Merchants Report Upsurge in Sale of Firearms and Locks as News of Serial Murders Spreads : A Fearsome Intruder Has San Gabriel Valley in Uproar

A San Gabriel-area nurse is livid at the “Valley Intruder.”

“I have two guns in the house,” she said. “If he came to the door, I’d kill him.”

In fact San Gabriel Valley residents are so upset by the killer who enters unlocked homes at night and may be responsible for six slayings and 15 rapes, beatings and kidnapings in the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys that they refuse to give their names in interviews.

A Monrovia man says that every night at 1 a.m. he wakes his 1-year-old daughter and drives to pick up his wife at the restaurant where she works. Since the killings became known, his wife is afraid to walk alone the few feet from the restaurant to the lot where she parks.

Locking Selves in Bedroom

An Alhambra woman says that when her husband goes to work each night she and her 3-year-old daughter shut the windows and lock themselves in the bedroom.

“I have a phone and a bathroom,” she said. “So there’s no need to come out.”

A Monrovia professor recently moved his daughter from a downstairs to an upstairs apartment in that city, while a South Pasadena bartender says that in her bungalow complex one of the seven women over 65 stays up each night of the week to watch for the intruder.

People are “buying the hell out of window locks,” and husbands are buying guns for wives as residents react to a possible serial killer who seems more fearsome because he attacks in the home and without a discernible pattern, police say.

“It’s not like reading in the paper that it’s happening back East,” Detective Edward Winter of the Arcadia Police Department said. “When it starts happening in your town it makes you stop and think about it. That’s what our citizens are doing.

“We hear a lot of people say ‘I’m not sleeping well. I’m scared to death. I want to get an alarm.’ I can’t say it’s quite a panic, but people are concerned.”

“We’re getting more calls from people who notice things,” Lt. Joseph Santoro, commander of the community relations and crime prevention bureau of the Monterey Park Police, said. “In the past they might have rationalized what they saw and not called us.”

Santoro said the police are doing 15 to 25 inspections daily for people who want to know if their homes are properly secured. They normally do eight to 10. The police are also receiving about three calls a day from people who want to form neighborhood watches. Before the murders, calls for new watch groups had been rare.

The San Gabriel-area nurse said she is particularly angry at the intruder “because you’re not even safe in your own home. It feels like a violation of privacy even though you haven’t been accosted.

“I’ve heard he’s carrying a gun and I don’t know if it’s true,” she said, “but mine (a .12-gauge shotgun and a .44-caliber magnum pistol) are loaded. My profession is healing, but I have a very strong sense of person and property and a short fuse when they’re violated.”

The attacks have cut across all age and sex lines.

The professor, wearing shorts while visiting an Arcadia shopping mall, said he moved to Los Angeles about 10 years ago, at the time of the Hillside Strangler.

“It was very fearful to us and our daughters, who were teen-agers,” he said.

“But this seems even more horrendous because of the fact that this person goes into people’s homes. He’s going into your sanctuary, your private place. That’s very frightening to me, and he’s doing it in such a diabolical way.

“He’s not striking the same way twice and he’s making it very difficult for the police, I’m sure.”

The burly Monrovia man who picks up his wife after work, wearing jeans and a T-shirt and sipping a beer at an Arcadia bar, said that when his two dogs bark while he sleeps at night “I get my hockey stick and prowl the house.

“If you hear noise and you don’t wake up and wonder about it (in this situation), something’s wrong with you,” he said.

“I used to have the windows open at night because I don’t have air conditioning. Now I get home and open the windows and I get all the air I can and then shut them. At about 3:30 it’s so hot you’re choking.”

An Alhambra office worker said that her husband used to work part time at night but stopped because she was petrified to be alone. “I used to come home (and relax),” she said. “Now I come home and check all the rooms.

“During the summer when my husband would go off to work at night I used to leave the back door and the windows open. Now I’ll sit in the house sweating but I won’t open those doors. I’ll sit in front of a fan and go wet my head.

“I was so scared that I had my husband buy me a stun gun,” she said. The gun shoots two electrically charged darts that enter the skin and immobilize the body.

Turner’s Sporting Goods in West Covina reported an increase in gun sales, but it was selling more than stun guns; it was doing a brisk trade in .12-gauge shotguns with an 18-inch barrel on sale at $149.99. This is a legal weapon, not “sawed off.” However, it is 10 inches shorter than the standard shotgun.

“Husbands are getting them for their wives,” store manager Mike Battistoni said. “A lot of husbands are not home at night.

“Handguns have a 15-day waiting period before you can pick them up. You can take the rifle or shotgun home the same day. . . . They also want a gun that’s easy to use. . . . With a shotgun, you’ve just got to point.”

Increased Handgun Sales

Meanwhile, Fowler’s Sport Center in Pasadena reported increased sales of .22- and .25-caliber pistols.

Police, observing these sales, cautioned that gun buyers should know how to use them.

“And if you decide you have to use it, you have to be absolutely sure to use it for a good reason, the protection of your life or someone else’s,” Lt. Santoro said.

“You don’t want to shoot an innocent person. You have to live with that the rest of your life.”

In addition to guns, residents are also seeking protection by buying more window and door locks.

Steve Broten, general manager of Ace Hardware in Arcadia, said he couldn’t keep enough window locks in stock, and Roger Weiss, manager of Builders Emporium in Temple City, said customers had made a run on window and door locks, particularly dead bolts. Ole’s Home Center in Pasadena also ordered more window and door locks to keep up with sales.

Those sales reflect the bizarre nature of the recent crimes.

“I trust my husband to take care of me, but I’m not even safe with him (now),” the Alhambra office worker said. “I was talking to some lady at a nightclub. She said, ‘Don’t worry. He’s not after you. He’s only after single women.’

“I said, ‘Bull. He’s after whoever he can get. He’s just taking anyone at random. As long as he can get into your house.’ ”