He became an infamous figure, sometimes known as the Golden State Killer and other times as the East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker. His planning was meticulous and he seemed to know precise details about his victims’ schedules. They described the gravelly, angry whisper that he used as he tormented them. He wore gloves and a mask and was a predator with quirks: As his victims lay terrified, he would pause for a snack of crackers after raping them. He placed a teacup and saucer on the bodies of some of his victims and threatened them with murder if he heard the ceramic rattle.
With communities panicking — at one point his assaults averaged two victims a month — the authorities hired a range of experts to help them break the case, among them a military special forces officer and a psychic.
Then, when the rapes and murders appeared to end in 1986, the case went cold.
National interest was reignited this year with the publication of an exhaustive investigation into the serial killer’s identity, “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark,” written by Michelle McNamara, a crime writer who died in April 2016. The book, published in February, was completed after her death by a journalist and researcher recruited by her husband, the comedian Patton Oswalt.
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[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.
Mr. DeAngelo, whom the authorities suspect of a total of 12 murders, was arrested by investigators using some of the same tactics employed by the suspect to stalk his victims — the police surveilled his movements, studied his routines and pounced when he left his house.
He was arrested on a warrant stemming from the murder of the married couple in Ventura County in Southern California, but the authorities said more charges were in the works. The Orange County district attorney’s office announced four additional charges late on Wednesday.
Residents of the neighborhoods stalked by the killer said he changed the way they lived their lives. A carefree California lifestyle of open doors and children riding their bicycles to school was forever changed with the knowledge that a rapist now lurked.
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“One person can create a lot of fear,” said Tony Rackauckas, the district attorney of Orange County and one of the dozens of officials on hand in Sacramento to announce Mr. DeAngelo’s arrest. “It was like terrorism — not that it was done for the same reason — but it caused the same type of fear.”
The case had a profound impact not just on fear and public safety in California, but also on the way that rapes were investigated and how rape victims were treated, said Carol Daly, a detective in the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office at the time.
Locks sold out at hardware stores and over 6,000 guns were sold, she said. Community safety forums would be packed with hundreds of people.
Rape victims were seen and cared for faster, and pubic hair, scratches and other evidence were examined and preserved, she said. Rape kits were standardized. “Every victim went through the process,” she said.
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Bruce Harrington, whose brother Keith Harrington and sister-in-law Patrice Harrington were among the murder victims, joined law enforcement officers at the news conference. It was “time for the victims to begin to heal,” he said.
“Sleep better tonight, he isn’t coming in through the window,” he said. “He’s now in jail, and he’s history.”
One victim, Jane Carson-Sandler, who was raped in 1976, said on Wednesday that she was overwhelmed with emotion.
Ms. Carson-Sandler, 72, said she had always believed that her rapist was alive and that he would be caught. The hatred and anger she felt eventually faded, she said, but she continued to pray for two things each night: that he would be identified, and that she wouldn’t dream about the rape.
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She never did dream about it, she said, and on Wednesday morning she turned on her phone to learn that a suspect had been arrested.
“I just feel so blessed that God has finally answered all of our prayers, that this monster would eventually be put behind bars,” she said.
Mr. DeAngelo, who has adult children, was twice employed as a police officer in two small California cities: In Exeter, in the Central Valley, from 1973 to 1976, and in Auburn, north of Sacramento, from 1976 to 1979, according to Mr. Jones.
He was convicted in 1979 for shoplifting a can of dog repellent and a hammer from a store in Sacramento County. The incident led to his dismissal from the Auburn police force. The arrest came amid the rash of rapes in the area.
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One of the neighborhoods where the suspect repeatedly struck was Rancho Cordova, a Sacramento suburb of ranch houses, redwood and birch trees, trim lawns and rose bushes.
In one attack in 1978, Brian and Katie Maggiore, a couple living in the area, were walking their dog in their neighborhood around 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.
Diane Peterson, a retired teacher who lives in Rancho Cordova, said Wednesday that theories about who was behind the rapes and home intrusions had 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.”
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Jean McNeill, a retired employee for the state board of equalization who lives near where one of the murders took place, said she was “elated” Wednesday morning when she heard that the suspect might have been captured.
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 F.B.I. announced at 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.”
“We came together to bring solace to the victims,” Sean Ragan, special agent in charge of the Sacramento office for the F.B.I., said Wednesday. “But we know the pain and anguish has never subsided.”
(CNN) For decades, Joseph James DeAngelo's neighbors thought he was a little odd. He kept mostly to himself, sometimes yelling at the people who got too close to his fence or mowed their grass too early.
But they didn't have any reason to suspect he might be behind a series of killings, rapes and assaults in the 1970s and 1980s that spawned an investigation that lasted more than 40 years -- and, until recently, neither did authorities.
"We all knew that we were looking for a needle in a haystack," Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert said Wednesday at a news conference announcing DeAngelo's arrest.
"It is fitting that today is National DNA Day," Schubert said. "We found the needle in the haystack and it was right here in Sacramento."
DeAngelo, 72, was taken into custody Tuesday evening in the Sacramento suburb of Citrus Heights. Police allege he is the so-called Golden State Killer, who is believed to have committed 12 killings and at least 50 rapes in at least 10 counties in California.
Detectives matched a discarded DNA sample from his home to evidence from the investigation, according to law enforcement officials who gathered outside the crime lab where the key break was uncovered. DeAngelo was arrested not far from where the Golden State killer committed some of his crimes.
While officials would not say what led them to seek DeAngelo's DNA, they said his name emerged in connection with the crimes last week.
He was arrested without incident.
"When he came out of his residence, we had a team in place that was able to take him into custody. He was very surprised by that," Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones said.
DeAngelo faces capital murder charges in connection with the killings of Katie and Brian Maggiore in 1978. He is being held without bail in Sacramento. He will be arraigned Friday afternoon.
He also is accused of murder by authorities in Orange and Ventura counties, according to documents and officials.
Six years as a cop
"All too often we forget to talk about the victims, and today we at least brought the first step towards closure for those victims of these horrendous crimes," Jones said.
The suspect 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, according to Jones. He worked as a police officer in Exeter and Auburn between 1973 and 1979.
"Very possibly he was committing these crimes during the time he was employed as a peace officer, and obviously we'll be looking into whether it was actually on the job," Jones said.
Exeter Police Chief John Hall said, "It is absolutely shocking that someone can commit such heinous crimes, and finding out someone in a position of trust could betray that is absolutely unbelievable."
The Auburn Police Department said it will "do everything within its power to support this investigation and any prosecution that follows."
"We will pull out all the stops for our Sacramento-area law enforcement partners in this horrific and historic case."
A CNN crew outside DeAngelo's home saw investigators bring some bags of evidence out of the residence as they worked into the night.
Neighbors say he could be different
From 1976 to 1986, DeAngelo's alleged crimes sowed fear across the state, where the suspect was also known as the "East Area Rapist" and "the Original Night Stalker."
Kevin Tapia, who said he has lived near DeAngelo for 20 years, said neighbors could often hear DeAngelo yelling in his home. In recent years, he said DeAngelo had become a recluse, sometimes yelling at neighbors for minor annoyances, like mowing the grass too early in the morning.
"He's not like an overly creepy person, but he definitely, you know, kept to himself and kind of was ... a little different," Tapia told HLN. "It was definitely some concern."
George Hirsch, who said Wednesday he witnessed DeAngelo's arrest, described the suspect as someone who was quiet most of the time but "a little bit out of control."
Jane Carson-Sandler told HLN on Wednesday that she used to live in Citrus Heights -- where DeAngelo was arrested and resided -- when a man broke into her home, and raped her while she and her 3-year-old son were tied up.
"When I think back about all of the lives that he destroyed and all of the folks that he has affected over all of these years, I can't help to get angry," she said. "I want to punch him."
Carson-Sandler became the first of the Golden State Killer's recorded rape victims on June 18, 1976. In an HLN documentary on the case, she said she was dozing in bed with her 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 her 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," she said in the HLN documentary, in which she didn't share her last name.
That first rape sparked the hunt for the man who authorities say went on to commit rapes and killings in California over the next decade.
Renewed interest in case
It's been more than 40 years since the Golden State Killer's first recorded attacks, which began in and around Sacramento in Northern California. No suspects were 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, in the hopes of shedding 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 the Maggiores 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 the 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."
DNA changed the case
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 matched the East Area Rapist's DNA, and they say it led them to Joseph James DeAngelo, 72.
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."
Note: Unless stated otherwise, the interviews from this story came from the HLN series "Unmasking A Killer."
Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, is believed to be behind a brutal spree of homicides and rapes in 1970s and 80s California
The nicknames underscored the dread he inspired. The East Area Rapist. The Original Night Stalker. The Diamond Knot Killer. The Golden State Killer.
A brutal, homicidal spree terrorised California in the 1970s and 1980s and prompted one of America’s most intense manhunts.
He wore a mask and gloves, broke into homes and put a blade to victims’ throats before committing atrocities. “Shut up or I’ll kill you,” he said.
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara review – in search of a serial killer Read more
Authorities studied his modus operandi – the reconnaissance, the knots - and offered rewards for information. They distributed sketches of the slender young man with blond hair blamed for 12 murders and at least 45 rapes from 1976 to 1986.
Years turned to decades and he remained free, his identity unknown.
On Tuesday evening came a denouement. A police taskforce pounced on a balding 72-year-old man as he emerged from his home in Citrus Heights, an affluent suburb outside Sacramento. Joseph James DeAngelo Jr, a former police officer, seemed too astonished to try to flee.
“He was very surprised,” said the Sacramento county sheriff, Scott Jones.
So was everyone else when authorities confirmed the news at a press conference on Wednesday, revealing that a DNA breakthrough had turned a cold case very hot. “This was a true convergence of emerging technology and dogged determination,” said Jones.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Joseph James DeAngelo. Photograph: Sacramento county sheriff's office
DeAngelo is being held without bail on suspicion of murdering Brian and Kate Maggiore in 1978 and Charlene and Lyman Smith in 1980. He is on suicide watch.
He allegedly committed some of the rapes and killings while a police officer – possibly while on duty.
“This defendant has been able to live here in a nice suburb in Sacramento,” said the Orange county district attorney, Tony Rackauckas. “Our team is going to work hard to make sure he never gets out.”
Bruce Harrington, whose brother Keith Harrington and sister-in-law Patrice Harrington were among the killer’s victims, also addressed the press conference. “For the 51 ladies who were brutally raped: sleep better tonight. He isn’t coming through the window. He is now in jail and he is history.”
A cottage industry of books and documentaries have kept the Golden State Killer in the public eye.
The true-crime author Michelle McNamara detailed the crimes and investigation in her book I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. Her husband, Patton Oswalt, an actor and comedian, helped finish the book after McNamara died in 2016. It became a bestseller and reportedly is the basis of a planned HBO series.
“If they’ve really caught the #GoldenStateKiller I hope I get to visit him. Not to gloat or gawk – to ask him the questions that @TrueCrimeDiary wanted answered in her ‘Letter To An Old Man’” at the end of the book, Oswalt tweeted.
Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) If they’ve really caught the #GoldenStateKiller I hope I get to visit him. Not to gloat or gawk — to ask him the questions that @TrueCrimeDiary wanted answered in her “Letter To An Old Man” at the end of #IllBeGoneInTheDark. pic.twitter.com/32EHSzBct5
Jones told reporters the book helped keep the case in the public eye but did not prompt the breakthrough, dismaying some of McNamara’s fans on social media.
Anne Marie Schubert, Sacramento’s district attorney, said a taskforce assembled in 2016 pooled information and resources from the FBI and multiple police forces across California. “The answer was and always was going to be in the DNA.”
Authorities hailed laboratory experts and old-fashioned detective work but did not reveal how they matched the DNA to DeAngelo, only that the breakthrough came last week, after which they put him under surveillance.
His relatives were cooperating, said Scott, the sheriff. “It’s quite a shock to them, as you might expect.”
Neighbours expressed shock as police scoured DeAngelo’s beige bungalow and removed some property, including two cars, a boat and a motorcycle. They told reporters the only notable detail about him was his occasional loud swearing while doing DIY in his yard.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Authorities announce the arrest in Sacramento. Photograph: Fred Greaves/Reuters
DeAngelo served as a police officer with the Exeter and Auburn police departments before being fired in 1979 on suspicion of shoplifting a hammer and a can of dog repellant from a Citrus Heights store.
The East Area Rapist got his name by breaking into homes from 1976 and using laces to truss victims.
His fifth victim, Jane Carson-Sandler, wrote a book about the ordeal. “Shut up, shut up, shut up or I’ll kill you,” he said as he scraped a knife across her chest, drawing blood. “I just want your money.” That was a lie. He tied up her three-year-old son, then raped her.
The attacks grew more sadistic. He tied up husbands, placed cups and dishes on their backs and said they and their wives would be killed if the crockery slipped off.
By 1978, the attacks were murderous. The Maggiores were shot while walking their dog. The Smiths were bludgeoned to death. That year police found an essay believed to belong to him. “My 6th grade teacher gave me a lot of disappointments that made me very mad and made me built (sic) a state of hatred in my heart,” said one excerpt. Another page included an intricate sketch of a neighborhood and the word “punishment”.
The FBI set up a website in 2016 offering a $50,000 reward, saying by then the killer would be approximately 60 to 75 years old. “He may have an interest or training in military or law enforcement techniques, and he was proficient with firearms,” it said.
Carson-Sandler, the rape survivor, told the Island Packet newspaper the arrest had overwhelmed her with joy. “I’ve been crying, sobbing.”
Michelle McNamara, shown in 2012, wrote a book about the Golden State Killer that her husband, Patton Oswalt, left, helped get published after she died. (Matt Sayles/Associated Press)
She knew his blood type, his build, his habits and the way he breathed. She knew his twisted proclivities, embarrassing faults of his anatomy and exacting details about dozens of rapes and 12 murders that police believe he committed. And after tracking him and the gruesome trail of crimes he had left throughout California, for years, she even seemed to know how it would all end.
But Michelle McNamara never lived to see the day that a suspect was arrested.
The true crime writer, who died in 2016, looms large over a case that has captivated the country with the news that former police officer Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, has been arrested and charged with two counts of murder in a case that had long gone unsolved.
McNamara is the author of a book about the horrific cold case, “I’ll Be Gone In the Dark,” which was published posthumously this year with help from her husband, comedian Patton Oswalt. The book, the result of years of painstaking research by McNamara, helped bring the case a national prominence it didn’t have before. She even coined the killer’s catchy nickname, disregarding the monikers bestowed on the suspect by police in the many jurisdictions where he struck, in favor of a title that sewed the state’s geography together: the Golden State Killer.
[‘Golden State Killer’ suspect, a former police officer, arrested after DNA match, officials say]
But officials have played down the suggestion that McNamara’s book played a role in the suspect’s apprehension.
“That’s a question we’ve gotten from all over the world in the last 24 hours, and the answer is no,” Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones told reporters.
Authorities did acknowledge that the work built public interest in the case, which can have the effect of lending an old investigation more urgency and, potentially, more resources.
“It kept interest and tips coming in,” Jones said, but “other than that there was no information extracted from that book that directly led to the apprehension.”
Many of McNamara’s family, friends and fans said they believed she deserved more credit for the arrest in the case.
“It was pretty amazing,” Sarah Stanard, a longtime friend of McNamara’s told The Washington Post. “I’m going to try not to be angry, but they’re taking all the credit.”
Oswalt, who spent the day doing interviews and tweeting ecstatically about the news of DeAngelo’s arrest, said that McNamara “didn’t care about getting any shine.”
“She cared about the Golden State Killer being behind bars and the victims getting some relief,” he wrote on Twitter.
Still, he said that he believed the police would be disinclined to credit writers and journalists who helped them with the case.
“But every time they said Golden State Killer, they credited” her work, he said.
McNamara’s long fascination with true-crime stories sprouted from an unsolved murder near her family’s home in Oak Park, Ill., when she was 14. After moving to Los Angeles later, she worked briefly for a private detective, before going on to write for television, Stanard said. But she returned to focus on her fascination with true crime, starting a blog in 2006 to examine unsolved cases.
“She was just a dogged person,” Stanard said. “She had a different brain.”
One of the cases she examined was the unknown assailant known variously as the East Area Rapist, for early crimes committed in Sacramento, the Original Night Stalker, after police learned that his crimes predated that of serial killer Richard Ramirez, and the Visalia Ransacker.
The killer left a lurid trail of crime scenes and victims across the large state: horrifying home invasions, women raped in front of their bound loved ones, and a series of couples killed in their homes together. His meticulousness helped him elude capture for decades.
“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,” McNamara wrote. “Victims received hang-up or disturbing phone calls before and after they were attacked. 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.”
For her, the case had become a fixation. She joined with other amateur sleuths in online message boards, met with survivors of the killer’s victims, pored over decades-old files, autopsy reports, maps and mug shots.
“I’m obsessed,” she wrote on her blog in 2011. “It’s not healthy.”
She wrote a long narrative about the case and her obsession with it for Los Angeles Magazine in 2013, which led to a book deal with HarperCollins.
“And, you know, in writing the book, she began to recruit retired homicide detectives and cops from all these different jurisdictions and precincts and cities. And she got them to pool information,” Oswalt said last year during an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air. “But her research was so meticulous and so complete that they would contact each other and say, talk to Michelle. She knows. This person is actually not some weird, you know, overenthusiastic amateur. She wants to put the bracelets on this guy.”
But the work began to take a toll. McNamara, who would often work at night after her daughter and husband went to bed, began to develop anxiety and sleep issues, Oswalt said. He has spoken about the panic the case created for her, including one time she mistook him for an intruder in the middle of the night and swung a lamp at his head.
“I think that is what led her down this road of using Xanax. And I know she was taking Adderall in the mornings to get up and some — you know, before she died, the three days before she died, she really didn’t sleep because there was all this new breaking stuff on the case,” Oswalt said. “I’m not going to be glib and say that’s the cause of death. The cause of death was a lot of things. But that certainly held the door open for the other causes.”
She died in her sleep from what host Terry Gross said was an undiagnosed heart problem along with Xanax, Adderall and fentanyl in her system on April 21, 2016. She was 46.
Oswalt helped steward the book’s completion, with the help of a journalist, Billy Jensen, and a researcher, Paul Haynes. It has been hailed by critics, writers such as Stephen King and Gillian Flynn, and readers, and landed on bestseller lists.
It appears police have caught the Golden State Killer. Go get Michelle McNamara's excellent book about the case, I'LL BE GONE IN THE DARK. — Stephen King (@StephenKing) April 25, 2018
Family and friends said they had just done a reading of her book at a Chicago-area bookstore around the time they believe DeAngelo was arrested.
“I think you got him, Michelle,” Oswalt said in a video he posted to social media.
“On the night when all of Michelle’s collaborators were together for the first time, in Michelle’s hometown, with Michelle’s family present, the monster we sought is simultaneously taken into custody,” researcher Paul Haynes wrote. “I’m a rational man, but I can’t help but feel this transcends coincidence.”
Many shared a particularly prescient passage from the book that envisioned the suspect’s arrest in the future.
“One day soon, you’ll hear a car pull up to your curb, an engine cut out. You’ll hear footsteps coming up your front walk,” McNamara wrote. “The doorbell rings. No side gates are left open. You’re long past leaping over a fence. Take one of your hyper, gulping breaths. Clench your teeth. Inch timidly toward the insistent bell. This is how it ends for you.”
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