Here's Where It Gets Interesting - An Impactful Career in Cold Cases with Paul Holes

Episode Date: May 13, 2022

Content Warning: This episode contains subject matter that is not suitable for children. In this episode, Sharon has a conversation with retired cold case investigator, Paul Holes, about the mental and emotional impact of working in a field of violent crime. Paul recounts some of his most memorable cases and why he chose to pursue a career in cold cases. We also get to hear about Paul’s friendship with the late Michelle McNamara, author of I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, and the investigation of the Golden State Killer. After 24 years, the killer, Joseph DeAngelo, was brought to justice thanks to Paul’s work with a small team that began to link suspect DNA through genealogy. In his retirement, Paul often does consulting work, and he co-hosts The Murder Squad podcast with journalist Billy Jensen. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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you might be familiar with him. You might be familiar with his podcast Murder Squad. He has a new book out called Unmasked, and he is talking a lot about his work as a criminalist and a lot about his work identifying the Golden State Killer. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon. And welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Thank you so much for doing this, Paul. I know so many people who listen to this podcast, they are fascinated by true crime. And you are one of the people that many people are like, you need to speak to Paul. So thanks for doing this. It's my pleasure. It's nice to meet you finally, Sharon.

So give us a tiny bio. I know it's always weird to talk about yourself excessively, but just give us some context about your career, your relationship to true crime, and how you got to do what you spent most of your adult life pursuing? Sure. You know, I'm a little bit unusual. I ended up getting into my career because of a TV show back in the day called Quincy. He was a forensic pathologist and that was like, oh, I'm fascinated and that's what I want to do. And so I thought I was going to go to medical school. So after I graduated high school, I went to UC Davis and I was in their pre-med program and got a degree, my BS in biochemistry. And I ran across a job description. I found out about a career in

criminalistics. And then I got hired as a civilian forensic toxicologist doing drug analysis and alcohol analysis back in 1990. And eventually was promoted to a deputy sheriff criminalist position, which required me to go to the police academy. And then once I completed the police academy, I was assigned back to the crime lab doing crime scene investigation, assigned to the old serology unit, which was, you know, ABO testing and enzyme testing and protein testing, but we were on the very front edge of DNA testing. So eventually I became a DNA analyst in addition to working in a variety of forensic disciplines and going out to homicide scenes and also involved shootings and hundreds and hundreds of drug labs. But early on, I found a passion for cold cases and serial predators. I quickly learned that just being stuck in the lab wasn't for me. And that's when I started getting involved in cold case investigation, even though my bosses didn't know

what I was doing. I started doing my own thing, you know, and then rose up through the ranks within the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office, where I became a division commander overseeing all the forensics and was bored out of my skull writing memos and doing spreadsheets. And that's when I really started digging into what would become the Golden State Killer series. I had a long, long time association with that case at that point in time. I reached out to the DA at the time and said, hey, I would love to come over to your office. What about a job? And he, after three years, he created a position for me. And then I officially became a cold case investigator with the Contra Costa County DA's office.

became a cold case investigator with the Contra Costa County DA's office. And eventually working with my partner in the FBI, Steve Kramer, as well as a small team, we were able to solve the Golden State Killer case using, which at that time was an unheard of technique, you know, which is now known as investigative genealogy or genetic genealogy. And we identified Joseph DeAngelo as the golden state killer. What a resume. I want to get into Joseph D'Angelo in a few minutes here, but I'd love to go back to you as a college student, when you read that job description and you were like, delicious, that is what I want to do. What was it about identifying criminals, forensic analysis, blood type? What was it? Well, I think at the time I was fascinated by this forensic pathologist on TV called Quincy,

but what I didn't know is he was an absolute fictional character. He was a mix between different jobs. He was a crime scene investigator. He was a forensic pathologist. And all of that is what I wanted to do. But when I found the criminalist position, and that was at a job fair, when I'm literally standing in line for a biotech firm and you know this is 1990 or 1989 and I look over and in another booth there's a tv screen set up you know it's old style crt tv and on that tv screen was a man laying on a kitchen floor in a pool of blood what is that

so I get go over and that's when I'm introduced to a field I had never heard of called criminalistics. And it really was the application of science to try to help solve cases. And it was like, that's what I want to do. I had just almost completed my biochemistry degree, wasn't going to get go into medical school. And I was like, okay, I can do this. And the idea of getting out into the field and doing crime scenes, as well as working on the evidence in the lab to help the investigators solve cases, just was like, that's my calling. I feel like when I talk to people who work in this type of law enforcement, they tend to fall into one of two camps. And you have this unique perspective of, I love science. So that is sort

of this, you know, North star of, I love science. I want to use my biochemistry degree. I'm interested in this, but most people have a bent to one of two things. They have a bent towards law and order. Got to get the bad guys off the streets. And I bet you could attest to this if you're having worked to the field for so long, or they have a bent toward the macabre where they are just like that. I got it. I need to know more about that. Like that's weird. So do you feel like you fall more into one of those two camps? I'm actually probably right in the middle, you know, because as I was going through my biochemistry studies, I spent more time at the UC Davis Medical Library, where I'm looking at

forensic pathology books, you know, and I'm looking, I'm reading about death and how the death process occurs. And I'm looking at just horrific photographs, you know, especially as a young kid where now I've never seen anything like this. It's not what you see on TV or what somebody looks like when they're decomposing or been involved in a traffic accident. So in many ways, there was a fascination with my own mortality. You know, that now it's like I'm seeing what eventually is how everybody ends up

in one way or another. But when they end up that way because somebody else makes that decision and takes their life, that's what becomes very, very appalling. Nobody has a right to take somebody else's life. And so this is where that, the other side, the law and order side comes in, where it's like, I need to catch these guys.

You describe in your book, Unmasked, about how easy it is for you to slip into compartmentalizing all of that terrible information. And I really do. I mean, I've said this many times on my show that some people are just really good at it and can easily, it's easy for them to do. It's easy for them to put looking at somebody who's just been shot to put that in like this little thing over here where you're like, I don't need to feel anything about that other than doing my job at this moment. Do you feel like you've always been that way or was that a learned behavior on your part? Well, in terms of being able to slip into being able to compartmentalize, yes, I've always been able to do that. You know, what I did not know is that doing that compartmentalization would have a long-term impact on me as a person.

There is the aspect of going out to a homicide scene and seeing a woman that's been brutalized or children that have died a horrific death, as well as distinct memories of going out to these gangbang shootings. As well as, I mean, distinct memories of going out to these gangbang shootings. And you have a young man lying in the middle of the street. And then his mother is on the other side of the crime scene tape just wailing away. And it's like, I've got a job to do, you know, and I would push that away. And then as I got older, because I think your listeners need to understand, I'm in law enforcement. I mean, this is a very alpha male testosterone driven type of field and showing weakness is not what is acceptable. And so the

ability to go out to any type of case and to just go, okay, you know, I'm here, I've got a job to do and not to show the weakness. That is what is expected. But as I've gotten older and now that I'm retired and I'm in my fifties, the testosterone driven aspect is not so much there. The ego is not what I'm concerned about. And some of the symptoms of suppressing that trauma that I was exposed to over 27 and a half years kind of started to come out. And that's how I wrote the book where I'm going, what is happening to me? I've never experienced sitting in my vehicle and just sobbing after I've talked to the family over the course of the last quarter century. Why is this happening to me now? And that's ultimately, you know, I,

I ended up going to a therapist who said, Paul, you know, what you've been exposed to, most people understand that, you know, officers who are involved in shootings, that acute trauma, people understand that trauma, but basically these cases that I've worked over time, it's like small nicks and eventually you get so many nicks you start bleeding out and that's what was happening to me you know which was you know relatively shortly after i retired and so now the book even though i am talking about a variety of cases golden state killer and behind the scenes aspects of that investigation and then other cases some cases that people you know people have heard of like lacey peterson or jc dugard that i had some small role in then other cases, some cases that people, you know, people have heard of like Lacey Peterson or JC Dugard that I had some small role in, but other cases I had major roles in that

people have never heard about, you know, all these cases, they have significance to me in one way or another, but they're all little nicks. And, you know, and that's where it really does come down to, you know, for me, for the reader of Unmasked, even though, yes, there's the stories of these cases and they're fascinating. It's really to understand that the impact of working in this career has had on me, as well as other professionals, you know, that do similar type work. They may not be involved in NOS or involved shooting, but they are exposed to things that the average person doesn't ever deal with in the course of their life. So true. And it's one of those things where the work that you're doing is incredibly important and it is an incredibly important service to the rest of us so that the rest of us don't have to do it. But I do think the rest of us take it for granted, the impact that it has on the people who are doing this work.

No, and I would agree. And I think that, you know, there's people who are in relationships with professionals within law enforcement and don't understand what their significant other is being exposed to or why there's certain behaviors that are happening and that's where now it's it's really trying to get out there that there really needs to be a recognition that crime scene investigators criminalists dispatchers death investigators you know they're not necessarily on the front line with bullets flying but in many instances with bullets flying. But in many instances, they are so much more exposed to these traumatic events than the average patrol officer. And it has an impact. And there needs to be a way to address

that earlier in these people's career to help improve their quality of life. Or they're going to end up behind the bottle or worse things are going to happen. And their personal life is going to be affected. A hugely popular book called I'll Be Gone in the Dark was written about the Golden State Killer. You knew Michelle McNamara. You were very integral in working on identifying who the Golden State Killer was. Can you give us a super brief, like, real short summary of this case? Sure. Starting with what we truly know is in 1974, down in Visalia, California, which is in the Central Valley area of California, a fetish burglar starts breaking into houses and stealing women's underwear and jewelry and blue chip stamps and

is doing weird things. And he's very prolific. He commits over 100 burglaries in this very small area of Visalia in the 74-75 timeframe. At one point, he tries to take the 16-year-old girl out of her bed in the middle of the night. And as she's screaming, her father tries to come to her rescue outside. And the Visalia Ransacker, as he was known, drops the 16-year-old girl and shoots and kills the father, who is a professor at the local College of the Sequoias. Ultimately, the Ransacker is confronted by a law enforcement officer, shoots the law enforcement officer, but the law enforcement officer's flashlight actually absorbed the bullet and he survives. And then the ransacker disappears. Six months later, up in Sacramento in June of 1976, now have an offender that is breaking into

houses in the middle of the night and initially is attacking women or teenage girls. After 15 attacks, he starts attacking couples, where he breaks into the house in the middle of the night, wakes the couple up, he's shining a flashlight in their eyes, and he's got a gun. And he makes sure the couple knows they have a gun. And this is to basically prevent the man from getting up and being a threat. Throw bindings to the woman who now is forced to tie her husband or boyfriend up while he's face down on the bed. And then he'd come over and tie the woman up. And then he would go through the house and eventually come back with something akin to dishes.

And it would vary from case to case, but typically dishes. And place those on the man's back whose wrists and ankles are bound and then would tell the man if I hear these dishes rattle she's dead or I'll kill everything in the house if there are children in the house you then take the woman out to the family room and repeatedly sexually assault the woman while the man was laying in in his bed and then eventually he disappears from northern california this was in sacramento and he moves out of sacramento down into the central valley and then actually out into the east bay including where my jurisdiction was contra costa county but then in june of 79 he just kind of disappears and what was known as the east area rapist, is gone. On October of 1979, down in Santa Barbara,

an identical type of attack starts with an offender, masked offender coming in. But when he separates the man and woman out, the woman hears him pacing back and forth saying, I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him this time. I'm going to kill him. She freaks out.

He loses control. He ultimately is chased by an off-duty FBI special agent who was a neighbor, but escapes. Two months later, in that same neighborhood, a couple is killed. cases in Southern California between the end of 79 and then May of 1986, in which couples or single women are bludgeoned to death in their bed. And at this point down in Southern California, he was known as the original Night Stalker, not knowing that he also was the East Area Rapist up in Northern California, who also was the Visalia Ransacker in Visalia. And that this case was unsolved for decades. What made you interested in solving cold cases? You know, I think for me, the cold case side, in terms of really going after those, was the challenge. And I wasn't just going after any cold case. I mean, there's hundreds of gangbang shootings or drug-related shootings that are unsolved.

Those never interested me. There's other people that specialize in gangs, but that's their passion. For me, it was those cases that appear to have been conducted by a serial predator. And again, most of the time, there are women or children that were killed. And so for me, that was a very sympathetic victim. And I was so empathetic to what their experiences were in the last moments of their life. But it was also seen as the ultimate challenge. Because most cases, law enforcement is very good at solving domestic violence cases.

The victim knows the offender. Bang, bang cases. We know who the rivals are. But when you get into the serial predator, most of the time, this is a stranger to the victim. You can't use classic investigative techniques. Let's figure out the victim's social circles and do that. It's much more vague in terms of how to approach the investigation. And for me, it was that ultimate challenge. I was like, okay, I think I can solve these cases where the previous investigators didn't, because I think I can see these cases differently. And now, of course, I had

modern technology, but then there's also, these are the types of cases, because domestic violence and gangbang cases have a high solve rate. At least we know who the offenders are. In these predatory type cases, very low solution rate. And that's where it's like, well, these offenders, they got away with the most horrific type of crime imaginable. And they're still out there. First of all, they don't deserve the life that they're continuing to live because they did this to this person, this victim. Second of all, this is a public safety issue. They're out there and they are likely continuing to offend because that's

what these types of offenders do. So there's that whole side of the law and order side of me going, I got to go get this person. Don't deserve that life and I need to get them in custody so they don't do this to some other woman or some other kid. It's hockey season and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats. But iced tea, ice cream, or just plain old ice? Yes, we deliver those. Gold tenders, no.

But chicken tenders, yes. Because those are groceries, and we deliver those too. Along with your favorite restaurant food, alcohol, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.

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That's what Canon's Level Up sales event is all about. With awesome deals on their range of cameras and lenses, you can grab everything you need for that shot or scene you've been dreaming of for less. Whether you're helping that special person take their content up a notch or adding that extra quality to your own shoots, Canon's got you covered. Shop the level up sales event today at canon.ca. You mentioned before that you started your work on cold cases without your boss knowing. Was that because it was not your job or was that because they wouldn't approve or some other reason? So let me clarify that a little bit. I started doing laboratory work on cold cases with my bosses knowing.

What they didn't know is I was slipping out and going and starting to investigate the cases. And that was because that wasn't part of my job. I was a criminalist, but I was just like, I can only do so much with the physical evidence. And it's like, I need to go out and I need to be talking to the victims, the victims, families, the witnesses, I need to go out and I need to be talking to the victims, the victims' families, the witnesses. I need to be talking to potential suspects and to see if the boots on the ground aspect can be married up with what I am doing in the lab. And then ultimately I became well-versed in the behavioral side. You know, so really I was wearing three hats, the investigative, the forensics, and the behavioral, the profiling aspects. And I was bringing that and leveraging that into these cold cases.

And so I felt that I had a skill set that very few could replicate when I was looking at these cold cases. When your boss eventually found out, were you in trouble? found out, were you in trouble? It came close. When my bosses did find out, they supported what I was doing, though, you know, at one point, like when I was out at the J.C. Dugard location for two weeks straight, and I kind of inserted myself into that, thinking that Phil Garrido was involved in other cases in my jurisdiction. My commander at the time said, Paul, you're management now. You can't be doing this. But with fast talking, I was able to have him allow me to continue going out there. And I even, when I was at the DA's office working the Golden State Killer case, my boss at one point was saying, Paul, he's dead. I need you doing other things. And I was like, don't take me off this case, please. Again, fast talking. And when I have one sheriff in San

Joaquin County communicating with my sheriff saying, what the hell is your Paul Holes doing out here? And my sheriff through the chain of command is going what the hell now is Paul holes up to those were nerve wracking times but I was fortunate that nobody either truly understood the level of time commitment, and the amount that I was slipping out in the middle of the day, what was going on. on. And generally these people were people that liked me, you know? So I think that tolerated some of that as long as I continued to perform the other duties that I was supposed to do. So going back to Golden State, you say in your book that everybody kept telling you he's dead, he's disappeared. He's been inactive for so long. Like he's long gone, Paul. And you talk about how like, you just knew that he wasn't, that he was out there living some suburban life that he didn't deserve given what he had done to other people. And that just really got under your skin that you just felt strongly. He was out there. Was that just a hunch? What made

you feel so strongly that he was still alive? You know, I think it was most certainly an educated hunch. He could have been dead for sure. However, you know, as I started taking a look at, well, what's the likely age of the Golden State Killer? And I thought he was older than what most investigators thought. Unless he was killed or died early, or there was a thought that maybe he was in custody, he's possibly still out there. And the fact that he called a victim 24 years after he attacked her. So he attacks this one woman, his oldest victim ever, was a 38-year-old woman that he attacked in 1977. He called her 24 years later in 2001 after the DNA link between East Air Rapist and original Night Stalker homicides. And he basically said, remember when we played? And I was going in 2001,

he tracked a former victim down who had remarried. You know, she changed her name, of course, changed the phone book. In 2001, it didn't have her list. It had her husband listed, but he was able to call her. I was like, he's still alive. And I sacramental based. And so that really was one of the correct things I predicted about the case. There's many things I was wrong about, but that was one of the things that I was right about.

How did you meet Michelle McNamara, who really was very instrumental in publicizing the case? She coined the name Golden State Killer. You talk in your book about how when she published a big story about it, you realized how serious she was to trying to solve this. Yeah, we had a task force, a law enforcement task force of investigators from across jurisdictions. And Larry Poole from Orange County Sheriff's Office said, hey, there's this true crime blogger, Michelle McNamara, who's interested in doing a Los Angeles Magazine article on the case, do we as a task force want to cooperate with this author, this journalist? And we went around

the table and generally we all agreed, yes, let's cooperate. It's time to bring more public attention to this case and what had previously been done. So, Michelle ends up calling me. I didn't know her from Adam, you know, and I was, due to previous experience with reporters and journalists, you know, I've had some bad experiences, and I was a little standoffish. As I described myself, I was just sort of the, just the fax man, the Joe Friday. And as I'm trying to answer her questions in very, very vague terms, she's zinging me with more in-depth questions where I go, oh, you know, she knows this case. And then eventually back and forth as she's marching down to writing this article for Los Angeles Magazine, I confide in her some details about my investigation that I

should never have confided in a civilian. And so when the article came out, I was scared. I was going to go, no, those details are going to be in there and I'm going to be fired. But the reality was, the other investigators in the task force are going to not trust me, which would kill me. But then I saw that she held back everything that I told her off the record. And that's when she gained my trust. And then we ended up, I mean, there was a pause in our relationship. And then she called me up and said, hey, I've been asked to write a book. And I'm wondering what you think and what you think the task force would think. And I said, yes, absolutely. We need a good book on this case. And so now we're starting to correspond more and more. And then I actually

offered her, I said, hey, would you come up and I'll drive you around and show you some of the crime scenes. So she came up to Concord, California, which is in the East Bay. I met her at the hotel that she was staying at and we got in and it was just like two old friends, you know, it was so natural. She turned the tape recorder on and I drove her around for over eight hours. At that point we became friends and then we continued to communicate. She was my investigative partner. She just wasn't riding shotgun with me. And then ultimately she tragically passed away in her sleep, which was just a massive blow. I had gotten so fond of Michelle that losing her felt like I lost a family member and then I was lost.

For somebody who's not familiar with how this case was finally cracked and the perpetrator identified, how did you eventually identify who had committed all these horrible crimes? Right. Well, you know, and fundamentally it came down to physical evidence. And it was, though the Golden State Killer was very savvy, he was an intelligent, sophisticated offender. He never left any fingerprints that we know of. He always hid his face. Back in the 1970s and the early 1980s, DNA was not known. And he left his DNA in many cases, particularly, you know, down in the homicide cases where they had preserved the evidence all these years. And so it was really focusing in on, well, what can we do with the DNA?

That's how I got involved in the case back in the 90s was with DNA and then ultimately linked through DNA the East Area Rapist phase and the original Night Stalker phase using the DNA. And his DNA had been up in the FBI's DNA database for now almost several decades. We had done multiple Interpol searches looking at other countries' DNA databases and in 2012, I had started using a genealogy tool based on the male DNA with no success and then I had another case in which involved an abduction of a little girl, this Lisa Jensen,

and we spent 15 years using traditional law enforcement tactics to try to identify lisa and i get a call and then pulled into a conference call in which peter headley from san bernardino's office sheriff's office had said hey we identified lisa and she says don boden out of new hampshire she's missing her out of new hampshire and there's a whole story with Bear Brook murders and everything else related to that. But it was like, how did you identify Lisa? And it was like, well, I used, you know,

DNAadoption.com, a genetic genealogist by the name of Barbara Ray Venter, who was employing her skill sets to help adoptees find their biological parents. So I was just like intrigued. Okay. If that could be used to identify Lisa, could it be used to identify Golden State Killer? So I immediately drove back to my office. I called Barbara up and after a few questions, and I never told her what case I was working on. I just asked her the question, could this be used in this

situation? And she was like, I see no reason why it couldn't. And unfortunately, unknown to me, Barbara ended up having a serious health issue and she stopped communicating with me. But an FBI attorney by the name of Steve Kramer popped up out of the blue saying, hey, I hear what you're doing with genealogy. How can I help? And so Kramer and I then became tied at our hip and we had a symbiotic relationship. His bulldog personality, his federal authority, coupled with my knowledge of the case and scientific background, we just turned out to be perfect. And eventually we're marching down using this new genealogy tool in which is relying upon a DNA profile that generally your Ancestry.com and 23andMe and Family Tree DNA type companies are using, the SNP profile. And then Barbara

came back into the picture and Barbara's like, hey, do you still need my help? I'm like, oh my God, yes. And so we formed a very small team within the task force of six people steve kramer myself and barbara and three other individuals and then we're just working on utilizing this technique by the time d'angelo's name popped up it took us almost three and a half months and then i was really high on a guy in Colorado and I was focusing in on him that was generated off of this list. And then we got a DNA sample from his sister and she wasn't the sister of Golden State Killer. So I could eliminate the Colorado guy. And then I'm looking going, I'm going to retire in a week or two weeks. Who can I dig into? And DeAndre's this cop from Auburn, he has Joseph

DeAngelo. So I start digging into him. And as I dug into him, he became more and more interesting. And then the last day that I was at work, that's when I drove up and sat in front of his house, debating whether or not I should just go knock on his door and get a DNA sample, you know, thinking it's a likelihood he's the guy. And fortunately, I didn't knock on his door and get a DNA sample, you know, thinking it's a likelihood he's the guy. And fortunately, I didn't knock on his door. I drove home. I retired, continued to participate in the cases, but then surveillance was set up on D'Angelo and ultimately a surreptitious sample was collected and it ended up matching Bolden State Killer. How did that feel to you in that moment of knowing that he had finally been identified?

What was your feeling? Well, you know, at that point, I'd been involved in the case for 24 years. That was just that weird, almost out of body floating experience. You know, it's like, oh my God, finally. But then it's immediately, oh, there's a bunch of work that needs to be done.

You know, kicking into, okay, what's the next step? Got to do this. And even though I was retired, I was still very active with the case and ultimately went up into Sacramento homicide with my bud, Ken Clark from Sacramento Sheriff's Homicide. And we hold ourself up and authored the arrest warrant together. And then I helped out with the search warrant. And then we just waited for a confirmation of the sample through some other technicalities. And then boom, Sacramento Sheriff's arrested D'Angelo. Had he been living the life you had pictured for him when you were like,

nope, he's still out there? Still out there. He was living in a middle-class neighborhood. From the outside, an immaculate house. His yard was immaculate. I mean, this guy was just taking care of everything that the public could see. He was fired from law enforcement. He eventually was hired as a mechanic. He had done a full career as a truck mechanic in the Sacramento area. He ended up retiring. He had friends. He'd go fishing with his fishing buddies. You know, he was living his own life.

He had granddaughters. He had daughters. He's just the doting grandfather taking his granddaughters out. Here's a guy who had taken so many people's lives or traumatized so many people. And then he continued to live a life that he didn't deserve. And so that's, you know, that's that angst, but we got it. And you know, what I get a lot of glee is that he and I literally retired at the same time in March of 2018. And I would say my retirement has gone better than his. Have you ever spoken to him or spoken to anybody in his family?

No. So I was supposed to help interview him with Ken Clark after he had been arrested, but the way that he was acting, we needed to get to the Southern California homicide investigators in front of him. So I didn't get to interview him post-arrest. And then outside of seeing his two younger daughters, I have not talked to anybody else in his family, except extended family. I had a nephew reach out to me who has some information that's interesting. You know, we all hope that D'Angelo will talk someday because he never has. He's never given us any details about his cases. And we have so many questions. He's never given us any details about his cases. And we have so many questions. So interesting. What I mean, this is obviously a fascinating topic that many people, you know, the mind of a serial predator is fast. It's fascinating for the general public. Do you have any sense of what made him do it and why he stopped? No, in terms of what made him do it, no. You know, there's, I mean, of course, all sorts of theories that are generic to the serial predator. What made him stop, I do believe, I mean, he's somebody that did show empathy during the course of his crimes,

which a lot of people might find surprising. And I think he struggled with the fact of what he was doing. Secondarily, he was getting older. And at a certain point, he gets into a fight with a six foot three Gregory Sanchez out down in Santa Barbara in 1981, July of 81, which he possibly could have lost. And we don't have another case for five years until he attacks a teenage girl in May of 1986. And there's no male present. But after 86, you know, he's now in his early 40s. There's no more cases that we know of yet. And so I think he was like, I'm done. I physically can't do this. And this is what we hear from Dennis Rader, BTK. Similar situation with a guy he did not expect to be in the house and walked away going, oh my God, I could have lost that fight.

I could have been caught. I could have been hurt. I could have been killed. And he stopped. These guys continued to fantasize, but the physical act may be something that they realize that they are no longer capable of doing. And a lot of state killers cases, jumping over fences, breaking into houses, running away. It's a very physical type of event that, you know, once he's getting into his forties, he's no longer as physically capable as he was in his twenties. What made you write this book? What made you write Unmasked? Well, initially it started out, you know, I thought, well, everybody's going to be fascinated with a deep dive into the investigation of the Golden State Killer case. But then as I'm talking to my collaborator,

you know, Robin on the book, I'm talking to her about my career and all these other cases. She's like, oh my God, you've done so much more than just Golden State Killer. And it's important for people to know that I'm not just a Golden State Killer guy. I've done a lot. But as we got talked and I'm telling her stories, you know, and there's times when I'm not just a Golden State Killer guy. I've done a lot. But as we got talked and I'm telling her stories, you know, and there's times when I'm emotionally breaking down, then it became obvious, okay, this is more about now, why, how did the career impact me? As we started working with the publisher, it became, yeah, this, and it became my passion. You know, this is where I opened up and there's not, I'm very private.

There's not a lot out there in the public about me, but now it's like, yes, this is so important. Not only talking about Golden State Killer and these other cases that I had a role in, like Lacey Peterson and JC Dugard and other cases that have fascinating stories that people haven't heard of, but it's also, this is what somebody like me, the personal sacrifices, you know, we make that I've made and other people have made in order to do this job. And that this is now what I want the readers to get out of this. So people see the title Unmasked and they're thinking it's D'Angelo Unmasked. And yes, but it's also Paul Holes being Unmasked. And so what are you doing now? What is your second career?

Well, the second career, of course, I've got a podcast called The Murder Squad on the Exactly Right Network. And then I've also entered into a contract with CNN HLN to do some more true crime related TV shows. And so I filmed some of that and I'll let HLN kind of announce how they, you know, what's going on there, but that's going to keep me busy for a while. So you still get to keep your expertise up, still get to keep your hands in it, but just not. Just not the same, but it's something. Yeah.

So interesting. Well, I have one last question for you that I know I've discussed with my listeners before, and I'm curious about your perspective on it. Should people take DNA tests that are uploaded to places like 23andMe, Ancestry.com? Should they do that? readme ancestry.com should they do that so if if the concern is related to law enforcement i will say there shouldn't be any concern there even though on the surface that seems like that's going to be your biggest threat to privacy but i will say that i as a law enforcement officer when i'm searching these these databases using this genetic genealogy tool i never had access to anybody's genetic information in the databases. In order for me to do that, I have to download or be able to download their DNA profile. I'm no different than an Ancestry.com user, you know, who gets the email saying, hey, we found a

third cousin, right? And share this much DNA. That's all I see as a law enforcement officer. So it's really misperceived in terms of what law enforcement can access. I think the bigger concern is going to be, you know, how are these private companies going to be utilizing your DNA? Because you've literally sent your DNA into these companies. So do they have big freezers? They've done their DNA profile, but they probably still have these huge freezers containing your DNA for future testing purposes. And I'm sure that's in their terms of agreement. It is. And then how are they going to want to profit from having access to this DNA material? That would be my bigger concern. And I think that really comes down to an individual preference as to what their people are comfortable with. My DNA has been sent in.

I've done my own DNA for genealogy. My parents, I use my parents to experiment with in order to figure out how this tool would work before D'Angelo was arrested. So I'm very comfortable with that side of it, but I know there's people out there not. And so I think it's just a personal decision, but just, I think for me,

people of course have concern about law enforcement's use of these genealogy database, but it's really fundamentally learn how the process works and don't just assume. And my biggest fear is legislatures will enact laws that will restrict law enforcement's use without understanding really what truly is the privacy impact with this tool. Because it is so proven, this Golden State Killer, hundreds of the worst of the worst types of cases, cold cases, have been solved utilizing it. There is a significant public safety benefit that has to then be weighed against the potential privacy concerns of the individual. And think about this, just a little soapbox issue on my side is that in Golden State Killer, before this tool was used, we collected DNA from hundreds upon hundreds of men.

from hundreds upon hundreds of men. We now possess their DNA as a government servant because they looked like a composite generated in the 1970s on this case. An ex-wife or an ex-girlfriend called up and said they are a bad guy. Once we did genealogy, we got DNA from one person and that was a sister of somebody that was related, but we were able to eliminate. That guy never was contacted to this day. He doesn't know that he was at least eyeball. We saved, genetic genealogy saved hundreds, if not thousands of men from having their DNA collected in this one case. And that's their DNA now being possessed by the government. So it shows the power of this tool. Not only can we identify the offender, we can prevent people from the trauma of being the knock on the door. Paul is knocking on your door saying, hey, your name has come up in this

investigation of a serial killer. You know what? You can give me your DNA and we can eliminate you. That's very traumatic. So it has the power to exonerate. Good point. Paul, thank you so much for doing this. I read your book with interest. Thank you for your career in public service. Tell everybody where they can find you. in public service. Tell everybody where they can find you. So I'm not somebody who's really out there that much. I do have an Instagram account, which is at paul.poles. And I do have a Twitter account at paul.poles. They can find me there. But of course, my book Unmasked, My Life-Solving America's Cold Case, is coming out on April 26th. So I hope people will at least take a look and see if that's something that they can learn a little bit more about me and a little bit more

about real crime. Thank you, Paul. I appreciate your time so much. Thank you, Sharon. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. This podcast was written and researched by Sharon McMahon and Heather Jackson. It was produced by Heather Jackson, edited and mixed by our audio producer Jenny Snyder,

and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. I'll see you next time.