Ex-policeman is held after 40‑year hunt for the Golden State Killer
Ex-policeman is held after 40‑year hunt for the Golden State Killer
An FBI sketch of the Golden State Killer as a young man, whose first murder victims were Brian and Katie Maggiore
Detectives hunting one of the most notorious serial killers in American history have arrested a 72-year-old former police officer in Sacramento.
Joseph James DeAngelo had not been a suspect in the investigation until a DNA match last week but his arrest may finally resolve a cold case that has haunted Californians for decades.
The sadistic and meticulous crimes of the man known variously as the Golden State Killer, the East Area Rapist, the Original Night Stalker and the Diamond Knot Killer are thought to have included at least 12 murders, 51 rapes and more than 120 burglaries committed between 1976 and 1986 and linked either by DNA or method.
Despite thousands of leads his identity had always eluded detectives. “We knew we were looking for a needle in a haystack, but we also knew that needle was there,” the Sacramento county district attorney Anne Marie Schubert said yesterday. “We found the needle in the haystack, and it was right here in Sacramento. The answer was always going to be in the DNA,” she added.
Mr DeAngelo worked at the police department in Auburn, a town outside Sacramento, until 1979 when he was fired for stealing a can of dog repellent and a hammer.
He was arrested at his home in the Sacramento suburb of Citrus Heights on Tuesday night after a second DNA sample enabled lab technicians to “confirm what we thought we already knew — that we had our man”, said Scott Jones, the sheriff of Sacramento county. Charges have been filed against him for the murder of two couples, one in Sacramento county in 1978 and one in Ventura county, near Los Angeles, in 1980. Prosecutors said that they would seek the death penalty.
It was only with improvements in DNA technology that the extent of the Golden State Killer’s crimes became clear, tying together attacks in scores of places. His methods were often unusually distinctive. Armed with a gun or a knife and wearing a mask, he would bring shoelaces to tie up his victims, who ranged in age from 13 to 41 and included girls, single women, women with children and couples. Sometimes he would roll a bound man on to his stomach and put crockery on his back so that he could hear if the man moved while he was raping the woman.
Jane Carson-Sandler was one of his first victims. She was dozing in her Citrus Heights home with her three-year-old son one morning in October 1976 when she was awoken by a masked man with a butcher’s knife and raped. Yesterday she described herself as “overjoyed” and added: “I feel like I’m in the middle of a dream and I’m going to wake up and it’s not going to be true. It’s just so nice to have closure and to know he’s in jail.”
A string of further assaults and rapes followed that attack, beginning with women who were alone or with their children and progressing by 1977 to couples in their homes. Ms Schubert said that anyone who, like her, grew up in the area had “very vivid” memories of the fear they felt at that time.
Then in 1978 the attacker committed his first murders, chasing down and killing Brian and Katie Maggiore, a couple who were out walking their dog and may have spotted him breaking into a home. It was DNA linked to that case that led to Mr DeAngelo’s arrest.
Briefly the crimes appeared to stop but they resumed in 1979 with attacks on women and couples in Santa Barbara county, over 300 miles south of Sacramento. Then he ventured further down into southern California where he is thought to have killed for the last time in May 1986. After that the trail went cold, until last week.
“Joseph James DeAngelo has been called a lot of things by law enforcement,” said Tony Rackauckas, district attorney of Orange county. “Today it’s our pleasure to call him defendant.”
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