Love songs, duct tape, night of terror described at NorCal Rapist trial

After the NorCal Rapist broke into her Rohnert Park home on June 22, 1991, he tied up the 21-year-old hairstylist, put duct tape over her eyes and then led her upstairs to her bedroom, where he left her on the bed while he went downstairs.

He came back with a boom box.

“He turned it to a station that played love songs,” his victim testified Wednesday. “At that point, he said these are our songs, these are our love songs.”

Then he began one of three sexual assaults against the woman in what authorities say was the first in a series of attacks that lasted until 2006 throughout Northern California and victimized nine women.

On Wednesday in Sacramento Superior Court, the first victim, Nicole Earnest-Payte, described in graphic detail what happened over the course of about six hours while the suspect charged in the case, Roy Charles Waller, sat at the defense table looking down at a legal pad or occasionally writing notes.

Earnest-Payte, who was identified as “N. Doe” in court but consented afterward to be identified by name, said she never saw her attacker’s face because he wore a ski mask and taped over her eyes.

Victim stares down suspect in court

But she made certain to stare Waller down during more than three hours of testimony that began Tuesday afternoon and continued until noon Wednesday, and said he never looked at her once.

With poise interrupted only occasionally by tears, she recounted how she was awakened by a man in a ski mask carrying a handgun about 8:30 at night after falling asleep on a couch in her home.

She testified that her attacker asked for money and her ATM card, and that he seemed to know details of her personal life: how tall her ex-boyfriend was, where she worked, that she typically left her sliding glass door unlocked while she was gone during the day.

Then, he turned the radio on.

“At that point, he had only been looking through my belongings and asking for money,” she testified under questioning from Sacramento Deputy District Attorney Chris Ore. “But at some point he turned me over on my back and I started shaking, because I knew what was about to happen...

“I don’t recall if I said anything. I was shaking and started to cry. He said, ‘Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be as bad as you think.’”

Two of nine victims have testified so far

Earnest-Payte was the second rape victim to testify in the trial, which began Monday and could result in Waller going to prison for life.

Theresa Lane, who was attacked in her Vallejo home in February 1992, earlier described fighting with her attacker, trying to escape and stabbing at his forehead with the tip of a knife that broke off when she tried to grab it from him.

Earnest-Payte said she was too afraid to fight, that her attacker threatened multiple times to kill her that night.

“I knew at that point I was not getting out of this,” she said of how she felt when he first began to rape her. “I felt terrified for my life, couldn’t believe what was happening, tried to think of ways to get away.

“I knew there was no way I could get out of this. I was absolutely terrified. I just wanted him to get out of my house, and I thought if I don’t fight him maybe he’ll get out of my house.”

She said the man told her he had been watching her for weeks, and that after the first rape he began kissing her all over her body.

“I was thinking this was insane, and I was thinking I think he believes this is a romantic interlude,” she said as Waller stared down at the defense table. “At some point, he started to apologize.

“He was laying kind of next to me at that point and he said, ‘I’m sorry for doing this. I’ve never done this before and I’ll never do it again, I promise.’”

Attacker threatened to kill her

The attacker left her home at about 2:30 a.m., she said, after taking her ATM card and PIN and tying her hands in front of her with duct tape. Then he gave her a butter knife to cut the tape and strict instructions.

“He instructed me to wait for three songs on the radio and cut myself free,” she testified. “I believe he even waited a little bit longer before he left.

“He said, ‘Make sure you wait three songs to give me time to get to the bank and get out. Don’t call the police or I will know and I will come back and kill you before they come.’ He kept saying, ‘I’ll know.’”

Then, as he left, the attacker said something “mockingly,” Earnest-Payte said.

“Right before he left, he said, ‘You should lock your doors from now on. Someone might come in and try to hurt you.’”

Earnest-Payte said she did what he told her, that after the three songs she cut herself loose, got dressed and grabbed a clothes iron as a weapon because she feared he was still there.

Even after finding no one inside the home, she was still too terrified to call police. She called her mother in Tiburon.

“I said, ‘Mom, I just was raped at gunpoint in my house by a masked man, I need you to get here,’” she recalled. “God bless her, I don’t know how she did it. She said I need to hang up right now and call the police.

”There was no way I was going to call police. I told her I was way too terrified. I believed he had access to a scanner.”

She called her father in San Diego County, and within minutes her mother showed up with Rohnert Park police that her mother had called on her own.

After court, Earnest-Payte said sitting on the stand recalling what happened to her had been “very hard,” but that she made a point to look at Waller “multiple times.”

“He didn’t look at me once,” she said, adding that the attack nearly 30 years ago has changed her life forever.

“It made me constitutionally stronger, devastated my sense of safety anywhere,” she said. “I’ll never feel entirely safe anywhere.

“It has not ruined my life. He did not ruin my life. But it has definitely been altered forever by what happened, and I will never forget this incident even after this is all over.”

The trial, which is expected to last for weeks, continues Thursday with testimony from the victim of a Halloween 1996 attack in Martinez.