[Read about Mr. Oswalt’s quest to finish Ms. McNamara’s book after her death.]
Mr. Oswalt spoke about the reported capture on Wednesday in a video posted on Instagram. “I think you got him, Michelle,” he said.
In one episode in 1978, Brian and Katie Maggiore, a couple living in Rancho Cordova, were walking their dog in their neighborhood at about 9 p.m. After a “violent encounter” with the suspect, they tried to flee, ending up in a private yard, where they were fatally shot, the sheriff’s department said in February, appealing to the public for leads.
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The suspect struck repeatedly in Rancho Cordova, a Sacramento suburb of ranch houses, redwood trees, trim lawns and rose bushes.
Diane Peterson, a retired teacher, said Wednesday that theories about who was behind the rapes and home intrusions have remained a topic of conversation in the neighborhood in the four decades since the attacks began.
“It never totally died down,” Ms. Peterson said. “People would have their own suspicions as to who it might be.”
The killer changed the habits of what had once been a more carefree neighborhood, Ms. Peterson said. Families became diligent about locking their doors and windows. “It was a scary time,” she said.
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Jean McNeill, a retired employee for the state board of equalization who lives one block from where one of the murders took place, said she was “elated” Wednesday morning when she heard that the killer may have been captured.
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She remembered the terror that the killer instilled in the neighborhood.
“I can remember thinking, ‘It’s getting dark and no one is home with me — I’ve got to be really careful,” she said. “That’s what made it so frightening. We didn’t know when he was going to strike next.”
After the Maggiore murders, the attacker was not believed to have struck in the Sacramento area again. But in 2001, investigators using DNA evidence linked the crime to others committed in the Bay Area, and to murders in Southern California, the sheriff’s department said.
In June 2016, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced in a news conference that it would offer a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the “prolific serial rapist and murderer.”
The F.B.I. said then that if the suspect was still alive, he would be between 60 and 75 years old. Investigators described him as a white male, close to six feet tall, with blond or light brown hair and an athletic build. They said he might have an interest or training in military or law enforcement techniques and the use of firearms.
Authorities name suspect as Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, who is believed to have committed at least 12 homicides and 45 rapes
The suspected California serial killer and rapist arrested on Wednesday in Sacramento is Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, a former police officer, authorities announced on Wednesday.
In a news conference, the Sacramento county district attorney, Anne Marie Schubert, said DNA in two 1978 killings in Sacramento led to the arrest of and murder charges against DeAngelo. Prosecutors said they would seek the death penalty.
Schubert said the “answer was always going to be in the DNA” and the connection came in the killings of Brian and Katie Maggiore.
Authorities say the serial killer, most recently dubbed the Golden State Killer but also called the East Area Rapist, committed at least 12 homicides, 45 rapes and dozens of burglaries across the state in the 1970s and 1980s.
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara review – in search of a serial killer Read more
In 2016, FBI and California officials renewed their search for the suspect and announced a $50,000 reward for his arrest and conviction. He is linked to more than 175 crimes in all between 1976 and 1986.
As he committed crimes across the state, authorities called him by different names. He was dubbed the East Area Rapist after his start in northern California, the Original Night Stalker after a series of southern California slayings, and the Diamond Knot Killer for using the elaborate tie used to bind two of his victims.
Most recently called the Golden State Killer, the suspect has been linked through DNA and other evidence to scores of crimes.
Armed with a gun, the masked rapist would break into homes while single women or couples were sleeping. He would tie up the man and pile dishes on his back, then rape the woman while threatening to kill them both if the dishes tumbled.
He often took souvenirs, notably coins and jewelry, from his victims, who ranged in age from 13 to 41.
A woman who was sexually assaulted in California in 1976 by a man believed to be the East Area Rapist and who now lives in South Carolina told the Island Packet newspaper on Wednesday that she has been contacted by detectives about an arrest.
The Associated Press typically does not name victims of sexual abuse.
“I’m overwhelmed with joy. I’ve been crying, sobbing,” the woman said.
Joseph James DeAngelo has been identified as the so-called Golden State Killer believed to have committed 12 killings and at least 50 rapes across California from 1976 to 1986, authorities said. The 72-year-old suspect is being held without bail in Sacramento on two murder counts. "The answer has always been in Sacramento," Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert said.
DeAngelo was arrested after police matched discarded DNA evidence from his Sacramento area home with genetic evidence from the crimes, Ventura County District Attorney Greg Totten said.
The suspect has been charged with capital murder and other counts in connection with the 1980 slayings of Lyman and Charlene Smith, Totten said at a news conference outside the Sacramento crime lab where authorities matched DeAngelo to the crimes.
DeAngelo is a former Auburn, California, police officer who was fired in 1979 for shoplifting a can of dog repellent and a hammer from a drugstore, Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones. He worked as a police officer in Exeter and Auburn between 1973 and 1979.
"Very possibly he was committing these crimes while he was employed as a peace officer," Jones said.
[Previous story, posted at 1:10 p.m. ET]
A person believed to be the so-called Golden State Killer -- accused of 12 killings and 45 rapes across California from 1976 to 1986 -- is under arrest, FBI spokeswoman Angela Bell said Wednesday.
Bell would not identify the suspect but authorities in Sacramento are expected to release more information at a news conference scheduled for noon PT (3 p.m. ET).
The suspect was also known as the "East Area Rapist" and "the Original Night Stalker."
The first recorded rape was on June 18, 1976. The victim, Jane, was dozing in bed with her 3-year-old son after her husband left for work. Then, she was abruptly awoken.
A masked man stood in the bedroom doorway, holding a large butcher knife and shining a flashlight at her face.
He bound Jane and her son with shoelaces and blindfolded and gagged them with torn sheets. After moving her son off the bed, he unbound Jane's ankles.
"And then I knew what he was there for," said Jane, who didn't want to share her last name.
Jane's rape sparked the hunt for the man who authorities say went on to commit rapes and killings in California over the next decade.
It's been more than 40 years since his first recorded attacks, which began in and around Sacramento in Northern California. No one was ever caught or even identified in the case. Police only had minor details about his looks, along with a sketch from an almost-victim.
JUST WATCHED What we know about the Golden State Killer Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH What we know about the Golden State Killer 01:48
In recent years, there was renewed interest in the case. This year, a book and a series from HLN were released, hoping to shed more light on the case.
When the Sacramento-area rapes were first being reported, it was always by women who were alone or with their children. But by 1977, a year after Jane's attack, the list of victims had expanded to couples in their homes.
It's believed the attacker chased down and killed Katie and Brian Maggiore in February 1978.
Police believe the East Area Rapist killed Brian and Katie Maggiore after the couple -- who were walking their dog at the time -- spotted him before he broke into a home in Rancho Cordova, California, just outside Sacramento, in February 1978. Those were his first known homicides.
"We thought he would never stop, but then two months after the Maggiore homicides, the East Area Rapist left our jurisdiction. It was like he disappeared in thin air," said Carol Daly, a retired detective from the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department.
That's when a serial attacker began terrorizing Santa Barbara County, California -- more than 300 miles south of Sacramento. Police didn't realize it at the time, but the attacker's crimes fit the same pattern as Sacramento's East Area Rapist. He attacked women and couples across Southern California from December 1979 to May 1986, and became known there as the Original Night Stalker.
Depictions of the East Area Rapist, also known as the Original Night Stalker and Golden State Killer. Today he would be between 60 and 75 years old.
"These cases are some of the most horrific I've had to investigate," said Erika Hutchcraft, an investigator for Orange County District Attorney's Office. "They're not a one-time, you know, crime of passion, but these are almost passionless crimes. Very cold, very violent."
Even with such distance between Sacramento and Southern California, detectives in the north who heard about the Original Night Stalker believed he was the same perpetrator as the East Area Rapist.
"Over the years, we heard of homicides down in Southern California, and we thought it was the East Area Rapist," said Larry Crompton, retired detective for Contra Costa County Sheriff's Department. "But he would not leave fingerprints, so we could not prove, other than his M.O., that he was the same person. We did not know anything about DNA."
Once DNA tests were available to investigators, they were able to confirm the same man committed three of the attacks that had previously been blamed on the so-called East Area Rapist, according to Paul Holes, who investigated the case for the Contra Costa County District Attorney's Office.
"That's when I reached out to Orange County" in Southern California, he says, "just to see, you know, if the East Area Rapist DNA was a match with the Original Night Stalker."
In 2001, DNA evidence determined the East Area Rapist was the same offender as the Original Night Stalker.
Investigators have matched the East Area Rapist's DNA, which they believe will help them link or eliminate suspects.
In 2016 -- 40 years after his first attack -- the FBI offered a $50,000 reward for any information that could lead to his arrest and conviction.
"The sheriff's department never gave up on this investigation," Detective Paul Belli of the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department said at the time. "This person ruined a great number of lives, and he should be held accountable."
The FBI describes him as a white male, close to 6 feet tall, with blond or light brown hair.
"We have his DNA," said Holes. "If we find the right guy, we will know we got the Golden State Killer. This is a solvable case."
Note: Unless stated otherwise, the interviews from this story came from the HLN series "Unmasking A Killer."
More than 40 years after the so-called “Golden State Killer” began to terrorize Californians, raping dozens of women and killing at least 12, authorities announced Wednesday that they had arrested 72-year-old Joseph James DeAngelo in the case.
News of DeAngelo’s arrest marked a sudden development in what had been one of the most notorious unsolved crime sprees in U.S. history, one that stretched over a decade and terrorized scores of people across California.
Police said DNA evidence helped lead them to DeAngelo, a former police officer who had been living in Citrus Heights, Calif., a city outside Sacramento. They did not elaborate on what the DNA evidence was or how it was obtained.
“The magnitude of this case demanded that it be solved,” Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert said at a news conference in the California capital. “We found the needle in the haystack, and it was right here in Sacramento.”
Joseph James DeAngelo. (Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department)
Sacramento County court records showed that DeAngelo was booked into jail early Wednesday morning on two counts of murder. No bail was set.
The string of attacks — attributed to someone alternately dubbed the Golden State Killer, Original Night Stalker and East Area Rapist — was horrifying for both the nature of the attacks and their grim sweep. Between 1976 and 1986, the FBI said, the attacker killed a dozen people and raped 45 people, attacking people who were as young as 13 and as old as 41.
Authorities had said they suspected the Golden State Killer may have either had a background or interest in law enforcement techniques. On Wednesday, police said DeAngelo fit that bill. He had served as a police officer in California between 1973 and 1979, Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones said, a period that overlapped with the beginning of the attacks.
The case, which involved one of one of the most prolific and elusive serial killers in modern American history, had remained an object of intense focus for many. In 2016, the the FBI made a renewed plea — complete with a $50,000 reward — for help in finding what they called “the violent and elusive individual.”
The wanted poster for the man known as the East Area Rapist/Golden State Killer. (FBI)
“Everyone was afraid,” Special Agent Marcus Knutson, who was born and raised in Sacramento and was heading up the FBI’s portion of the investigation, said in a 2016 statement. “We had people sleeping with shotguns, we had people purchasing dogs. People were concerned, and they had a right to be. This guy was terrorizing the community. He did horrible things.”
The Sacramento District Attorney had said a “major announcement” was coming in the case at noon Pacific time Wednesday, following reports from several local news organizations reported that a man had finally been arrested in connection with the case.
Beginning in 1976, the Golden State Killer is believed to have raped dozens of women in their homes — meticulously planning his intrusions, sometimes ambushing entire families, and killing several of his victims toward the end of his spree, before vanishing in 1986. The attacker was also behind numerous residential burglaries in the state, the FBI said.
Jennifer Carole was sleeping in her Santa Cruz home when the text came in at 7:11 a.m. on Wednesday. When she woke, she could hardly believe it.
“Could this really be him?” a friend had typed out and sent a link to a news article.
It was. Almost four decades after her father, Lyman Smith, and step mother, Charlene Smith, were found murdered in the their Ventura, Ca. home, it appeared the culprit had been caught. Carole was torn by conflicting emotions.
“This is a hard one,” Carole said. “There aren’t really words for this. I have feelings all over the place. There’s tremendous relief because I’m a single mom myself. In my mind, I had him dead as a way to cope, so his capture is stirring up all kinds of emotions.”
Carole said it was a chilling feeling to know the killer had been in the Sacramento area the whole time. Her mother and father had lived in the area for some time.
In March 1980, Carole’s brother had gone to their father’s home to mow the lawn. He grew suspicious when the home’s alarm didn’t go off when he entered and went to the bedroom to check on his father and stepmother, Carole said.
The sheets were pulled up over their bodies, covering them, Carole said. Her brother pulled back a corner, just enough to see a distinctive tattoo his father had and realize something was very wrong. He called 911.
Jennifer Carole, now 56, was in high school at the time and just turned 18.
“I hope to god he confesses,” Carole said.
Since his disappearance, investigators and amateur detectives have searched for the man across the United States and inquired as far away as Australia.
“He was young — anywhere from 18 to 30 — Caucasian, and athletic, capable of eluding capture by jumping roofs and vaulting tall fences,” the crime writer Michelle McNamara wrote in a Los Angeles Magazine profile of the old cases.
“To zero in on a victim he often entered the home beforehand when no one was there, learning the layout, studying family pictures, and memorizing names,” she wrote. “He disabled porch lights and unlocked windows. He emptied bullets from guns. He hid shoelaces or rope under cushions to use as ligatures.
“These maneuvers gave him a crucial advantage because when you woke from a deep sleep to the blinding flashlight and ski-masked presence, he was always a stranger to you, but you were not to him.”
Police first dubbed the man the East Area Rapist, as he would not begin killing until later in his spree.
The first known attack, Katie Mettler wrote in The Post, took place in the middle of the night in the summer of 1976, when the man snuck into a home in east Sacramento County, raped a young woman and left.
He raped again a few weeks later, then again and again. After a year, two dozen women had been attacked in the Sacramento area — shattering. A sheriff’s department spokesman told the Associated Press that some residents had started “sleeping in shifts,” because the man would strike even if others were home.
His 44th suspected victim was a 13-year-old girl in the Walnut Creek area in 1979, the Mercury News reported. He allegedly raped her at knifepoint while her father and sister slept down the hall. Hold her he’d kill her family if she told them, and departed through the back yard, past her playhouse.
“He liked to ‘bomb’ a neighborhood, as one investigator put it,” McNamara wrote in her profile, “sometimes targeting houses just yards from one another. He was nervous and fidgety yet brazen. Once, he walked away from a crime scene without his pants on, and when a dog chased him into a backyard, he waited patiently until he was sure the dog wouldn’t bite and then reentered the house.”
The rapist likely began to kill in 1978, Mettler wrote in The Post, with an atypical attack in which he began chasing Brian and Katie Maggiore while they were waking their dog down a street in Rancho Cordova, and shot them to death. Detectives speculated that this first killing may have been unplanned — a desperate attempt to conceal his identity.
The next 10 homicides, which all took place near Los Angeles, more resembled his traditional style.
In December of 1979, Santa Barbara sheriff’s deputies found Robert Offerman, a 44-year-old osteopath, dead in his condo, along with his girlfriend, Debra Alexandria Manning. Both had been bound and shot, and she was lying nude on the waterbed.
“As detectives processed the crime scene, they stepped around a turkey carcass wrapped in cellophane that had been discarded on the patio,” McNamara wrote. “The killer had opened the refrigerator and helped himself to Offerman’s leftover Christmas dinner.”
Charlene and Lyman Smith in Ventura were the next victims, three months later — both tied up and been beaten to death with a fireplace log.
Another couple was bludgeoned to death in the fall of 1980. A fifth woman was killed in February of 1981, and then Cheri Domingo and Gregory Sanchez that July, while they were house-sitting in Goleta.
It would be decades before DNA tests linked all of these crimes, and investigators realized that the East Area Rapist of Sacramento was the same man called “Original Night Stalker” near L.A. — all the work of the Golden State Killer.
By the time the DNA was processed, his spree was long over and the killer’s trailer had gone cold. His last known victim was 18-year-old Janelle Cruz, raped and bludgeoned to death in Irvine in 1986.
The killer was “the worst unidentified violent serial offender in modern American history,” McNamara wrote in her profile, and the case was all but abandoned until the 21st century, when public interest in the Golden State Killer was rekindled by a collection of retired detectives and amateur sleuths — including the author herself.
McNamara coined the term “Golden State Killer” in that 2013 profile, and in subsequent years transformed from an amateur crime blogger into a widely cited expert on the case, pursuing the investigation with the help of old police files, friendly investigators and the trust of many rape survivors.
She then watched as interest in a rediscovered serial killer exploded. “Help us catch the East Area Rapist,” the FBI pleaded in 2016, as authorities announced a $50,000 reward for new leads and posted maps showing the locations of his crimes around Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Francisco — more than 200 in all, The Post wrote.
“This serial offender was probably one of the most prolific, certainly in California and possibly within the United States,” Sgt. Paul Belli, a Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department detective said at the time.
The same year, McNamara was poring over old files and preparing a book about the murder. “She fell down a wormhole,” a childhood friend of the writer later told Vulture.
“Ms. McNamara believed she was close to tracking him down, and was working long days and nights, her obsessive determination overwhelming her mounting anxiety,” the New York Times wrote in October 2016, after the 46-year-old writer, wife and mother took a Xanax to help her sleep and never woke up.
Several months later, McNamara’s husband, Patton Oswalt, told the Associated Press that the Xanax, combined with other medication in her system reacted with a previously unknown artery condition and killed her.
On Wednesday, as Oswalt and the rest of the world heard about the arrest in California, he address his late wife in an Instagram video.
“If that’s true, they caught the Golden State Killer,” Oswalt said. “I think you got him, Michelle.”
Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report, which has been updated.
