‘I’m in control now.’ Victims’ ordeals in NorCal Rapist attacks recounted in court

With NorCal Rapist suspect Roy Waller sitting quietly at the defense table, prosecution witnesses on Thursday described fierce and bloody resistance by two of his alleged victims before surrendering to their attacker.

One victim was attacked Feb. 13, 1992, in her Vallejo home, where she awoke after spending the night in her locked bedroom and started walking down the hall.

“She saw a person in the hall bathroom trying to hide,” retired Vallejo police Detective David McGraw testified in Sacramento Superior Court on the second day of Waller’s preliminary hearing to determine whether should face trial as the notorious rapist who is believed to have attacked woman in six counties between 1991 and 2006.

“She said she ran screaming into the bedroom. She did say that he had a knife.”

The attacker was holding his hand over her mouth to stop the screaming as she continued to fight, eventually grabbing at the knife blade, McGraw said.

“She grabbed it with her hand and was able to break the blade,” McGraw testified about the sexual assault he investigated 28 years ago and said he still remembers vividly.

The victim continued to struggle, running to grab a lamp and throw it through her bedroom window, but eventually smashing it into her attacker’s head as he grabbed her, McGraw said.

“I just need your money,” the attacker told her, according to McGraw. “I just want your money.

“So she gave up the fight and he tied her hands and feet.”

The result was a night of at least three sexual assaults before the attacker fled into the night after being cut during the struggle.

McGraw said that despite working countless sexual assaults in his career, he remembered the Vallejo attack and the aftermath of the hunt for the suspect.

“There was a lot of prints taken out of the home...,” he said. “I know the house had print powder everywhere.

“I’ve never seen a house fingerprinted so much. Everything had powder on it.”

That attack is believed to be the third in a series of rapes that continued until 2006, when a man assaulted two roommates in their North Natomas home before fleeing.

Waller, whose 60th birthday will come next week as he remains locked up in the Sacramento County Main Jail, was arrested in September 2018 after DNA hits led authorities to stake out his Benicia home and ultimately arrest him as he reported for work as a safety specialist on the UC Berkeley campus.

On Thursday, he showed no emotion as he listened to descriptions of the attacks he allegedly conducted, occasionally leaning over to confer with defense attorney Joseph Farina as investigators recounted what Norcal Rapist victims told them over the years.

Terri Castiglia, a Sacramento County District Attorney’s criminal investigator and a former Sacramento police officer, testified that she interviewed another woman last March who is believed to be one of Waller’s victims.

The Chico resident came home after a night of dancing and drinking and went to bed at about 2 a.m., only to be awakened by a man crawling onto her bed and placing his hand over her mouth, Castiglia said.

The man told her to shut up, that he only wanted her cash and ATM card, then tied her up, Castiglia said. Later, he tried to untie her so he could bind her to the bedposts, and the victim told him there were scissors he could use in the nightstand.

He tied her up again and left the room long enough for the woman to partially untie herself using her teeth to loosen her bindings, but the attacker returned and saw she was trying to get free.

“The scissors were on the nightstand and she grabbed them and started jabbing at him,” Castiglia said. “She said she thought she stabbed him in his right forearm.”

The attacker pushed her face down into the bed, then said, “You really messed this up,” Castiglia said.

The attacker then set about trying to clean up his blood from the carpet, the sheets and the materials he bound her with as he complained, “I can’t f------ trust you,” Castiglia testified.

“I’m in control now,” the attacker added. “I’m the boss.”

Then, the attacker knelt down at her bedside as she lay helpless, Castiglia said.

“God help me,” the victim cried.

“He told her to shut up,” Castiglia said of the victim, who has since attended at least one of Waller’s previous court hearings.

Thursday’s hearing marked the second day of what is expected to be a four-day preliminary hearing spread out over the coming weeks as prosecutors Chris Ore and Keith Hill try to convince Judge Trena Burger-Plavan there is enough evidence to order Waller to face trial.

Farina already has challenged some of the DNA evidence produced in the case and on Thursday took pains to point out dissimilarities in some of the attacks.

In one case, testimony showed a victim described her attacker as having an 8- to 10-inch gut hanging so far over his beltline that he looked pregnant.

But another did not describe her attacker in the same way, and Farina noted descriptions varied, with the attacker described as having light hair in one case and dark in another, or of having a Southern drawl in at least one case but not others.

He also noted that victims have said they actually saw little of their attacker because they typically were confronted by a man in a ski mask who covered their eyes and mouths with duct tape.

This story was originally published January 2, 2020 at 4:52 PM.