WP:‘Golden State Killer’ suspect, a former police officer, arrested after DNA match, officials say

[Dan T.]

Here's a link to Michelle McNamara's Los Angeles Magazine article that was the precursor to her book "I'll Be Gone in the Dark."

 

http://www.lamag.com/longform/in-the-footsteps-of-a-killer/

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

I don't know if the McNamara book shook anything loose or if this is just unbelievable timing.

 

Where I do agree with her is that it's unbelievable that this case had really no national footprint., He's probably the most prolific serial offender in California history (and California has a LOT of serial criminals). If you through in the Visalia crimes, he might be the prolific serial offender in American history. And - for lack of a better world - the "elan" of his crimes is really really remarkable. They followed a distinct pattern, and the pattern was insane.

 

1. Endless stalking and prowling that involved prior break-ins and preparation

2. Use of a unique restraining method

3. Sometimes hours of rummaging through a house. (He cooked food. He drank beer. He went through drawers. He would set up "mood" lighting. He chilled on patios).

4. A near super-human ability to avoid detection.

 

She made this guy a national story for the first time. That probably had some impact. But I really need to know more about how they found him.

 

Five stories that will freak you the hell out about this dude:

 

1. A neighbor of a victim was cleaning her house one day and found a bunch of ligatures under her couch. It was known that he would break into a home and leave shoelaces and ropes for later usage.

2. He liked to talk to victim's and reveal things about their lives that he knew. He told the wife of an army officer that he saw her at an officer's club dance. He told another victim that he saw her at her school's prom. In an early attack, he told the victim that he saw her at her college. She was a high school student and said that. He stopped. Freaked out. Paced around and announced that everything was wrong. He then left without actually raping her. It turned out that her neighbor was around the same age and had the same build/hair color. She attended the college he mentioned. He apparently either stalked the wrong person and mistakenly broke into the wrong house. When he realized that he made a mistake, he left.

3. There is really only one record of a "spontaneous attack." He brutalized and raped a woman who had gone to her dad's house to do laundry after her washer stopped working. She even had a friend with her. She was waving goodbye to the friend in the driveway. Once he was out of sight, she was grabbed and taken back into the house for a truly brutal beating/rape which was far more violent than most of his early attacks. It turned out that another house in the neighborhood with a teenage daughter had been burglarized that night, but the girl was unexpectedly not home. It appears that in frustration, he just wondered around until he found a victim and took it out on her.

4. He raped one girl while she was babysitting at a house she never babysat at before. Afterwards, there was evidence that he had been stalking her for a while. So, he knew where she was going to be and did his attack there.

5. The first big article on the guy mentioned that he only attacked women who were home alone or home with children. On the very next attack, he raped a woman who was home with her husband. He would make the wife tie up the husband. Then he would tie up the wife. Then he would retie the husband. He then would put dishes on the back of the husband so he would know if they moved as he always raped the wife in another room. At that point, he pretty much only attacked couples. This is one of the only examples I've seen of a serial offender changing his MO in response to the media.

 

That stuff is all verifiable, which is how things like the Italian man shaming his neighbors and then getting victimized happens. There are also crazy stories about children of detectives claiming to see him on their roofs, peaking into their windows.

[Dan T.]

Re: the Itlalian guy who spoke up at the town hall... people are poring over photos taken at the town hall to see if they can spot Deangelo in the crowd. 

 

Also, for all his meticulousness, one of the double murders him walking up to a couple walking their dog, chasing them into a back yard and shooting them.  Oddly different from the rest of the homicides.

[The Evil Genius]

Makes you wonder if he had accomplices inside the police force, even after he was fired.

[Kilmer17]

I'll bet he confesses to multiple murders well into the 90s and 00s by the time this is over.

[SoulSkin]

4 hours ago, LadySkinsFan said:

Just put the book on my wish list, thanks to Dan T. I love true crime books.

 

My wife is always listening to some podcast about serial killers, and recently this book on her Echo. I can't help but catch some of it, because she listens in the kitchen on Sundays while she cooks. She was enthralled by this story was telling me a lot about it last weekend, saying they'd never catch this guy. I saw the news yesterday and told her when I got home. She reacted like I did the last time the Skins won the Superbowl. I mean pure adrenaline craziness. I thought she was going to start high fiving me. So, she recommends the book highly.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

12 minutes ago, Dan T. said:

Re: the Itlalian guy who spoke up at the town hall... people are poring over photos taken at the town hall to see if they can spot Deangelo in the crowd. 

 

Also, for all his meticulousness, one of the double murders him walking up to a couple walking their dog, chasing them into a back yard and shooting them.  Oddly different from the rest of the homicides.

 

Until he started doing his crimes in SoCal which were double murders from the start, he did not do well when things went off-script.

 

1. The Visalia Ransacker case was simply that: ransacking homes. That series came to an end when he entered a home, found a teenage girl, and tried to kidnap her (probably to rape her as he was likely building towards that). Her father woke up, confronted him and was shot. So, he's an odd case where he escalated from burglary to murder before he apparently started raping. But it seems like this went way way off-script. It's not even clear if the kidnapping was planned.

 

2. The Maggiore murders always seemed odd and have never officially been part of his crime spree until now. The story is that they saw him prowling/peeping when he was not wearing his ski mask. He chased them down and shot them. What tied him to the scene (no pun intended) is that black shoelaces were found near the bodies that were apparently dropped by the shooter and a witness did see someone fleeing who fit the general profile they had established. The board I lurk on is somewhat flabbergasted that they brought these charges so quickly, because that had been the biggest debate for years. If he didn't commit that murder, one of the composite sketches was useless. But again, like the girl who was the wrong girl, he didn't handle situations where he had no plan.

13 minutes ago, The Evil Genius said:

Makes you wonder if he had accomplices inside the police force, even after he was fired.

 

He was an Auburn police officer. The majority of his rapes took place in Sacramento. As far as I know, he never did anything in his own jurisdiction.

 

What I think is likely is that 1970s cops never really looked at their own. Moreover, if he ever found himself pulled over for speeding or was caught up in a roadblock of some kind, all he had to do was flash a badge and be sent on his way. My uncles were cops in the 70s. It was a different time.

 

He probably knew police procedures and used that to his advantage. If you knew they were going to search in x number of square blocks, you knew where you had to flee to by such and such time. And he used the canals behind all these homes extremely well.

 

The one thing that just pisses me off is that he stole a dog repellant kit and a hammer and no one ever asked him, "Um, why?" Sacramento had several serial rapists at this time. Like Patton Oswalt said, that's a purchase you make at The Murder Store.

 

 

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

8 minutes ago, SoulSkin said:

 

My wife is always listening to some podcast about serial killers, and recently this book on her Echo. I can't help but catch some of it, because she listens in the kitchen on Sundays while she cooks. She was enthralled by this story was telling me a lot about it last weekend, saying they'd never catch this guy. I saw the news yesterday and told her when I got home. She reacted like I did the last time the Skins won the Superbowl. I mean pure adrenaline craziness. I thought she was going to start high fiving me. So, she recommends the book highly.

 

My reaction was stunned disbelief for several hours. Most nights, it's my job to do the locking of the doors, turning out the lights etc. Since I read about this case, I always check the windows and the door from the laundry room to the garage, because those were his favorite entry points. So, he'll briefly flash in my head a few times a week. And I assumed he would NEVER be caught. I put it at 50/50 that he was already dead.

If you want a great podcast on this - and have like 5 hours - the Casefile podcast out of Australia did an epic 5 parter on this a few years ago. They went through every single attack over the episodes. (It was obvious that a lot of it was taken from the Quester website I listed).

 

They did a special podcast yesterday on this.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

I'm sorry I'm writing so much, but I had been debating starting a thread on this case for years. I figured it would just be me rambling like this and didn't bother.

 

Here is where the police background likely helped. He bounced around jurisdictions. He started in Rancho Cordova, which is in Sacramento County but not the Sacramento city limits. Then he moved into Sacramento. He bounced around here before suddenly sagging to Stockton, Modesto, and other places in the Central Valley.

 

This is the 70s. Various jurisdictions have a hard time cooperating today. They barely acknowledged each other then. So, there was never really anyone with all the information at any one time.

[Kilmer17]

I'm reading a bunch of stuff on this today.

 

I cant believe that the composite sketches didnt ID him in the 70s.  I have to believe a few fellow cops saw the resemblance but ignored it because he was one of them.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

4 minutes ago, Kilmer17 said:

I'm reading a bunch of stuff on this today.

 

I cant believe that the composite sketches didnt ID him in the 70s.  I have to believe a few fellow cops saw the resemblance but ignored it because he was one of them.

 

You are really caught up on this corrupt cop thing.

 

We was cop 45 minutes away from the crime scene in a town with none of this activity.

 

I mean, maybe he had someone helping him. That's been theorized for a long time. But this is not a case where a Sacramento cop was committing crimes in Sacramento and then investigating said crimes.

 

Besides, even the most corrupt cops in the 40s and 50s would not have turned a blind eye to a serial rapist/murderer. This is not someone selling drugs or shaking down hookers.

[Kilmer17]

1 minute ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

 

You are really caught up on this corrupt cop thing.

 

We was cop 45 minutes away from the crime scene in a town with none of this activity.

 

I mean, maybe he had someone helping him. That's been theorized for a long time. But this is not a case where a Sacramento cop was committing crimes in Sacramento and then investigating said crimes.

 

Besides, even the most corrupt cops in the 40s and 50s would not have turned a blind eye to a serial rapist/murderer. This is not someone selling drugs or shaking down hookers.

I dont mean it that way at all.  I mean that in a way that a cop couldnt possibly believe one of their own was a monster.  So they ignored a resemblance.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

2 minutes ago, Kilmer17 said:

I dont mean it that way at all.  I mean that in a way that a cop couldnt possibly believe one of their own was a monster.  So they ignored a resemblance.

 

 

Oh that's possible. He seems to have never been on anyone's radar.

 

Here's something that I was just reminded off on a board.

 

The used hounds a lot in this case. The hounds often would react really strangely. It was reported a few places like the dogs acted like they found someone with a terrible disease or on a lot of drugs.

 

Maybe they just found a bunch of dog repellant.

 

Again, not only being a police officer but having a college degree in law enforcement had to help him. He was a cop who was probably smarter and better trained than 98 percent of the cops chasing him.

[Kilmer17]

This will be one of those cases where hindsight is going to make a lot of people look bad.   The Italian guy incident, the questions he asked about prom and colleges etc all will now look obviously like someone who had been there.  Add in the composite sketches, the shoplifting of stuff used in the crimes, the cars etc etc etc.  

 

Everyone will be looking at this over the next few weeks going OF COURSE IT WAS HIM!

[The Evil Genius]

As someone who, prior to 2 years ago, lived in Sacramento county for 17 years..I do know the geography.

 

Auburn would have been podunk small pop back in the late 1970s (think about 7500 people max). Randcho would have been only 4x or 5x bigger. 

 

Maybe you're right and they guy is a supervillain. But it seems like he could and would have had help to bury some of the more damning evidence. 

[Hooper]

I think the tragic story behind the McNamara book is better than the actual book, which was clearly a very work in progress when she died. One of the Chief cops involved wrote a book too -- he wasn't the writer McNamara is, but I actually preferred it.

 

Will be interesting to see what led the cops to this guy being that they didn't have his DNA on file. Neither the McNamara book or the online sleuths had this guy anywhere on their radar. 

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

9 minutes ago, The Evil Genius said:

As someone who, prior to 2 years ago, lived in Sacramento county for 17 years..I do know the geography.

 

Auburn would have been podunk small pop back in the late 1970s (think about 7500 people max). Randcho would have been only 4x or 5x bigger. 

 

Maybe you're right and they guy is a supervillain. But it seems like he could and would have had help to bury some of the more damning evidence. 

 

He wasn't a supervillain now that everything is starting to come to light. It may have felt that way during a deep dive of the facts.

 

A supervillian doesn't get caught shoplifting a damn hammer. What he clearly was is supremely confident, reasonably athletic, and well-versed in police tactics.

 

But what more damning evidence would there have been? This was in at least 7 jurisdictions and they had one fingerprint. All the composite sketches came from suspected prowlers, never from a victim of him because he never took off the ski mask. They had semen and knew his blood type.

 

One thing everyone seems to be overlooking is that were around 100 living victims who interacted with him. The rape victims. About half of them had husbands who were tied up. Some of them had children who were tied up. Either the first or second victim was raped in a bed while her toddler lay on the floor tied up. The kid apparently later said he thought the person with his mommy was a doctor.

 

There are theories that he had a co-conspirator. There are theories that there were two East Area Rapists actually. If he had one, it would have likely involved all the stalking/prowling/breaking and entering and helping him escape so easily so often.

 

I do think that everyone is looking at this through 2018 lenses and not 1976 lenses. This is a world where fingerprints took weeks or months to match.

 

I'm always a believer in choosing incompetence over conspiracy.

4 minutes ago, Hooper said:

I think the tragic story behind the McNamara book is better than the actual book, which was clearly a very work in progress when she died. One of the Chief cops involved wrote a book too -- he wasn't the writer McNamara is, but I actually preferred it.

 

Will be interesting to see what led the cops to this guy being that they didn't have his DNA on file. Neither the McNamara book or the online sleuths had this guy anywhere on their radar. 

 

The writer of that other book lost me when he claimed that the EAR broke into his house to read the book before it was published. I've forgotten his name.

 

I am happy that he lived to see the case solved since it was clearly eating at him.

[The Evil Genius]

I'm curious if cops back then were feven fngerprinted as a requirement of their service.

 

Assuming they all are now...

[LadySkinsFan]

I would think so if only to exclude them. 

[Dan T.]

Here's one of the sketches along side a photo of Deangelo from that era.

 

 

There's a definite similarity there.  But as for Kilmer17 saying why didn't his fellow cops recognize him from the composite sketches... that's just too far fetched to think that someone would, out of the blue and with no other evidence, think "Hey, that's Joe!  He must be the rapist!"  Even the best of sketches look very generic until after the fact.

[Kilmer17]

If nothing else, I would expect cops to bust each others balls when one of their own resembles a suspect.  Hey look Frank!  You look just like the sheep molester!.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

I think that sketch looks like every high school basketball coach in the 70s.

 

Even if they took his fingerprints, I don't think there was any centralized database until the 90s maybe. Maybe even later?

 

I think fingerprints were largely used to match a suspect to a crime scene. Today, we think of it as drop the fingerprints in the database and wait for a match. But that is extraordinarily recent.

 

I'm fascinated by this New DNA technology that they seem to be referencing. The rumor is that they got a sample off the shoestrings at the Maggiore crime scene.

 

If that's the case, it's actually somewhat terrifying that they can extract DNA from anything you've ever touched. That's a brave new world for sure, and one I'm not exactly on board with.

[Dan T.]

22 minutes ago, Lombardi's_kid_brother said:

I think that sketch looks like every high school basketball coach in the 70s.

 

 

 

                                                               

 

 

Oh. My God.   The East Area Rapist is The White Shadow!!!  Why, Coach, why?

[The Evil Genius]

Holy ****. Dead ringer.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

I honestly wasn't think of The White Shadow when I said that, but holy ****, is that hilarious?

 

 

May this be a lesson to everyone.