The man accused of being the Golden State Assassin, who carried out a series of rapes and murders that terrorized California residents in the 1970s and 1980s, is expected to plead guilty to dozens of crimes on Monday, June 29 in a court hearing in Sacramento. .
A former police officer who was arrested in 2018 after authorities identified him via DNA as the famous serial killer, Joseph DeAngelo is expected to appear before his surviving victims and the families of those accused of murder to accept a plea agreement that saves you the death penalty.
The Golden State Killer, also known as the Original Night Stalker and the East Area Rapist, is suspected of carrying out a twelve-year crime wave beginning in 1974 that included killing at least 13 people and raping more than 50 victims. . He is believed to have started the increasingly violent crimes in the Sacramento area before moving to the Central Valley, the Bay Area, and eventually southern California.
He would plead guilty, essentially, to being one of the most prolific serial killers in California history, although the sheer geographic spread of his alleged murders meant they would not be united until 2001.
His crimes began in the Sacramento area in the late 1970s and included the 1979 murder of Brian and Katie Maggiore, shot while walking their dog in Rancho Cordova. He then moved to the Bay Area, where he is accused of committing 11 robberies and sexual assaults in Concord, Walnut Creek, Danville, San Ramón, Fremont and San José before moving to Southern California.
The Orange County murders began in August 1980, with the murder of Keith and Patty Harrington, a newly married couple who lived in Dana Point. The killer entered the couple’s open house, tied them up, raped Patty, then covered them with bedding and beat them to death.
In 1981, a murderer broke into Manuela Witthuhn’s Irvine home while her husband was hospitalized with an illness. Investigators came to believe, they said, that the killer intended to attack the couple and was surprised to find Witthuhn alone at home, but killed her anyway.
In 1987, the same murderer is suspected of attacking Janelle Cruz, alone in her parents’ Irvine home while on vacation, raping and beating her to death. Investigators said they believe he attacked her shortly after her boyfriend left.
DNA tied the Orange County murders to one assailant, and then to the other murders and rapes across the state.
For decades, the killer eluded authorities. Larry Pool, a former investigator for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, later said he had a database of possible suspects that grew to more than 8,000 people.
The bald, cheerful 72-year-old former police officer who had spent years living in a one-story stucco house with a three-car garage in a quiet suburb of Sacramento was not included in that database. A Navy veteran who served in Vietnam and as a police officer in Exeter and Auburn before being fired for stealing a hammer and dog repellent, DeAngelo had suspected nothing.
It was a DNA match from an online genetics website, compared to DNA found at the crime scene, which would bring DeAngelo to the investigators’ radar. The authorities, who were working undercover, took DeAngelo to a Hobby Lobby and seized a piece of trash that he threw into a garbage dump to obtain his DNA.
Before the plea agreement, DeAngelo’s trial was shaping up to be a massive effort, with input from statewide prosecutors who had indicated they would seek the death penalty. Although Governor Gavin Newsom has suspended executions while in office, the death penalty remains legal in California.
This is a developing story. Return here to see coverage of court proceedings.
