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Who Was the 'Sacramento Slayer'? All About Morris Solomon Jr. · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You know, usually when we talk about a medical diagnosis,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: there's this expectation of just absolute precision.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Right. Like an exact science.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Exactly. We treat it almost like mechanical engineering. You break
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: your arm, you go to the hospital, the x-ray shows
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: that jagged white line on a glowing screen, and the
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: doctor just points and says, there it is. That is
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: the source of the problem.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It was a very satisfying transaction.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: It is. Because the damage is localized, right? It's visible
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: and unmistakable.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Well, we crave that kind of diagnostic clarity in almost
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: every aspect of life, honestly. Having a binary system like
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: broken or not broken, sick or healthy, it gives us
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: this illusion of total control.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, completely.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: When you can isolate the anomaly, you can usually prescribe
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: a straightforward fix. It is incredibly comforting to categorize the
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: world that way.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: But then you step into the world of neurodevelopment and
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: specifically the way severe trauma affects physically alters the brain
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: over time, and, well, suddenly that x-ray machine is entirely useless?
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: We're looking at a diagnostic landscape that just doesn't offer
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: clean breaks. You can't just take an image of a
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: person's psyche, point to a dark spot, and definitively say,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: you know, this is where the capacity for extreme violence
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: was born. The mechanics of how a human being fractures
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: are infinitely more complex.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: It forces us into incredibly murky waters. I mean, the
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: pathways of trauma, they don't follow a linear, predictable route.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: You are dealing with compounding variables, environmental factors, genetic predispositions,
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: systemic failures.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Just layer upon layer.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Exactly. All weaving together over decades. You are looking at
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: a system where the symptoms might not manifest until years
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: after the initial injury. And when they do, they often
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: look completely disconnected from the original cause.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: And today, we are taking that exact same concept. That
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: terrifying ambiguity, that inability to just point at an x-ray
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: and see the fracture, and applying it not just to
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: a single human mind, but to an entire community.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: To a whole criminal justice system, really. Right.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: And to the societal blind spots that allow predators to thrive.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Welcome to today's Deep Dive. We are thrilled you're joining
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: us because we have a staggering, honestly unsettling story to
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: lay out for you today. We are examining the chilling
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: case of Morris Solomon, Jr.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: He is a figure who eventually became known by the
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: grim moniker the Sacramento Slayer.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a serial killer who managed to operate just right
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: in plain sight during the 1980s. The source material guiding
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: our exploration today is a profoundly disturbing and, well, deeply
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: detailed investigative piece from A & E penned by Alex Gurley.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: It's a phenomenal piece of reporting.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: It really is. It chronicles Solomon's life, the horrific scope
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: of his crimes... And maybe most importantly for you listening,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: the systemic machinery that essentially allowed him to keep operating
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: completely undetected.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: And the overarching mission of this deep dive is to
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: really pull back the layers on that machinery. We want
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: to unpack how a monster is formed because, you know,
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: they are never simply born in a vacuum.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: No, they're built.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: They are built over time. We need to look at
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: the mechanisms of how this particular man hid behind such
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: a friendly, unassuming facade in a tight-knit community. And crucially,
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: we have to examine the specific ways the justice system
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: and deeply ingrained societal biases essentially handed him the perfect camouflage.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: The exact camouflage he utilized to continue his spree for years.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: It is a heavy one, but it is fundamentally necessary
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: to understand if we ever want to fix the cracks
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: in our own systems.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's unpack this by grounding ourselves in the geography
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: and the specific era. We are traveling back to the 1980s,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: specifically to Oak Park, which is a neighborhood in Sacramento, California. Right.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: And to understand how Morris Solomon Jr. operated, you have
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: to understand the fabric of this specific place at this
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: specific time.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Oak Park in the 80s was dealing with intense
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: economic disenfranchisement. But it was also a place where people
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: deeply relied on each other out of sheer necessity. I mean,
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: in a neighborhood where municipal services might be, you know,
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: slow to respond or where folks just couldn't afford expensive contractors.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: A good, reliable handyman becomes an absolute pillar of the community.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: It's essential, yeah. And that was Morris Solomon Jr. 's
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: public persona. He was this outgoing, universally liked local handyman.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: And the psychology of choosing that specific profession is vital
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: to analyze here. Being a handyman isn't just a job.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, in a community like Oak Park, it functions
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: as a skeleton key.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: That's a great way to put it.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: It provides unmitigated, unquestioned access to the most intimate spaces
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: of people's lives. You aren't just a neighbor. You are
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: the person trusted to go into the basement, to fix
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: the locks on the doors, to know the structural vulnerabilities.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Of the house. You know the weak points.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Precisely. He embedded himself so deeply into the community fabric
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: that he became functionally invisible. He wasn't some mysterious drifter
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: lingering in the shadows of a parking lot. He was
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: the guy you proactively invited over when your porch steps
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: were rotting or your plumbing was acting up.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: And the level of trust he cultivated was just staggering.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: The source material points out that homeowners were actually inviting
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: him to live inside the homes he was repairing.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: They would say, sure, sleep in the spare room or
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: the basement while you renovate the place. You do not
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: offer that level of access to someone unless they give
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: off an incredibly powerful aura of safety. He had mastered
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: the performance of the helpful neighbor.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: But that performance was an actively maintained firewall. It was
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: a carefully constructed barrier designed to keep the community from
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: seeing the reality of his internal life, which was, honestly,
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: in a state of rapid, chaotic decline.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Right, because behind that friendly exterior, he was battling a
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: severe and accelerating cocaine addiction. Yes.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: And the mechanics of how he fueled that addiction involved
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: a highly transactional predatory dynamic, with local sex workers operating
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: in the area.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Initially, according to the sources, he even managed to maintain
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: a positive reputation among these women. Like, he was known
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: as someone who paid, someone who was exchanging money and
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: cocaine for their services without initial violence.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: But you have to look at the power dynamics of
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: that era, especially during the height of the 80s drug epidemic.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: It's incredibly bleak. It is.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: That dynamic is inherently incredibly vulnerable for the women involved.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: They are operating outside the protection of the law. relying
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: entirely on the whims of the men who hire them.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the breaking point of this facade
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: in the summer of 1986. Specifically, June 18, 1986.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: This date marks his first known murder in the Sacramento area.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: The victim was a sex worker named Yolanda Johnson. And
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: the details of the crime scene are just grim, but
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: they establish his terrifying blueprint. Solomon sexually assaulted and murdered her.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: and then he left her body inside a closet on
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: a property he was actively employed to renovate.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Placing the body in a closet is a significant behavioral marker,
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: which we will analyze deeply when we look at his past.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: But the immediate aftermath of this specific murder, that is
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: where the behavioral profile of Morris Solomon Jr. diverges from
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: almost every typical textbook case of a first-time killer.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: This is the twist that just completely derailed my understanding
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: of how criminals operate when I was reading through the
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: source material. Solomon himself picked up a telephone and contacted
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: the police. He voluntarily called the authorities to report finding
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: a deceased body on the property where he was working.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: He deliberately initiated contact with law enforcement while standing at
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: the scene of his own crime.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, it defies every instinct of self-preservation. It is
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: the equivalent of a bank robber calling 911 to report
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: a shattered glass door at the bank they literally just emptied.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: It's an incredibly high stakes game of hiding in plain sight.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: it feels almost like he is actively mocking the investigative system.
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  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the underlying psychology of that decision,
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: because initiating contact with law enforcement usually stems from one
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: of two very distinct psychological drives.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Okay, what's the first one?
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: The first is a hyper-calculated attempt at narrative control. The
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: logic is defensive. Like, if I am the one who
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: reports the body, I instantly cast myself in the role
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: of the horrified, helpful bystander. The police naturally view the
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: caller as an asset, not a suspect.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see. creating a smokescreen by playing the victim
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: of a gruesome discovery.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: Yes. Is is an attempt to build an impenetrable alibi
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: of goodwill right out of the gate. And the second
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: psychological drive is far darker. It's driven by sheer, arrogant,
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: thrill-seeking behavior.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: So it's an adrenaline thing.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. We see this in certain predatory profiles where the
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: crime itself isn't enough. They need the adrenaline rush of
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: standing shoulder to shoulder with the detectives, knowing they are
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: the exact monster the police are hunting. and watching them
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: try to solve the puzzle. It's a massive power play.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: By calling it in, he injects himself into the center
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: of the investigation, forcing the authorities to interact with him
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: on his terms.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: And terrifyingly, that massive gamble actually paid off, at least initially.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: When the authorities arrived at the renovated house, Solomon was
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: standing right there. He played his part perfectly. But he
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: made one critical error in his performance. He didn't give
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: them his real name at first. He provided a fake identity.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Providing a false identity at a murder scene is typically
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: the thread that unravels the entire sweater for investigators. It
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: instantly flags deceptive behavior. Right.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: And the police did catch the lie. Later that day
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: during a follow-up interview, they uncovered his real identity. But
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Solomon had this brilliantly manipulative counter move ready.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: He was prepared.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: He was. When they confronted him about lying about his name,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: he gave them an excuse that seemed entirely plausible for
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: the neighborhood. He told them he had several outstanding warrants,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: specifically mentioning one for soliciting prostitution, and he claimed he
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: gave a fake name because he was terrified of getting
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: locked up for a minor offense.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: The architecture of that lie is incredibly effective because it
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: relies on a verifiable kernel of truth. The police run
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: his name, they see the active warrants for soliciting, and suddenly...
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: his deceptive behavior at a murder scene is seemingly explained
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: away by a much lesser understandable fear of going to
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: jail for a misdemeanor.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: It's actually genius in a sick way.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: It is. He hands them a logical conclusion that directs
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: their attention away from the homicide.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: He even pushed his luck further by admitting to the
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: police that he actually knew Yolanda Johnson. He told them
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: he had used her services about six months prior. He
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: is feeding them just enough truth, you know, just enough
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: verifiable proximity to seem completely cooperative and transparent. And because
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: the police had absolutely no physical evidence at the scene
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: to definitively connect him to the murder itself, they hit
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: a legal wall. They let him go. They released him
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: from custody.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: The threshold for a murder arrest requires substantially more than
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: proximity and a past association. Even if the officers harbor suspicions,
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: without DNA, without a murder weapon tying him to the act,
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: and without witnesses, their hands were legally tied. He managed
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: to walk away from his own crime scene.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: But stepping back and looking at the mechanics of this,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: hiding a victim's body in a tight, confined closet, and
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: then possessing the sheer nerve to purposefully invite the police
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: to the scene, I mean, that is not typical first-time
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: offender behavior. The level of compartmentalization and absolute psychological control
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: required to execute that performance doesn't just spontaneously generate overnight.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: No, it takes years to build that.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Exactly. To understand the origin of these very specific, highly
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: calculated actions, we have to shift our timeline backward. We
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: have to examine the blueprint of his violence.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: To find the drafting of that blueprint, we have to
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: examine an early environment defined by absolute systematic terror.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: We are jumping back to the year 1944. to rural Georgia.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Morris Solomon Jr. was abandoned as an infant at his
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: grandmother's home. Her name was Bertha. And the trauma that
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: he and his older brother endured under her roof is
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: the kind of sustained, agonizing abuse that fundamentally rewires a
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: developing brain.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: The documentation of this period provides a clinical look into
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: the creation of profound psychological damage. The environment wasn't just strict.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: It was an atmosphere of constant, unpredictable violence designed to
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: keep the children in a state of perpetual hypervigilance.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: And the mechanisms triggering this violence were so incredibly minor.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: We're talking about the kinds of unavoidable natural mistakes that
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: young children make every single day. They were severely beaten
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: for wetting themselves, for mispronouncing words while speaking, or, and
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: this is perhaps the most devastating mechanism of control, for
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: crying during a beating.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: Punishing a child for the physiological response to pain is
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: a method of intense psychological torture. It forces the child
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: to attempt to suppress their own central nervous system, teaching
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: them that expressing vulnerability is a punishable offense. The punishments
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: were designed to systematically strip away every single ounce of
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: human dignity.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: The specific details of these punishments are chilling because they
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: map so perfectly onto his later crimes. Bertha would force
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: young Morris to stand completely naked on a small stool
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: while she beat him with an electrical cord or with
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: wooden switches. Just break down the mechanics of that scenario
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: for a moment. Think about the sheer overwhelming humiliation a
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: child's brain has to process in that exact setup.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: It is a meticulously designed annihilation of the self. Being
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: forced to strip naked removes all physical and psychological defenses.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate state of exposure. Forcing the child
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: to stand on a stool elevates them, making them a
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: literal physical spectacle of vulnerability in the center of the room.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Just horrifying.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: And the implement she chose, an electrical cord, is not
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: just a tool of discipline, it is an instrument meant
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: to inflict maximum, searing, lasting pain. It leaves deep physical
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: scars that the child carries as a constant reminder of
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: their total powerlessness.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: And this wasn't a brief, terrible chapter that ended quickly either.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: This sustained abuse went on for years during his most
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: formative developmental window. Eventually, when Solomon was 13 years old,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Bertha moved the family across the country to a small
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: farming town about 40 miles outside of Sacramento. This geographic
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: move finally reunited Solomon with his biological parents. But the
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: chaos didn't stop. It just changed frequencies. Right.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: The environment merely shifted from calculated torture to explosive domestic warfare.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: The physical and verbal abuse continued. But now Solomon was
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: also caught in the daily crossfire of his parents violently
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: assaulting each other.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: So there was no safe haven. None.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: His entire concept of home from infancy through adolescence was
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: defined as a war zone. where survival required constantly navigating
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: the violence of the adults who were supposed to protect him.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, I have to push back here for a second
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: because we need to be very clear about how trauma works.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: When you read about a childhood like this, your heart
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: just breaks for that child. But millions of people survive horrific,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: unimaginable childhood abuse. They endure the worst of humanity, and
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: they do not grow up to become serial killers.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: That's entirely true.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: They become teachers. They become mechanics. They become loving parents
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: who actively work to break the cycle of violence. So
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: what is the mechanism here? Why did this specific localized
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: abuse turn outward into catastrophic, predatory murder for Morris Solomon Jr.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: It is the single most vital question in forensic psychology.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: You are entirely correct. Severe trauma does not automatically manufacture
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: a killer. Most victims of abuse internalize their pain. But
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: in certain psychological profiles, when trauma is so severe, so humiliating,
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: and left completely untreated... the psyche utilizes a defense mechanism
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: known clinically as reenactment.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: OK. How does that actually work in practice?
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: The human brain has a desperate need to master unbearable
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: pain and unresolved trauma. In cases of reenactment, the subconscious
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: mind tries to gain control over the original terrifying scenario
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: by physically recreating it in the present. But here is
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: the catastrophic dark twist in the pathology of a predator.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: Instead of remaining the helpless victim standing naked on the stool,
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: The individual flips the script entirely.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: They become the one holding the electrical cord. It is a.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Total violent transfer of power. The brain essentially decides that
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: the only possible way to survive the crushing memory of
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: the trauma is to become the absolute author of it.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: And when we analyze the specific methodology of Solomon's later crimes,
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: it is a direct distorted mirror of his grandmother's punishments.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: He didn't just kill these women. He specifically chose to
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: bind his victims with electrical cords. He deliberately locked them
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: in closets, small, dark, confining spaces that evoke total powerlessness
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: and isolation. He was taking the exact instruments of his
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: childhood torture and weaponizing them to inflict that precise humiliation
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: and terror onto others. He couldn't go back in time
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: and defeat his grandmother, so he substituted vulnerable women, finally
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: becoming the omnipotent abuser instead of the helpless victim.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: It's a horrifying realization, seeing the exact architecture of his trauma.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: Perfectly rebuilt in his crime scenes. But what is equally
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: jarring and deeply unsettling is how he managed to present
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: himself to the outside world during this transitional time. We
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: are entering this phase where he becomes a deeply paradoxical teenager.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: The internal reality and the external performance, they just do
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: not match at all.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: The sheer cognitive dissonance is staggering. He was actively developing
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: the compartmentalization skills that would later allow him to hide
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: in plain sight. Right. Despite this absolute nightmare happening behind
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: the closed doors of his home, acquaintances from his teenage
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: years described the young Morris Solomon as, quote, outgoing, gentle,
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: and normal. And he wasn't just hiding. He was seemingly
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: thriving in the system. He graduated from high school. He
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: went on to attend community college classes. He held down steady,
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: responsible jobs working as a mechanic and even working as
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: a bus driver entrusted with public safety. He was functioning
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: seamlessly in society.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Because he was actively building and refining the facade, he
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: was learning through trial and error exactly how to wear
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: the mask of normalcy. He learned what smiles disarmed people,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: what polite conversations deflected scrutiny.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: And then in 1966, a massive systemic catalyst hits his life.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: The Vietnam War.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Solomon was drafted and served briefly in Vietnam. And once again,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: his external performance within a rigid structure was exemplary. His
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: military records show that his platoon sergeant explicitly praised him,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: officially calling him an outstanding and trustworthy soldier. The military
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: provided a highly structured environment where obedience was rewarded, which
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: can temporarily stabilize a chaotic mind. But the return home
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: to civilian life was a completely different story. The source
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: material highlights a stark, undeniable personality shift upon his return
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: from combat. Court records from that era describe him as distant, untruthful,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: and ill-tempered. He was exhibiting severe, unmanaged signs of PTSD.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: To understand this shift, you have to look at the
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: mechanics of compounding trauma. You are starting with a young
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: man who possesses a baseline of massive, untreated childhood trauma,
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: a neurological foundation built entirely on violence, fear, and profound humiliation.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Then you insert him into the intense theater of war,
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: exposing him to extreme combat stress, hyperarousal, and the normalization
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: of lethal violence.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: It's a recipe for disaster.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: And finally, you return him to civilian life in the
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: late 1960s, an era completely devoid of meaningful psychological support
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: or debriefing for returning veterans.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Add to that the personal instability. I mean, the sources
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: mention he went through two failed, deeply volatile relationships right
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: around this time.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: The intersection of all these specific factors acted as a
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: psychological pressure cooker. The carefully constructed, you know, gentle facade
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: that he had spent his adolescence perfecting simply shattered under
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: the weight of the compounding trauma. The aggressive impulses he
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: had suppressed were now supercharged by combat PTSD and relational rejection.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: And that shattering leads directly into a terrifying rapid descent
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: into crime. We can actually map out a timeline here
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: that charts his escalating sexual violence against women, primarily operating
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: in the Oakland and Berkeley areas, long before he ever
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: moved back to Sacramento.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: It is a textbook escalation of predatory behavior. where he
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: is actively testing his boundaries and refining his methods.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Let's break down the progression. In 1969, just a few
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: years after returning from Vietnam, he sexually assaulted an 18-year-old
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: sex worker in Oakland.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: So he begins by targeting a highly vulnerable demographic, establishing
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: a predatory pattern he would rely on for the rest
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: of his life. He is testing the waters with victims
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: he believes the police will largely ignore.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Then, jump forward just two years to 1971. He abducted.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: sexually assaulted and abandoned a woman in that same neighborhood.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: But he didn't stop there. Later that same year, he
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: escalated his target demographic. He attempted to kidnap and rape
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: a college student who was hitchhiking home from the UC
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Berkeley campus.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: Notice the shift in brazenness there. He is moving from
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: marginalized sex workers in Oakland to college students hitchhiking in Berkeley.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: He is testing his ability to control different types of
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: victims in different environments and pushing to see what he
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: can get away with before the system pushes back.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: And the escalation just continues to build. In 1975, he
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: sexually assaulted another sex worker, but this time he attempted
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: to hold her prisoner. And then in 1976, we see
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: the clear manifestation of his specific methodology. He abducted an
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: 18-year-old woman, physically assaulted her, and locked her in a
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: closet overnight in a home where he was staying before
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: she finally managed to escape the next day.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: The physical manifestation of the closet appears. It is the
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: literal realization of his need to completely trap, isolate, and
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: exert absolute power over another human being, mirroring his own
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: childhood entrapment.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: So by the end of 1976, we are looking at
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: a man who was not a ghost. He is a known,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: violently escalating offender. He's leaving a clear, undeniable paper trail
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: of sexual violence, abduction, and false imprisonment across multiple cities.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Which leads me to ask you, the listener, the most
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: infuriating question of this entire deep dive. How does a
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: man with this extensive documented record, a man who has
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: locked terrified women in closets, how does he end up
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: completely free a decade later working as a friendly handyman
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: in the very Sacramento neighborhoods he preys upon?
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: To answer that, we have to dissect a catastrophic failure
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: of the justice system's risk assessment protocols.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Because the justice system actually had him. They had him
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: entirely in their grasp. Let's decale exactly how this blind
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: spot functioned. In 1975, he was criminally convicted. He was
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: found guilty of aggravated assault, assault with intent to rape,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: and false imprisonment. He also picked up three counts of
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: grand theft in Arizona around the same time.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: And the state did not view him as run-of-the-mill burglar.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: He was officially and clinically classified by the state of
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: California as a mentally disordered sex offender. He was sent
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: to spend two years in a secure mental health facility
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: for evaluation and treatment.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: And following that, in 1977, he was transferred to the
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: prison system and sentenced to two years to life at
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: San Quentin State Prison. The system knew exactly how dangerous
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: he was. They had the paperwork. They had the clinical diagnosis.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: And yet the absolute outrage of this story is the
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: mechanism of his release. He was paroled in 1980.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: He was released back into the general public after serving
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: a total of just three years in the prison system.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Three years.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: Three years. To understand how this happens, you have to
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: look at the mechanics of California parole boards in the
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: late 1970s. the system was dealing with massive overcrowding and
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: the psychological metrics used to evaluate rehabilitation and sex offenders
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: were deeply flawed, often relying on superficial compliance rather than
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: deep psychological shifts. If an inmate like Solomon, who, remember,
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: learned how to play the good soldier in Vietnam and
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: the gentle teen in high school, could perform obedience in prison,
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: the board could justify his release.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: It is maddening. It is like, Taking a faulty, volatile
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: engine that keeps catastrophically catching fire, locking it in a
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: garage for three years without touching a single tool or
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: replacing a single part, and then dropping it back into
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: a car, expecting it to run perfectly just because it
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: sat quietly in the dark.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: The underlying mechanics of his violent reenactment were never dismantled.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: They were just temporarily parked.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: And when the parole board opened the garage door, they
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: released him into an environment that offered the absolute perfect
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: conditions for a predator of his specific design.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: He walked right back into Oak Park in the 1980s.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: We mentioned earlier the economic struggles in the neighborhood and
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: how he utilized his handyman job to gain access. But
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: we need to look deeply at the sociological mechanisms of
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: why this specific environment allowed him to operate to literally
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: kill seven women over the course of a year without
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: setting off massive citywide alarms.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, specifically the
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: broader societal picture of the 1980s, we are forced to
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: look at the devastating impact of societal bias. The victims
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: Morris Solomon Jr. targeted were women existing on the extreme
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: margins of society. They were sex workers. And crucially, this
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: was occurring during the rapid escalation of the crack cocaine epidemic.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the timing is crucial.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Many of these women were struggling with profound addiction. operating
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: in a heavily policed but severely underprotected low-income neighborhood.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: In a very real functional sense, mainstream society had essentially
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: decided these women were disposable.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: And that is the exact systemic failure he weaponized. When
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: these women started disappearing from the streets or when their
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: bodies were eventually discovered in abandoned houses, it did not
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: generate massive public panic. The local news anchors weren't interrupting broadcasts.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: The deaths didn't dominate the front page headlines of the
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: broader Sacramento community.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: There was no outrage. No.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: The underlying, deeply tragic assumption by the general public and
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: often by the institutional culture of the police at the
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: time was that sex work combined with heavy drug use
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: is inherently fatally dangerous. Therefore, violence against these women was
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: often miscategorized as a tragic but expected occupational hazard rather
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: than the calculated work of a targeted serial predator. So.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: Morris Solomon Jr. was not some evil, cinematic criminal mastermind
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: outsmarting the FBI with brilliant forensic countermeasures at every turn.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: He didn't have to be brilliant. He was simply preying
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: on a demographic of women that the broader society was
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: already actively choosing to ignore.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: He relied on the apathy of the system. He found
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: a demographic that entirely lacked the social and political capital
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: to demand a massive coordinated police response. The societal bias
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: acted as his camouflage. shielding him from the kind of
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: intense investigative heat that would have followed a series of
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: murders in a wealthy suburb.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: And this systemic apathy gave him a horrifyingly long leash.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Left entirely unchecked by a society looking the other way,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: the helpful neighborhood handyman utilized his unique occupational access to
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: turn the abandoned homes and renovation projects of Oak Park
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: into his own literal graveyard.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to the terrifying escalation of his spree,
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: where the psychological compulsion begins to outpace his cautions.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Right, because we previously discussed the June 1986 murder of
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Yolanda Johnson, where he called the police and miraculously managed
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: to talk his way out of an arrest. Just one
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: month later, in July of 1986, he strikes again.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: The time frame between the kills is shrinking rapidly. The
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: compulsion to reenact his trauma is taking over his logical self-preservation.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: The victim this time was Angela Polidor, another local sex worker.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: Her body was found on July 20th. She was bound
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: by an electrical cord mirroring the exact trauma of his youth.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: And she was found in a condemned property that had
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: recently undergone some minor renovations, but was primarily being used
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: as a gathering spot for local drug addicts.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: Notice the deliberate use of the environment. He is using
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: the landscape of urban decay condemned properties, drug dens, to
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: hide his crimes. Because the house was a known hub
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: for transient activity, the police found no reliable witnesses. Anyone
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: who might have seen something was unlikely to talk to
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: the police due to their own legal vulnerabilities. The investigators
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: couldn't even determine an exact cause of death initially because
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: of the condition of the scene. They came up entirely empty-handed.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: And because the system failed to connect him to Angela Polidor,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: the spree continued unchecked. Over the course of the next year,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: Solomon struck at least five more times. It is vital
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: to state their names, not as a list, but as
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: individual lives extinguished by a system that failed to protect them.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: He murdered Maria Apodaca, he murdered Sheila Jaycox, Tara Massey,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: Linda Vitella, and Cherie Washington.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: Seven lives completely destroyed, countless families shattered, while he continued
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: to walk around the neighborhood with his toolbox, fixing porches,
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: repairing drywall, and smiling at the neighbors.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: But eventually, the sheer volume of violence forces the system
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: to pay attention. The investigation finally starts to connect the
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: scattered dots. A former Sacramento Police Department detective named John
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: Cabrera started looking closely at the cold cases. specifically focusing
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: on Yolanda Johnson and Angela Polidor.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: Cabrera utilized early behavioral profiling before it was a standardized
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: tool in every precinct. He wasn't just looking at the
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: cause of death. He was looking at the behavioral signatures
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: left at the scenes.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: Right, because we have to remember, they did not have
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: modern DNA databases to rely on. Cabrera had to see
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: the structural patterns. Both women were known sex workers in
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: Oak Park. Both were found in houses that were either
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: completely abandoned or undergoing chaotic renovations. And both scenes had
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: strong connections to local drug activity.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: Recognizing those patterns wasn't enough to secure an arrest warrant,
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: but it was the crucial shift in perspective. The police
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: finally realized they weren't dealing with random, isolated drug violence.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: They had a highly organized serial offender operating within a
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: very specific geographic and demographic footprint.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: The major, case-breaking breakthrough didn't come until March of 1987.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: A crew of construction workers were doing heavy renovations on
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: a recently repossessed home, and while digging in the yard,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: they found the buried body of Maria Apodaca. And crucially,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: she was also bound by electrical cords.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: The location of this discovery changes the entire trajectory of
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: the investigation. Finding a body left inside an abandoned drug
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: den is one thing. Finding a body physically buried in
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: the yard of a home indicates that the killer had prolonged,
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: unobserved access and a legitimate reason to be on that
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: specific property for an extended period of time without raising suspicion.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: And that's exactly when a critical, brave witness steps forward.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: An individual who had previously lived on that specifically possessed
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: property goes to the police and tells them that Maria
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Apodaca and several other local sex workers used to frequent
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: the home. But they provide the vital key to the lock.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: The witness states that these women were always accompanied by
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: the handyman, Morris Solomon Jr.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: That witness testimony is the turning point. They hand the
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: detectives the specific thread they need to finally unravel the
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: entire camouflage.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting, in a deeply chilling,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: methodical way. When investigators started pulling on that thread of
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: his employment, they uncovered the hidden spatial geography of this killer.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: The detectives realized that Solomon was using the literal houses
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: he was hired to work on or the properties he
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: temporarily lived in as his own personal burial grounds.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: It is a profoundly disturbing violation of domestic space. He
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: took the places meant to offer shelter and turned them
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: into tombs, utilizing his professional access to do it.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: The police immediately start cross-referencing his employment history and checking
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: other properties he had legitimate access to. At one property
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: tied to his work history, they dug in the yard
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: and found Sherry Washington buried in a shallow grave. Just
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: days later, they went to a totally different property that
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: he had previously renovated, and they dug up the bodies
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: of Sheila Jaycox and Linda Vitella.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: The mechanics of this investigation are fascinating. The detectives were
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: essentially using a municipal real estate trail to hunt a
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: serial killer. They weren't just tracking a suspect's physical movements
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: on the street. They were tracking his W-2s, his employment history,
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: the construction permits pulled in the neighborhood. addresses where he
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: had official permission from landlords to access the grounds.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: It's unbelievable.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: His occupational camouflage, the very thing that hid him for
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: so long, became the exact geographic map the police used
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: to corner him.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: It is brilliant, methodical police work to finally illuminate the
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: pattern that was hiding in plain sight. Soon after these
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: horrific discoveries, the police issued a warrant and Solomon was
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: taken into custody without incident. He was initially charged with
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: six counts of murder. A week later, when Sharon Massey's
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: body was discovered in yet another location tied to him,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: they bumped the charges to seven counts.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: And that arrest, after years of systemic failure, sets the
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: stage for a massive, heavily scrutinized courtroom battle.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the trial phase, which officially begins
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: in May of 1991. And we cannot overstate the logistical
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: scale of this trial.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: The sheer volume of information was staggering. We are talking
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: about the prosecution team coming forward with over 15,000 pages
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: of court documents and meticulously cataloging over 600 individual pieces
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: of physical exhibit evidence. It was a logistical mountain designed
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: to definitively prove that this unassuming, polite handyman was actually
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: a calculated, prolific serial killer.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: But the prosecution faced a massive structural hurdle regarding forensics.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: We have to contextualize the era. This is 1991. DNA
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: technology was in its absolute infancy. It was not the magical,
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: indisputable tool we see on crime shows today. The source
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: material notes that the prosecution did have a semen sample
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: recovered from the scene of Yolanda Johnson's murder that positively
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: linked to Solomon.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: To understand why that wasn't a slam dunk, you have
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: to look at how early DNA typing worked. In the
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: early 90s, they were using early RFLP or basic semen typing,
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: which could determine blood type and secrete status. But it
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: couldn't provide the one in a billion genetic certainty that
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: modern PCR sequencing does.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Right. It was too new.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: Because the technology was so new and complex, defense attorneys
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: could easily muddy the waters and juries simply didn't weight
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: it with the absolute unquestioning authority they do a day.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: You couldn't just walk into a courtroom, drop a DNA
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: swab on the table and expect a guaranteed conviction.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The science wasn't trusted yet. So the prosecution's case
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: couldn't rely solely on the lab. It had to rely
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: heavily on a massive web of circumstantial evidence. They had
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: to rely on the human element, the witnesses who placed
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: him with the victims shortly before they died, and the undeniable,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: meticulously documented property records proving his exclusive access to the
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: very places these women were buried.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: Meanwhile, the defense strategy is fascinating from a clinical and
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: psychological perspective because they didn't try to argue that he
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: wasn't there. They couldn't.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: No. Instead, they leaned entirely into his history. The defense
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: built their case around the argument that his violent actions
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: were the unavoidable result of severe compounding psychopathology. They brought
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: the horrific childhood abuse at the hands of his grandmother
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: Bertha into the courtroom. They brought his unmanaged combat trauma
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: from serving in Vietnam and his crippling, reality-altering addiction to cocaine,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: laying it all out for the jury.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: And they explicitly utilized the exact psychological concept we discussed earlier.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: Expert psychologists took the stand and testified that his crimes
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: were a literal pathological reenactment of the humiliation of abuse,
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: and sexual sadism that he experienced in his formative years.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: They argued that his brain was broken by his environment
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: long before he ever picked up an electrical cord.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: So as a listener, I want you to just pause
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: and deeply ponder the incredible agonizing dilemma faced by those
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: 12 people sitting in the jury box. On one hand,
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  Speaker 1: you were presented with a childhood of such profound systemic
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: torture and abuse that it naturally demands human sympathy. The
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: systems of family, society, and the military utterly failed him.
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  Speaker 2: Yes.
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  Speaker 1: But on the exact same token, you are looking at
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  Speaker 1: the brutal, calculated, sadistic murders of seven innocent women who
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: were also failed by society.
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  Speaker 2: It forces the jury to answer one of the most
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  Speaker 2: fundamentally agonizing questions in the entire criminal justice system. How
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  Speaker 2: do you mathematically weigh the tragic making of a monster
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  Speaker 2: against the horrific actions of the monster once it is
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  Speaker 2: fully formed? At what point does profound trauma stop being
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: a shield and simply become the engine for evil?
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  Speaker 1: And clearly, the jury struggled with that exact philosophical weight
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  Speaker 1: immensely because after convicting him of the murders, the first
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: jury actually deadlocked on the penalty phase. They were completely
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: paralyzed and able to unanimously agree on whether to sentence
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: him to death for the crimes or life in prison
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  Speaker 1: due to the mitigating trauma. The judge was forced to
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: declare a mistrial specifically for the penalty portion of the trial.
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  Speaker 2: Which means the entire system had to reset. They had
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: to conduct the grueling penalty phase all over again in
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: front of a completely new jury.
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  Speaker 1: And during the second attempt, the retrial, the prosecution made
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: a strategic move that ultimately shifted the entire emotional and
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  Speaker 1: legal weight of the case. They brought in four women
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  Speaker 1: to testify.
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  Speaker 2: But these were not witnesses from the 1980s Oak Park murders.
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  Speaker 1: No. These were four women who bravely took the stand
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  Speaker 1: to testify that Morris Solomon Jr. had violently assaulted them
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  Speaker 1: way back in the 1970s during that early escalation period
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: in Oakland and Berkeley.
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  Speaker 2: And the most crucial, heartbreaking detail of their testimony, these
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: were brutal assaults that they had never reported to the
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: police at the time they occurred.
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  Speaker 1: They held on to that trauma, living in total silence
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: for over a decade. It was only when news of
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: his arrest as a prolific serial killer finally broke across
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  Speaker 1: the state that they realized the man who hurt them
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: had destroyed so many others, and they finally felt compelled
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  Speaker 1: to come forward.
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  Speaker 2: This raises an important question regarding narrative control in a courtroom.
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  Speaker 2: The impact of these silent witnesses on that new jury
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  Speaker 2: simply cannot be overstated. When a jury hews from survivors
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  Speaker 2: who are actively sitting on the stand, still visibly carrying
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: the heavy, agonizing weight of an attack a decade later,
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  Speaker 2: it completely shatters the defense's narrative.
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  Speaker 1: It totally undermines it.
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  Speaker 2: The defense wanted the jury to believe his violence was
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: a recent anomaly, driven entirely by a recent drug habit
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  Speaker 2: or a temporary break from reality. These four women proved
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  Speaker 2: that this wasn't an anomaly. It was a lifelong, deeply ingrained,
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  Speaker 2: calculated pattern of predatory behavior.
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  Speaker 1: Their testimony absolutely tipped the scales of justice. In September
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: of 1992, hearing the full, decades-long scope of his violence,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: the new jury sentenced Morris Solomon Jr. to death.
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  Speaker 2: Concluding his legal and temporal timeline, he was transferred to
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: Death Row in California, where he remained incarcerated for decades
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: as the legal appeals process played out. until he ultimately
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: passed away from natural causes in prison in August of 2024.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: So as we wrap up this incredibly heavy deep dive,
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: we have to look at the final overarching takeaway. Why
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: does this dark chapter of Sacramento history matter to you,
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: listening right now in the present day?
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: It matters because it fundamentally shatters our comforting cinematic illusions
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: about what danger actually looks like.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: It really does. It is a terrifying necessary reminder that
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: that predators do not always look like obvious monsters. They
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: don't always lurk in dark, rain-slicked alleys wearing trench coats
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  Speaker 1: scowling at the world. Sometimes they are the friendly, helpful
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: handyman offering to fix your neighbor's porch for a discount.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: They are charming, they are polite, and they are intricately
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: woven into the very fabric of the community they were
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: preying upon.
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  Speaker 2: And on a much broader systemic level, this case underscores
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  Speaker 2: the immense lethal danger of societal blind spots. Right. When
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: we as a culture or when our justice and policing
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: systems actively devalue certain demographics like sex workers, like people
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: battling severe addiction, like those surviving in disenfranchised, low-income neighborhoods,
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  Speaker 2: we're essentially handing serial predators a free pass.
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  Speaker 1: We're giving them coverage.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly. We are providing them with the exact sociological camouflage
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  Speaker 2: they need to operate unchecked, relying on our apathy to
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: hide their violence.
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  Speaker 1: Which leads me to a final thought I want to
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: leave you with today. A provocative thought to mull over
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  Speaker 1: long after this audio stops playing. I keep thinking about
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  Speaker 1: those four brave women from the 1970s, the ones who
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: finally took the stand at the penalty retrial. They carried
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: the agonizing, isolating secret of their assaults for over a decade.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: They never reported it. likely out of a deeply ingrained
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: fear of retaliation or profound societal shame, or the entirely
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: rational belief that the justice system simply would not protect
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: women like them. They only broke their silence when they
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: saw his face on the news and realized he was
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: finally caught.
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  Speaker 2: It's sobering. It is.
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  Speaker 1: Think about what that silence actually means on a macro
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: level across our society today. How many other predators are
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: currently out there right now, hiding behind a friendly smile
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  Speaker 1: and a helpful demeanor? Predators who are protected not by
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: their own brilliant criminal genius, not by destroying DNA or
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: outsmarting detectives, but simply protected by the paralyzing shame and
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: systemic fear that society so often instills in the victims
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: who survive them. We started this deep dive talking about x-rays,
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: about how much we desperately want a clean, clear image
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  Speaker 1: of what is broken so we can just apply a
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: cast and fix it. But when a community's vision is
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: clouded by deep-seated bias, and when victims are forced by
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: the system into total silence, The diagnostic machine is fundamentally broken.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: And sometimes, the jagged, terrifying line of the fracture isn't
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: hidden deep inside the bone. It's just standing right there
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: in our collective blind spot, holding a toolbox, offering to
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: fix the front door.