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.

Staebell said the office has been in touch with the victims in both Sonoma County cases and that they are relieved to learn a suspect has been arrested. Only the Rohnert Park case has so far been linked to Waller through DNA, he said. In the one in Sonoma, the perpetrator used strikingly similar tactics during the attack: sexually assaulting a woman at her home and then driving her to an ATM to withdraw cash and force her to give him money, Sonoma County sheriff’s officials said.

The first Sonoma County attack occurred in Rohnert Park on June 23, 1991. Earnest-Payte, who is being identified because she willingly spoke to a reporter on Friday, reported she was assaulted inside her home by a man she didn’t know who wore a mask and had a gun. In prior interviews with The Press Democrat, Earnest-Payte, who now lives in Petaluma, described him as soft-spoken and apologetic, and that he said he had been stalking her.

She was so grateful now to finally match a face and name to her attacker, she said, that she almost attended the press conference announcing Waller’s arrest to personally thank Sacramento police. That experience, she said, contrasted dramatically with that of Rohnert Park police, who she thinks mishandled the case by not taking her report seriously years ago.

“It was a different police department, but people there then just didn’t believe me,” Earnest-Payte said. “They thought I made it up, they said I was not credible when it happened in Sonoma.”

Cmdr. Johnson, who was not at the Rohnert Park police department in 1991, said that he took the case very seriously when he took it over in 2006.

“I was on the same mission as she was; I wanted to find out who victimized her,” Johnson said.

Rohnert Park police officials have said previously they tried to identify a suspect through DNA and fingerprints taken at the scene of the assault.

Those efforts apparently didn’t unearth any connections to Waller. UC Berkeley officials Friday said they didn’t start fingerprinting employee applicants until 2004. By then, Waller had been working on campus for 12 years.

The second Sonoma County case was reported Dec. 1, 1991, on Chase Street in Sonoma. A 42-year-old woman told deputies she was awakened in the middle of the night about 1:30 a.m. “by a man dressed in a mask,” sheriff’s spokesman Spencer Crum said. The Press Democrat does not know the woman’s identity.

“He tied her up and raped her twice,” Crum said. “He drove her to a local bank in Sonoma where he withdrew some money out of her account.”

He took her home and left, Crum said.

Crum said DNA evidence was collected from the scene but that has not yet been tested against Waller but he matches a description of the assailant. The case has long been treated as potentially involving the so-called NorCal Rapist because the crime was remarkably similar, he said.

“I hope this solves the case and we help get some closure for this woman,” Crum said.

Waller has worked in the environment, health and safety office of UC Berkeley since 1992 as a safety specialist, said Roqua Montez, a university spokesman. He lives in Benicia and is married, Sacramento officials said.

For Earnest-Payte, the day’s news was difficult for her to describe.

“It’s a strange, surreal feeling to now move into the next chapter, now knowing who he is and seeing his face,” she said. “I don’t know what’s next in this chapter, but I know I will continue to be as strong as I can, knowing that I have a great life and he didn’t destroy it, nor will I ever let him.”

You can reach Staff Writers Nashelly Chavez at 707-521-5203 or nashelly.chavez@pressdemocrat.com and Julie Johnson at 707-521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com.