Summer 1980

Summer 1980 is the beginning of two stories that initially seem unrelated: a wave of home invasions across the hills above the San Fernando Valley, and Robert Mallory’s first stay in Los Angeles with his aunt. The connection would only become visible in retrospect. At the time, the intrusions seemed random, the perpetrator had not been named, and Bret Ellis was more occupied by the shifting attachments of adolescence than by the clues accumulating around him.

The First Signs of a Pattern

The home invasions began in May 1980, at first seeming like tests rather than a fully formed campaign. The intruder did not initially enter the properties; instead, his presence was reported through small, unnerving signs. Wind chimes sounded on a still night at a house on Oakfield Drive in Sherman Oaks. In July, a witness on Woodcliff Road saw a flashlight beam and a dark-clad figure beside a pool, apparently holding a knife. These glimpses offered no stable description, only the sense that someone was watching.

The targets appeared to have little in common. Young and older couples, people living alone, families, men and women were all exposed to the break-ins or attacks. Because age and gender did not seem to offer protection, residents had no clear way to predict who might be next. In the summer of 1980, the intrusions were reported across the San Fernando Valley side below Mulholland, near Bret’s home, from Studio City through Sherman Oaks and Encino, and briefly into Bel Air and Benedict Canyon. The wave later spread more sporadically to Pasadena, Glendale, and Hollywood before stopping abruptly. In all, twenty break-ins were attributed to the figure that summer.

Witness descriptions contradicted one another. The intruder was variously remembered as tall or not particularly tall, lean, muscular, or heavy; reported eye colors ranged from blue and hazel to accounts in which no one had seen his eyes. A black ski mask and matching dark clothes obscured his features. The uncertainty made him seem less like an identifiable person than an elusive character whose apparent shape changed with each account.

Animals, Intrusions, and Retrospective Meaning

Animal disappearances became one of the clues that connected the seemingly unrelated incidents. Before an attack, pets belonging to a victim or a nearby household might vanish; the missing animals could be dogs, cats, birds, snakes, mice, rabbits, or guinea pigs. In some neighborhoods, three animals were ultimately sacrificed before an assault. Investigators would not understand the purpose of this pattern until later in 1981, when they learned what had been done with the animals’ remains.

The clues were not recognized as a coherent system while the events were unfolding. Bret’s later account emphasizes the gap between what people experienced and what they could infer: the Trawler had not yet acquired that name, the victims had not yet been connected, and no one understood the developing pattern as a story being deliberately constructed. The home invasions began again in mid-December and continued through January 1981, but their early phase remained obscure even after the first murder victim’s body was found.

Katherine Latchford’s disappearance in June 1980 eventually became part of that larger account. In later investigations, her missing cat and two missing neighborhood dogs, along with reports of strange silent phone calls and changes in her bedroom, were recognized as warning signs. But when her body was found in August, the link between her case, the disappearing pets, and the home invasions was not yet apparent. That delayed recognition is central to the period’s significance: evidence was present, but its meaning arrived only after further crimes made the pattern legible.

Robert Mallory and the Emerging Timeline

Robert Mallory’s first stay in Los Angeles coincided with the start of the home invasions. Years later, Bret would tell Dr. Croft that Robert had dated Katherine shortly before her disappearance, while Robert was staying with his aunt after coming from Chicago. Bret also argued that the timing of the invasions and assaults matched Robert’s time in Los Angeles: the crimes began when Robert first arrived, stopped after he left, and resumed when he returned for the holidays. He placed the disappearances of Sarah Johnson and Julie Selwyn within later periods when Robert was again in the city.

This chronology gave Bret a compelling but ultimately mistaken framework for interpreting Robert’s presence. In a house where Robert had sometimes stayed, Bret later found newspaper clippings about Katherine’s disappearance, social life, and murder, but no comparable articles about Sarah, Julie, or Audrey. The clippings made Robert’s connection to Katherine tangible without proving that he had caused her death or the wider series of crimes.

The letters sent to Robert beginning in the summer of 1980 further complicated the timeline. Abigail Mallory eventually released them, and their voice was identified as the Trawler’s. They addressed Robert as “the God,” described him as watched, and referred to gifts and sacrifices around the city, but named no victims and did not explain the crimes. Robert did not recognize their connection to the attacks; he thought they might come from admirers or a former girlfriend. The letters show that the Trawler’s fixation on Robert began early, while also explaining why Robert himself did not understand the danger surrounding him.

Bret’s Adolescent Perspective

The danger outside Bret’s home did not dominate his attention. He sometimes feared that the house on Mulholland might become a target, but thought himself fortunate, and the incidents did not provoke the mass panic that their later significance might suggest. His thoughts were occupied by Matt Kellner, and, increasingly, by Ryan Vaughn, whose importance began to eclipse Matt’s and intrude on Bret’s fantasies about Thom Wright and Susan Reynolds.

That private emotional world also provides the period with a second, quieter chronology. Thom and Susan had been together since their sophomore year and were among Buckley’s most popular students; Bret, Susan’s close friend, was privately in love with her and also carried an unreturned attraction to Thom. The apparent ease of their friendship and couplehood contrasts with Bret’s unspoken desires, which he did not admit to either of them.

Ryan, meanwhile, seemed to share Bret’s wish to leave Los Angeles and begin again elsewhere. Bret understood Ryan as keeping a low profile until he could get out of high school, find a distant college, and reinvent himself. Their closeness was secret and cautious: Ryan described the need for subterfuge, and their connection remained attached to the imagined freedom of a future beyond Buckley. Looking back, Bret remembered his September 1981 weekend with Ryan as the last one untainted by what followed. The later recollection gives summer 1980 a double edge: it marks the start of a murderous pattern that nobody yet understood, while Bret’s own sense of the future still held out the possibility of escape and intimacy.

Retrospective Significance

Summer 1980 is not presented as a moment when the characters could see the whole pattern. Its meaning is assembled afterward from scattered reports, missing pets, contradictory witness accounts, and Robert’s overlapping periods in Los Angeles. The narrative makes the distinction between chronology and understanding decisive: events had begun, but the connections that would name the Trawler and expose his fixation on Robert had not yet been made.

The period also establishes the tension between two kinds of uncertainty. The intruder’s identity is obscured by disguise and incompatible descriptions; Bret’s personal future is obscured by secrecy, longing, and the assumption that life can begin again somewhere else. In retrospect, both uncertainties acquire consequences, but they are not equivalent: the crime pattern is eventually reconstructed through evidence, while the hoped-for future with Ryan remains unresolved. Summer 1980 therefore stands both as the first phase of the Trawler’s campaign and as a remembered threshold before the violence reshapes Bret’s adolescent world.