“I will never be the same person,” she wrote Thursday. “I now live every day with the knowledge of how he attacked and severely injured hundreds of lives of innocent people and murdered 13 innocent people who were loved and are now missing for 40 years or more.”
Huddle never once refers to him by name and calls him by the ‘suspect’.
“I’m lost the opportunity to trust people,” she said. “I trusted the suspect when he told me he had to work, or he would go pheasant hunting, or visit his parents hundreds of miles away. When I was not, I trusted that he did what he told me he was doing. the. “
A serious rapist known by many names
During the course of his crime buddies that swept California, Joseph James DeAngelo became known as the Golden State Killer, the East Area Rapist, the Original Night Stalker, and the Visalia Ransacker. Last year, he pleaded guilty to raping more than 50 women and murdering 13 people in the 1970s and 80s. As part of a lawsuit, he has also admitted to crimes for which he has not been charged.
One by one, victims and family members took the stand, describing in unparalleled detail the horrors that the former police officer imposed on them.
One woman, who was just 7 years old and was asleep when her mother was bound and raped by DeAngelo, described to him that her mother threatened not to make any noise, that it did not wake her.
“He threatened to cut off my ear and bring it to her,” she said. When she woke up, “I could mean evil, then all hell broke loose.”
Comparing him to the fictional cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter, she said DeAngelo was “evidence monsters were real. I had met the boogeyman.”
Others recounted stupidity in the hands that lasted for months because their wrists were so tightly bound in the attacks.
More than 40 years after the attacks, most victims spoke of lifelong scars. Many show resistance and testify about not allowing their lives by defining these incidents and finding their way to happiness despite the inexhaustible damage that DeAngelo leaves behind.
Anger sown through the statements. “Can he rot in hell,” Karen Veilleux said on behalf of her sister Phyllis. Another woman supported her statement by calling DeAngelo “subhuman” and aggressively pointing her middle finger.
DeAngelo made his plea to avoid the death penalty. One man speaking on behalf of his mother said effort was futile.
“A lot of people might want to carry out the death penalty themselves, but can’t you see? The sentence has already been given. You’ve been robbed of your whole life, yet you’re too stupid to notice,” he said.
Six counties brought charges against him
Although he avoided the death penalty, DeAngelo will likely serve 11 consecutive life sentences without parole with 15 simultaneous life sentences and extra time for gun costs.
Victims in one of the six counties who brought charges against him voted unanimously to accept his guilty plea.
“Today’s plea will never bring back the lovers or restore the sense of security that was shattered, but today, after 40 years of uncertainty, dozens of victims and a nation heard the person responsible for this reign finally admit that he – and only he – is responsible, “said Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer at the time of the lawsuit.
Victims and their families have been waiting for decades for justice and to unmask the man who created a pattern of sneaking to first attack women only as with their children and then couples in their homes.
His crimes spanned the 1970s and 1980s. A free genealogy database definitely gave authorities the time they needed to arrest DeAngelo in 2018.
“In this case, justice did not move quickly, it was a long time coming. However, our victims remained firm and courageous in this whole process,” Diana Becton of Contra Costa County District said in a June news release.
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