RedHanded - The Golden State Killer - Part 3: The Dark Arts of DNA Databases | #462

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

To find the most prolific and violent serial rapist and killer the state of California had ever seen, took over fifty years, and some ethically questionable methods. Public DNA databases were trawled without their users consent, samples were entered under false pretences, and hundreds if not thousands of people had their rights violated. But, they did eventually catch their man, and walk him up the garden path, leaving a roast to overcook in the oven. Join us in part 3 of our now 4 part series on the Golden State Killer as we discuss how Joseph James DeAngelo was finally caught.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

Throughout the 70s, the 163,695 square miles of California, thank you I practice, were terrorized by one man in many masks. He stalked through the whole state with one intention to create a collective that lived in total fear, all because of him. And he managed it. As the Vasilia ransacker, the rancher Caudover Proula, the Creek Killer, the Santa Barbara Slasher, the Diamond Knock Killer, the East Area Rapist,

the Ea, the original Night Stalker, Eir slash Ons. And finally, the Golden State Killer, the name that ties all of those identities together. For decades, little was known about him, except that he was a man living in opposition. Many of his victims reported to various police departments and sheriff's offices that their tormentor spoke in a low, gravelly voice through a clenched jaw, telling them to shut up and clearly demonstrating to them

that he had been watching them for quite some time, relishing in the torment he had caused. But then his mask would slip. After brutally raping some women, he would sob, I'm sorry, mummy, on a loop. One victim reported that she could hear the East area rapist hysterically crying in another room as she lay tied up, face down, terrified that he would come back and defile her again. Most tellingly of all, in July 1978, after all his raping and sodomizing, the man in the mask

wept, I hate you, Bonnie, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. In April 2018, all the way in Italy, Bonnie Oltson's phone rang. It was her ex-husband. He was calling to ask her if she remembered the guy she'd gone out with before him. Of course she did. She nearly married him. It's not a person that anybody forget. The man Bonnie actually married, the one on the other end of the line, had something he needed to say. I need you to know.

They are arresting him as the East Area rapist. I'm Hannah. I'm Surruti. And this is red-handed, the episode where I thought we would finally get to put the Golden State Killer to bed. But my sleep paralysis and night terrors have to extend by another week. And if mine do, so do yours. Because I think this might be our first ever four-parter. Oh, congratulations.

I called it being three a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. And then today I was like, it's got. before it's it just has to be yeah i mean if any if any case is going to i think a case that spanned this length of time and took this many forms from the killer it's probably one that uh it's worth pausing on over the space of four weeks i agree and also i gen if we hadn't have got him this would have been over two weeks ago yeah yeah it would be a totally different kettle of fish but because he gets caught, that just opens up.

He doesn't confess, don't be silly, but it does open up a whole other chapter to this story that otherwise I don't think we ever would have got to see. No, and there is actually a lot to the story that I don't know. I think it's one of those ones that maybe because it is so famous, people like me perhaps are like, oh, I know it. And I haven't really taken the time to delve into it in a huge amount of debt because it feels overwhelming as somebody who you have done the research, I'm sure you can agree to. It feels overwhelming, so I haven't really gone near it. So I'm learning a lot and I'm very

intrigued to hear what the hell is going on with Bonnie, because that's absolutely fucking terrifying. Oh yeah. Bonnie is, Bonnie's got quite the part to play in this Sardaga. Oh dear. Well, let's pick back up then with our story. Many similar nights were unslept by Orange County sheriff investigator Larry Paul, who dedicated 20 years of his life to tracking down this man in a ski mask. And also, he was the originator of the name, the original Nightstalker. Something that Larry actually wasn't too happy about in the end, he worried that it made people more obsessed with Richard Ramirez, who was operational in California in the 80s, and actually turned attention away.

from the Iran's investigation. Paul was assigned to the Orange County Sex Crimes Unit in 1998, and his first task was cracking open those county cold cases, starting with the murders of Keith and Patty Harrington. Over his decades of service, Larry Paul built a database specifically pertaining to this case, called the Harrington Access Data Bank. He had to build it himself,

because in his own words, Excel wouldn't cut it. Just going to refer to my handwritten notes to remind you who Keith and Patty Harrington are. We told their horrible story last week. Keith and Patty Harringtons are murdered in 1980. It's the third couple that he murders in Laguna Nigel. And Larry Paul, I think for lots of reasons, they're also the one where it's Keith's dad who discovers them. And he's really convinced that because their faces are covered, that the killer must have known them. But actually he wrapped them up in a blanket before he cracked them like eggs because he didn't want the blood to go everywhere.

Yeah, I remember. So he starts with Keith and Patty Harrington, and it leaves an enormous effect on him. He comes very close with their families. And once Larry had created his monster, his data monster, he fed it, killer profiles, height, weight, age, shoe size, ski mask, colors, ligature types, speech patterns, dishware balancing acts and the consumption of food at the crime scene. as a result of computing all of these usual and unusual traits. It was investigator Larry Poole that connected the Orange County killings, which is the Harrington's Manuela Withune and Janelle Cruz, the last one,

to the murders of Dr. Offerman and Deborah Alexander Manning in Galita, which is in Santa Barbara in 1979. And he also began to suspect pretty early on that the crimes of the Vasilia ransacker were a bit too close for comfort too. The MO was essentially all Larry Paul had to work with. Although, by 1998, DNA analysis was really making quite large moves. Two years before Paul was assigned to the sex crime unit,

DNA had snagged a murderer of six women Gerald Parker, exonerating an innocent while at it. So the point being, DNA's hot shit, people are funding it. They're like, okay, this one. works. What was Colin Pitchfork? 86? Something like that. And that was in the UK. So DNA has sort of gone from this like, kind of like how no one used to take hypnotism seriously.

And now everyone's like, hypnotism is the best thing in the world. And it stopped me like doing everything. DNA was sort of a quite out there idea for a while until it starts cracking cold cases. And Larry Paul is right there at the beginning of this wave. However, the California crime labs, were a bit behind in DNA profile building.

So when Larry Paul sends off the rape kits from the Harrington and the withune murders, when he sends them off, they were proven to be the same, but no profile was made. It wasn't, they're the same and this is your man. But Larry Paul took that connection to the press nevertheless, armed with the knowledge he kept in the 93 binders on this case that haunted his office and I'm sure his wife. A cheeky 400 miles away in Contra Costa County,

deputy criminalist Paul Holes had his nose buried in an investigation all of his own. Although, supposed to be confined to his crime lab, Holes could never help his eye wandering over to the Cold Case files on the East Area rapist. Contra Costa was one of the few departments that hadn't routinely destroyed their ear files, or sold them to Michelle McNamara. And in 1997, Holes started collating all of the forensic samples he possibly could. But without the magic of a database to compare the samples against, he was left with what investigators had known since the 70s.

The man responsible for all three of the Contra Costa County East Area rapist cases was a non-secretor with type A positive blood. Yeah, they've known that for like 30 years. Yeah. And it only narrows it down to like 15% of the population, maybe. which is still millions and millions. I think it's difficult for us now to be able to even get our heads around a case with this much physical evidence where DNA hasn't come into play for so long.

So it kind of feels like you're screaming at the TV to not go down the corridor or not open the door. But it just didn't work like that. No. And I think you have to give a lot of credit to the investigators, police officers, people in law enforcement who had the foresight to think, okay, well, we don't have a database yet. But it's coming at some point.

and what I need to do is very diligently save every scrap of physical evidence that I possibly can because one day this will mean something. Because the easiest thing in the world would have been to be like, well, you know, all I can do is use the tools that I have now and not have that foresight to think about what could be possible in the future. And I think they're doing a stand-up job with what they have at this point. So yes, Paul Holes knows that he hasn't really moved anything forward in terms of what people knew. in the 70s to what they knew at this point. But he didn't give up that easily.

He nervously tracked down retired sheriff's detective, yet another Larry Crompton. I think this is our fifth Larry. Yeah, a lot of larries. We're going to have to go so many. A lot of Larry's knocking around in California in the 70s. And this Larry had been assigned to the ear case back in the day. Holes was apprehensive in his approach because it's not often that retirees want to muse over the great failures of their careers. But Larry Crumpton was different.

He was all too happy to speak to holes. We want to tell you about Mums and Mysteries, the podcast where two Florida friends uncover chilling cases with humour and heart. Melissa and Mandy are the mums behind the mics, taking you on a roller coaster of true crime stories while adding their own brand of humour right into that mix,

respectfully doing so. Join them every Tuesday for Mums and Mysteries, your gateway to gripping well-research true crime stories. They're your go-to podcast for Mysteries, with a mothering touch. And now every Thursday, they're revisiting some of the cases they've covered

over the last nine years, as well as delving into some new mysteries. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. I think it is in Michelle McNamara's book because they're aware of each other. And she describes how, like, in Orange County Sheriff's Office, in particular, they leave the cold case files in the office

so all of the young blood can see them. so they like want to crack it you know which is why they still exist but back in the day detective crompton had also spotted similarities to catastrophes in other counties he had connected his own discoveries to the santa barbara murders back in 1980 but he had been told that he was barking up the wrong tree but still he'd never forgotten it almost 20 years later he told paulhauls I know it's him. So, Paul Holes got on the blower to Santa Barbara, who told him to get lost too,

but perhaps out of pity, they threw him an Irvine-shaped bone. Irvine, as my crash course in Californian geography has taught me, is in Orange County. And in the Orange County Crime Lab, there was Miracle Mary Hong. Mary Hong was using a different, more refined DNA typing technique and working in the same office as original night stalker fanatic Larry Poole.

Larry Poole had discovered the double homicide of Charlene and Lyman Smith. That's the one where the neighbour sees the milk through the window. A case that had gone cold in Ventura County in 1980. And he was sure that that too was committed by the man he was hunting in Orange County. The Ventura Sheriff's Department were a bit more helpful than Santa Barbara had been, and they agreed to send any forensics that they had pertaining to the Smith murders to Mary Hong in the Orange County Crime Lab. And somehow, with a few glass slides from vaginal swabs taken in 1980, Mary Hong developed a DNA profile, a non-secretor with a very rare gene mutation.

The very same extraordinarily rare gene mutation as found. with the murderer of Keith Harrington, Patty Harrington, Manuela with Hune and Janelle Cruz, bringing the killer they were hunting's body count up to six. But without being able to run that profile across Kodas, the combined DNA index system, there was nothing they could do with it. And no one thought to warn the victims of the East Area rapist that this was all being aired and his confirmed hunting ground was being expanded. And on April 6th, 2001, one of the Sacramento 51, got a phone call from a voice she thought she would never hear again, saying, remember when we played. So he knows.

Michelle was sure that Doug Fedler was the Golden State killer, a man who had bludgeoned his own brother to death in Idaho, and still lived with his mum. With a frying pan, no less. Oh, lovely. But Doug was eliminated by Codas. Until the mid-2000s, everyone had been in unspoken agreement that running the wire chromosome profile created by Hong and Holes through CODIS would lead them straight to the terror of 70 Sacramento. Such a prolific criminal must have been caught for something and therefore he must be on the database.

Yeah, I really think there is this like, because they're waiting, right, they're waiting for California to be able to, or for Santa Barbara or Contra Costa even, to get access to Kodas, like this is going to be it, he has to be in there. Which is sound logic, of course, like a man who has committed this many heinous crimes, you know, this level of violence, it would be shocking that he wouldn't be in there for something. So it's sound logic. But yeah, just not happening.

So yeah, he's not turning up in Kodas. So either he was dead or the man responsible for 13 murders over 51 rapes and countless burglaries. was still out there and somehow keeping a squeaky clean record. So Paul Holes took a leaf out of Michelle McNamara's as yet unpublished book and turned his attention to more recreational... I'm not convinced that's actually a word. I've just decided that genometric. Genometric.

Sounds nice. The pursuit of genes. I like it. Attaining to genes. I like it. I like it. Okay. I will also point out.

out on my crusade against publishers, they don't publish Michelle McNamara's book after she dies. They publish it when he gets arrested. Oh, yeah, okay. Because that's when they're going to make money, isn't it? Okay, yeah. So Paul Holes turns his attention to more recreational genometric pursuits. And as we said last week,

the likes of Ancestry.com and 23 and me were really taking off. And loads of non-criminales were uploading their DNA profiles, left right and centre to the internet. By 2017, Ancestry.com had sold 5 million DNA kits. One of them had to halt the answer the holes was looking for. But those sites were of no use to holes, because he didn't have the Golden State killer spit in a tube. He basically needed a site that would let him just upload a bunch of letters and numbers

and search for a hit. Which do exist. The thing with Ancestry.com 23 of me, all the big ones, my heritage, Because you are uploading this information about yourself, it's like the toll is a tube of your spit you're like. I give you my information in exchange for everyone else's. And Paul Hulls can't do that. So he's not allowed in those arenas. He gets in them illegally, but as yet, not allowed.

So he needs these letters and numbers sites. And there are a fair few of them. Now defunct Y search was a very popular and very free site where one could upload Y genome markers. to try and find your daddy. And Holes typed in the very unique markers that he had pieced together from surviving rape kits, and bingo, found a partial match. But the site's parent company, gene by gene,

even when Holes got hold of a federal subpoena, refused to release any information on the account holder, which they are perfectly within their rights to do. Interesting. This is something that not many people realize when they hear about this case, because you hear like, oh, like the Golden State killer got got by Ancestry.com and you're like, oh my God, that's so cool. But actually,

ethically, it's really fucked up. And I'm going to explain why. Law enforcement have absolutely no right to use these geneal websites for criminal investigations. It's part of the terms and conditions that no one reads, but it's there. Uploading your spit profile to a genealogy website categorically is not agreeing to cooperate with law enforcement, federal or otherwise, or for them to have access to that information. Actually, the next site I'm going to talk about, I went on the, I had a look, and they have a pro version of their genealogy database. And the first thing you now have to click is I accept that by joining GED match pro, I am also consenting to law enforcement using my information. It's the first thing.

But back then, it wasn't. And the pesky human right to privacy was not going to stop Paul. holes. He found another site that was a spit-free info zone, the one I was just talking about GED match, a free site where users can upload their DNA data files to compare to over 1.5 million people these days. It's actually the sister of GEDCOM that was developed by Mormons to track their genealogical information. Why do you need to track it? It's quite a small pool. You're all in the same place. Just go down the road. Maybe that's why. It's like how in Iceland, they have dating apps that have like genealogy trackers so that you're not

accidentally fucking your like long-loss cousin or something. I mean, at the end of the day, we are all long-loss cousins. It just depends how long, you know. The incest's epitaph. Well, it's true. It's like when people do their like 23 or me or whatever, they're like, oh my God, I'm related to Charlemagne. We're all related to Charlemagne because for it to have gone back that far, there must

to just be more people than ever existed. It's complete nonsense. Anyway, the number of profiles on the site on GED match back in the... The Tweedys? What do you... The Tweedys? What do you call the 2000s? I don't know, actually. I christened them, the Tweenies. In the Tweenies.

The number of profiles was closer to 650,000. But that was all it took. The site identified 10 to 20,000. distant relatives of the Golden State Killer. That's like shared great, great, great grandparents in the 1800s where everyone had like 25 children. But from those 10 to 20, Holes and his team built out 25 family trees of the Golden State killer's third and fourth cousins.

In the end, that totaled to a pretty unhelpful thousand plus people, but it's progress. And then a similar search was run on family tree DNA. But these free open source sites don't give you names. They only give you ages and maybe a location. If you want names, you have to go for a paid-for website who do not cooperate with police without a court order, and sometimes not even then. Then a break came in February 2018,

in the form of civilian genealogy fanatic Barbara Ray Venter. Barbara took it upon herself to upload the Golden State Killer's forensic profile onto her personal account on MyHeritage.com, a total violation of the site's privacy policies, as well she knew, as did the FBI. Barbara had done a similar thing for the Bear Brook investigation, and via that had access to FBI catfish accounts on all the major genealogy sites and plenty of the minor ones too.

The FBI's public opinion on this civilian violation is that law enforcement are entitled to go wherever the public goes, Using a genealogy site is just law enforcement agencies making use of a public access service. See, here's where I don't agree with you, FBI. That comes from a press conference, I think. And the example they give is how is it different to an FBI agent going into a bookshop and buying a book? Anybody can do that. And I'm like, yeah, but you're not trading your spit, though, are you?

You're not giving up anything of you. It's really dicey. It's really shady territory. So my heritage narrowed down the search pool significantly and spat out some first cousins of the Golden State killer. The FBI paid one of these cousins a visit in Orange County and asked her for a DNA sample to help them close the net. So so far they've been dealing with a Y chromosome profile, obviously.

So that's only going to give you men in it. Yeah. So they come across this first cousin, I think she's the only woman they find, and they're like, we've got to get her, because all of these men must be related to our killer by the woman's side. So as soon as we've got one woman, we've got him. So they go down there and they get her to spit in a tube.

And she's like, okay, whatever you want. Because as I said, the Golden State killer must be related to the family that they found on his mother's side. So Barbara ran this woman's sample through Ancestry.com. Because this time, she had the tube full of spit to pay. the entry fee. Only six men came back as possible fits. The FBI had to look through the California driver's license records. They're allowed to do that.

I'll give them that. That's fine. And those unavoidable DMV mugshots showed that only one of those six had the blue eyes of their killer. It's time. Joseph James DeAngelo of Citrus Heights. California, born in 1945, had made it to his earlyish mid-70s. He had been living in Sacramento County for decades, just 20 minutes from Rancho Cordova.

The place he could never manage to stay away from. But this wasn't enough for an arrest. They needed DNA from the tiniest wang in California. So the FBI stalked out the home in citrus heist that, Joseph DiAngelo had made with his wife and three daughters. After ten days and a deal with a bin man, two samples were collected, one taken from the handle of a car,

and the other from a thrown away tissue. Paul Holes and the FBI, by nefarious means, had all they needed. A perfect match and game over. On the 24th of April, 2018, the Sacramento Sheriff's Department arrested Joseph Gajangelo outside his house. You'll read in a lot of places he was mowing the lawn. That's not true.

He just walked out and they were like, surprise, gotcha. I heard he was mowing the lawn and cooking a roast in the oven. The roast bit is true. Oh, delicious. So, half-sy-half-sey. Two out of three ain't bad. He's so gutted. They take fucking age.

You're like, what? There's a roasted. in the oven. That's literally what he says, are you a serial killer? That's what he says as they arrest him. Why toast when you can roast? As he was handcuffed, he calmly told the sheriff's department that he had a roast in the oven. And the Golden State killer was assured that the deputies would take care of his cooking for him. You'll ruin it. I don't trust you. That's what I'd say. was retired by the time his sins caught up with him.

But it is heyday, Joseph D'Angelo had been a police officer. Oh, dun, dun, dun. And before we jump into his life,

please, Surruti Barler included, I actually sent this to you on Slap. But take yourself over to the show notes, which you can find on our website. At the very top, there is a link to the most helpful timeline I have found.

Some genius put the, this together on Reddit and I could not find who it was. If I'm using your work, please get in touch with me so I can thank you personally. It is hands down the most helpful thing I have found to help run DiAngelo's life alongside his crimes and cross-reference events that made him take pause a few times and then eventually stop. So if you get stuck, if you get confused, that's what you need to look at to clear it up. Joseph James DeAngelo was born in upstate New York, but on account of his father being in the Air Force, Joseph and his siblings moved around loads and spent quite a lot of time in Germany, living on air bases. By his early teens, DiAngelo had been plonked in junior high

in Rancho Cordova, California, as his dad left for Korea. His mother was left behind with four kids and only a waitressing job at Denny's to feed them all. DeAngelo bore the responsibility of raising his siblings, and this pressure often boiled over into screaming matches between him and his mum. DeAngelo ended up essentially being adopted by another family. I already had nine other children. Hey man, they're probably Catholics. An uncle of mine was part of a nine child brood and then the Pope said adopt so they got another one. Wow. When you've got nine, what's one more really? True, true. And one of these nine children in this family that he was adopted into was Judy, who later told the

times that when she saw a hooded figure, peeping through her window one night as a teen, she never thought it would be Joe. So Joe and her older brother are like best mates, right? Uh-huh. And she gives this interview years later, obviously, after the big reveal. And she was like, I just, even though that really creepy thing happened to me and I lived in this small town after he moved in with our family. It never even crossed my mind that it would be him.

Plenty of little robberies were also reported nearby over the years as well. So although many timelines, including the one that we've recommended for you guys, Mark DiAngelo's criminal beginnings in the early 70s, it's clear that it started long before. The more anecdotal stuff that comes out, which obviously could only happen once they catch him because then people are like, oh, I like sat next to him in playgroup or whatever, it becomes very obvious that it started so young.

After his parents divorced, DiAngelo dropped out of school and joined the military, wanting to become an aviator like his flyaway father, but they didn't trust him in the skies or even on the ground. Joseph DiAngelo was plonked in the galley of a warship as a mechanic and sent off to Vietnam. After three years at sea and one more in the naval reserve, the killer was honourably discharged back to the Golden State. He moved in with his mum, just outside Auburn, about 40 minutes from his spiritual home. Rancho called over. And he drove those 40 minutes a lot. He was with his adoptive family all the time, in local bars, all over the place. But he enrolled in community college back in Auburn.

And Sierra College is where he met Bonnie. She was a lab assistant, whose main job at Sierra College was to look after all of the rats. Bonnie also had a pet owl that she would train in the college grounds. I don't know whether she was just stealing the rats to give her owl training treats. I don't know. I can't confirm that. Bonnie, I'm sorry if that's not true,

but it does seem like a weird parallel that you're in charge of all of these lab rats and also have a rat eating owl. Anyway, one of Bonnie's training sessions with her avian friend took a decidedly staircasey turn when her owl got tangled in Bonnie's hair. I fucking knew it. I fucking knew it. Yeah, Joseph DiAngelo is the owl.

To Bonnie's 18-year-old rescue came a muscular political science studying Joseph DeAngelo fresh from serving his country. A week later, DiAngelo asked Bonnie out. He put her on the back of his motorbike and took her shooting. According to Bonnie, he shot a vulture out of the air. Wow. out. My husband can catch pigeons with his bare hands. That is a skill, Hannah, you're yet to see. Why?

I don't know. But it's true. Firstly, how did he find that out? And secondly, why? There's very good questions. Apparently, there was a man who he saw do it. And he was like, that's fucking nuts. How did you do that?

And he's like, I'll show you. And he's like, you just wait. You wait. And then one flies over you, you just put your hand directly up and you grab it because they can't see you. There's a blind spot. And he was telling his friends, I wasn't there, but I've seen the video.

He was telling his friends he could do this. And they were like, no, you fucking can't. They're on the phone. They're standing outside a train station. You can see it all on the recording. And then he's just like, well, I'll show you. Pigeon flies over. He grabs it with his bare hand and pulls it down and shows it to them.

And they're like, everybody is screaming. I do not understand why, how. Sometimes when we go and walks, he threatens to do it. And I'm like, please, for the love of God, don't. But there you go. There you go. Who knew? Such an embarrassing thing.

to try and do and fail. But as of the why, I don't yet have the answer, I'm afraid. But anyway, moving away from the birds, Bonnie and our killer, soon to be killer, DeAngelo, started spending a lot of time together. And Bonnie had never had any real interest from boys before. And DiAngelo was also five years older. And he was a veteran. And he exclusively listened to the doors.

So she's thinking he's a catch. And he's got a bike. Yeah. I get it. I get it. Like she's both of her parents are teachers. She's like very like good girl. And then there's this like dangerous.

And it's a fun meet cute. Who's like I choose you. Like, you know, I get it. Exactly. And he rescued her with their fun meat cute of when she had an owl trapped in her hair. It's a good one. That's like they go. It's a good one.

Yeah. It's almost like, yeah, the poised. opposite of the staircase, isn't it? The start of something horrible. Everything has an equal-perfitt opposite reaction. Exactly. We found it. So yes, Bonnie, as you can imagine,

was particularly impressed with DiAngelo's missing fingertip that he told her he had clipped off by a bullet whilst on patrol in the Mekong Delta. In reality, however, DiAngelo had never seen that kind of action. He didn't even see the outside of the ship's hull.

He lost the finger because he didn't get out of the way of a moving barrel quickly enough. Now, Bonnie's dad was less impressed with her new bow. But because he had been behind enemy lines himself in World War II, he did give DiAngelo the benefit of the doubt when he asked for Bonnie's hand in marriage. Although he did think it was a bit odd that the ring DiAngelo produced was far more expensive looking than a student should have been able to afford. He also says that he just had this feeling that it wasn't for her, because it had a really high setting,

and she was wearing gloves all the time because she works in her lab. So he was just like, why would you get such an impractical ring for a woman who works with her hands and gloves all day? Which I thought was very perceptive. That's very perceptive. And also, I'd say, I do believe that the ring wasn't for Bonnie, and I'm sure that will be a reveal to us. But I also think it's giving a student proposey far too much credit

for thinking about the settings of a ring and the height setting of a diamond. And he obviously hasn't done the TikTok ring quiz before he went and bought that for Bonnie. No, I mean, I don't think he bought it for anyone. I think he nicked it. I think he just broke to someone's house. It's a trophy. First ring he saw. I was like, jobs are good.

Bam, that'll do. No actual wedding date was set, which was proved to be the luckiest escape Bonnie could have imagined. By 1971, both of them had transferred to California State Sacramento. Bonnie was training to be a nurse and Joseph DeAngelo, get this, was studying criminal justice. Of course he fucking was. Of course he fucking was. In the early days of their courtship, the riders on the storm days, the sense of danger that DiAngelo carried with him was very attractive to Bonnie. But as time wore on, it became a lot more than that.

DeAngelo started sharply veering off roads down steeply. slopes with Bonnie on the back of his bike, not accidentally, because DiAngelo wanted to feel Bonnie's fear. When a German shepherd chased them down the road, DeAngelo kicked out his foot, and Bonnie was helplessly holding on as she heard the dog's neck snap and had to watch it crumple onto the concrete. Jesus Christ. Bonnie justified a lot. We've all been there, but as the daughter of two teachers, the one thing she absolutely would not tolerate, was academic dishonesty. So when Joseph de Angelo, ironically, was struggling to get the marks he needed to get through his criminal justice degree, he asked Bonnie to cheat for him on a psychology test. You couldn't write it.

And she says, no, absolutely not. And she dumps him. Bonnie returned the weirdly expensive looking high-set ring at her father's house, and DiAngelo stormed out, and he appeared to throw the ring into the distance. He didn't. A few days later, Bonnie saw DiAngelo on campus chatting to another girl, which I think she was probably quite relieved about. If he moved on, then she really would be in the clear.

But the next day, that relief was gone. When in the middle of the night, Bonnie heard a tapping at her window. She opened it to find her ex-fiancee waving a gun in her face, hissing, get up, were going to Reno. Bonnie did not jump out to the window and hop on the back of DiAngelo's bike, taking back everything she'd ever said. She went and got her dad. Bonnie Sr. told her to lock herself in the bathroom and not come out until he came back.

Bonnie's dad was gone for two hours. He didn't call the police. He just stood in the pitch black night speaking to the future original night stalker. And Bonnie's dad made him leave. Bonnie's dad then went back into the house and told his daughter that she could unlock the bathroom door and that Joseph DiAngelo was gone.

Having a dad sounds great. What's that like? Fuck it out. What a man. What a man Bonnie Senior is. How scary is Bonnie Senior that he doesn't even have to threat? He just makes him leave by talking. Yeah, fucking out.

Good for him. Following this incident, Bonnie took a year out and returned to her studies later on. In 1972, she got married and Joseph to Angelo bought a house two miles away from her marital home. I truly believe he never stopped watching Bonnie. I think he follows her wherever she goes. Jesus. Somehow though, even without her cheating for him, he did manage to get his degree in criminal justice. in 1973, and then he started an internship at the local police department.

And his home base of Rancho Cordova experienced a surge in strange burglaries where nothing much was stolen, only a strange unsettling feeling left behind. These home invasions were accompanied with multiple reports of a man appearing outside women's windows, often with no trousers on, and then running away when he was spotted. There were also multiple killings of really big dogs. When Bonnie's identity was revealed after the arrest, the gutter press, including the Daily Mail, ran headlines like,

the woman who broke the Golden State Killer's heart and caused him to kill. Or Bonnie, the one who started it all. Oh my God. Or this is the woman who sparked his murderous rampage. This is what I'm talking about when I say we need to decenter women from the discussion of male violence.

And he is arrested in 2018. We're not in the 70s anymore, right? even in the discussion of the golden state killer, 13 murders, at least 51 rapes, at the center of it, it's this woman's fault. He would have been completely fine. Like, she's the Yoko Ono of this situation. If they had never crossed paths,

all of those people would still be alive. It makes me fucking sick. Like, it's the same as the, like, what was she wearing? She was asked, it's all part of the same ecosystem. Like, feeling the need to, like, save men's feelings when discussing the violation of women is the same problem. Like, when men get angry, women die,

and I just don't feel like we need to apologize in the discussion of that by being like, oh, but other men upset, you know? Like, women are dead. Like, I just, oh, okay, anyway, you know what I mean. When Bonnie was questioned by Sacramento prosecutors after DeAngelo's arrest and asked if she was ever coerced or restrained by him in a sexual situation, she said no.

But Bonnie did admit that she did have sex with DeAngelo and it was exhausting. He would edge himself for hours, boasting over how much control he had over his body, a sentiment echoed by the ear in many of his attacks. After he finished his police internship, Joseph DiAngelo moved down to Sacramento Valley and got his first police job,

in Citrus Heights, specifically, where he would move back years later. This first police job that he got brought with it, Chief Wiggum-style donuts, and a bit of weight. DiAngelo met a girl and married her. DeAngelo and Sharon Huddle would go on to have three daughters together,

but separated sometime in the early 90s. Despite that, though, Sharon was DiAngelo's first call when he was detained. Because Sharon is a lawyer. Fucking hell. That's wild. After DiAngelo's arrest, Sharon's brother told oxygen, so take it with a pinch of salt. but you never mind, that although he never suspected his brother-in-law of being the most wanted man in the state,

he definitely had brought up the Golden State Killer in conversation. And this is the best possible moment to have your tandy timelines two-hand. Because this moment is the dawn of the Vasilio Ansaka. And if you remember all of the descriptions of him like big legs, tubby guy, really good at jumping over fences for some reason. and it's one of the reasons because he drops a lot of weight by the time he starts being the East Area rapist that the descriptions aren't the same. And he drops that weight because he's not sitting in a patrol car eating donuts anymore. He's on the actual beat.

Anyway, this moment is the dawn of the Vassilia Ransaka because DiAngelo is butt hurt by Bonnie. He's rebound married, carrying a bit of sad weight, and he starts breaking into people's homes and leaving underwear treasure maps, lifting single earrings, leaving perfume bottles on doorknobes, and stealing one very particular gun. Reports flooded into the sheriff's office and police department of a surprisingly agile fatty launching over fences into the dark. From 1973 until 1976, the East Area Rapist worked as an officer for the Exeter Police Department.

He actually made sergeant in 1976 and was placed in charge of an anti-burglary program created for a rise in the problem that he created himself. Brilliant. Create the problem, sell the solution. From 1976 onward, which is when he did most of his murdering, Joseph de Angelo worked for the Auburn Police Department, which is the same town in which his mum lived.

During his time on the beat, DeAngelo did all sorts of low-level work. He drove around on eight-hour patrols, casing all the houses possible to serve the community and himself. He neutralised false alarms, petty thefts, and drove drunks home. His appraisal files show a consistent lack of initiative, but a preference for tracking down drunk women. At the height of the East Area rapist crisis, Officer DiAngelo would check the houses were secure on behalf of terrified women,

and then within hours he would be back on the creep. And he would play it the other way around too, DiAngelo would carry out his vicious attacks in broad daylight and then be back on police duty the same day. And when a call came into the Auburn Police Department from someone claiming to know the identity of the East Area rapist, it was Joseph DiAngelo himself who was sent to take the statement. The report was closed when DiAngelo reported

that the tips had obviously been drinking very heavily. Only DiAngelo knows what was actually said, and he'll take that to his grave, which unfortunately still seems to be a little. while away. I'm convinced, right, that he doesn't want to be promoted. That's why all of his like reports are like, oh, like, right, could try harder, doesn't show initiative. He doesn't want to show initiative. He wants to stay exactly where he is.

It's a dream job for someone who's doing what he's doing. He's like basically getting paid to go around and case the houses. He's getting paid to basically go to people's houses and check what their security systems are like. And again, case the joint so he can come back if the woman in there, you know, fits the bill for the kind of victim he wants. Like, it's perfect. It's perfect. And also, come on, like, as we have been saying in the last two episodes about this, he's not just a random opportunist. He's a man who plans. He is a professional rapist and murderer. That's how he sees himself. He is a professional. And it's very hard, as you and I both know, having done that for the first few years of this podcast, to have two jobs. So I think he's just like,

I don't need it. I don't need it. I get enough money and I get enough from doing this beat job. My real passion, my real raison d'etre is all the other shit I do at my spare time. Why the fuck would I want a promotion? Added bonus, I'm the last one anyone will suspect. I'm in the police. I'm here to serve and protect. Absolutely. The thrill he would have got.

Perfect. From turning up at the house of someone who has either been victimized or who is terrified. And that terror is, as we know, exactly what he gets off on. That's exactly what he wants. He wants the whole of this area living in absolute fear, and he gets to see it on the fucking front lines. He's not like lingering around, seeing if people look scared or going to like neighborhood watch meetings.

He's a fucking police officer. He gets to go to their house and hold their trembling hand. Yeah. And it is not a stupid man who works all of those things out, is it? No. This is a very smart operation. In October 1976, Joseph DeAngelo was sent off to get a statement from a woman who reported a hooded man attempting to get through her bedroom window,

of which he made little note to his superiors. When sent to speak to two women who had received obscene phone calls, he did make notes. They said that the women described the caller's voice as pleasant. They just didn't like what he had to say. Which, to be fair, is exactly what they've said in the press, so that probably wouldn't have raised any eyebrows. DeAngelo's Orban PD career wasn't totally without issue, though.

He was reported several times by members of the community for having an overly confrontational demeanour. Reports show DiAngelo being described as superior and explosive over the most minor infraction. On one occasion, he's out of uniform as civilian day off. He's cut up by a Frenchman on the highway. And DiAngelo follows this driver into a car part and then he flies at this man screaming every version of fuck you can think of. The driver was accompanied by his elderly mother, so his passenger stepped in, a volunteered as tribute. All said and done, DiAngelo sued his sparring partner for dental work and lost income, and he won $15,000. If you have been keeping an eye on your timeline, you will know that by this date,

Joseph DiAngelo was already firmly in the serial killer category. I actually think the harshest blow to his ego comes from Nicholas Willick, a patrol sergeant who oversaw DiAngelo during his time at the Orban PD, who remembered him as totally normal, unmemorable, bar his stumpy finger, totally unremarkable. Even stating he was just an average person, an average Joe. Until 1979, when Joe Average's police service was brought to a bizarre and abrupt end, when the Orban PD received a most irregular call

to tell them that Officer DiAngelo had been arrested for shoplifting dog repellent and a hammer from a local drugstore. Mr Willick has stuck to the narrative that DiAngelo was immediately dismissed without fanfare. But the real story is actually quite a lot stranger. The second, this fully grown man, got collared, lifting dog repellent,

he started screaming and dropped to the floor. exclaiming that he was being treated like an animal. And when that didn't work, he faked a heart attack. Once the store security had wrestled the seemingly dying man to the floor, he sprung back up and tried to run. But they kept hold of him. Then DiAngelo pulled a hammer from his pockets, but still the security team didn't give up.

They dragged their assailant into their office and tied him to a chair until the sheriff arrived. And DiAngelo started rambling nonsensically. Remember that because it's important. Okay. DeAngelo didn't actually have much on him when he was detained. The hammer might have taken up quite a lot of room pocketwise. He had no cash, but he did have a handcuff key.

When he was asked about this, he paused his rambling and said that he used to be a cop. When the sheriff showed up, DeAngelo cranked up the madness a notch and it worked. The sheriff wrote him off as a nut job shoplifter and went on his way. And the second the sheriff was out of the room DeAngelo's mad act stopped and explained that he only acted mental because he wasn't an ex-policeman. He was a current one and he was afraid that they would call the Orban PD, which is where he worked. The shop security absolutely did call the Orban PD

to Dobangelo right in and he got sacked. This all went down in July 1979. patrolman Joseph DiAngelo had already raped 40 women and killed three people. But none of those homicides had been intentional. After he lost his job, DiAngelo made a work-related injury claim against the city claiming that Nicholas Willick had harassed him to the point of mental duress. Willick's four-year-old daughter was startled awake by a man with a torch at her window in the middle of the night, days after the claim was filed.

Willick's daughter refused to sleep in her bed after that. instead choosing to curl up in the bathroom under the toilet so she wouldn't have to walk down the dark corridor back to her bedroom in the night. DeAngelo also told a therapist that he had taken a gun to Willick's house with the intention of killing him. When Willick was told this, he brushed it off as a ploy made by DiAngelo to seem more mentally distressed than he actually was. But who knows?

Could be either. Could be either. After this series of humiliations, both being caught shop, reported to his boss and losing his job, Joseph DiAngelo started killing people on purpose. Dr. Robert Offerman and Deborah Alexander Manning of Galita Santa Barbara were murdered on the 30th of December that same year. Now you will read in some places that this also marked the true beginning of DeAngelo's descent into lunacy, when the man masks started to slip and the monster persona started to take

control more and more. People use this to explain why he started to start. started becoming more violent, killing intentionally, crying and using two voices, the low gritty one and the high-pitched childlike one. But I think the way he behaved when caught shoplifting, even explaining that he was only pretending, is enough to call bullshit on any loss of control via mental illness narrative attributed to the Golden State killer.

He got more violent because he wanted to. He started murdering to see what it would feel like, and he kept killing because he liked it. Now we can absolutely agree that whatever drives a person to rape, murder, terrorise and kill is not the product of a sound mind. But that is absolutely not the same thing as legal insanity, which leads to diminished responsibility, something that we will deal with a bit more next week.

Yeah, sometimes it really is that simple. He just wanted to, and he did. Absolutely, I think with cases like this, most cases, 90% of cases, I think, you just have to think, why is this person doing the thing that they're doing? And it's because there is some sort of pay off for them. And in this case, we know, as we've talked about, it's not like a big financial incentive. He's not robbing things from these people's houses that is of like huge monetary value or whatever. He's doing it because he fucking loves it. He enjoys it. He gets an

emotional, sexual, psychological, some sort of egotistical gratification out of this. And that's why he does it. It really is that simple. Don't need to look deep. put it into his reasoning's emotions. He just fucking loved it. It was good fun for him. And next week we're going to really think and talk about the insanity itself is a legal term, not a medical one. And I think that gets confused a lot. So we will deal with that next week. But for now, I can say Hannah McGuire with confidence. Joseph de Angelo only ever feigned what he believed was insanity when he was trying to get out of trouble. Or, create a narrative where he may be less culpable for his hideous, unforgivable and abhorrent acts.

After he got the sack from the police, DeAngelo worked as a mechanic for a bit. And then he worked at a distribution centre for supermarket save mart, whose slogan is, lower prices your family can count on. Not lowest, lower. Not low, lower, you know. And DiAngelo sure did count on it. Because he stayed at Save Mart in a Sacramento suburb for 27 years. Until he retired in 2017. Jesus, that's crazy.

And according to Save Mart, Joseph de Angelo raised absolutely no suspicion at all. But would they admit it if he did because they let him work there for 27 years? At least with the Auburn PD, they can say, well, we sacked him, what do you want? he dumps them. A year later, Joseph DiAngelo was arrested in front of his home and he was taken straight into an interrogation room where he pulls all the same shit all over again, just with a shade more dementia because of his age.

It's age appropriate, you know. Homicide detectives from three different counties were sent in to try every trick in the book. Good cop, bad cop, small cop, big cop, some as big as your head cop. But they couldn't get anywhere. With the 72-year-old Joseph DiAngelo, he gave them absolutely nothing. For hours, he only asked why he was there.

And he kept that up through the night. Until about 1 a.m., when DiAngelo was left alone. And this is when he started talking to himself. Here are a few things that he said. I've done nothing. I've done nothing. I took control. I got stronger. I finally took control. I pushed him out.

As a child, he was always there. I didn't want to go out. He made me. Mum, he was so mean. He was mean and rotten. I just want to be with my mother. Or because I was too weak. I don't remember any of it.

What have I done? It's so shameful. He was controlling me. I've destroyed all their lives. What have I done? Now, he's not talking about any victim here. DiAngelo never takes any responsibility for any crimes. The lives that he's concerned with destroy.

belong to his daughters. I think we can safely assume that Joseph DiAngelo is one of those men were the only women he perceives as people and not prey are his own mothers and daughters. After eight hours in the interrogation room, DiAngelo was put into the Sacramento jail at 2.29 a.m. His intake photo shows grazes on his face and a bandage on his head,

and has never been confirmed, but it seemed obvious that he had rammed his own head into the wall in a further attempt to consolidate an insanity plea. He's an officer. He knows he's being recorded. He knows that they're watching him from behind the two-way mirror. He knows. He knows exactly what he's fucking doing. The only lawyer DiAngelo asked for was his ex-wife. And when his daughters came to visit him in jail, he refused to see them.

Once he gets put in jail, he doesn't speak to his daughters ever again. Yeah, it's a shame. It's a shame. for DiAngelo, I mean, we've talked about it before. I mean, do we even need to call him a psychopath? Like, sure, like, if it's even worth it. But, like, of course. It's not that people like DiAngelo don't have feelings of love or affection for other people. It's the people that they deem worthy to have that.

It's the people that they choose to have that with. And I'm sure he had those feelings for his daughters. They were probably, you know, seen as extensions of himself. I mean, they are. They're half him. Yeah. And he's going to feel so much. shame because I'm sure for the entirety of their lives, DiAngelo would have, you know, reveled in

being their hero and being their father in I'm sure he would have treated them incredibly well. That's not always the case, but I have a feeling that that is the case here. Next week, we've got letters from his daughters. That is exactly what they think. Yeah, he's not going to see them. There's going to be too much shame, that shattering of that illusion, that fantasy that he had of playing that role in their lives. There is no way. It's done. That's it. He can't face them. So now, Holes and the FBI had their men's identity confirmed irrefutably by DNA, and they had him behind bars.

The state of California, on the other hand, had a different problem. They could only charge Joseph DiAngelo with murder because the statute of limitations on rape in California in the 70s was only three years. So all of the 50-plus victims from DiAngelo, most prolific years, just weren't victims anymore. These days, there is no statute of limitations on what they call in California forcible rape, what's unforceable rape, but whatever. But there is a statute of limitations on statutory rape. That is still only three years. Or three years after the victim turns 18. So raping children, different, apparently. The state prosecutors did pull a

blinder when they realized that because DiAngelo would often move his victims from their bedrooms into the kitchen or living room, that counted as kidnapping for robbery, which has no statute of limitations, even back in the 70s. I think in a previous episode, I called it transportation for kidnapping. I was wrong. I'm sorry. Kidnapping for robbery. So that meant some of the rape cases could be taken. He could be charged with some of them. In the end, only, only, you know, only. Only 13 of the rape cases were selected for charge, leaving a lot of East Area rapist victims feeling overlooked. And that sent some of them on their own quest for justice. And we are going to take you along with them next week.

To get Joseph DiAngelo to trial would take 100 witnesses, $20 million and five years. No one was sure DeAngelo would even live that long. So serving some justice against the clock became the name of the game. It is such a devil's bargain. We'll show you this next week, but he is quite obviously trying to die. Like he rams his head into the wall,

he drops an enormous amount of weight really fucking quickly. He doesn't want to fucking see trial. So the state prosecutors are like, how can we get something? So the problem became a fine balance between what it would take to get DiAngelo to plead guilty and what his victims would accept as just. So if they get him to plead guilty, no trial.

That solves that problem. Yeah. It's just how. And how much he all plead guilty to and how much then the victims will be like, okay, we accept that that's enough. Taking the death penalty off the table was the obvious choice.

DiAngelo's defence reached out to many victims personally. Victor Hayes actually says he heard from the defence way more than the prosecution. Victor Hayes is one of our, I think one of the only male victims that we've told our story. There's another one next week. He's the one who is tied up and he balances the dish plates and the salt and pepper on its back. In exchange for the death penalty being taken off the table, the victims drew up a list of crimes that DiAngelo had not been charged with

and wanted him to admit to each one. But that didn't happen. To find out what did, you'll have to come back next week. for our fourth and final part of the Golden State Killer. God, I hope so. If I text you and say, I think it might be five, just shoot me in the head. Like, just put me down, take me around the back of the bar and shoot me. It's my time to go.

I believe. I believe. We can do this. We can do it. Next week, we bring this whole horrible saga to an end. And you guys will have, you know, at least I'm hoping, right, Hannah, a satisfying conclusion to this long horrible story. Yes, it is. Beautiful. There we go. That's the best we can do, guys. That's the best we can do. So thank you for

listening. That is the third part of the Golden State Killer. We'll be back next week for the fourth and final part where we will conclude this story and we can all go rest easy. And if you are like me experiencing sleep paralysis where there are men at the end of your bed or in the wardrobe or at the window, move your eyes. That tells your brain that it's not real. Like just when you can't move, just start moving your eyes and that will like set everything moving top tip. Okay, there you go. I was saying, I was watching that show that I told you about, it's got terrible name. I think it's just called evil, but it's actually quite good. In that she has a sleep paralysis demon called George who like torments her every night.

And she's a psychiatrist or, yeah, she's a psychiatrist. And what she does is she leaves a note like tape to her ceiling because she says in a sleep paralysis dream you can't read. So she would, she knew that what she had written on there. And when she looked, But if she couldn't read it because it looked all blurry, she'd know that she was just dreaming. Oh, okay, okay, okay. So there you go. That's another top tip. I don't know if it's real or not.

But yeah. Yeah, move your eyes. You'll be fine. Perfect. And I don't know. I'm not having sleep paralysis about this, maybe because I haven't got as close to the case as you did. But I did watch a horror film last night that sounds so shit, but it was actually so good that I was scared to go to the toilet all night. I did eventually have to go

and I saw the man in it everywhere I looked in the dark it's called Smile 2 I saw Smile 1 like ages ago when it came out and I was like yeah it was fun Yeah Smile 2 is I was like Smile 2 Is this really worth my time

Watched it last night It was genuinely really very good Very good very good work Terrified me I will say Like yes this has been utterly terrifying But it also has just come

A particular period in my life Where I'm in a lot of unfamiliar places Yeah that doesn't help new houses make new sounds and i've been doing quite a lot of that but i'm still here exactly exactly and we will still be here next week and so will you hopefully for the final part we'll see you then goodbye goodbye