20/20 - True Crime Vault: Golden State Killer

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

A series of rapes in Northern California. The rapist moves down the coast, his crimes escalating to murder. Originally aired: 05/04/18 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the 2020 True Crime Vault, where heart-stopping headlines come to life. Hello? Hello? He told us with clenched teeth, shut up or I'll kill you. Sorry, it's just, you know, finding out what she went through. Tonight on 2020, the so-called Golden State killer a 40 year old cold case back in the news tonight. The police are saying lock up tight Is this my last moment alive he wanted fear he wanted to see fear in me hands tied legs tied One of the most notorious and elusive serial killers in American history.

He's a pro. Nobody even knows what he looks like. He was like a puff of smoke in the night. We have his DNA. We just need a name to go with his DNA. Tonight, we have one. I think they got him. Now we're taking you inside the epic manhunt. We have a master suspect nameless of 8,000 hands. Honing in on his MO, he would balance plates

on many of his victims. That was his thing, you know, if he hears the plates rattle, he's gonna come back. And how they developed a profile from the bizarre details. What was he saying? Mommy, mommy, I don't wanna do this anymore. Why am I doing this? I have talked to victims who said he called them

in the 90s and said, I'm coming back. Now, how an obsessed detective and his team and a tiny DNA sample almost forgotten in cold storage for four decades led to last week's arrest. Finally, I got to see the face of the man that I've been hunting for 24 years. And you won't believe the man authorities say is behind the mask. I'm Elizabeth Vargas.

And I'm David Muir. And this is 20-20. And ABC's with Johnson tonight reporting this hour. He's been on this story from the start. And he begins tonight with the words from an author who spent much of her life obsessed with this case. Control was this offender's chosen language. It was in the bindings, the blitz attacks.

He ruled in the houses he sneaked into. A static mask imposing horror. Tuesday, October 5th, 1976. It was about 6.30 in the morning. My husband had just left for work. My three-year-old son hopped in bed with me for a snuggle. Within one to two minutes, I saw a flashlight shining down the hall, and I screamed out to my husband, What have you forgotten?

Next thing I knew, I looked up, and there was a man shining this flashlight in my eyes with a ski mask on holding a large butcher knife. He told us with clenched teeth, shut up or I'll kill you. She would soon become victim number five. But before that terrifying morning, she was simply Jane Carson, a 30-year-old nursing student at Cal State Sacramento, living with her Air Force pilot husband and their young son in the suburb of Citrus Heights. Life was very good back then. Just a normal routine, getting up in the morning, taking my son to daycare, and then I would go to school, come home, fix dinner. That month's number one song was Chicago's If You Leave Me Now.

Rocky was due to hit theaters. A new president, Jimmy Carter, was on the cusp of election, and Sacramento was still an up-and-coming capital city with a small-town feel. It was a sleepy town. Friendly, safe. People didn't lock their doors. You could park your car in the driveway and you could leave it unlocked. You could leave the keys in it. And you didn't worry about your safety. That was until 1976. For Jane, her once secure home would soon become her prison. The next thing is he gags us, blindfolds us, ties us up with shoelaces.

He started ripping sheets or towels, I'm not sure. But it was very methodical and it was very slow. That tearing sound, he's doing that purposefully because he knows the victims can hear that. He wanted to inflict absolute fear and suffering in these victims. And that was his primary goal. His next move was to move my son.

This is where the fear really took place. My heart was pounding through my chest and I just prayed, dear Lord, please, please let my son be safe. And he came around and he untied my ankles. I wasn't paying attention to the rape. I was paying attention to what had he done with my son. After the assault, her son is put back in bed with her. I could feel his body, And then I was relieved.

And then he said, don't move or I'll come back and kill you. Then he goes into the kitchen and he starts rattling pots and pans. It's like he's cooking something. And I went, wow, this is really off the wall. This is really weird, strange. When her attacker finally leaves, the sun is rising. Jane and her little boy still bound in bed.

Then she breaks free. When I got my blindfold down, would you believe that my three-year-old was asleep? That was God's protection for that child. Carol Daly, a detective with the Sacramento Sheriff's Department was one of the first on scene. By the time our patrol officer got in the area and started looking for him, he was nowhere around, nowhere close. No, there had been four similar attacks in Sacramento in recent months. At what point did you realize you had a serial rapist on your hands with Jane Carson? When we look

back and realize she was number five of similar rapes. In each case, the same meticulous, petrifying MO. He always had a mask on, he always had gloves on. Sometimes he would break into the house the night before. Part of that is probably to figure out the layout of the house. He would be in there anywhere from one to three hours in the assault. They could hear him going into the kitchen. He would eat food.

He would drink a beer. This was about power for this guy. This was not about sex. He's thinking to himself, I'm king here, and I'm just going to relish that feeling. So he would just make himself at home. Knowing that he had the victim secured. He would find their wallet, he would take their

driver's license and say I know where you live, I know who you are. He took rings off the victim, take some of the jewelry, anything that would be a memento for him to look back and say that was my victim. And he's simply driving a stake through people's psyche. After Jane's attack, there are three more rapes just that month. Police had been keeping them quiet, certain they would soon solve the case. But public safety was at risk and rumors had begun to spread. It was almost like wind through the trees. Everybody knew something was going on but nobody knew exactly what. The sheriff decided that we would hold community forums.

If you are going to defend yourself, you must injure your attacker. I had no idea there were going to be several hundred people that would show up. Concern over rape is mounting in this community. I live alone and I would like to learn how to protect myself. I imagine a lot of women in the area are scared and are nervous. Terror gripping the city. Residents desperate to protect themselves from a madman now dubbed the East Area Rapist. People in these quiet East Bay suburbs have wondered and worried.

Wondered about why the police can't catch the rapist and worried about their own homes being violated. Locks were flying off the hardware shelves. I don't like it. It's getting too close to home. I put locks on my doors, people's in just last week. Gun sales soared. They just want to protect themselves and protect their families. I have a gun but I still don't feel safe being you know at home alone. Every day in the newspaper it was number 8, it was number 10, it was number 15, 20, 28, 30, you know it just kept going on and on and on.

This map of the area showed the rapist's brazen ability to strike wherever and whenever he wanted. This particular rape happened within one block of another rape. The initial attacks are on women, home alone or with their children. But then, the East Area rapist shifts his target to couples. It tells me that this guy has the self-confidence in his abilities to be able to go into a house

with the threat of this male present and take control. One of the town meetings addresses the new development. A man stood up and said, I don't believe somebody could be raped if a man was in the house. What happened to him? Well, several months later, he and his wife were victims of the East Area Rapist. It's chilling to think that this guy said, oh yeah, really? You think you can protect your wife? And then he attacked them.

I believe the rapist was in that room and followed him home. It's a completely devastating story of predatory evil connected to the psyche of the town in a way I've never seen before. Until he's caught, this area will continue to live in fear. This one man could change a city. Next. I was fortunate that I was number five because after my rape he became much more aggressive. As time went by we felt that our next call was going to be to a homicide. Stay with us. The IRS is the most powerful collection agency in the world and with the April 15th deadline

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Now streaming on Hulu. It's a serial killer case. He's the dumber you've never heard of. I definitely felt the presence of evil. But did he act alone now finally? Not many people live to tell about their involvement with the serial killer. The one man who helped break the case. Never before a face-to-face interview with the camera.

Why now? Let me ask you, what do you think? Am I the evil culprit, the accomplice? I'd like to know how the audience views me. The Fox Hollow Murders, playground of a serial killer, now streaming on Hulu. The majority of violent fantasizers never act. What makes the ones who do cross over?

The daydreamer steps out of his trance and into a stranger's house. stranger's house. Every time the East Area rapist strikes in the new city the police switchboard lights up. Cocker, police department, we're getting an awful lot of calls. Some people even turning in their neighbors because they think he might be the rapist. It's the fall of 1977.

Sacramento, California is under siege. A violent serial rapist on the prowl. With this guy, the next rape could be anywhere. This guy was a menace. He was striking time and time again. The fact that they couldn't catch this guy just ignited the city in fear. A lot of people are buying guns. The cops say that's a bad idea, noting the weapons are a bigger danger than the rapists.

This spunky 13-year-old named Margaret Wardlow couldn't get enough of those headlines. It was really piqued my interest. Like, what was making this guy tick? Why was he doing this? Anything that she could read or hear about on TV of the East Area rapists, what was making this guy tick? Why was he doing this? Anything that she could read or hear about on TV of the East Area rapist, she was just intrigued by it. Thursday, November 10th. It's a school night. Margaret goes to bed early. I was awoken about 2.30 in the morning

with a flashlight in my face. And I knew at that moment, this is the Easter rapist most likely. Margaret's mother tied up in the next room, the rapist stacking plates on her back. He did that with so many of the victims when there was more than one person in the house. Why would he stack the plates?

So if he heard anybody moving, he was right back and told them, don't move, don't move. I'm going to kill you. I'll kill you. Like an alarm system? Yes, like an alarm system. The whole time he'd been threatening me, he'd been saying, do you want to die? And I answered him very clearly, saying, I don't care.

He said, I'm going to kill you, and you told the serial rapist, I don't care. I knew by telling him this, he most likely would leave sooner than later. He wasn't getting what he wanted He wanted fear. He wanted to see fear in me Margaret was probably the strongest Young victim I have ever talked to She was victim number 27, but the attacks continued to escalate, now spreading to neighboring cities.

He moved on to Stockton, Modesto and Davis. He surfaced in Concord and San Ramon. Then two nights ago, he hit Fremont. The East Area rapist taunting his victims even further with chilling phone calls. I'm gonna kill you. I'm gonna kill you. F***ing whore. He would say things like, remember the fun we had. And sometimes it was just heavy breathing, but they knew it was him.

How long after the fact would he make these calls? Sometimes it was within a week and sometimes it was years later. So it was as if as soon as a victim started to get comfortable, he would circle back and try to prolong the fear and suffering? He did everything he could to make sure that he tormented them for the rest of their life. The infamous masked man made his 44th attack. Our biggest problems are in being able to clearly identify a suspect. What did he look like as far as what the victims were saying?

5'10", 180. We thought he had lighter brown hair. The eye color was sometimes dark, sometimes light. Some said he had a strange smell. Did the victims give a description that was unique about him? Most of the victims described him as having a very small penis. Detective Carol Daly says they thoroughly checked out all leads.

There was not a stone left unturned in trying to identify this rapist, and we didn't have any luck there. Authorities canvassed neighborhoods, surveilling at all hours. They even brought out canines. All those resources and yet you still couldn't catch him. No we didn't catch him. There were a few physical clues left behind but a blood sample showed the East Area rapist had a rare genetic condition that would eliminate 85% of the population. They would bring a cloth out of a little kit

and you would chew it so they would get your saliva. We went to UPS briefings and delivery people just volunteered, officers, because at one time everybody thought it could be a cop. Was there a point in time when there were clues that maybe he was former law enforcement or military? In attack number three, they're confronted with this man. He's got a mask on, he's got a t-shirt on, and he's got a gun in one hand and a padded

baton in another hand. And he says, freeze or I'll shoot. When you look at his tactics, he definitely had an understanding of how law enforcement would respond to this type of attack. He understood how law enforcement would investigate that. Well, he was definitely good at getting away with it. He was very good at getting away with it. And there is something else striking. The East Area rapist reportedly said during one of his assaults, unnamed.

He is sobbing and saying, I hate you Bonnie, I hate you Bonnie, over and over. What was the significance of that? That he had some significant female in his life named Bonnie and he had some anger against what Bonnie had done to him. And he's taken that anger out on this victim that he's raping. The only thing we really know about the East Area rapist is that he's a pro. He's been at this for four years now and still nobody even knows what he looks like. We felt that our next call was going to be to a homicide. We really felt he was ready to kill.

Suddenly the spree of sex assaults stopped abruptly in 1979 with no rhyme or reason. What investigators didn't know was their biggest fear had come true. The rapist reemerging in Southern California, now a killer. It can happen to you and it apparently can happen without reason or motive. Ten murders in succession, earning him the nickname Original Night Stalker. Among the victims, prominent attorney Lyman Smith and his wife Charlene.

Daughter Jennifer was just 18 at the time. He was bigger than life. He loved to laugh. Charlene was vivacious, musical, loved to cook. She had a flair for style. They had been bludgeoned in the head with a log that had been collected from a wood pile outside the house. It was horrible to think you're blindfolded, your hands are bound, they're behind your back. Charlene's body was processed for sexual assault evidence and semen was found.

Police preserved that semen sample from Charlene Smith's rape kit. It would take 17 years to match the killer's DNA to the DNA collected at three other murder scenes. So they worked them independently for many, many, many years. It wasn't until the advent of DNA technology in the mid-90s that they were able to link a crime. Then, four years later, in a stunning development, authorities are finally able to connect the original Night Stalker

to the East Area Rapist. This serial offender was probably one of the most prolific, certainly in California, possibly within the United States. Your serial rapist in Northern California was the same serial killer they were dealing with in Southern California. How significant was that development? Holy smokes, this is like the big break because they got more insight, 50 cases worth of investigation. Now they know the rapist and the killer are one man, a 10-year crime spree spanning 500

miles. a 10 year crime spree spanning 500 miles, at least 12 murders and 50 rapes investigators say, now rebranded as the Golden State Killer. We have his DNA. We just need a name to go with this DNA. How a genetic roadmap led investigators to an alleged criminal mastermind. The DNA came back and it's looking like it's him. Next.

2020 continues with To Catch a Killer. It was a power play, a signal of ubiquity. I am both nowhere and everywhere. You may not think I have something in common with your neighbor, but you do. Me. Despite the discovery of a DNA link among his many vicious crimes, the man known as the original Night Stalker would elude investigators for decades.

How frustrating was that at the time to have the DNA but not have a name or a face to go with it? I mean, it's frustrating. have a name or a face to go with it. I mean, it's frustrating. The clue that would unlock the mystery of the Golden State serial killer for police was hidden inside that 1980 murder of Lyman Smith and his wife Charlene. I'd arrive at the scene with my little suitcase, a tube rack and dry ice and a microscope. Pathologist Dr. Peter Speff investigated the Smith case when the use of rape kits was in

its earliest stages. Speff had an unusual methodology. I always made duplicate kits and both kits were identical. To my knowledge, there are no other medical examiners who make duplicate rape kits. Spath's decision to make two kits would prove prophetic. That turned out to be a gold mine for us, because that second kit had sat in the coroner's possession for 38 years untouched.

And so these swabs collected from Charlene Smith's body were pristine. For years, those pristine swabs languished in an evidence room, past rows of case files. The DNA of the man, who authorities say killed 12 people and raped 50, sat undisturbed in a freezer. For almost four decades, police were sitting on a genetic fingerprint, waiting for the science to catch up. Little did they know that years later, a brave new world of genetic genealogy would begin to flourish.

Ancestry.com searches the world's largest online family history resource. Now, everyone looking to find their family roots or a long-lost relative could spit into a test tube and compare it to millions of other samples. About 2009, this new type of DNA to use for genealogy was introduced, and it's become a huge industry. CeCe Moore, a genetic genealogist, helped pioneer the use of DNA to help build family trees and has helped thousands find long-lost relatives. You're a mom. Give me a hug.

Adoptees and people with unknown parentage started coming to me and asking me to identify their birth parents. But law enforcement was slow to realize its power until Detective Paul Hulls started to wonder, could this genetic genealogy create a roadmap to a serial killer? I started watching these PhDs, these genetic genealogists explain the technology. And I was like, that looks interesting.

Hulls went back to that freezer and took the killer's DNA information and uploaded it onto a no-frills genealogy website called GEDmatch. How did you plant the mystery DNA of that unknown attacker into the website? I created an undercover account and I just uploaded the Golden State killer's profile and allowed the GEDmatch servers to do their magic and produce the list of people that potentially shared some DNA with my offender.

Why did investigators choose GEDmatch? It's a public database. The largest databases, 23andMe and AncestryDNA, only accept saliva samples. And so you have to spit in that tube, create quite a bit of saliva, so you can't get that from a crime scene biological sample. And remember investigators had that DNA from a 1980 crime scene rape kit to work with.

So investigators, even if they wanted to, they didn't have the ability to submit a sample on something like Ancestry or 23andMe. That's correct. And those companies have purposely tried to make that difficult because they they don't want law enforcement using their databases for these purposes. Jedmatch says they were not approached by law enforcement. Their policy statement says users should expect their information will be shared with other users. And despite the Jedmatch database being significantly smaller than 23andMe and Ancestry.com,

Detective Hulls got lucky. I got a list of individuals that shared DNA with the offender on the order roughly of third cousins to fourth cousins. Hull spent months building out family trees, working with a team of investigators, including a genetic genealogist. They pored over obituaries, gravesite locators, census records, and DNA databases to begin a process of elimination. In the end of this painstaking process, narrowing down, sifting through the family tree, how many people did you end up with in your final group? We start looking at his geographic profile and seeing that he has a Sacramento area connection

and a Southern California area connection. We're evaluating these people that were of the right age, they are of the right physical size that we knew our offender to be. Somebody who's roughly 5'8", 5'10", 160, 80 pounds. We had settled on roughly five. How do you narrow in on Joseph D'Angelo? We started focusing on Joe D'Angelo because he looked better than the remainder. But still at that point, he wasn't a prime suspect, was he? No, in fact, he was just somebody who rose to the level, as many people have.

It wasn't anybody thinking, this is the guy. To narrow the focus, police knew they needed to get fresh DNA from D'Angelo to match against that 1980 sample. How did they get the DNA from him? By a surveillance team that watched him for days and when he went to a public location he discarded some of his DNA at that public location that was then collected. Learning new details about the arrest of the suspected Golden State Killer case.

With help from genealogy websites years and years later a genealogy site Paul Holes retired in March after nearly three decades chasing the killer but was so driven He was still actively working the case. Where were you when you got the news? I was outside a restaurant in Colorado I received a call from the Sacramento DA's office and they told me, don't say a word, but the DNA came back and it's looking like it's him. When we come back, how did the man accused

of being one of the most notorious criminals in American history blend into his neighborhood, his workplace for over 40 years. He's been right here the whole time, under all of our noses, living his life. Most violent criminals smash through life like human sledgehammers. They're caught easily, but every so often

a blue moon surfaces. A snow leopard slinks by. The reason that he has evaded capture for so long is that he's so evidence savvy. After an hour and a half, it was over, and he fled without a trace. It was like he knew every step that law enforcement was doing all along.

With this guy, the next rape could be anywhere. In my estimation, he's the most prolific major crime perpetrator, maybe in American history. It's April 25th, 2018. Police say they now have the Golden State Killer in custody. Forty-two years after the Golden State Killer commits his first crime, a break in the case drops like a bombshell. Thousands of nightmares and thousands of sleepless nights have come to arrest. The man accused of being one of the most violent serial criminals in American history

is found hiding in plain sight. Finally, I got to see the face of the man that I've been hunting for 24 years. He's 72-year-old Joseph James D'Angelo. That former police officer who authorities say went on a reign of terror for so many years. And I just was shaking everywhere, just shaking, like the adrenaline just flood. The Vietnam War veteran is discovered living in this sleepy Sacramento suburb. Living just a few hours away from you. Can you say the balls involved in being right here

under all of our noses? He's been right here the whole time living his life. Authorities say D'Angelo was tinkering on a woodworking project in his garage when investigators took him into custody. The only thing he really said was that he had a roast in the oven. Joe D'Angelo appeared to live a quiet and normal life, working 27 years at this grocery

distribution center fixing trucks before retiring last year. He was married to a local attorney, the couple raising three daughters before reportedly separating in 1991. Were you surprised to learn that Joseph D'Angelo was a father, a grandfather, family man? I wasn't because I had predicted that he likely would just be blending in. It was a different story for some of his neighbors, who say the man who kept a meticulous front lawn also had an explosive temper. He would go into a yelling tirade, not sure who he was yelling at, a lot of four-letter

curse words. He'd accuse us kids here of spying on him in the backyard. He was paranoid at times. Grant Gorman, who lived in the house directly behind D'Angelo's, says his neighbor once left his family an anonymous but threatening voicemail. And it said, if you don't shut that dog up, I'll deliver a load of death. Perhaps the most alarming of revelations, that D'Angelo at one point had actually been a police officer.

In 1973, he was working in Exeter, California. I don't think anybody really got to know the guy. Farrell Ward says he worked patrol with D'Angelo for three years. And I told him he was over-educated. So why would he want to stay in Exeter? DeAngelo for three years. And I told him he was overeducated, so why would he want to stay an exeter? He should be an FBI.

It was while he was a police officer, authorities allege, DeAngelo's reign of terror begins. Now that we've identified DeAngelo, and he was a law enforcement officer, then it's like, well, sure, he's been through the academy, he's been working on the force, he understands all that, and he's using that to his advantage to commit these attacks. By then, he had moved north, working here

at the Auburn Police Department outside Sacramento. He had a nickname on the department. It was Junk Food Joey. Junk Food Joey. Yes. What was that about? He would always have a Coke in his hand, a bag of chips, a candy bar.

At times, DeAngelo's behavior made his colleagues uncomfortable. When he talked to you, he'd get kind of close to your face and always be touching you. I remember one time I told him, I said, you know, Joe, my mother doesn't touch me as much as you do. How did he respond to that? He got his feelings hurt. Nick Willick fired DeAngelo in 1979 for stealing dog repellent and a hammer from a local hardware store, saying D'Angelo

later filed a lawsuit against the department. The investigator told me that Joseph had gone to my house one night to kill me and said that he walked around the house looking in the windows but couldn't find my bedroom. And when you heard that you thought what? I just never saw him as a person who could kill somebody. But Willick says looking back he now remembers something else. A short time after he had been fired I woke up one morning and my daughter said to

dad last night there was someone looking in my bedroom window with a flashlight. Did you think that could have been Joseph D'Angelo outside your home? No, I did not. I did not. There is one more chilling detail that helped investigators target their suspect. Remember that mysterious name, Bonnie? The name one woman told authorities her rapist cried out. Could that hold the clue to the Golden State killer's rage?

You thought this guy had a grudge. He had a grudge and we didn't know was Bonnie his mom, a wife, ex wife, girlfriends. We just knew that there is a Bonnie in his life. Tell me how Bonnie's name later on helped you zero in on Joseph D'Angelo. When we're looking at Joe D'Angelo, we run across a newspaper article of an engagement to a Bonnie back in 1970.

So now we have a guy that has a Bonnie in his life, and we couldn't find any indication that they ever got married. Now, after linking the Golden State killer to 12 murders and 50 rapes, could there be more surprises for investigators? It's possible there's attacks out there that we haven't linked to him. When 2020 continues. 2020 continues with To Catch a Killer. He's been called the East Side Rapist, the original Night Stalker, and the Golden State Killer. Today, it's our pleasure to call him Defendant.

It was the first of likely many appearances before a judge last week, as Joseph D'Angelo was rolled into a Sacramento courtroom. In custody, D'Angelo. The 72-year-old appeared sullen and feeble, barely enough energy to respond to Judge Michael Sweet. Is Joseph James D'Angelo your true and correct legal name? I'm sorry? Yes. Coughing him to the wheelchair seemed almost pointless,

his eyes barely able to stay open as the charges were read. I think that he was either tranquilized or it's all in act. I don't believe it at all. Completely fake. Thought it was a big show. Yep. This is a physically capable 72-year-old man.

For him to be in that wheelchair based on what was seen in the week prior. It's fake, isn't it? The week before he was arrested, he was seen riding a motorcycle? Yes. He's the ultimate tactician. And now he is employing a strategy to get sympathy. I'm a frail old man. So far, DeAngelo has been hit with eight murder charges spread over three counties. On this day, two counts for the 1978 double homicide

of Katie and Brian Majore. No bail and a public defender. Couldn't speak. She had to lean in and touch him to hear his words. When you hear his neighbors, he could be here shouting in anger. Come on, dude. Let's make it a fair fight. Let's go stand up. Frail or not, DeAngelo will likely avoid prosecution on the 50 rapes he's suspected of. He raped a 29 year old housewife. There was a knife use and he was wearing a mask or hood of some sort. The statute of limitations has long since expired. But there's no statute of limitation on murder. It took him 40 years, but they found him. And now he's going to pay. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

But for now, there are unanswered questions about D'Angelo's alleged reign of terror. First, could it have been even worse than authorities suspect? And I was wondering, what else had he done? Who knows? He might have gone to summer camp somewhere. He might have gone to summer camp somewhere. He might have, um, you know, gone on vacation somewhere. Still, there's much speculation about one big question. Why did the Golden State Killer finally end his years-long crime spree? What do you think happened?

In 1981, he ends up going in to kill Gregory Sanchez and Sherry Domingo. He gets in a physical fight with 6'3 Gregory Sanchez. And I think that physical altercation with Sanchez scared him. We don't have an attack for five years. But then he runs across beautiful 19-year-old Janelle Cruz and can't help himself and kills her. But at this point, he's an aging offender. His testosterone might have gotten lower, he might have gotten heavier,

he wasn't able to jump around the way he was doing before. I always felt he quit because he lost the ability, maybe to control, maybe to be as agile and as quick as he used to. So he just retired from the killing business? I think it's possible, but it's also possible there's attacks out there that we haven't linked to him. Even if the killer finally gave up on rape and murder, criminal profilers Mary Ellen O'Toole and ABC News consultant Brad Garrett say it's possible the killer didn't stop in 1986.

He just moved on to different crimes or changed his MO. If you're psychopathic, you're psychopathic and you're going to take that to your grave. It is just unbelievable to me that he stopped cult turkey in 1986 because those urges don't go away. Perhaps the biggest unknown, is it even possible to know what triggered the killer's rampage? Fantasy drives him and the fantasies get richer and to fulfill whatever excitement, thrill, need, sexual thing he needs, he's got to bump it up a notch. When people have those facades of normalcy around them, with jobs, with backgrounds,

with families, they fly under our radar screen far longer than that serial killer that's out there just grabbing people off the street. Just yesterday, DeAngelo's public defender was back in court, failing in her attempt to block investigators from collecting more DNA, fingerprints, and photographs of specific parts of DeAngelo's body. As for Paul Hulz, he personally doesn't need any more evidence. Now that you've seen his face after all these years, what do you see in his eyes? I saw glimpses of the evil when he saw a female and his face turned into rage briefly. And I thought that is the real Joe D'Angelo.

When we return, the sister survivors of the Golden State Killer speak out. No matter how cold your case is, it's not hopeless. Stay with us. Unsolved murders became an obsession. I need to see his face. He loses power when we know his face. Michelle McNamara's book ends with a hope that one day a killer would be unmasked. She would have been thrilled. She would have been looking through her files, which is what every investigator is doing now that has been involved with this. Unexpectedly, Michelle passed away in her sleep a little over two years ago, before

she could finish her book or see the arrest of Joseph D'Angelo. One day soon, you'll hear a car pull up to your curb. You'll hear footsteps coming up your front walk. This is how it ends for you. Open the door. Show us your face. Walk into the light. It's been 42 years. For two years, I carried a backpack of feelings of revenge, of hate, of shame for a long time.

But I no longer carry that. I don't want them to be remembered for this. But now, they might be remembered for perhaps being the link that solved the case. The key. The key. This is indeed a game changer because every law enforcement department in the country, maybe in the world, just realized the power of genetic genealogy. I've kept a big binder of information just so I could be able to answer questions over the years and pretty soon I can burn it all.

It'll be gone. What is the most important thing that you want people to remember about this story? I want people to remember the victims. You know, everybody's going to be talking about the rapist, but the victims are the most important part of this story. Jane Carson is now an advocate for rape survivors like herself, speaking out at rallies like this one last Friday night. I have been a hot mess.

I have just been on an emotional roller coaster. Gotta make your mess a message. You can't let it destroy your life. Life is too beautiful. and an emotional roller coaster. Gotta make your mess a message. You can't let it destroy your life. Life is too beautiful. What a survivor. We will continue to follow this incredible story. And that's 2024 Tonight. I'm Elizabeth Vargas.

And I'm David Muir. From all of us here at ABC News, thank you for watching. Have a great evening. Good weekend, good night. us here at ABC News. Thank you for watching. Have a great evening. Good weekend. Good night. Thanks for listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault. We hope you'll join us Friday nights at nine on ABC for all new broadcast episodes. See you then.