His victims confront Golden State Killer in torrent of emotion
Peggy Frink was 15 when the Golden State Killer tied her up and repeatedly raped her in her parents’ Sacramento house. He also bound her 16yearold sister Sue. He tied them up so tightly that their hands remained numb for weeks after the attack. Peggy couldn’t brush her hair because her head was so sore from his beating.
“My God, we were just high school kids going to school,” Peggy said Tuesday in court. “Now, finally, the end of this trauma is here. He’s a horrible man and none of us need to worry about him any more.”
Decades after he broke into dozens of homes across California to rape and kill, his victims got their first chance to fight back Tuesday as the sentencing of Joseph DeAngelo began.
For three days, DeAngelo will hear victim impact statements in a Sacramento courtroom before a judge almost certainly sentences him to multiple life sentences without the possibility of parole. In June, the 74yearold former police officer from Citrus
“Bye bye Joe, don’t cry. May you rot in prison.”
Patti Cosper, above, daughter of rape victim Patricia Murphy, sings to Joseph DeAngelo during his sentencing Tuesday
Heights pleaded guilty to 13 murders and 13 counts of kidnapping for robbery. As part of his deal that will spare him the death penalty, DeAngelo also admitted to committing crimes of violence against 87 victims on 53 separate occasions in 11 counties, including Contra Costa, Santa Clara and Alameda.
On Tuesday, Sacramento rape victims and their families got the first chance to address DeAngelo, who wore a white cloth mask and stared straight ahead with no expression as the Sacramento courtroom burst with emotion. One by one, the men and women walked up to a dais and spoke, some staring at the man who caused turmoil and pain in their lives for decades.
Patti Cosper, the daughter of rape victim Patricia Murphy, raised her middle finger and pointed it at DeAngelo. Her mother was sexually assaulted in her parents’ Sacramento home and when Murphy learned of his arrest in 2018, she was hospitalized and given psychiatric care for three days, Cosper said.
“Byebye Joe, don’t cry,” she sang to him, an old song her grandfather used to sing to say goodbye. “May you rot in prison.”
Pete Schultze was 11 when DeAngelo broke into his mother’s bedroom, where he slept with his 6yearold sister, and tied him to a bedpost while he repeatedly raped Schultze’s mom.
“Do you remember me?” he asked DeAngelo.
For years after the attack,
Schultze’s father slept with a baseball bat, and his sister slept under the bed.
“She will never be Jane Doe 22. She will always be Wini Schultze,” her son said.
His mother was a ski instructor, breast cancer and stroke survivor and fantastic mom who, when asked by detectives for a description of her attacker, told them he “had a very inadequate penis,” Schultze said. He recalled that DeAngelo stole her wedding ring, other jewelry and money earmarked for the American Cancer Society.
“But he did not steal the happiness, dreams and spirit of our family,” he said.
“Your suffering, sir, has just begun,” he said. “The boogeyman is gone.”
The family of Deborah Strouse, who died of cancer in 2016, shared her tragic story and their pain that she could not survive to see her rapist get captured.
Sandy James recalled the morning after the rape, seeing her older sister Deborah Strouse, who lived with her husband at the time, being comforted at her parents’ house — ankles, wrists and eyes red and swollen, with black fingerprint dust covering her body.
“For once in your life be a man, look at her!” James screamed, holding up a glossy photo of her sister in the direction of DeAngelo. He continued looking straight ahead toward a far corner.
Strouse’s daughter, Courtney Strouse, recalled how the events led to the divorce of her parents — her father was tied up during the attack — and a mother who got little sleep and worried of her being raped throughout her childhood.
“She would stick her fingers under our noses as we slept to make sure we’re alive,” the daughter recalled, sobbing.
On Wednesday, the rest of his rape victims, including some from the Bay Area, are expected to address him. On Thursday, family members of murder victims will confront DeAngelo.
Many victims questioned DeAngelo’s purported frailty. Judge Michael Bowman has ruled that prosecutors can’t play a video of DeAngelo in prison that they claim would show the serial killer is not the infirm, man who needs a wheelchair appearing in court.
“With his slow gait, the distorted twist of his hands, and his head turned and cocked to the side as he haltingly answered the judge’s questions, Joseph DeAngelo presented an appearance of feebleness at his plea on June 29, 2020,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo. “However, DeAngelo’s agile movement and behavior in his jail cell indicate an individual who is healthy and physically active.”
On Friday, DeAngelo will have an opportunity to speak as well. Prosecutors are recommending 11 consecutive sentences of life without parole, in addition to another life sentence and eight years. On Friday, Bowman will sentence DeAngelo and put an end to one of California’s most heinous criminal chapters.
At his plea hearing in June, prosecutors read graphic, gutwrenching descriptions of his sadistic crimes from 1975 to 1986. He raped a college student, a babysitter, a pregnant wife, a mother whose 6yearold daughter cried nearby. He whispered through clenched teeth, threatening to kill scared couples and injure children sleeping nearby. He taunted victims, calling them after their attacks.
His crimes were strikingly similar. He would find an open window or break in through a door of suburban houses at night, wearing a ski mask and waking up couples or women by shining a flashlight in their eyes. He would bring shoelaces and have the women tie up their boyfriends or husbands before binding the women and sexually assaulting them repeatedly over hours, dimming the lights. He’d place dishes on the men’s backs as a makeshift alarm system and warn them that if he heard as much as a rattle from a plate, he’d kill everyone in the house. Meanwhile, he’d rummage through the houses, eating food, drinking beer, stealing small amounts of money and trinkets before eventually slinking out.
DeAngelo’s crimes stretched from Sacramento down to Orange County. Before his capture, he was known as the Visalia Ransacker, East Area Rapist and Original Night Stalker.
Finally, in 2018, pioneering DNA technology caught up to him. Investigators created a DNA profile from genetic material left at crime scenes and uploaded it to a genealogy website where sleuths can track down lost family members. Detectives got a hit from a distant relative of DeAngelo’s and painstakingly narrowed down the search using family trees before obtaining a used tissue from his Citrus Heights trash can to confirm he was the notorious killer.
The last speaker on Tuesday was the only male victim to speak in person. Victor Hayes was bound and threatened in 1977 while DeAngelo raped his 17yearold girlfriend at the time.
“What makes him the worst of the worst is he took the oath of office,” Hayes said. “He was a cop.”