Golden State killer gets life, no parole
In plea deal, he avoids facing death penalty
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The man who terrorized California as the Golden State Killer apologized to his victims before being sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Joseph DeAngelo, 74, sat silently next to his defense team as Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Michael Bowman ordered his sentence.
DeAngelo, a former police officer, admitted in June to being the serial rapist, murderer and burglar who stalked his prey in at least six counties in the 1970s and 1980s. He pleaded guilty to 13 counts of murder and 13 counts of kidnapping with robbery.
Before his sentencing on Friday, DeAngelo stood up, took off his face mask and looked at the survivors in the audience and said: “I’ve listened to all your statements, each of them. And I’m truly sorry to everyone I’ve hurt.”
The hearing was in a ballroom at Sacramento State University to accommodate court staff, attorneys, survivors and the press while upholding social distancing protocols.
DeAngelo eluded capture for decades, and it took law enforcement more than 40 years to connect his crimes and catch up to him.
By the 2000s, the advent of DNA helped link the crimes to one person. Much of the DNA collected had been used up in the testing for this effort.
But a second, untested rape kit taken from Charlene Smith, 33, one of DeAngelo’s Ventura victims, would lead to his arrest in April 2018. Semen collected from her body was used to track down his family tree and point to him as the suspect.
To finally identify and arrest him in 2018, investigators pioneered a new method of DNA tracing that involves building a family tree from publicly accessible genealogy websites to narrow the list of suspects. They linked nearly 40-year-old DNA from crime scenes to a distant relative and eventually to a discarded tissue they surreptitiously sneaked from DeAngelo’s garbage can in suburban Sacramento.
DeAngelo’s defense attorneys read statements from his loved ones about how he was a good father and a support system for his family. A statement from his sister said DeAngelo’s father was a stern military man, a womanizer and was physically abusive.
His family’s statements painted a picture of a good, loving man and said they could not wrap their heads around the truth of DeAngelo’s crimes.
For three days, DeAngelo’s survivors and their loved ones spoke about how 40 years ago a masked man entered their homes and threatened them with knives and guns. He would bind and gag them, rape the women, then help himself to whatever food was in the kitchen. After hours of this torture, he took their jewelry and left.
He killed three early Northern California victims when they interfered with his assaults. But he escalated again when he moved to Southern California, to 10 known murders.
Prosecutors from Ventura, Sacramento, Orange, Santa Barbara, Tulare and Contra Costa counties were ready to seek the death penalty. An agreement was made, however, for life in prison as long as DeAngelo pleaded guilty to the 26 charged crimes and dozens of uncharged offenses linked to his reign of terror.