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- [00:01]
Carter Roy
Crime House exists because of listeners like you want to support Murder True Crime Stories and get the best listening experience. Join Crime House plus and get both parts of each week's story dropped at once, completely ad free. No more waiting for part two. Plus you'll get ad free and early access to every show across Crime House and bonus episodes every month. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap try free at the top of the Murder True Crime Stories show page. This is crime house. He had a lot of names. The Visalia Ransacker. The East Area Rapist. The original Night Stalker. For years, investigators didn't even realize they were chasing the same person. He was that good at disappearing. Because of that, this man was able to commit over 100 burglaries, approximately 50 sexual assaults, and 13 murders across California. He broke into homes while families slept. He tied couples up and tortured them for hours. He called his victims afterward, sometimes years later, just to remind them he was still out there. And then one day, the crimes just stopped. No arrest, no explanation. He simply vanished. Like a ghost slipping back into the dark. For over 30 years, no one knew who he was. Investigators, retired victims grew old waiting for answers. Entire police departments came and went without ever putting a name to the monster who had haunted their communities. The case became one of the longest unsolved crime sprees in American history. And the question that tortured everyone who'd ever worked it was always the same. How does someone do all of that and just get away with it? This is the story of the Golden State Killer. People's lives are like a story. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end. But you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon. And we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy, and this is True Crime Stories, a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes come out every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Thank you for being part of the Crime House community. Please rate, review and follow the show and for early ad free access to every episode, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to another episode of Murder Mystery Fridays, where I'm covering the cases with questions that I can't get out of my head. The ones where the evidence points in multiple directions and every theory feels like a possibility. Remember, these episodes are also on YouTube with full video. Just search for Murder True Crime Stories and be sure to like and subscribe. Today, I am talking about a case that spans more than a decade of terror, four decades of mystery, and a cast of victims whose stories deserve to be remembered far more than the man who destroyed their lives. The Golden State Killer terrorized California from the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s. He committed over 100 burglaries, approximately 50 sexual assaults, and 13 known murders. He operated under so many different names that it took investigators years to realize the same person was behind all of it. When they finally found him, the truth was almost unbearable. He'd raised a family, he'd held down a job, he'd mowed his lawn and waved to his neighbors for decades, while the people whose lives he destroyed spent every day wondering if they'd ever see justice. All that and more coming up. On this show. We're always digging for the truth, yet modern healthcare remains one of the greatest mysteries of all. Everyone deserves real medical support. And that's why I want to talk about Mochi Health. Mochi is a nationwide platform that's bringing humanity and transparency back to healthcare by treating your unique biology. Not a fad. They've already helped 400,000 members lose over £5 million. And while they lead the way in weight loss, Mochi Mochi is now a full scale Marketplace for over 120 treatments ranging from hair and skin care to longevity, mental health and specialized men's and women's health. After you complete an eligibility form, you'll receive a telehealth evaluation with a partnered provider on Mochi's platform to build a plan personalized for your specific body and goals. You'll have 247 access to your provider and specialized medications from a network of licensed pharmacies delivered right to your door. No waiting rooms or hidden hidden fees. You just pay for your membership and your medication. It's personalized care that actually treats you like a human being. Stop leaving your health up to an algorithm. Go to joinmochi.com just got a new puppy or kitten.
- [05:50]
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- [06:28]
Carter Roy
Visalia California sits in the agricultural heart of the state, in the San Joaquin Valley. It was the kind of mid sized town where people left their doors unlocked without thinking twice about it. But in May 1973, the people there started to notice something strange. Houses were being broken into, but not in the way you'd expect. The burglar wasn't after money. He'd clean out a kid's piggy bank, but leave hundreds of dollars in cash sitting on the counter. He'd ignore expensive jewelry and instead take class. Rings, wedding bands, engraved bracelets. Things with personal value he'd steal. Single earrings, family photos, coins. And in some cases, he'd take weapons. Firearms, ammunition, knives, even a billy club. But what made these burglaries truly unsettling wasn't what he took. It was what he did while he was inside. This man, who locals would come to call the Visalia Ransacker didn't just rob houses, he lingered. He'd open drawers and dump everything out. He'd knock over furniture, spill drinks, and leave the place looking like a tornado had torn through it. Sometimes he stayed for hours, eating food out of the refrigerator, helping himself to ice cream, digging through closets and bedrooms like he had all the time in the world. He was methodical about it too. Once inside, he'd open additional windows throughout the house, creating multiple escape routes in case he needed to flee. He'd set up makeshift alarm systems, balancing cups or cans against doors so he'd hear anyone approaching. This wasn't someone acting on impulse. He was careful, he was patient. And he clearly enjoyed what he was doing. There was also a sexual element to these crimes that disturbed investigators. The Ransacker seemed especially drawn to women's bedrooms and clothing. Sometimes he put on women's clothing from the houses he was breaking into. Investigators found evidence that he had masturbated at some of these scenes. And shoe prints discovered beneath windows indicated he was also a peeper and a prowler. Watching women in their homes before coming back to break in. When they were gone for over two years, the Visalia Ransacker burglarized more than 100 homes. The whole town was on edge. But as bad as the break ins were, at least nobody got hurt. Yet in the autumn of 1975, the Ransacker began stalking a 16 year old girl named Beth Snelling. On the night of September 11, around 2am he came to her home wearing a ski mask. He probably entered through an open window. The family's air conditioning wasn't working and made his way into Beth's bedroom. He climbed on top of her, covered her mouth, and told her not to scream or he'd stab her. Then he started dragging her out of the house. Beth's screams woke her father, Claude. He was 45 years old, a beloved professor at the local college who'd lived in Visalia for 17 years. And when he heard his daughter in danger, Claude didn't hesitate. He ran outside to save her. The intruder shot him. Once in the arm, once in the chest. Then he kicked Beth in the face and fled into the night. Claude Snelling died on the way to the hospital. Beth survived, but nothing about her life would ever be the same. Beth gave the police a description of her attacker. A white male, about 5 foot 9, around 180 pounds, wearing a dark shirt and a ski mask. A month later, with no suspects, police had Beth undergo hypnosis to try to recover more details. That might sound unusual, but in the mid-1970s, forensic hypnosis was actually a widely used investigative technique. The LAPD alone used it in hundreds of investigations during this period. The idea was that putting a witness into a relaxed, focused state could help them recall details their conscious mind had blacked out. The it would later fall out of favor because critics argued it could plant false memories or make witnesses more confident about things they didn't actually see. But at the time, it was a legitimate tool in a detective's kit. And in Beth's case, hypnosis reportedly added a few more details. She said the attacker smelled clean and spoke in a raspy, loud whisper. But investigators made an even more important discovery. They were able to match the gun used to kill Claude to a firearm stolen during one of the ransackers burglaries. That connection confirmed what many had feared. The burglar who'd been terrorizing Visalia for three years had now become a murderer. Over the next eight months, the local authorities received dozens of tips a day and investigated around 150 suspects. But eventually, the leads dried up and the case went cold. Then, on December 10, 1975, an officer named William McGowan caught a break. He was on a stakeout near home where suspicious shoe prints had been found beneath the windows. That night, he spotted a man matching the ransacker's description sneaking into a backyard. McGowan chased him and confronted him, firing a warning shot and ordering him to stop. The suspect let out a high pitched scream, fake and theatrical, and pretended to surrender. He pulled off his ski mask and raised his right hand in the air while quietly drawing his gun with his left. Then he fired at McGowan. The bullet missed, but it hit McGowan's flashlight, sending glass into his eye. While the officer stopped to deal with the injury, the suspect disappeared. When McGowan recovered, he gave his own description of the man. White, blonde, no facial hair, 25 to 35 years old, about 5 10, 180 pounds or more with a thick neck. That encounter with Officer McGowan was the Visalia Ransacker's last confirmed crime. After three years of break ins, one murder and one near fatal shooting, the man behind it all simply vanished. But he wasn't done. He was just moving on to a new city, a new set of victims, and a new kind of horror. On this show, we're always digging for the truth, yet modern healthcare remains one of the greatest mysteries of all. Everyone deserves real medical support. And that's why I want to talk about Mochi Health. Mochi is a nationwide platform that's bringing humanity and transparency back to healthcare by treating your unique biology. Not a fad. They've already helped 400,000 members lose over £5 million, and while they lead the way in weight loss, Mochi is now a full scale Marketplace for over 120 treatments ranging from hair and skin care to longevity, mental health and specialized men's and women's health. After you complete an eligibility form, you'll receive a telehealth evaluation with a partnered provider on Mochi's platform to build a plan personalized for your specific body and goals. You'll have 24? 7 access to your provider and specialized medications from a network of licensed pharmacies delivered right to your door. No waiting rooms or hidden fees. You just pay for your membership and your medication. It's personalized care that actually treats you like a human being. Stop leaving your health up to an algorithm, go to joinmochi.com Crime House exists because of listeners like you want to support Murder True Crime stories and get the best listening experience. Join Crime House plus and get both parts of each week's story dropped at once, completely ad free. No more waiting for part two. Plus you'll get ad free and early access to every show across Crime House and bonus episodes every month. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you listen on Apple Podcasts tap try free at the top of the Murder True Crime Stories show page.
- [15:41]
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- [16:13]
Carter Roy
For six months after the McGowan shooting, things in Visalia went quiet. No more ransackings, no more prowling, and no more murders. But 200 miles to the north, in the suburbs east of Sacramento, a nightmare was just beginning. At 4am on June 18, 1976, a woman in Rancho Cordova became the first known victim of a predator who would terrorize the Sacramento area for the next two years. He would come to be known as the East Area Rapist. As the attacks continued, a clear pattern emerged. He struck at night, always while victims were sleeping. He entered through open windows or sliding glass doors, or he'd quietly pick a lock on a back entrance. He blindfolded and gagged his victims. He tied them on their stomachs with their wrists and ankles, bound behind their backs, sometimes using shoelaces he'd found in their own closets. And then he assaulted them. But what set the East Area Rapist apart from other predators was the way he operated. He wasn't in a rush. After tying up his victims, he'd disappear into other parts of the house for long stretches. They could hear him opening drawers, rattling pots and pans, eating their food, drinking their beer. His behavior was just like the Visalia ransacker, except now there were people bound and helpless in the next room, listening to every sound, not knowing when he'd come back. At first, most of his victims were women who were home alone. But In March of 1977, a local newspaper ran an article that changed everything. The piece noted that the East Area Rapist had never attacked while a man was present in the home. It was meant to reassure couples, but the ear took it as a challenge. Almost immediately after the article came out, he started targeting couples, and his method was designed to maximize humiliation and terror. He'd wake them both up, then forced the woman to tie up her male partner. Once the man was bound, the ear would take over, binding the woman himself, then placing teacups or plates on the man's back. If the man moved even slightly while his partner was being assaulted in the next room, the dishes would fall and the attacker would know. He threatened the man with with guns, knives, and ice picks. He told them he'd kill their wives, their children, Anyone they loved if they so much as shifted their weight. His victims ranged from 13 year old girls to women in their 30s and possibly 40s, though most were in their teens and 20s. And it wasn't just the attacks themselves. He called his victims sometimes before, sometimes after. Some calls were silent. Others were obscene. In one call, he repeated I'm going to kill you over and over. He called the Sacramento County Sheriff's office at least three times on a single afternoon in March 1977, identifying himself as the east side rapist. He apparently got his own nickname wrong. In one of those calls. He said he already had his next victim stalked and that they'd never catch him. Then he laughed and hung up. A few hours later, he attacked again. He also sent letters. In December 1977, the Sacramento Bee and the Sacramento Mayor both received letters from someone claiming to be the east area rapist. One included a poem titled Excitement's Crave. Another demanded that Sacramento fund a movie about his life to pay for his planned exile. Whether these letters were genuine or the work of a copycat, they added to the growing sense that whoever was doing this wasn't just evading capture. He was taunting the people trying to catch him. The fear in the Sacramento area during this period is hard to overstate. Gun sales spiked. Women organized neighborhood watch groups. Families installed extra locks, spot guard dogs and slept with weapons beside their beds. People who had never thought twice about an unlocked window now triple checked every point of entry before going to sleep. Because the east area rapist didn't just attack individual victims, he poisoned an entire region's sense of safety. In total, the east area rapist sexually assaulted between 40 and 50 women across the Sacramento area. Stockton, Modesto, Davis, and eventually the San Francisco Francisco Bay area. But as horrifying as the sexual assaults were, the east area rapist's final known crime in the Sacramento area would be something even worse. On the evening of February 2, 1978, a young married couple named Brian and Katie Maggiore were out walking their dog in Rancho Cordova. They never made it home. At around 9pm gunshots rang out. A neighbor heard a woman screaming. Another saw a man running away. White, mid-20s, around 6ft tall, dark hair, wearing a brown leather coat with a stain on the back. A separate witness said the shooter was wearing a ski mask. Brian and Katie were found shot dead near their bodies. Lying in the grass was a shoelace and was tied in a double loop pre tied as a ligature, the same kind of binding the east area rapist used on his victims. At the time, officers didn't connect the murders to the east area rapist. They were looking for two different suspects based on conflicting witness descriptions. Authorities offered a $2,500 reward, but nothing came of it. The majority case went unsolved. And with that double homicide, the Ear's attacks in the Sacramento area came to an end. But he wasn't finished. He was evolving. In October 1979, more than 400 miles south of Sacramento, a new series of violent crimes began unfolding. They took place across the Central coast and Orange county region of Southern California. In Santa Barbara, Goleta, Ventura, Dana Point and Irvine. The attackers methods were chillingly familiar. Nighttime home invasions, bound victims, sexual assault and ransacked bedrooms. But now the violence had escalated to murder. These crimes were attributed to a figure known as the original Night Stalker, not the serial killer Richard Ramirez, who later became known simply as the night stalker. The first sign of the original night stalker came on October 1, 1979, when a couple in Goleta was attacked in their home, but managed to escape. The perpetrator fled on a stolen bicycle and was nearly caught by a neighbor who happened to be an off duty FBI agent. Unfortunately, he hopped fences through the neighborhood and got away. That near miss would be the closest anyone came to catching him for decades. And what followed was a string of murders that wouldn't stop for nearly seven years. On December 30, 1979, 35 year old Deborah Manning and 44 year old Robert Offerman were killed in their condo in Goleta. They were found nude and bound, both shot to death. On March 13, 1980, 43 year old Lyman Smith and 34 year old Charlene Smith were murdered in their Ventura home. Charlene was sexually assaulted and both were found nude and bound. They had been bludgeoned with a log from the firewood pile outside their door. On August 19, 1980, Keith Harrington and his wife Patrice, both in their mid-20s, were killed in their Dana Point home. They had been bludgeoned in the head. Keith's father was the one who found them. On February 6, 1981, 28 year old Manuela Withhune was found dead in bed by her own mother. She had been bound, sexually assaulted and bludgeoned in the head while home alone in Irvine. On July 27, 1981, 35 year old Sherry Domingo and her boyfriend, 27 year old Gregory Sanchez were killed in a Goleta home where Sherry was house sitting. Gregory was found face down on the floor with a gunshot wound and more than two dozen blows to the Head Sherry was found in bed. She had binding marks on her wrists and ankles, but the bindings had been removed. After the Goleta murders, the crimes stopped. No more attacks, no more murders. At least not for nearly five years. Then, on May 4, 1986, Janelle Cruz, just 18 years old, was killed in her family's Irvine home while her mother was on vacation. Her body was discovered by a realtor. She was lying face up in bed, a blanket draped over her head, nude from the waist down. She had been beaten to death with an unknown blunt object. And then, nothing. The original Night Stalker vanished, just like the Visalia Ransacker had vanished, just like the East Area Rapist had vanished. The crimes simply stopped, as if someone had flipped a switch. At the time, investigators speculated that he might have died, been in prison for an unrelated crime, or moved out of the country. But no one could say for certain. And that uncertainty was its own kind of cruelty. For the survivors, the women who had been assaulted, the families who had lost loved ones, the silence was almost worse than the attacks. When someone is hurting you, at least you know to be afraid. But when they disappear, you don't know if it's over. You don't know if the knock on your door at midnight will come tomorrow or never. You spend years, then decades, suspended in that awful space between vigilance and grief. Some survivors moved to different states. Others changed their phone numbers, their routines, their entire identities. Many struggled with ptsd, depression, and broken relationships. A few spent the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders, scanning every crowd for a face they'd never clearly seen. Because he always wore a mask, the terror was over. But for the victims and their families, the nightmare would continue for decades. Because without answers, there's no such thing as peace. On this show, we're always digging for the truth. Yet modern healthcare remains one of the greatest mysteries of all. Everyone deserves real medical support. And that's why I want to talk about Mochi Health. Mochi is a nationwide platform that's bringing humanity and transparency back to healthcare by treating your unique biology. Not a fad. They've already helped 400,000 members lose over £5 million. And while they lead the way in weight loss, Mochi is now a full scale Marketplace for over 120 treatments ranging from hair and skin care to longevity, mental health, and specialized men's and women's health. After you complete an eligibility form, you'll receive a telehealth evaluation with a partnered provider on Mochi's platform to build a plan personalized for your specific body and goals. You'll have 247 access to your provider and specialized medications from a network of licensed pharmacies delivered right to your door. No waiting rooms or hidden fees. You just pay for your membership and your medication. It's personalized care that actually treats you like a human being. Stop leaving your health up to an algorithm. Go to joinmochi.com if you're an experienced
- [29:05]
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- [30:41]
Carter Roy
For years, investigators across California had been chasing what they believed were three separate criminals a burglar in Visalia, a rapist in Sacramento, and a killer in Southern California. The idea that one person could be responsible for all of it over a hundred burglaries, dozens of sexual assaults, and more than 12 murders spread across more than a decade and hundreds of miles seemed almost impossible. But DNA was about to change everything. In 1994, an investigator named Paul Holes came across the East Area Rapist Cold Case Files at the Contra Costa County Crime Lab in the Bay Area. Holes was interested in DNA testing, still a relatively new tool at the time, and he found that three sexual assault Kits from the ear cases had survived. He got permission to test them. Two years later, in 1996, DNA from semen evidence linked the murder of Lyman and Charlene Smith to three other Southern California homicides. Keith and Patrice Harrington, Manuela Withhune, and Janelle Cruz. In 1997, further testing linked that same DNA to sexual assaults in Contra Costa county from the late 1970s. Then, in 2001, improved DNA technology confirmed what Paul Holes had been. The man who committed the sexual assaults in Northern California was the same person who murdered victims in Southern California. The East Area Rapist and the original Night stalker were one and the same. The news was published on April 4, 2001, and two days after that article hit newsstands, a former victim of the East Area Rapist received a phone call. A male voice said, remember when we played? He was still out there. Although investigators knew the East Area Rapist and the original Night Stalker were the same person, they still didn't have a name. They'd run the DNA through the DOJ's felon database, but there was no match, and the case went cold again. One article from 2001 captured the frustration. Investigators described the suspect as methodical, sexually deviant, and with above average intelligence. Frank Fitzpatrick, director of the Orange County Crime Lab, called him about as bad as you can get. And a retired Sacramento county sheriff's detective named Richard Shelby, who'd worked the East Area Rapist cases decades earlier, offered a theory that turned out to be eerily prophetic. Shelby believed the suspect was still alive and that he probably had a family. Another former victim had received a phone call from him around 1990 or 1991. During the conversation, she could hear kids in the background and a woman's voice. He was out there living a normal life, maybe coaching his daughter's soccer team or grilling burgers in his backyard. And no one knew. For the next decade, the case lingered in a kind of investigative purgatory. Detectives knew more about their suspect than ever before. They had his DNA, they had victim descriptions, and they had composite sketches. They knew he was intelligent, methodical, and had an intimate knowledge of the neighborhoods he terrorized. It only seemed like a matter of time until they caught him. And in June 2016, the FBI even announced a $50,000 reward for information leading to his arrest. But none of it was enough. Back in the early 2000 and tens, a true crime writer named Michelle McNamara started pulling on the threads of this case. McNamara was a meticulous researcher who gradually built relationships with investigators, including Paul Holes. She wrote about the case obsessively. And in 2013, in an article for Los Angeles magazine, she gave the criminal a name that would stick. The Golden State Killer. It replaced the clunky acronym investigators had been using. E A R O N S, short for East Area Rapist, Original Night Stalker. And it brought the case back into the public consciousness in a way nothing else had. McNamara was writing a book about the case when she passed away in April 2016. Her book, I'll Be Gone in the Dark, was published posthumously in February 2018. And the work she'd done, the public pressure she'd built, the connection she'd made, helped create the momentum that would finally crack the case wide open. One of the people McNamara inspired was Paul Holes himself. Holes had been working the case for over two decades, and he was running out of time. He was approaching retirement. But a new field was emerging that offered a completely different approach to finding the killer. It was called investigative genetic genealogy. And in 2017, it had never been used to solve a major criminal case. The idea was simple in concept, but revolutionary in practice. Instead of running a suspect's DNA through a criminal database, where it would only match if the suspect had previously been arrested, you could upload a DNA profile to a public genealogy database. From there, you could find distant relatives of the suspect and build a family tree backward and forward until you narrowed it down to a living person who fit the profile. In March 2017, Holes reached out to a woman named Barbara Ray Venters. Rae Venter was an unlikely crime fighter. She had a PhD in biology and had spent most of her career as a patent attorney specializing in biotechnology. After retiring, she'd gotten into genealogy as a hobby, helping adoptees find their birth families using DNA databases. That work had led her to assist in the Bear Brook Murders case in New Hampshire, where she'd helped identify a serial killer named Terry Rasmussen. It was groundbreaking work, and it put her on holes. Radar holes. Asked if she'd be willing to try the same approach on the Golden State Killer, she said yes. And in early 2018, she used a surviving semen sample from Charlene Smith's sexual assault kit to create a genetic profile. She uploaded it to GEDmatch, a public genealogy database. The search returned 10 to 20 distant relativespeople who shared the same great, great great grandparents as the killer, going back to the 1800s. From there, Ray Venter and a team of five investigators spent four months building out more than 25 family trees, containing roughly 1,000 people in total. Using age, sex, geographic location, and physical description, they gradually eliminated branches until they had narrowed the field to two brothers in California. One of the brothers was in his 70s and living in an Oregon nursing home. Investigators collected his DNA and ruled him out. The other was a 72 year old man living in Citrus Heights, California, a Sacramento suburb just a short drive from the neighborhoods where the East Area Rapist had terrorized communities decades earlier. His name was Joseph James DeAngelo. On April 18, 2018, an officer followed DeAngelo to a hobby Lobby parking lot in Roseville, California, and swapped his car door handle. The DNA came back as a partial match, 47% to the Charlene Smith semen sample. Strong but not definitive, because the door handle had DNA from multiple individuals. Five days later, on April 23, officers collected trash from the curb in front of DeAngelo's house. Inside was a tissue. The DNA from that tissue was a definitive match. Joseph d' Angelo was the man who had raped Charlene Smith. And by extension, he was the East Area Rapist, the original night stalker, and almost certainly the Visalia ransacker. By all accounts, DeAngelo had no idea he was being watched. He'd lived quietly in the Sacramento area for decades, and by 2018, he divorced, retired from his job as a truck mechanic, and was now living with one of his daughters. According to the Sacramento District Attorney, his name had never come up in the investigation. Before 2018, he'd been invisible for 40 years. But not anymore. On April 24, 2018, Joseph DeAngelo was arrested at his Citrus Heights home on a quiet afternoon. He did not resist. Left alone in an interrogation room, he talked to himself. And what he said was strange. He muttered about someone named Jerry, as if there were another person inside him who had committed the crimes. He said, I didn't have the strength to push him out. He made me. But then in the same breath, he said, I did all those things. I destroyed all their lives. So who was Joseph d'? Angelo? And how did he commit over 160 crimes across more than a decade, then just disappear into suburban normalcy? When investigators went back through his life, the pieces fit together with a kind of sickening precision. D' Angelo was born in 1945 in Bath, New York. He joined the Navy at 18, served as a mechanic, and was honorably discharged. In 1968, he moved to California and enrolled at a community college. His major criminal justice. He wanted to become a cop. Think about that for a second. The man who would go on to become one of the most prolific serial offenders in California history chose to study how crimes are investigated and how criminal criminals get caught. He didn't just stumble into law enforcement, he pursued it deliberately. And that training would give him an enormous advantage for decades. At community college, he met Bonnie Colwell, an 18 year old classmate. They got engaged. But according to Bonnie, Joseph was controlling and had a dark side. He liked killing animals. Doves, frogs, deer dogs. He was also obsessive about sex and was a rule breaker who drove recklessly and poached in off limits areas. When Bonnie ended the engagement in 1971, Joseph didn't take it well. A few nights after the breakup, Bonnie woke up to tapping on her window. Joseph was standing outside pointing a gun in her face. He told her to get dressed. They were going to get married and he wouldn't take no for an answer. Bonnie's father spent two hours talking him down while Bonnie hid inside. She was so traumatized, she dropped out of school for a semester to avoid running into him. That broken engagement would haunt his crimes for years. During some of DeAngelo's attacks, victims reported hearing him cry out, I hate you, Bonnie. In 1973, DeAngelo graduated from Sacramento State with a criminal justice degree and joined the Exeter Police Department in California's Central Valley, just 10 miles from Visalia. He was assigned to the anti burglary unit. Let that sink in. The man who was breaking into 100 homes across Visalia was being paid to catch burglars 10 miles down the road. In 1976, he transferred to the Auburn Police Department about 30 miles from Sacramento, right when the east area rapist attacks began in that region. He was fired from the Auburn PD in 1979, reportedly for shoplifting a hammer and a can of dog repellent. Here's an important detail that came out much later. While Paul holes was investigating DeAngelo as a suspect in 2018, he called DeAngelo's former boss at Auburn PD, the man who had fired him decades earlier. The retired officer told Holes something he'd never reported to anyone working the east area rapist case. Shortly after he let d' Angelo go, a man appeared outside his daughter's bedroom window in the middle of the night and shone a flashlight in waking and terrifying her. The man fled, but left shoe prints beneath the window. The officer had always Suspected it was DeAngelo, but at the time, he hadn't connected it to anything larger. Why would he? As far as he knew, his former employee was just a petty thief. Now he knew the truth. After getting fired, d' Angelo worked as a mechanic and moved his family to Citrus Heights, where he lived for decades. And the geographic trail tells its own story. When d' Angelo moved from Exeter to Auburn, the Visalia ransacker vanished, and the east area rapist appeared. When he was fired, the attacks shifted south. In June 2020, Joseph D' Angelo pled guilty to 13 counts of first degree murder and 13 counts of kidnapping. He also admitted to dozens of sexual assaults. But statute of limitations on the sexual assaults meant he couldn't be prosecuted for those crimes, though he admitted to them anyway. In total, he confessed to 161 crimes involving 48 people at his sentencing hearing in August 2020. Three full days were devoted to victim impact statements. One by one, survivors and their family members stood before the man who had shattered their lives and said what they had waited decades to say. Some raged. Some wept. Some simply looked him in the eye and told him he didn't win. That they had built lives and raised families despite what he'd done to them. For many, it was the first time they had ever seen his face without a mask. On August 21, 2020, Joseph D' Angelo was sentenced to 26 consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole. He was 74 years old. He would never see the outside of a prison again. What stays with me about this case isn't the DNA. It isn't the genealogy. It isn't even the arrest. It's the decades in between. Think about what those years look like for the people he hurt. 40 years of not knowing. 40 years of waking up in the middle of the night and checking the locks. 40 years of flinching at the sound of footsteps behind you or a phone call from an unknown number. The women who survived his attacks carried the weight of what happened to them for decades, many in silence. The children who lost parents grew up without them. And the partners who never felt safe again rebuilt their lives around a void that no amount of time could fill. Those people didn't just lose a night. They lost the peace of a world that made sense. And for most of them, the wait for justice lasted longer than the crime spree itself. This case also raised questions that we're still wrestling with today. The genealogy technique that cracked the Golden State Killer case was groundbreaking. It also sent shockwaves through the worlds of privacy, law enforcement, and genetic research. In 2019, GEDmatch, the genealogy database investigators used to, changed its terms of service to exclude all members from law enforcement searches unless they specifically opted in. Overnight, the number of profiles available to police dropped from more than a million to nearly zero in 2021. Maryland and Montana passed laws restricting police use of genetic databases. At the same time, Bruce Harrington, whose brother Keith and his sister in law Patrice, were murdered by DeAngelo, became a vocal advocate for expanding DNA databases to include all felons. His efforts helped California amend its penal code, growing the state's convicted offender database from around 300,000 to more than a million DNA profiles in less than three years. Still, the debate is far from settled. Is it worth sacrificing some genetic privacy to catch monsters like Joseph d'? Angelo? Or is the power of that technology too dangerous to leave in the hands of law enforcement without strict guidelines? There are valuable arguments on each side of the debate, although for the victims and families of the Golden State Killer, the answer has always been clear. But I would love to know what you all think. Leave your thoughts in the comments, wherever you listen. In her book, Michelle McNamara quoted something the Golden State Killer had once whispered to one of his victims. He'll be silent forever and I'll be gone in the dark for 40 years. That's exactly what happened. He vanished and he expected the world to forget. But that's not what happened. Because the people at the center of this story refused to let it. Thirteen people were killed. Fathers who ran toward danger. Couples who were just going about their evenings. Young women who were home alone. People whose only mistake was being in the wrong place when a monster decided it was their turn. And then there are the survivors. The women who were assaulted in their own beds, who spent decades carrying that weight. Many of them in silence, many without ever seeing justice in their lifetime. Some of them stood in that courtroom in August 2020 and looked Joseph Diangelo in the face for the first time. After 40 years, they finally got to tell him, you didn't win. Joseph d' Angelo will die in prison. His name will be forgotten long before the names of the people he hurt. And every investigator who refused to close the file, every person who kept pushing when the trail went cold. They are the reason this story has an ending at all. Foreign thanks so much for listening. I'm Carter Roy and this is Murder True Crime Stories. Come back next time for the story of another murder and all the people it affected. Murder True Crime Stories is a Crime House original Powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media, rimehouse on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review and follow Murder True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference. And to enhance your Murder True Crime Stories listening experience, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode early and ad free. We'll be back on Tuesday. Murder True Crime Stories is hosted by me, Carter Roy and is a Crime House original. Powered by Page Studios, this episode was brought to life by the Murder True Crime Stories team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Natalie Pertsofsky, Lori Marinelli, Cassidy Dillon and Russell Nash. Thank you for listening.