A roommate ad, a call from a stranger, a gun in the night: How NorCal Rapist case began

“She woke to a male subject in a mask grabbing her,” retired Rohnert Park Police Officer Marshall Goldy testified Friday in a Sacramento Superior Court hearing for Roy Charles Waller, the suspect in the NorCal Rapist’s reign of attacks that authorities say began that night and continued across Northern California until 2006.

“She woke to a male subject in a mask grabbing her,” retired Rohnert Park Police Officer Marshall Goldy testified Friday in a Sacramento Superior Court hearing for Roy Charles Waller, the suspect in the NorCal Rapist’s reign of attacks that authorities say began that night and continued across Northern California until 2006.

“She said, ‘OK, I was lying on the couch with my face to the back of the couch and didn’t hear anything. And the next thing I knew there was an arm around my neck and a small handgun pointed at my right cheek.’”

The victim, who now goes by Earnest-Payte, was not present Friday for the third day of Waller’s preliminary hearing, but she attended Waller’s September 2018 arraignment and has spoken openly about the night a masked man attacked her. She also has described how she felt staring Waller down in court following his arrest.

“When he turned around and looked squarely at us, straight in our eyes, I glared right back,” Earnest-Payte told reporters then. “That was the first time I felt angry.

“It was the first time that I finally thought, ‘Yeah, there you are, and you look fairly pathetic.’ I was a little afraid, but not afraid of him.”

Waller, who turned 60 on Wednesday while being held at the Sacramento County Main Jail, is now facing up to life in prison and sat attentively Friday before Judge Trena Burger-Plavan.

He occasionally made suggestions to his defense attorney, Joseph Farina, as prosecutors continued their meticulous effort to present evidence from decades ago about the attacks that remained unsolved until Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert announced a suspect had been found through analysis of DNA evidence left behind at some of the crime scenes.

Goldy, an 18-year veteran of the Rohnert Park police force at the time of the attack, said his first involvement came as he was helping with a traffic stop shortly before 3 a.m. on June 23, 1991.

The victim’s mother pulled up behind his patrol car and told him what had happened, and he followed her over to Earnest-Payte’s Parkway Drive apartment, Goldy testified.

Once there, he secured the scene and took her to a hospital, where she told him that during the ordeal her attacker raped her three times and that his voice sounded identical to the “Bob Smith” who had previously called about renting a room, Goldy said.

The assailant bound her hands and feet and placed tape over her eyes and a pillowcase over her head, and asked repeatedly where she kept her money.

“She said, ‘He pulled open my bathrobe,’” Goldy said, reading from his 1991 police report. “She said, ‘Please, don’t do that. Please, don’t. Take my money and go.’

“She said at that point he raped her. She said after the first rape she said, ‘Could you please leave now? You’re finished.’ … He was holding onto me like we were lovers or something.”

Eventually, Goldy testified, the attacker told her not to call police or he would kill her. He bound her feet and hands with tape, and gave her a butter knife, with instructions to wait 15 minutes before she tried to cut off the tape.

And, he asked for her telephone number and apologized.

“He kept saying, I’m sorry, this is my first time. I’ve done this and I regret this. I can’t believe I’ve done this to you,’ ” Goldy recounted her telling him. “He kept saying over and over again that he learned his lesson and he would never do this again to anyone.”

In fact, authorities believe he struck a second time in Sonoma County that same year, and that he eventually attacked women in six counties, ending the serial crime spree with the double rape of announced in October 2006.

Farina tried to pick apart some of the police work done 29 years ago, eliciting testimony from Goldy that the victim gave him only vague descriptions of the masked attacker, and did not provide his weight, hair or eye color.

At one point, Waller leaned over and spoke quietly to his lawyer, who then asked whether anyone had tried to trace the phone number from “Bob Smith.” Goldy said he didn’t know.

Authorities believe semen left on the victim’s bedsheets that night match DNA samples taken from Waller’s garbage by investigators who had him under surveillance before his arrest.

Waller’s hearing is expected to continue into next week, when the judge is expected to rule whether there is enough evidence to take the case to trial.