Inside the Hunt For the Golden State Serial Killer Who Killed 12 and Raped 45 in California

It was around 6:30 a.m., on October 5, 1976, when Jane Sandler heard footsteps running toward her bedroom in her ranch style house in Citrus Heights, California, a middle class suburb of Sacramento.

Thinking it was her husband, who had just left for work for the day, Sandler, a 30-year-old Air Force reserve captain, said, “What did you forget?”

That’s when she looked up and saw an intruder wearing a black ski mask shining a flashlight in her face. As she clutched her three-year-old son next to her, he put a large knife to her chest and muttered, “Shut up, I will kill you.”

The intruder quickly tied their hands, blindfolded them, and tied her feet using sheets from her bed.

“He had this ritual of ripping and tearing these sheets,” Sandler, now 71 and the author of Frozen in Fear: A True Story of Surviving the Shadows of Death, tells PEOPLE.

He sexually assaulted her and then told her he was going to eat something in the kitchen. She heard him moving around pots and pans.

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Finally, after he didn’t return to the bedroom and she believed he had left, she and her son went to the backyard and screamed for help.

Sandler had become the fifth victim of the East Area Rapist, who over a 10-year-period was linked by DNA and M.O. to 12 murders, 45 sexual assaults and more than 120 burglaries from Sacramento to southern California’s Orange County. The killer, a male, is still at large.

• For more on this case, watch the People Magazine Investigates premiere episode The Golden State Killer on Mon., Nov. 6, at 10 p.m. ET on Investigation Discovery. 

The East Area Rapist — later known as the Original Night Stalker and the Golden State Killer — wore a ski mask and would pry open the windows and doors of the homes of single women. Once inside, he would enter the bedroom and shine a flashlight into his victims’ eyes.

After the media reported that he only attacked women home alone, he sought out couples, forcing the women by knife or gunpoint to bind the men with shoelaces he brought with him. He would then stack teacups or plates on the male’s back and would threaten to kill everyone if he heard a clatter.

RELATED VIDEO: People Magazine Investigates the Golden State Serial Killer

On some occasions, he would enter homes when no one was home days or weeks prior to his attacks so he could learn about his future victims. He put on fake accents, like German or Chinese, in an attempt to throw detectives off his trail.

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In February 1978, his crimes escalated from rape to murder when he fatally shot Brian and Katie Maggiore, who were walking their dog in Rancho Cordova. In 1986, he is believed to have stopped his spree after he killed a teenager in her Irvine, California home.

No one has ever been charged in the murders and rapes despite years of police work, a DNA profile and intense media attention. The case has spawned countless documentaries and a dedicated band of online sleuth. Last year, on the 40th anniversary of his first attack, the FBI offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to his capture.

Today, a team of dedicated investigators and criminalists from Northern and Southern California are working together to track down the elusive killer.

“The answer is out there somewhere,” Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert tells PEOPLE. “It is a case that needs to be solved because these women and these families deserve the answers, and the person, if alive, needs to be brought to justice.”

Contact 1-800-call FBI or go to tips.fbi.gov with any info on the Golden State Killer.