Former Police Officer Joseph James DeAngelo Arrested as the Suspected Golden State Killer
Sacramento officials said the 72-year-old, held without bail on two Ventura County murder charges, was the man behind a 12-year spree of killings and rapes.
Published
The man they had been hunting for four decades was 72 and lived in Citrus Heights. Overnight into Wednesday, April 25, 2018, Sacramento County sheriff's deputies arrested Joseph James DeAngelo at his modest suburban home, and on Wednesday officials announced that they believed he was the masked attacker known as the East Area Rapist, the Original Night Stalker and, latterly, the Golden State Killer. He was held without bail in the Sacramento County jail.
"We all knew as part of this team that we were looking for a needle in a haystack, but we also all knew that the needle was there," said Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert. "We found the needle in the haystack and it was here in Sacramento." Sheriff Scott Jones said DeAngelo had been under surveillance for six days and that investigators had used "discarded DNA" to confirm he was their man, though he would not say what that meant. He was taken into custody on a Ventura County warrant charging two counts of murder in the March 1980 killings of Lyman and Charlene Smith, with special circumstances of multiple murder and murder committed during a rape and a burglary.
The suspect had been a police officer himself. DeAngelo, a Navy veteran, served in the 1970s with the departments of two small California cities, Exeter and Auburn, and Auburn fired him in August 1979 for shoplifting a hammer and dog repellent. Jones said investigators did not yet know whether he had committed any attacks while on duty. "We are trying to fill a lot of gaps in his life," the sheriff said. His grown children were cooperating and, he said, were in shock.
Police attributed to the offender about a dozen killings, some 45 rapes and around 120 burglaries across California between 1974 and 1986, when the attacks stopped for reasons no one had explained. His victims ranged from 13 to 41. Standing with the officials was Bruce Harrington, whose brother and sister-in-law, Keith and Patrice Harrington, were beaten to death as newlyweds in Dana Point in 1980, and who had paid for the 2004 ballot measure requiring DNA samples from felony arrestees. "Sleep better tonight," he said to the families. "He isn't coming through the window."
The search had taken on new urgency that February with the posthumous publication of Michelle McNamara's book about the case, I'll Be Gone in the Dark. Contra Costa County cold-case investigator Paul Holes, who had worked the case for decades, had said shortly before that the killer covered his trail well. "What he didn't account for," Holes said, "was DNA technology."
What this story covers. It reports the arrest as NBC News described it on April 25, 2018, from the sheriff's and district attorney's news conference. Officials did not explain at the announcement how DeAngelo had been identified; the genetic genealogy behind it was made public later and is not covered here. DeAngelo was a suspect when this was reported; he pleaded guilty in 2020.
Sources
Related News
- June 29, 2020: Golden State Killer Joseph DeAngelo Pleads Guilty to 13 Murders in Sacramento
- August 21, 2020: Golden State Killer Joseph DeAngelo Sentenced to Life Without Parole After Telling Victims He Is 'Truly Sorry'