Sacramento

Serial killer sentenced: Joseph James DeAngelo, the infamous Golden State Killer whose decade-long reign of terror included 13 known murders and almost 50 rapes, was sentenced to 11 consecutive life sentences after reaching a plea deal with prosecutors. Again and again, the former police officer, now 74, said “I admit” as he publicly confessed to what prosecutors called a “staggering” crime spree that began in 1975 and ended in 1986. “I didn’t want to do those things,” he reportedly told Sacramento county prosecutor Thien Ho before the hearing, explaining that he had been driven by an uncontrollable force. DeAngelo’s plea skirts the death penalty, as prosecutors said they were driven by fear of bringing multiple aging witnesses into a courtroom during a pandemic.

DeAngelo was arrested in

2018, long after the cases had gone cold in what is now recognized as the first use of

“genetic genealogy” to identify a criminal, by finding matches of relatives in a DNA database.