Hi. I found the real location of the original map. I started from Visalia and worked my way up. I found it after an hour or so of looking. But then I stayed up all night until 5am or so and searched most of California to make sure.
The Location is at 37.992924,-121.326932 In Stockton
Google Map
Here are my images:
After extensively comparing the map and location I'm certain this is it. This is where the Original Night Stalker drew that map. You do have to to take some liberties of course. It does look like he got quite turned around a bit and made plenty of mistakes. But this is the spot. when I travel I draw my own maps all the time since I prefer to just look at a piece of paper, and it helps to memorize where I'm going better. And I can tell you that even going off of google maps that many times I'm not even this accurate as he got with his map. I compress area's, leave many many parts out, and exaggerate others. I'll run out of room and have to stick things in wrong scale or places. I believe he did the same.
Imagine the Original Night Stalker (East Area Rapist,Golden State Killer) having to draw this map with no Ariel view. Maybe at night, maybe not wanting to stay in one place to long. Or possibly from memory after he got home. And look at all those circles and curves, very easy to get turned around and make mistakes. One thing is for sure there are far far to many similarities to not be it. The odds are far to great.
I made some images of the original map and color coded it. And then I made an image of the actual location and color coded that to match the original map.
If you look at the actual google map location and zoom in you'll see more detail. Not sure if there was ever a lake there or it was covered over to make room for the golf course. Maybe when he was younger a lake was there or maybe right after he made the map it was covered over. He left out the houses in the very middle though where there could have once been a lake. But there is still water there all around it. And if you follow the water you can see it goes all around through the neighborhood. Right up to one of the shopping centers. And another goes toward the College, where it looks like the water keeps going, but where it was a path and water together on the one side of the road it is only the path that continues over to the college side.
The yellow street and yellow court is completely turned around. But look how it curves up around the water. The same curves. Then notice by the Yellow court, the water goes up there right past it. Just like at the real location. Also notice that there are two bridges over the water right near the yellow court. Same with the real location.
look at all the green Cul-de-sac. Pointing in toward the water area. Not super accurate in where he put them. But for the most part it's right.
Look at the middle of the yellow and and green Cul-de-saks. Where I put the red arrows. This is very important. In the middle of them is a small round island. I can tell you that this is very rare and unique. After looking at most of the entire state I almost never ever came across this. Yeah you'll find one here and there, a rare one. But not laid out like this and not so many. This a very important detail and I do not feel you'll ever duplicate this in such a way. This area in Stockton seemed to like using them.
As if that was not enough, look at the houses on the yellow road. They look like tetris pieces. But at the yellow cul-de-sac they look more like a block. At the real location they are also the same like that, and at the culdesak they are also mostly blocks in real life. The same as he drew them. He got that good with the detail. And remember he doesn't see an aerial view, he sees them from the front.
Look at the beginning of the yellow road, where I put the star. It appears he drew in tennis courts. I put a star on the real tennis courts, right about where they should be.
Follow the red road and you see the same curves. From top to bottom where they intersect with the green road on the real location. But look where the red road comes off and goes right, look at how they make the upside down "U". Big one, smaller one, and then a court. A little different off the main red road but he got most of it right.
Green road. The green road goes all the way around and frames the whole area in. Look up to the top left. Same curves all around and especially at that top left. There is no freeway entrance there now though, or small mall area. It's either gone or he got that confused and he was was thinking the small mall area on the bottom left was in a different spot. And probably looked different back then. Of course he might have been thinking that was the college or something. But also looking at googe maps I see that a lot of road work was actually finishing up on the freeway, you can see that they changed a lot of the freeway and it's not the same anymore. I think a long time ago it had those loops like on his drawn map, and it might have been further up where the top left curve is. Or he just mixed it up.
He did totally leave out that whole big other water area, not sure if it was there before, or if it just didn't matter or was a big empty area. He probably didn't have space to put it in and it didn't matter so he left it out. I do stuff like that myself all the time when drawing directions. I could print out a map now but I don't because then I have tons of pages, so I leave things out that are of no consequence to keep it on one page.
See the star on the long building? There is a long building just like that at the real location. Same narrow parts, then bigger parts, then narrow parts. Big stores, small stores. Looks like he ran out of room a bit and had to angle it though, and it's way over in another place. But that has to be the same building, it's just to uncanny how close it is.
If you keep looking you'll probably keep finding more and more similarities. I'm sure you'll find more.
But even after all that evidence I then looked up some the crime locations. I think there were two in Stockton. I didn't find the actual address or look to much but found the neighborhood. At least one of them was right across the freeway from this location map I posted. So VERY close. This was it, this has to be his map location. He had to have been here. I wonder when and why he was there. Is this a crime location that wasn't released? A crime he decided to back out of? Maybe one that wasn't reported? Did he go to that College across the way? Did he live nearby? Was he stalking girls from the College? I don't know. Maybe we'll find out.
