Suspected 'NorCal Rapist,' linked to 1991 Rohnert Park assault, arrested after 27 years
After 27 years, two victims of brazen sexual attacks in Sonoma County have the name of their suspected assailant, a Benicia man authorities identified Friday as the prime suspect in at least 10 sexual assaults across Northern California.
Roy Charles Waller, 58, is suspected of being the “NorCal Rapist,” who attacked women in six counties including two crimes in 1991 in Sonoma County, Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert said Friday. Investigators have linked the serial rapist to assaults that took place beginning in 1991 in Rohnert Park up to a 2006 attack on two women in Sacramento.
On Friday morning, Nicole Earnest-Payte received an unexpected phone call from the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office, alerting her that authorities had arrested the man they suspected had attacked her in Rohnert Park nearly 30 years ago.
“I literally felt like the room started spinning and I fell down on the floor, and I couldn’t speak,” Earnest-Payte told The Press Democrat Friday night. “I was happy, elated, sad, angry. There was a lot going on. I’m relieved and this has been a long time coming.”
In Sacramento during a news conference flanked by law enforcement officials from Sonoma, Yolo, Sacramento, Butte, Solano and Contra Costa counties, Schubert said a genetic genealogy database helped investigators link Waller to the crimes.
“DNA is the silent witness to the truth. For 27 years, the truth was not known until now,” Schubert said.
Sgt. Vance Chandler, a Sacramento Police Department spokesman, told reporters authorities are aware of 10 victims but will continue checking whether other similar crimes are linked to the suspected rapist.
The Sonoma County assaults connected to Waller were reported by Earnest-Payte in Rohnert Park and another woman in Sonoma. In both cases, they were attacked in their homes, local investigators said.
Waller was arrested Thursday in Berkeley near his longtime job as a safety specialist on the UC Berkeley campus. His arrest came 12 years after investigators in different jurisdictions first linked their cases with the discovery that the DNA collected from the individual crime scenes appeared to show they involved the same perpetrator.
But the investigations grew cold after that discovery in 2006. Waller did not become a prime suspect until about 10 days ago when Sacramento detectives received information from the genetic genealogy company GEDmatch that put Waller under investigation, Schubert said.
Rohnert Park Public Safety Department Commander Aaron Johnson, who was a lead investigator in 2006 when DNA connected the local case to other assaults across Northern California, said he learned Waller had been identified as a suspect Thursday morning when Sacramento police called the department’s investigations unit.
“My first thought was, ‘Finally,’?” Johnson said. “You feel relief for the victim and her family and our immediate community. But you also feel relief for all the other victims and all the other communities.”
An emerging crime-solving tactic nationwide, genetic genealogy has proven crucial in recent years to cracking cold-case investigations that have stumped detectives, sometimes for decades.
The same open source genomics database and genealogy website, Florida-based GEDmatch, used by Sacramento investigators to identify Waller was credited for helping authorities earlier this year identify suspected Golden State Killer, Joseph James DeAngelo.
Databases like GEDmatch are compiling genetic and genealogical information submitted willingly by people trying to learn about their family trees. Law enforcement are turning to these private databases to search for possible relatives or even matches to crime suspects.
Brian Staebell, Sonoma County Chief Deputy District Attorney, said they have a staff person assigned to cold cases who is also charged with exploring the potential for these private genealogical databases to help solve more local crimes.
Waller’s arrest Thursday was in connection with the 2006 rape of two women in their Sacramento home. He was charged in Sacramento County Superior Court with 12 felony forcible sexual assaults, including allegations he had used a gun in some of the incidents. He was booked into the Sacramento County Jail about 7:45 p.m. He’s being held without bail on suspicion of three felony sexual assault charges, including rape, forced oral copulation and forcible penetration with a foreign object, records show. Waller is scheduled to be arraigned at 1:30 p.m. Monday in Sacramento Superior Court, Department 63.
He has not yet been charged with crimes in other jurisdictions, including Sonoma County where as of Friday he has no record of committing any criminal or civil offenses.
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