Petaluma woman attacked by NorCal Rapist a determined survivor

In the 27 years since a stranger entered her home while she slept, bound her, raped her and threatened her with additional harm if she called police, Nicole ?Earnest-Payte has endured a mix of terror, defiance and even a modicum of empathy for a man so apparently troubled that he would do what he did to her that night.

All of that changed in a Sacramento courtroom Monday, when, for the first time, the Sonoma County woman confronted the rape suspect investigators believe targeted ?10 Northern California woman, including Earnest-Payte. They call him the NorCal Rapist.

When her eyes met his momentarily in court last week, she said all other emotion vanished. Only fury remained.

“I didn’t feel fear, I think, for the first time in many, many years. It was pure rage,” she said. “And when he looked me in the eye, the rage went from zero to 100 because he showed - and I know he’s innocent until proven guilty, and he hasn’t gone to trial - he showed zero remorse. None of that. He sort of showed me again that he is just evil.”

At 48, Earnest-Payte, a Petaluma mother, wife and businesswoman, has waited more than half of her life to put a face and a name to the man whose voice and presence are seared into her memory for eternity.

Now she thinks she has it.

Roy Charles Waller, 58, was arrested Sept. 20 for attacks against two Sacramento housemates in 2006. But authorities say they have linked the Benicia man through DNA and other evidence to cases in six counties, beginning in 1991, when two Sonoma County women were attacked six months apart.

Earnest-Payte is believed to have been Waller’s first victim - though that’s not a word that defines her. A woman of clear strength and resilience, she is more determined warrior, whose openness as a rape survivor and refusal to let it destroy her life will, she hopes, help others.

It’s an arduous path, and there’s been nothing simple about navigating the conflicting emotions inspired by that horrifying night in June 1991.

Among the hardest moments was informing her teenage son of her connection with the case when the arrest was about to be announced.

Even her recent trip to court proved an emotional roller coaster, despite the support of her husband and father, who accompanied her, and another survivor who was attacked in Chico in 1997. There was trembling and nausea, and eventually rage.

She said she and the other woman, Maki Anderson, gripped each other’s hands and gasped simultaneously when a door opened and allowed Waller to enter a small barred cell maybe ?10 feet away from them. She thinks she started to cry.

“When he turned around, and I actually saw his face and saw his eyes for the first time - and I even hate to admit it, because it’s what he wanted - I was terrified,” Earnest-Payte said. “And it all came back in that split second.

“And then part of me thought, ‘Yeah. I’m here. We’re still here fighting. And you’re in an orange jumpsuit,’” she said. “It was a huge amount of mixed emotions.”

Earnest-Payte was 21 on that Saturday night in 1991 when she went to sleep on the couch in her Rohnert Park condominium after a long day at the Marin County hair salon where she worked.

The man who invaded her home was armed, soft-spoken and apparently had been watching her for some time. She was bound, blindfolded with duct tape and repeatedly assaulted.

The man left after three hours only after making clear he could return at any time. The threat haunted her for years.

“I was very jumpy for a long time,” Earnest-Payte said. “It didn’t make me afraid of men or anything, but it made me afraid of him. I was terrified for a long time that he would come back and get me because I had no clue what he looked like or where he lived.”

She also recalls being “very intent from the time he was in my house doing this thing to me, that I wanted to remember every detail because I wanted him to get caught.”

Her experience has been shaped, as well, by doubt demonstrated early on by Rohnert Park police, who she says questioned her story and credibility, and suggested she did not comport with “how rape victims behave.”

“I don’t know what they expected of me, but I didn’t seem like someone who had been terrorized and raped multiple times,” she said.

A Rohnert Park police lieutenant was quoted in The Press Democrat in 1992 as saying they had concerns about the woman’s credibility. Subsequently, Rohnert Park authorities have defended their investigation, saying they pursued leads but got nowhere.

Her faith in the system was further shaken when, in 2006, she was informed for the first time by a Sacramento police detective that evidence long since pieced together tied her case to a serial offender. He was surprised she didn’t already know.

The making of an “America’s Most Wanted” segment on the case a short time later allowed her to connect with a few other victims, and “sit and talk and cry and talk about how we feel.”

“This is a sisterhood,” she said. “We never asked for it. We didn’t want it. I never met most of these people. But I love them anyway, because this experience is horrendous. To know we all went through this and survived, it binds us together.”

Adding to the complexity of Earnest-Payte’s experience is her dissatisfaction with a culture that encourages victims of sexual violence to keep secrets, endure shame and hesitate before coming forward.

She remembers a high-profile rape trial six months after her own attack, in which a member of the Kennedy family was tried and acquitted of assaulting a woman on a beach. News coverage of his accuser routinely showed her on the witness stand with a huge blue dot over her face.

Earnest-Payte remains confounded and remembers thinking, “Why are we covering up her face? She didn’t do anything wrong.”

Last week confronted her with another round of whipsawing emotions, an experience that has proven empowering and spiritually draining. She is more driven than ever to turn her personal trauma into a force for positive change - improving the way people discuss sexual violence, the investigation of such cases by police and emboldening survivors.

“This doesn’t have to totally destroy people,” she said. “You can have a wonderful, full, joyful life.”

The moment is ripe, given the rise of the #MeToo movement and the nation’s preoccupation with Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and sex assault allegations facing him from an acquaintance when both were teenagers.

She’s hoping the profound shock she’s experienced will settle and that there will be more room in her life for normality. She wished long ago for this day to arrive. With Waller’s arrest she plans to deliver in court one day testimony she wrote many years ago.

“I have fantasized for 27 years reading it in court, and I’ll keep it to myself about what I will say, but it’s been really, really important to me to get a day to be in court, and that’s part of the process. It’s been very important to me to sit in a courtroom and tell the world what he did.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.