CHAPTER ONE
“We’ll catch the guy”

“I’ll be driving my wife’s orange Jeep, you won’t be able to miss me.” Retired VPD Sgt. John Vaughan is a master of understatement.

I chose the Black Bear Diner because it seemed like the kind of place where cops eat. They serve all-day breakfast, steaks, and bottomless cups of coffee in their signature white mugs. I was afraid that if I suggested a place more suited for a vegan from Los Angeles, I might make an already awkward meeting totally unbearable for both of us.
The Jeep was the brightest thing in the parking lot, maybe in the entire county, now turned brown after years of endless drought. As I drove into town, the only color was the green from irrigated groves of citrus trees. Although it was still early, the day was quickly heading over 100 degrees. Visalia is a small city stuck in time. It prides itself on pretending that it is still 1950. The A&W brews its own homemade root beer, and sells it in jugs that you can take home. However, it was impossible to miss the racist graffiti scrawled on the wall of the Indian grocery store on the edge of the A&W parking lot.

I understood Visalia, and its power structure. My great-grandparents chased the American farming dream across the country at the turn of the 20th century, going from Kansas to North Dakota, then to the newly planted orange trees of Southern California. My great-grandfather was a pacifist, and they fled to Canada during WWI, finally returning to the apple and cherry trees of northeastern Washington State. My great-uncle, “Buck,” was the police chief of a small farming city a lot like Visalia. Rumors were that he ran the town as his own personal criminal empire. He took a cut of every illegal enterprise, and black and brown suspects ended up dead in the river, rather than in a jail cell or courtroom. According to my mother, the rumors were all true. As soon as she could, she left for Seattle, and never looked back. Her sister took the other path, became a police dispatcher, and married the son of a homicide detective in Spokane.
I never planned on becoming an attorney, but somehow my internal need for fairness found a practical profession. Handling criminal appeals immediately put me in direct conflict with law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges. It’s a specialized area of the law that requires endless hours of research on each case. The best appellate attorneys start at the beginning, with the events leading up to the crime, not the trial itself. That means digging into original police reports, witness statements, and forensic lab bench notes. Overworked and underfunded public defenders are rarely granted money for investigators and forensic experts, and critical details can easily be missed.
Although my office is staffed by licensed attorneys and private investigators, we each bring unique life experiences and skills. I spent summers on drilling rigs in the Arctic Circle and in Montana. Guns were a necessity in camps accessible only by helicopter, and stalked by grizzly bears and wolves. We have dirt bike riders, and a pilot who can conduct surveillance via small plane or drone. One of our attorneys is a forensics expert, who studied criminology at Oxford University, and can build a complete family tree for a subject while you wait in the field for the next address to check out or vehicle to follow. Two of us lost close friends to serial offenders, and we are guided by what we know they would want us to do if we were pursing their killers. Terri and Laurie would want the truth—no matter how long it takes, or how difficult it may be to accept.
My first phone call to John Vaughan went pretty much exactly as I expected. John had retired as a sergeant with VPD in 1996 after 35 years of service, and 20 years later, he had little interest in revisiting a 40-year-old unsolved crime spree. However, I wasn’t calling about just any case—it was the longest and most expensive investigation in VPD history, and Sgt. Vaughan had been the lead detective. I asked him if I could just email a few documents, and he finally agreed to let me mail him an envelope. The day he got the documents he called back, and asked if we could meet to discuss the information. Now here we were in the parking lot of the Black Bear Diner.
Even twenty years after retirement, John still looked like he could topple his wife’s Jeep with one hand, and the expression on his face as I pulled up made me think he was considering it. Walking into the restaurant together, we made small talk, and the mood hadn’t really improved by the time we were done ordering. John was a wall of skepticism, built over 40 long years of listening to an endless number of overly excited “theories” about his biggest case. Between March 1974 and December 1975, a man dubbed the “Visalia Ransacker” had terrorized his city. There had been over 150 residential burglaries with a very weird and specific MO.
The burglar ignored expensive jewelry and electronics, and instead stole Blue Chip trading stamps, piggy banks, food, coins, cameras, two dollar bills, knives, and single earrings from a pair. He took guns, but only if they were older or foreign, and therefore lacked traceable registration numbers. Immediately upon entering the home, he opened multiple escape routes, and placed the window screens in odd places, like on the bed. He also put chain locks across doors, or blocked them with chairs, to delay the homeowner should he return during the burglary. He displayed undergarments and jewelry boxes on beds and pillows, and stole photos of the attractive teen girls who lived in the rooms. All areas, including the kitchens, were heavily ransacked. Drawers were left pulled out, or contents dumped on the floor. Sometimes he placed stacks of undies and nightgowns in rows down the hallway.
The VR always struck in the early evening, while the residents were out to dinner, a movie, or the local football game. He confined his activities to a small area of single story homes, often on cul-de-sacs, owned by middle class professionals. The houses were usually locked, and the VR favored prying and chiseling locks on sliding glass doors or back doors to garages, then going into the kitchens. The VR traveled almost exclusively through backyards, ditches, open spaces, alleys, and greenbelts—always careful to avoid sidewalks and streets. The burglaries got little press attention or police investigation, and were treated like a nuisance, not a threat.

CHAPTER ONE
“We’ll catch the guy”

“I’ll be driving my wife’s orange Jeep, you won’t be able to miss me.” Retired VPD Sgt. John Vaughan is a master of understatement.

I chose the Black Bear Diner because it seemed like the kind of place where cops eat. They serve all-day breakfast, steaks, and bottomless cups of coffee in their signature white mugs. I was afraid that if I suggested a place more suited for a vegan from Los Angeles, I might make an already awkward meeting totally unbearable for both of us.
The Jeep was the brightest thing in the parking lot, maybe in the entire county, now turned brown after years of endless drought. As I drove into town, the only color was the green from irrigated groves of citrus trees. Although it was still early, the day was quickly heading over 100 degrees. Visalia is a small city stuck in time. It prides itself on pretending that it is still 1950. The A&W brews its own homemade root beer, and sells it in jugs that you can take home. However, it was impossible to miss the racist graffiti scrawled on the wall of the Indian grocery store on the edge of the A&W parking lot.

I understood Visalia, and its power structure. My great-grandparents chased the American farming dream across the country at the turn of the 20th century, going from Kansas to North Dakota, then to the newly planted orange trees of Southern California. My great-grandfather was a pacifist, and they fled to Canada during WWI, finally returning to the apple and cherry trees of northeastern Washington State. My great-uncle, “Buck,” was the police chief of a small farming city a lot like Visalia. Rumors were that he ran the town as his own personal criminal empire. He took a cut of every illegal enterprise, and black and brown suspects ended up dead in the river, rather than in a jail cell or courtroom. According to my mother, the rumors were all true. As soon as she could, she left for Seattle, and never looked back. Her sister took the other path, became a police dispatcher, and married the son of a homicide detective in Spokane.
I never planned on becoming an attorney, but somehow my internal need for fairness found a practical profession. Handling criminal appeals immediately put me in direct conflict with law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges. It’s a specialized area of the law that requires endless hours of research on each case. The best appellate attorneys start at the beginning, with the events leading up to the crime, not the trial itself. That means digging into original police reports, witness statements, and forensic lab bench notes. Overworked and underfunded public defenders are rarely granted money for investigators and forensic experts, and critical details can easily be missed.
Although my office is staffed by licensed attorneys and private investigators, we each bring unique life experiences and skills. I spent summers on drilling rigs in the Arctic Circle and in Montana. Guns were a necessity in camps accessible only by helicopter, and stalked by grizzly bears and wolves. We have dirt bike riders, and a pilot who can conduct surveillance via small plane or drone. One of our attorneys is a forensics expert, who studied criminology at Oxford University, and can build a complete family tree for a subject while you wait in the field for the next address to check out or vehicle to follow. Two of us lost close friends to serial offenders, and we are guided by what we know they would want us to do if we were pursing their killers. Terri and Laurie would want the truth—no matter how long it takes, or how difficult it may be to accept.
My first phone call to John Vaughan went pretty much exactly as I expected. John had retired as a sergeant with VPD in 1996 after 35 years of service, and 20 years later, he had little interest in revisiting a 40-year-old unsolved crime spree. However, I wasn’t calling about just any case—it was the longest and most expensive investigation in VPD history, and Sgt. Vaughan had been the lead detective. I asked him if I could just email a few documents, and he finally agreed to let me mail him an envelope. The day he got the documents he called back, and asked if we could meet to discuss the information. Now here we were in the parking lot of the Black Bear Diner.
Even twenty years after retirement, John still looked like he could topple his wife’s Jeep with one hand, and the expression on his face as I pulled up made me think he was considering it. Walking into the restaurant together, we made small talk, and the mood hadn’t really improved by the time we were done ordering. John was a wall of skepticism, built over 40 long years of listening to an endless number of overly excited “theories” about his biggest case. Between March 1974 and December 1975, a man dubbed the “Visalia Ransacker” had terrorized his city. There had been over 150 residential burglaries with a very weird and specific MO.
The burglar ignored expensive jewelry and electronics, and instead stole Blue Chip trading stamps, piggy banks, food, coins, cameras, two dollar bills, knives, and single earrings from a pair. He took guns, but only if they were older or foreign, and therefore lacked traceable registration numbers. Immediately upon entering the home, he opened multiple escape routes, and placed the window screens in odd places, like on the bed. He also put chain locks across doors, or blocked them with chairs, to delay the homeowner should he return during the burglary. He displayed undergarments and jewelry boxes on beds and pillows, and stole photos of the attractive teen girls who lived in the rooms. All areas, including the kitchens, were heavily ransacked. Drawers were left pulled out, or contents dumped on the floor. Sometimes he placed stacks of undies and nightgowns in rows down the hallway.
The VR always struck in the early evening, while the residents were out to dinner, a movie, or the local football game. He confined his activities to a small area of single story homes, often on cul-de-sacs, owned by middle class professionals. The houses were usually locked, and the VR favored prying and chiseling locks on sliding glass doors or back doors to garages, then going into the kitchens. The VR traveled almost exclusively through backyards, ditches, open spaces, alleys, and greenbelts—always careful to avoid sidewalks and streets. The burglaries got little press attention or police investigation, and were treated like a nuisance, not a threat.