All that awaits the Golden State Killer now is an end to his days in prison.
A Sacramento County judge on Friday sentenced 74-year-old Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. to life without parole for killing 13 people and raping 50 in a series of burglaries that terrorized a state.
Judge Michael Bowman handed down the sentence in the ballroom at Sacramento State University, where DeAngelo, a former police officer, graduated nearly 50 years ago with a degree in criminal justice.
Among those present for the completed proceedings were victims, family members, prosecutors from nearly a dozen counties – including the six following DeAngelo – former case detectives, and even newspaper reporters dealing with the first of the crimes of the 1970s.
Before he was officially convicted, DeAngelo came up short to speak.
“I have listened to all of your statements, each of them,” he said. “And I’m so sorry everyone I hurt.”
Contra Costa County Dist. Atty. Diana Becton called DeAngelo “the boogeyman, the man whose horrific indescribable crimes ruined the lives of so many people, lives that will never be the same, lives forever changed, moments, hours of terror that can never be erased or forgotten. “
But as the historic criminal case draws to a close, victims and prosecutors are grappling with what justice does after four decades of suffering and loss.
‘To say our family is in grief is an understatement. Calling this true justice is probably an overstatement, ”Bryan Sanchez, cousin of the 1981 murder victim Greg Sanchez, told Judge Michael Bowman in the Sacramento County Superior Court this week in three days of affidavits.
“Justice is not possible in this case,” said Jennifer Carole, the daughter of another murdered victim, Lyman Smith, and his wife, Charlene. “And therefore I can have no peace.”
The arrest of DeAngelo in 2018 marked the first cold case in the nation that would be solved by following a murderer through the DNA of his family members on public genealogy sites.
He allowed crimes that were originally attributed to multiple attackers in the 1970s and 1980s, each with his own sobriquet – the Visalia Ransacker, East Area Rapist and Original Night Stalker. It was not until DNA linked the crimes that the unknown attacker was renamed the Golden State Killer.
Friday’s hearing began with a lengthy reading by prosecutors against DeAngelo and his pleadings to guilt, as well as admission of guilt to scores of uncharged crimes.
When his crimes were read out, DeAngelo – wearing a face mask and a long-sleeved white shirt over his orange jumpsuit – stared blankly forward.
Sacramento County Public Defender Alice Michel, one of DeAngelo’s attorneys, said: ‘Nothing we can say can reduce the seriousness of Mr. DeAngelo’s actions. Nothing we say can relieve the pain of the survivors. Nothing we can say can bring the murderers back. ”
“We have heard you and we have seen and we have felt your pain and suffering,” she said. “We applaud those who have kept their loved ones alive in their memory and we are humbled by the power of the survivors. We hope that Mr DeAngelo has given some peace of mind to the descendants and their loved ones by acknowledging these crimes and we hope that these procedures have provided some relief. “
The crimes began when window was seen in DeAngelo’s hometown, Rancho Cordova. They continued with burglary in bedroom and pantyhose theft in Visalia, and then the murder of a high school instructor who caught the intruder and tried to abduct his daughter from her bedroom.
The rapes that ensued were intensified as DeAngelo began attacking couples together, and later, in order to kill them.
The investigations were often clashed by law enforcement officials who refused to cooperate, but the crimes also marked significant advances in laws and tools for criminal justice. They were urged by women’s rights advocates to successfully increase the fines for rape. A political crusade launched and funded by the family of murder victim Keith Harrington burned down a law in California that required criminals to add their DNA to a database used to hunt down criminals.
Harrington’s older brother, Ron, used his statement to the victim in court this week to make the case for exaggerating privacy concerns and maintaining police access to consumer drug sites, such as the detective used. to identify DeAngelo.
“It’s so important for law enforcement to resolve allowed cold cases with public access DNA sites,” he said.
As part of a lawsuit filed with prosecutors, DeAngelo admitted he carried out 53 attacks on 87 victims in 11 provinces, beginning in 1975 and ending with the rape and murder of a teenage girl in Orange County in 1986. Authorities believe he is also responsible for further two sexual assaults and one shooting for which he was not charged.
In exchange for his plea, prosecutors decided to spare him the death penalty. He will be sentenced to 11 life terms without the possibility of leave, to serve consistently, plus 15 life periods and eight years.
Attorneys from Ventura, Orange, Santa Barbara, Sacramento, Contra Costa and Tulare counties took part in a week in which victims told painful and often remarkable stories of human suffering and triumph with their own presentation on Friday.
There are circles upon circles of victims in the sprawling case, said Joyce Dudley, the Santa Barbara County district attorney.
“It was not enough to rape or beat or shoot his victims,” she said. ‘He wanted to bring human pain to the highest level. Therefore, he often made sure that their loved ones saw or heard their loved ones murdered. That’s who Joe DeAngelo is. ”
While DeAngelo typically drags women out of bed and rapes them away from her husband and her into other rooms, evidence from crime scenes shows the couple he murdered dying in bed next to each other. In one case, after forgetting a couple to death with a heavy piece of wood, he covered their bare bodies with a quilt and laid the bloody block of wood on top.
The first murder victim was Claude Snelling, the journalism instructor at DeAngelo High School, when Snelling interrupted the abduction of his 16-year-old daughter’s bedroom in 1975.
“The triumph and spirit of these families cry out loud over this state and this world … cry out to other families who are victims,” Tulare County District Atty said. Timothy Ward.
‘The world is being told now: never give up. You are not forgotten, “he added.
Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer, who had sought the death penalty against DeAngelo, said Friday that he still believes “that this person – not even a person – deserves this final punishment.”
Spitzer said he wanted to stare into DeAngelo’s eyes when he was rightly executed “and watch you slip quietly into the night, never again to take someone’s dreams away … I wanted to see that.”
But Spitzer acknowledged the prolonged, protracted nature of death penalty cases and said, after meeting with victims and their families, “we knew this was the right thing to do so that you could all be here today in your life.”
DeAngelo’s lawyers acknowledged the horror of his crimes and the suffering and pain of his victims. But they also read loud letters of pain, support and love from family and friends that described a different side of the man now known as the Golden State Killer.
Michel reads a statement from a niece of DeAngelo, who called him “friendly and loving” and her “favorite person.”
‘He made my life peaceful. He is part of why I am a good kind of loving person today, ”wrote the unidentified niece. ‘This is my story. This is the truth. I’m thankful I had him in my life. I would not be here today. ‘
One child friend called DeAngelo “a good father.”
Among those who submitted statements about victim was DeAngelo’s ex-wife. Sharon Huddle lived with him during the rapes and murders of the 1970s and 1980s, but did not move long after her three daughters. She finalized her divorce after his arrest.
“I have lost my ability to trust people,” Huddle wrote in a brief statement, telling the court of DeAngelo’s crimes “have had a devastating and pervasive” effect on her and her family. “I trusted the suspect when he told me he had to work, or was he pheasant hunting, or would visit his parents hundreds of miles away.”
Huddle has remained silent for most of the two-year trial, beyond expressing sympathy for victims shortly after DeAngelo’s arrest.
Huddle did not say what she wanted to happen to her ex-husband. She concluded instead, “I wish that nothing I say here would limit another person’s impact.”
