There was an "Original Night Stalker" suspect before Richard Ramirez; this one killed at least ten people in Southern California from 1979 to 1986. About ten years before, however, he'd been found by linked DNA evidence to have raped about fifty married or romantically attached women.
His modus operandi? Before proceeding to rape the women, he commanded the husbands or boyfriends to lay down on the floor and hold a stack of dishes on their stomachs. This way, if the extremely unlucky men were to move the slightest muscle, the ONS would hear him.
At a town meeting in Sacramento (where the rapes of the previous decade had roughly taken place) a man stood up and lambasted the other men in the audience for not protecting their wives against the ONS making them hold the dishes on their stomachs while their wives were being raped in front of them. He also warned the ONS that if he ever came into the man's house, the man would fight him.
Two or three weeks after the meeting, the wife of the man who spoke at the town meeting was also raped--while the husband lie down on their bedroom floor, holding a stack of dishes on his stomach.
Police suspected the ONS had actually attended the meeting...and had chosen the man out of the crowd.
