Used tissue, DNA extracted from car in Roseville parking lot led to arrest of suspect
SACRAMENTO >> As Joseph James DeAngelo shopped inside a Roseville Hobby Lobby store in April, detectives secretly swabbed his driver’s side door handle, collecting a DNA sample that appears to have matched the genetic makeup of the notorious Golden State Killer.
Days later, investigators waited for the 72-yearold grandfather and former Auburn cop to wheel his garbage bin out to the curb of his Citrus Heights home and on April 23 plucked out a used tissue, which also linked DeAngelo to the murder and rape rampages from the 1970s to ’80s that crisscrossed California, investigators said. The tissue DNA from DeAngelo’s garbage was at least 47.5 septillion times more likely to be linked to the DNA profile of the Golden State Killer than an unrelated person, according to the documents unsealed by Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Michael Sweet.
Investigators believe DeAngelo committed at least 13 homicides, more than 50 rapes and hundreds of sexually motivated burglaries, prowling events and hang up/lewd phone calls throughout California in the 1970s and ’80s, according to nearly 200 pages of court records released Friday.
Though heavily redacted, the records tell the story of how police linked hundreds of crimes — often sexually motivated — across the state to the notorious serial killer, rapist, and burglar, before ultimately identifying DeAngelo as a suspect through DNA and arresting him on April 24. The records include details of burglaries in Southern California committed by the “Visalia Ransacker,” a series of sexual assaults in Contra Costa County, and killings in Santa Barbara, Sacramento, and Orange counties. While much of the rape details remain blacked out, the court records show the horrific and sadistic nature of the crimes during which victims were often taunted and brutalized.
The East Area Rapist — another moniker that had been assigned to the suspect sought by police — is linked to a dozen Bay Area sexual assaults in Contra Costa, Alameda and Santa Clara counties, but the newly released records only focus on the Contra Costa crimes and how DNA from those rapes were used to tie the suspect to murders around the state.
Sacramento Sheriff Detective Robert Peters, who authored the search warrant probable cause statement, did not indicate why he believes DeAngelo came to the Bay Area, but indicated all the Contra Costa rapes happened within a “few minutes driving distance of Interstate 680.” He wrote that hundreds of suspects had been contacted over the years for those crimes, but all the men had been eliminated.
Authorities tied some of the crimes through DNA, and others through similar behavior in the perpetrator, such as hopping fences to escape, always on foot, not with a car. The documents said that the East Area Rapist would make lewd calls or call and hang up in order to gain intelligence on his victims, writing the calls were a “unique indicator” that the rapist was targeting a victim.
“Excuse me, I’m trespassing,” the bold suspect would mutter after breaking into victims’ homes, according to investigators.
Peters said DeAngelo looked similar to composite sketches of the attacker.
The document requesting the search warrant lists nine pages of “trophies” detectives believe DeAngelo took from his victims, including wedding rings, handbags, a poker chip, clothes, silver dollars and other items.
The records were released after media companies, including the Bay Area News Group, filed a motion to unseal the records. Judge Michael Sweet spent this week going line by line through the records to determine what should be blacked out before releasing the documents.
Sweet read his decision in court Friday, saying he kept some details of DeAngelo’s other alleged crimes sealed because “wholesale public dissemination at this time may result in inaccurate or inadmissible information” to reach potential jurors.
“This court recognized a qualified First Amendment right to recognize public records and documents . ... However, the court also has a duty to protect the right of the accused to a fair trial,” Sweet said.
Sweet said he would keep portions of the warrants under seal that speculate how DeAngelo may have committed certain other crimes for which he has not been charged, but investigators believe he may be responsible for. Prosecutors have already announced that some alleged sexual assaults believed committed by DeAngelo may not be charged due to expired statute of limitations. The judge also ruled that the list of property seized from DeAngelo’s Citrus Heights home last month would remain sealed.
The search warrant asked to seize trace evidence of blood, skin and other physical evidence of potential victims, firearms, ammunition, bindings, such as rope or shoe laces, computers or other electronic devices, stolen items taken from victims of East Area Rapist, locked safes, journals or diaries during the years of the crimes. It also asked to search his underwear for weapons, collect DNA from him and photograph his penis.
The new records indicate why authorities believe DeAngelo started his decades of crime as the Visalia Ransacker. Visalia was less than 20 minutes away from DeAngelo’s residence while he worked as an Exeter police officer. The Kings County Public Safety Academy, where DeAngelo spent hundreds of hours of training, was held on College of the Sequoias campus, the “epicenter” of the Ransacker crimes, investigators wrote in the records. A college professor was murdered in September 1975 following an attempted abduction of his daughter in the surrounding neighborhood which was connected by drainage canals.
A Visalia cop almost stopped the whole rampage.
On Dec. 10, 1975, the Visalia officer waited in a garage they suspected might be targeted and spotted a prowler peeping through a window. The suspect removed his ski mask and begged the cop not to hurt him, in a “juvenile and effeminate” voice, according to records. With one hand over his head and the other in his pocket, the Ransacker suddenly pulled a gun and fired a round, striking the cop’s flashlight. He escaped by jumping a fence.
Among the crimes linked to DeAngelo was a February 1977 nonfatal shooting of an 18-year-old man, whose name is redacted. The man was shot in the abdomen while attempting to follow a prowler who’d been seen in the backyard.
DeAngelo is due to appear in court July 12 at 1:35 p.m. when he will appear again before Judge Sweet.