Joseph James DeAngelo
Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. is an American serial killer, serial rapist, and former police officer known as the Golden State Killer, the Original Night Stalker, the East Area Rapist and the Visalia Ransacker, who committed 13 murders and numerous rapes and burglaries across California between 1974 and 1986. The crimes began in Northern California where DeAngelo committed a minimum of 120 burglaries and one murder in the San Joaquin Valley before moving to Sacramento County, where he committed at least 51 rapes and two more murders from 1976 to 1979. In southern California, DeAngelo murdered at least ten people from 1979 until 1986 before going dormant.
After committing a series of highly publicized burglaries in and around Visalia, DeAngelo escalated to raping victims in east Sacramento and was additionally linked to attacks in Stockton, Modesto, and Contra Costa County. DeAngelo committed serial murders in Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Orange counties from 1979 to 1986. He is believed to have taunted and threatened both victims and police via 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, DNA testing indicated that the East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker were the same person. 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. In an attempt to increase awareness, crime writer Michelle McNamara coined the name "Golden State Killer".
In 2016, the Federal Bureau of Investigation 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, California authorities 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 the rapes he had committed in the 1970s; but he was charged in August 2018 with thirteen related kidnapping and abduction attempts. On June 29, 2020, DeAngelo pleaded 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.
Personal life
Early life and education
Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. was born on November 8, 1945, in Bath, New York, to Kathleen "Kay" Louise DeGroat and Joseph James DeAngelo Sr, a sergeant in the United States Army. He is of Italian ancestry and has two sisters, Rebecca and Constance "Connie" and a brother, John. A relative reported that when DeAngelo was a young child, he witnessed the rape of Connie by two airmen in a U.S. Air Force base warehouse in West Germany, where the family was stationed at the time. Following DeAngelo's conviction, Rebecca stated that he was abused by their father while he was growing up.Between 1959 and 1960, DeAngelo attended Mills Junior High School in Rancho Cordova, California. Beginning in 1961, he attended Folsom High School, from which he received a GED certificate in 1964. He played on the school's junior varsity baseball team. Prosecutors reported that DeAngelo committed burglaries, mail theft, and tortured and killed animals during his teenage years.
DeAngelo joined the United States Navy in September 1964 and served for 22 months during the Vietnam War as a damage controlman on the cruiser and the destroyer tender. Beginning in August 1968, DeAngelo attended Sierra College in Rocklin, California; he graduated with an associate degree in police science, with honors. He attended Sacramento State University in 1971, where he earned a bachelor's degree in criminal justice. DeAngelo later took post-graduate courses and further police training at the College of the Sequoias in Visalia, then completed a 32-week police internship at the police department in Roseville.
Police officer
From May 1973 to August 1976, DeAngelo was a burglary unit police officer in Exeter, having relocated from Citrus Heights. He then served in Auburn from August 1976 to July 1979, when he was arrested for shoplifting a hammer and dog repellent; he was sentenced to six months of probation and fired that October. During the process of being fired, DeAngelo threatened to kill the chief of police and allegedly stalked the chief's house.Marriage and relationships
In May 1970, DeAngelo became engaged to nursing student Bonnie Jean Colwell, a classmate at Sierra College, but she ended the relationship in 1971 after he became manipulative and abusive, culminating in his demand that she help him cheat on an abnormal psychology test. After the break-up, he attempted to force her to marry him by threatening her with a gun.In November 1973, he married Sharon Marie Huddle of Citrus Heights, in a ceremony held in Auburn. In 1980, they purchased a house in Citrus Heights, where he was eventually arrested decades later. The two also purchased a second home in Long Beach
and lived there throughout most of the 1980s. Huddle became a divorce attorney in 1982, and they had three daughters: two were born in Sacramento and one was born in Los Angeles.
The couple separated in 1991.
In July 2018, several months after DeAngelo's arrest, Huddle filed for a divorce, which was finalized the following year. DeAngelo committed most of the offenses while he was married and raising a family. Neither his wife nor his children ever suspected he was committing serious crimes. His eldest daughter claimed he was a "perfect father", while his wife believed his excuses for being away from home.
Other employment
DeAngelo's employment status during the 1980s is unknown; it's suspected he worked as a computer engineer and a cashier. From 1990 until his retirement in 2017, he worked as a truck mechanic at a Save Mart Supermarkets distribution center in Roseville. He was arrested in 1996 for failing to pay for gas, but the charge was dismissed.Loud outbursts
DeAngelo's brother-in-law claimed that DeAngelo would casually bring up the East Area Rapist in conversation around the time of the original crimes. Neighbors also reported that he would frequently engage in loud, profane outbursts. One neighbor reported that his family received a phone message from DeAngelo threatening to "deliver a load of death" because of their barking dog. He was living with a daughter and granddaughter at the time of his arrest.Crimes
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.Visalia Ransacker (1974–1975)
It was long suspected that the training ground of the criminal who became the East Area Rapist was Visalia. Earlier Visalia crimes dating back as early as May 1973 and other sprees like that of the "Cordova Cat Burglar", during which he bludgeoned to death several family dogs, and the "Exeter Ransacker", as well as Visalia burglaries that took place after the shooting of Detective William McGowen, are now suspected to be linked also. Over a period of 20 months, DeAngelo is believed to have been responsible for one murder and around 120 burglaries.In late-April 2018, the Visalia chief of police stated that while there was no DNA linking DeAngelo to the Central Valley cases, his department had other evidence that played a role in the investigation; and he was "confident that the Visalia Ransacker has been captured". Though the statutes of limitations for the burglaries have each expired, DeAngelo was formally charged on August 13, 2018, with the first degree murder of Claude Snelling in 1975. In 2020, DeAngelo pleaded guilty to the Snelling murder.
Burglaries
The first recorded ransacking occurred on March 19, 1974, when a sum of $50 in coins was stolen from a piggy bank. 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 but also included six weapons and various types of ammunition. There were 12 separate incidents on November 30, 1974. Common characteristics of the burglaries included:- climbing fences and moving through established routes such as parks, walkways, ditches, and trails
- attempting to pry open multiple points of entry, particularly windows
- leaving multiple points of escape open, especially windows, as well as the house, garage, and garden doors
- moving removed window screens onto beds or into bedrooms
- placing "warning items" such as dishes or bottles against doors and on door handles
- wearing gloves
Shootings
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 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 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.