Bobbie Scott lives a peaceful life with her husband in Palm Desert, but on October 17, 1978, she lived in Pleasanton, California.
“It was a warm afternoon on that October day. The doors were open and my son and his friend were outside playing. Do you remember? I’ll never forget,” she’ll never forget because that’s the day she says she was attacked by the man known then as the ‘East Area Rapist.
Her hands shake as she continues to read from the letter she wrote to her rapist as a part of therapy, the same letter she hopes to read to him court, “You were selling encyclopedias. Do you remember? I’ll will never forget.”
She recalls telling the man she already had a set but he wanted proof. She complied, but when she came back, “The look on you face was monstrous,” something was different she says, “I thought you were angry because I didn’t buy the encyclopedias but then I realized you were there to rape me.”
What followed was a brutal rape in her son’s bedroom, “You were so violent, all the while I was praying that my son and his friend didn’t come into the house,”
Before he left she says he threatened her and her family, “You told me not to call police because you would come back and kill my son.”
A threat she took seriously because three months before the attack she was getting threatening calls, something this rapist turned killer was known to do, “This person said, ‘Are you watching your son?'”
So she didn’t report it.
“I was afraid that he would come back and he would kill my son, however I did report the calls that he made,” she says.
She just tried to move on that day, “I called my son in from outside and I told him that we were going to have an early dinner and I was going to put him to bed in my bed so that we could watch cartoons.”
But the years that followed were rough. Especially every October.
“Even though I did exactly what he said to do I thought he could come back at will,” she says.
Then last year she while watching the news, “I heard the voice and I looked up and there was a picture of him and it was him.”
She says she had never made the connection between her attacker and the east area rapist but then she watched another special and she was certain, “You would never forget the voice, you would never forget the face,” she says.
She says she called the FBI, the detective on the case and the local district attorney, “And he did tell me at the time that they had DNA.”
Fast forward to April 24, 2018. Another day she’ll never forget. Her son calls her to tell her they caught the ‘Golden State Killer’ also known as the ‘East Area Rapist’.
“Oh my gosh, they got him I’m just like, thank you God, thank you God, thank you,” she says.
Now the image of the man who is thought to be the monster California feared for decades is shown with a different word.
“Captured, yeah,” she says, adding his arrest makes her feel like she’s now out of captivity, “
It makes her feel like she’s out of captivity, “Maybe I was never physically captured but he captured my heart and my soul for so long but now I‘m free and he’s not,” she says with a smile.
