Cold Case Files - REOPENED: The Golden State Killer: Part 2

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

On April 24, 2018, 72-year-old Joseph DeAngelo was arrested and charged with eight counts of first-degree murder. But who is Joseph DeAngleo? And why does law enforcement suspect he is The Golden State Killer?Sponsors:Zocdoc: Go to Zocdoc.com/CCF and download the Zocdoc app for FREE. Then find and book a top-rated doctor today. Angi: Download the free Angi mobile app today or visit Angi.com Progressive: Press play on comparing auto rates. Quote at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. 

Hi everyone. Before we get started, I wanted to let you know this episode discusses stories of intense sexual violence, which may be disturbing to some listeners. Please, listen with caution. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files with the Golden State Killer, Part 2. In the last episode, we talked about the brutal crimes committed by a serial rapist and murderer in the state of California. Over 50 people were raped and 12 people were murdered. Police thought that two different men were responsible for all of those attacks, but as science evolved, we learned that wasn't the case. We ended the last episode with a huge scientific breakthrough. It was 10 years after the last attack and DNA was able to verify that one man was the culprit for all of the violent crimes

attributed to both the original Night Stalker and the East Area Rapist. The name, Golden State Killer, was coined by Michelle McNamara while researching for her book, I'll Be Gone in the Dark. Michelle died suddenly in her sleep at the age of 46, and up until her death, she was still searching for the killer. I feel particularly sad that she wasn't able to see that the suspect was arrested less than six months after her death. The man's name is Joseph D'Angelo, and right now he's a suspect being charged with a horrific crime. This is America, and he has the right to a fair trial, including the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. So today, we're going to look at the facts. Who exactly was Joseph D'Angelo? And how, and why, did he come to be a suspect?

We're also going to hear from the victims. If he's found guilty, what do they think his consequences should be? Is their opinion now the same as it was 40 years ago? Or has time changed things? And how do their opinions differ from each other? Each victim had to develop their own path to recovery, and their opinions are pretty varied. His first victim, however, has an informed and perceptive opinion about her attacker, and I can't help but admire that. I don't, I don't hold it against him. There's something wrong with him. You know, there's something not wired right or whatever, you know, for someone to, you know, to do this continually. When we left off last time, scientists had made a breakthrough discovery that the East Area Rapist and the original Night Stalker were in fact the same person.

It definitely was useful information. I mean, they had the culprit's DNA. The issue was they didn't know who that DNA had come from. DNA is a really effective tool for matching a suspect with a crime. But if there's no suspect, it loses its effectiveness. Not only did they need a suspect, they needed his DNA to compare to their sample.

It wasn't going to be an easy task in the first place, but because so many years had passed, the person they were looking for could have been anywhere, assuming they were even still alive. Finding the suspect would be difficult enough, but compelling them to give their DNA would likely prove to be impossible. I'm going to talk for a second about the laws on DNA in California. It won't get too technical, mostly because I'm not an attorney. A little later in the episode, you'll understand why this information is important. In 1994, the FBI was granted the authority to create CODIS, a national DNA database for law enforcement purposes. The premise was that the local authorities would enter the DNA profiles of convicted felons to be shared nationwide. That would increase the communication across jurisdictions. Participation wasn't mandatory,

but the federal government urged each state to provide the DNA information of convicted felons to CODIS. They believed they would help reduce unsolved crimes in which there was DNA, but no suspect DNA for comparison. Only 23 states fully complied. California's DNA laws, which were established in 1998, were similar to that of the federal government. All individuals who were convicted or found not guilty by reason of insanity for a number of violent crimes were required to give a sample of their DNA. This included juveniles. If they refused, they are fined or imprisoned for up to a year. But how do those consequences affect someone who's already being held in prison? Investigator Larry Poole wanted to compare the DNA

from the Golden State killer victims to an inmate that seemed like a plausible suspect. He made a request for the sample, but it didn't quite turn out the way he had intended. Here's Investigator Poole. They called me back and they said they approached him and he said no. And, of course, my reaction to that was, and then? And they said, well, he said no and we don't force blood out of inmates when they say no.

You're kidding. No, we're not. So I got a little bit more definitive answer as to why they don't force the issue and I asked what needed to be done to overcome that, and they basically said, change the law. Change the law. What started out as a snarky comment turned into a goal, one that Poole was determined to accomplish. He called his local senator, and together they determined the best way for the law to be changed. In 2002, Senator Jim Brulte introduced Bill 284 to the California Senate.

It would give officials the power to collect DNA from reluctant inmates by reasonable force, even though the definition of reasonable force wasn't included in the bill. This is Senator Brulte. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members. Senate Bill 1242 is a bipartisan effort to bring common sense into the DNA collection process and needed closure to tens of thousands of victims and their surviving loved ones in our community. Bruce Harrington, remember he's the brother of Keith Harrington, a victim of the Golden State Killer, spoke in favor of the bill along with several other people who had lost loved ones in violent crimes.

For those this morning who fail in their responsibilities to protect the public by defeating this bill, I say publicly, shame on you. It was an extemporaneous emotional speech, I think, directed toward those staff members and committee members who had made public announcements that they were going to defeat this bill. The state of California, however, still didn't feel that bill widened the database as much as it should be. In 2004, voters passed Proposition 69, which even further expanded the DNA laws. It widened the criteria for those required to give a DNA sample. The expansion proposed that not just people convicted of certain felonies were required to share their DNA, but everyone

convicted of a felony and some misdemeanors had to submit a sample. Additionally, any adult arrested for a felony offense had to submit a DNA sample, even if they hadn't been or never were found guilty. Though passed in 2004, Proposition 69 didn't fully take effect until 2009. Bruce Harrington, as you might imagine, was a huge proponent of Proposition 69, so much so that he donated $2 million to its campaign. Here's Bruce Harrington again. I have an obligation to my brother and his wife. We've tried to put it behind us, but it can't be put behind us. And if I have the opportunity to put something on the books to set a framework of laws that ultimately would

solve his case and Patty's case, wonderful. Like any policy that requires someone to share personal information with the government against their will, there was an immense amount of controversy and opposition. Regardless of the questionable morality of forcing someone to provide a DNA sample, in this case, it was useful. In an attempt to use all the tools available to them, investigators contacted a criminal profiler by the name of Leslie D'Ambrosia. The most important part of developing an unknown offender profile lies within the crime scene assessment. The crime scene assessment is the crux of the analysis.

And what we look at is how the offender behaves on the crime scene and behaves with his victims, because we can then generalize how the offender behaves in his day-to-day life. Let's think about his crime scene behavior. In his crimes, he targets women, but isn't deterred by someone else being present. He enjoys both the physical and emotional damage that he inflicts on his victims. He takes things, but they aren't monetarily valuable. D'Ambrosio tells the police that he likes controlling and manipulating people. He wanted to degrade and humiliate them and to make them suffer. I'm not sure if that's new information, but D'Ambrosia concludes with this statement.

This is a compulsion. Within himself, he's forced to do this. He can't stop himself. He will continue to commit the crimes as long as he's out and he is free. He has an insatiable drive to commit these crimes. I can't help but wonder, if she's correct, how many victims have gone undetected in the last 40 years.

Joseph D'Angelo was 72 when he was arrested in April of 2018. He's white, 5 feet 11 inches tall, and he weighs just over 200 pounds. As I researched his life, I came across a dozen or so pictures and there are very few smiles. In the most widely circulated picture, I assume it was taken while he was incarcerated, he's wearing a white t-shirt and standing against a gray wall.

His face though, he's wearing a deep frown, but it looks natural, like it's rested that way for years. His skin is blotchy, he's mostly bald, and his eyes kind of look blank. I mean, he's there, and he's looking at the camera. But maybe he's not really there on the inside. That last part is my opinion. He was born in New York.

His parents, Catherine and Joseph Sr., grew up there. His father was in the Air Force and died during World War II. His mother later remarried and relocated the family to the suburbs of Sacramento, California. That's where D'Angelo graduated from high school. His sister told reporters that he had never displayed any type of aggressive behavior when they were young. After high school, he joined the Navy. The facts got fuzzy when I tried to determine when and why he left, but there were no indicators of misconduct. When he returned home, he earned an associate's degree in political science and a bachelor's degree in criminal justice.

In the early 1970s, he worked as a police officer in Exeter, California. That same year, he was engaged to a local woman, but they never married. The reason was unclear. In 1973, he married a woman named Sharon. She was an attorney from the Sacramento area. Then, in the late 1970s, he worked for the Auburn Police Department, but he was fired for stealing a hammer and dog repellent from a local store. If my math is correct, that means a lot of his alleged crimes were committed during his time as a police officer. D'Angelo and his wife had three daughters. The first was born in 1981. His second daughter was born in 1986, the same year the Golden State Killer attacked his final victim.

His third daughter was born in 1989. Though they've never officially divorced, he and his wife Sharon separated in 1991, and they've been estranged ever since. He then worked at a grocery store distribution center for 27 years in a suburb of Sacramento. He lived nearby with one of his daughters and a grandchild. I couldn't find any on-the-record quotes that painted D'Angelo as a bad guy. The worst thing I found was that a neighbor called him cantankerous. I think my own neighbors have said worse things about me.

Ironically, incarcerated people don't want to share their DNA. But millions of people who are not incarcerated pay for the privilege. You've heard the ads. You send a DNA sample to a company you found on the internet. That company analyzes it and generates a report with all kinds of information about you. It's interesting and fun to know about your heritage. Well, it's fun unless a few weeks

later, 72-year-old great-aunt Myrtle finds herself in police custody. All joking aside, that's what happened. The police used the DNA they had from the victims and compared it to DNA profiles from online genealogy websites. They didn't find an exact match, but they did find a likely connection, a family member. The investigators realized that D'Angelo had many of the characteristics from the Golden State Killer's profile, so they started to watch him. They trailed him for six days. On that final day, he sneezed politely into a tissue in front of a store, and then he threw it into the garbage. The police retrieved the tissue and took it to the lab to be analyzed. I can't imagine the feeling after all

of those years of not knowing to finally have a sample to compare. And it matched. On April 24, 2018, Joseph James DeAngelo was arrested outside of his home. He's now facing 12 murder charges. Unfortunately, most of the rapes that were committed can't be charged because of the 10-year statute of limitations. He hasn't entered a plea as of the time of this recording. This is Investigator Poole explaining just how extreme the crimes of the Golden State Killer were. There have been other brazen crimes, other brazen serial offenders, but not as prolific. He's doing this time and time again.

He did it 50 times in Northern California. He's done it, I believe, no less than 10 times in Southern California and Central California. And that's extremely unique. Crimes were committed in four separate counties, meaning there are four district attorneys working on the logistics of a trial. It's possible D'Angelo could be granted four separate trials, but it's also possible that he could face judgment

for all of his alleged crimes at one massive trial. At least one of the DAs has stated that their intent is to push for the death penalty. That surprised me. Not the desired punishment. But I just didn't realize there was a death penalty in California. I looked it up, and there are actually over 700 people on death row in California. But there hasn't been an execution since 2006. A federal court called their methods of execution

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Discounts not available in all states and situations. In this situation, the Golden State Killer raped over 50 people. But the law says that because it took more than 10 years for a suspect to be found, he can't be charged for those rapes. A law, once implemented to prevent wrongful conviction conviction seems, in this case, to be preventing a fair trial. The victims must be experiencing such a complex array of emotions because of this situation. I wondered what kind of consequences they would choose for the man who attacked them. This is the first rape victim attributed to the Golden State Killer. Something, either he had some trauma or he had something that caused that, I have no idea. But I know it's not good to hold hate in your heart and all that, and I don't think I do.

I'm just a lot more careful. I don't want him to be dead because I think that would have been the easy way out for him. And I don't want that. I'd rather, you know, him be tried and convicted and spend the rest of his life in prison. She's right. This man of guilty was unable to function within the boundaries of our society. There was something different about him and wrong about his behavior. That's not an excuse or a justification. It's just the truth laid out in a very simple way. It helps people to heal when they look at a situation

that doesn't appear to make sense and discover even a small amount of clarity. There are as many opinions as there are victims in this case. And to some, there will never be clarity. This is the second anonymous victim. I used to say, and I'm sure that, you know, who knows, I remember saying when it was still going on,

if they ever catch this guy, they should lay him on the floor and let everybody that he raped get to do whatever they want to him. You know, I just thought that's what we should get to do. And then that thought kind of went away. But I thought, you know, we should get to do what we want. You know, we had to go through this.

I don't think that I would need to hurt him, you know, if he was caught. I don't need to get any revenge. I don't need anything like that. I just like there to be closure. But I have to say, you know, it's felt pretty closed to me for a long time. That statement was made to the FBI prior to D'Angelo being arrested. It brings up the question, for those victims who have healed so much since the time they were attacked, is this arrest re-inflicting an old injury?

Last year, in 2017, one of the victims, Jane Carson Sandler, spoke at a conference I was attending. In the last episode, I talked about Jane's story. She was the woman whose 3-year-old son was home while she was attacked. She said she'd been a victim for a long time. It made her sick. It made her drink. A lot. And she didn't feel like she was living.

Jane said she isn't a victim anymore. She's a survivor. Because she's taken control back of her life. She said by speaking out and helping other women, she was, quote, turning her pain into power. Then Jane said something I'll never forget. She believed he was still alive,

but had to find it within herself to forgive him. Then, in her last sentence, she stated all she wanted to know was he was locked away so she could finally stop being afraid of his return. She said those words about a year before the suspect was arrested. I wonder if her stance on things has changed. I can't imagine what these and all survivors of the Golden State Killer attacks are thinking or feeling right now. They need support and understanding and to talk about it if they choose on their own timeline. What they don't need is to be bombarded by strangers digging for information to broadcast into the world. I recently watched a broadcast of

someone who was ready to talk about the Golden State Killer, investigator Paul Holes. He had some interesting theories on why D'Angelo, the alleged perpetrator, made certain choices. He referred to D'Angelo as the killer, but keep in mind as you listen to what he had to say, he is still currently only a suspect. Holes said D'Angelo's wife had been pregnant with his first daughter when he allegedly committed the attack on two people in 1981. Perhaps the stress of fatherhood had triggered something in him. During that attack, he had a physical altercation with a younger, stronger man. D'Angelo would have been 41 at the time. Maybe that altercation was a reality check, that he wasn't as young as he used to be,

and he could get hurt, or worse. Holes then pointed out that five years later, D'Angelo's wife was seven months pregnant with his second daughter when the killer last attacked. The victim was 18-year-old Janelle. She was home alone, bludgeoned to death in her bed. Holes said he couldn't say why the attacker chose the victims or the locations that he did, but the investigator was confident that the right man is in custody.

I realized that when I said we were experiencing this cold case being uncovered in real time, just how accurate that was. When my producer Scott and I were making the final revisions to this episode, a 13th murder charge was added to the list of D'Angelo's alleged crimes, just now as we're recording this episode. The father of a 17-year-old girl named Elizabeth was shot while successfully preventing his daughter from being abducted. His name was Claude Snelling. Elizabeth recounts that a man with a ski mask broke into her room in the middle of the night and threatened her. He forced her into the carport next to their house. Mr. Snelling must have been alerted to trouble and came running to the carport.

Elizabeth said that the masked man pushed her to the ground before shooting her father twice and running away. Mr. Snelling's murder had originally been attributed to a murderer known as the Visalia Ransacker. Authorities have suspected that the Ransacker and the Golden State Killer are the same person, but because of a lack of DNA evidence, they haven't been able to make a scientific connection. At this point, I usually discuss justice. Was there justice in a case or not? Did the court make the right decision?

And was the family satisfied with the ruling? Since D'Angelo hasn't had a trial at this point, I want to talk about justice a little differently. In the United States, everyone has the right to a fair trial, and every person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. With the amount of publicity that this case and this defendant has received, I wonder if it's possible for him to have a fair trial at all. Because I think, especially in this case, an impartial jury is going to be very difficult to select.

I know that if I were called as a juror, I couldn't honestly say that the research I've done wouldn't bias my judgment. Because bias isn't always an intentional action. After listening to this podcast, have you formed an opinion on his innocence or guilt? Could you promise to be completely without bias? Justice means that a situation is made fair, but you can't unrape someone. You can't bring back a murder victim. And you can't erase emotional trauma. What's being offered is retribution, a punishment, an attempt to murder an alleged murderer. There is no justice when a crime is committed that has a lasting physical or emotional impact. The symbol for justice is a scale.

After a crime, it becomes off balance, weighed down on one side with hurt and anger. Adding further hurt and anger to the scale doesn't balance it out. It just breaks the scale. I guess what I'm trying to say is, maybe the scale is broken because we've been using it wrong for so long. We need to take the time to fix it and to learn to use it as intended. Cold Case Files the podcast is written and hosted by Brooke Giddings, produced by McKamey Lynn, Scott Brody, and Steve Delamater. Our executive producer is Ted Butler.

Original music by Blake Maples. We're distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and hosted by Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold Case Files at aetv.com and by downloading the A&E app. Hi, everyone. This is Jillian with Court Junkie. Court Junkie is a true crime podcast that covers court cases and criminal trials using audio clips and interviews with

people close to the cases. Court Junkie is available on Apple Podcasts and podcastone.com. Hold on to your jingle bells. Pluto TV has all your holiday favorites for free. Enjoy our season's greetings category with nine holiday channels, including holiday movie favorites by Lifetime, Festive Fireplace, Holiday Lights, and Hallmark Movies and more. Download the Pluto TV app on all your favorite devices and start streaming holiday favorites on live channels and on demand.

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