Joseph James DeAngelo

What the record shows

Joseph James DeAngelo is the former California police officer identified in 2018 as the Golden State Killer, the offender earlier known as the Visalia Ransacker, the East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker. On June 29, 2020, he pleaded guilty in Sacramento County Superior Court to 13 counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances and 13 counts of kidnapping, and under the plea he admitted dozens of uncharged rapes. NBC News reported that prosecutors described crimes against 87 victims at 53 crime scenes in 11 California counties between 1975 and 1986. On August 21, 2020, Judge Michael Bowman sentenced him to consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.

The first killing DeAngelo admitted was the September 11, 1975 shooting of Claude Snelling in Visalia, Tulare County, during the period when the Visalia Ransacker was burglarizing homes there. According to the Wikipedia article, the East Area Rapist home-invasion attacks began in Rancho Cordova, near Sacramento, on June 18, 1976, and continued into 1979; Brian and Katie Maggiore were shot to death in Rancho Cordova on February 2, 1978. The attacks then moved to Southern California. According to the Wikipedia article and charges reported by NBC News, Robert Offerman and Debra Manning were killed in Goleta on December 30, 1979; Lyman and Charlene Smith in Ventura on March 13, 1980; Keith and Patrice Harrington in Dana Point on August 19, 1980; Manuela Witthuhn in Irvine on February 6, 1981; Cheri Domingo and Gregory Sanchez in Goleta on July 27, 1981; and Janelle Cruz in Irvine in May 1986. The later victims were bludgeoned in their homes after being bound.

DNA testing eventually linked the Southern California murders to the East Area Rapist attacks. In 2018 investigators uploaded a DNA profile from crime-scene evidence to the public genealogy database GEDmatch, built family trees from distant relatives who matched, and narrowed the candidates to DeAngelo. NBC News reported that Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones said investigators confirmed the match with discarded DNA after six days of surveillance; according to the Wikipedia article the samples came from his car door handle and a tissue in his trash. He was arrested at his Citrus Heights home on April 24, 2018, at age 72, in the first widely publicized arrest made through forensic genetic genealogy.

NBC News reported that at an August 2018 arraignment DeAngelo faced 13 murder counts across Sacramento, Santa Barbara, Tulare, Ventura and Orange counties and 13 kidnapping counts in Sacramento and Contra Costa counties; the kidnapping charges were used because California's statute of limitations barred prosecution of the rapes themselves. The district attorneys agreed to consolidate all of the cases in Sacramento.

The 2020 plea agreement spared DeAngelo the death penalty. The Associated Press, in a report carried by PBS NewsHour, said prosecutors had initially sought death but accepted life terms, citing California's execution moratorium, the pandemic and the ages of the defendant, victims and witnesses. Sentencing followed three days of victim impact statements in a university ballroom. DeAngelo, then 74, rose from a wheelchair and told the court he was sorry to everyone he had hurt, ABC News reported. The AP reported that Judge Bowman imposed 11 consecutive life terms without parole on the murder counts, additional life terms on the remaining counts and eight years for enhancements. He waived his right to appeal.

According to the Wikipedia article, DeAngelo is held in protective custody at California State Prison, Corcoran, and DNA testing has excluded him from several other unsolved killings once speculatively linked to the case.

DeAngelo was born on November 8, 1945, in Bath, New York, according to the Wikipedia article. He served in the Navy during the Vietnam War, studied police science and criminal justice, and worked as a police officer in Exeter from 1973 to 1976 and in Auburn from 1976 to 1979. NBC News reported that he was fired from the Auburn department in 1979 after being arrested for shoplifting a hammer and dog repellent. He raised three daughters in Citrus Heights and later worked as a truck mechanic. His wife filed for divorce after his arrest.