KIN’S DNA GOT FIEND
Test firm led to serial susp
SUSPECTED Golden State Killer Joseph DeAngelo eluded detection for decades — until one of his relatives submitted a DNA sample to a genealogical website.
Dogged investigators were finally able to track DeAngelo (photo) down by submitting DNA from one of his alleged crime scenes to a genealogy mapping service that returned at least one hit for a possible relative in its public database, the Sacramento Bee first reported Thursday.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Grippi later confirmed it was “accurate” to report that familial DNA from a genealogical website helped investigators connect the dots and crack the case.
Prosecutors did not divulge which service led to the match, but popular ones include Ancestry.com 23andMe.com.
Investigators reportedly took the proposed match and scoured that person’s family tree until they found a suspect who fit their profile.
Detectives with the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department then surveilled DeAngelo at his suburban Sacramento home, obtained some of his “discarded DNA” and made a definitive match in the last week, officials said.
DeAngelo, 72, was arrested Tuesday afternoon outside his tidy, ranch-style house in Citrus Heights.
Prosecutors in Sacramento and Ventura and counties quickly charged him with the 1978 murders of Brian and Katie Maggiore in Rancho Cordova and the 1980 slayings of Lyman and Charlene Smith in Ventura.
Lyman Smith’s daughter Jennifer Carole praised the police work to the Daily News.
She said Ventura County District Attorney Gregory Totten called her Wednesday and said the DNA was “a 100% match.”
“I do not want him on Death Row. He doesn’t deserve a private room like that. He deserves general population and to be afraid every moment of his life. He needs to be afraid like he made all of us afraid. It’s his turn to be afraid,” she said.
Authorities say DeAngelo, a former police officer, is responsible for upwards of 50 rapes and at least 12 murders. After his last known murder, which took place in Southern California in 1986, DeAngelo moved back to the Sacramento area and spent more than a quarter century working at a grocery store. He got a job with the Save Mart chain around 1990 and settled into a quiet life as an unassuming “machinist” known simply as Joe, a company spokeswoman said, adding he retired last year.
A spokeswoman for the Sacramento County district attorney’s office declined to comment when asked if investigators believe DeAngelo continued his sadistic spree after 1986 or retired from his life of violent crime.