Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Golden State Killer survivors & victims' family speak live at CrimeCon 2018

Episode Date: May 8, 2018

With the arrest of Joseph DeAngelo, who allegedly murdered at least a dozen people and rape more than 50 women between 1976 and 1986, the survivors and the families of the dead are telling their stories. Four of them talked to Nancy Grace for a special Crime Stories live event at CrimeCon2018. Jane Carson-Sandler was the 5th victim of what was then known as Sacramento's "East Area Rapist." Margaret Wardlow was the youngest to be assaulted by Sacramento's "East Area Rapist." Debbi Domingo was a teenager in 1981 when the "Golden State Killer" murdered her mother.  Michelle Cruz is the surviving sister of Janelle Cruz, who is the last known victim to be raped and beaten to death by the "Golden State Killer."  Nancy is also joined by forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan, private detective Vincent Hill, juvenile judge Ashley Willcott, and lawyer Renee Rockwell. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Did you know a recent law can leave your personal data exposed online for anybody to find? If you've turned on the news lately, you know the internet has created a dangerous new world. It's time you take back the power by using a new website called Truthfinder. Have you been issued a speeding ticket? Received a lien from the IRS? Did you forget about an embarrassing social media profile? That info may already be online. Truthfinder can help you find it. Truthfinder searches millions of public records,

assembling the data together in one report. Members get unlimited searches, so you can also look up those close to you and make sure they're not hiding something. Visit truthfinder.com slash Nancy. Enter your own name. Get started. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace on Sirius XM Triumph, Channel 132. We all knew as part of this team that we were looking for a needle in a haystack. But we also all knew that the needle was there. After all these years, the haunting question of who committed these terrible crimes has been put to rest. For the 51 ladies who were brutally raped in this crime scene, sleep better tonight. He isn't coming through the window.

He's now in jail, and he's history. Imagine being asleep in the middle of the night and you hear a bump or you hear what you think is a tree limb against the fence in the backyard. You think you hear a footstep in a hall, but then nothing. And then there he is, at your bedside, in the dark.

The Golden State Killer. And if you live to tell the tale, which so many did not, you will never forget that moment. A man now believed to have committed at least 12 murders, at least 50 brutal rapes, and over 120 home burglaries. Now we know is the Golden State Killer a former cop? How many other victims are there? I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. And we are live at Nashville's Crime Con.

Thank you, everybody, for being with us, and we are live at Nashville's CrimeCon. Thank you, everybody, for being with us. You know what? I feel like clapping, and I feel like celebrating right now because with me here on the podium are survivors that lived through the Golden State killers' attack. What a blessing. that lived through the Golden State Killers attack. What a blessing. And they are here to testify

to their surviving and give us clues that may help some other woman where there was not DNA, put together the pieces of the puzzle to connect her to the Golden State Killer. Because I am telling you, there are more victims. Murder victims and rape victims.

With me, Jane Carson Sandler, the fifth victim and the author of Frozen in Fear, a true story of surviving the shadows of death. You saw on Amazon, you can find it, I did, Jane Carson Sandler, Margaret Wordlaw, the youngest victim with us. Debbie Domingo McMullen, victim's advocate, daughter of Golden State killer murder victim Sherry Domingo McMullen, Victim's Advocate, daughter of Golden State Killer Murder Victim, Sherry Domingo. With me, Ashley Scott, founder of ChildCrimeWatch.com, Atlanta lawyer, Renee Rockwell,

private investigator, Vincent Hill, forensics expert expert Joseph Scott Morgan from Jacksonville State University, and the sister of a murder victim whom I've spoken to many times. The murder victim was Janelle Cruz, her sister Michelle with us as well. You know, I paused right there because I'm thinking about all the victims that were brutally murdered. Just think about it. What if your life stopped right now? My children right now are eating lunch. The last time I saw them, they were asleep. What if I wasn't there to raise them? What if they grew up the rest of their life missing mommy? What about the victim's parents, their husband, their children? Just in one moment, gone. This man did this thing. And today we look for clues to piece together what other victims there may be as these ladies give their witness. I want to go first to Jane Carson Sandler. Jane,

I've asked you before, and your book, which is Frozen in Fear on Amazon, is so compelling. And I don't know how in the world I pray to be as good of a Christian as you are, and I am falling way short of the mark, because somehow you have turned what happened to you into a testimony. But I want to start at the beginning with the devil. What happened? I am a little emotional right now. Nancy is so caring and compassionate, and I'm crying just because of her words and her love for all of us. Well, it was 6.30 in the morning on the 5th of October, 1976. My husband had just left for work.

I heard the garage door close, and my 3-year-old son had just gotten in bed with me. And within a few minutes, there was a flashlight shining down the hall, and I yelled out to my husband, what did you forget? What's going on? And it wasn't my husband. Within a minute, a man was standing over me,

shining a flashlight in my eyes, with a ski mask on, holding a large butcher knife, with a black leather jacket, black gloves, and black high-top sneakers. At first I thought, oh my gosh, maybe he's just here to rob us. But it was soon after that I realized he was more than just there to rob us. He gagged my son and myself.

How old was your son, three? My son was three years old. He blindfolded us, he gagged us, and myself. How old was your son, three? My son was three years old. He blindfolded us, he gagged us, and he tied us up. And then he moved my son. And that's why I named my book Frozen in Fear, because I had no idea where he had put him or what he had done with him. Then he untied my ankles, and then I knew what he was there for. But I don't remember the rape, because my whole attention was on,

where did you put my son? And my heart was beating so hard, it was just coming through my chest, and the fear was just overwhelming. I was just terrorized. So after the rape, he proceeded to tear sheets and towels, and it was very methodical, very slow, and I'm thinking, oh, my God,

what are you going to do with those sheets and those towels? What are you going to do with all those strips of cloth that you have just torn? I had no idea. Are you going to hang us? Are you going to bound us? Again, I had no idea. It was the fear, the fear of what we both went through. So eventually I moved over and he had moved my son back next to me. And that was, oh my goodness, I just can't tell you the feeling that I had when I felt him.

So he was in the house for quite a while. He'd come back and forth. And again, when he first got there, he said to us with clenched teeth, shut up, shut up or I'll kill you, shut up or I'll kill you. Then he kept coming back in the bedroom and warning us, if he heard anything, he would come back and kill us. So he would go in the kitchen, he'd rattle his pots and pans, and he'd come back and check on us and then go back. It was like he was cooking something in the kitchen,

which was just unbelievable. Really, you're cooking now? You've just raped me and now you're cooking in the kitchen? Okay. So then after we didn't hear anything for a while, I was able to get my blindfold down just a little bit and I was able to see that it was getting light. And I looked next to me and my son was actually asleep. Praise the Lord. He was asleep. So then I woke him up and I said, come on, sweetie, we've got to get out of here. We've got to get out of here.

So again, it was taking a chance. I didn't know if he was still in the house or not, but we hobbled down the hall, got to the front door, which was actually he had taken a chair and propped it up under the front door, so we couldn't get out that way, but we did get out through the back patio, hobbled around to the front of the gate, yelled for a neighbor, and she took us into her home, called the police, called my husband, and then soon after two policemen showed up to interview me, and I really didn't want to speak to them, but then Carol Daly, a female detective who I've become very close to over

the years, she did show up and she took me to the emergency room. And at that point, you know, they did the rape exam. They went ahead and gave me the shot of penicillin in case he had a venereal disease. And then, of course, gave me the morning after pill, so I didn't get pregnant. So that was not a very pleasant experience at all. But, you know, thanks be to God we're alive and we're here. And thank you all for caring and being here. I've got so many thoughts just colliding through my head as you speak. I couldn't even write them down fast enough to keep up with you. And just so many things. Here are some of the points.

For instance, the first thing you said about how you could not remember the rape. You know, it's interesting, and I've gone over this with Renee a lot. First of all, let me introduce everybody full on. Vincent Peel is a former Tennessee PD, now private investigator. Renee Rockwell is a longtime defense attorney

and dear friend of mine that practices in the Atlanta area. Joseph Scott Morgan, death investigator and professor of forensics at Jacksonville State. And you've met there on the end is Ashley Wilcott. She founded ChildCrimeWatch.com, lawyer and advocate. Jane Carson Sandler wrote Frozen in Fear Margaret Wordlaw Michelle Cruz

Debbie Domingo McMullen I had to say that very slowly so I could get it all in you know Renee there's so much that when my fiance was murdered I can't remember the facts from a couple of years before and a couple of years after the funeral. I can remember that the pastor kept calling me Mary during the funeral.

And just facts like that, when something horrible happens, I think in a way God blocks some of it out so you don't remember it. Thank God. Nancy, you're living this now with these victims as they talk about it. And just when things black out, that's for self-preservation. But now that we have this person in custody, this is going to all be very important. Yeah, every single detail, because I can, is this, every single detail matters if you do get some of that memory?

Because believe me, when a defense attorney gets a hold of this case, no offense, Renee. Everything you say and remember is going to be questioned. As a matter of fact, this is how it all broke down. We've been covering this for years, right?

Who's the Golden State Killer? And the fact that, remember she said he put the chair up against the door. This is common. He would use pots and pans and dishes in many of his offenses. If a man was home, he would tie the man up and put dishes on his back and say, if I hear the dishes rattle, I'm going to kill everybody. So the dishes, the pots, the pans, the cooking tells me,

told me that he had a background in law enforcement, maybe, because he was clearly casing the home. He knew when your husband left, and he knew he wasn't coming back, or he wouldn't have stayed there so long to cook something. So that led me to who was in your area, who was around you, who would know that. What finally happened is some brilliant officer got the DNA from way back and plugged it into something like Ancestry.com, and it got familial DNA hit. In other words, sisters, mothers, brothers, uncles, they all popped up, right,

with this DNA. So they first go to another man based on that, and then they rule him out. Then they get to the Golden State Killer. And he said, oh, I'm sorry, I've got a roast in the oven. Like he couldn't go. Well, okay. He's in jail, and right now, as of today, he is challenging their use of whatever website they use, like Ancestry.com, saying it's unconstitutional, and if that gets ruled out, we're in trouble. We are in trouble. I don't think it's going to get ruled out.

Why? Because the Constitution protects us from police getting into our business without a warrant. When you mail off your DNA in the mail, that's your problem. So the Constitution doesn't protect you from that. I don't think it's going to be a legal issue, but they're fighting it right now. I'm going to take questions and ideas out here, but I want to hear from all of our ladies. I want to go now to Michelle Cruz, Janelle's sister. Hi.

Gosh, this is really, really emotional. Listening to Jane and Nancy, whenever I hear any of the victims or the families, I get really emotional. But Janelle was my sister. She's 18 years old, and I was 17. And I was in Mammoth skiing when I got a phone call from a friend who said, I think you need to sit down. And I said, why? And she said, your sister has been murdered and I said my sister got married and she said no murdered and for the next 20

years I don't I don't remember so what happened I was just living in a bubble kind of like Debbie was we just tried to live our life and go on our family didn't talk about it and it wasn't until about ten years ago that I started getting more into the case. And then two years ago when I started really coming out and showing my face, just to try and move this case to the forefront so people would learn about it. You know, you said something interesting. Our family didn't talk about it. Oh, how I love to blame things on my parents if I can.

But really, you know what? I don't like, I do it when I have to, but I don't like talking about my fiance's murder. I don't like it. It hurts my feelings. It gets me upset. I can't eat. I feel awful, and my twins don't deserve a mother like that.

So the fact that maybe your parents didn't talk about it or your family didn't talk about it, that could be for a lot of reasons. They just don't want to talk about it. It's like reliving it all over. It was. It was very emotional. It caused arguments and just a lot of crazy emotions. How did it cause arguments?

Because, you know, one, I was doing things to speak out, and then my mom didn't want me to do that because the Golden State Killer was still out there, and she was afraid that I was jeopardizing our family. And just a lot of mixed emotions. And, you know, I didn't like when she brought it up in front of people when we were at some kind of a social thing because then it got really upsetting and we'd cry and it just kind of dampened everything. So there's a lot of emotions, a lot of really, really crazy emotions. How was Janelle killed? What happened?

She was home by herself. My parents had just, my mom and my stepfather and my brother had just left for Cancun the day before. And that night she had some friends over and they heard noises. Janelle was on the phone and her friends that were over, they went outside and ran to the backyard where they heard the noises but they didn't see anything. So they all came back in and just were hanging out. And the next day, Janelle had gone to work and she had some friends over during the day. And in the evening time, she didn't want to stay by herself.

She was nervous, probably because of the noises the night before. And so she had some friends over and they heard some more noises in the backyard, and she disregarded it as maybe a cat or something, and she shut the shutters. And then about 10.45, her friend that she had there left, and she also left. They just left in different cars. And 15 minutes later, which was 11 p.m., she came home because somebody heard her car pull up. And I know she had a phone call at midnight, and she did not answer that phone call. So it was sometime when she'd come back home that he attacked her, I guess.

How was her body found, and what was the mode of death? Our house was listed for sale, and a realtor was showing the property, and she had gone and went into the bedroom and saw my sister on the bed, and the blankets were covered over her face, and the rest of her body was not covered up. And so that realtor called our broker, and then our broker immediately came, and they called the police, and the police came. I bet this guy, the Golden State Killer, went back and watched because we know he later would call the victims and talk them on the phone.

Right? Isn't that right? And say, Jane, what do you recall, if anything? When he would call afterwards, I could just, he would just call and then just hang on the phone. And I knew it was him. Thank goodness he didn't, you know, say to me, I'm going to come back and kill you. Or, you know, do you remember me? No, he just breathed. and I knew it was him.

But that was enough to cause so much fear again. You're just getting over it. That is an insight into who he is. It's like going back to the scene. Remember Scott Peterson kept going back and looking out in the San Francisco Bay? Because he knew she was there. Like calling the victim back, and you just listen and then hang up. That says something about his psyche.

Yeah, it does, Nancy. And one of the things that you have to keep in mind is they value trophies. And these trophies can actually be, and I'm talking about in serialized events, they can put a specific value on even just reminiscing. If you go back and even look at, like, BTK, he'd go and disinter bodies many times and lay down in the graves and then reinter the body. So they have this desire. They have this desire to engage. And a lot of it goes back, I think, to power to a great degree, having power and control.

I mean, why in the world would you go and victimize somebody like that? Well, think about it, Joseph Scott. This guy guy been a cop and yeah i'm usually on the cop side yes i know they're bad cops and i hate them and i want them to go down but this guy i think wanted to be a cop and not one but two jurisdictions got fired at one because he wanted the power and the control. And now we see that playing out on the victims. Did you know about a recent law that could leave your personal data exposed online for anybody to find? If you've turned on the news lately, you know the internet has created a dangerous new world. Data breaches expose private information. There's a new cybersecurity threat every other day and criminals can sell the identity of you and your family on the dark web. It's time you take

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slash Nancy. Enter your own name. Get started. I want you to hear from Margaret Wardlaw. Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for being here. And I'm really glad that I could be here to see everyone and be able to tell my story. I do want to add, Nancy, that from my understanding, law enforcement said that he covered their heads because he realized that being people about the head was going to leave blood splatter on him, and they speculate that he may have covered people up that way

because when he beat them, oftentimes he would beat the upper part of their body. You're right. He wouldn't get splatter on himself, so that way he wouldn't be covered with blood. And he really, I guess he really, really, really. Which is another clue that he is law enforcement. Yeah, so my story is very different. I was 13 years old. We were living in Sacramento.

This guy was a prolific rapist, serial rapist, and I was absolutely fascinated with the story. I was reading the newspaper every time there was an attack, every time a profiler wrote something about this guy. When you were 13, you were obsessed with... When I was 13, I was still riding a bike and didn't know

where babies came from. Wow. I don't know. I mean, the whole town was abuzz. So it wasn't just me that was interested in this whole thing. You know, the whole town was just on edge because we had this serial rapist that was attacking in Sacramento. So my mother was 55, and I was 13,

and my mother always said, well, I'm too old, and you're too young. We would never be victims of this perpetrator. And in addition to that, he had already started going into the homes where there's a man, a husband, and a wife. We had a newspaper article, I guess, that came out and said, well, he's only attacking single women. And so, you know, he obviously read that, and the next attack involved a husband

and a wife. And so, you know, he just upped the ante each and every time. There was a town hall meeting where somebody stood up, a gentleman stood up and said, there's no way in a million years a guy's coming into my house with a gun, and he's going to tie me up and rape my wife. Well, guess what? That same man, two months later, had this guy show up at his house and tie him up, and yes, he did rape his wife. So he was there at the town hall meeting, must have followed him home. This guy was just gutsy. So anyway, I was fascinated. I read everything there

was to read. I understood. I did not know that. Yeah, it was, I mean, it's... So he was at the town hall meeting. It's scary. That is no coincidence, guys. No, it's scary. It was not a coincidence, I'm sure. So reading

everything I had read, I understood he really got off on frightening his victims and putting the fear in them. And by putting that fear in them, he was able to control his victims. And it was very evident to me by reading everything I had read that this is what this guy wanted. He wanted control through fear.

So it was a school night. I went to bed at a normal hour. And I was awoken about 2.30 in the morning with this flashlight in my face and this guy telling me, turn over, I'm going to tie you up. Initially, I just refused because I thought it was our neighbor we had had dinner with the night before. And I just thought thought he had my mom had employed him to come over and wake me up as a joke for school and he had these leather gloves on and so I refused a couple times and then finally I went along with it he got a little bit more forceful and instruct instructing me to turn over and let him tie me up so once I was tied up he walked out of the room and I looked

over the clock radio and it's like 2.30 in the morning, and I realized very quickly that this is not my neighbor. This is most likely the East Area Rapist. So he proceeded to go on upstairs. Our house was really different because we had a kitchen and living room, dining room upstairs because we lived right on the American River, and you could look over the levee and see the trees, and you could see the river. It was a beautiful place to be, but I could hear him coming downstairs with those plates. You could hear him coming downstairs with the plates?

Yeah, and the plates were very indicative of his MO. He would always put the plates on, like, typically the back of a man, and say, if I hear these plates rattle, I'm going to come back, I'm going to kill your wife, and I'll come back, and I'm going to kill you. So that was always a threat. So I heard him coming down the stairs with the plates, and I heard the plates rattling, and I realized, well, if he comes into my room, he's going to rape my mom. Wait, did you know about the plates and the pots and the pans

at the time it was happening? You had read about it? Absolutely. I read every single thing I could get my hands on. I cannot even imagine laying there and hearing the plights. I just realized that he was going to rape one of us, most likely,

and whomever's room he went into, the other person was going to be raped. I heard him go into my mom's room. I just had a calming voice within me just said, this is what's gonna happen you're gonna be raped but you're gonna get through it you're gonna be okay and I knew he hadn't killed anyone he hadn't hurt anyone yet and I knew

like I'm talking right now he was not gonna kill anyone he wasn't gonna hurt anyone that night even though he was threatening it continually and so I heard him go into my mom's room, and I just prepared myself. I just remained very calm. And, you know, I have to say, I don't know where it came from, but for some reason, I just, I realized I had to maintain just not being afraid. So he made a lot of threats. He did it in a very harsh whisper. He'd asked me, do you want me to kill your mother? Do you want me to kill you? And I simply replied, I don't care. It was the best thing I could think of to let him know, I'm not affected by you. You're

not frightening me. And I just knew in my mind, I had to just show this guy no fear because that's what he wanted and I was damned if I was going to give that to him so what did your mom say well my mom was deeply affected by the attack you know she was once he had this tendency to come in the room and then leave the room deeply affected by the attack. You know, she was once, he had this tendency to come in the room

and then leave the room. So you never knew when he was really gone, right? And he'd go upstairs, he turned on the water and he turned on our exhaust fan at the stove. So there was an ambient sound going on. So I believe he left through the front door. He came in through an upstairs

sliding glass door off a deck. So I mean, this guy was extremely agile. He was like a super track athlete. He was jumping fences. He was just notorious for getting away and getting into places where you just don't know how he got in there. So I'm sure he left out the front door. My mom started screaming. The neighbor came over. Once my mom thought that he was gone, and the neighbor came over with a shotgun, the neighbor's wife untied me, and then we waited for the police to come,

and my mom really thought it was a copycat, and I said, no, I don't think so. I think this was the guy. And my brother says he came as quickly as he could from work, and he got out of his car, and I met him outside, and I said to him, Jim, what are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be at work? I don't remember seeing that,

but my brother has a very vivid memory of me just being cool as a cucumber. It's just the thought of a teen girl having to undergo a rape kit and then all those years go by and it is never resolved. I'm going to come back to each of you and ask how you felt when you heard there had been an arrest. Debbie Domingo McMullen is with me. The daughter of a murder victim, Sherry Domingo. Thank you for being with us. Tell me your story. Hi, Nancy. Thanks for having us on. This is really, really heartwarming to have this opportunity to share our stories, so we're grateful. In 1981, I was 15 years old my parents had divorced a few years earlier my dad had already remarried so I had a a stepmom and stepbrothers and my own brother I had two households that I lived in and most of the time I lived with just my mom it It was just her and me. Sometimes I would go to my dad's and I'd come back.

The summer of 1981, mom and I had been arguing quite a bit. I was just coming into that rebellious teenager, I don't want to follow a curfew, I need to be able to talk on the phone, all I want is no matter how much it costs and I can smoke cigarettes and I can do whatever I want kind of thing. And, and my mom had always been, um, we were very, very close. We, she was, uh, she was a nurturer. She and I were almost more like,

like sisters than mother and daughter. Uh, we'd be out in public. She had me when, when she was, was very young. She was 20 when I was born. And so we'd be out in public. She had me when she was very young. She was 20 when I was born. And so we'd be out in public, and we'd be in a restaurant somewhere. She'd order a glass of wine, and they would ask for her ID. And I'd be like, dude, that's my mom. What are you doing?

So we'd be shopping for clothes, and I'd say, hey, mom, and everybody would just look because... Anyway. But we'd been arguing that summer. And at one point we just had this knock down, drag out, just screaming at each other. And I said, well, I don't have to live with these rules anymore.

And I threw some clothes into a backpack and I hopped on my 10-speed bicycle and I took off. And I went to a girlfriend's house and stayed on their couch for a couple of days. And when her parents got sick of me, I went to another friend's house. And I kind of bounced around for about three weeks. And during that time, Mom and I had, we talked on the phone every once in a while. We had a, I went to a teen runaway shelter kind of a place. And they said, okay, well, you can stay here, but you have to participate in counseling.

So we had the beginning of a counseling session that almost immediately as soon as we were in the same room we were screaming at each other again so it was just it was just this round and round kind of a thing but hey i just want to side with your mother because if i caught lucy lynch with a cigarette to her lips i would do a back flip, ninja style. Okay, get that out of her mouth. So I'm just going on the record. I'm with your mom on this. Sorry.

Okay, go ahead. Well, you don't have to apologize for that because now I am a mother and a grandmother. And, you know, she was just doing her best to be a good mom. She really was. Oh, you know, she was just doing her best to be a good mom. She really was. Oh, man, starting already. I'm sorry. Anyway, I'm good.

Thank you. Monday, July 27, 1981, I was at the home of a girlfriend, and her brother called and said, hey, some lady is looking for Debbie. Is she there at the house with you? And I was. And he said, well, she's supposed to call this woman. This was my mom's best friend, who also happened to be a neighbor. And I thought, well, I'm not calling her back. She's just going to try

and convince me to come home. She's just going to try and get us to smooth things over. So I said, no, I'm not coming home. And she said, no, Debbie, you have to come home. And I said, no, I'm done. There's nothing you can say. I'm done. I was a kid. I didn't know what I was doing. But she got real quiet and real serious. And she said, Debbie, you don't understand. Some things happened. And it's important. And you have to come home. And when I did that,

of course, I had a friend drive me home. And we lived in a cul-de-sac. We were the second house in on the left-hand side, and we pulled up, and the first thing that struck me was the yellow tape. It was everywhere. It was all the way around the house. It was around the end of the cul-de-sac. There were police cars. There were news cameras. There were neighbors standing around looking and whispering and trying to figure out what was going on. And I got out of the car and I started to make a beeline for the house. And my mom's best friend came immediately and put her arm around me and tried to shield

me from everything that was about to happen. And I looked at the house, and I could see my mom's car in the driveway, and I could see her boyfriend Greg's car parked at the curb in front of the house. And immediately, you know, I knew something bad was going on. You see yellow tape, there's no question that something's wrong. But I saw Greg's car. And my mom and Greg had dated off and on for the better part of four years. I was very close to Greg, and I loved Greg, and he was so good to us. He was part of four years. I was very close to Greg and I loved Greg and he was so good to us. He was part of the family. And I saw Greg's car and immediately I just felt hope because I thought,

oh, if Greg's here, he'll make it better. And so I started asking, where's Greg? I want to see Greg. And this was early enough in the investigation that identifications hadn't been made yet. So as soon as I said, where's Greg, all the cops started saying, Greg, who? Who are you looking for? What are you talking about? And I said, that car right there, Greg Sanchez. I want to see Greg. So anyway, the short version.

Eventually they got me into my mom's best friend's house and sat me down, and they said that there were two bodies found in our house and that they believed that my mother was one of them. And, of course, you know, Margaret can relate this little smart-aleck attitude in my head. I'm thinking, well, duh, one of them's my mom. Who else would it be? I was feisty, and I didn't want to believe what they were saying to me. And then the next several days, obviously, I called my dad,

and he drove several hundred miles to come be at my side and get me through that. And then we spent the next couple of days of questions and answers. And did your mom have any enemies? And did she do drugs? Were there drugs in the house that somebody could have broken in to try and find? And they grilled my dad. When somebody gets killed, you look at the ex, right? So they took my poor father into that room with the blood spatter and interrogated him for hours. And fortunately, he had a rock-solid alibi that put him several

hundred miles away. But that ordeal, that first couple of days, it was obvious to me that they were really grasping at straws, that they didn't have a clue who had broken into this home, broken the window, reached into the doorknob, stepped into the master bathroom, waited for my mom and Greg to fall asleep, and then surprised them in that bedroom and beaten them both to death. Vincent Hill, are you hearing all of the times that the perpetrator is touching things, is leaving behind, we would think, DNA or prints or evidence of some sort? Yeah, we would think that, Nancy, but I think it's clear he did everything he could to disguise who he was, gloves, mask, even disguising his voice, which couldn't be used in a lineup later for voice recognition.

Back in 2000, I was living in California with my ex-wife and something came on about the Night Stalker. I told her, I said, this guy's a police officer. He was a police officer. Because I can remember ever since I was a little kid, I wanted to be a police officer. And I remember in 1986, DNA was used for the very first time in court in England. And if you think back in 1986, this all stopped. So that told me this guy knows exactly what's going on. He knows that he's been leaving something behind to tie back to him. So he says I need to bow out gracefully and hope they never catch me. I can remember when I first started trying cases, felonies, we didn't have DNA. And we would prove rape cases by blood. All we had was like the perp is a type A and you're a type A along with about 20 million

other people are a type A. And we didn't have anything. We couldn't identify hair. You could only say if hair was Caucasian, Hispanic, or African American there was really no way to use that kind of forensics to make a rape case that is really interesting that once and I remember my first DNA case deoxyribonucleic

acid but that's really interesting that it quit at the time DNA made its advent into court let me go to Jane interesting that it quit at the time DNA made its advent into court. Yep. Let me go to Jane. All these years that you waited, did you relive it? Did you have dreams about it?

Did you think about it, consider it? And what did you do when you heard there had been an arrest? Well, for the last 42 years, every night before I went to bed, I would say, dear God, please don't let me dream anything about the rape or the rapist. And God answered my prayers

because I never did. I never did. And last week ago, Wednesday, I guess it was April 25th, my husband and I were in Wilson, North Carolina. We had just returned from Germany. And the next morning, my phone hadn't been working the day prior, so the next morning when I turned on my cell phone,

there was a message there from Larry Crompton, and he said, hey, I guess you've heard by now they got him. So my husband, Roger, and I, we cried, and we sobbed, and we laughed, and we jumped up and down, and just could not believe it. And I've said before, I think we could have woken up the hotel. We were just so joyous. So then instead of calling Larry, I called Carol Daly, who was awake,

and she was, again, the detective, my angel, that took me to the emergency room. And Carol said, yes, Jane. She said, we have him. He's behind bars in Sacramento. So, wow. I still can't get my head around it. It's just so grateful to all the media, all the podcasters, just everyone, all the detectives that have worked so hard on this case, and they've never given up. They've never let up,

because everyone up here, we've all believed that he's, you know, that one day he would be caught. We've never given up hope. Margaret, I want to hear, after incident what you went through and your response when you discovered that he had been apprehended. Well, I mean, I consider myself being really fortunate that I just didn't have, like, that feeling of being victimized so much. I mean, I think the whole town was victimized, you know. So for me, I carried on, and I was just tough. I was a tough little girl. I knew it wasn't something that I did wrong. This was a bad person that perpetrated an evil deed upon me,

and that wasn't mine to own. That was on him. And I never, ever looked back. I just continued on, and I was just tough. I always felt like I got the better of him by just telling him I don't care and not showing fear. That was always in the back of my mind. Always. How did you find out about the arrest?

I got a phone call. I was in San Diego and I got a phone call. My phone was ringing off the hook and it was in my purse and my husband says, you better go answer the phone. I thought, okay. Eventually I went and looked at the number. It was a 916 number, which is a Sacramento area code. So this detective says, I'm a retired Sacramento sheriff, and you don't know me, but I grew up four doors down from your

family, and I've always felt a personal connection to your family and to you, and I know this case inside out, and I just want to be the one to tell you he is in Sacramento County Jail this evening. We got him about 530 p.m. and you can't tell a soul. And that's hard for me because my husband says it goes in here and it comes right out there. Michelle? Oh, gosh. Somebody had emailed me and said there's a rumor going on that the Golden State Killer has been caught. And is that true? And I hadn't heard anything, but I didn't reply to that message. I just got on my phone and I sent a text message to Erica Hutchcraft,

who is the detective that I've worked with for the last ten years, who I'm very, very close with. And I said, there is a rumor. Is there any good news you want to tell me? And she said, yes. And I said, how good? And she said, very good. And she said, I'm on a plane right now. I can't talk to you, but I will call you back as soon as I can.

And I just put my hands in my face, and I just started crying. I couldn't believe it. I thought, okay, this is really true. It was processing. And then the next day I drove to see my mom and I took my kids with me. And Erica Hedgcraft, I talked to her just before, and she says, I want to talk to your mom. I want to, you know, tell her. So because she had worked so hard for the last 10 years, I couldn't tell my

mom anything. I waited until 10 o'clock in the morning and we had a speaker call and Erica told my mom what had happened. And my mom was in shock and very happy and emotional and mad and just everything all at the same time. And that's it. But really I just, I probably cried for hours and I didn't sleep and called everybody that I could that was close to me. And it was just a really good moment. Debbie? Debbie Stahlman- On Tuesday evening, the 24th, I was in my recliner with my laptop in my lap, which is someplace I don't go very often. No, I'm kidding. I spend almost all my waking hours. I have spent almost every waking hour trying to publicize this case and on the hunt for this guy. And,

you know, Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and all the forums out there with the people like yourselves who take interest. And so I'm in my living room and I'm at the laptop and I got a couple of just random messages from people I know from the boards and that kind of thing. And the first one said something like, hey, I heard there's been an arrest. Do you know anything? And I answered back and I said, no, I don't know anything. What do you know? And then the next message I got said, I heard he's been arrested.

Is that true? And I'm like, I don't know anything. So you heard online from friends? Sort of. So I'm hearing these rumors, and I'm looking, and I'm trying to find, you know, I'm looking at the news. I'm trying to find stuff. And then my phone rings, and it's Margaret Wardlow. And she's, okay, and she was sworn to secrecy, right? Okay. Don't tell anybody, Margaret. But she calls me, and I answer the phone, and she says, and she's like a little kid. She's all excited.

Debbie, Debbie, they got him, they got him, they got him. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And she says, I got this call from, and everything she just said. She got the call from the guy, and I'm like, I said, Margaret, that doesn't sound like an official source to me. I don't know about this. And she says, well, who should I call next? And I said, I don't know. I'm like, we're keeping this secret. I have to ask you something, Debbie. Yes, ma'am. In all the years that your mom has been gone, do you feel that you've ever heard from her or has she tried to reach you in any way? Specifically not, no. There are a lot of people who feel like they've got loved ones

who communicate with them. And I don't, I've never had anything like that happen. I have, over the years, I've made peace with how we left our relationship. My last words to her over a pay phone, I just screamed at her and said, you need to just stay out of my life. And I slammed the phone down. And 24 hours later, that's when I found out that the bodies were found. So that lingered for a long time. But I have made peace with that.

And I know that she loved me, and she knows that I loved her. And there are no doubts there. Right now the Golden State Killer, I believe the Golden State Killer, is behind bars, connected to 12 murders, 120 home burglaries, likely 50 rapes. I predict there will be more, but there is a battle going right now to exclude the DNA evidence and if that happens under the doctrine of the fruit of the poisonous tree, those cases will be

dropped. So the fight for justice goes on. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off.