Ex-cop Joseph DeAngelo pleads guilty to 13 murders, 13 kidnappings in Golden State Killer case

On August 21, 2020, a 74-year-old man in a wheelchair appeared via video screen in a Sacramento courtroom. Joseph James DeAngelo Jr., a former police officer, was there to answer for crimes that had haunted California for more than four decades. According to reports from the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office, DeAngelo pleaded guilty to 13 counts of murder and 13 counts of kidnapping, bringing a formal close to one of the state’s most infamous cold cases.

The case began in the mid-1970s with a series of rapes in the Sacramento area, attributed to a suspect dubbed the East Area Rapist. From 1976 onward, attacks were reported in Rancho Cordova, Carmichael, and other suburbs. Over time, the crimes escalated—from burglaries to rapes to murders. In 1979, the attacks shifted south to the San Francisco Bay Area, where the same suspect became known as the Original Night Stalker, committing rapes and killings in Contra Costa and Santa Clara counties. In 1980, a double murder in Goleta, near Santa Barbara, was later linked to the same offender.

For years, investigators believed the total attributed crimes included at least 12 murders and 45 rapes, though they suspected the true number of victims was higher. The case went cold for decades, hampered by jurisdictional disputes and the lack of a unified database in the early years. Police linked the East Area Rapist and Original Night Stalker through modus operandi and, later, DNA. A critical turning point came in 2001, when DNA testing confirmed that the same male profile linked the northern and southern California attacks.

In 2016, the FBI and local agencies formed a task force to tackle the case. The break came in 2018, when investigators used a public genealogy website. They uploaded the suspect’s DNA profile to GEDmatch, a consumer database, and built a family tree. That led them to DeAngelo, who lived in Citrus Heights, near the original attack area. Investigators obtained a discarded item from his trash and matched his DNA to the crime-scene samples. He was arrested on April 24, 2018.