The "suspicious circumstances" call caught Sgt. Richard Shelby's attention. The night watch commander was sitting in his car, listening to radio chatter as the sheriff's patrol he supervised cruised the middle-class suburbs of Sacramento County's east side. Bored, Shelby decided to take a look himself.
A couple living in Rancho Cordova reported a prowler at a neighbor's house, but when Shelby and deputies got there, the house was locked tight and the street quiet.
The sheriff's detail left, and the couple called again. Minutes after police left, they saw a man jump from their neighbor's roof, hit the ground in stride and vault over a fence. Shelby arrived first to walk the property. By the door of the garage he found a bloody stick of firewood. It was flecked with flesh.
"Here we go," he thought.
The lanky, dark-haired sergeant entered the dark house alone, his flashlight off, prepared to catch a prowler by surprise. The rooms were in order, nothing amiss. He rounded a bed. Halfway under the frame lay the family's small dog, disemboweled by the blows of the log.
It was the latest in a string of home break-ins in the eastern Sacramento suburb in which the intruder sometimes killed dogs. The burglaries unnerved the community, but police largely considered the minor thefts to be nuisance crimes.
The first victim to make the papers was Pups, an overweight 10-year-old hound who was a bit of a celebrity in his corner of Rancho Cordova. Children loved him and residents regarded the mongrel as a neighborhood alarm system, friendly but loud.
It was the old dog's barking in February 1972 that annoyed a prowler trying to break into the house next door. The burglar reached over the 5-foot slat fence with a piece of wood and battered Pups, cracking his ribs, knocking out teeth and breaking his jaw.
The death was front-page news in the community paper, The Grapevine, which noted other canine killings in Rancho Cordova's unexplained rash of home burglaries. A victim said deputies told her of dogs shot in the yard, then pulled into the living room and left to bleed to death on the floor.
Rancho Cordova was a new community, an unincorporated sprawl of tract homes that sprang up around Mather Air Force Base and its defense contractors. Most of the residents were young military families from elsewhere or new hires at the sprawling Aerojet rocket plant. People didn't pay much attention to strangers in the dark of their unlighted streets, even behind the closely set homes.
The renter who moved into a vacant house directly behind the burglarized property Pups was trying to protect found that his place served as a nightly pathway for backyard intruders. He nailed his gate shut to put an end to the traffic.
The next morning, the gate was again ajar, broken by what looked like a kick.
The thief had a penchant for slipping in and out of homes while residents slept, what police call a hot prowl. He ignored items of high value that could easily be pawned, often just grabbing a purse and dropping it empty in the bushes outside. Three or more homes were hit in a night. More than 50 homes were entered in the first six months of 1973 alone.
Sgt. Shelby figured the "Cordova Cat Burglar" was the work of kids. But there were signs something else was afoot. Sometimes the occupants woke to see a man in the bedroom. Once, a woman was startled by an intruder who fled after touching her breast. Other homeowners reported break-ins with nothing stolen.
Only the women's underwear was disturbed.
