20/20 - True Crime Vault: The Monster Among Us

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

A killer terrorizes idyllic California neighborhoods in the 1970s and 1980s, evading authorities as he lives among his victims for over four decades. Originally broadcast: October 30, 2020 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This show is supported by Mind of a Monster, the Killer Nurse from ID. From 1989 to 1995, nurse Karen Gilbert killed four of her patients at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Massachusetts, and she suspected of killing dozens more. On Mind of a Monster, a podcast from ID, criminal psychologist Dr. Michelle Ward dives into the mindset of Kristen Gilbert to try to find out why she would kill her patients, and how she was able to do it in front of her colleagues. Ward speaks with detectives, journalists, nurses, and victims' families to unpack Gilbert's life and crimes on Ward C. Listen to Mind of a Monster, the Killer Nurse, wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome back to the 2020 True Crime Vault. Joseph DiAngelo was in the Navy. He was a police officer. He was married. He was like a Hannibal Lecter, highly intelligent, highly sadistic, master manipulator. His first rape attack that we know of, he was 30 years old. This was a man who was clearly living a double life. A man in a leather hood entered the window.

of a house in Citrus Heights and sneaked up on a 16-year-old girl watching television alone in the den. He pointed a knife at her and issued a chilling warning. Make one move and you'll be silent forever and I'll be gone in the dark. Crime after crime, it was that same terrifying ammo. I saw a flashlight shining down the hall and I thought, now that's odd. The leather gloves are really, really remember because they made kind of sound, you know, when they moved. He started ripping sheets or towels, I'm not sure, but it was very methodical and it was very slow. It was a time when a vast area was terrified of one evil being. This was a criminal who went by many different names.

He was known as the East Dary Rathist in Sacramento County, the original Nightstocker in Orange County. A 29-year-old wife was raped while her tied. a husband had to listen. A 17-year-old girl was attacked here. He would put his knees on the victim's chest. And he had a gun in one hand, a flashlight in the other. Peepings, prowling, stalking. Over 100 burglaries.

Police think he checks the home out before he striped. He put plates on the man's back. And he told the man, if I hear these rattled, I will kill you wife. At least 13 homicides. This is a sustained campaign of cruelty and viciousness that lasts a few decades. a decade. Welcome to crime scene, a podcast that examines real-life crimes. I'm Michelle McNamara of Truecrime Diary.com. Michelle McNamara was a true crime blogger. She was a writer and producer. She was a citizen detective and a true crime writer. Very much being a mom during the day, very much

writing about true crime at night. She was working on all different types of unsolved cases. Then she found a case that really dug its claws into her. What turned him on was terror. The East Area Rapist, original Nightstalker, is California's most prolific serial offender. He murdered more people than the Zodiac killer, but has little name recognition. Partly that's because he moved between communities, and his crimes spanned 10 years. Everything about it is a mystery, and it has such a bogey man aspect to it. Michelle used to talk about this case, and the thing that boggled her mind is that people didn't know about it. This was one of the most horrific serial killers in history,

and nobody talked about him. It's summer, 1976, it was the bicentennial. It's all about happy days. Laverne and Shirley. In those days, the middle class in America was thrived. We felt safe, but the crime rates were going up. But suburban Sacramento was considered a safe place in the mid-70s. You could ride your bike all over town.

My parents would just tell us be home before dark. People didn't lock their doors, they left their windows open, especially people close to the river. We'd get the Delta breeze. Everything changed in the summer of 1976. An attack occurred in Rancho Cordova. Young lady woke up, and there's a guy standing in the doorway.

They blindfold her, tied her up. And then sexually assaults her. This is the first known sexual assault attributed to the man we know as the East Area rapist. Nobody knew about the first attack except the police. The first attack, the second, the third, the fourth. When this first started in Sacramento, a lot of the people didn't know what was going on. They didn't put it in the paper at the time. The press had not yet covered it because Sacramento County Sheriff's Department asked them not to.

There was a reason for that, that if you put it in there, the suspect's going to know that you're looking for them. At the time the rape started happening in Sacramento, Sacramento Sheriff's Department didn't have a specialized sexual assault unit, just whoever had a free caseload, you know, that could take on another case. And so I did not become involved with these cases until rape number five when it was Jane Carson. I was 30 years old. I was married with a three-year-old son. My husband was stationed at McClellan Air Force Base. Jane was a nurse.

She was a colonel in the Air Force Reserve. It was about 6.30 in the morning. My three-year-old son hopped in bed with me for a snuggle. I heard the garage door close, and I knew my husband had just left for work. I saw a flashlight shining down the hall, and I thought, now that's odd, and I screamed out to my husband, what have you forgotten? And there was no answer. Then the rapists all dressed in ski mask and dark clothes shining a flashlight at her.

He told us with clenched teeth, shut up or I'll kill you. He tells her to turn over and he's going to tie her up. He gags us, both of us. He blindfolds us and he ties us up with shoe laces, very tight. His next move was to move my son. I was already scared to death, but this is where the fear really took place. All she's thinking about is the life of her little boy

and saving him. After the rape was over, praise the Lord, he moved my son back next to me. I could feel his body, and then I was relieved. So we hobbled around to the front fence, screamed for a neighbor. She called the police. And then Carol Daley, the female detective, showed up.

And I call her my angel. One of my great heroes of this story is Carol Daly. She was an investigator for the Sheriff Department in Sacramento. She was asked to go out and interview the victims. Maybe something that the man said or something that he did to you or something that you recall hearing. Through that process, she was able to glean a lot of information, like what he would say to his victims. And sometimes he would call out a name. In one of the cases, the victim said that she heard him crying and saying, Bonnie.

For years, detectives didn't know what to make of this name. Who's Bonnie? Bonnie was not a victim, but a mystery woman at the center of the case. Bonnie was the girlfriend and then fiancé of Joseph DiAngelo. One of the first women to get a real glimpse of the psychopathy behind Joe DeAngelo was, was Bonnie Colwell. She's 18, really smart, going to a community college studying nursing.

And she's in the middle of the quad. And this older guy ambles up to her and begins a conversation. Bonnie talked about her relationship with Joe DiAngelo in the HBO docu series All Be Gone in the Dark. He was very gregarious, outgoing to all my friends. We'd been together close to a year. He gave me a high solitaire engagement ring.

And he told me that we're going to be married. They were both students at the time. He was studying criminal justice. So Joe was someone who initially was impressive to Bonnie. He was exciting. He had a motorcycle. He taught her to shoot. But the longer she dated him, the more trouble

began materializing. He takes her on thrill rides. And this is where the relationship starts to show its hand with Joe. Joe, without saying a word to me, just turned right, went down a very steep bank that I had no idea what he was doing. He's obviously thrilled not just by the speed,

but he's thrilled by Bonnie's terror. The rules were never for him. So many of the things that we did together, he pushed me toward fear. As they're riding on a motorcycle, the German Shepherd comes out from the side, of the road and nips at the tires and Joe swings a foot out and breaks the dog's neck instantly. There's such an efficiency to his movement that stunts her. Eventually Bonnie

said, I don't want to be with you anymore. She actually broke their engagement. He showed up at her house in the middle of the night. He had a gun and he told her that she had to marry him. Just inches from my face, there was the barrel of a, of a gun. got pointing at me, and it was Joe. What he said to me was, get your clothes on, get dressed. We're going to Reno, and we're going to get married tonight. Her dad was able to break it up and send Joe on his way. I think it's a foreshadowing that he was going to use violence against people in the future.

Bonnie breaks her engagement with Joe DiAngelo, and within just a few years, strange crimes start happening in Rancho Cordova. He would empty female underwear drawers and perfect. line up the underwear down the hallway. It's all control and power. This is my house now. These are my items now. He's the king of the house.

Every obsession needs a room of its own. Mine was strewn with coloring paper on which I'd scribble down California penal codes and crayon. It was around midnight on July 3, 2012, when I opened a document I'd compiled listing all the unique items he'd stolen over the years. He would take momentos, almost like they were trophies from inside the home. He would steal rings with engravings on them.

He stole driver's license. He stole photos from albums. There is a fantasy component about these crimes. I still have a part of you. I have your jewelry. I have your driver's license. I have, you know, something that means something to you. And now I own it.

He was a serial rapist. known as the ear, attacking women and girls, first in East Sacramento County. This place meant something to him. He attacked here first and kept coming back. Was it home? Some of the investigators, especially the ones who worked the case in the beginning, think so. We were always trying to figure out why victims were chosen and why the locations were chosen. For Joe DiAngelo, this was his home, right?

in his own backyard. He lived in three or four houses in this exact same area where many of the rapes were committed. He grew up in Rancho Cordova. He was familiar with the playgrounds, the schools, the empty lots. This is the home of the first documented rape that occurred in Sacramento County. He was very agile. He could jump over fences. He knew which way to go. from whatever neighborhood he was in he knew that the best way to get in and out he knew this area like the back of his hand he grew up there joseph d'angelo junior grew up the son of a master sergeant in the air force who moved around a lot we met joe when he was 13 years old my father was stationed at matherer air force base and then his father was transferred

there and we shared a duplex. The girl became very close to him at the time. Judy described a very lonely boy. He was missing a family. His mother and father had split when he was young. At a very young age, he was neglected. He and his siblings would be locked in the closet and then beaten by the father.

Per his siblings, Joe DiAngelo received the worst of his vitriol and anger when they were growing up. Joe was always over to our house and he just became a good family friend. He never talked about himself. He never talked about any problems he might have. He never discussed anything that was bothering him. They started reporting, you know, the peeping Tom's here in Rancho.

And I remember I was in the bedroom and I was asleep and I had this feeling. I woke up because I had this feeling somebody was there. And when I looked up and glanced towards the window, I saw this outlined figure. I didn't do anything to let them know I saw them that I was aware of them. So the next morning I came in here and I said, Dad, I said, somebody was peeking in my window last night. And he says, what? And I says, yeah. And there was footprints out there in the dirt, two distinct footprints there.

It's very common for sexual offenders to start out, particularly in adolescence, as peepers or voyeurs that are creeping around. around the neighborhood, looking in windows, watching women undress, almost like a training ground. Many of us had never seen anything like this before in our career. His whole thing was terror. It wasn't the sex. It was the terror that he wanted to put in these people.

That was his number one priority. His victims ranged in age from 13, I think, to 39. Out of the first 10 attacks, six of those were juveniles. Oftentimes, sex offenders or sexual assault and murders will start out with, I guess, easier victims, victims that are younger, that are more vulnerable, victims that he can control.

My name is Chris Padretti. I was 15. I was a kid, just a normal kid, cartwheels in the front yard, and really not a care in the world. It was not ever even a thought that our world might be unsafe. So it was a week before Christmas,

she'd been left home alone. I was supposed to go to a high school dance. And it was the last day before Christmas vacation. I put a pizza in the oven, and I went to go play the piano. I remember hearing a noise and I stopped playing and listened. Didn't hear it again. No, it was nothing.

So I kept playing. It was very shortly after that, probably seconds, that he approached me. She turned around and she saw a man in a ski mask. I froze. The brain stopped thinking at that point. I mean, I just went straight into survival mode. I don't remember thinking at that point, anything other than kind of turning into a robot, just do what he says, do what he says. It was like Chris had left the body, and it was just the body left.

That individual led her to the back patio. She tied her up. I didn't know about rape. I certainly didn't know about sex. What he did to me, what he took from me, I can't ever get it back. He kind of ruined my childhood. You know, he took it away. Everybody knew something was going on, but nobody knew exactly what.

The sheriff decided that we would hold community forums. I had no idea. There were going to be several hundred people that would show up. If we have a gun, could we shoot him? knowing what I know about this man if I had a gun I definitely would shoot him and I would not shoot to injure I would shoot to take care of him

he liked this he liked the police being on edge he liked the town being on edge I have a gun but I still don't feel safe being at home alone law enforcement was bracing for more attacks as his rampage of violence continued his tactics were changing

And no one knew what he would do next. I have to admit, I'm scared to death. The young girl made one bad move after another. Her attitude was much too inviting. She should never have stopped to window shop at night. In the 1970s, when a woman reported rape, she was shamed, she was blamed, she was blamed. Often she was ostracized by her own community. Rape cases really weren't considered serious.

They were misdemeanor. You had to make an arrest within a year or else they were not prosecuted. Even if an arrest was made, the defense was always it was a victim's fault. Rape was such a prevalent crime back in those days that there were multiple serial rapists operating in California. 217 were reported last year.

That's about one every day and a half. In the Bay Area, you had the stinky rapist who smelled like diesel fuel. I had pillowcase rapist. He had the key car rapist. When the East Area rapist became active in Sacramento, he quickly upstaged all the other rapists in the area because of how terrifying his M.O. was. Concern over rape is mounting in this community.

There was panic in the city of Sacramento. The fact that they couldn't catch this guy, this ignited the city in fear. No one knows where or when he'll strike again. They were getting guard dogs. They were putting in alarm systems in their homes. Have the dog in the house, a big dog. The worst thing is not knowing. All you can do is take every possible precaution and then hope that he gets caught before he gets too.

you. Every day in the newspaper, it was number eight, it was number 10, it was number 15, 20. You know, it just kept going on and on and on. It seemed like every time investigators thought they were getting close, he would disappear. But he kept attacking again and again. He was elusive, like a puff of smoke in the night. Detective Carol Daly wanted this serial rapist behind bars. She was relentless in her pursuit of him, but constantly frustrated by the fact that they couldn't catch him. The officers in this department are working on this case are frustrated because there's just no evidence to give any firm leads.

We're doing everything humanly possible to catch this man. He was a phantom. Descriptions ranged pretty widely. One person thought he was Hispanic. And now all of a sudden, he's blonde hair, blue-eyed. There are like eight, nine, ten drawings of him, and they have completely changed. The best descriptions that we had were his height and his possible weight. We knew we wore a size nine shoe.

When the police were taking the victim statements, many of the women described his penis as being very, very small. We said, all right, if he is so under-endowed, we went to a doctor who specialized in what I would call infantile penises. to see if he had any patients that came in. And we didn't have any luck there. It's a very serious situation. I think it's very dangerous. And the last thing I think of when I'm going to bed is I look at the doorway in my bedroom

and I think that he could be standing there. Detective Daly was following every leave. We filled out a long background form for the victims. Where did they go to school? What did they look like? What age were they? You know, what was their bill? There was no pattern among any of them.

victims because he was just prowling he would see them and follow them home Margaret Wardlow she was just 13 years old when she was attacked by the East Area rapists Margaret was probably the strongest young victim I have ever talked to growing up in Sacramento was great where we lived was ideal it was right next to the American River go down there with my dog after school, go fishing. Totally felt safe. Margaret had a curiosity about her. She wanted to know about the East Area rapist. I was a reader of everything I could get my hands on that had to do with this individual. Like, what was making this guy tick? Why was he doing this? She herself

became a victim. I believe there was a pre-wired strength in her mind that helped her survive this attack. It was a school night, just my mother and myself. I went to bed at like a regular school night hour. I was awoken about 2.30 in the morning with a flashlight in my face. I thought it was a joke. I thought my mom had asked him to like come in and wake me up and scare me or something. As he tied her up and then went into the

mother's room, Margaret knew that either her or her mother were going to be the victim. The rapist tied up her mother and put plates on her back as a warning device. He did that with so many of the victims. when there was more than one person in the house. 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. Putting the dishes on someone's back, he knows he has to do something either. Hurt them, flee. So as much of the bravado as he's trying to convey, he's scared of the physical confrontation. A little voice inside of me said, you know, you get out of a lot of stuff, Margaret,

but you're not going to get out of this one. The whole time he'd been threatening me, he'd been saying, do you want to die? He wanted fear. He wanted to see fear in me. This is your psychological sadist. He is enjoying, controlling that woman like that. This guy was so beyond the pale, and that was why Michelle was so interested in him, is because he was so frightening. The way he walks around people's houses and the way he destroys them and sort of hangs out and eats, there's something so psychological.

fascinating about that to me. It's like he got to the emotional center of people's lives and just wanted to destroy that. Michelle caught the bug. She started going down the rabbit holes in this case. At this point, instead of writing a book, she was investigating the case. I'm obsessed. It's not healthy. I know the strangest details about him. I know his blood type. I know his penis size. He vaulted fences. He escaped foot chases. He escaped foot chases. but I believe it's the rare moments when he was human that will be his downfall in the end. As time went on, this East Area rapist

started to crisscross Sacramento attacking women home alone or women with their kids in the middle of the night. He seemed to be expanding what his capabilities were when he was carrying out these crimes. He became much more aggressive. and his tactics. He did more horrible things than I can even describe. This tells us that the offender is adapting and learning as he is committing crimes.

He really messes with people's minds, both the investigators and the victims. Part of the thrill of the game for him was a kind of connect-the-dots puzzle he played with people. He stole two packs of Winston cigarettes from the first victim and left them outside the fourth victim's house. junk jewelry stolen from a neighbor two weeks earlier was left at the fifth victim's house it was a power play a signal of ubiquity

I am both nowhere and everywhere you may not think you have something in common with your neighbor but you do me Michelle started as a blogger talking about cases that no one else was paying attention to and trying to get people motivated to look at those cases.

The case dragged me under quickly. Curiosity turned to clawing hunger. I was on the hunt, absorbed by a click fever that connected my propulsive tapping with a dopamine rush. I wasn't alone. I found a group of hardcore seekers

who congregated on an online message board and exchanged clues and theories on the case. Citizen sleuths, they are ordinary people that go to work, they go home, they put their kids to bed, and then they go on the computer. And they spend hours and hours trying to solve certain crimes. My name is Paul Haynes.

I was Michelle McNamara's research collaborator. When I first began learning about the case, there was a specific forum dedicated to the East Area Rapist was the most active forum on that. website. Paul Haynes was a writer living in Florida and Michelle recognized that he had a great proclivity for digging into old archives and things. It was a case that a lot of citizen detectives got into because there were so many clues. Irons wasn't a super villain. He was a man, a guy with habits and traits and preferences that with enough examination should shine like

Hansel's breadcrumbs in the woods. My name is Kay Gilbraith, and I call myself a researcher. I started seeing patterns emerging to me where I became convinced it was solvable because all of the crimes had common bonds. He was leaving ligatures at the scene with this particular knot. He would eat food out of the victim's refrigerators. I was spending every waking hour

trying to find men who fit the criteria. And it was at that time. that I first connected with Michelle. It's a fascinating community. I had been on those boards for a while following this story because everyone had such great information. Michelle's quest was to get this case solved. She just had an abiding curiosity

in letting the details lead us to the perpetrator. The East Air Rapists would target not people, but neighborhoods. You can see the proximity of these homes to green belts, drainage ditches and creeks and canals. We believe he used the canal as an escape route, which ran along the back of so many properties. He was a great escape artist. These are passageways that this killer used

to surveil the residents unseen, cloaked by the darkness of these green belts. He was able to look over those fences, look into those homes, look at what time people ate dinner. I mean, he knew what time the husband left. The Sacramento Sheriff's office has invested more than 40,000 man hours in the search for the East Area rapists. Sacramento would have a helicopter up in the sky, and they all knew it was because they were chasing the East Area rapist. It was terrible. It was terrible to hear that.

Well, he didn't like it either. And it turns out that he served in Vietnam. He left Sacramento because of that helicopter. Then these things started up in the East Bay of San Francisco. There are two things known about the rapist. One is he has never been caught in a home where there was a man present. The other is he's never been in a home where there has been a big dog. The East area rapists worked on challenges.

Everything he saw in the paper, we said he didn't do something he did it the next time. When the newspapers reported that he was just attacking, single females, he took this as a challenge. At attack number 16, he's starting to attack with a man present, and then two-thirds of the attacks he does since then, has a man present. He is purposefully choosing couples. My name's Gay Hardwick.

My name's Bob Hardwick. And we've been married 41 years this August. Happily married 41 years. Bob and Gay Hardwick were a couple living in Stockton, California. We had picked out a home in one of the little picture-perfect tree-lined streets. We were just happy in our new home, living together. The day of our attack was March 18, 1978, and we were attack number 31. We had gone out to dinner.

and a movie. Normal Friday night, and we came home around 10 o'clock and went to bed. Later that night, we were awakened by very bright light right in our faces and a voice saying, wake up, wake up.

The attack on Bob and Gay Hardwick was much like all the other attacks in that he confronted Bob and Gay when they were in bed. He ordered her at gunpoint, to bind Bob. Nothing you can do when there's a 357 magnum pointed at your head.

He then bound gay. He retied Bob. Turns him over, puts the plates on his back as a warning device. Things would go silent for a period of time. And then as soon as they moved, he was right in their face. Move and I'll kill you.

Ultimately, he moved gay into the living room. where he sexually assaulted her. You're convinced at that moment that this is not a full human being that you're dealing with. He can not only humiliate a woman who's about to rape, but he can also completely in his mind

emasculate her partner, putting him in a position where he is helpless and has to listen to what's going on in a different room. These attacks are happening in the macho 1970s, you know, $6 million man. We have the capability to make the world's first bionic man. And Bert Reynolds, you know, these are the icons.

And the men were not looked at as victims. They were looked at as just being weak for not being able to protect their wives and their girlfriends. I never talked to anybody about it over the years. I just wanted to put it out of my mind, you know. It was, well, we're going to get through this. We're going to get back to normal. And you don't ever really, really make it to normal. It was tough.

But, you know, I loved her, and I said we're going to get through it. Our home never felt the same again. Every surface that you could think of was covered in fingerprint dust. It just looked like a smoke bomb had been set off in our house. It was contaminated and ruined for us. He wasn't out attacking people on lover's lanes or in parks. He was attacking people where they feel the most safe, in bed with their partner, in their home.

And he was able to say, you know what? I have so much power, I can take all of that security away and devastate your life. Why couldn't they catch him? Somehow, it was always one step ahead of law enforcement. And they wondered, could he be one of us? After the East Area rapist would terrorize these women, sometimes he would call them and taunt them.

Hello. Hello. I'm going to kill you. This rapist did not stop with just the assault of that night. he terrorized them their whole lives this is that psychological sadist at work he is getting off on continuing to cause fear in his victim I'm Michelle McNamara of truecrime diary.com

Larry Crompton is a retired lieutenant for the Contra Costa Sheriff's Department. He worked on the rapist task force in the 70s. How optimistic are you that, you know, that he may be caught one day? I'm very, very optimistic. I had worked many, many crimes while I was on the department, but none of them were really like this. I knew what these people went through, and I knew what the family was going through. I couldn't let it go.

And for many, many years, it was me. What did I miss? What did I do wrong? Why didn't I catch them? Helicopters, roadblocks, citizen patrols taking down plate numbers, hypnotists, psychics, nothing. You were assent and shoe impressions.

Bloodhounds and detectives tracked both. They led away. They led nowhere. He next shows up down in Modesto in June of 1978. He attacks a couple down there. And then 48 hours later, he's up in the town of Davis, over 110 driving miles away and is attacking a UC Davis co-ed there. early Wednesday morning the infamous masked man made his 44th attack on a young couple living in mission

San Jose it was as if he knew what police were doing and all along many of the detectives who were working the case thought that that maybe he was a police officer or a military and ultimately that turned out to be true You should have seen me coming. One of the things that's important to remember when you're looking at Joseph Angelo is he actually graduated with an associate degree in police science. He had told Bonnie that his aspiration was to join the California Highway Patrol. He studied evidence and he studied crime scene. He went to Northern California.

California, and he applied with the Auburn Police Department and was hired there. And then that's when he started his rapes. He actually started out committing crimes as a teenager. At some point, he even blew up a dog with a firework, killed the dog while he was committing a residential burglary. It makes sense that somebody who has a need for control wants to be in power would be attracted to a position that allows him to have that every single day.

When I was working the cases, I thought he's got to be in law enforcement. The first clue was an attack number three in Sacramento. He had gloves on to protect from fingerprints, and he's got a gun in one hand and a padded baton in another hand, and he says, freeze, or I'll shoot. We felt so strongly that he could have a law enforcement background that we were looking at every officer in our department who fit the description of the height and the weight and the shoe size.

Up to that point, he would sometimes take his clothes off doing his sexual assault. Carol and I figured out how to fingerprint the human body. We found out that fingerprints stayed on the skin for really just a very short period of time, but there was an iodine technique that we could use to try to pull them off. Carol, I talked to the guy in charge and said, don't talk about this in the radio. They blasts dissolve over the place. Just a couple days later, his gloves never came off. There's no question you know what we're doing.

The police have one last bit of advice, and that is, don't panic because that alters your judgment. And by the way, that advice goes out to anyone in the Bay Area, not just the people of Concord. Because with this guy, the next rape could be anywhere. Michelle was a mother and she was a wife. When she took this book on, this investigation became her life. It's really the obsession is with the investigation. And she knew that when you look at cases out there, famous serial killer cases, they were caught with innocuous things.

He was, first and foremost, it seemed to me, a burglar, a cat burglar. I think Michelle felt that if she could find one of the items that had been stolen in any of those rapes or in any of those burglaries, she could trace that item back the way you would trace someone's ancestry to its original owner. And that would lead to the offender's identity. And in one case, this offender stole a pair of personalized, monogrammed cufflinks. It was the initials N.R. They were like a 1950s style. So Michelle took this and thought, if I could follow those pair of cufflinks, we might get closer to the answer.

Then I saw it, a single image out of hundreds loading on my laptop screen. They were going for $8 at a vintage store in a small town in Oregon. My husband was on his side sleeping. I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at him until he opened his eyes. I think I found him, I said. This show is supported by Mind of a Monster, the Killer Nurse from ID. From 1989 to 1995, nurse Karen Gilbert killed four of her patients at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Massachusetts, and she suspected of killing dozens more.

On Mind of a Monster, a podcast from ID, criminal psychologist Dr. Michelle Ward dives into the mindset of Kristen Gilbert to try to find out why she would kill her patients and how she was able to do it in front of her colleagues. Ward speaks with detectives, journalists, nurses, and victims families to unpack Gilbert's life and crimes on Ward C. Listen to Mind of a Monster, the killer nurse, wherever you get your podcasts. This show is supported by Odu. Imagine you're a business owner who has to rely on a dozen different software programs to run your company, none of which are connected. And each one is more expensive and more complicated than the last. It can be pretty stressful. Now imagine Odu. Odu has all the programs you'll ever need connected on one simple platform, giving you peace of mind that your business is always taken care of from every angle. Odu has user-friendly,

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It was never enough to commit the horrible crimes. It always had to be, and let me do something more. We all want to think that we would recognize. a serial killer based on how this person looks. I wonder if he was out stalking his next victim? I don't know, because everything seems so normal. The scariest aspects of serial killers is they don't look different. From the very beginning, I knew DNA was going to solve this case. Police had been sitting on this genetic fingerprint for four decades.

Holy smokes, this is like the big break. He's been living there under everybody's noses. This is the Golden State killer. I just want to tell you, buddy, to rot in hell. Michelle McNamara was a true crime blogger. She was a citizen detective and a true crime writer. She was talking to her publisher about writing a book that didn't have. have an ending. My interest in crime has personal roots. The unsolved murder of a neighbor when I was

14 sparked a fascination with cold cases. What gripped me was the specter of that question mark where the killer's face should be. I need to see his face. He loses his power when we know his face. When I'm puzzling over the details of an unsolved crime, I'm like a rat in a maze given a task. The world narrows. The search propels. I felt in the truest sense of the word gripped. I had a murder habit, and it was bad. I would feed it for the rest of my life. I considered Michelle McNamara a friend. She impacted the Golda's Day killer case. One way we're able to keep on investigating the case is to have public interest, to have the online interest, and she helped push that. On a sleepless night last July, I googled a description of a pair

of cufflinks he stole, then a jolt of recognition. There they were. I bought them immediately. The best thing to do I knew was to turn the cufflinks over to an authority on the killer. As soon as I saw those cufflinks, I thought this is pretty astonishing. I photographed those and sent those to surviving victims because it was potentially a very good lead in the case. Unfortunately, the cufflinks didn't pan out. The victims looked at them and they weren't the cufflinks that were stolen. And she was devastated. I don't know Michelle was convinced she could solve the case, but I believe that she was convinced she could make a difference

and that she wanted to do it for the victims. He forced the woman at night point to tie up her boyfriend, then he tied her up and raped her. The East Area rapist has struck 40 times in the last two and a half years, and he hasn't been caught yet. He started inflicting real physical pain on the victims, like punching, giving black eyes. One of the most sadistic things I think that he would do would be to say to them,

I'm going to cut off a piece of your wife and bring it back to you. We knew that he was becoming more and more angry. As fear in the community intensified, Detective Carol Daly held regular public forums. One thing I want to emphasize, ladies, is for you not to be polite. If you are going to defend yourself, you injure him enough to incapacity him in any way that you can. I started working with these cases, and I thought, if I can talk to one of the people that deal with these rapists, maybe I can get into the head of what I'm looking for. Vacaville Medical Center is where they have rapists that have been convicted. The men were asked what they thought was motivating the East Area rapists.

The mere fact that he ties his victims up has to have them completely submissive. You can sense the conquest he had. You're not what you think you are, and you won't accept it. So you strike out to prove to them that you are, but in reality you aren't. And until you face that, you're going to keep on and going and going. If I'm willing to kill you, the first move you make, you're going to be dead. The doctor told me, you had better catch him. He is going to kill.

He wants to kill. He first becomes a burglar, and then he progresses to sexual assault, and then proceeds to escalate to murder. The East Area Rapists disappeared from Northern California in July of 1979. He showed up in Santa Barbara in October of 79, and shortly thereafter, he starts killing. The Pacific Ocean was warming up, an inviting churn of white caps making its way towards soft sand and an endless line of 100-foot palm trees. Golden teenage boys with blank hair and effortless muscles headed for the water. with their boards and a gate, the locals called the Surfer Bouts.

This was Santa Barbara's magic time. Dr. Offerman was an orthopedic surgeon. He had begun dating a psychologist named Alexander Manning. In the morning of December 30th, 1979, some friends of Robert Offerman's had shown up at his condo for a tennis game. There was no answer at the door. I went in the sliding door and looked around a living room. On the floor, there were Christmas ornaments that had fallen off on the ground.

Some Bullen's right by the sliding door, which I thought he would leave me there. So we knew something was wrong. So I took her right towards his bedroom, and that's when I saw Miss Manning on the bed, and he was on the floor. Offerman of Manning, both were shot and killed. It was the holidays. As authorities processed the crime scene, they stepped around a turkey carcass wrapped in cellophane that had been discarded on the patio. They concluded that at some point the killer had opened the refrigerator

and helped himself to Dr. Offerman's leftover Christmas dinner. It was never enough to commit the horrible crimes. It always had to be, and let me do something more. Let me go into your refrigerator and eat your holiday meal. The level of depravity that this man had and the execution of it was despicable and shocking. Larry Crompton, who led the Ear Task Force in Contra Costa County, reached out to Santa Barbara investigators and told them this sounds like the East Area rapists that we've been dealing with.

When I called Santa Barbara and talked to the lieutenant and said, I heard that you had a double homicide, would like to know about it because we think it's our rapist that is down there. And he said, don't know what you're talking about. Haven't had anything like that. Nope. Law enforcement agencies weren't necessarily as connected as they are now. I think there was still this thought that these are isolated instances throughout California. And that was it.

It was so frustrating. I am sure that Larry Crompton called many jurisdictions because he truly believed that the rapist would move on and become a killer. Santa Barbara is an enclave of rich people. You've got Ronald Reagan. You've got people that are worried about their property values. They don't want news about a double murder. in a house going wide. Pretty soon it gets off the front page.

He gets a taste for not only murdering people, but murdering them after these prolonged, terrifying times in their homes. In 1979, a new and terrifying chapter. He starts a killing spring. Two double murders in Galita, one double murder in Ventura, the murder in Irvine,

and the double murder in Dana Point. The rampage of violence was brutal and unstoppable. Four horrible murders within of six-block radius in a suburban middle-class neighborhood. We knew it was the same person, but we couldn't prove it. Profilers of that day said, I know of no one who does what this offender does. I thought once he started killing, there's no way he can stop,

and he's going to continue to do it. 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. After 1981, we don't have an attack for five years. Well, I think people slow down in life. You don't have that sort of energy to be prowling. Like you literally can't be out at 3 a.m., like running across roofs, because you're not 18 anymore.

I don't believe that his sexual deviances went away, but I can believe that he found other less risky ways of satisfying those urges. Could he have moved out of the state, out of the country, could he have died, got medicated? I mean, I don't know. In 1981, Joe D'Angelo became a father, the first of his sister. three daughters was born, the second of his three daughters was born in 86, and then his third daughter was born in 1989. He had a wife who was a lawyer. He lived in middle-class existence. He sent all his girls through Montessori schools, and he would take him to their different sports events, the horseback riding, the roller skating.

We all want to think that we would recognize a serial killer based on how this person looks. And yet so often, this is somebody who's living in the community who knows his neighbors. And I think that is one of the scariest aspects of serial killers is they don't look different from other people. My sister and I, Melody, used to take turns going out and babysitting while Sharon was in school. And I didn't start thinking about it until after he was arrested because when they started showing all these dates I'm going oh my goodness I wonder if he was out stalking his next victim I don't know it's been five years with no more rapes or murders by Joseph D'Angelo some reason he runs across beautiful 18-year-old

Janelle Cruz and can't help himself and kills her Janelle was kind of a shy girl. She was very pretty, very popular. The brief life of Janelle Cruz was no less tragic than her death. Her biological father was long out of the picture. Her parents had gone to a cruise with her six-year-old brother, and she was staying at the residence alone. For the first time, left my daughter alone, because that was another thing that I never did, because I was worried that if I was gone, that something might happen. Chanel Cruz had had a friend over to the house and heard noises in the backyard. They got up to inspect that, saw nothing.

And sometime that night, Chanel was confronted by an intruder. She was raped, and then she was bludgeon to death. And I got that telephone call that every mother, any family member is just devastated by the Janelle case just felt like such an outlier because

he had decided to go after couples and then he had stopped for a really long time and then he attacks Janelle and then that seemingly is his last attack some think you died or went to prison not me

I think you bailed when the world began to change. In the 1970s, there was no DNA. The investigators had evidence but couldn't connect the crime scenes. They needed the science to catch up. DNA didn't enter the forensic landscape until about 1986, 1987. It would take 15 years for DNA to finally link the Northern California East Area Rapist Series, with the Southern California homicides as all being done by one man. I was immediately on the phone to Larry Poole down at Orange County Sheriff's Office,

and we're talking about, holy smokes. This is like the big break. But detectives still had no idea who he was. I got a little excited maybe in the first 18 to 24 months, but over the years, I chronicled and logged over 8,000. 8,700 suspects in the investigation. After five years, we got no match, and after 10 years we got no match, and we just were not getting a hit.

When people have asked whether it worries me that the killer may still be out there, I waved dismissively, pointing out that he'd be much older now. He can't hurt me, I say. Not realizing that in every sleepless hour, in every minute spent hunting him and not cuddling my daughter,

He already has. Michelle McNamara was a mom, married to actor Patton Oswald, investigating this case and working on a book. Patton describes her as staying awake at all hours of the night, would not put down her computer, would not put away the files. At the same time, struggling with her writing and publication deadlines, and she began self-medicating. I actually see her as being his final victim. I got an email from a friend of Michelle's, and he told me that Michelle had passed away that morning. I think I went completely numb.

I eventually learned that she had fallen asleep and didn't get up. According to the medical examiner's report, Michelle died from a combination of fentanyl. of fentanyl, Xanax, and I believe Adderall. And that's when the magnitude of her loss hit me. I immediately thought, what can I do? I can help finish this book. When Michelle passed, we decided at the end of the book,

what are the strings that she left us to get us out of this maze? It was genetic genealogy. From the very beginning, I knew DNA was going to solve this case. During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures. And see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute.

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Unless canceled, ends 1, 526 terms of lie. Thousands of pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and only one person knew what it was supposed to look like. That one person wasn't Michelle. It was the killer himself. It has now been 40 years. years that one of the most prolific serial killers in American history has managed to allude police. The man known as the Golden State Killer has been linked to 50 rapes and 13 murders.

Police are frustrated and running out of Leeds. I have no path to go on this investigation. None of the tips are coming in or anything that I'm excited about. So I'm floundering. When Michelle passed and me and Paul were working on the book, We talk about what are the strings that she left us to get us out of this maze. And it was genetic genealogy. Forensic geneal was something that Bouchal was excited about, and that seemed like the most viable direct pathway to this offender's identity.

Hi, and welcome to 23 and Me. Companies like Ancestry.com and 23 and Me had already been using genetic genealogy for years, allowing me millions of customers to spit into a tube and use their DNA to discover family roots and long-loss relatives. Ancestry.com searches the world's largest online family history research. Is a growing number of particular of adoptees are realizing these sites that are really created for learning about family history can help me start to figure out who I'm biologically related to. Hi! To help people to find their biological mothers, to find their biological fathers, to find their biological father,

How are you? To find siblings, to find cousins. It wasn't too long for people to realize, wait a minute, what if we use the DNA of criminals to try and identify their second cousins or third cousins and try to narrow it down from there? I start learning how this technology could be used. We become blown away at the power of it,

and then we recognize this is the way we need to go. need to go. But then there was a concern as to whether we had enough DNA. I had consumed all the East Area Rapists DNA doing all the testing I had done over the years. And he found a pristine DNA sample going back to the 1980 murder of Lyman and Charlene Smith and Ventura County. A second sexual assault kit in the coroner's office that had never been opened. To my knowledge, there are no other medical examiners who make duplicate rape kids.

In March of 1980, Lyman and Charlene Smith were found bludgeon to death in their bed. It was a horrific scene that I will never forget. Got arrived at the scene with my little suitcase, a two-brack, dry ice, and a microscope. I always made duplicate kits, and both kits were identical. 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 the swabs collected from Charlene Smith's body were pristine. Police had been sitting on this genetic fingerprint for four decades.

waiting for the science to catch up. Genetic genealogy had only been used to solve a criminal case once before by a woman named Barbara Ray Venter. I've always liked puzzles. I used to love playing Clue when I was a kid. What I've discovered is that law enforcement are pretty big gossips, and so they were all sort of talking amongst each other, and apparently Paul was talking to the detective on the...

the other case. And I was like, how did you do that? I call Barbara up and I explain, I'm working a case. It's an old case. I don't tell her what case it is, but could this be done to identify this unknown offender? So Paul Holes was able to take that DNA and convert it into a DNA profile, which is basically a number. He used this no frills genealogy website called Jedmatch.

And I just uploaded the Golden State Killer's profile and allowed the Jedmatch servers to do their magic and produce the list of people that potentially shared some DNA with my offender. We were all logging in several times a day to see if the matches are there. Then all of a sudden, he started connecting to some distant relatives.

We're talking third, fourth, fifth cousins. So we immediately knew that we were going to be building a lot of family trees to sort out who he was. We're now trying to identify common ancestors from this list of people who share DNA with the person we're looking for. And we end up spending four months building family trees.

And unlike if you were to upload your DNA to a website and try to build out a family tree from yourself being the beginning point. This is reverse engineering a family tree. So you start with a wide swath of potential relatives and by a painstaking process of elimination you start cutting down that pool. Narrow it down, narrow it down, narrow it down. Genealogy testing had indicated that our offender was of European descent. 40% Southern European. And a number of the matches that we had

were with people who had Italian so names. Once it came down to that final pool, that's when the real detective work began. You had to hit public records. Things like marriage certificates, birth certificates, gravesite markings. So now we only had six men on the list.

So now they had to be a certain age. They had to be in Northern California. And they had to be related only through the maternal line to our crime scene DNA. And at that point, we then had one other piece of information that we hadn't applied yet. And that was eye color. She looks at a separate tool on a related site that suggests that their suspect had blue eyes and was bald. The FBI then pulled the California DMV records for those six men. Only one had blue eyes.

Joseph DiAngelo. Joseph DiAngelo. Joseph DiAngelo. After four decades and countless hours of detective work, it's an emerging technology, genetic genealogy, that finally gives investigators their strongest lead yet, a name. Who is this guy? I need to start drilling down on him, and I'm now within a couple of weeks of retiring.

So I'm trying to find out as much as possible, as fast as possible, about Joe DiAngelo. He's not in any of the criminal databases, so police start putting together a case to either eliminate him or prove he is in fact the man they're looking for. Physically, he was within the specs of what we are expecting for the Golden State Killer. Born in 1945, a little bit on the older side, but most certainly within that 1940 to 1960 range. Investigators started zeroing in on Joseph DiAngelo, and they started digging up things about his past. He goes into the Navy. We know he is stationed in San Diego. We know that he spent some time overseas.

Joe DiAngelo returned to Sacramento, began working with the Auburn Police Department. He had a nickname on the department. It was junk food, Joey. He would always have a Coke in his hand, a bag of chips, a candy bar. He really violated people's space all the time. Get kind of close to your face and always be touching you. He had been fired from Auburn Police back in 1979. He had been observed shoplifting, a can of dog repellent, and a hammer from a Citrus Heights drugstore. He was accosted by the clerk. He was subsequently arrested. Auburn Police Chief Nick Willick had to fire DeAngelo at the time.

And the chief said, when Joe was put on administrative leave, he had threatened to kill me. I immediately remembered back to my daughter, you know, being afraid. A short time after he had been fired, she said, there was someone looking in my bedroom window with a flashlight. She said he got up and ran outside. That man was gone, but there were shoe impressions all around the perimeter of his house. But there's another huge piece of the puzzle

they had been investigating in relation to possible suspects, and that piece also seemingly falls into place in DeAngelo's story, Bonnie. Bonnie. There's a newspaper clip from an Auburn journal about the engagement, and there's this picture of a young brunette. She's 18 years old. announcing his engagement in 1972, a woman named Bonnie Colwell.

Remember, Bonnie was one of DeAngelo's early girlfriends who broke off their engagement. So suddenly, Detective Holes and others were like, wait a minute, could this be Bonnie? That we remember following early on in the case. And of course, Bonnie was significant due to the victim in attack number 36. While the East Area Rapist is literally raping that victim, he is crying and he's saying, I hate you, Bonnie, I hate you, Bonnie over and over. I'm now within days of retiring. It's like, okay, I've got to go boots on the ground on this DiAngelo.

More and more things connect and click, you know, right place, right time. let's go see if this is the guy. I'm now my second to last day at work and I go, I have to go see this guy where he's living and I park on the curb directly opposite from DiAngelo's house. There's a car in the driveway, I'm pretty sure he's home and I'm sitting there and I'm wondering

what's the likelihood, really, that this is the Golden State Killer? A day before his retirement, Paul Holes literally has the suspect in his crosshairs. It's been a 24-year hunt, but he uses restraint and turns in his badge the next day. It was a tough decision to drive away from that house that day. I was upset. I was like, you know, I didn't solve this case before I retired. The Sacramento Sheriff's Office picks up where Paul Holes left off. And so what they have to do next is conduct surveillance on Joseph D'Angelo.

And what they're waiting for is an opportunity to collect his DNA. And they secretly follow him to a shopping plaza. But Joseph was not smoking, he was not spitting out gum. So what they had to work with was he had a car. They swabbed the door handle. And that gave them something that's called TouchDNA. They were able to pick up an initial DNA sample and some fingerprints from his car door.

I'm sitting in a Chinese restaurant in Colorado Springs, and my cell phone rings and it's Lieutenant Kirk Campbell from Sacramento DA's office. You can absolutely not tell anybody about this. And at that moment I go, okay. And he says, the lab is excited about this. It's mixed with DNA from other people, but it looks like it might be a close match.

But the Sacramento DA was saying, we want a cleaner sample. cleaner sample. So they stake out his house, wait for him to put out the trash. He puts his trash out on the curb. They get a guy that comes and collects the trash. They sneak over and pull tissue out of the trash bin and take that back to the lab. And one of the items out of the trash had a single source male DNA profile that matched 100% the Golden State Killer's DNA profile. Get this call from my chief deputy.

His first words are, are you sitting down? And I asked him a million times and I'm like, you better not be messing with me. He goes, they're shaking, Amory. They're shaking at the crime lap. They got a match. But now they have to get the suspect into custody. So they call Paul Holtz back to assist with the operation.

There was concerns about how he would respond if this did not go smoothly. I can imagine they were prepared for every. scenario. This is somebody who has been a sophisticated, a diverse, sadistic killer. A law enforcement team now gathers outside DiAngelo's home for the takedown. He and his wife have been separated for decades, and he's living with his daughter and granddaughter. The hope was is to get him away from his house in order to be able to do it safely. So at a certain point, DeAngelo's all far off to the side of his house. It looks like a prime spot.

And then we just hear, over the radio, go. It's Kelly Clarkson here to talk all things, Wayfair, the best place to buy furniture, decor, and anything else you can think of to create a home you absolutely love. I know when I shop with Wayfair, I find options for every style, whether I'm feeling boho or farmhouse, modern, traditional, French country. I can find exactly what I need for my home and more.

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Run on for a long time. He's been called the East Side Rapist, the Vyselia Ransacker, the original night stalker. Gone on for a long time. And the Golden State Killer. Today, it's our pleasure to call him defendant. Sooner or later, God will cut you down. That bombshell arrest, that former police officer. 72-year-old Joseph James DeAngelo.

He's been described as one of the most prolific serial killers that terrorized California for decades. Sooner later, God will cut you down. The arrest of Joseph DiAngelo dropped like a bomb. all these years hiding in plain sight. Oh my God, he's living in Sacramento. He's been living there under everybody's noses for all this time. It was stunning. It's a moment when you realize that 40 years of work by a lot of folks

to bring some answers to some family members was becoming real. It's just unbelievable after all these years they got him. I feel I reverted right back. That part that I was so successful at tucking away in my brain, that door opened. I was shaking. It was hard to process. I know after I got the call, the tears welled up.

Thousands of nightmares and thousands of sleepless nights have come to arrest. It was just something that was on my mind for all those years. want them caught before I die. We can finally put a face in a name to this massed individual that was terrorizing all these communities back in the 70s and 80s. Joseph DiAngelo's first arraignment in court. Just make sure your cell phones are silent. It was a complete madhouse.

It was a zoo. And the front rows were family members of victims. and victims themselves. We're all super, super nervous. I start sobbing and sobbing, and I couldn't stop. Joseph James DeAngelo. And then that moment, Joseph DiAngelo, in a red-orange jumpsuit that says,

prisoner on the back, rolls in in a wheelchair, hunched over, his hands handcuffed. This is the Golden State Killer, this old man, And he looks so harmless. And I think that is exactly the impression that he wants to create. Is Joseph James DeAngelo your true and correct legal name? I'm sorry?

Yes. At that moment, you could hear gasps. There was something about his voice that clearly brought back years of pain and fear. I thought this has got to be a big act. In the week prior, he's riding a motorcycle at high speeds. He was walking around just fine. And within a day of his arrest, he's all of a sudden bound to a wheelchair. But then, the jail surveillance camera tells a very different story.

He's climbing up on the bunks and getting up on the vents and cleaning things. Doing exercises in the jail cell. He's a master of disguise. He used that during all of his crimes, and he has continued to use it, but now in a different way. Victims are still processing it. And the big question, why? Why did he do all of this?

What really did transpire? Why he became this person, this a predator? I think that's a million-dollar question. Mr. DeAngelo, would like to make a brief statement. I'd like to get into his mind to talk to him and find out what brought him up to where he was. There is no recipe for a serial killer.

We can see all of these markers or all of these risk factor. along the way. We have a physically abusive dad. And a relative reveals a bombshell in that HBO docu series All Be Gone in the Dark, detailing how Joseph DiAngelo, at the age of nine or ten,

allegedly witnessed his younger sister being sexually assaulted. She was seven years old. The very thing that happened to my mother is the very thing that my uncle. went and did to other women. How sickening is that?

It would be so easy for us as forensic psychologist. If we could kind of go, a person is abused, and therefore they become this kind of offender. The vast majority of people don't turn into serial rapists and serial killers. So it's hard to feel the sympathy for these offenders or to say that this event made him do it. Bonnie certainly is not responsible.

certainly is not responsible for DiAngelo's actions. And the breakup did not cause those actions. Sentencing today for the so-called Golden State Killer. Former police officer Joseph DiAngelo Jr. committed rapes and murders all across California. This is the matter of the people's state of California versus Joseph, James, DeAngelo. This will be the first time that these people have seen him

since the nights that they were victimized. This is a network of people that have come together that never knew each other, but share one thing in common. On March 18, 1978, Jody Angelo attacked us while we were sleeping. He kidnapped me from my bed. He raped me repeatedly. I want you to look at me.

You bound my wrist and ankles. You blindfolded me. Remember that? At three different times that night, I thought I was going to die. No 13-year-old should have to find out what a rape kit is. My family couldn't hide the agony in their faces. What matters is that you. You will spend the rest of your life in prison, and I survive.

I just want to tell you, buddy, to rot in hell. You will forever be known as a repulsive coward who hid behind a mask of evil. The devil can keep you company in your prison cell as he gnaws away at whatever soul you have left. Mr. DiAngelo would like to make a brief statement. I've listened all your statements. And I'm really sorry to everyone ever. Mr. DiAngelo is sentenced to a total of 11 life without the possibility of parole sentences plus an additional life sentence plus an additional eight years.

The survivors have spoken clearly. The defendant deserves no mercy. In the end, we may have lost a battle one night, but we've won the war of life. We're nearing the end of a very long journey here. It shows that justice doesn't have a time limit. You can still find answers decades and decades later if you're willing to do the work. Inside Michelle's computer, she had a letter, and it was her writing directly to the Golden State Killer. One day soon, you'll hear footsteps coming up your front walk.

This is how it ends for you. You'll be silent forever, and I'll be gone in the dark, you threatened a victim once. Open the door. Show us your face. Walk into the light. You've been listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault. Friday nights at 9 on ABC, you can also find all new broadcast episodes of 20. Thanks for listening.

A 20-year-old soldier goes missing from a U.S. Army base. How can she go missing on a military base? That's too ridiculous. What would come to light is horrifying and ignites a movement that sparks a reckoning in the U.S. military. Listen to Vanished. What happened to Vanessa? A new series from ABC Audio in 2020.

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