Man in the window: 'He has a gun'
The California sun caught the light in Bonnie Colwell's long, honey-blond hair as she stood in the gravel commons of Sierra College.
It was her sophomore year. She worked as a lab assistant in the science department, responsible for a small menagerie of rats, rattlesnakes and orphaned birds. She had brought two of her charges, a young great horned owl and a starling, to practice flying.
The owl, not yet fledged, grabbed Bonnie's shoulder as the starling launched from the top of her head and wildly into the air, only to return to the safety of the teenager's loose hair.
The spectacle drew the attention of a stocky, grinning man Bonnie had never noticed before. Joe DeAngelo was thick-muscled and dough-faced, with an odd jounce to his gait. He was five years older than the 18-year-old sophomore. He made a beeline across the open space to her.
Soon, the 23-year-old Vietnam War veteran was showing up at the science lab where Bonnie worked, joining conversations with her and other students. By the end of the first week, he asked Bonnie out.
She said yes to this easy talker, a suitor with an appealing swagger and a penchant for muscle cars.
To Bonnie, he was an energetic and worldly Vietnam vet, an impression strengthened by the fingertip he said was clipped by a bullet during river patrol in the Mekong Delta. Stray fire, he explained coolly.
From Joe, Bonnie learned the rituals of bullfighting on late-night television. He taught her how to lean into canyon curves as she sat behind him on his Honda motorcycle, her nose buried in the smell of English Leather, and how to drive his royal blue Road Runner with the growling engine.
He handed Bonnie a Browning .22 rifle and took her dove hunting by the American River, and she followed nervously as they jumped the fence onto a defense contractor's property to illegally spear frogs. She once saw Joe shoot a vulture out of the sky.
Joe became Bonnie's guide to life outside her sheltered, sometimes stifling home. He coaxed her to take risks and to experiment, to scuba dive and join him in the pitch-black holes of wells. He
