’75 slaying is suspect’s 13th charge of murder
The body count in the Golden State Killer’s alleged reign of terror increased to 13 on Monday when prosecutors in Tulare County filed charges linking the suspect to another spree of crimes previously attributed to a person dubbed the Visalia Ransacker.
A new murder charge was filed as investigators continue to unspool Joseph James DeAngelo’s expansive wave of alleged violence, tracing it back to 1974 when he worked as a police officer in the small town of Exeter.
DeAngelo, 72, is also accused of being the East Area Rapist and Original Night Stalker. He was charged Monday with one count of murder with a special allegation of personal use of a firearm in the killing of 45-year-old community college teacher Claude Snelling.
“To think that the crimes — that now we see from the charges filed around the state — may have originated in our quaint, quiet, wonderful little town is quite startling,” Tulare County District Attorney Tim Ward said at a press
conference announcing the murder charge.
Snelling, a journalism professor at College of the Sequoias, was shot dead while trying to save his teenage daughter from the clutches of a masked intruder on Sept. 11, 1975. He awoke in the early-morning hours after hearing a disturbance, looked out his window and spotted a man in his carport trying to kidnap 16-yearold Elizabeth Hupp.
Snelling ran to his daughter’s rescue and the kidnapper pulled out a gun and shot him dead, Visalia police Chief Jason Salazar said. Hupp escaped as the assailant fled.
The murder shocked the small Central Valley town of Visalia and came amid more than 100 bizarre burglaries, attempted burglaries and an attempted murder between 1974 and 1975 that were believed to be the work of the Ransacker.
“This community was terrorized by these rampant crimes in their tenacity, their intimacy and the frequency in which they were occurring,” Ward said.
The crime wave, though, abruptly stopped in December 1975, right before DeAngelo started working at the Auburn Police Department and the East Area Rapist cases began around the Sacramento area.
In the Visalia crimes, DeAngelo broke into homes by prying open windows and doors, Salazar said. But rather than loot the home of expensive items, the burglar took keepsakes, family photos and other personal belongings.
Investigators said the gun used in Snelling’s murder was stolen from a home two days earlier, leading them to believe the Ransacker was also the killer.
Authorities nearly captured him Dec. 12, 1975, when police spotted a masked man entering the backyard of a Visalia home. The intruder opened fire on a police detective, hopped a fence and disappeared.
The detective was unharmed, but the bullet shattered his flashlight. It was the last time authorities heard from the Ransacker until DeAngelo was arrested at his Citrus Heights home in April.
DeAngelo is accused of crimes that terrorized Californians throughout the 1970s and 80s before abruptly stopping nearly 30 years ago, police said.
Investigators previously linked him to 12 killings and at least 50 rapes before Monday’s announcement. He also faces murder charges in Sacramento, Ventura, Orange and Santa Barbara counties. It’s unclear if prosecutors can file rape charges since the cases have passed the statute of limitations.
Detectives caught DeAngelo using an unprecedented approach. They uploaded his DNA profile into an opensource genealogy website called GEDmatch, which revealed several potential relatives of the then-unknown suspect.
Investigators soon closed in on DeAngelo, now a grandfather living in the same home he bought in 1979, by gathering DNA samples from his car and trash that matched with several cases.
DeAngelo’s attorney did not return messages. He has not entered a plea and is due back in court Sept. 5.