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On a frost-stung December night in 1995, just two days before Christmas, 30-year-old Tommy Coulet left his quiet home in Ridgewood, California, and would never return.

They found Tommy the next morning, brutally murdered in a valley on the outskirts of town.

Two weeks later, it was Bobby Calvin.

Then, two weeks after that, Bobby Briggs.

The murders turned the small town of Ridgewood upside down.

Every two weeks, like clockwork, someone was taking men, sometimes off of busy streets in the middle of town, and dumping their bodies in the same secluded valley.

The killer sliced something from each body and then simply … vanished.

The killings suddenly stopped.

For nearly 30 years, the murders were forgotten, overshadowed by the Golden State Killer, the Zodiac, and other Bay Area murderers who haunted the region.

But in late 2023, the killer suddenly returns, grabbing three more Ridgewood residents off the streets.

In this season of Crime Adjacent, host Chase Patrick returns home to uncover what really happened in Ridgewood and how the nation’s most prolific serial killer could slip under the radar for so long, leaving a legacy of violence that stretches across decades and spans the entire country, small town after small town, family after family.

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Episode One

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Episode One *

This story begins on December 23, 1995, when Ridgewood resident Tommy Coulet drives to the Hunter Hill Rest Stop in the hopes of finding connection.

What he finds instead is a man intent on destruction -- of him, of the town of Ridgewood, of our entire sense of safety.

This is the untold story of quite possibly the most prolific serial killer in American history.

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