Has one housewife’s obsession finally nailed the Golden State killer?
He terrorised California in the 70s and 80s, killing 12 and raping many more. Now as an ex-cop is arrested ...
He always came at dead of night or just before dawn, slipping in through back doors and windows of homes he had often already broken into when nobody was at home.
This nightmare in human form would use the time to study room layouts and even memorise victims’ names. Porch lights were disabled, sliding doors left unlocked and bullets emptied from householders’ guns. Chillingly, shoelaces or nylon cords were hidden under cushions to be used as ligatures.
when he decided it was time to visit terror on his victims, the man would return, armed with a gun or knife.
The Golden state Killer, as he came to be known, started out in the seventies as a serial rapist, attacking at least 46 women in their bedrooms in the hills east of sacramento, the state capital. His brutality horrified residents and confounded the police.
later, he extended his appalling crimes to murder, killing 12 people between 1978 and 1986 as he widened the range of his activities to the west and south.
Though the police knew the crimes were linked, they never produced a suspect, prompting some victims’ families to fear that one of america’s most violent serial killers had died unpunished.
But now it appears that may not be the case. On wednesday, a police and FBI taskforce announced it had arrested a man it is convinced is the Golden state Killer at his home in a well- to- do sacramento suburb.
shockingly, Joseph Deangelo, 72, is a former police officer. He and his only wife, sharon Huddle, a lawyer, split up in 1991 after an 18-year marriage.
They have three daughters in their 20s and 30s, and neighbours believe he has at least one grandchild. His brother-inlaw said Deangelo was a good father.
However a neighbour, Grant Gorman, said he avoided playing with Deangelo’s daughters when they were young because their father ‘just had this anger that was pouring out of him’. He added: ‘He’d just be yelling at nothing in the backyard, pacing in circles.’
what’s fascinating about this week’s dramatic development is that many people are now giving credit for the arrest to a California housewife and amateur sleuth who devoted years to tracking down the man responsible.
Decades after the crimes, Michelle McNamara — who came up with the killer’s ‘Golden state Killer’ nickname — became consumed with unmasking the killer, working night after night from her daughter’s playroom.
sadly, she died in 2016 aged 46 after taking a fatal dose of prescription drugs having admitted she had become ‘ unhealthily obsessed’ with the case. she had reportedly been so fixated with finishing a book on the crimes that she suffered from insomnia, anxiety and weight gain.
Her husband, comedy actor Patton Oswalt — who voiced Remy the Rat in the Pixar film Ratatouille — enlisted an investigative journalist to finish the book, titled I’ll Be Gone In The Dark: One woman’s Obsessive search For The Golden state Killer. It became a national bestseller when it was published in February.
although she never identified Deangelo as a suspect, and police insist the book played no ‘direct’ role in his arrest, they admit it revived interest in the case and led to a flurry of tips. One friend of Michelle’s said this week of the police’s mealy-mouthed response to the book: ‘I’m going to try not to be angry but they’re taking all the credit.’
Meanwhile, Paul Haynes, who helped research the book, said: ‘I’m a rational man, but I can’t help but feel this transcends coincidence.’
after the arrest this week, Mr Oswalt paid tribute to his wife in an Instagram video. ‘you did it, Michelle,’ he said. ‘The cops are never going to say it, but your book helped get this thing closed.’
Michelle McNamara’s interest in unsolved crimes was established after a murder in her Illinois neighbourhood when she was 14. as her fascination with the Golden state Killer grew, she formed a group of contacts including investigators and other amateurs. she also interviewed witnesses and detectives who had been involved.
The man she hunted was one of america’s most twisted and violent serial killers, his deeds casting a shadow over the sunny lives of Californians decades ago.
In her book, McNamara argues that he was driven by a hatred of nuclear families which he liked to shatter with appalling acts of sexual violence.
she writes that because DNa profiling was not developed until 1984, this ‘master watcher’ was able to ‘stroll undetected in the middle-class swarm’.
she was right, in the sense that the trail might have gone cold were it not for developments in DNa technology in recent decades. wider DNa sample databases linked the sacramento outrages to other killings near san Francisco and in southern California, prompting the FBI to reexamine the case in 2016.
The bureau offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction.
Officials won’t yet reveal what exactly led them to suspect Deangelo, but they say they cracked the case only in the past week. The taskforce put him under surveillance for six days and secretly retrieved his DNa from objects he had thrown away. Those samples — along with fingerprints — matched evidence left by the killer at his crimes scenes, according to prosecutors.
Police pounced at his home on Tuesday. He has been charged with eight counts of murder. Prosecutors promise more and believe he was responsible for 12 murders, 51 rapes and 125 burglaries.
‘ For more than 40 years, countless victims have waited for justice,’ said sacramento County District attorney anne Marie schubert.
although police insisted there had been no clues pointing to Deangelo, that wasn’t entirely true. He had been sacked as a police officer in auburn, a town outside sacramento, in 1979 after he was caught shoplifting a can of dog- repellent spray and a hammer.
a suspicious mind might have recognised these were the sort of items a violent house-breaker
wouldn’t want to risk buying. However, he had an otherwise clean sheet. A decorated U.S. Navy veteran of the Vietnam War, he retired last year after working for 27 years as a lorry mechanic at a grocery chain distribution centre. His hobby was building model airplanes.
Among the first of the attacker’s rape victims was Jane Carson- Sandler, 30, who was in bed in her Sacramento home with her threeyear-old son in October 1976 when a man in a ski mask burst in. The intruder held a butcher’s knife to her chest. ‘Shut up or I’ll kill you, I just want your money,’ he hissed. But he blindfolded, gagged and bound them both with shoelaces. He then raped her as her son sat on the floor.
ASWITH other victims, he lingered, disappearing off to the kitchen. He may have prepared himself a meal.
Several weeks earlier, Mrs Carson-Sandler had reported a break-in.
This week, her response was unequivocal. ‘ I’m overwhelmed with joy. I’ve been crying, sobbing,’ she said after DeAngelo’s arrest. ‘After 42 years — wow!’
Police built up a picture of the attacker — white, young, aged 18 to 30 — and athletic. He always talked through clenched teeth with what was described as a guttural whisper. Police believed he had a military or police background because he knew about guns.
His female victims were always bound, and frequently moved into specific positions, although he wouldn’t touch their breasts or kiss them. He attacked sleeping couples, too, tying the men up while he raped their wives and girlfriends.
The attacks became increasingly violent. Months after warning a rape victim that he would kill two people if her ordeal reached the media (it did), he shot dead a newlywed couple out walking their dog one night.
In 1980, just days before he was appointed a judge, Lyman Smith and his wife Charlene were bludgeoned to death with a fireplace log in their home in Ventura, California. A few months later, Keith Harrington, a medical student, and his wife Patrice, a paediatric nurse, were beaten to death with a brass sprinkler head from their garden. Their killer then made their bed with them in it,
In what investigators believe was the final murder, 18-year-old Janelle Cruz was raped and bludgeoned to death in her bed at her family’s home in Irvine in 1986.
Now, if the police really do have their man, victims and their families will at last find some sense of peace.
Bruce Harrington, whose brother Keith was murdered, had a message for surviving victims. ‘ Sleep better tonight, he isn’t coming through the window,’ he told them. ‘ He’s now in jail and he’s history.’
In the final chapter of Michelle McNamara’s book, ‘Letter to an Old Man’, she fantasises about the net she helped build finally closing around him. Though she never got to see it, this week it appears finally to have come to pass.