The Golden State Killer's invisible victims: The men whose lives were shattered
The salt shaker teetering on a pot lid on his naked back could not fall.
Victor Hayes kept his face pressed into his mattress. The gunman promised to kill him if he heard the objects slip.
Until that moment, pinned by kitchenware, Hayes embodied all the swagger of the 1970s American male.
He was 21, with the long thick hair and heavy mustache of a rocker, a souped-up Chevelle in the garage, and a custom chopper parked in the living room like something off the set of "Easy Rider."
Hayes protected his property with similar machismo - a pit bull in the backyard, guns in the house. His girlfriend slept against the wall, and Hayes took the outside of the bed because "I'm the man."
But just after midnight on Oct. 1, 1977, an intruder blinded Hayes with a flashlight and held a gun on him as he removed Hayes' rifle by the headboard. There was no time for Hayes to go for the .22-caliber Magnum. The single-action revolver stayed beneath the mattress and box spring just inches away.
He was rolled over in bed, his ankles and wrists bound with shoelaces. Then the intruder perched a metal lid and a salt shaker on Hayes' naked back, and said if he heard them fall, he would "blow his f------ head off."
Hayes was reduced to paralysis while the man in the living room raped his 17-year-old girlfriend.
It was clear this was more than a sexual assault.
Eight times in the next hour, the rapist returned to
