Lisa Rinna Opened Up About Her Mother’s Harrowing Experience With Future Serial Killer
Lisa Rinna and her mother, Lois DeAndrade, were close, but the reality star admitted that for a long time, she didn’t know key details about her mother’s life. Several years before Rinna was born, DeAndrade survived a near-fatal attack by a man who would become known as the Trailside Killer. Rinna spoke about the attack and the way it impacted her mother.
Lisa Rinna said her mother survived a near-fatal attack from a serial killer
In 1960, DeAndrade was waiting at a bus stop when her co-worker, David Carpenter, drove past.
“One morning she was waiting at the bus stop to go to the dentist,” she said on IMPACT x Nightline (via People). “And he came by the bus stop and say, ‘Lois, I want you to meet my new baby!’ And she was like, no I have to go to the dentist. And he was like, ‘Oh I’ll drive you.’ And she got in the car with him.”
DeAndrade began to feel uneasy when she noticed that Carpenter was no longer speaking with a stutter.
“He started talking to her and he wasn’t stuttering. That was the first sign,” Rinna explained. “He was driving in a weird direction. And she said, ‘David, what’s going on with you? You’re not stuttering. You’re speaking clearly.’ And he said, ‘I don’t know Lois, something just comes over me.’ And that’s when she knew she was f***ed.”
When Carpenter parked the car, he began attacking DeAndrade with a knife and a hammer.
“As David Carpenter parked the car, he literally straddled my mom, grabbed the knife out of the glove box… goes at my mom,” Rinna said. “My mom grabs it with her hand. And it severs these two fingers, so her fingers are like dangling. Then David starts to freak out because he sees the car coming. So he grabs a hammer… And starts smashing my mom over the head with a hammer.”
A military officer interrupted the attack by shooting and wounding Carpenter. He got out of prison in 1969. After his release, he committed a series of murders in the Bay Area and became known as the Trailside Killer. He was ultimately convicted of seven murders and remains on death row.
She said she didn’t learn about the attack until later in life
After the attack, DeAndrade spent three months in the hospital and had a metal plate placed in her skull. Rinna said it was a long time before her mother opened up to her about the attack.
“When I finally learned the truth, I had such great sadness and empathy for my mom,” she said. “Knowing that not only did this happen to her but that she basically just stuffed those feelings for how many years.”
Still, she said her mother was always positive.
“I think my mom was positive. And never played a victim. Never felt sorry for herself,” she said. “And she could have been the most miserable, f***ed up, traumatized human being, and I never saw that.”
Lisa Rinna said her mother appeared to her in a dream
DeAndrade died in 2021. Rinna believes she came to her in a dream to tell her to leave The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
“She came to me,” she told the Evening Standard. “‘It’s so wild, because half the world will believe this, half the world will say: ‘That’s so weird.’ I was sleeping and I heard her say to me: ‘It’s time for you to go.’”
Rinna said she believes her mother is continuing to guide her from beyond the grave.
“I told a psychic and she said: ‘Oh yeah, she’s come to me and told me that. She wants you to be happy and follow your dream, but she says it’s time for you to go,’” she said. “I’ve never told anybody that, except for the psychic. I’m guided by my mom, for sure.”
