The Valley Intruder : The Victims’ Stories : A Path of Violence From the Southland to San Francisco

The first to die was 34-year-old Dayle Okazaki.

Law officers combing through her Rosemead condominium on that cloud-shrouded March 18 morning believed that it was a single act of violence--one of the more than 1,000 homicides reported yearly in Los Angeles County.

Five months later, after a task force of law enforcement officers compared notes on 30 unsolved assaults and killings, it became chillingly apparent that they were looking at the work of a serial killer.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced at a late night news conference Friday that the assailant has definitely been tied to 14 murders and 19 assaults. Previously, investigators had conclusively linked the killer to eight deaths and 15 assaults.

The victims newly identified by Sheriff Sherman R. Block include Joyce Nelson, William Doi, Lela and Max Kneiding and Vincent and Maxine Zazzara. The others are Dayle Okazaki, Tsai-Lian Yu, Mabel Bell, Patty Higgins, Mary Cannon, Chainarong Khovananth, Elyas Abowath and Peter Pan. The crimes linked Friday to the killer occurred weeks ago, and local law enforcement officials had strongly suspected a connection.

In an investigation larger than the one in the infamous 1977-78 Hillside Strangler case, detectives are going over every detail of the deaths, apparently at the hands of what one law officer called a “cunning and very, very dangerous” killer.

One of the victims was a student, another a special education teacher. Two were business executives and one a parking lot attendant.

Several were doting grandmothers, others lived alone. One contributed his time as a deacon in his church, another practiced meditation in his garden. One adored Glenn Miller records, another played the organ. One had been detained in a Japanese detention center in World War II.

They moved to California from many places: Pakistan, Italy, Pennsylvania, Kentucky. Five were Asians. Although their origins differed, they have become inextricably linked in death.

The Valley Intruder or Night Stalker, as detectives have dubbed him, preys mainly on the most vulnerable--children, women living alone, elderly couples. He has snatched at least two children off the streets, sexually assaulted them and let them go. He dragged one young woman from her car and shot her to death. Most often, however, he has crept through unlocked windows and doors before dawn, attacking while his victims slept. Several of the homes were ransacked and valuables were taken.

He has bludgeoned some victims, slashed others and shot still others to death. Victims who have lived to tell about the terrifying attacks have described their assailant as a 25- to 30-year-old man, 6 feet tall, slender, with curly hair and stained, gapped teeth.

The homes of his murder victims are surprisingly similar: All but one are small single-story residences with tidy front yards. Most are set serenely in look-alike middle-income neighborhoods within sight of freeways or within blocks of off-ramps. Almost all were painted shades of yellow.

The attacks were first clustered in the San Gabriel Valley--Arcadia, Monterey Park, Rosemead, Monrovia and Sierra Madre. In August, as law enforcement agencies and Neighborhood Watch groups in those areas were on the alert, the killer ranged further. Murder cases bearing his stamp cropped up along the freeway corridors of the foothills, in Glendale, Northridge, Sun Valley and Diamond Bar. And last week the swath of violence spread to San Francisco.

Here are the victims’ stories, as pieced together from interviews with police, relatives and friends.