Today, Explained - Golden State Killer opens Pandora's box

Episode Date: May 1, 2018

After 40 years, police say they have finally caught the Golden State Killer, a man responsible for at least 12 murders, 50 rapes, and 100 break-ins in the 1970’s and ’80s. They found him using a genealogy site -- a relative uploaded DNA and unwittingly provided the missing link. Vox’s Aja Romano narrates the killer’s grisly reign of terror across California, and lawyer Steven Mercer explains why the DNA methods police used set a dangerous precedent for the rest of us. ********************************* New steel tariffs were supposed to go into effect overnight, but the White House extended them by another 30 days. For more on the tariffs and why they won’t make the United States any more popular in Canada, Mexico and Europe, check out our March 6th episode “What’s the Deal with Steel” here: https://art19.com/shows/today-explained/episodes/eb487386-3786-4bb3-ad4c-ee6e5f0acd44 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Isra El-Pati, hi, how are you? Welcome to Today Explained. Thank you so much, Sean. Friend of the show. Yes, I am. Colleague here at Vox Media. Yes, indeed. I hear you might have a mattress problem. You know, so far I actually, I've had this mattress for 16 years.

16 years? I bought it 16 years ago at Mattress Firm, actually. Wait, wait, wait, I want to hear all about it. Mattressfirm.com slash podcast. The code podcast10 gets you 10% off. We'll do the rest later. Okay. Sometimes when you want to catch a criminal, you have to catch his great-great-great-grandparent first.

That's how police in California finally track down the guy they think is the Golden State Killer. After four decades. My detectives arrested James Joseph DeAngelo, 72 years old, living in Citrus Heights. I can tell you that although it was DNA, ultimately, that led us down the right road, there were a lot of places that road could have led.

Since the arrest was made last week, a lot of people have taken issue with some of the tactics police used. Cops took DNA people submitted to genealogy sites to track down relatives and instead used it to track down a murderer. We're going to tell you the story in two parts, Golden State Killer and DNA Controversy. The first part has a lot of grisly details and audio from the killer and one of his victims too. So if you'd rather not hear that kind of thing, skip ahead to the second half of today's show. It starts around minute 10. Okay, here we go. Asia Romano has been writing about the Golden State Killer for Vox.

In 1974, a man who would go on to terrorize most of California began a series of regular break-ins where he would essentially go through people's houses and rifle through their things and take small mementos from their houses. He became known as the Visalia Ransacker. What came next started in 1976. A suspect who would go on to become known as the East Area Rapist began assaulting people in their homes. He was incredibly detailed. He would spend weeks and even months scoping out his victims' neighborhoods,

even detailing things like the drainage systems nearby, places that he could escape. While he was doing this, he would also call his victims. Sometimes he would just breathe heavily into the phone. Sometimes he would tell them exactly what he wanted to do to them. Sometimes he would say, I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill you. 48 Hours did a documentary on the Golden State Killer,

and they talked to Larry Crompton, who was a detective for the county sheriff's department. He would go in the house when the people weren't there and set that house up. And he would leave a window unlocked or a door unlocked so that he could go in. He would come for you even if you weren't home alone. If you were with a partner, he would bind you both, usually with shoelaces.

He would blindfold the victims. And after tying them, he would take a towel and tear it up and use that for a blindfold. And we actually have a lot of detail from survivors who have come forward and talked about this with the FBI. Blindfolded, gagged, hands tied, legs tied, and then, you know, pulled me up like this because I was on my stomach and put me back in bed and said, if you move, I'm going to kill you. He would cut off your circulation and he would leave your partner there while he assaulted you. During the assault, he would frequently cry. He would often pretend to have met the victim

at a previous event based on photos that he gathered from around the house. So if you left up a photo of yourself attending prom, during the middle of his assault, he might say, I met you at the prom and I wanted you then. And then he would leave without a trace. And he did this over and over and over and over and over for almost a decade. Between 1974 and 1986, the suspect committed 12 murders that we know of, at least 50 sexual assaults, and at least 100 break-ins and robberies. He became known as the Visalia Ransacker, the East Area Rapist,

the Original Night Stalker, and the Diamond Knot Killer, among other nicknames. It wasn't until 2011 when DNA evidence taken from an original Night Stalker crime scene and an East Area Rapist crime scene were positively matched, and police were able to confirm that the killer and the rapist were one and the same. And it wasn't until 2013 that all of these different names and all of these different crimes in all of these different parts of California became unified under one new name, the Golden State Killer. Law enforcement, spearheaded by the Sacramento District Attorney's Office, began to use ancestry websites that have compiled public DNA profiles based on people who've submitted their own DNA samples to the websites.

They began looking at one website in particular called GEDmatch to see if they could pair the East Area Rapist and a DNA sample that they had from one of the original Night Stalker cases to an existing DNA profile on one of these websites. And they looked, and they looked, and they looked. And then on Thursday, April 19th, 2018, they thought they found a guy. His name is Joseph James D'Angeloelo and he had been living in Citrus Heights which was one of the areas where multiple attacks

of the East Area Rapists took place in the 70s. He'd been living there the entire time. Police immediately put him under surveillance and by Friday they had obtained a discarded DNA sample. Joseph James D'Angelo had probably thrown something out in the trash. It could have been a straw, a drink, a cotton swab, anything. And law enforcement surveilling the house collected it. And they had a match. Joseph James D'Angelo had lived in Sacramento for most of his life. He had gone to school in the area. Between 1973 and 1979, when the most active period of his crimes took place,

Joseph James D'Angelo worked as a police officer. In 1979, he was, in fact, fired from his police officer position because he was caught shoplifting dog repellent and a hammer. You might ask, why would anyone want to shoplift something like a hammer, a dog repellent? Well, if you're going to use it for something very specific, you don't want that receipt to be in your record. When he was arrested for shoplifting in 1979, he faced trial but immediately pled no contest. You might say that he was eager to let that incident die quickly before authorities could look further. Joseph Chanciangelo also served in the Navy in Vietnam, which added fuel to the long-standing belief that he had had some sort of military

training and that he had had some sort of marine training to tie the intricate knots that he tied. Recently, one of his daughters moved into the house along with a granddaughter. Authorities have said that family members are cooperating with police and that family members had no idea their father and grandfather was the Golden State Killer. DNA evidence isn't a thousand percent accurate, but in this case, we have very specific reasons for believing that all of these cases are connected. We have DNA matches in several of the original Night Stalker cases, and we also have DNA evidence in multiple instances of the East Area Rapist cases. Those DNA samples have been matched together.

And because they have multiple DNA samples obtained from multiple cases, it's very, very, very unlikely that police have targeted the wrong person. Cops in California would have never caught the Golden State Killer without DNA evidence. But the way they use DNA might set this really problematic precedent. That's in a beat. This is Today Explained. Isra, you have been to a mattress firm and actually bought a mattress there? Yes.

You are a rare breed. My parents did, to be fair, as I was 12. You were 12? I was 12 years old. Do you remember the experience? I do. I do remember it really distinctly because we bought a new house. I was sleeping on a twin mattress for 12 years. We went to the mattress

firm, which was ginormous. It was in Texas, so it was extra big. And my expectation was getting a full bed. And then my dad took me over to the Queens area and I lost my mind. And the mattress firm guy, he would just talk to me me directly did he seem like an expert definitely yeah i thought some like foamy crap was what i wanted you know some like weird soft stuff and go waterbed like what a 12 year old would want exactly yeah they're like we don't have those here they deal in the real over there and he knew that's why i've had the same mattress for 16 years and it's still comfortable um wait this doesn't sound like a mattress problem anymore. I'm Sean Ramos for Room. This is Today Explained. We can easily be happy that a serial crime has been solved. But the way the Golden State Killer was caught has been keeping Steve Mercer up at night.

It is alarming for many people who find out that DNA that they have shared for one purpose is being used for an entirely different purpose. The cops started with some Golden State Killer DNA. And then they tested that DNA to develop this much larger profile, this ancestry profile that looks at about 700,000 places on the human genome and has a lot more information in it. They ran this DNA through

a genealogy site. An open source genealogy site called GED. So law enforcement had to create some user account. They got this way distant relative. Then they created this massive family tree. And one branch leads to Joseph James D'Angelo in Citrus Heights right outside Sacramento. You know, got some notification of a potential relative. Went and put this person under surveillance and then collected what's called abandoned DNA. And evidently it was a perfect match.

And on that strength of that match has charged him. It all sounds like really good detective work. But ownership of DNA is a tricky thing. If you submit a sample to Ancestry.com because you want to investigate your family ancestry, you know, if you look through their terms and conditions, they will tell you you own your DNA. Well, that sounds very reassuring. Steve Mercer has been litigating at the intersection of DNA and civil liberties for 20 years. He teaches law at the University of the District of Columbia, and he says we're all at risk of another Facebook Cambridge Analytica type situation where your data gets shared without your approval. Except this time, it's the most personal data you've got. You're allowing them to use your genetic information to develop products and services that they may sell, either themselves directly or in collaboration with research partners.

The future of companies like 23andMe, Ancestry.com, is not in the testing business. It's in the DNA brokerage business. What they have created are applications that entice people to send in their DNA sample. Now, these private companies have over 12 million DNA samples. That is a very rich resource in unlocking the human genome that big pharma companies want or substance abuse. What happens if the data of a private company that contains genetic information is hacked? You could certainly envision a situation where a politician, as his 23andMe account, hacked and then it's revealed that this person has traits for impulsivity or substance abuse or mental health disorder. We're walking into this blind.

But you can bet companies like Google are very much aware of the value of DNA. It's no surprise that you see these insider connections between a company like Google and Ancestry. Think about the history with Google, with the assurances 10, 15 years ago that we're just here to help you, we're just here to help you search the internet, to the point now where it's very clear that its purpose is to hoard information about you so they can better target ads at you. I mean, that's just a hint at what it's going to be like. If your DNA propensities are known, you'll get targeted ads for mental health services. You'll get targeted ads for anxiety-related conditions. It's the opening up of the Pandora's box.

And we're walking into that by allowing private companies and, frankly, law enforcement to develop and maintain unregulated databanks of our most profoundly intimate information. How is law enforcement using DNA a game changer? How's that potentially worse than like getting creepy targeted ads based on my DNA? DNA testing has become so fast and so sensitive that when a crime occurs, let's say it's a bank robbery and the getaway car was rented from Hertz and the swab patrol goes out and they swab the door handles and the steering wheel and the gear shift and the headrest.

Let's say that you had rented that car for a day or two and you had returned it. And after that, it had been used in this bank heist. You can quickly become a target if your DNA is found on that car seat, and although you may not be a convicted offender or arrestee whose DNA is in a regulated data bank, maybe your brother or sister at Christmas time had sent off their DNA to an ancestry website. Now suddenly your name pops up on a list. The unintended consequence of having this regulated databank system is that it invites law enforcement to both create and maintain quasi-private public databanks and also to allow law enforcement to go off to these public databanks that are in

the hands of private companies without any oversight, without any safeguards, without any reporting requirements, is just inviting a world where genetic surveillance of everyone has become a reality. If you could scream something from a mountaintop, Steve, what would it be? Wake up? Don't let the camel put its nose in the tent. What does that mean? If you let the camel put its nose in the tent, then very soon the whole body's going to be in the tent.

Incremental changes over time aren't noticed that are putting us in peril. It's easy to celebrate that a cold case involving a serial wrongdoer has been solved. But you shouldn't have to worry when you submit your DNA to an ancestry site that without any oversight, law enforcement will examine it to investigate a crime. What if the crime that is being investigated is trespass or shoplifting or property crimes? And familial searching is already being used in some areas for precisely that type of crime. If we're creating rules around these handful of cherry-picked successes that allow for free reign of law enforcement over DNA, we're setting ourselves up for some real peril. Steve Mercer teaches at the David A. Clark School of Law in D.C.

One more thing before we go. At midnight, these new steel tariffs the Trump administration proposed were supposed to go into effect. Instead, the White House delayed them for another 30 days. For all the details on the tariffs and why they won't make the United States too popular in Canada, Mexico, and Europe, check out our March 6th episode, What's the Deal with Steel? You can find a link to it in today's episode description. I'm Sean Ramos for M. This is Today Explained. Do you love your mattress? I do like my mattress, but I need to change my mattress.

Why? Tell me about the problem. I don't know if it's just society is pressuring me to get rid of it. They say stuff about dead skin cells or something along those lines. That about the problem. I don't know if it's just society is pressuring me to get rid of it. They say stuff about like dead skin cells or something along those lines. That's a problem. I read a lot of things online about how you should switch it up. How often? Between, you know, five to ten years.

Okay. For various reasons. So I've long passed that. So probably in the next, you know, few months or so, I'll be looking into changing my mattress. All right. Well, you know, you should go to mattressroom.com slash podcast. Use the coupon code podcast10 to get 10% off before May 8th. I definitely will.