The door handle that caught a serial killer: inside the DNA hunt

The door handle was on a car parked outside a house in Citrus Heights, California.

In 2018, investigators obtained a discarded sample of DNA from that handle.

They matched it to crime-scene DNA from a series of attacks and murders across California dating back to the 1970s.

The man who owned the car was Joseph James DeAngelo Jr., a former police officer.

He was arrested on April 24, 2018.

A mundane object, touched by a hand, ended a decades-long hunt.

The genealogy technique, using the public site GEDmatch, was widely credited as the decisive breakthrough.

Investigators compared crime-scene DNA against distant relatives' profiles on the site, and that led them to DeAngelo.

Not because he had submitted his own DNA. But because someone in his family had.

The record does not specify exactly how the sample from the door handle was obtained.

Was it swabbed? Was it picked up, a stray cell left on the metal?

That would require evidence.

What the record confirms is the match itself: the discarded sample, the crime-scene DNA, the same profile.

For years, the attacker wore a ski mask and used a flashlight to blind his victims.

He left items behind — a stolen watch, a single earring.

He made taunting phone calls to victims and police.

But he could not control what he left on a door handle.

The case had gone cold for decades.

In 2001, DNA testing linked the East Area Rapist attacks to the Southern California murders, confirming a single offender.

That offender had a name by 2018.

He was living in Citrus Heights.

A car door handle is small.

It is ordinary.

It is also the object that ended the hunt.

THE CRIMES

The crimes began in the Sacramento area.

There, the attacker was dubbed the East Area Rapist.

He spread north to the San Francisco Bay Area and south to Southern California, where he became known as the Original Night Stalker.

Between 1974 and 1986, a serial offender committed at least 50 rapes and 12 murders across California.

The precise number of rapes is not established.

The record confirms only "at least 50."

Victims included couples attacked in their homes.

They were often bound while the male was forced to listen to the rape of his partner.

The attacker wore a ski mask.

He used a flashlight to blind victims.

He left items at scenes: a stolen watch, a single earring.

He made taunting phone calls to victims and to police.

Among the murder victims was Katie Maggiore, killed in 1978 while walking her dog in Rancho Cordova.

The last known victim was an 18-year-old woman murdered in Irvine in 1986.

The terror spanned more than a decade.