Golden State Killer

Early Life

Joseph James DeAngelo was born in 1945 in the suburbs of Sacramento. He joined the military and served in Vietnam for 22 months before coming home as a decorated vet. He attended Sierra College where he earned his bachelor's degree in criminal justice in 1972. After graduating, he went on to become a police officer in Exeter, California from 1973 to 1976 and then joined the Auburn police force from 1976 to 1979. Many of his co-workers described him as the 'average joe' and an upstanding guy whose passion was to "serve the community". Unfortunately, his experience in the police force and military, aided him in avoiding persecution for more than 40 years.

Crimes

Starting in 1974, just a year after DeAngelo started his career at the Exeter police department, an unidentified criminal, by the name of Visalia Ransacker, started burglarizing homes in the area. It is said he ransacked at least 100 homes and might be responsible for a murder during that time period as well.

Another criminal nicknamed the East Area Rapist started terrorizing the Sacramento area in 1976. He would stalk women who lived alone and in single story homes. Before the actual attack, he would break in, leave ligatures, unload any guns in the home and unlock sliding glass doors for easier entry later. He would then come in, bind them and rape them repeatedly.

Eventually he started attacking couples. He would break in, shine a flashlight in their face with a gun pointed at them. He'd have the female tie up the male, where he'd then place him on his stomach and put glass plates on his back. He would tell him that if he heard the plate rattle, he'd kill everyone in the home. He then bound the women and repeatedly raped them for hours on end.

He would often hide in the home making the owners think he had left, only to jump out of the darkness and start his reign of terror again. Once he was "done", he would sneak out of the house without them even knowing, and go through back roads, back alleys, through fields, etc to avoid being spotted leaving a crime scene.

In 1979, a seemingly new killer emerged in Southern California, nicknamed the Original Night Stalker (Original after Richard Ramirez was nicknamed the Night Stalker). This criminal seemed to mimic the East Area Rapist except the victims would either be bludgeoned or shot to death. It is said that the Original Night Stalker had killed at least 10 people during this time.

Once ligatures and similarly sized shoe prints were found at most of the crime scenes from each of these criminals, authorities assumed them as the same person and gave him the nickname, The Golden State Killer.

The Capture

DeAngelo escaped justice for over 4o years and I believe that is because he used multiple different "crimes" (burglary, rape and murder) and different cities in California. It was hard for detectives to really hone in on one person being the culprit for all of these crimes. A few potential suspects across the decades, proved to be dead ends when they died before the final crimes were committed or due to DNA testing eliminating them. But in 2017, the FBI reopened the case and in 2018, police used GEDmatch to use DNA from the crime scenes to create a profile.

In April of 2018, a match came back as Joseph James DeAngelo and when police took DNA evidence from DeAngelo's car, it was a match to the DNA left behind at the crime scenes.

The Trial

It took a while for everything to come about after he was arrested in April 2018. At first, the court entered a guilty plea, but in June 2020, DeAngelo plead guilty to raping over 50 women and 13 murders, he also admitted to crimes he had not been charged with. He was sentenced to 11 life sentences without the possibility of parole plus an additional 8 years which is the maximum the court was allowed to impose on him.

Conclusion

Because of Joseph James DeAngelo's extensive training in the military as well as in criminal justice and on the police force, he was able to evade detection for his momentous and atrocious crimes for over 40 years. But when it came down to it, DNA proved to prevail and capture this monster.

In my next story, I will be watching the 2 hour long victim impact statements and give an overview as well as my opinion on them. Please feel free to follow me on Instagram for links to all my stories. I am just getting started promoting on Instagram, so please bear with me!