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Golden State Killer captured by single piece of rubbish after 40 year murder
More than 40 years after his reign of terror began, Golden State Killer Joseph James DeAngelo has just received 11 life sentences for his horrific crimes. Throughout the 1970s and '80s, while he was a small-town California cop with a wife and a family, DeAngelo killed at least 13 people and raped as many as 50 women, sometimes tying up their husbands and forcing them to watch.⠀
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See the photos and learn the chilling full story by clicking the link in our bio.⠀
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Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. (born November 8, 1945) is an American serial killer, sex offender, burglar, and former police officer who committed at least 13 murders, 51 rapes, and 120 burglaries across California between 1974 and 1986.
He is responsible for at least three separate crime sprees throughout the state, each of which spawned a different nickname in the press, before it became evident that they were committed by the same person.
In the San Joaquin Valley, DeAngelo was known as the Visalia Ransacker before moving to the Sacramento area, where he became known as the East Area Rapist and was linked by modus operandi to additional attacks in Stockton, Modesto and Contra Costa County.
DeAngelo committed serial murders in Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Orange counties, where he was known as the Night Stalker and later the Original Night Stalker (owing to serial killer Richard Ramirez also being called the "Night Stalker"). He is believed to have taunted and threatened both victims and police in obscene phone calls and possibly written communications.
During the decades-long investigation, several suspects were cleared through DNA evidence, alibis, or other investigative methods. In 2001, after DNA testing indicated that the East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker were the same person, the combined acronym EARONS came into use.
The case was a factor in the establishment of California's DNA database, which collects DNA from all accused and convicted felons in California and has been called second only to Virginia's in effectiveness in solving cold cases. To heighten awareness of the case, crime writer Michelle McNamara coined the name Golden State Killer in early 2013.
On June 15, 2016, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and local law enforcement agencies held a news conference to announce a renewed nationwide effort, offering a $50,000 reward for the Golden State Killer's capture. On April 24, 2018, the State of California charged 72-year-old DeAngelo with eight counts of first-degree murder, based upon DNA evidence; investigators had identified members of DeAngelo's family through forensic genetic genealogy.
This was also the first announcement connecting the Visalia Ransacker crimes to DeAngelo. Owing to California's statute of limitations on pre-2017 rape cases, DeAngelo could not be charged with 1970s rapes; but he was charged in August 2018 with thirteen related kidnapping and abduction attempts.
On June 29, 2020, DeAngelo pled guilty to multiple counts of murder and kidnapping. As part of a plea bargain that spared him the death penalty, DeAngelo also admitted to numerous crimes with which he had not been formally charged, including rapes. On August 21, 2020, DeAngelo was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Crime
DNA evidence linked DeAngelo to eight murders in Goleta, Ventura, Dana Point, and Irvine; two other murders in Goleta, lacking DNA evidence, were linked by modus operandi.
DeAngelo pleaded guilty to three other murders: two in Rancho Cordova and one in Visalia. He also committed more than 50 known rapes in the California counties of Sacramento, Contra Costa, Stanislaus, San Joaquin, Alameda, Santa Clara, and Yolo; and he was linked to hundreds of incidents of thefts, burglaries, vandalism, peeping, stalking, and prowling.
The first recorded ransacking occurred on March 19, 1974, when a sum of $50 in coins was stolen from a piggy bank.[66] Most of the Ransacker's activities involved breaking into houses, rifling through or vandalizing the owner's possessions, scattering women's underclothes, and stealing a range of low-value items while often ignoring banknotes and higher-valued items in plain sight.
The Ransacker would also often arrange or display items in the house. Items emptied included piggy banks and coin jars; and stolen items often included Blue Chip Stamps, foreign or historic coins, and personal items (such as single earrings, cuff-links, rings, or medallions) but also included six weapons and various types of ammunition. Multiple same-day ransackings were common as well, including 12 separate incidents on November 30, 1974.
On September 11, 1975, DeAngelo broke into the home of Claude Snelling, 45, at 532 Whitney Lane (now South Whitney Street). Snelling, a journalism professor at the College of the Sequoias, had previously chased a prowler discovered under his daughter's window around 10:00 p.m. on February 5, 1975.
On September 11, he was awakened around 2:00 a.m. by strange noises. Upon leaving his bedroom, Snelling ran through the open back door and confronted a ski-masked intruder in his carport attempting to kidnap his daughter, who had been subdued with threats of being stabbed or shot. Snelling was then shot twice, staggered back into the house to his wife, and later died. After the shooting, the assailant fled the scene, leaving behind a stolen bicycle at 615 Redwood Street. After the murder, Beth Snelling, 16, underwent hypnosis in order to gather further details. The Visalia police also committed more resources to apprehending the Ransacker, and a $4,000 reward (equivalent to $19,366 in 2021) was posted. Nighttime stakeouts were set up near houses that he had previously prowled, but the ransackings continued.
Around 8:30 p.m. on December 12, 1975, a masked man entered the back yard of a house at 1505 W. Kaweah Avenue, near where the Ransacker had been reported to frequent.
When Detective William McGowen (on stakeout inside the garage) attempted to detain the man, the suspect shrieked, removed his mask, and feigned surrender after McGowen fired a warning shot.
However, after jumping the fence to the house at 1501, he also pulled out a revolver with his left hand and fired once near McGowen's face, shattering his flashlight.
Nearby officers rushed to aid McGowen, and the shooter was able to escape. Items collected as evidence included the flashlight, tennis shoe tracks, and dropped loot, namely Blue Chip Stamps and a sock full of coins.
DeAngelo moved to the Sacramento area in 1976, where his crimes escalated from burglary to rape. The crimes initially centered on the then-unincorporated areas of Carmichael, Citrus Heights, and Rancho Cordova, east of Sacramento. His initial modus operandi was to stalk middle-class neighborhoods at night in search of women who were alone in one-story homes, usually near a school, creek, trail, or other open space that would provide a quick escape. He was seen a number of times but always successfully fled; on one occasion, he shot and seriously wounded a young pursuer.
Most victims had seen (or heard) a prowler on their property before the attacks, and many had experienced break-ins. Police believed that the offender would conduct extensive reconnaissance in a targeted neighborhood—looking into windows and prowling in yards—before selecting a home to attack. It was believed that he sometimes entered the homes of future victims to unlock windows, unload guns, and plant ligatures for later use. He frequently telephoned future victims, sometimes for months in advance, to learn their daily routines.
Although DeAngelo originally targeted women alone in their homes or with children, he eventually preferred attacking couples.
This change in modus operandi is believed to be a direct result of media reports claiming he only attacked women alone in the home. His usual method was to break in through a window or sliding glass door and awaken the sleeping occupants with a flashlight, threatening them with a handgun. Victims were subsequently bound with ligatures (often shoelaces) that he found or brought with him, then blindfolded and gagged with towels that he had ripped into strips. The female victim was usually forced to tie up her male companion before she was bound.
The bindings were often so tight that the victims' hands were numb for hours after being untied. He then separated the couple, often stacking dishes on the male's back and threatening to kill everyone in the house if he heard them rattle. He would move the woman to the living room and rape her, often repeatedly.
A decade later, police reported that DeAngelo repeatedly said, “I hate you, Bonnie,” during a 1978 rape, the 37th attack.
DeAngelo sometimes spent hours in the home ransacking closets and drawers,[94] eating food in the kitchen, drinking beer, raping the woman again, or making additional threats. Victims sometimes thought he had left the house before he "jump[ed] from the darkness".
He typically stole items—often personal objects and items of little value, but occasionally cash and firearms. He then crept away, leaving victims uncertain if he had left. He was believed to escape on foot through a series of yards and then use a bicycle to go home or to a car, making extensive use of parks, schoolyards, creek beds, and other open spaces that kept him off the street.
The East Area Rapist operated in Sacramento County from the first attacks in June 1976 until May 1977. After a three-month gap, he struck in nearby San Joaquin County in September before returning to Sacramento for all but one of the next ten attacks. The rapist attacked five times during the summer of 1978 in Stanislaus and Yolo counties before disappearing again for three months. Attacks then moved primarily to Contra Costa County in October and lasted until July 1979.
A young Sacramento couple—Brian Maggiore, a military policeman at Mather Air Force Base, and his wife Katie Maggiore—were walking their dog in the Rancho Cordova area on the night of February 2, 1978, near where five East Area Rapist attacks had occurred.
The Maggiores fled after a confrontation in the street but were chased down and shot to death. Some investigators suspected that they had been murdered by the East Area Rapist because of their proximity to the other attacks' locations, and a shoelace was found nearby. The FBI announced on June 15, 2016, that it was confident that the East Area Rapist had murdered the Maggiores. On June 29, 2020, DeAngelo entered a plea of guilty to these murders.
Original Night Stalker (1979–1986)
Shortly after the rape committed on July 5, 1979, DeAngelo moved to Southern California and began killing his victims, first striking in Santa Barbara County in October. The attacks lasted until 1981 (with a lone 1986 attack). Only the couple in the first attack survived, alerting neighbors and forcing the intruder to flee; the other victims were murdered by gunshot or bludgeoning. Since DeAngelo was not linked to these crimes for decades, he was known as the Night Stalker in the area, before being renamed the Original Night Stalker after serial killer Richard Ramirez received the former nickname.
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