Dr. Simon Says ...

sion’s Crime Analysis program, catching this serial rapist was not Sadler’s job, but it had become his obsession.

Sadler and partner Tom Covington were equally preoccupied with tracking the movements of the rapist. They pursued a singleperp theory even when the brass told them they were wrong.

Armed with data from exhaustive research, they shared their theories with senior investigator Reba Crowder, Sadler says, but she dismissed them. She believed that the rapes were the work of several di erent perpetrators.

Not content to sit by, Covington and Sadler say they spent hours in the field surveying the rapist’s ground.

“We wanted to refine our feel for where and how he was moving through his turf, and we were constantly looking for him,” Sadler says.

Concedes Sadler, “This is my side of the story. Some in the department might say, ‘Sadler is full of it.’ ”

But events following Crowder’s departure from the case show that Sadler and Covington were on the right track all along.

Today, thanks to DNA forensics, sex crimes are easier to connect and solve than they were 40 years ago.

The 1970s serial rapist whom Sadler and Covington were tracking terrorized approximately 80 East Dallas women over a period of three years before police finally nabbed him.

“I wish we had DNA evidence back then,” Sadler says. But DNA would not be broadly available in crime solving for another 15 years.

Sadler led the behind-the-scenes e ort to catch Guy William Marble Jr., who was dubbed, during the height of his infamy in 1977, the Friendly Burglar Rapist, or FBR.

Had it not been for the innovation, creativity and persistence of Sadler and Covington, the clever and clean-cut Marble — a husband, father and advertising exec by day might have eluded the law and continued raping much longer. Sadler and his partner believed the FBR’s crimes followed a pattern that eventually would lead to murder if no one stopped him.

In the late 1960s, Sadler was tough and streetwise — a Vietnam vet and a beat cop who joined the force when he was just 20. He worked undercover, at times posing as a wino. And he was exceptionally creative.

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“I went to Oklahoma State University to major in fine arts with the intent of being a painter,” he says. “But [the core classes] bored me. A comedy movie inspired the idea of joining law enforcement.” Because he was a minor, he had to be legally emancipated before he was sworn into the department in 1968.

In 1972, when the DPD started a crime analysis program at the Central Patrol Division, they tapped Sadler to oversee it. Sadler’s artistic inclinations made him a good choice.

He placed large city maps on his office wall and used stickers to plot crimes — a retro version of today’s info-graphic.

“The visuals helped. I think it forced the sergeants and [subsequently] beat cops to take more accountability for their neighborhoods,” he says.

When a man began terrorizing area women — chatting in their ears as he raped them, telling one he was her “Friendly Burglar Rapist” — Sadler was the first to notice a pattern.

In 1974, he noticed a rape report strikingly similar to one he had reviewed several months prior. At the time, Sadler was analyzing only Central Division reports.

He asked his chief, Robert O. Dixon, for access to citywide reports. Sifting through thousands of them, he determined about 10 cases altogether could possibly be linked. And then the reports kept coming.

Sadler noticed multiple connections: Most of the rapes occurred in the Northeast Police Division’s Vickery Meadow area, then a bustling community for young singles. The attacker stalked his victims, looking for plants or other indicators of a female occupant. Donning a nylon mask, he typically entered unlocked doors or windows while the women slept. He cut phone lines, which he later used to bind his victims. He stole money from the complainants’ wallets and usually removed their IDs (later, Marble would admit to investigators that he enjoyed seeing the photograph, age and description of the woman he would be raping). A woman in her 60s was among his victims. A mother and her adult daughter were victimized in two separate incidents. He covered women’s heads with pillowcases or pulled their own nightgowns over their faces. He held his knife to many throats but never cut anyone. Victims described him as “polite.”

One victim got a good look at her attacker.

Space

Unlike today, the department did not employ a sketch artist, but the witness worked with an uno cial artist to develop a composite drawing.

Incoming investigators John Landers and Truly Holmes listened to Sadler and Covington, and they directed a tactical team to stake out a specific area, a Vickery Meadow complex, based on the researchers’ data and predictions.

Just a few nights later, on Valentine’s Day 1977, O cer Barry Whitfield spotted Marble peeking into apartment windows there and apprehended him.

Whitfield was lauded as a hero, but he credits Sadler and Covington.

“The Dallas Police Department took a quantum leap forward in the area of crime analysis as a result of their work,” Whitfield recently noted.

The media light never shined on the two behind-the-scenes researchers, but through a 1977 commendation, investigators acknowledged that the men led police to the rapist.

“These o cers were more knowledgeable than anyone in the department when it came to the ‘Friendly Burglar Rapes,’ ” wrote investigator Truly Holmes. “The information they amassed resulted in their accurately predicting the next movement of the rapist.”

In custody, Marble confessed to 81 rapes. Charged with various counts of rape and aggravated burglary (which at the time carried a heavier sentence than rape, according to presiding judge Henry Wade), he was sentenced to 60 years in prison, but he was eligible for release after 20 years. In May 1998, the 51-year-old Marble went free.

While in prison Marble married a French woman. Paperwork shows he was denied a French visa. Sadler says no one is sure where he is now.

“We do know that he was supposed to register as a sex o ender and never did,” he says.

Several things changed in the Dallas Police Department during Sadler’s years as a crime analyst.

For example, Sadler developed a standardized list of questions requiring o cers taking a crime report to ask for specific descriptions height, weight, hair color, eye color and ethnicity of suspects, for example. This gave analysts a more focused list from which to draw connections between crimes.

In addition, improvements were made in the way law enforcement treats victims of sexual crimes.

“Victim blaming was rampant in those days — in the department, in the media — stories about the victims’ lifestyles and how they invited the attacks ran in the paper,” Sadler says. “Great strides were made in rapecrisis counseling and education during the FBR era, aided in no small measure by Tom Covington’s wife, Janie Covington.”

Janie Covington volunteered at Dallas’ Rape Crisis Center, spent long nights at Parkland Hospital with victims and lectured publicly about prevention and how to cope after an attack.

“The rapist’s three-year spree opened a multitude of doors in crime prevention,” Tom Covington notes. “All of the publicity that came from [this case] helped change the public attitude about rape.”

It is clear that Guy William Marble Jr. — the years searching for him and the fact that the old man is free and unregistered — still occupies a large space in Sadler’s head.

In 2012 Sadler published a 540-page book documenting his experience. The tome, “One Step From Murder: The True Story of the Friendly Burglar Rapist,” is dedicated to Covington, Chief Dixon and the victims: “To the women of Dallas who were the prey of the FBR,” reads the opening page, “Tom and I never forget you.”

Neighborhood resident Robert Sadler’s book, “One Step From Murder,” about his hunt for a serial rapist in the 1970s, is available on amazon.com.