How old do you think he was?

[ausgirl]

Just looking for thoughts on whether it might have been possible that EAR/ONS was still a teenager in 1976. Maybe 15-16-17, around there, not quite old enough to trust his driving skills as much he did his trusty bikes in making a quick approach and getaway, maybe having to mask the last of his voice changes or an immature voice by growling through his teeth?

What made me wonder this most of all was the ski mask/motocross style gloves described as being worn by him, as well as the use of bicycles (though bike-riding rapists are not all uncommon in all age groups). It made me think : BMX? The BMX rage was full on in the 70's and there were lots of events in and around the areas EAR/ONS focussed on.

I'd be happy to hear opinions both for and against him being in late teens. Sorry if it's been discussed ad infinitum before.

[geko]

Aus, I have just emailed something very similar, I have emailed you a copy so you can see just how similar our thoughts are

[greg26011979]

The age topic is one that has been debated at lengh over a number of posts on the other forum. Personally, I tend to lean towards the age 18-22 bracket when he began his crimes as the EAR. This is just my assumptions from the statements and accounts provided by Sudden Terror, and what I have read on various web sites, etc.

There was something about the early crimes, and certain of the later ones that is hard to define where you get the impression he was some kind of mal adjusted young man trying to live out a pre-scripted fantasy. As I say that is my take on things, and it is only a feeling based on the facts I have to hand.

Others may well disagree.

[truthandsoul]

Are there any (apprehended) serial rapists that have been as young as 18?
Seems awfully young for someone to develop that psychology.
Not that he can't be an exception...

I'm going with low to mid-20s circa 1976.

[greg26011979]

William Senior. 15 year old British boy who raped 4 women aged between 25 - 30 circa 1999 /2000. Was sentenced to life imprisonment in May 2000.

[samk]

On the old board someone posted that Investigator Pool may have believed that the perp was around 30 years old when he started his first attack as ear. If this is true then the experience shown during the early attacks may have led to this conclusion.

[truthandsoul]

Jun 18, 2013 12:00:32 GMT -5 greg26011979 said:

William Senior. 15 year old British boy who raped 4 women aged between 25 - 30 circa 1999 /2000. Was sentenced to life imprisonment in May 2000.

WOW! That might be a good case study, if there's any details on him. Thanks for that

[ausgirl]

Thank you, Geko, will zip over to my email next..

As to early starts..

- Ed Kemper started killing at 15.

- Tommy Lynn Sells' first attempts at rape began at home, age 13, when he attacked his mother.

- Joseph Duncan raped a nine year old boy at gunpoint, age 15 and claimed to have raped many other boys by age 16. He was sentenced to 20 years for another gunpoint rape at age 17.

- Jeff Dahmer was 18, and had just graduated high school before his first murder, but he'd fantasised about killing since he was 14.

- Ottis Toole was just 14 when he committed his first murder.

So there's a few off the top of my head.

Thing is with EAR/ONS, he seems to have emerged as a fully developed serial rapist with a pretty detailed signature and MO... but logic demands consideration of the likelihood that he'd developed his 'skills' during other, earlier crimes. I think he was not too far along, though, in '76, still working out his techniques and experimenting.

If he did start young, maybe the escalation to murder was a sign of his own maturation as well as that of his MO? Not saying it's so, just a thing to ponder.

[geko]

IF, he's the ransacker, then what happened between Dec'75 and June'76 ? IMO something did, almost exactly 6 months. Youth offending on another type of crime or a brief spell in the Military ? This period maybe the cause of the leap from petty theft to rape.

[ausgirl]

Completely off topic, Geko -- well, almost completely - looking just now at a list of 94 VR crimes - all but 8 are committed on a Fri, Sat or Sunday. And the Snelling murder happened on a Thursday. It's the only Thursday, out of 94 crimes over 42 separate dates. There's a few on Mondays, a few more on Wednesdays.. and just this one Thursday happens to be the night he picked to try to snatch Beth Snelling...

I can't help but wonder if this night was chosen for more than sheer convenience.. it was out of his regular schedule for the ransackings. To me, it seems probable that the VR had had the abduction of a girl on his mind for quite some time, and maybe put some special effort into adjusting his timetable in order to try to take Beth.

I am pretty convinced that a sexually motivated attack was the underlying motivation for the ransackings from the get-go, given that robbery wasn't. Looks to me like a future serial rapist honing his skills... and gathering his nerve.

I do think there's a very good possibility EAR/ONS was also VR.. and that VR may have been quite young? Maybe?

I -really- need to look into VR some more! It's on the to-do list.

[greg26011979]

He may not have been a super genius, but for the most part he wasn't stupid either. If we assume he was the VR, then he has just shot and killed a man and shot at a police officer. The attention / scrutiny he would now be under would immense. Could the 75-76 period just be down to the fact he forced himself to lay low in order to avoid detection / capture while he plotted a move somewhere else to start his crimes again. If you look when he moved south he tried to change aspects of his MO as he clearly didn't want the police from different areas to work out where he was next.

[lepke]

Jun 19, 2013 7:28:58 GMT -5 greg26011979 said:

He may not have been a super genius, but for the most part he wasn't stupid either. If we assume he was the VR, then he has just shot and killed a man and shot at a police officer. The attention / scrutiny he would now be under would immense. Could the 75-76 period just be down to the fact he forced himself to lay low in order to avoid detection / capture while he plotted a move somewhere else to start his crimes again. If you look when he moved south he tried to change aspects of his MO as he clearly didn't want the police from different areas to work out where he was next.

That depends how much control he had, and though it is not impossible that he just decided to take a break between being VR and EAR, assuming they are one in the same, I find it hard to believe that he could just do that so easily.

I doubt that during the first half of 1976, he was in the places, with the time on his hands, to carry on with what he had been doing, even though he probably would rather have been doing that.

There has been speculation that he was the son of someone important in Visalia, maybe even a cop, and was being protected accordingly. On that basis, maybe after killing Snelling, he was told to get the hell out of town, and packed off somewhere, maybe the military.

It could explain why he was no longer able to be committing crimes for a few months, the weight loss through whatever training he was doing, and given him the break in physical offending that he might have needed, to change his attitude from showing up at houses to ransack, to being there to rape instead.

[lepke]

It seems that some of the houses that VR hit, were the family homes of girls at a couple of local high schools. VR may well have been around school leaving age at the time of the crimes, and I hope that the police have thoroughly looked into all the males aged around sixteen to twenty one in Visalia at the time.

Their alibis should be checked very thoroughly, because if VR was being protected, that means that someone was telling lies for him, and as such, all alibis based on the possibility of a small number of people lying, really need to be given another look.