MARGARET Wardlow grew up in an idyllic Sacramento, California neighbourhood, but her safe and peaceful home life all changed in 1977 when she became the youngest victim of the notorious Golden State Killer and serial rapist — whose crime spree terrified Californians and who remained at large for 40 years.

America’s ABC News reports that Ms Wardlow told the story of how she experienced terror at the age of 13 in an interview with current affairs TV show 20/20.

Ms Wardlow reveals that she had been following the case as a teen and reading up on the rapist obsessively. “I remember distinctly reading over one article three times and saying to myself, ‘There aren’t any more words that you haven’t read,’” she said.

“I don’t think I was the only person that was curious as to what was making this guy tick. And it was very clear that during the attacks he was using this fear that he was controlling people with, you know, by making them very much afraid of what he was saying to them and what he was doing to them.”

Ms Wardlow’s morbid fascination with the case proved to be an asset to her in the end. For while her mother assured her that she was too young to be one of the rapist’s targets, Ms Wardlow found herself his next victim.

On November 10, 1977, she was woken up in her bedroom at 2am by an attacker wearing a mask. He stood beside her bed wearing leather gloves and pointing a flashlight beam into her eyes. At first Ms Wardlow thought it was a practical joke being played on her by her family. But the intruder said, “This isn’t a joke.”

Ms Wardlow told 20/20 that he then tied her up and blindfolded her. He did the same to her mother and stacked plates on her back so that he would hear her if she tried to move. The attacker repeatedly threatened to kill the 13-year-old Margaret Wardlow who lay there and told herself, “You’re gonna get raped. But you’re gonna be OK. And he’s not gonna hurt me.”

Having thoroughly studied the attacker and his methods, Ms Wardlow felt she knew enough about him to have an “advantage”.

“My instinct said don’t let him see you sweat.”

She believed she knew that he got off on seeing the fear of his victims, so each time he threatened to hurt her or her mother she said, “I don’t care.”

Wardlow, now 53 and with a daughter of her own, says that she was indeed raped but that her defiance seemed to have shortened the duration of the assault.

“He wasn’t getting what he wanted,” she said. “He wanted fear. He wanted to see fear in me.”

She said he then fled the scene, sparing her and her mother. It was a combination of her age, her innocence — and her defiance — that helped her to be spared.

The Golden State Killer went on to rape over 50 women and kill 12 people.

Ms Wardlow has shared that she felt “elated” when she heard the news that there had been an arrest in what had been a 40-year-old cold case.

Joseph DeAngelo, a 72-year-old retired policeman living in Sacramento was identified through DNA evidence.