Unmasked: My Life Solving America's Cold Cases

In 2003, Giacomelli asks Holes for help on a case because his partner, Conary, has been called away due to the death of his mother. The case involves the death of a 21-year-old man named Eric Louis Huffman. His sister reported that he arrived on her doorstep beaten and then died inside her house. Suspicion arose when no blood was found outside of her home and when it was discovered that Huffman died not of a beating but of a gunshot wound.

Giacomelli seeks Holes’s advice on how to look for traces of blood after the crime scene has already been cleaned. After they talk, Holes returns to work only to learn later that an officer has been shot: Giacomelli. Impatient for the rest of his team to arrive, Giacomelli entered the home alone and was shot by the homeowner—Earl Foster Junior. Foster, the ex-boyfriend of Huffman’s sister, had also shot Huffman. Holes has little time to mourn the death of his friend because he is involved in the high-profile case of Laci Petersen, whose body just washed ashore after having been missing for four months.

By 2004, Holes and Lori have been separated for six years—a change that results in divorce. Holes is still dating Sherrie and feels at ease with her: Not only does she share his passion for scientific criminal work, but she also allows him space to be alone and independent when needed. Lori dates and then marries a man named Jim that she met at her church, but Holes wavers on committing to Sherrie, cautious not to rush into another relationship. They break up when she heads to the police academy but then resume their relationship when she returns.

Holes proposes to Sherrie in February, and they marry three months later. Because their colleagues have complained of Holes giving Sherrie preferential treatment as her supervisor, Sherrie ultimately takes a new job in a private firm. By the end of the year, they are expecting their first child together.

Holes identifies several traits he possesses that make him a skilled crime scene investigator: He is able to not only emotionally detach from gruesome crime scenes but also focus on one small task at a time in a way that helps him avoid becoming overwhelmed by the scale of an investigation. Further, while other investigators sometimes begin compiling suspects before the crime scene has been fully analyzed, Holes never rushes. He pays attention to details that others miss and insists on thorough examinations.

He cites a case that demonstrates this: The wife of a prominent attorney was brutally attacked and killed in their home in 2005. Holes noticed a small hole on the victim’s sock and had it swabbed for DNA—something that is not routine. He suspected the tear might have resulted from the victim fighting back. Sure enough, it was this DNA that garnered a conviction.

After much cajoling, Holes applies for and then accepts a promotion as chief of forensics in 2009. As the bureaucratic stress adds to his anxiety and reduces his time spent on cold cases, he begins to regret it. However, he is suddenly “rewarded” when Jaycee Duggard—a woman who went missing in 1991, when she was 11—is located. A rapist on parole named Phillip Garrido kidnapped her. Holes wonders if Garrido might be responsible for other unsolved cold cases—namely, the Pittsburg sex worker crimes that Conaty and Giacomelli had worked on. Holes and Conaty collect evidence at Garrido’s compound but cannot link any of the cold cases to him.

Holes is quickly reminded that his new place is at a desk, not out in the field. Holes is further dismayed when a new supervisor forbids DNA testing on cold cases, insisting it is stretching resources too thin. Holes comes to realize that his acquired investigative skills are going to waste and takes it upon himself to secretly pull out the EAR file once again.

In the summer of 2009, Holes reexamines the EAR case. This time, he has information from Orange County about the ONS to add to what he knows. For some investigators, slowly combing through old reports and tracking details is tedious and therefore frustrating, but Holes thrives on this slow and methodical work. He checks a long list of suspects, examining them against the profile of EARONS.

The reports indicate that EARONS is sadistic in his mental torture of his victims, threatening to harm their children if those he targets do not comply. In the 1977 rape of a woman named Karen, Holes also finds hints of guilt and a desire to remain uncaught that suggest that EARONS is not a psychopath but a sociopath.

Holes becomes adept at finishing his administrative work quickly in the morning so that he can spend the remainder of each day researching EARONS. He travels to the houses where the perpetrator struck, trying to determine how he selected his victims.

Holes narrows the list of suspects to 24. The most compelling is a man he assigns the pseudonym Robert Lewis Potts. Potts’s geographic whereabouts overlapped with EAR’s in the 1970s. He has a history of domestic violence and behaved strangely around the time of the attacks when police pulled him over for an outstanding warrant: Police thought it odd Potts was in the area of Danville, though Potts claimed he was on his way home from his job as a railroad brakeman and had pulled over to nap. Just a few months after this, the EAR struck again—in Danville, near where Potts had been napping. In this instance, however, the husband of the would-be victim scared off the attacker. This was the final time that the EAR appeared, but four months later, the ONS attacks began in Southern California.

Potts was eliminated as a suspect in 1979 based on the results of a saliva test. Holes, knowing the test is outdated and less reliable than modern tests, feels Potts should not have been eliminated.