The Los Angeles Times’s publication of the Trawler’s letter makes the serial killer’s own account of his crimes public, transforming scattered reports of break-ins, assaults, and disappearances into a declared pattern. Bret reads the extensive article at Buckley and encounters both an explanation of the Trawler’s routines and a disturbing uncertainty: the letter describes a system, but the newspaper cannot establish every victim’s fate or connect the account to every disappearance that troubles Bret.

Causes and Background

For about a year, the city had seen break-ins and assaults followed by disappearances. By 1981, the body of a second missing teenage girl had been found; the first had been discovered in 1980. The cases were ultimately connected to the home invasions. The growing sequence of incidents supplied the background against which the letter appeared: it did not introduce violence into an otherwise undisturbed world, but gave an existing series of crimes a self-declared author and an apparent organizing logic.

The article appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, alongside black-and-white photographs of Katherine Latchford, Sarah Johnson, Julie Selwyn, and Audrey Barbour. It reported that the newspaper and the Los Angeles Police Department had verified the letter as coming from the Trawler. Its publication therefore carried an authority different from rumor, even as the contents remained the statements of a killer rather than a complete investigative account.

What the Letter Reveals

The article continued across a full page in the Metro section, combining photographs of places where the girls’ bodies had been found with excerpts from the letter. Some passages were typed and redacted; others were handwritten in different-colored pens. The mixture presented the letter as a material document with editorial limits: readers could see portions of the writer’s account, but the newspaper did not disclose everything it contained.

In the published excerpts, the Trawler described himself and his companions wandering through an abandoned mill in search of what he called an appropriate dumping ground. He also recounted stealing a dog from a neighborhood where a future target lived, calling the target a sacrifice destined for “the God.” The language recast murder as a ritual and victims as offerings within the killer’s private system of belief.

The account sketched a recurring method of movement and surveillance. The Trawler and his companions, it said, lived in motels and crossed the city at night, “following the moon.” They selected neighborhoods, assessed homes for access, and tracked potential victims to decide who was suitable for sacrifice. The letter described watching young women jog alone, following them through a mall food court, or waiting in a public parking lot near a beach. The varied settings point to a practice built around observation and opportunity rather than a single fixed location.

The Trawler called the bodies “paradises” and associated them with “the alterations.” According to the excerpts, he had been carrying out alterations for years before coming to Los Angeles and regarded the city as another step in a longer continuum. The newspaper withheld the materials used and did not fully explain what the alterations involved. It did report the writer’s references to bleach, a hacksaw, and Polaroids, leaving the objects visible in the account while their exact uses remained undisclosed.

The letter also distinguished between people the Trawler physically attacked and those he selected for sacrifice: he claimed never to have sacrificed a target he had attacked. Between murders, he described renewed home invasions as “tests” of whether a target was viable. His stated sequence moved from driving around and choosing a neighborhood to selecting a house and teenager, watching the residence, and searching for animals. In the account, following people and waiting helped keep him in control; the repeated project distracted him from what he called his pain and quelled his paranoia.

The article attributed further details to the letter, including the recording of victims’ screams and the killer’s stated use of violence to silence them and prevent them from seeing him and his companions. The Trawler described the process as an “ultimate annihilation” and said the final assemblage could take up to a week. These excerpts made the letter’s ritual vocabulary part of the public report, but did not fill every gap in what could be known about particular victims.

Bret’s Reading and Its Limits

Bret came upon the report in the Buckley library after arriving late at school. The photographs and the headline about the serial killer in the San Fernando Valley seized his attention; he turned to the Metro continuation and read the account as a revelation of what he calls the world’s concealed madness. The article repelled him, yet he read it intently, searching its details for a motive and for an explanation of the violence he had already associated with Robert Mallory and the wider climate of fear.

The article’s organization helps explain that response. It places named victims, photographs of recovered bodies, and excerpts from the Trawler’s letter beside one another, allowing the killer’s narrative to impose a pattern on distinct crimes. But it also preserves visible absences: redactions interrupt the letter, and the report does not clarify the exact nature of the alterations. Its force comes partly from this tension between disclosure and withholding. The text offers enough detail to make the crimes seem structured while leaving readers to confront what the publication cannot confirm.

The omissions matter especially to Bret. The article says nothing confirmed about Audrey Barbour and does not mention Matt Kellner or any male victims. Thus the public account neither settles Audrey’s status nor explains Matt’s death. Bret’s reading supplies an interpretive frame for the crimes, but the article’s limits prevent that frame from becoming proof of a connection to every event he fears is related.

Consequences and Significance

After finishing the article, Bret feels unable to remain at school or follow an ordinary conversation. He leaves Buckley, drives to the empty house on Mulholland, and spends the afternoon away from the school day, unsettled by what he has read. The newspaper report has become more than news to him: it reorganizes his perception of Los Angeles, Robert Mallory, and the Trawler into a single field of threat, even where the published evidence does not establish a direct link.

The publication marks a shift from rumors and partial discoveries to the killer’s own public account, but not to complete understanding. The letter claims a repeating structure—surveillance, selection, invasion, and ritual—and the newspaper’s verified attribution lends that claim credibility. At the same time, its redactions, unanswered questions, and silence about Audrey and Matt expose the limits of treating a perpetrator’s account as a comprehensive record. For Bret, the article sharpens fear rather than resolving it: it supplies a pattern, while leaving the most personal uncertainties intact.