After decades in the shadows, Joseph DeAngelo confesses that he is the Assassin of the Golden State

Now there is no doubt: Joseph James DeAngelo Jr., is the Assassin of the Golden State.

On Monday morning, DeAngelo, 74, began the lengthy process of pleading guilty to more than a dozen felony charges, and admitting many more unexcused offenses, to a Sacramento state ballroom, the place unusual necessary to accommodate the numerous victims, witnesses and media. with social distancing.

In exchange for pleading guilty, DeAngelo will avoid the death penalty and spend the rest of his life in prison. He also agreed to waive his appeal rights and will pay restitution for determining his victims. A formal sentencing hearing will be held in August.

As prosecutors in Ventura, Sacramento, Santa Barbara, Contra Costa, Orange, San Joaquin, Yolo, Alameda and Stanislaus counties recited the details of their murders, DeAngelo, who appeared disinterested, responded “guilty” to each charge. On the allegations with no formal charges attached, he simply said, “I admit it.”

The former California police officer stalked such a wide swath of the state that he collected nicknames wherever he went. In central California, he was the Visalia Ransacker. In Sacramento and the Bay Area, he was the rapist for the eastern area. In Southern California, he was the original night stalker. And eventually he became the Golden State Assassin after crime writer Michelle McNamara coined the nickname in 2013.

DeAngelo raped more than 50 women between 1975 and 1986. He also murdered at least 13 people. Those killed were Brian and Katie Maggiore, Lyman and Charlene Smith, Keith and Patrice Harrington, Manuela Witthuhn, Janelle Cruz, Claude Snelling, Robert Offerman, Debra Manning, Cheri Domingo, and Gregory Sanchez.

After Cruz’s brutal pounding in 1986, the Golden State Killer disappeared, leaving frustrated investigators chasing false leads and dead ends for another 30 years.

In his wake, DeAngelo left countless families traumatized. In addition to victimizing women, he subjected their husbands and boyfriends to the horror of hearing their partners being raped while tied up in another room. DeAngelo sometimes placed plates on his back, warning that if he heard a plate fall, it would kill them. Some children slept during the attacks, although others woke up to the nightmare and were forced to return to their rooms, alone for hours while DeAngelo wandered through the house.

The Golden State Killer was known for creating rapist personal connections with victims, calling women by their first names, or telling them that he had harassed them before. However, it is unclear if he really had ties to them. DeAngelo broke into the victims’ homes before attacking, giving him extensive access to photos, letters and other identifying details. The researchers believe that DeAngelo would pigeonhole streets for days or weeks before attacking, and that he would often attack a single neighborhood repeatedly before selecting a new one. In the days leading up to an attack, residents noticed family photos moving, closed doors they had sworn to leave open, and scratches on window screens.

Psychological terror did not end with rape. In some cases, police believe DeAngelo called his victims later. In one of those calls, a woman and children could be heard in the background, leading investigators to speculate that the killer was a family man. A woman, at the request of the police, kept her phone number for years in hopes that the attacker would call and reveal identifying information.

Decades after the last case cooled, investigators announced in 2018 that DNA led to a break in the case. Detectives sent the killer’s DNA to an open-source genealogy website called GEDmatch, where he found a hit with a DeAngelo relative who used the service. Detectives were able to narrow down their list of suspects, and eventually arrested DeAngelo after a covertly obtained sample of his trash matched the DNA linking so many crime scenes.

Left alone in the interrogation room, Sacramento County Deputy District Attorney Thienvu Ho said DeAngelo began talking to himself.

“I did all of that,” he supposedly said.

For the past three decades, DeAngelo lived in a one-story house in Citrus Heights. During many of his crimes, he was an active-duty police officer, specializing in burglary cases, in Auburn and Exeter. He was fired by Auburn police in 1979 after an arrest for shoplifting. In hindsight alone, the stolen objects took on a dark meaning: He had raised a hammer and dog repellent.

Until his retirement in 2017, he worked as a truck mechanic for Save Mart in Roseville. He had a wife and three daughters, although he and his wife separated in the early 1990s. Records from the Sacramento County Jail indicate that DeAngelo rarely, if ever, receives visitors.

Capital punishment is suspended in California due to a 2019 executive order signed by Governor Gavin Newsom. The order put a moratorium on executions while Newsom governorate lasts, but to completely repeal the death penalty, voters in the state will have to intervene. Given DeAngelo’s age, it is highly unlikely that he was executed by the state. But the guilty plea agreement sped up the legal process, something both DeAngelo’s public defenders and the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office pressed for the pressure it would put on victims and witnesses.

“Many of these people, all deeply affected by these crimes, may not be with us in time for a jury trial,” Sacramento County Deputy District Attorney Amy Holliday said Monday. “… Victims of sexual assault have waited decades for justice.”

DeAngelo has been in jail since his arrest in April 2018.

Now he will probably die there.

Katie Dowd is the SFGATE Administrative Editor. Email him: [email protected] | Twitter: @katiedowd