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Golden State Killer Joseph DeAngelo Pleads Guilty to 13 Murders in Sacramento

The former police officer, 74, admitted 13 murders and 13 kidnappings and 161 uncharged crimes against 61 more victims under a deal that spared him a possible death sentence.

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AI-generated illustration, not the real place or event: a ballroom set up as a temporary courtroom with spaced chairs

For more than four decades he had been a set of nicknames: the Visalia Ransacker, the East Area Rapist, the Original Night Stalker, the Golden State Killer. On Monday, June 29, 2020, sitting in a wheelchair in a university ballroom in Sacramento, Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. answered to all of them. Asked by Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael Bowman how he pleaded, the 74-year-old former police officer replied in a hoarse, quavering voice, again and again, that he was guilty.

He pleaded guilty to 13 counts of first-degree murder, with special circumstances of multiple murder and murder committed during rape, robbery and burglary, and to 13 counts of kidnapping to commit robbery. Under the same agreement he admitted 161 crimes he was never charged with, against 61 more victims, among them attempted murder, rape, robbery and first-degree burglary. Those uncharged crimes were committed in Alameda, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Santa Clara, Stanislaus, Tulare and Yolo counties.

The murders he admitted spanned eleven years and much of the state. Claude Snelling was killed in Tulare County on September 11, 1975. Katie and Brian Maggiore were killed in Sacramento County on February 2, 1978. In Santa Barbara County he admitted killing Debra Alexandria Manning and Robert Offerman on December 30, 1979, and Cheri Domingo and Greg Sanchez on July 27, 1981. Charlene and Lyman Smith were killed in Ventura County on or about March 13, 1980. In Orange County he admitted killing Keith and Patrice Harrington on August 21, 1980, Manuela Witthuhn on February 6, 1981, and Janelle Cruz on May 5, 1986, the last of them.

The hearing had been moved out of the courthouse and into the Sacramento State ballroom so the crowd of survivors and relatives could attend at a safe distance during the coronavirus pandemic. Prosecutors from county after county took turns reading the facts of each case into the record. Thienvu Ho of the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office described how investigators, after a genealogy match through DeAngelo's relatives in 2018, recovered a tissue from his trash that gave them the DNA they needed to charge him.

The plea spared him a possible death sentence. All six district attorneys prosecuting the case, from Contra Costa, Orange, Sacramento, Santa Barbara, Tulare and Ventura counties, had decided to seek the death penalty, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said. They accepted DeAngelo's offer after consulting the victims and their families, citing the advanced age of the victims and witnesses, the deaths of key witnesses, the age of the defendant and a prosecution expected to take as long as ten years. "He has not just been arrested and charged; he has now admitted he is guilty," said Ventura County District Attorney Greg Totten. "His plea today ensures he will spend the rest of his life in prison, and he will die a convicted rapist and murderer."

Under the deal DeAngelo was to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The sentencing hearing was set to begin on August 17, 2020, with survivors and families given the chance to speak to him before the sentence was imposed.

The dates and places of the murders are those listed by the prosecutors in their joint announcement of the plea. DeAngelo was convicted of the murders and kidnappings named in his plea; the further crimes he admitted were never charged, and Ventura County prosecutors noted that the statute of limitations had run on many of his other crimes.

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