As parents, we like to think that our children are safe in our home when we go to bed at night. We’re right there in the next room, so what can happen – right? When Alicia Blake went to sleep on April 11th of 1986, both of her daughters were seemingly safe, but this mother would awake to an ongoing nightmare.
The night in question had been a normal one. 14 year old Rickie Ann had opted to spend the night inside her Chula Vista, California home; she’d studied while watching a Padres baseball game, and spoke with her friends on the telephone. The teen had been super excited about trading her eyeglasses in for a pair of contacts the next day, which had been a really big deal. Rickie had always been such a good girl, the homebody type who had never been involved in any sort of trouble. As a matter of fact, even at the age of 14 she still loved to play with her Cabbage Patch dolls – the girl was so innocent. Recently she’d spoken of some crank phone calls which she’d received, and sometimes the man on the other end of the line said some really graphic things, but this was the ‘80’s. It was before caller ID was a thing, and these prank phone calls were somewhat common; it does not seem that Rickie had been too concerned.
Sometime around 9:30 pm mother Alicia retired to her bedroom; at ten Rickie’s big sister, Alicia Marie, arrived home, and at midnight the telephone rang. The caller on this particular night had addressed himself only as George, and he’d asked to speak with Rickie; sister Alicia Marie hadn’t thought that anything was wrong, so she’d given the phone to Rickie. The teen took the call in her bedroom, and that was the last time her family ever saw her alive.
Rickie’s mama, Alicia, awoke to her alarm at five am, and she immediately knew that something horrible had happened. The family dogs were locked up in the garage instead of running free, the front door was open wide, and the television had been blaring all night long. Alicia checked on Rickie; the 8th grader was gone, she’d left without even taking her shoes. The police were summoned. All day Alicia worried for her baby, and by nightfall the mother instinctively braced herself for the worst – Rickie never stayed out through the night.
Just after ten pm that same night, Rickie’s lifeless body was discovered near an exit ramp on Route 15. The girl had been abducted, beaten, sexually assaulted, strangled, shoved in a trunk, and dumped on the side of the interstate. The teen had sustained chipped teeth, there was alcohol in her system, and liquid in her lungs. Rickie’s killer had forced her to drink alcohol, he’d smashed the bottle against her teeth in the process, and she had inhaled some of the liquid.
Rickie was gone, she could no longer feel any pain, but this is not where the torment ends. Within hours of the murder, someone began to harass the young victim’s family. A man who claimed to be the killer called Alicia relentlessly, he found satisfaction in relating the gory details of her daughter’s death.
Rickie’s funeral was packed with hundreds of mourners, and the bereaved family played Rickie’s favorite song, “With you all the way” by New Edition. Somewhere in the crowd, it’s believed that the killer lurked. He would later use this song as a tool to torment Rickie’s mama; when the man called, he would often play Rickie’s favorite song into the phone. This caller usually phoned between 3 and 4 am, but whenever Mr. Bill Blake answered, the man would simply hang up. In the months following the murder, several of Rickie’s classmates would also complain of disturbing phone calls from a man who’d identified himself as George.
This man was hell bent on torturing his victim’s loved ones. Alicia’s home was broken into, and boxes of Rickie’s things were stolen – these items would be left on Rickie’s grave or at the family’s home for her mother to find. The most creepy to be found was strips of a man’s shirt stuffed into a vase and placed upon the girl’s grave. Often he would call to recount exactly what Alicia had done that day. If she had gone to her daughter’s grave, the man always knew; he would tell the grieving mother that he’d been there the entire time, watching in the shadows.
Alicia was worried for her surviving daughter, so she sent Alicia Marie out of town to live with relatives, but the brave mother refused to move away from her home or even change her phone number. She believed that eventually this psychopath would slip up, and he’d give away his identity. When asked if she was worried for her own safety, Alicia stated, “I use to be scared, but I’m not scared anymore. There’s nothing you could do to hurt me anymore. You’ve killed my insides, you can’t kill me anymore.”.
This torment went on for more than ten years, with the harassment usually increasing around the victim’s date of birth, March 14th, and anniversary of death; it wasn’t until 1998 when the calls finally began to slow. Then, in 2003 police finally got a hit on a DNA match. The culprit was a 47 year old construction worker named George Williams Jr, from Gary, Indiana; this man definitely fit the bill. In 1984 George had molested his own six year old daughter. A week after Rickie’s murder, he sexually assaulted a San Diego woman at knife point. After he’d assaulted the lady, he turned his attentions towards her six year old daughter – then raped the woman once more. For this crime George went to prison. After his release, in February of 1998, the man was desperate for a new victim; this time he attacked a 13 year old boy. In 2005, George was sentenced to death for Rickie’s horrific murder.
Still some questions remain unanswered. You see, just a week after Rickie was murdered, George had been arrested; he hadn’t been a free man again until 1998, which is when the calls finally ceased! It would’ve been impossible for George to have placed all of those phone calls, he couldn’t have been the one who’d stalked the family, broke into their home, or left things on Rickie’s grave. There’s no possible way that he’d been the one who’d enjoyed relaying the details about the teens murder to her anguished mother.
We know that George was Rickie’s killer, but had he a partner in crime? Who in the world was the stalker? A sick opportunist couldn’t have guessed all of the details which this caller had so easily recounted. How had George known Rickie, and why had she believed it safe to answer the door for him that night? She’d been terrified of the dark, there’s no way she would have opened up for someone she hadn’t known and trusted, and how did the killer get her out of the house so quietly? We know that she wouldn’t have left the home on her own. Unless someone comes forward with these answers, it’s unlikely we will ever know what happened – someone else must’ve been involved, and they’re getting away with it.
Alicia has since passed away, and she is buried next to her daughter at Glen Abbey Memorial Park.
