![]() "You murdered her in the first-degree, bludgeoning her in the face."Ī guilty plea and life sentence avoids lengthy and expensive litigation. "You attacked her, you beat her and you raped her," Spitzer said. Spitzer, who wiped a tear at one point, diverged from other prosecutors to address DeAngelo directly when discussing the May 5, 1986, rape and slaying of Janelle Cruz, 18 - the final killing. ![]() Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer choked up as family members of the victims stood during his description of each of the four killings there. He started on the police force in the San Joaquin Valley farm town of Exeter in 1973, where he committed his first killing.ĭeAngelo was among the officers trying to find a serial burglar in the neighboring city of Visalia responsible for about 100 break-ins.Ĭommunity college professor Claude Snelling was killed by the suspected "Visalia Ransacker" after trying to prevent him from kidnapping his 16-year-old daughter.Īfter three years on the force, DeAngelo moved back to the Sacramento area, where he worked for the Auburn Police Department in the Sierra foothills until 1979 when he was caught shoplifting dog repellent and a hammer - two items that could be of use to a burglar.ĭeAngelo killed a couple walking their dog in a Sacramento suburb in 1978, but the majority of murders came after he moved to Southern California. He slipped off into the dark on foot or by bicycle and even evaded police who at times believed they came close to catching him. He stole whatever he could find, sometimes a few bottles of Budweiser and some cash, other times diamond rings. "I admit," DeAngelo said after the prosecutor read the description of that crime. He piled dishes on the backs of men and said they would both be killed if he heard the plates crash while he raped the women.Īt a home in Contra Costa County in the fall of 1978, he told a woman he would cut her baby boy's ear off if she didn't perform oral sex after he had raped her. Victims described being prodded by the barrel of a gun or the point of a knife. ![]() He would have women bind their husbands or boyfriends face down in bed with shoelaces, and then he would tie up the women. The masked prowler initially said he only wanted their money to earn their cooperation. Prosecutors detailed sadistic acts he committed after slipping into homes undetected and surprising couples in bed by shining a flashlight in their faces and threatening to kill everyone in the house - including young children - if they didn't follow his orders. The retired truck mechanic was arrested at his home in the Sacramento suburbs - the same area he terrorized in the mid-1970s, earning the title East Area Rapist. They tailed DeAngelo and secretly collected DNA from his car door and a discarded tissue to get an arrest warrant. Police used DNA from crime scenes to find a distant relative through a popular genealogy website database then built a family tree that eventually led them to him. Investigators connected a series of assaults in central and Northern California to slayings in Southern California and settled on the umbrella Golden State Killer nickname for the mysterious assailant. "I feel a lot of anger, which I don't think I've felt so powerfully before."ĭeAngelo, a Vietnam veteran and a grandfather, had never been on investigators' radar until about a decade after the crimes seemed to end. And I thought it was going to be hard," Carole said. "This is much harder than I thought it was going to be. A pile of used tissues sat on the floor next to Jennifer Carole, whose father, attorney Lyman Smith, was slain in 1980 with his wife, Charlene Smith, who was raped before being killed. While prosecutors suggested DeAngelo had been faking a split-personality, Ho said his day of reckoning had arrived.ĭeAngelo, who wore orange jail scrubs and a plastic face shield to prevent possible spread of the virus, listed to one side and his mouth hung open as prosecutors read graphic details of the rapes and killings where snacked on leftover turkey before leaving.įamily members wept as the proceeding went on most of the day. It was like in my head, I mean, he's a part of me. "I didn't have the strength to push him out," DeAngelo said. "I did all that," DeAngelo said to himself while alone in a police interrogation room after his arrest in April 2018, Sacramento County prosecutor Thien Ho said. But he muttered a confession of sorts after his arrest that cryptically referred to an alter ego named "Jerry" that he said forced him to commit the wave of crimes that appeared to end abruptly in 1986. had remained almost silent in court since his 2018 arrest until he repeatedly uttered the words "guilty" and "I admit" in a hushed and raspy voice as part of a plea agreement that will spare him the death penalty for a life sentence with no chance of parole.ĭeAngelo, 74, did not cooperate with authorities.
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