The Apologetic Rapist

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A compostie sketch created of the NorCal Rapist from an attack in the 1990s.

For the last 15 years, citizens in Northern California have been plagued by a man police call the NorCal Rapist. Law enforcement officials say they've linked him to assaults on 10 women in six counties since 1991.

Victims of the NorCal Rapist's string of sexual assaults say similar things: He talked to them as if they were friends and sometimes called them after an attack to apologize. He reportedly tells his victims personal details about himself. Some authorities believe these are the actions of a man who fantasizes about a future life with the women he rapes.

Investigators note the NorCal Rapist stalks his victims and learns their routines. In his most recent attacks in October 2006, two female victims told detectives it seemed like he knew his way around their home, suggesting that he had watched them beforehand.

Police tell AMW that when he strikes, the NorCal Rapist likes to tie his victims up with duct tape, blindfolds them and then repeatedly rapes them over a period of several hours.  He sometimes wears a mask and often begins each assault by telling victims he is armed before brandishing a gun.

To date, police say he's attacked 10 women on nine separate occasions. The series of assaults began in 1991 when a woman was raped in her Rohnert Park townhouse after an unknown assailant broke in through a sliding glass door. Police say the same man struck again in Vallejo, Calif., in 1992.

Four years later on Halloween, police say the NorCal Rapist donned a skeleton mask and attacked a woman in Martinez, Calif. Stranger still, he called the woman at work three weeks later to apologize. That same year  he tied up a different woman but didn't rape her. In 1997, he raped two women in Davis and one in Chico. He wouldn't appear again for three years when he struck again in Davis. Police say that while the NorCal Rapist's first two victims were white, every victim since has been Asian.
 

The NorCal Rapist's Latest Attack

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Police say that the NorCal Rapist may be driving an SUV similar to the one pictured here.

After going dormant for six years, the NorCal Rapist would strike again, this time in Sacramento. On October 13, 2006, a woman was attacked after she got home from work. Police say the NorCal Rapist broke into the woman's home, put a gun to her head, tied her up...and waited for her roommate to return home.

Authorities say that the NorCal Rapist tied both women up and repeatedly raped them for hours. During the incident one of the women was able to get a look at him when one of their blindfolds slipped down. She told police that her attacker is white, 35-to 40-years-old, around 6-feet tall and weighs 200 to 250  pounds with a protruding stomach.

Luckily, neighbors spotted the vehicle used by the rapist, and it was also picked up by a nearby garage-mounted camera. The vehicle is described as a 1997 white Toyota 4-Runner with tinted rear windows and a silver stripe around the bottom.

Police now have DNA evidence on the NorCal Rapist from his most recent attack in Sacramento and have positively linked him to previous assaults. Sacramento Police Chief Albert Najera tells AMW, "Unfortunately, we have everything on this guy except who he is."  Authorities are asking for the public's assistance in helping identify the NorCal Rapist or the Toyota 4-Runner.