reported that Robert had returned to the lobby around 8:50, with dried blood on his clothes and face and a black duffel bag over his shoulder. He told the doorman that he had witnessed a terrible accident and intended to clean up before returning to the hospital. Bret drove to the towers and told the valet that Robert had called and sounded desperate, presenting himself as a school friend who did not know what Robert wanted. The contrast between Robert’s role in getting the injured couple to medical care and his swift departure, followed by his bloodied return to Century City, became part of the uncertainty surrounding the night.

Bret’s Injury and Police Statement

Later that night, Bret woke in a darkened room at Cedars-Sinai with Laurie Wright standing over him. He had received 115 stitches, but the physician told him his wounds were not serious or deep enough to require more urgent treatment; none had damaged an organ or major blood vessel. The contrast between the number of stitches and the absence of life-threatening injury shaped his retrospective account: he described the knife fight as something he seemed to have rehearsed, and the aftermath as vaguely routine.

Bret told police that Robert had called from a pay phone after leaving the hospital, upset and asking to meet. He also described Robert’s earlier institutionalization in Illinois after a suicide attempt, connected him in his own theory to the Trawler’s crimes through Robert’s past relationship with Katherine Latchford, and laid out a timeline he believed linked Robert to the missing women. Bret further accused Robert of being responsible for Debbie Schaffer’s disappearance, a claim the officers had not previously known. His statement thus turned the attack into an account of suspected connections and prior events, although the narrative later complicates the certainty of that interpretation.

Public Meaning and Retrospective Revisions

The attack did not settle who the Trawler was; it briefly made Bret appear to have settled the question. Students later stared and whispered that he was the boy who had killed the Trawler, and that they had been saved because of him. That public account rested on Bret’s version of the confrontation and offered a clean ending to a frightening story. It could not hold. On November 21, Leslie Slavin disappeared after leaving friends at Yesterdays in Westwood, and further home invasions were reported. A letter verified by the Los Angeles Police Department claimed that the Trawler had left another sacrifice for the figure he called the God, explicitly sought to clear that figure of suspicion, and asserted credit for the crimes. It identified Audrey Barbour as the offering and described the hidden basement of the Benedict Canyon house as a place where the Trawler and his associates had installed soundproofing. The revelations reopened the question of what had happened on November 7: the apparent rescue, Robert’s departure from the hospital, and Bret’s accusations could not by themselves resolve the larger pattern. The day’s consequence was therefore not only physical and personal danger, but a lasting contest over who could author the account of it—and how much that account concealed.