The Trawler

The Trawler is the serial killer whose crimes shadow Bret Ellis’s memories of Los Angeles and whose obsession with Robert Mallory distorts the story Bret tells about both. First registered through scattered intrusions and disappearances, the killer gradually emerges as the author of a deliberate, ritualized pattern. Later letters identify Robert as “the God,” a figure the killer and supposed companions stalk and flatter; those revelations clear Robert of the murders but leave Bret’s suspicions, public accusations, and resulting isolation in their wake.

Identity and Emergence

The Trawler’s name was not initially public. Two investigators in the Hollywood division of the Los Angeles Police Department privately coined the nickname as a lewd joke about the crimes and the killer’s use of a net-like method. A reference to “The Trawler” survived in an incompletely redacted police memo and appeared in press coverage, giving the still-forming case a name that sounded ominous but did not convey the full scale of the violence. In the summer of 1981, the victims had only begun to be connected; the Los Angeles Times did not publish its confirming series of articles until late September, when the killer became a character in the city’s wider narrative.

The first known wave of home invasions began in May 1980 in the hills above the San Fernando Valley. Early reports suggested no obvious victim profile: the targeted homes belonged to young and older couples, people living alone, and families with children of different ages and genders. Men and boys were attacked as well as women and girls, leaving residents with no clear category of person who could assume they were safe. Some early intrusions were signaled only by an unexplained presence: wind chimes sounding without an apparent breeze, or a flashlight beam and a black-clad figure reported beside a pool. The figure’s mask and the reports of a knife placed the incidents in the language of horror, but at the time neither the killer’s identity nor the later pattern was understood.

Gradually, investigators and the public began to notice a connection to animals. Pets belonging to a potential victim, and animals from the surrounding neighborhood, disappeared before some attacks. The pattern extended across species, including dogs, cats, birds, snakes, mice, rabbits, and guinea pigs. In some neighborhoods, three animals were ultimately sacrificed ahead of an assault. The reason for their disappearance became clearer only later, as the killer’s letters and the discoveries of the victims’ bodies revealed that animals were incorporated into the killer’s work.

Methods and the Pattern of the Crimes

The early home invasions appeared at first to be testing or rehearsal. Some victims were bound and left on the floor; some were stripped, and a minority of the assaults were sexual. Survivors of the earliest attacks reported that the intruder seemed to be weeping as he left. After the first murder and a subsequent lull of about three months, another wave of invasions began in December. Survivors of this later phase did not report the same behavior, a shift that the narrative presents as a change in the attacker’s confidence after the first killing.

Over time, the attacks were understood as prearranged rather than random or impulsive. The sequence could include missing pets, unexplained calls, altered objects or furniture in a residence, and a break-in that familiarized the intruder with a home before a later assault or abduction. Victims spoke of silent or unnerving phone calls and of items in their homes being moved. The killer’s pattern was not simply a series of attacks: it involved watching a location, returning to it, and leaving signs whose meaning was not yet apparent to the people being targeted.

Katherine Latchford’s disappearance in June 1980 became the first known murder in the sequence, although her body was found two months later. She had reported a missing cat and strange calls before she disappeared; two dogs from her neighborhood were missing as well. The accounts later connected these warning signs with a sequence that also included Sarah Johnson, abducted in early January 1981 and found in March, and Julie Selwyn, whose body was discovered in September 1981. Each had experienced some combination of missing pets, disturbing calls, rearranged furniture, or a poster left as a gift. None of the three had first been attacked in a home invasion. The different forms of stalking and intrusion were thus related parts of the pattern, not a simple progression in which every victim survived an earlier assault.

The public learned that the murders and home invasions were linked only as the case developed. Julie’s body had been found in a public park, presented in a way that suggested the killer wanted a broader and more immediate response than the earlier discoveries had produced. Newspaper coverage confirmed that two calls had been made by the suspect or suspects and that the police nickname had entered the case. A letter attributed to the killer claimed that “he and his friends” had abducted Julie while she walked to her car after leaving a party. The detailed account of the crimes remained withheld, and the press described the injuries only vaguely. The gap between what police and later investigators knew and what the public could establish made rumor part of the case’s atmosphere.

Robert Mallory and the “God”

The Trawler’s crimes became inseparable in Bret’s mind from Robert Mallory’s arrival in Los Angeles. Bret understood the growing darkness of the period through Robert, even while recognizing that Robert was not responsible for every alarming event in the city. The association was circumstantial and, as Bret’s later accusations show, dangerously easy to turn into certainty: Robert was present during parts of the crime timeline, knew people near the investigation, and appeared to Bret as the point where unrelated fears converged.

Bret’s suspicion intensified when Matt Kellner disappeared. Matt had been absent from school for days before his parents realized that his red Datsun was missing and that the lights in his guesthouse and pool area had not been on over the weekend. Bret connected the disappearance to warning signs already associated with the Trawler: silent calls, rearranged belongings, missing aquarium fish, and Matt’s missing cat. He also questioned his own interpretation, since earlier home invasions had involved male victims and the apparent pattern did not reliably exclude them. Robert’s relationship to Matt and his presence in the broader sequence nevertheless kept Bret’s suspicion alive.

The relationship between Robert and the killer was eventually revealed to be one of secret surveillance, not the partnership Bret had imagined. In a letter published by the Los Angeles Times, the Trawler described Robert indirectly as “the God” and referred to victims as sacrifices and gifts offered to him. The letter claimed that the Trawler and companions watched potential targets, selected neighborhoods and homes, and treated the killings as a continuing project. It also stated that the killer had committed similar acts before arriving in Los Angeles. The letter’s self-dramatizing religious vocabulary cast Robert as a recipient and object of devotion, not as the person directing the crimes.

After Robert’s death, Abigail Mallory released the letters sent to him from the summer of 1980 through early fall 1981. They were fan notes from the same voice as the Trawler’s later letter, expressing devotion to “the God,” promising that Robert was being watched over, and alluding to gifts and sacrifices without naming victims or explaining the crimes. The letters do not show that Robert understood their connection to the murders. Abigail said he had wondered whether they came from a group of “psycho chicks” or from a girl he had dated. What Bret had interpreted as evidence of Robert’s culpability was, in this account, part of the killer’s long campaign of stalking and manipulation.

Public Revelations and Aftermath

The Los Angeles Times letter gave Bret a detailed but incomplete account of the Trawler’s process. The killer described moving across the city at night, watching people, choosing targets, and treating the repeated acts of surveillance and selection as a structured ritual. Home invasions and what the killer called “rearrangements” could function as tests of whether a target was suitable. The letter distinguished between people attacked in invasions and those selected for murder, complicating any simple equation between a break-in and a later killing. It also described a prolonged process of violence and the alteration of victims’ bodies, while the newspaper withheld substantial details. That withholding left readers confronting both the killer’s own account and the limits of what the article would disclose.

Audrey Barbour’s body was found in a soundproofed room in the makeshift basement of an abandoned house in Benedict Canyon. The discovery linked the house to the broader case and prompted brief speculation about Robert, who had connections to the location and to people involved. Bret remembered the news coverage and the house as a place where Robert had made plans and Matt had been held. The full implications of the room and the killer’s methods were not made public at once; the account says the extent of the bodily alterations became clearer months later, and that complete details took about a year to emerge.

The Trawler’s later letter to the Los Angeles Times rejected the accusation that Robert had committed the crimes. It identified Audrey as a sacrifice left for “the God,” said that the killer and companions had soundproofed the basement, and claimed that Audrey had been held there before her death. The writer resented the suggestion that Robert was responsible and sought credit for the crimes. The letter also announced a final victim in Los Angeles County: Leslie Slavin, who disappeared in Westwood on November 21, 1981, after leaving friends and walking to her car. The Trawler’s insistence that Leslie would be the last victim in the county did not amount to an arrest or resolution of the killer’s identity.

The letters’ release changed the public meaning of Robert’s story. They established that he had been watched for roughly a year and a half, along with students close to him after he arrived at Buckley. The killer had left him gifts, photographs, and posters, while keeping the connection between those tokens and the crimes obscure. Once the letters were recognized as coming from the Trawler, Robert was exonerated as the murderer. Bret’s forceful account of Robert as a dangerous killer nevertheless remained the narrative many people had accepted, and Bret’s standing collapsed as it became clear that Robert had been a focus of the Trawler’s obsession rather than the perpetrator Bret had claimed.

Narrative Role and Unresolved Threat

The Trawler’s defining method is also a method of storytelling. The crime pattern accumulates clues—missing animals, silent calls, altered rooms, posters, surveillance, and staged discoveries—before the people living through it can recognize their relation. The killer’s letters then offer a self-authored narrative of ritual and devotion, but their claims are partial and theatrical, designed to elevate the writer and shape how the crimes are understood. Their disclosures answer some questions while intensifying the uncertainty around others, including the killer’s identity and the full extent of the crimes.

That uncertainty also exposes the danger in Bret’s own narrative. He links Robert to the crimes through chronology, association, and his interpretation of signs, then treats those links as proof. The letters reveal a different relation: Robert was the killer’s chosen object of attention, while Bret’s certainty helped turn an incomplete pattern into a false accusation. When Bret later writes about the Trawler decades after 1981, a beige van at a Los Angeles convenience store brings back the killer’s fixation on Robert and the fact that the Trawler was never captured. Bret imagines the killer may have moved elsewhere and begun new narratives. The case ends not with an identified perpetrator or a secure account of what followed, but with the return of the old fear whenever an ordinary vehicle recalls a watcher who may still be free.