Following the trail of sadistic killings
Authorities say homicide spree started after ex-cop’s firing
CITRUS HEIGHTS, Sacramento County — The ex-cop and retired grandfather accused of terrorizing California with a series of rapes and killings — spurring a decadeslong manhunt that ended this week — committed most of his homicides during a rampage that began three months after he was fired from his job as a police officer in Placer County, police said.
Investigators in several counties were building cases Thursday against Joseph James DeAngelo, who was named a day earlier as the notorious Golden State Killer and East Area Rapist, but they could not explain why he allegedly launched into his prolific spree or why he apparently stopped cold more than 30 years ago.
They believe the 72-year-old Vietnam veteran — set to make his first court appearance Friday in Sacramento — crisscrossed the state from 1976 to 1986, selecting and stalking victims before raping or killing them. They believe he left behind his terrible pastime to grow older in the quiet Sacramento suburbs, work at a Save Mart distribution center and raise at least one daughter and granddaughter.
How the serial killing sus-
pect managed to lay low for three decades after committing so many chilling crimes is one of many questions detectives across California are trying to answer. DeAngelo was known among neighbors for bouts of anger — some called him “Freak,” others referred to him as “Crazy Joe” — but they had no idea he could be linked to one of the nation’s worst unsolved crime cases.
James Reavis, a forensic psychologist in San Diego who has studied serial killers, said a firing can trigger rage in psychopaths who extend preexisting sexual sadism into homicidal violence. Rage killings can happen on occasion with normal people, he said, but “it wouldn’t go on and on and on unless there was something wrong internally.”
DeAngelo, arrested Tueday at his home, is scheduled to appear in a Sacramento County courtroom Friday to face two murder charges. He’s accused of shooting to death a young couple near their Rancho Cordova home in 1978 as they walked their dog.
DeAngelo is expected to face a litany of criminal counts filed by prosecutors across the state. Investigators say they connected him to 12 slayings and 45 rapes after tracking him down by running crime-scene DNA against consumer genealogical websites, giving them possible relatives of the target, then building a pool of suspects and narrowing from there.
The district attorney’s offices in Ventura County and Orange County announced that they also would be filing murder, rape, robbery and other charges in at least six other killings. In some counties, including in the Bay Area, prosecutors said they may not be able to file rape charges because the statute of limitations has passed.
As prosecutors made their decisions, a chilling picture emerged of a sadistic killer.
DeAngelo grew up in Bath, N.Y., graduated from Folsom Senior High School in 1964 and served 22 months in combat in Vietnam, according to a 1973 story in the Exeter Sun. He received a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice at Sacramento State University and began working as a police officer in Exeter, in Tulare County, in 1973. The clean-cut, baby-faced DeAngelo is pictured in the Exeter Sun after he was hired.
Police believe he may have begun his crime binge as the Visalia Ransacker, who broke into 85 homes in Tulare County from 1974 to 1976, though the evidence is not as strong. The ransacker was also suspected of killing a college professor, according to the Visalia Times Delta.
DeAngelo was hired in 1976 as a police officer in Auburn, in Placer County, and investigators say he left behind his uniform while committing rapes in the Sacramento area as well as the Bay Area — in Danville, Walnut Creek, San Jose, Fremont and San Ramon.
He was fired from the Auburn force in 1979 after he was charged with stealing a hammer and dog repellent from a drugstore, officials said. A string of savage attacks began three months later in Santa Barbara and Orange counties that left 10 people dead.
As the spree went on, it saw chilling behavior from the man also known as the Diamond Knot Killer and the Original Night Stalker.
The assailant reportedly cried, “I hate you, Bonnie. I hate you,” as he raped one of his victims, according to a book on the case written by Richard Shelby. DeAngelo was briefly engaged to a woman named Bonnie Jean Colwell when he was 24.
The killer was known to stake out his victims and break into homes before the carefully planned assaults, which usually occurred at night. A couple who once questioned the existence of the rapist at a town hall meeting became victims of the rapist, who was apparently listening, the Sacramento Bee reported.
He often tied up the male victims and stacked dinner plates on them, and told couples he would kill them both if he heard the plates fall while he was raping the woman, investigators said.
“That is just classic psychopathy,” Reavis said. “In the moment, he is the evil genius, omniscient, omnipotent and he holds this person’s life in his hands. My guess is that would be incredibly exciting to him and also sexually arousing. It’s classic predatory aggression.”
According to investigators, DeAngelo took a five-year break from preying on victims after his daughter was born in 1981, and then, after a rape and murder in Orange County in 1986, apparently stopped altogether.
He appears to have been living a relatively normal life at the time of his arrest. He was retired and living in the Citrus Heights suburb of Sacramento after working at a Save Mart distribution center for nearly three decades.
“Joe DeAngelo was a 27-year employee of the Roseville distribution center, having retired last year,” Victoria Castro, a spokeswoman for the company, said in a statement. “None of his actions in the workplace would have led us to suspect any connection to crimes being attributed to him.”
Reavis, like detectives, could not explain DeAngelo’s alleged pattern.
“When I read that he had stopped, I thought that he was probably incarcerated, but that doesn’t seem to be the case,” he said. “It could be the intensity of his sexual fantasies may have gone down with increasing age. You’d also have to consider whether there were more murders ... that we’re not aware of.”
In addition to the homicides and rapes, authorities suspect DeAngelo committed more than 150 home break-ins across the state.
On Thursday, FBI investigators searched DeAngelo’s garage, along with a blue Volvo, white Toyota and silver fishing boat with “Klamath” painted in white letters on the side. Neighbors said he lived with a grown daughter and a granddaughter in recent times.
Neighbors said DeAngelo kept his yard immaculate and often could be seen working on his cars or his boat. They described the neighborhood as quiet, but said DeAngelo was loud.
“We used to always just call him ‘Freak,’,” said Natalia Bedes-Correnti, 47, who has lived across from DeAngelo for 20 years. “He used to yell and curse and curse and yell. He liked the f-word.”
Shawna Silva, 28, grew up down the street from DeAngelo’s house and spent most of her childhood playing with neighborhood kids in the street. She said DeAngelo had three daughters, but that she avoided the children of the man she called “Crazy Joe.” She said DeAngelo’s wife left him to raise the kids alone.
Sandy Valdez had a more positive impression of DeAngelo. She said her granddaughter was a friend of DeAngelo’s granddaughter, and even attended sleepovers at his house, where she said he was “very congenial.”
“I can remember him coming to the door and saying, ‘Well, I’m grandpa,’ ” Valdez recalled. “He looked like a grandpa, sounded like a grandpa and I identified him as such.”
When news broke of the arrest, Valdez said her daughter questioned her granddaughter to make sure nothing inappropriate had happened at DeAngelo’s home.
“She told my daughter that he was always nice and pleasant and took them out to eat,” Valdez said. “He was just a regular grandpa.”