Criminology - The Golden State Killer 1 Year Later

Episode Date: April 20, 2019

It's hard to believe but it has been a year since the arrest of Joseph J. DeAngelo as the suspected EAR/GSK. It occurred during our long second season of Criminology when we took a deep dive into this case. In this episode, we talk about what has happened in the past year. But, we do so with the help of our friends, some of the people that made Season 2 so great through their interviews. You'll hear from Paul Holes and so many others, including several of the sister-survivors that have been so incredibly brave in telling their stories. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'd like to welcome everyone to episode 57 of criminology. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. And Morph, this is a very special episode. We are talking about the Golden State Killer one year later. And it really is hard to believe that a whole year has gone by since you and I did. our, you know, big long season about the Golden State Killer since the arrest, all of that. There's a lot of stuff that's happened since that time, Morphe, and we wanted to put out an

episode kind of talking about that and talking with some of the people that made that season so great. Yeah, a lot of people have asked us if we would do a follow-up to see what was going on. and we were fortunate enough to have a lot of the same people to participate in this episode that we had in season two. So it's going to be exciting to hear from them. And I should have said it right out front, but I'll say it now. More if you've been sick for a couple of weeks, you're kind of battling through and have been battling through a pretty bad cold, but much appreciated that you're willing to kind of suck it up and stick with it. I appreciate it. I'm trying to power through and hopefully pretty soon I'll be back to a full

strength. All right. Let's do our Patreon shoutouts. We had Catherine Haynes, Sydney Eliza, Mike Helmer, Courtney Erickson and Becky Pantuso. So huge thanks to all those people that chose to support the show. And a big thanks to the people that continue to support us month after month. It really does make a huge difference. Thanks so much for all of your Patreon support. And if you'd like to support the podcast through Patreon, you can do so by visiting patreon.com slash criminology. Don't forget about CrimeCon in June.

Time is running out to register. So if you're going, go now. Go to thecrimecon.com website. Use our promo code, Criminology 19, to save 10% of, 10% off your standard badge price. All right, Morf, we've got to jump into this episode because I think it's going to be a big one,

both in terms of information, some star power, you know, some great interviews, but also in length. I think just lengthwise, this is probably going to be a pretty, pretty long episode as well.

It drops only days before the one year anniversary, of the arrest of the alleged Golden State killer Joseph James DeAngelo. And you remember it. I remember it. We were in the middle of writing, recording, doing all the stuff that we do of season two of criminology. We were actually recording an episode when, you know, through the microphone, you told me that you got a text from someone that the Golden State Killer was in

custody. And I'll never forget it. I remember exactly how you played it. It was almost as if you were shrugging it off, saying, okay, I got this text. There's no way that's real. It's not possible. Yeah, I did get that text and I was in disbelief. I was so used to getting all these little tidbits and messages about the case and they never really led anywhere or they were dead ends. So I sort of brushed that off. But as soon as we stopped recording, I started chatting online with Paul Haynes, who will finish Michelle McNamara's book, and I asked if he had heard anything, and he said no. And I think I actually told him that I didn't believe it and thought it was pretty much

bullshit. And that's when I got a second source that reached out to me and said the same thing. And a couple of texts later, and I was like, holy crap, this is real. And then I heard from some of the sister survivors, and it was really a surreal night or morning, I should say, since this all went down around midnight to 3 a.m. my time, it was really hectic. And then, you know, you remember those days afterwards how hectic things were for us. Yeah, no doubt. Things really got crazy for many days after that. We were what? A little bit over halfway. Well, let's say this. We were over halfway of what we thought our original season would be on the Golden State Killer.

then this bombshell drop. Of course, we had to rush to put out an update episode. And it really kind of threw the whole season out of whack. So you had all the press conferences, all of the news that started to come out about DeAngelo, the searches into his background, his private life. There was a lot of things that were learned in a very short period of time about just who Joseph DeAngelo was. And we can, covered a lot of that in season two. And then eventually over time, you know, after we finished up our coverage, more and more stuff came to light about DeAngelo. But as much as stuff has come to light, there are still lots of unknowns in this case. I mean, some of the blanks may never be filled

in without a trial occurring. And even then, we may never know the entire. truth. But, you know, speaking of that season two, more if we still get a lot of people asking, you know, what happened to the first three seasons of our podcast, they are out there. They're on Stitcher Premium, along with a lot of great content from other podcasts. So just putting that out for people that are just finding the show, you can go back and listen to those first three seasons of criminology on Stitcher Premium. One of the coolest things to really come out of the arrest of DeAngelo was the new crime fighting tool called Genetic Genealogy, and that's been nailing so many killers that evaded

capture for decades. Some of those cases we detailed in season four of criminology when we spoke with Parabon and Curtis Rogers of Jedmatch, as well as genetic genealogist calling Fitzpatrick. and hats off to our friend Paul Holes, who had the forethought and knowledge to roll the dice on this method that ultimately led to DeAngelo's arrest. And we'll hear from Paul Holes later in this episode. In the last year, I think we've all seen photos and videos of DeAngelo in court. You know, you and I have talked about it more.

First, he was wheeled into the courtroom in a wheelchair. Later, he was shown in a holding cell, like it looked like a, a cage and he looked very gone. He looked thin. Some people have wondered if that was some type of sign that DeAngelo was sick or maybe he was starving himself. A lot of people have asked the question, is this guy even going to make it to trial? And with all of the court proceeding so far, we're a year on, right? He hasn't even entered a plea yet. And the actual. The actual trial, if it ever occurs, could be very far away, years away, perhaps. Yeah, and we'll get into how long they could take a little bit later in this episode.

And speaking of the trial process, prosecutors just had a monkey wrench thrown in their plans when a moratorium on the death penalty in California was put in place. And we aren't going to get into a debate about the death penalty here. Everyone has their own opinions and thoughts on that. but what that moratorium does to the prosecution ties their hands and hurts their position. For example, they may have been able to offer DeAngelo a plea deal by taking the death penalty off the table if he pled guilty and spilled his guts about everything he knew. But now that's not an option for prosecutors.

DeAngelo can just go to trial and take his chances, and if he's found guilty, he's no worse off. But he knows that he won't be facing death. so there's really no incentive for him to cooperate. Personally, I think he's a coward that would never own up to what he did anyway. Now he can delay a trial as long as possible, and who knows, he may not live to even see a trial. And that would be a real shame, right? For all of the families of the victims, for the victims themselves, you and I have talked to a lot of them more. They want DeAngelo in a courtroom.

they want him to answer for what he's done. So hopefully for the sake of everyone involved related to the victims, you know, that happens. And the details do one day come out. People get the answers they deserve. And I think most likely that would come through a trial. But what would that look like? And when could that happen? There are a lot of questions about that.

scenario, and we invited Keith Comos to come on and walk us through that process and the possible directions that this thing could take. Listeners may remember Keith Comos, who helped us with our Visalia Ransacker segment of season two. He's co-author of the book's Case Files of the East Area Rapist, Golden State Killer, and Secret Origin of the Golden State Killer, Vyssalian Ransacker. He helps run the website, Golden State Killer.com. but Keith's focus has shifted following the arrest of DiAngelo from writing about the Golden State Killer to the prosecution of DeAngelo.

As a result, he's now launched Golden State Killer Trial.com, which extensively covers any trial news and updates. Keith walked us through the DeAngelo timeline, starting with his arrest in April 2018. So on Tuesday, April 24th, 2018, at about 5.30 p.m. local time, Joseph James DeAngelo, was arrested at his home on Canyon Oak Drive by armored police working for the Sacramento's Sheriff's Department. His next seven hours were spent in an interrogation room where apparently he chatted a little bit. He didn't own up to any of the homicides, and he eventually clammed up so that only a few of the agencies on standby got to talk to him. He did not have an attorney present, so anything he said could potentially get tossed out of the courtroom. We'll see.

he was booked in the early morning hours of the 25th and apparently rammed his head into the wall a few times in an effort to kind of cut the process short. The display earned him a seat in the jail psych ward and a see-through paper smock to wear for his first few days in jail where he was apparently at a near catatonic state and talking quietly to himself. So he's in a catatonic state talking quietly to himself when he was arrested. definitely it makes you wonder, and I think a lot of people have speculated online, what was slash is now the mental state of Joseph J. DeAngelo? Yeah, it makes you wonder if he was just putting on an act so that people would have sympathy for him or pity for him, or if he really is delusional or sick. Also, regarding some of the rumors about what DeAngelio is.

did talk about following his arrest. There's been a lot of speculation. The only one true thing that I know from someone who was there when he was taken into custody is that he did say he had a roast in the oven and wanted to go back into the house to turn the oven off. And this goes back to the discussion as to whether or not DeAngelo is sane or not. Did he really believe that police would allow him to go back into his house to turn a stove off? or was that a ploy to somehow go in and grab a gun and start shooting?

Yeah, I guess I'm torn more if I really don't know the answer. Some of it seems to be a ploy. You know, when we talked about the fact that he's in a wheelchair, he acts like he doesn't even know where he's at in the courtroom, all of it kind of seemed like an act. So it makes me think that a lot of this may have been an. act as well, but we really don't know. This man could have some very real psychological issues that we're just not aware of. And there have been reports from some of his neighbors and co-workers that he used to talk to himself and sometimes yell for no reason when no one was around.

So it'll be interesting to see if there's any kind of mental evaluation done at some point on him. Next, Keith walks us through the days following DeAngelo's arrest. The public got their first look at his mugshot on the 25th at the press conference. I encourage your listeners to go back and find a YouTube of this, actually, just to hear Bruce Harrington's comments again. Bruce's brother Keith was murdered by the Golden State Killer in August 1980, and Bruce has been a champion for forensic DNA advancements ever since the technology has existed. and his message becomes more relevant by the day. So it's important to listen to, and he gave a really impassioned speech about it.

On the 27th, DeAngelo appeared in a Sacramento County courtroom before Judge Michael Sweet, and the public got their first real look at him. He appeared to be sedated. His head was kind of rolling. He was breathing deeply. He was handcuffed to a wheelchair. It was a very dramatic moment. We got to meet Diane Howard, his primary.

Mary defense attorney who patted him like he was a naughty puppy who tinkled the rug. And in early May, DeAngelo appeared in a wheelchair again, this time without cameras and press present. The attorneys fought over whether the DA could take DNA samples from him or take all over body photos, including his genitalia. The motion was eventually passed and body photos were taken. DNA was taken. Then began the fight with the media, a coalition of newspapers.

and other outlets petition the court to unseal the search and arrest warrants. The defense fought that and tried to convince the judge to ban all media coverage of the case, claiming it would influence witness memories and influence an ongoing investigation. There's international interest in this case, though, so that didn't fly. And the search and arrest warrants were released in a redacted form, which is fine. That's all the media wanted. Keith talks about how the various jurisdictions in the East Area Rapest, slash Golden State Killer Crimes,

coordinated with each other to figure out how to charge DeAngelo for the various crimes in these different areas. So while DeAngelo was sitting in Sacramento County Jail, the Southern California jurisdictions with murders on their books

began charging them one by one until they were all accounted for. Orange County has four. Santa Barbara has four cases or four murders. Ventura has two. Sacramento arraigned him, and April on their two, and as this is ongoing, Tilleri County is compiling everything that they have

on the 1975 Claude Snelling murder, which predates the other murders by several years. They decide that they have enough to charge DeAngelo for it, and D.A. Tim Ward held a press conference in August to announce that. That brings us to 13 counts of homicide for DeAngelo. A week later, 13 more charges were filed against DeAngelo. These were not murder charges. though. These were for some of the East Area rapist crimes that happened in Northern California. Your listeners will probably remember that the Central California burglaries and murder as the Vysalia Ransacker took place between 1973 and 1975. The East Area rapist crimes in Northern California, which include 50 sexual assaults and the Maggiore murders, took place from 1976 to 1979.

and the Golden State Killer murders in Southern California took place from 1979 to 1986. These new counts come from the East Area Rapist series, where the perpetrator was invading homes in the middle of the night, assaulting his victims, and leaving them bound but alive. The statute of limitations on these types of crimes in the 1970s was terrible. I think three or six years for rape and three years for molestation. It was archaic. We're much better now, but we're stuck with the laws that were on the books then.

DeAngelo can't be charged with any of the Northern California rapes, even though three of them have DNA. This is where prosecutors got creative. Diana Bechtin and Marie Schubert and others found that the legal window had not run out on a violent crime called kidnapping with intent to rob. This means that in any of the cases where the offender forcibly moved a victim and stole some of the crime. or intended to steal something, and they think that they can tie it to DeAngelo. They've potentially got a case. They found 13 such instances where they're fairly sure that they can make a kidnap to rob charge stick, and that's where those charges came from.

So that brings the trial to 26 crimes in total, or 26 charges. The reaction to these additional charges was mixed. Several folks praised the creativity and ability to seek justice for more victims, Others noted that it could add significant time to an already lengthy process and that the additional convictions wouldn't really influence a potential sentence. I think the thing to focus on here is that since these cases are being charged, a lot of evidence from the Easteri Rapist series can be introduced without objection. The reality is that some of the murder charges that don't have DNA will be harder to prove. They're not as strong. and being able to bring in evidence from the East Area Rapist series allows prosecutors to paint a much fuller picture and weave a lot more connecting threads.

So with all these crimes and all of these different prosecutors, the question was, who gets first crack at them? How can they proceed in a timely manner and cost-defective manner? The district attorneys from six different jurisdictions worked out a deal to where DeAngelo would be tried in Sacramento, one location, one big trial, with the hope that it shaves years off of the process. Doing it this way is expensive, though, with estimates exceeding $20 million. The state of California passed Assembly Bill 132 specifically for this trial to help Sacramento recoup the costs in a timely manner. California Assembly Bill AB 132 introduced on December 8, 2018, an amendment. on February 15, 2019,

authorizes Sacramento County to be reimbursed for costs incurred during the trial in the defense of Joseph DiAngelo through a newly created bill called the Justice Act of 2019 for the reimbursement of county costs arising from the matter of the people versus Joseph DeAngelo. That's the name of it. This is a continuously appropriated fund as opposed to a lump sum payment. It's just called the Justice Act of 2019 for short. One of the interesting stats it puts forth is that the counties affected

contain nearly one-third of the population of the entire state of California, which is interesting. The Assembly determined that the prosecution and defense of DeAngelo cannot be born without endangering other critical services in the county. Exact cost statements and payment amounts related to the defense will be confidential, which is standard. It also states that other counties can be eligible for reimbursement for incurred. costs if they meet certain requirements, which are too boring to go into on your show. Post-trial appeals and convictions are not part of this deal.

He was arraigned in Sacramento on all charges on August 23, 2018. Since then, there's only been one additional hearing. It was a brief check-in on December 6th. The next one is April 10th, probably around the time this episode airs. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work. and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer.

For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do but had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, Blood and Water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. So you heard Keith say, this trial could take years.

it could cost $20 million. That is a mind-boggling figure. But I guess if you think morph about this man and his alleged crimes, I mean, number one, just the sheer number. And then, you know, number two, the span of time. And then I think three, the different jurisdictions. That alone is going to make this. trial, I think much more onerous, I guess is the word I would use on the prosecution than many

other trials that we talk about. Yeah, definitely. And it makes sense to try and funnel all of the proceedings into one jurisdiction for the trial to alleviate some of that and save time and money along the way. And even doing that may still cost $20 million. And just imagine if they did it separately in all these different jurisdictions, what kind of time and money they'd be looking at. Keith also mentioned that some of the rapes that DeAngelo committed when he was allegedly the Easterer rapist can't be charged due to the very short statute of limitations on rape back then. And it's just crazy to think how lightly the crime of rape was taken back in the 1970s. And fortunately, the prosecution team was able to get creative and charge him with other

crimes related to some of those rapes. One thing that made headlines more recently was the fact that DeAngelo's wife, Sharon Huddle, filed for divorce. And I think all of us are pretty familiar with the notion that a spouse can't be compelled to testify against their partner, but with a divorce in the works, how would that affect the trial and DeAngelo's wife's ability or? or the fact that she possibly could be compelled to testify. DeAngelo was in the process of getting a divorce in Placer County.

It was initiated on July 31st, 2018, by his soon-to-be ex-wife, and it's still ongoing. The latest status conference was March 28th. The next one is in May, I think. At the beginning, he didn't have an attorney, and he was representing himself as of July, or as of February 25th. 2019, there is an attorney involved. DeAngelo is not fighting the divorce. It doesn't look like they met in the courtroom face-to-face. In October, his soon-to-be ex-wife was able to cite precedent to keep property agreements from becoming public. So it's a little hush-hush. People think it's strange that they were separated for so long without divorcing, especially since she's a family

law attorney. But there are all kinds of situations out there. And her being self-employed, might have been an incentive to stay married and stay on DeAngelo's health insurance. An issue with the children might have been at the root of that. Sometimes people just sour on the institution of marriage and the legalities of all of it in general, and they just leave well enough alone. There are a lot of different scenarios. Another bit of recent news is that DeAngel was arrested in the 1990s in relation to a possible burglar at a gas station.

Right after he was arrested, one of the first things I heard was that he'd robbed a convenience store in the 90s and that he'd given the clerk his driver's license. None of that really sounded right to me, so I started rooting around for the case files on that, which of course were nowhere to be found. Other media outlets started looking too. The Sacramento Bee tracked down the case files a few weeks ago, and it turns out the truth is even stranger. Apparently, in July 1995, DeAngelo was filling his gas tank and the pump was acting up. He went inside for a refund, and he got into an argument with the clerk.

There was a language barrier there or something. DeAngelo left, and the clerk called the police and said that DeAngelo tried to rob him. During a warrant roundup several months later, the police sent out notifications to outstanding warrants saying that they won Super Bowl tickets. And this was in April, not exactly football season. DeAngelo was notified, and probably not even knowing that there was a warrant out on him. He showed up. He ended up being arrested and spending several hours in the Sacramento County made jail, the same one he's in today, actually. Of course, they had no way of knowing that they

had the alleged Esteria rapist in a cell. There was no DNA intake or anything at that point in time. When listening to this story, it's important to remember where the investigation was at this point. None of the murders had been connected to the Esteria Rapist series. Not the Maggiore's, not Snelling, not anything in Visalia, not anything at all in Southern California, officially at least. The murders in Southern California hadn't even been connected to each other, at least through DNA, though that was about to happen. The statute of limitations had long since run out on the known Sacramento crimes, and he actually must have been feeling pretty untouchable. There was almost no publicity about his crimes in the 1990s. He probably didn't even have his radar up, and he

he was probably somewhat carefree. There's even a big lull and suspected East Area rapist calls to former victims during this time. It does get a little weirder. DiAngelo was found factually innocent of the robbery, and he sued the gas station owner.

The case was settled in early 1998. And I've got to say, major kudos to the Sacramento Bee for tracking down all this information. So I think we have to talk about this. It's 1990s, long after the last confirmed Golden State Killer Crime, DeAngelo is back in the Sacramento County area and gets in trouble over a misunderstanding regarding a gas purchase. He's arrested, but charges are

dismissed, and he winds up suing the gas station owner. You have to imagine the nerve of this guy. You'd think that he would want to let this interaction with police just fade away, but he focuses on it, and instead, he sues the gas station owner. And unfortunately, there was nothing there that would make police think at the time that he was the East Air rapist, so you can't fault them, but it's still disappointing that he slipped through the cracks as he did when he was fired back in the 1970s from the police force for stealing dog repellent. I think a couple of things that people really want to know is what has life been like for DeAngelo rotting away this last year in jail and when realistically can we expect a

trial to begin. His life in jail? Well, he's moved cells a few times. He's currently on the eighth floor on the west side and solitary. Roy Charles Waller, the alleged NorCal rapist, is up on the eighth floor too, but he's in the east wing. DeAngelo is in cell number 305B. The death penalty, well, California hit the pause button on the death penalty. Not that they carried out executions anyway, but this actually could affect any negotiations or plea bargaining. It's a political issue, so I'm not really going to get into it, but that's where we're at with it. It does affect the trial as far as what can be put on the table in negotiations. People have been saying that there's a cone of silence around the case, but I've been following a few major cases, and this is pretty much part for the course.

In instances where the accused is already a famous personality, there's usually a lot of pretrial coverage. in cases where the accused is unknown before the arrest, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot. So this seems kind of typical to me. Law enforcement won't be making a lot of comments. The American Bar Association model rules of professional conduct strongly discouraged such things. Though California actually hasn't adopted those rules, and they're actually the only state that hasn't. Of course, anyone who talks to the media or jeopardizes the case is going to be in hot water. The exception, of course, is for retired law enforcement personnel, or

anyone not involved in the prosecution. That's why you get to see Paul Holes talk a lot about the case. But yeah, the juiciest stuff is under wraps for now as far as what they're going to do in the courtroom. Actually, in several countries, it's a criminal offense for involved parties to comment on cases that are still under judgment. These are called subjudice laws. Now, the media is still allowed to report on anything that they find independently. They've done a pretty good job. People who follow. the case closely would like more details than they're getting, of course. But the general public is really only interested in big picture stuff, and all of the details will come out eventually. What's next? Probably lots of waiting. Eventually, a preliminary trial will get rolling,

and the prosecution will make their case against DiAngelo, then a bit more waiting, and then the actual trial will get started. There's no way of knowing the time frame on any of this right now. Again, big thanks to Keith Comos for, you know, talking to us, coming on to update us. So Keith closed that last part off by saying there's just no way to know the exact time frame yet as to when DeAngelo could wind up a trial. And as frustrating as that weight has been for all of us, imagine that long wait for his victims, for the family of his victims. Yeah, it's after waiting 30, 40 years in some cases to finally get that arrest and then

realize that, uh-uh, you've got to wait much longer to get all the answers and see justice done. I can't even imagine how frustrating that must be. Well, and I think the whole time you're thinking, we've got to get this going. This guy might die before we ever get the trial. started. And if that's the case, Mike, then maybe he takes a lot of these unanswered questions to his grave and we never know the truth. Yeah, I think if that were to happen, and again, I'm not 100% sure how much is going to be disclosed in the trial, but if he doesn't make it to trial,

I think we find out very little. This year's really been a wild one for news about DeAngelo. So many different news outlets spent. hotless hours digging for dirt on him and trying to uncover clues. We reached out to Allie Wolfe of Fox 40 in Sacramento, who really had her finger on the pulse of what was happening in the world of news surrounding DeAngelo. You heard from Allie in our Golden State Killer coverage in season two. Allie detailed for us the mood in Sacramento following the rest of Joseph DeAngelo.

Well, for everybody in Sacramento, it was a complete shock, and then it became a whirlwind for us who were covering. it for so long. And so it was just sort of a scramble and a rush to find out as many pieces of information to put together his life. So, you know, it's where

he go to school, his law enforcement experience, where his movements were, his relationships. So it was really, you know, going through his life and figuring out what we could. And, you know, we tried to get as many details down to him

missing part of a finger, to you know, some of his behavior with neighbors and we went to his house, we went in court. We really were trying to hunt down as much information about his life as we could. And of course, being in local news, we were right there. So we were able to go to his house and to go to his workplace and to actually talk to these people face to face. And really the most dramatic thing was seeing him in court multiple times. Ali also talked a little bit about having to balance remaining neutral as a journalist and covering the case, but also having personal emotions for the victims and survivors.

From my perspective personally, I mean, there's so many people who have their emotions tied to this case. And, you know, getting immersed in it for a couple months, you know, you really do, your heart goes out to the survivors and, you know, the people who lost loved ones. And so it's, it's an emotional thing when you, when you learn something like this. And of course, you know, I have to cover it as a journalist, but, you know, it's hard not to feel something. And I will never forget sitting in that courtroom. And I remember the clicks and the sound of the judge and him being wheeled into that

courtroom. And I remember holding my little cell phone up trying to get some video of him being wheeled in. But I was shaking. And I just, it was surreal. me. So that was a moment that, you know, like many, I didn't believe it would happen. And so it was very surreal to be there and to watch him enter that courtroom and to be in the same room as him. As a journalist trying to dig into DeAngela's background, it wasn't always easy to find stuff. You know, it was pretty easy at first to find the big details and, you know, the big facts, where he

went to school, where he worked, where he lived, all this stuff. But, The bigger challenge was sifting through some of the smaller facts that, you know, detailed about somebody's life that are more personal and that are smaller but give more of an indication as to, you know, who you are, what makes you tick? And I think that's really still a mystery because nobody's been inside of his head and knows really everything that he knows about what happened. And one of the things is his wife, who has never spoken, except just a brief statement that she released to the media through the sheriff's department. And so, you know, the question is, you know, does she have information that could help? And will she ever talk?

And back in February, we did a story about her filing for divorce. And so, you know, we had known that she was estranged from DeAngelo for many years. and then there are proceedings that are going on right now. And so, you know, the question is, why is this happening now? And what is the impact going to be on the trial? Because we're still awaiting this huge trial. And, you know, whether or not his estranged or ex-wife will actually take the stand. And if she'll have anything to say, if she'll be willing to talk at all.

We are told that prosecutors will likely call her to the stand. because they are no longer technically married. My understanding is that they can call her to the stand, but will she actually talk and will she actually reveal her experience with him or any observations she had about his behavior or, you know, what he was doing, especially on nights when some of these crimes, rapes, and murders were being committed. Allie detailed for us just how neighbors of DeAngelo and other residents in that area took the news that this violent predator had been hiding silently among them for years.

So the reaction, I mean, I think especially in the beginning, everybody was just starving for information because, you know, remember, this is something that affected this community deeply. You know, even the DA was a child when the East Area racist was on the losing. So you can imagine how many people we've come across in the community who, who, who, are just so curious and who remember being scared and having their parents, you know, lock the doors at night, have guns to protect themselves, things like that. So I think there's a lot of curiosity and I think that still the interest is very, very high in Sacramento. And I know that whenever we do a story here at Fox 40, whenever we put a story on TV or on social media, the

response is really big. And so, you know, it's not over. I think it's just beginning because we have a trial coming up and, you know, we don't know when it's going to be, but we do know that, you know, we're hoping that's going to be when we learn a lot more. We wanted to know if Sacramento residents were in support of the new genetic genealogy technique used to catch DeAngelo. We've covered a lot of other stories, and, you know, you're seeing nationwide a lot of these cold cases get solved with this technique. We just had the NorCal rapist get identified and arrested.

with the similar technique. And so, you know, you're seeing this happening. And so I think that obviously the public wants to see criminals get caught. And I think that what you're getting at is sort of the privacy issue. I haven't heard too many people being upset about that. But, you know, of course, with anything, there's always that concern. But I do think that people are very interested in the fact that, you know, these genealogy sites have the power to really, really solve mysteries.

We also asked Allie if she or Fox 40 had been able to glean any additional information about the court process and a potential timeline. And if her sources thought DeAngelo may take a plea deal. All I know so far is that the defense, what I've heard is that recently he, or one of the hearings recently was to determine. and if he could afford his own defense team. And so he's going to be getting a public defender. So that wasn't too long ago.

So that defense team and his defense then has to go over all of the case and to build their case to try and defend him in court. And whether or not he enters a plea, I have no idea, but I do know that it's likely going to take a long time for the trial to actually happen. I don't really have much clarity on that either. I'm just sort of waiting to see what happens each time he's in court. So he is going to be in court again, April 10th. I'm not sure if this comes out after that, but April 10th, I'm not sure what's happening in court, but he's going to be making another appearance. So really, I and the station and all of us here in Sacramento are just watching every step

and seeing what happens along the way. We don't really know what the big picture is and what the timeline is. We do know that it's a slow process and it's not like a typical murder trial where, you know, it can go to trial relatively quickly. This one is different. I mean, I think this is one that we really haven't seen. It's not your typical case. So I think you can expect it to last a long time. I think this trial is a first in so many ways.

I mean, you have 26 counts. You have 13 murders, one individual. and then you have the genealogy aspect of it. So not only is it massive, but you have, I guess, a different kind of evidence with the genetic genealogy DNA. And so you would think that on one hand that would help the prosecution

because they have something fairly concrete, but at the same time, I think the question is, what is the judge going to say to that? What is the defense going to do? And, yeah, I think it's unprecedented and I think it's going to be really interesting to see how it all plays out.

You know, he's 73 years old, and one thing that a lot of people have noticed is that he has lost weight while behind bars. We don't know what's happening with that. But, you know, he's older. He's looking a bit frail in court. And so a lot of questions have been swirling about that. So, you know, a lot of people are hoping that this goes to trial soon because, you know, you don't want to see him get older and have health issues.

because a lot of people want to see this trial play out because there have been, you know, so many people waiting decades to see this happen. In our coverage of the Golden State Killer in season two, we heard from a lot of investigators and detectives that worked on the Eastere Rapist Golden State Killer case. That included investigators both past and present, people like Carol Daly, Richard Shelby, Larry Crompton, Ray Biondi, and Ken Clark. We'd love to have them all back on for a follow-up to get their opinions and thoughts following the arrest of DeAngelo, a former cop himself. But as we mentioned earlier, while some of the older East Area rapists rapes can't be prosecuted,

some of the other crimes such as kidnapping associated with them still can be. As a result, many of these long-retired investigators who handled those cases early on may be required to testify at trial and can't readily appear in media talking about the case. One person who we've been very fortunate to have on a few times, and we're lucky to have on again for this episode, is Paul Holtz. Paul has been a wealth of great information and insight into this case. So it was great to hear his take on DeAngelo's arrest and the fallout afterward. And I think most people know, Paul has been pretty visible.

since DeAngelo was arrested, this case morph turned his world upside down. Yeah, there's no doubt he got a lot of attention. And he is the first one to tell you he's just part of the team that caught him. But it's always good to have him on to talk about his inside look at the case. You know, since the day that we announced at the press conference that we caught the Golden State, killer. My life has just been a constant roller coaster. I have just been going nonstop, and it's all been good, but I have entered, you know, the world of the media. I'm doing multiple projects. I'm trying to get a book written, and it's fun, and it's overwhelming at the same time.

Paul recounted for us how just days before he was to retire, DeAngelo came up on a genealogy shortlist of potential suspects. Paul walked us through what happened next. We had whittled it down. I'd say it was just a handful of males that were kind of fitting the criteria in terms of age and the fact that they had a connection to Northern California. And once we got sort of one guy that I really focused in on, he was out of state, he was involved in construction, and I was really going down.

into the development construction angle as part of my investigation. And so I was calling up ex-wives, ex-girlfriends of this guy and learning more about him. Then we ultimately eliminated him. And the last guy that we had on our list who had just recently kind of came up was this Joseph DeAngelo. And I remember seeing that name and looking at his background going, God, a full-time Auburn police officer. I have a hard time believing somebody holding that job could be doing all these crimes all across Northern California.

So I wasn't super excited about DeAngelo, though Barbara Ray Venter, the genetic genealogist that was helping us, early on as we were looking at the jed match results, she was saying, hey, it looks like your guy potentially has a fair amount of Italian in his background. And that was news to us because we had always thought of our guy as being more Western European like British Isle based on the YSTR results that since 2012 I had been pursuing. But once I started focusing in on DeAngelo, things started to slot up. And you start seeing that he has a connection down in the Bicelia area at the time of the Vysalia Ransans. Sacker series. He had an engagement to Bonnie and there is no subsequent marriage. And so it looked like a relationship that had gone sideways. And we had kind of thought that the Golden State killer, when he was known as East Area Rapist, had a Bonnie that was significant to him just because in one of the cases in Davis, California, July 5th, 1978, as he's literally raping the woman,

he is sobbing and he's saying, I hate you, Bonnie, I hate you Bonnie over and over. And we thought, well, he's got a wife or he's got a mother or he's got a girlfriend named Bonnie. And so this DiAngelo had a Bonnie. And then, you know, as I do, I start looking at, well, who are the people I could talk to to to find out more about this DeAngelo character. And, of course, I reach out to Bonnie. She doesn't answer her phone. I leave her a message.

I don't hear back from her. And that was on March 23, 2018. I start looking at his current wife, this Sharon Huddle, and I started evaluating whether or not she's somebody I could contact. And in taking a look at the stuff that I could determine, and it looked like he was still married with her. He shared kids with her, though they had separate addresses,

which was confusing at the time. And I just decided, I don't know enough about their relationship to be able to contact her. So I never called Sharon. But in the newspaper articles about Joseph DiAngelo towards the end of his tenure

as an Auburn police officer, he ended up being arrested by Sacks Sheriff's Office of all people and for shoplifting, dog repelling a hammer out of a Citrus Heights store, which was interesting. And then ultimately was fired by the then Auburn Police Chief Nick Willett. So I thought, well, I better track Nick down and talk to him. And I did.

And that's when Nick told me about, well, first DeAngelo had threatened to kill him during the administrative process, but more importantly that his daughter, during this time when DeAngelo had been placed on admin leave, his daughter in the middle of the night had come into his room and said, Daddy, there's a man standing outside my window shining a flashlight in. And Nick gets up and runs outside and doesn't find the man but finds fresh shoe impressions all around the back perimeter of his house. Well, that's exactly what the East Area rapist, aka GSC, would do. And it was at that point where I was like, oh, I need to know a lot more about DeAngelo. And that's when I drove up to his house. And I drove up, and this was the day before I retired and parked in front of his house and kind

of evaluated what I was looking at. When I was sitting out in front of his house, you know, my thought process was that I wasn't entirely confident. he was a guy. And I thought, you know, I might as well just close this guy out and go knock on the front door and, you know, introduce myself and say, hey, your name is coming from the investigation, establish rapport, and get his DNA. But as I thought about everything that I knew about him, I thought, I just don't know enough. There's just enough here where it's a could be. And that's when I decided I needed to drive off. After I retired, I continued to be part of the investigative process. And these guys, I mean, I was obviously a critical component of this team, having formed

the team, these guys who were still active, were very accommodating and accepting of me as a retiree and trusting of me to be able to keep me involved. So I kind of knew that as we were going on, DeAngelo was starting to look more and more promising, you know, and this was at a point to where my FBI partner, Steve Kramer, had briefed his Sacramento FBI partner up there about DeAngelo. And then I had talked with Detective Ken Clark of Sachs Sheriff's office about what we were doing. And that's when they decided that they're going to put DeAngelo under surveillance. And so during my retirement, me and my family decided to, you know, we were going to really, relocate to Colorado. And so I had flown out to Colorado in order to buy a house. And during this time,

I'm having both Ken Clark and Steve Kramer calling me up on a nightly basis giving me updates in terms of what was going on. And it was funny because Ken, you know, who I've known for, you know, a decade on this case, Ken was excited. He's an excitable character. And he is just going, oh my god i think i think this could be the guy you know and he's he's talking about certain things on how things are aligning and i say oh did you know you know he was formally engaged to a bonnie oh shit no i didn't know that you know and he'd get more excited and then i would say oh did you know this but we were both like we've been down this road before um we can't get overly excited you know we'll see where this this all plays out um and then eventually i was told that you know a d and a

had been collected. And it was when the next day I get a call, I'm eating at a restaurant, P.F. Chang's in Colorado Springs with my wife. And that's when Lieutenant Kirk Campbell from the Sack Dea's office calls me. And I see that he's the one that's called me. And so I excuse myself for my wife. You know, we're at the end of the meal and the waiter was there to clear off the dishes and stuff. And I go stand outside and it's snowing. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, April, but as is typical in Colorado Springs, it's snowing. And then that Kirk immediately just says, Paul, you can't tell anybody about this. And I knew at that point, okay, this is, this is not just a routine update like I've been getting every night. And that's when he said the lab came back

with the DNA results on the sample collected from DeAngelo, and they're very excited. And I was like, well, what do you mean? They're very excited. And Kirk's not a DNA guy. And he goes, I don't know exactly what it means, but they said something about, you know, 20 out of 21 markers or something are lining up. And at that point, I knew we got him. And I told Kirk, that's him. I walk in, I walk back in. And now I'm, I am in a little bit of shock. And I sit back down and the waiters, you know, delivering the fortune cookies. And my wife is super excited about the fortune that's inside the fortune cookie because it said, you know, something to the effect that you'd find your dream home and we had just put an offer in on the house that I'm currently sitting in. It's the

house that we ultimately bought. So she's super excited and hitting my forearm saying, open your fortune cookie. And I look at it. I couldn't even tell you what my fortune was. And then she said, well, what did Kirk want? And I didn't say a word. And she's looking at me. And she claims my face was white. And I go, no. There's no way it was white. And then she being a DNA analyst was going, do they have the DNA results back. And I look at her and I'm debating internally if I'm going to even say anything because I know how she'll react. And she was like, no, they don't have the DNA results back, do they? And I just give a simple nod. And she's like, no. And I just gave another simple nod. And then all of a sudden she's like squeezing my arm and pushing me out of the restaurant to get the story. And so I tell her it's him. And then at this point, Steve Kramer from the FBI call

me and it just so happens my Bluetooth has been linked to the rental Jeep Cherokee that we had and so he's on speakerphone so my wife's listening in to Steve and I starting to talk shop and she's like can't you two get excited to start yelling or something you know

so you know in retrospect it was very much very surreal but at that point in time even though you know I had been involved in the case for 24 plus years It was just, it was like, I got to think about what the next step is going to be.

This is not the time to celebrate. We wanted to know what Paul's gut feeling was in regards to driving away from DiAngelo's house instead of confronting him. Does he feel now that he made the right call? Oh, in retrospect, you know, that's kind of the thing. Because at the time, you know, when I was there, I was. thinking anything about it. You know, this is just another guy that I, you know, I've done this many times and I just

decided, no, today is not the day to knock on the door. After finding out, you know, he is the guy and, you know, knowing, you know, I went into his house and even before I had gone into his house when I was still active, I had run him in terms of the number of registered firearms and he had more registered firearms. and he had more registered firearms to his name than what the California DOJ system would print out. And, you know, you walk into his bedroom and you see targets from the shooting range. You know, so he obviously is very proud of his capabilities as a shooter. And so now knowing how much publicity I had gotten on this case when it was unsolved leading up to it,

I think it's very possible. He could have looked through the window blinds and seen me walking up to his front door and knowing exactly why I was there. And he could have armed himself. I mean, he could have shot me. He could have taken a daughter hostage. He could have killed himself. Who knows what would have happened. But probably nothing good would have happened. I don't think he would be the guy that would have answered the door with a smile on his face and try to pretend something wasn't amiss. In hindsight, I think, and I've said this in a couple other interviews, in many ways it was the best decision of my life because I'm still here. Although DeAngel is officially considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law,

Paul is convinced based on the police work and the DNA that court proceedings are just a formality. He has no doubt that they got the right guy. There's no doubt. As an investigator, it's my job to identify who the offender is and name that offender and put him into the court process. And so I'm an advocate saying this is the guy and this is why I think he's the guy and a lot of it has to do with the DNA. We know we have the Golden State Killer's DNA. He left it in multiple cases across the state of California and DeAngelo matches that DNA. We have tested so many people. We have searched the FBI's CODIS database that has over 14 million. I think it's far in excess of that in terms of

offender profiles. We've done familial searches and nobody else has matched that DNA profile. The only person that has is Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. And I have to be careful and how I comment about things, but most certainly the defense has their work cut out for them. Now, just because, Paul is convinced that they've got the right guy doesn't mean that he still doesn't have a lot of unanswered questions. He talked a little bit about some of those with us. There are so many things. There's so many questions that I have. And I have purposely not followed any developments on the case after the arrest. And I've told the active investigators, don't tell me any details. You don't want me to accidentally share because I've been so much out there in the media.

side. But, you know, when I look at this case, and I, you know, I had my theories before he was identified, I've looked at the offender in terms of his activities as he was committing these cases, I've got questions about, number one, how he's choosing his victims. You know, are there any victims that he had prior interactions with? Because I have theories as to which victims those might be, and I want to know, was I right or not. I also want to know how, as a full-time Auburn police officer, you know, 30 miles north of Sacramento, how is he doing all the prowlings, all the burglaries, and all the attacks in Northern California for the entire East Area rapist phase from June, 1976 to July of 1979, going as far south as San Jose, how is he doing that and still maintaining his job? The guy couldn't have been getting much sleep. You know, and then the Southern California aspect, he moves down to Southern California at some point.

What's he doing down there? What is his connections to these various areas? What is his connections to these various victims? So that's a big question mark in my mind. And I know to the current investigators and whether or not they've discovered that, I don't know at this point. And then, you know, the five-year gap between Domingo Sanchez and July of 81 until Janelle Cruz in May of 86, is there anything else? Or did Gregory Sanchez truly scare him? Because that's what I think. And I think that's why we have that five-year gap. And then what caused him to attack Janelle Cruz in May of 1986. You know, and there's those and so many other questions.

But I don't think I will get an answer to those until after trial. And I'm not sure I will ever get an answer to those because he is the only one that can answer most of those questions. And I'm not sure he will ever tell us those types of details. While Paul is still trying to put all the puzzle pieces together and figure DeAngelo out, there are a lot of people that are just happy that DeAngelo is behind bars. and those people are the victims and survivors of the East Area rapist Golden State Killer attacks. And in season two of our Golden State Killer coverage, you got to hear directly from so many of them. We're once again honored to have some of them on again in this special episode,

and that includes Jane Carson Sandler, Margaret Wardlow, and Debbie Domingo. Jane Carson Sandler was the East Area Rapist's fifth confirmed victim. She was one of the first victims to publicly speak out about what happened to her at the hands of the East Area rapists. And since that time, Jane has gone from being a victim to a survivor to now what she calls a thriver. And she's definitely inspired a lot of people along the way. You know, she waited for answers for over 40 years. And she told us what it was like to finally get to. news that an arrest had been made?

Well, I'll tell you, I was in complete shock. My husband and I had just flown back military space A, and we then drove to Wilson, North Carolina, where we were spending the night before we drove back to our home in Bluffton. And I guess it was like, oh, I don't know, maybe three in the morning. my phone beeped. And I thought, now that's unusual. You know, who's beeping me at 3 in the morning? And sure enough, it was Larry Crumpton, and he left me a message.

And he says, I guess you've heard by now that the Golden State Killer has been caught. Well, I hadn't heard. I had not heard. So rather than calling Larry Crumpton back, I called Carol Daly in California. So it's quite a few hours difference. And Carol answered, and she says, yes, it's true. It's true. So I sobbed.

My husband sobs. We woke up the whole hotel just crying and laughing and, oh, my goodness, celebrating. We just could not believe it. So, yeah, what great news. It was like a dream. It was truly like a dream. And then things just happened so quickly after that with all the media, you know, trying to, you know, call and gather information as to how I, you know, how I was feeling and what my reaction was.

And, you know, the next day I was on Megan Kelly. And I had already been on her show a few weeks prior, went before he had been caught. So here she has me back again to tell me, you know, ask me how I'm feeling now that, you know, he was in jail. So it was just boom, boom, boom, you know, just such a busy, busy time. But I just, you know, I always thought that he was still alive.

I always believed that he was alive. And I just didn't know, you know, one day, maybe one day. And I wanted him to be caught before, you know, Richard Shelby or Carol Galey or Larry Crompton, any of, you know, the fellows that worked so hard on this case, you know, before they passed. And, you know, 42 years is a long time. And every one of them just put so much effort into, you know, catching this monster. Jane told us what it was like to see DeAngel in court after decades of waiting for answers and waiting for her attacker to be arrested. and unmasked. I truly had thought that I had healed, but that's not true.

You know, our wounds heal that our scars remain. So when I went into court, Debbie Domingo was with me, my sister, Debbie. And, you know, she was the one that her mother was brutally murdered by D'Angelo and also Debbie's mother's boyfriend. So before he was brought into the courtroom, I sat in the front row with Deb. And of course, you know, I had seen pictures of him, but I had never seen him in person. And for some reason, Mike, I started sobbing. I couldn't stop.

I'm crying. And Debbie's going, Jane, what's the matter? I said, I don't know what the matter is. I don't know. I don't know why I'm crying. But I sobbed. And God bless her, she put her arm around me, and she says, Jane. I'm putting around the armor of God around you.

This is your time. This is your moment. You've got to be in it. And with her saying that, I stopped crying, and they brought that monster into the courtroom. And then all those feelings I used to have with my anger and my feelings of revenge and hate that I had gotten rid of, they all came back when I saw his face. And I'm like, oh, God. I just wanted to jump out of my chair. and just punches lights out.

So it's taken me now a few, it's taken me now a while to get rid of those feelings again because I don't like living with that anger. But I think if I see him again, when I do see him again, I think it will be natural for those feelings to return. One of the big things that Jane always wondered about her attacker

was whether or not she knew him. And did he know her? we were curious about that as well. He very well could have seen me at the officers club at McClellan. You know, he mentioned that, you know, you look so good at the O-Club. And then right away when he said that to me, I knew he had been in the military because, you know, lay people don't say O' Club. They say Officers' Club.

So that's a possibility that he did. But I guess it's such a creepy thought to think how long had he been stalking me and where did he see me? And, you know, those sort of thoughts always. I love to be able to speak to him one day, but I don't think I'll ever get that opportunity. While Jane earned the reputation as a motivator, survivor, and thriver, it was Margaret Wardlow, the East Area Rapist's youngest victim, who's been labeled a badass by many for standing up to the Easterer rapist and refusing to give her attacker what he wanted most,

and that was for her to be afraid. Defiantly, and perhaps a bit foolishly, Margaret made up her mind early on in her attack that she wasn't going to let her attacker have the power. She shared with us her reaction to finding out that her attacker was in custody. I was just dilated. I couldn't believe it. I was so excited. And it's interesting, you know, talking to some of the other victims, their experience with getting that news, and my experience with getting that news was so completely different. You know, some people just were paralyzed. A lot of the victims were just paralyzed. You know, one girl said she just shook for a whole hour, you know, she just couldn't do anything.

And another girlfriend of mine, who I got to meet, interestingly enough, prior to his capture, she was about my age. She was 15 when she was attacked, and that's victim number 10, Chris, and she was in Unmasking a Killer. She was in the last two episodes of the newer episodes of Unmasking a Killer by Todd Lindsay. and she, interestingly enough, you know, she was playing the piano. Her parents had gone to a, they had gone to a Christmas party, I guess, and she was playing the piano, and this guy shows up in her house, and nobody's home except for her and attacks her. And, you know, her experience, of course, was different all the way around.

Her parents told her, you know, you can't tell anyone about this. Her older sister who lived with them didn't even know what had happened until, you know, Chris, her parents had died and everything, me, Chris was able to beat with Carol Daly and, you know, go over the report and stuff. And her sister never even knew what happened. You know, I think she told her best friend, and she got in trouble from her father. They sent her off the Bible camp a week after the attack and just told her, you know, you can't even tell, you know, the pastor at church.

You can't tell anyone, you know. So it was very unfortunate. She was told to just keep it a secret. And I had gotten in touch with her through Jane and talk to her. And, you know, her attack was so, you know, similar to mind, but then how her parents made her keep it a secret and how she couldn't tell anyone and she, you know, just put it away. A lot of the memory of the attack is just, she doesn't even remember it because she was just told so many years just not to tell anyone that she said she just literally has forgotten exactly what happened. So I got in touch with Carol Daley. Carol met with her and she went over the case file.

and, you know, it was hugely healing for her, and I feel really, I never cried over this whole entire episode as to what happened to me or after word or anything like that until she told me, like, thank you so much for helping me, thank you for, thank you for just helping me get this out and talk about it. And then she did Todd's thing just recently, and that was so cool. It's just a great thing. She didn't, she's a good friend now. Chris was only victim number 10, where I was number 27, where it was.

And, you know, like I've said many times over, I've followed this case. I read everything about it. I read everything about it. So I was pretty well educated about what this guy was about when my attack happened. So I knew what he wanted. I knew he hadn't hurt anyone. To my knowledge, as far as everything I'd read, he hadn't hurt or killed anyone. And I was pretty darn sure that he wasn't going to hurt me, he wasn't going to kill me.

So I felt like I could kind of, you know, be as to find. as I could possibly be given the circumstances. Since all this has transpired, I was able to meet another victim who was, I don't know what number she was, but she was a young girl. I think she was 15, and she was awoken by him, and she started fighting back. She kicked him and punched him, and he threw her on the floor and started pistol whipping her with a gun, and she said she couldn't brush her hair for, you know, two and a half weeks after the attack. And so I really realized at that point, oh, boy, I'm so lucky with my

attitude and everything that he didn't beat the shit out of me because he could have very well done that. In Margaret's young mind at the time of her attack, she didn't feel that her life would be in danger. But looking back now, it appears very clear that by the time Margaret was attacked, the East Area rapist had already committed a murder when he killed Claude Snelling in Vyselia. We wanted to know if looking back and knowing now that he was a killer back then, would she have done anything differently? Not only that, but I think also, I really, I think more so about the girl that was

attacked and pistol whipped. And, you know, I think about that because she fought back. And I think more about her than I do about Claude Selling. I mean, had he, you know, I don't know, I'm sure his daughter, thanks God, anything, anything could have possibly happened to me, which would have been fine with me as long as he didn't kill my father. You know, that I just, I can't even imagine. Yeah, I do think about it. I think more, though, about being just beaten up badly. And I don't think I would be the person that I am today had that happen.

You know, I don't think I would be as strong a person, and I would have looked back on the attack as being such a strong point in my life. A lot of people think, you know, do you wish that would have never happened? You know, you've had a lot of people to talk to and you've had a huge amount of people that have been interested in what happened to you. I don't think that would be the case had I been beaten like that. I think I would just be a completely different person. I don't know who I would be today if I was beaten up like that as a kid, you know. know by some stranger. As we did with Jane, we asked Margaret if she had ever heard of Joseph DeAngelo before he was

arrested. We wanted to know if he could have been someone that knew her or her family at the time of the attack on her. Never. I had never heard of the name. If I had seen him walking on the street, I wouldn't have known who he was. I'm sure, you know, I may have looked the guy in the face at some point wherever I had been because I was a kid that was coming home from school.

didn't get there for another two and a half hours after I had gotten home at least two and a half hour. And I was just running free. I got my fishing pole. I went to the river. I had my dog with me. I wrote the night before because I didn't really remember any of what I did the days prior to my attack. I was able to look at my file, my case file. The lead detective in Sacramento of homicide was able to bring me in my case file and show me, you know,

what I had done the previous evening. I had ridden my bike probably a good four, five miles across the river, gone to a soccer game at Country Day School. I met a girlfriend. And, you know, I was out and about. So he could have seen me at any point, you know, and decided I was going to be his victim. So, no, I didn't know who he was.

You know, but, of course, since my brother worked very closely with his wife. You know, she's an attorney and my brother has a prominent process serving business. And he, he worked with her very closely for a number of years and had her as a client. And, you know, just a weird, weird coincidence. Just as Jane and Margaret have been some of the most recognizable faces and voices in this case, bravely sharing their experiences with the world, Debbie Domingo has shared time. and time again, what it was like to lose her mother, Sherry Domingo, and Sherry's boyfriend, Greg Sanchez, to a violent killer. She shared what it was like as a teenager to lose her mom,

but also what it's been like as an adult to struggle for decades, to learn the truth about that night in July of 1981 when she lost her mother. Debbie shared with us what it was like to learn that an arrest had been made in the case, and she talked to us about the chaotic aftermath. I was so privileged to have some really good close relationship with the insiders on the case, and some of the retired investigators and some who were still active. And so I kind of had a little bit of an inside track, but of course, you know, I didn't really have details. But in all of my communications with anybody who was investigating, they,

all, um, golly, I want to say from, from the, the middle of, of 2017, all the way up into,

uh, you know, the beginning of 2018. Every time I would talk to somebody, they, it, it was like a snowball of confidence. They kept,

they kept, I don't know how to explain it. They didn't say with their words, we're going to get him. But the attitudes and the, I don't know, just the, optimism and the determination just led me to believe that it really was going to happen.

And I don't know how to describe it, but when I did get that call on late night on the 24th, that said, we got him. It was almost, I took a deep breath and I closed my eyes and I just went, yes, we knew it was going to happen and now it's happened. And thank you, Lord. I mean, I just felt that so, it was just like a big exclamation point. It's like I knew it was coming. I knew it was coming.

I knew it was coming. And then boom, here it is. And it just felt so good. The first day was just hilarious because, you know, I had learned, I had heard rumors on the evening of the 24th. Like, hey, they got somebody. Do you know what's going on? And I was like, no, I don't really know anything, you know? And then I got a call from Margaret.

And she said, oh, somebody told me that they got it. they got him, and it's great. And I was like, well, Margaret, that doesn't sound official to me, you know. And that, you know, my interest was piqued. And I was, and I was leaning towards, you know, that moment of, could it really be true? And then Anne-Ruehuber called me and she confirmed that it was true. And I will confess, I stayed up nearly half the night. I, um, fortunately, I had already, um, arranged to be off the point.

following day anyway. So I call my boss and say, hey, by the way, I'm not coming in today or tomorrow or maybe the next day either. But the day of a press conference was so, so funny because I have two daughters that live here in the same town with me, and they both came over to the house that we didn't watch the press conference. And, you know, we didn't know anything. Amory just told me we got him. There's going to be a press conference to, you know, watch it. And so I didn't have any information. I didn't have name or a face or really anything to go on. So I was learning along with the rest of the world as the news conference was going on. And it was the funniest thing.

I had my cell phone sitting next to me, and it started buzzing and ringing. And all of a sudden it was, you know, all these messages saying, hey, are you, are you catching this press conference? Hey, do you see this? And, of course, I'm ignoring those messages because I was just hanging on every word of the first conference. And by the time it was finished, I looked at my phone and I started trying to answer messages and listen to voicemails and there's new calls coming in. And it was just hilarious.

And finally, after about, I don't know, 10 or 15 minutes of me just like scrambling the phone, one of my daughters says, hey, mom, give me your phone. And I said, what? She said, give me your phone. I said, okay, so I handed her my phone. And she goes, okay, this person is asking this. What do you want me to say? And so she started answering all my messages for me. And then my other daughter, she grabbed my laptop.

And she opened it. She's starting to answer my emails and my Facebook messages. And for the next, I'd say probably eight hours solid, we were talking to press mostly. And within the first, I want to say the first 72 hours after the press conference, I had already done something like 10 or 12 media interviews. One of them was actually cameras in my living room on that first day. So it was just, it was unbelievable. And then, of course, you know, we spent the next couple of weeks putting the finishing touches on our appearance at CrimeCon,

which, you know, had to drastically change. The last minute to change the wanted flyers to put the word captured across the front of them. It was kind of comical, but man, did it feel. good. Debbie had waited so long to get news of the arrest, and she always pictured seeing her mother's killer unmasked in a courtroom. We asked her what went through her mind when she finally got the opportunity. I'm not really even sure I know what I was thinking in the first couple of minutes.

I was just listening so intently to try and get every little detail of what was being said in decisions that were being made. But looking at his face, I think I was just kind of focused in on the eyes. and because really in all of the in all of the composites over the years you know a lot of the stuff was was masked and really all we had a good description on was was eyes and so looking at him for the first time I really did I think I honed in on eyes and and they just looked dead to me I didn't see any spark of personhood in him and I know that may sound really strange but but that was my first impression. I just, I got this, just this lifelessness out of, out of the look in his eyes.

Debbie is looking forward to the eventual trial of Joseph DeAngelo, but she knows. She still has a long road ahead of her to get answers. And she also knows that she may never get all of the answers she's looking for. And you know, I have really, really mixed emotions about that because there are so many possible outcomes for the way this could go. And, you know, on the one hand, you know, there's part of me that says, wouldn't it be great if he just spilled the beans, gave us full confessions, gave us names and dates and details and, and just gave it all up so that we could just put it to rest and move on. And then there's another part me that says, no, we've waited all this time. We deserve justice and a full measure of justice,

which in our system includes the best possible prosecution and the best possible defense. And I feel like we, the survivors, we deserve to have that process unfold. to completion. We deserve to have every detail made record in that courtroom. And I really hope that he survived long enough for that, for that, for that process to unfold to completion. I really do. You know, you think about how, how time consuming it is, you know, even just for discovery. And, you know, the thing that strikes me is so funny. There are all these people who say, what's taken so long, the prosecution side, the investigators, the DAs, most of these people have been studying these crimes for years. So they're already up to speed on what happened and what he did. When you look at

the defense, they were handed this thing on day one, and they're dealing with 40 years of history that they have to learn inside and out. I really feel like we need to allow them the time to do that so that they can give him the best possible defense so that there's no chance that he's getting out of this. And that last bit of the conversation with Debbie, it's really kind of eye opening. She's hoping that DeAngelo gets the best defense he can so that at the end of the day, when this is finally all done, no one can say that he didn't get a fair trial. That's a very tough position for Debbie to be in.

And, you know, on the one hand, she knows that this is the guy that killed her mom and her mom's boyfriend, but she still wants justice to work the way that it's supposed to, even if it takes longer. I think what she wants is to make sure that all the eyes are dotted and the T's are crossed so that this guy doesn't get out later on. And I agree, I think this is really only the beginning for all of these survivors that have waited so long for justice. There's still a really long road ahead, perhaps, and we can only hope that at the end of that road, justice is served. As they wait for justice, the sister survivors have launched their own website, sister-servivers.com. Show them your love and support by checking their site out. They'll be sharing news and updates about their story on there. We want to thank once again all of the guests that we had on in this episode, all of them.

helped us get a much better perspective on what this last year has been like. These conversations were crucial for putting out this episode. I think very similar to how we covered season two, right? Huge case to take on. It would not have been nearly the rich experience that I think it was for people. Had we not been able to get all of these. great individuals to come on and give us their perspective. And just like in season two, we had so much audio from, you know, what ended up,

Morp being, you know, just hours and hours of interviews that we couldn't possibly get it all on the air. And that's the same for the interviews we did for this episode. So we'll be putting all of these interviews in their entirety on our Patreon feed for our Patreon supporters. So if you are a Patreon supporter, be sure to look out for that coming up pretty soon. And if you're not, now is a great time to check out our Patreon. This was a pretty big and important episode.

And we appreciate every one of the listeners for joining us to mark the one year anniversary of the arrest of Joseph DeAngelo. And the question that I have, Morp, is how many more of these do you think we'll do? And the reason I asked that is because this is the one year anniversary. We had some new information. We got some great stuff from folks that were involved in the case. There's going to be some stuff to come out, right? In the next year, in the next two years.

I could see us maybe a year from now, maybe even sooner if there's a big bombshell coming back with another episode, even if it was a. mini episode where we were able to get some interviews. I just think people are fascinated by this case. Yeah, I think you're right, Mike. I think people have really paid attention to this case and gotten to know some of the people involved with it. And they have a genuine interest in seeing what happens and what unfolds. And we have people reaching out to us all the time asking about the case or what's going on. So I can definitely see us doing something again in the future, maybe an update show sort of like this one.

I don't think there's been a case in recent years that has grabbed people like this one. I don't know, I mean, I don't want to reference OJ or anything like that, but OJ was a different time. We didn't have all the social media. I think the fact of podcasts, the social media aspect, it's generated so much interest in this case, but it's also. allowed people to get to know victims, families of victims. And I think that's really rare on this level, on a case of this level. And I think that's what makes this so interesting for people.

And I think we've all heard the term trial of the century for different cases in the past. And I think this really could be the trial of the century. This is one of the biggest predators in California history, not the entire nation. So if this does go to trial, it'll be interesting to see what we learn from that. Well, I will say this, right? That term trial of the century seems like it gets used several times over in a century. I agree with you that this will be the trial of the century when it takes place. But if you think about it, there will still be probably, what, 70 to 80 years left in the

century. So I don't know. I don't know that I'll be around that long, but we'll see. If you and I are doing a podcast seven or eight years from now, that'll be, that'll be something. It means there has been some kind of technology that has caused us all to live very much longer than we do today. But we know there are a lot of vicious predators out there. I mean, who's to say, especially with all this DNA technology that we've been talking about, that they're not going to come along and find somebody that turns out to be worse than DeAngelo. Now, that would be hard to do, but it's not impossible.

If you like the show and you haven't done so, take a minute, go out, give us a five-star rating and make sure you're telling your friends about the show. All of that goes a long way towards helping new people find us. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with a handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook for searching for Criminology Podcast or by joining our Facebook Discussion Group, Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans. All right. So Morfell, thank you once again for powering through what I know has been very tough for you. Your voice has been weak for essentially a couple of weeks now.

Well, I'm going to try and arrest it and hopefully get back to full strength and and get on with the next episode because we've got some good stuff coming up. And I'm hoping to sound as good as I can for this. Yep, yep, me too. But I do appreciate it. That is it for another episode of criminology. We will be back with you next Saturday night with an all new episode. So for Mike and Morph.

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