Jury finds Roy Waller guilty of all 46 counts in NorCal Rapist’s 15-year string of crimes

A jury in Sacramento has found NorCal Rapist suspect Roy Charles Waller guilty on all 46 counts of being the man who raped nine women in six Northern California cities between 1991 and 2006.

The jury’s decision, read Wednesday morning before Sacramento Superior Court Judge James Arguelles, came after only two and a half hours of deliberations on Tuesday following a nearly month-long trial for the 60-year-old Benicia man, who faces life in prison. Sentencing is set for Dec. 18.

As the convictions were delivered, Waller showed no emotion as he sat looking down at the defendant’s table.

His defense attorney, Joseph Farina, declined to comment as he left the courthouse Wednesday and prosecutors Chris Ore and Keith Hill, limited their comments to saying DNA evidence had helped ensure Waller’s conviction.

“We’re just grateful that justice has been done for the victims through DNA,” Ore said.

“Justice was definitely served,” Hill added.

Nicole Earnest-Payte, who was attacked inside her Rohnert Park home in 1991 and was Waller’s first known victim, said she felt “amazing” after 29 years of waiting for justice.

“A lot of work went into solving this case,” she said, adding that she was “grateful to all involved.”

“It’s a good day,” Earnest-Payte said.

The speed with which the jury decided the case indicated how much evidence had been piled against Waller, according to Juror No. 7.

“The prosecutors, the DA put on such a good case that it made our jobs a lot easier,” said the juror, who gave his name as Michael H. “It was just open and closed.”

The juror said Waller’s testimony was particularly damaging, especially the fact that he could not explain how his DNA had come to be found at the crime scenes.

“That really hurt him, his testimony he could not prove nothing,” the juror said. “And DNA don’t lie. That was the reason why.“

“He could not tell us why his DNA was in all the places where the rapes occurred. That was one of the main reasons why we found him guilty.”

The Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement: We want to thank the jurors for their time and diligence in reaching this quick and definitive verdict. Nine victims waited for more than 20 years for this moment and it is only with the use of Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG) and the science of DNA that it has come. This is their day.”

Waller had maintained his innocence since his September 2018 arrest, despite what Ore and Hill described as conclusive proof of his guilt from DNA evidence left at all but one of the crime scenes.

They portrayed him as an organized and cunning criminal who stalked potential victims and collected information about their appearance, movements and vehicles and kept it in computer databases that he still had when he was arrested.

Prosecutors said he sought out Asian women, grading them on their appearance and build and studying their daily routines until he could slip into their homes and attack them in cities from Rohnert Park to Chico to Sacramento.

They described Waller, a safety specialist at UC Berkeley, as someone who maintained “rape kits,” zippered bags filled with duct tape, zip ties, handcuffs and other items used in the attacks that were found in Waller’s two storage lockers.

They described tawdry aspects of his personal life, including an appetite for pornography depicting bound, nude Asian women, as well as a sex life that included serial online dating, bondage and threesomes.

And they played a video of Waller the day of his arrest, when he was inside a police interview room alone and tried to hang himself three times with the drawstring from his hoodie, an act prosecutors described as an admission of guilt.

Farina countered that his client was simply an “oddball,” and thundered that there is nothing illegal about pornography or Waller’s sex life.

He let Waller take the stand in his own defense and testify over the course of two days, where Waller at times became agitated as Ore bore in on him and demanded to know how his sperm and blood could have been left behind at crime scenes if he was not the rapist.

Waller insisted he was not responsible, but only snapped at Ore about how his DNA had gotten there, saying he would have to ask a DNA expert to explain that.

Farina accused the police of overreach by taking a soda straw and half-eaten pear from Waller’s garbage outside his home to obtain his DNA, and questioned whether the DNA had been preserved properly from years-old crime scenes.

He noted that only one of the rape victims who testified identified Waller as her assailant, a Chico woman who was 21 when she was attacked.

Under questioning from Farina, she said she could see from under the duct tape that her attacker had placed over her eyes, and identified Waller in court as the man who did it, a statement that prompted Farina to accuse her of lying.

And he questioned whether police really had the right man.

“What is Mr. Waller is completely innocent of these unsolved rapes from 1991 to 2006?” Farina argued Monday as some of the victims sat in court listening. “You know, it’s no stretch of the imagination to say Mr. Waller took a big risk (testifying).

“Mr. Waller went up there and did the best he could.”

This story was originally published November 18, 2020 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Jury finds Roy Waller guilty of all 46 counts in NorCal Rapist’s 15-year string of crimes."