On June 18, 1976 in Rancho Cordova, just east of Sacramento in California, a 23-year-old woman
was alone in her home asleep. She shared the house with her father who was away.
Around 4 am, she awoke with a start. Someone was standing by her bedroom door.
And I looked up and I thought it was my dad, at first. He drives weird hours and
he might have come in early cause it was early in the morning. And nope, it wasn’t my dad.
The stranger was naked from the waist down. So, he came in, he had a ski mask on.
And jumped on the bed and had a knife.
I don’t exactly remember what he said. Something to the effect of “Don’t scream”.
And tied my hands behind my back. I just remember feeling extremely threatened.
He raped her. After he left, she managed to call 911 while her hands were tightly bound.
Joseph James DeAngelo started by targeting women who were home alone.
Later, he tortured them even if their partners were home,
putting dishes on the backs of men while he assaulted their girlfriends and wives,
telling them if any dishes broke, he’d kill them both.
From 1976 to 1986, he burglarized more than 120 homes, raped more than 50 women, and murdered 12
people in the state of California. A crime writer dubbed him the
“Golden State Killer” He had other nicknames
depending on where he was active. He was known as the East Area Rapist.
The Original Night Stalker And the Visalia Ransacker.
Police originally thought they were different culprits…however,
there was one similar trait. The survivors remarked the perpetrator had a tiny you-know-what.
DNA evidence confirmed they were the same person.
But DeAngelo was not on any police suspect list.
He hid in plain sight, living in the same
community he terrorized - taking the innocence out of America.
The 1970s was a time when no one locked their doors during the day
and parents let their kids play outside.
That changed when DeAngelo started terrorizing California.
He carefully studied his targets beforehand.
Traits he may have picked up as a police officer.
He was a cop when he first turned to crime which likely helped him avoid suspicion.
He knew enough to wear gloves. He was careful. But what he could not have anticipated
was the advent of DNA. The answer
was and was always going to be in the DNA. When he first started breaking into homes in
the seventies by prying open a window or door, detectives didn’t know anything about DNA.
That would change in 1984 when British geneticist Sir Alec Jeffreys had a eureka moment.
He realized you could identify an individual by looking at unique patterns in their DNA through
a method called DNA fingerprinting. This was ground-breaking considering
the DNA of any two people is 99.9% the same. DNA fingerprinting looks at the differences in
the .1% through small samples of DNA from skin cells, hair roots, blood, saliva, and semen.
DNA fingerprinting focuses on the regions containing short repeated sequences of DNA
called Short Tandem Repeats (STRs). The number of repeats varies widely
from person to person. This is unique to you. Like a fingerprint.
The sample of DNA is put into a gel plate, then, using electricity,
those short repeated sequences of DNA start to migrate…forming a unique pattern of bars.
The suspect with the pattern that matches the DNA from the crime scene
is guilty. In this case, suspect 1.
DNA fingerprinting became the forensic tool used to hunt the Golden State Killer.
He had left his DNA at the various crime scenes. He tended to snack from his victims’ fridges.
Rummaged through their belongings. Investigators also collected semen
found on the victims’ bodies. Unfortunately, even though the police
had samples of the killer’s DNA, they had nothing to compare it to because
the killer wasn’t in any criminal database. They had no idea to whom the DNA belonged.
We all knew we were looking for a needle in a haystack. But the needle was there.
In the end, they found the needle in the haystack from an unexpected source:
a genealogy website that millions of people used to trace their family tree.
Investigators used semen from a rape kit to develop
a DNA profile of the Golden State Killer. They then uploaded it to GEDmatch - a free,
public site where users can upload and analyze their DNA sequences.
Authorities also uploaded the DNA profile onto two private sites:
FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage. According to the Los Angeles Times,
it was MyHeritage that identified a close relative of the Golden State Killer.
That relative presumably had mailed in a swab kit to learn about their ethnic background,
find long-lost relatives, or discover hereditary diseases.
By tracking down the close relative, investigators managed to narrow down their list of suspects
and in 2018, they focused on 72-year-old Joseph James DeAngelo.
Was this the man who had eluded the police for 42 years?
The Golden State Killer liked to call the cops and threaten them. He also taunted his victims
over the phone before and after attacks. The FBI released this creepy 1977 call
from DeAngelo to one of his victims who survived his attack.
Hello? Hello?
Caller: [Heavy breathing] I'm gonna kill you.
Gonna kill you. Gonna kill you.
Gonna kill you. B--ch.
B--ch. At the time of the phone call, DeAngelo had
already broken into numerous homes and brutally raped women, but he had not yet started to kill.
That would change on February 2nd, 1978. Brian and Katie Maggiore were out walking
their dog at night near their home in the Sacramento area.
For some reason, they ended up in a backyard, where they were confronted by
a man wearing a ski mask. The couple may have interrupted one of his crimes in progress.
Brian was shot. Katie ran away, screaming for help, but DeAngelo caught up with her
and killed her, too. Katie was 20 years old. Brian, who was an air force sergeant, was 21.
The level of violence intensified in the following years.
On July 27, 1981, Cheri Domingo and Greg Sanchez were murdered in a home near Santa Barbara He shot
Greg but he didn't die. He then beat Greg to death before raping Cheri and beating her to death.
Then his attacks suddenly came to a halt.
No one knows why. But it did coincide with the birth of his first daughter that same year.
Five years later, it started again. On May 4, 1986, 18-year-old Janelle
Cruz was home alone. Her mom and stepdad were away on vacation.
A friend had come over that night. They thought they heard a noise in the garage but thought
nothing of it. Her friend left soon after. Janelle’s body was found the next day.
She had been raped and beaten to death. She was the Golden State Killer’s final victim.
Although forensics managed to collect the killers’ DNA, this was still the early days of DNA testing,
so testing capacity was limited, and the sample remained in storage for years.
It wasn’t until 2001 that DNA tests finally linked all the crime scenes to one person.
When authorities zeroed in on DeAngelo thanks to the ancestry website,
they went to work gathering his DNA to see if it was indeed a match for the Golden State Killer.
They collected DNA from the handle of his car door while he shopped,
and some from a discarded tissue in his trash. And bingo – his DNA was a match for the
Golden State Killer. After all this time,
DeAngelo lived free in a nice Sacramento suburb. He went on to become a father and grandfather.
When police arrested DeAngelo, he had recently retired from a career as a truck mechanic.
He had been fired from his job as an officer early into his attacks after getting caught shoplifting.
DeAngelo was living in Citrus Heights, California - a short drive from where he attacked his first
victim in 1976. For 42 years,
she had longed for the day he’d be caught. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7expnUQ-hQ4
But I know it’s not good to hold hate in your heart and all that, and I don’t think I do.
I’m just a lot more careful. I don’t want him to be dead,
because I think that would be the easy way out of him. And I don’t want that. I’d rather,
you know, him be tried and convicted and spend the rest of your life in prison.
DeAngelo was charged with 12 counts of first-degree murder.
Prosecutors then added a 13th murder charge for the killing of a college professor who was shot
while trying to stop the kidnapping of his teenage daughter in 1975. The case had been unsolved.
DeAngelo pled guilty to all charges. Before sentencing, he rose from his wheelchair,
took off his mask, and said to the courtroom filled with survivors
and the family members of victims: “I listened to all your statements,
each one of them, and I’m truly sorry for everyone I’ve hurt.”
On August 21, 2020, at the age of 74, DeAngelo was sentenced to life in prison.
He will die behind bars. It has only been in the
past few years that millions of people have submitted their DNA to genealogy websites.
This has led to debate about whether law enforcement should have the right
to use information consumers hand over to genetic testing companies.
The president of FamilyTreeDNA apologized to customers for failing to disclose
that it was sharing data with federal investigators working to solve crimes.
There were no complaints from DeAngelo's victims or their loved ones.
Without the help of modern technology, the Golden State Killer would likely
never have been caught. Innovative technologies have
helped catch criminals while also freeing the wrongfully convicted.
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