00:12:56.420There are different origins for both of our surnames, Moore and Kelly, because they're so common. And so you would only match those Kellys or Moors in my case that have the same origin. You know, Moore is from all over the world, basically. Now, Kelly, you're probably looking at Ireland.
00:13:14.300And so you might get lots of Irish people, not necessarily with the last name Kelly,
00:13:19.140because the Y chromosome goes back so far.
00:13:21.960You might connect before they even adopted the surnames, but you're only going to match
00:13:27.580that group, not all the other Kellys in the world.
00:13:30.760And my dad's Moore line was actually really unique.
00:13:34.440When I first joined the Moore surname project, he didn't match any of the Moores.
00:13:39.360And there were already quite a few people in it, even in the early days.
00:13:42.580and so it'll tell you which group of those moors which group of those kelly's your line fits into
00:13:50.220and you wouldn't have thousands of matches typically i mean when i started you had almost
00:13:55.820no matches you were lucky if you got a match and so that's based on so they would they're
00:14:01.480looking at moors that are roaming the earth right now who have submitted dna to try to give you as
00:14:06.500much info as they can. And they can see that your dad, your dad Moore has similar DNA to these other
00:14:13.280Moors who have also participated here and given a cheek swab. And we can glean something about0.84
00:14:18.200their ancestors just to get you started. It's really just a start. Right. So much of it is
00:14:24.500building trees, building your own tree, building other people's tree, trying to find where they
00:14:29.400converge. How far back can you find that common ancestor in the tree? And so it's not one of these
00:14:35.620things where it's done for you. You're doing all the work. You're just getting the clues.
00:14:40.840Okay. There's a man in Michigan who shares my dad's Y chromosome. There's a man in Germany
00:14:46.500who shares my dad's Y chromosome. Why? We got to figure out why they do.
00:14:51.800Okay. And that's, now I get it. So these are modern day men who have also sent in their DNA.
00:14:57.260And so it's a start. Somehow there's a relation between this guy and my dad, and maybe this guy
00:15:03.820and me. And, uh, this is where your family tree building comes in. And so let's go to that. Cause
00:15:10.480that's like an investigative piece that is like, you know, newspaper articles, Oh bits. I remember
00:15:17.580we talked about this on NBC, but it's like anything you can get your hands on to tell you
00:15:22.600the story about that guy. And then you build it out around him, like a tree, like just as far
00:15:27.640like an actual tree, like what branch goes here and what branch goes there. Right. So when we
00:15:32.300were working with Y chromosome, we would only build the father's father's father's father's
00:15:37.080father's father. What you're talking about now is what we're doing today with a totally different
00:15:43.120type of DNA. Now that's the autosomal DNA that you were trying to mention. Okay. So you used to
00:15:49.440just do sort of this investigative work and trying to figure out the dad vertically, the mom, and
00:15:54.360now, okay, now take it to where you wanted to take it with what, how it's changed. So that was
00:15:58.780really fascinating and wonderful. And we started thousands of surname projects doing that. But for
00:16:04.780those of us that were hungry for more, we really wanted to be able to explore those ancestors in
00:16:11.540the middle of our tree, not just those lines. And we started asking some of the scientists,
00:16:17.140could we use a type of DNA called autosomal DNA, which is auto, like the car, zomal. And
00:16:23.340And that type of DNA, even women inherit that from their fathers.
00:16:28.300So we wouldn't have to test a brother or a father or a cousin.
00:16:32.160We could test our own DNA to learn about our father's side.
00:16:35.860You get 50% from each of your parents.
00:16:38.680You get, on average, 25% from each of your grandparents, about 12.5% from each of your
00:18:11.020but I thought it started off as like a health website.
00:18:16.560You know, it's like you could send it in people who wanted to know, am I going to get Alzheimer's or what am I prone to would use 23andMe to figure out based on your genetics what you're necessarily guaranteed to get, but what you're prone to get.
00:18:29.840And now it's just branched out well beyond that.
00:18:41.940She had worked on Wall Street in that sector and was discouraged about profit making on our health and wanted to give people the power to be able to work with their own genetic information and learn about their own health and take charge of that.
00:18:59.640And so her goal was very different than mine and my field, but we saw what she was doing and said,
00:19:08.120well, wait a minute, can we test our own autosomal DNA at her company and see if we can use it for
00:19:14.560genealogy? And so that was really early adopters, people that had been engaged in genetic genealogy
00:19:22.500with these other types of testing and wanted more. We just wanted to see if we could learn
00:19:28.140even more. And there's so you were you were asking 23andMe if they would help you out on that
00:19:33.080in that goal or we didn't have to at first. We just had to buy what was a very expensive test
00:19:38.400back then. And in that case, you spit in a tube. This is saliva collection instead of a cheek swab
00:19:44.720and mail it in. And back then you could share with anybody. You could share your information
00:19:50.320and you could check and see if you shared any DNA with someone. So we started looking for shared
00:19:56.520segments, so long identical segments of DNA, those ATCs and Gs lining up in a row. Because if you
00:20:05.380had that, it meant you likely had a common ancestor somewhere in your family tree. And it
00:20:10.620opened up the inner branches for exploration. Now, we didn't know if it would work at first,
00:20:16.300but at the same time, they had a very forward-thinking scientist named Mike McPherson
00:20:22.060at 23andMe who created a beta test of a tool called Relative Finder. And there they compared
00:20:30.020everyone in their database against each other to see if they could find those long segments
00:20:34.460of identical DNA. So interesting. Yep. Yep. And they did. So that's, it's really interesting
00:20:40.040because, you know, some people find 23andMe and Sesshi.com controversial. They're worried that
00:20:45.140the government's going to hold onto your DNA and all that stuff, whatever. But
00:20:48.220they don't get enough credit for being sort of seedlings for crime fighting in the way you're
00:20:54.960talking about now. Now, they don't work with law enforcement. We'll get to all that. It's not,
00:20:57.920it's just that their innovation should be credited for helping give birth to this new
00:21:04.360lane of DNA exploration, which is putting tons of criminals in jail.
00:21:08.760Right. I don't think they want credit for it, but they certainly do deserve some credit for it.
00:21:13.300You know, I went to them very early on, just shortly after that time that I'm discussing now, and asked if they would be willing to accept crime scene DNA into their database. And they schooled me very quickly and sent me to her general counsel, Ashley Gold at the time. And we had about a three hour long conversation about why that wasn't something that they wanted to do, why that wasn't part of their business plan.
00:22:14.740Though I will say some of my favorite stories on NBC were the 23andMe stories or the Ancestry.com stories where people, because it's well beyond looking into your health history now.
00:22:24.240It is finding long-lost relatives and, like, the identical twins, you know, those were some of my favorite stories.
00:22:31.380You think of going to 23andMe, you get your results back, and it says, you have an identical
00:23:28.960and on my own independently to promote positive DNA testing stories. So if someone made
00:23:34.660an amazing discovery or even an upsetting discovery that led to a more positive outcome,
00:23:42.320these were things that I was starting to pitch to the media on my own, but 23andMe was also
00:23:47.980getting inquiries and they would send them my way a lot of times. We would have meetings with,
00:23:53.140for instance, a very early meeting with the 2020 producer, she reached out to 23andMe and they
00:23:59.300said, hey, Cece, come on up so you can tell her some of the stories of the things you're finding
00:24:03.680in this database. And so that was- Yeah, because sometimes it goes a different way. Sometimes it's
00:24:08.540like, why is there no link between me and my dad? That's awkward too. And that's happened to
00:24:16.240millions of people now. There's over 40 million people that have taken these direct-to-consumer
00:24:21.300DNA tests. And it's a pretty high percentage, surprisingly, that have found out that their
00:24:27.500father was not their biological father or one of their grandfathers was not. And so I don't know
00:24:33.320if people realize just how many people have made that shocking discovery from direct-to-consumer
00:24:38.820DNA testing. Oh, what a tangled web we weave, right? Some of those secrets women in particular
00:24:46.040in these cases are keeping. Maybe you feel it's better left unsaid, maybe not. Maybe it gives you
00:24:51.860the chance to connect with somebody whose genetic background or other background would be really
00:24:56.740interesting and helpful to you. You never know. It's a personal choice. So just to move it forward,
00:25:01.640you wind up, you're using a website, not 23andMe, not Ancestry.com called GEDmatch. And my
00:25:09.340understanding is the way you populated this GED match, because you point out you need as many
00:25:15.960samples on there as possible, is by encouraging people who are into this, who would like to
00:25:21.880connect with other relatives to take their 23andMe, their Ancestry.com results and upload them to GED
00:25:28.320match and to widen the chances that they'll connect with somebody. Right. So GED match was
00:25:34.480started by two friends of mine, Curtis Rogers and John Olson back in 2010, 11. And of course,
00:25:41.220when it started, there was no one in there. So we had to convince people to download their raw data
00:25:46.660from one of the other sites, which at the time was just 23andMe and family tree DNA,
00:25:52.200and upload to GEDmatch. And so it was just a small site, kind of a playground for more advanced
00:25:58.180genetic genealogists. It was where we could try out new tools. We could do cross-company comparisons
00:26:04.240So if you tested at 23andMe and I tested at FamilyTreeDNA or later Ancestry, we could both upload there for free and then compare our data looking for those long identical shared segments.
00:26:19.100And by the way, the criminal database, you know, like if you get arrested for I don't know how long it's been going on in America that they do a DNA test of you if you get arrested for a felony.
00:26:30.680How long is, how long, do you know how long they've been doing that?
00:26:33.640And are those results also uploaded to GEDmatch?
00:27:22.700And we're going to get to some of the cases that you've solved,
00:27:24.800but some of them are using DNA from crimes in the 70s,
00:27:28.680You know, and that's semen or blood or what have you. And it really was very forward thinking of law enforcement back then before they had any idea what we'd be able to do in 2023 to save all that stuff in, not sadly in every case, but in a lot of the cases, making crime solving 50 years later possible.
00:27:53.900Yeah, we owe them a huge debt of gratitude because they couldn't have possibly understood just how valuable that physical evidence was going to be. I've actually worked cases back to 1958 now.
00:28:07.900Yeah, quite a bit before I was even born. And so it's just amazing what can be done in those cases where the crime scene investigators were so forward thinking. They collected things they couldn't have imagined how powerful they would be today.
00:28:22.720how long does dna stick around you know like 58 i mean i think there's probably a hierarchy on
00:28:30.420the samples right like you'd rather have semen in a rape case than i don't know touch dna you tell
00:28:38.660me but how long does it last well that's a really good question i mean we can analyze ancient
00:28:46.680remains, right? When they dig up some old royalty and things or accidentally run into the one under
00:28:53.800the car park, there's still DNA there. So it just depends on the environment, how something was
00:28:59.760stored or where somebody was buried as to how long that DNA will survive. But it can survive for
00:29:07.880hundreds of years in some cases, even thousands. I mean, look, they've been able to analyze the
00:29:14.100genome from Neanderthals. So DNA lasts a very, very long time, but it absolutely depends on
00:29:21.060the environment. And so back to the crime fighting element of this. So now you're getting more
00:29:26.220advanced. You've got the new, the GEDmatch, which is getting bigger and more useful. And now can you
00:29:32.680just briefly describe how you do start filling in the tree, how it's become, this is the tool
00:29:38.520that now that you're using to fight crime. Yeah. Let me also mention, we have one other
00:29:42.920database that we can use with law enforcement and that's family tree DNA. The original pioneers of
00:29:50.060genetic genealogy decided that they wanted to help law enforcement as well. Now it is the smallest
00:29:56.600database, unfortunately, even though it was the first one, it's the smallest one. And so the
00:30:02.100databases we can use are the two smallest in the field. That's GEDmatch, which has about 1.5 million
00:30:07.760people in it, and Family Tree DNA that has about 1.25 million people in their autosomal DNA
00:30:13.880database. They have three different databases. How many in GEDmatch? A GEDmatch has about 1.5
00:30:20.540million, but only about a third of those are opted into law enforcement matching. So we can
00:30:26.540only use about 500,000 to identify violent criminals. That's incredibly small. I mean,
00:30:33.800I'm even more impressed that you've solved all these crimes with such a small sample size.
00:30:39.920Yes. It's like stepping back into 2014 when I was first trying to solve family mysteries,
00:30:46.540adoptions, and things like that. It is very difficult. It's very challenging.
00:30:51.280So give us an actual example that's easy to understand of how you've used this to solve a
00:30:57.180crime. So we get the unknown individual's DNA from the crime scene. It might be semen,
00:31:03.800blood, saliva, even touch DNA. And we have to send that to a private lab. So none of the crime labs
00:31:11.460have the capability to create the type of DNA profile that we need. The law enforcement
00:31:16.900databases, as I mentioned, are based on a type of genetic marker called an STR, single nucleotide,
00:31:23.840I'm sorry, single tandem repeat. And we use SNPs, which is a totally different type of genetic
00:31:31.580marker, a single nucleotide polymorphism. And so we have to start from scratch. And that means
00:31:38.080there has to be DNA left from that crime scene. If they've used it all up, then we cannot do
00:31:43.660genetic genealogy. So it goes to a private lab where it is analyzed. And just like they would
00:31:50.220analyze it at say AncestryDNA or 23andMe, we need it to be compatible with those profiles because
00:31:56.420that's the type of profiles we're going to compare against. So it's about 700,000 to 800,000 genetic
00:32:02.700markers across the genome. And then it goes to our bioinformaticists, our scientists. Now,
00:32:08.080because these are degraded, mixed, contaminated samples, these are not like if you spit in the
00:32:14.200tube and you have this perfect DNA sample, these are non-optimal samples. And so we need something
00:32:20.180called bioinformatics, which we have an amazing scientist, Dr. Ellen Gray-Tack and Dr. Ellen
00:32:26.480Katie, sorry, Dr. Janet Katie, it's Parabon, that work with that degraded DNA to try to repair it
00:32:34.120and make it as similar to a file as if you and I were to spit in a tube and mail it in.
00:32:40.180Once we have that, we upload it to GEDmatch and or Family Tree DNA. It's compared against all
00:32:46.140the people there that are opted into law enforcement matching, and we get a list of
00:32:50.700matches. Now, those matches are typically going to be really distant relatives. And that's because
00:32:56.620these are really small databases we're working with. So the chance of a close relative of a
00:33:01.940suspect are very small. So we're lucky if we get a second cousin or a few second cousins,
00:33:08.300sometimes closer, but mostly we're working with third, fourth, fifth, sixth cousins and beyond.
00:33:13.500and we can predict what the likely relationships are based on how much DNA someone is sharing with
00:33:20.260that unknown person. You can see the percentage. Okay. So this is fascinating. And then you draw
00:33:26.040the family tree. So if you've got a sixth cousin, you got to start drawing a family tree. And this
00:33:29.940is actually funny for me because I know who my sixth cousin is, or at least one of them.
00:33:34.160And it's somebody famous. It's somebody famous. That's the reason I know because somebody actually
00:33:39.240did the family training. We're like, oh my God, we're related to her. It's Loretta Swit,
00:33:44.640Hot Lips Houlihan. You're around my age, so I know you know who that is, of MASH fame. So she
00:33:50.780and I are related. It was so fun. She did a Barnes and Noble book signing up on the Upper West Side
00:33:55.040when I lived there. And I popped in and told her we were long lost cousins. She could not have been
00:34:01.040nicer. But anyway, so let's say I committed a crime, but you didn't know it was me. And Loretta
00:34:06.640had updated or had uploaded her DNA to GEDmatch.
00:34:36.640but who on that list shares DNA with each other? That's really important. So it's not just who's
00:34:43.000sharing with the suspect, but who is sharing with other people on that list. So say matches one,
00:34:48.860three, and five share DNA with each other. If I can build all their family trees, I should be able
00:34:54.600to identify their common ancestor. The only reason two people would share these identical segments
00:35:00.260of DNA is if they inherited them from somebody in the past. They have to have common ancestry.
00:35:06.640And so if I can identify where that DNA comes from, which of the great-great-grandparents are further back, then that gives me one piece of my unknown person's tree.
00:35:19.400And so I create what's called genetic networks.
00:35:23.460I'll group the matches into networks of people that are sharing DNA with each other or clusters.
00:35:30.840And each of those clusters will represent one branch of the unknown person's family tree.
00:35:35.700So we start piecing it back together that way. Maybe I'll have one set of great-great-grandparents, one set of great-great-great-grandparents. Maybe if I'm lucky, I can identify great-grandparents. And then I have to find that one person or set of siblings that is related to all of those matches and descended from those sets of ancestors.
00:35:57.160So it's like reverse engineering someone's family tree and eventually their identity based on their ancestors.
00:36:05.080And then do you get to the step of, let's take the Idaho murders, where it's like, okay, I know it could be, you know, somebody in this cluster or this cluster or this cluster, but hey, there's a guy in this cluster who lives within 10 miles of the murder site.
00:36:22.580Like, do you use evidence like that to help narrow it down, or you're only in the, you know, genetic genealogy field?
00:36:29.720It depends how much data you have. If you have enough matches that you can connect to someone's mother's side and their father's side, maybe three or even four of their grandparents' lines, you can narrow it down to just one immediate family.
00:36:43.520But because these databases are so small, we often don't have that. So say we could only identify one set of his great-grandparents or great-great-grandparents. In that case, we would have to then do what's called reverse genealogy, identify all of their descendants and look for their descendants who are the right gender, age range, maybe live in the right area, drive a white car.
00:37:09.360and so we do look at those other things and that's something I think a lot of people don't
00:37:14.320realize is that in with investigative genetic genealogy the DNA just gets us started without
00:37:21.500someone's family tree it's meaningless without trying to being able to identify the descendants
00:37:27.020of the common ancestors we identify it's meaningless so we're looking at location
00:37:32.820location's huge we look for the one branch of the tree that maybe moved closer to the crime scene
00:37:37.660and 99% of the time we find someone who lived right there within 10, 20 miles, sometimes
00:37:44.920within one mile. And so that's a really powerful part of it. And then we use phenotyping at Parabon
00:37:51.440where they can predict eye color, hair color, skin color, even shape face. And so we use a lot
00:37:57.780of different factors to narrow it down further when there isn't enough in the database to point
00:38:04.160at just one person or one family. So that phenom time, that's very interesting because
00:38:09.120that's something you can do even if there's no match, right? Like if you get DNA and you run it
00:38:16.060through GEDmatch and there's just nothing, like nothing comes up, the DNA is still useful to you.
00:38:21.420That's right. So we don't have many families or individuals in GEDmatch or family tree DNA
00:38:28.060that are recent immigrants. And so it's really difficult to identify someone if they were born
00:38:34.920in another country or their parents, or even grandparents or great grandparents were. And so
00:38:40.480there are some cases where it's not viable to perform genetic genealogy, but Parabon can still
00:38:47.080perform the phenotyping and still create this image of what someone might look like. Now it's
00:38:53.300not meant to be photographic, but it's meant to give you their traits. And so it is used in quite
00:38:58.560a few cases where there just aren't enough matches, aren't enough data for genetic genealogy.
00:39:06.360But what I have found is where it's most powerful is in conjunction with each other. So maybe I
00:39:11.920narrow it down to 10 males who all descend from these common ancestors. And then I can look which
00:39:17.700ones have blue eyes, brown eyes, which ones have blonde hair, maybe red hair. And that can really
00:39:23.420help to narrow it down because we want to give as few people as possible, right? We want this to be
00:39:29.480efficient and we want to keep innocent people out of these investigations. So I work very hard to
00:39:35.660try to narrow things down using all different types of information. So I'm not sending law
00:39:41.040enforcement on a wild goose chase and sending them after innocent individuals. The moral of the story
00:39:45.840is don't leave your DNA at a crime scene. Don't leave it. Even if you're not in the system,
00:39:49.480even if nobody you know is in a system, CeCe Moore is going to get you. All right, stand by.
00:39:54.000I got to squeeze in a break. There's so much to discuss. And I want to pick up the Idaho case
00:39:57.340because they're saying that this was used to catch Brian Kohlberger. We'll talk about it next.
00:40:06.980So let's talk about Idaho. This is, of course, on everybody's minds. And they have reported,
00:40:12.020there have been reports that genetic genealogy was used in nabbing this suspected killer, Brian
00:40:17.800Kohlberger, 28 years old, 10 miles away from the murder site, pursuing his PhD in criminology at
00:40:23.800the University of Washington, the four victims from the University of Idaho. They have only told
00:40:30.980us so far that DNA was detected on one button of the knife sheath that they tell us in the
00:40:40.120supporting affidavit for the warrant for arrest was found next to one of the victims, one button
00:40:46.520on a knife sheath. So that's kind of interesting. It's kind of surprising. I would think
00:40:53.640there'd be more DNA at this site. So what does it tell you that they're zeroing in, first of all,
00:41:00.400on just that one little button, as opposed to on the body of the four victims, on the
00:41:04.960bedpost, on the door handles, right? What does it tell you?
00:41:09.960Well, I think that he went to great lengths to not leave DNA. He likely had gloves on. He was,
00:41:17.160you know, educated about this. You would think he certainly would have made sure he wasn't
00:41:22.720leaving DNA behind, but he must have handled that knife sheath earlier when he didn't have gloves
00:41:29.380on. That's my guess. But I also want to point out that they don't have to reveal everything
00:41:34.460they have in the affidavit. And you know that, of course. And so I think it's very possible they
00:41:39.540have additional DNA. And even if they didn't, they might by now, because I'm sure they've been going
00:41:44.620through all of that physical evidence batch by batch, sending that to the Idaho Crime Lab
00:41:49.860and trying to detect any additional DNA. So I don't think we'll really know what they have
00:41:55.620until this case progresses. And hopefully they will find more DNA or already have.
00:42:01.400It might be more complex, meaning there might be mixtures of blood.
00:42:06.300Cases I've worked where there was a frenzied stabbing, almost always the knife has slipped
00:51:56.940We just don't know the answer to that yet.
00:51:58.720We are told that they collected a sample of garbage
00:52:03.200outside of Brian Kohlberger's father's home.
00:52:06.700He went back and stayed with his mother and father
00:52:09.080from December 15th forward to the day of his arrest,
00:52:12.120December 30th after his cross-country tour with his dad. I mean, ride home. By the way,
00:52:18.420latest reporting is that the FBI was tailing him as of that date, still denying that they were
00:52:23.260behind those two traffic stops in Indiana. But the FBI now, CBS reporting, was tailing him and
00:52:29.840was tailing him via the E-ZPass. And they said fixed wing aircraft. So it's possible there was
00:52:36.540an aircraft following him. Fixed wing would mean not a helicopter and through other means. So
00:52:44.440they were onto him by December 15th, according to this report. So they go to the dad's house
00:52:49.440and they say that they got the garbage outside of the Kohlberger house and that there was a match
00:52:55.140to the dad. In other words, they had DNA. They compared it with the DNA from the knife
00:53:02.060sheath button. And what they were able to tell was with 99.9996 accuracy, this DNA on this knife
00:53:12.940sheath belongs to the father of the killer. Do I have that right?
00:53:19.680Right. And so this is pretty common when investigative genetic genealogy has pointed
00:53:24.880law enforcement toward a certain individual or family. And they'll do what's called a trash pull.
00:53:30.240If they can't just follow that person and pick something up that they dropped, then they'll typically resort to waiting for that person to put their trash out on the curb.
00:53:59.300However, they were able to perform what is basically a standard paternity test comparison to the profile from the button on the sheath and determined that that individual's DNA from the trash was the father of the individual who left his DNA behind at the crime scene.
00:54:24.720Well, it's been accepted in courts for decades to establish paternity.
00:54:28.360It is extremely confident, as we saw by the number, 99.999, 8%.
00:54:35.240So that means that there's basically no one else on earth that could be the father of that individual.
00:54:43.420Okay, so the real challenge for the defense lawyers is to say, I mean, they will try to say, wrong, it wasn't him, you messed it up, you did something wrong at the lab, your lab procedures are faulty.
00:54:55.240But the best line of argument is probably, we don't know how that got there.
00:55:00.360Now, by this point, that would become irrelevant because they would have collected his DNA upon
00:55:05.080arrest and done the direct comparison, the one-to-one against that court admissible
00:55:10.760genetic profile that is the one they originally compared against the law enforcement databases.
00:55:16.200Once they got the one-to-one match, the paternity match wouldn't matter anymore,
00:55:20.120or any genetic genealogy that was done previously would all become irrelevant
00:55:24.560because they'd have that one-to-one match.
00:57:42.520You know, does it have to be pulled out by the root?
00:57:44.920No, thanks to the brilliant Dr. Ed Green from UC Santa Cruz,
00:57:49.160it doesn't have to have the root anymore. That's what's so exciting. And it's opened up a lot more
00:57:53.800cases for us to work. I was able to help identify the killer of a kindergartner using rootless hair
00:58:01.020and also another murder that hasn't been announced yet. And so I've been able to use just a single
00:58:07.800hair thanks to Dr. Ed Green's amazing technology. Their lab is the one that is processing that and
00:58:15.060creating that profile for me to use. So without these brilliant scientists, we wouldn't be able
00:58:20.060to even do what I do. Have you ever seen a murder, Cece, that's this up close and violent
00:58:26.100at which there was no DNA left behind? No, and that's why I was opining early on. I just couldn't
00:58:32.760imagine him not leaving DNA behind because it's such a violent crime scene. He stabbed four people
00:58:39.240multiple times and the chances of either the knife not slipping and cutting him or one of
00:58:45.760those victims fighting back and potentially getting his DNA under their fingernails or just
00:58:50.700dropping a single hair seems highly unlikely to me. So I guess time will tell, but I think it's
00:58:57.780something that people need to think about. If you are considering perpetrating this type of
00:59:03.680intimate, violent crime, you will leave DNA behind, no matter how hard you try. I mean,
00:59:09.460Brian was clearly educated about this, and yet he still left his DNA behind. Now, I will say people
00:59:16.180are talking about how smart he was. I don't think he was the sharpest tool in the shed. It does not
00:59:20.020sound like he planned this out nearly as well as we would expect from a PhD student in criminology.
00:59:27.280But, you know, it's just virtually impossible not to leave your DNA behind in this type of frenzied
00:59:33.580very intimate violent attack. Hmm. You know, there's speculation online that he posted
00:59:39.900under different names commenting on this crime. And we don't know that it was him. But there is
00:59:48.140one posting under this suspected name, again, unconfirmed, in which he talks about the sheath
00:59:54.720of the knife. Trying to find it here. It's by somebody named Inside Looking. And the post
01:00:00.500under that guy's name. It was all about the Idaho murders, this Facebook group where they were
01:00:06.420discussing it. And one of the many things he posted, this inside looking, was of the evidence
01:00:12.360release. Sorry, Papa Rogers. There's a couple of different ones. Inside looking was one of them.
01:00:16.940In any event, they post, of the evidence released, the murder weapon has been consistent as a large
01:00:22.920fixed blade knife. This leads me to believe they found the sheath. My God, that's just, I mean,
01:00:31.640my God, like who, that doesn't lead anyone other than the killer to believe that. Like who would
01:00:37.880go there? So I've been a member of that group from early days. I've been following this case
01:00:42.900from, I think the very first day it happened or the day we found out about it. I don't know what
01:00:49.180to think about that. You know, I mean, there's a lot of speculation, but that was something that
01:00:54.240really does make it seem like this person had some inside information, or it was just a really
01:00:59.880good guess. I've read both sides of the argument. Who would say they found the sheath, right? You'd
01:01:04.720say they looked at the wounds and determined that. I mean, that's a, that's a. I'm sort of
01:01:11.540on the side that it very possibly was him, but you know, like I said, it's all speculation,
01:01:17.680But I'm well for us. Right. But the law enforcement knows they know by now whether that's him because now that's a good point. I'm sure they have a search warrant for his home in Washington state where he was living and going to school. And now that's been sealed. They're not allowing us access to it for now, though they say in March we may get it.
01:01:33.700Um, they've, they've searched all of this. They're going to have record. You can't keep that stuff
01:01:38.180a secret. So they'll know. And that would be great evidence too. You mentioned, um, you know,
01:01:43.620the victims were likely to fight there. They, they say there were defensive wounds
01:01:46.640on the victims. So they did, they did fight, you know, that's what's one of the things that's so
01:01:51.100crazy about it is then why didn't anybody hear anything? Where were the screams? You know,
01:01:55.120why weren't they, you know, just the, they have the one roommate who lived, who wasn't attacked
01:02:00.080saying, I heard what sounded like crying coming from one of the rooms, but crying is not exactly
01:02:06.160consistent with being brutally stabbed to death next to either your boyfriend or your friend.
01:02:12.300So many questions still to be answered, but those defensive wounds could prove very important on
01:02:16.720the DNA front. Right. I agree. I think when you're fighting for your life, you're conserving your
01:02:23.600energy. Possibly they didn't scream. Maybe they were just focused on trying to survive.
01:02:30.080and focused on trying to fight him off without yelling or something that would have been heard
01:02:35.000by the roommates. God, so horrific to think about. They, just on Friday, right, this crime
01:02:43.960happened in November 13th. The arrest was December 30th. Here we are, July 12th is today,
01:02:50.860or January 12th. They were seen just this past Friday, the 6th, taking two bloody mattresses
01:02:58.540out of the crime scene, along with a bed frame and a box, which is strange to me. I don't know
01:03:05.580why the bloody mattresses were still there. I'm sure they've done some analysis on them prior to
01:03:10.400now, but in your experience of DNA analysis, like how would it be collected? Would they have done
01:03:15.840like a scraping of the mattress on, let's say day one, and then maybe this is a more in-depth look,
01:03:22.100or what do you make of that? Yeah, I thought it was very odd as well, and particularly since the
01:03:27.300judge had, I thought, frozen the crime scene until February 1st, I believe. So it must have been
01:03:33.880either the defense or the prosecution taking that away. Some people were saying maybe it was the
01:03:39.960roommates, the surviving roommates' bed, but I think you could clearly see that there was a blood
01:03:45.460stain on one of those mattresses. I think they would have swabbed it. Now, of course, there were
01:03:50.560sheets, right? They would have collected the sheets first and maybe a mattress pad. They would
01:03:54.380swabbed it. Sometimes they'll cut things out. I don't know if they would do that on a mattress or
01:03:59.420not, but they are probably putting that mattress into storage for future testing or maybe even to
01:04:06.160use in the courtroom. So we've been very focused on finding his DNA at the crime scene, but there's
01:04:13.420another lane here, which is finding the victim's DNA on anything related to him. What do you think
01:04:22.200the odds are of that, right? Understanding, okay, he covered up, but like, I'm sorry, he's not
01:04:27.940superhuman. There would be blood on his clothes. There would be. We don't know what he did with
01:04:32.040the clothes. We know they're going to analyze the route he took home, which is reportedly
01:04:35.660a little odd. It's not this straight direct line back to his apartment. I'm sure they've poured
01:04:40.480over every inch of it looking for anything that's been discarded, but they seized his car, right?
01:13:37.180And I have received emails or messages on social media every single day since that time asking me to work this case.
01:13:44.680I certainly would love to have the opportunity to do so, but I doubt very much that they would
01:13:50.600let me work it. I would expect maybe the FBI will work it if anyone is allowed to do so.
01:13:57.120As far as the risks, yeah, once you use up that DNA, that's the end. So you have to make sure
01:14:03.520that it's being sent to a well-tested team, a lab that has been able to create profiles,
01:14:12.380genetic genealogy profiles from tiny amounts of degraded DNA, and that has scientists that are
01:14:18.880really highly skilled at working with that degraded DNA. We can assume it's degraded
01:14:24.020after all these years. With touch DNA, which I think that's what this is in this case,
01:14:29.680my understanding, again, you just have a tiny bit of skin cells and it can be very quickly consumed.
01:14:37.240So I understand Boulder Police's hesitation to use up that last little bit because you never know what's coming around the corner. Nobody predicted investigative genetic genealogy outside of our little, you know, community.
01:14:52.480And so I, you know, I always am hesitant to second guess law enforcement.
01:14:58.040I've been involved in some pretty high profile cases where people were out there criticizing
01:15:03.580law enforcement and had no idea what was going on behind the scenes.
01:15:18.700But there's been other cases where they've never even released that they did use that tool. And, you know, I've had to keep quiet and listen, watch all these people criticizing law enforcement for years. It happened in the Chapel Hill case and Faith Hedgepest case as well. I had to bite my tongue.
01:15:36.000And so you just don't know what they are doing behind the scenes and what their reasoning
01:15:49.200They can get a whole genome sequence done on that DNA if it's viable, meaning you could
01:15:55.320not just look at the 700,000 markers that we use for genetic genealogy, but they could
01:16:01.420look at the entire genome and then have all of that information for the future. And I think
01:16:07.160that's probably the best bet in this case. There's two different ways you can do it.
01:16:10.900One is called microarray, where you just look at those 700, 800,000 genetic markers that the
01:16:16.920direct-to-consumer DNA testing companies also use. Or you can do this whole genome sequence,
01:16:22.300where you get every bit of the genome information that is available in that sample.
01:16:27.600You get that from touch, from touch DNA?
01:16:29.320Yes, absolutely. You know, about 10% of the cases that we've helped solve or been able to create profiles for have been touch DNA. We published a paper in 2019 talking about that. And so people in this case are saying, oh, it's so new if they use touch DNA for genetic genealogy, but it's actually not. We've been doing it since 2018. So it's totally doable.
01:16:54.560And I think, you know, John's getting older, as he keeps pointing out, and now is the time.
01:19:56.660How did you get involved in this all these years later?
01:19:58.440Well, Lancaster Police had worked with Parabon before I even joined forces with them to create this investigative genetic genealogy service. So they had an established relationship with them. So when I came on board, they asked Lancaster Police if we could perform genetic genealogy first on the Christy Mirak case, which they had done a phenotype for.
01:20:48.100But I felt like Lindy Sue's case was hanging over my head for years because I really felt that they both needed to be solved. They were sort of like sister cases to me, even though they were so many years apart. And I wanted Lindy Sue's family and brother to have those answers as well, like Christy's family finally did.
01:21:08.740But when we performed the analysis on that crime scene DNA and uploaded it to GEDmatch, there were no good matches. They were all very, very, very distant. So we recommended they upload to Family Tree DNA as well, the second database. Again, no good matches. And I was just so disappointed because I so desperately wanted to help law enforcement identify her killer as well.
01:30:14.880I mean, it's just so creepy to think that if this is true, this guy committed a heinous, brutal murder and then went on to live with the secret for 50 years, probably always wondering, especially as DNA techniques got more developed, right?
01:30:33.820Yeah, it definitely seems like we're identifying a new type of criminal.
01:30:39.620with investigative genetic genealogy, we see so many of these cases where this individual seems
01:30:45.540to have perpetrated one really horrible, violent crime and then gone on with their lives. And
01:30:52.220that's why they're cold cases, right? They were never arrested for another crime. They never got
01:30:56.020their DNA in the system. These are people that were never on law enforcement's radar at all.
01:31:01.220So, you know, who knows what else these individuals may have done, but it certainly appears
01:31:05.780that we've identified many of these types of individuals
01:41:17.000And it was basically took place over a 10 year period, if I have my facts right, 76 to 86.
01:41:22.700Well, in terms of, you know, when he kind of evolved into a full blown rapist and killer, that was between those years.
01:41:31.000But in the years prior to that, he was he was a fetish burglar and had already killed a father of a 16 year old girl down in Visalia before he started as a serial rapist up in Sacramento in 1976.
01:41:46.540So we know that now at the time. We know that now because we know his identity, right?
01:41:51.640in part there was always so down in visalia 1974 1975 there was a burglar that hit over a hundred
01:42:00.700times uh in the visalia area right around clustered around the college of the sequoias
01:42:06.040and he was going in and going into the women's undergarment drawers tossing the women's clothing
01:42:12.500around pulling out women's photos out of the photo albums and stealing blue chip stamps and single
01:42:18.460earrings and was very prolific. After about 85 attacks, he goes into a house in the middle of
01:42:28.560the night and tries to pull 16-year-old Beth Snelling out of her bed. She's kicking and
01:42:35.040screaming. He actually gets her outside when her father, Claude Snelling, a professor at the
01:42:39.980College of the Sequoias, tries to come to her rescue. Well, D'Angelo drops Beth, shoots Claude
01:42:46.040snowing three times, killing him and then runs off. And so now at this point, he's actually
01:42:53.100killed. And six months later, he ends up basically up in Sacramento and is now breaking into houses
01:43:02.360and raping women. So that's how it starts. The crimes escalate. So burglary to rape,0.97
01:43:41.140breaking into the house and get good at breaking into a house when somebody's there.
01:43:45.500And that's what D'Angelo is doing. And then eventually they go hands on with with a victim.
01:43:51.440And with D'Angelo, he was sexually assaulting the women and ultimately was attacking couples
01:43:57.940before he evolved to just committing homicides. So this is a almost a textbook example of the
01:44:07.320evolution of a serial predator from a serial burglar to a serial killer it makes sense in
01:44:14.880a way i mean it's tough to make sense of any murders serial killings but it does make some
01:44:19.960sense to see him graduating to more serious crimes as his confidence builds builds and
01:44:25.680as weird as this sound sounds he was very good at what he did i mean he was very good at covering
01:44:32.860his tracks right from the get-go that that was something he was always excellent at no
01:44:37.760well no you know he he was a criminal justice major and then of course he was a cop down in
01:44:48.100exeter which is a city right next to visalia when he first starts as a visalia ransacker he was not
01:44:54.340very good he struggled to get into houses he was seen left and right by people either victims
01:45:00.620residents that lived where he's peeping, or people in the neighborhood. But as he is developing in
01:45:10.300his law enforcement career, he ends up becoming part of a burglary task force and goes to
01:45:17.480burglary investigation school. And now he's learning how law enforcement is investigating
01:45:25.780these cases as well as how burglars commit their crimes. So the public money that went into the
01:45:32.800law enforcement field basically paid DeAngelo's way to become a better predator. And so when he
01:45:39.320moved up to Sacramento, he realized all the mistakes he made. And this is what makes him
01:45:45.100somewhat more of a sophisticated and intelligent offender is he learned from his mistakes and he
01:45:50.700incorporated methodology, strategies and tactics for now as a rapist, which up in Sacramento,
01:45:58.200he was known as the East Area Rapist. He is employing these methods, strategies and tactics
01:46:04.700and is very, very good at avoiding being seen, avoiding witnesses and breaking into houses.
01:46:12.760So he he basically evolved. Now, knowing who he who is, you know, a lot about him.
01:46:21.520Is he above average intelligence? Like, how would you describe his level of smarts?
01:46:27.580You know, in terms of D'Angelo, I would say, yeah, he's above average intelligence for this type of offender.
01:46:35.220You know, he, as a cop talking to a sergeant down in Exeter, or actually up in Auburn, when he was a cop up in Auburn, starting in 1976, his sergeant said, you know, he wasn't a good cop.
01:46:53.220So, you know, I can discern, you know, in terms of what he employed during the commission of his crimes, that he's a deep thinker and he was a forward thinker.
01:47:03.700And then he utilized, you know, what he learned, you know, in his law enforcement aspects in order to be able to commit these crimes.
01:47:14.240You know, in fact, his ex-fiancée, Bonnie, who I have become great friends with, you know, she went to school with him at Sac State as he's studying criminal justice.
01:47:25.820And they took some classes together and he was constantly cheating off of her just to be able to pass his classes.
01:47:31.240Hmm. When when was he engaged to Bonnie?
01:47:36.120In 1970 ish. I can't remember if it was at the end of 69 into 70, but circa 1970.
01:47:43.500And that's you know, we had a case in Davis, California that occurred in June of actually the beginning of July of 1978, where as he is literally raping this woman, he's sobbing and he's saying,0.96
01:48:01.240I'm going to kill you, Bonnie. I'm going to kill you, Bonnie, over and over again.0.99
01:48:05.500So we always knew there was a Bonnie in his life that was significant.0.97
01:48:10.100We just didn't know who this Bonnie was. Was this a girlfriend? Was this a wife? Et cetera.
01:48:16.780And then once we identified him through genealogy, I'm looking through his past.
01:48:23.620An analyst up at Sacramento found a newspaper article announcing the engagement of Joseph DeAngelo to Bonnie.
01:48:30.980And that was one of those check marks.
01:48:46.720I'm curious because that was before, you know, the 10-year serious rape and murder spree that, you know, he's known for, 76 to 86.
01:48:54.740How does she describe the then relatively young D'Angelo?
01:48:58.440You know, the primary characteristic that she really emphasizes is that rules didn't apply to him.
01:49:08.680You know, he didn't demonstrate anything to her, at least through the course of the relationship until the very end, that there was anything criminal about him in terms of indicating that he was capable of violence.
01:49:27.100You know, he would speed, he would go and trespass, you know, in the Folsom Lake area or on the old Rocketdyne property in Rancho Cordova.
01:49:37.640And then he would, you know, he was a thrill seeker.
01:49:40.360So he would have her on the motorcycle and try to scare her, you know, as she's holding on to him, as he's bombing, you know, off road, you know, and purposefully just trying to intimidate her that way.
01:49:52.680So, you know, it was an interesting but short relationship. And then when they got engaged, when she broke it off, that's when he shows up, knocks on her window at night.
01:50:07.140And when she opens up the drapes, D'Angelo's standing there with a gun pointed at her and basically tells her, you're coming with me.
01:50:15.500We're going to go get married, I think, in Reno.
01:50:37.140She does, you know, absolutely. But, you know, she was so courageous. She, you know, the victim that was on your show, Jane Carson, I introduced those to Bonnie and Jane. And Jane actually had Bonnie in the courtroom when Jane gave her impact statement.
01:50:57.920and bonnie stood up couldn't say anything but she was there and let d'angelo know i'm here
01:51:04.600you know so she showed tremendous courage to be able to let him know that she recognized that she
01:51:11.620really was a victim of his uh just fortunately he didn't physically attack her like he did
01:51:18.300the other women in the series oh that moment of of her standing up and while jane was there
01:51:24.460gave me the chills like they finally had their say and he was alive to hear it that's thanks to you
01:51:31.080you know so often it's like even the Jeffrey Epstein case you know he killed himself whatever
01:51:37.100he died and his victims only gave these impact statements that he never really got to hear
01:51:43.900it was just the frustration of the victims in those circumstances is terrible and and these
01:51:49.220women managed to avoid at least that piece of the terror? They got to confront him, but it wasn't
01:51:54.580easy. You know, I saw, you know, one of the San Jose victims, she had a large contingent of her
01:52:02.260family in the courtroom with her. She gave her statement. I happened to be out in the lobby
01:52:06.600outside the courtroom when she walked out and she literally collapsed after giving her statement.
01:52:12.100Her family had to hold her up. So, you know, this really underscores, you know, to this day,
01:52:18.300You know, how traumatized these families are, these victims who were personally attacked, as well as the families that lost their loved ones.
01:52:28.360He was so cruel in the way he pursued these attacks.
01:52:36.600I mean, he enjoyed the torture and harming of others.
01:52:40.280And the suffering seemed to be part of what he enjoyed the most.
01:52:43.900Not just of the women he was attacking and the men who he ultimately added to the mix, but even of the children who were who were there in the homes that he went.
01:52:53.280He couldn't have cared less if he bumped into a three year old or a seven year old, Paul.
01:52:59.220No. Well, he used the children against the adults.
01:53:02.380You know, he knew due to his surveillance, either prior to entering the house or while he's in the house and walking around, he knew they had children and he would threaten the parents.0.97
01:53:13.900You know, do what I say or I'll kill everybody in this house. I'll kill everything in this house. That was a common phrase that he would say. But also when you start talking about the sadistic aspect of him, he wasn't a physical sadist by classic definition. He was a psychological sadist.0.99
01:53:34.400You mentioned the fear. That's what he wanted to invoke in his victims. And so he would do things while he's got his victims bound just to get that fear response. And then he would continue after he's attacked them and left. He would call the victims.
01:53:51.380We have one victim who was attacked in 1977. And in 2001, 24 years later, he calls that victim and tell and basically says, remember when we played, you know, so he was still wanting to have that victim live in fear after a quarter century.
01:54:12.780We have one example of one of his phone calls, and you can hear the torture and how scary this would have been, especially to someone who had been attacked by this guy and lived only to hear him revisit her.
01:54:42.780my god it is still scary it's right i'm looking at my assistant abby we both like just get the
01:55:04.300chills like down your spine at that and that was the point yeah well and that's exactly what he's
01:55:13.060doing you know that's where he wants that victim to know he's still around and to be uh scared
01:55:19.320that phone call that victim that he called uh in that call was a very first victim that we know of
01:55:28.300when he was the east area rapist which occurred in june of 1976 and just let me jump in for one
01:55:33.460Hold on a second, Paul. Hold on. Because they call him East Area Rapist first because he started with rapes for the most part.
01:55:38.820I mean, we talked about the burglary, but that was sort of what they dubbed him East Area Rapist or EAR while he was primarily focused on rape.
01:55:46.400So if you may hear different names for this guy over the course of this interview, we're talking about the same guy, Golden State Killer.
01:57:52.980And then now the phone call comes in and he's with that one victim.
01:57:57.660He's now letting her know I'm still around and letting law enforcement know, too.
01:58:02.440I mean, right, because after 86, was there a question about whether this guy was still
01:58:07.000alive that the crime spree seemed to be over?
01:58:09.400Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, and that was part of the struggles that I had personally with my management, if you will, is, you know, I had my boss at the DA's office was saying, Paul, he's dead. Why are you spending so much time on this case?
01:58:28.760you know and and i was pretty convinced no i think he's still out there um and turns out he was in
01:58:36.980fact when i was on your show i mentioned to your audience he could be sitting here watching this
01:58:41.380show right now i remember that and we were all freaked out it is very possible that he is still
01:58:47.720alive he's still monitoring the investigation he's possibly even still watching the show he could be
01:58:53.220he could be in this audience oh well that's chilling so why did you think he was still
01:58:59.040alive why why did you believe that because before the phone call you didn't really have any evidence
01:59:03.480of that no and and that phone call was you know at that time you had occurred 17 years prior you
01:59:11.520know there's there's always a possibility he could have died uh or you know been in custody
01:59:17.400But in taking a look at the age range he likely was at the time he was committing these attacks, he most certainly was, you know, at an age that he easily could still be alive at the time that I made that statement.
01:59:35.600But also in assessing this offender and him stopping, you know, 1986 that we know of, but I felt that he actually psychologically stopped in 1981 after the last Santa Barbara attack.
01:59:54.600I thought, no, this is an offender that has stopped committing these crimes and is living a normal life.
02:00:02.940And just like the guy that I think is most similar to D'Angelo, Dennis Rader, BTK, you know, I felt the same thing, that he just blended back into his life.
02:00:13.460He was getting older, knew he couldn't commit to these types of attacks anymore.
02:00:17.800and you know the fact that after what was that 15 years after his last known attack he reached out
02:00:28.440and and contacted a victim okay this guy can go quiet for a long period of time and that's where
02:00:36.060i i kind of just put my eggs in that basket going he's still alive and uh quite frankly he's still
02:00:42.220a threat to the public and we need to find him it's just shocking to think that somebody this
02:00:47.360committed to this level of depravity could stop, could just turn it off one day.
02:00:54.480And that's something, you know, the myth out there is that, you know, serial killers, once
02:01:00.200they start, they don't stop. But we've seen as some of these notorious serial killing cases
02:01:07.900have been solved, well, these killers do stop. You know, we go to Gary Ridgeway, Green River
02:01:13.500killer, or as I mentioned before, Dennis Rader with BTK, and in interviews with those killers,
02:01:20.200you know, they had reasons for why they stopped. Gary Ridgway said, well, I got married.
02:01:24.680Dennis Rader said, you know, in my last attack, there was a man inside the house that I didn't
02:01:29.360realize was going to be there. I got into a fight, and I left scared. I thought I could have been
02:01:34.520hurt, killed, or captured, and I didn't want any of that, and I was getting older. And that's part
02:01:39.640of why I thought with D'Angelo, you know, in his last Santa Barbara attack in 1981, possibly stopped
02:01:47.020because he got into a physical fight with six foot three Gregory Sanchez. So as these cases have been
02:01:53.460solved, we're starting to see that there is the possibility that some of these offenders, not
02:01:59.420necessarily all, but some of them after committing the most horrific crimes imaginable, have the
02:02:04.500ability to go ahead and start living a normal life. The compartmentalized their past. They
02:02:10.540continue to fantasize about that, but they are now the family man. D'Angelo was the goading
02:02:17.340grandfather at the time of his arrest. If my math is correct, he would have been born in 46?
02:02:27.26040 uh 45 46 yes okay so when he was committing these crimes he was between 30 and 40 or so
02:02:37.460of the east area rapist attacks yes you know but we were pretty confident ken clark from sack
02:02:45.520homicide uh who was also you know part of the uh the core east area rapist task force a golden
02:02:51.960State Killer Task Force, he's pretty sure that D'Angelo in 1973 was the Cordova cat burglar,
02:02:59.980you know, breaking into the houses while people were inside the houses in the very same neighborhood
02:03:05.440where the East Area Rapist starts up in 1976. I know actually from a high school friend that
02:03:13.960called in after D'Angelo was arrested through my contacts with SAC DA's office. This friend said,
02:03:20.000And we used to commit burglaries as high schoolers in that very neighborhood.
02:03:24.280So D'Angelo has been committing crimes at least as far back as being a teenager.
02:03:30.640But my point in raising the 30 to 40-year-old range, which was 76 to 86, is that you can see it.
02:03:38.120Like that's when a man would be probably at his strongest, you know, feeling his most confident.
02:03:43.900You get in your 40s, you know, things start to change a bit.
02:03:46.640And you could see consistent with what you just told me, maybe the confidence level going down.
02:03:51.620Well, and as the East Area Rapist and even as the original Night Stalker, D'Angelo, his crimes were very physical.
02:03:59.500He liked to prowl around the houses and go through backyards and then move through neighborhoods by jumping fences.
02:04:06.960If he was being pursued, and there's multiple times during the series in which law enforcement actually gets into, you know, foot pursuits with East Area Rapists, you know, he is running and jumping fences and is very adept at it.
02:04:23.160But, you know, I know, you know, now that I'm, you know, 54, I've gone through from the late 20s into my 30s being very physically capable.
02:04:31.520And as I got older, well, me jumping a fence today is going to be a lot more effort than when I was in my late 20s.
02:04:39.120So that's part of, you know, D'Angelo, you know, self-assessing.
02:04:44.820Can he continue to commit these crimes and get away with them?
02:04:48.920And as he's getting older, the risk elevates because he's realizing he's no longer as physically capable.
02:04:55.680So because we just we did a show on the Zodiac killer or who our guest believes is a Zodiac killer.
02:05:02.600And we did a show on the D.C. snipers, you know, those two guys.
02:05:07.520And in both of those cases, it seemed pretty clear that the person wanted to be caught.
02:05:12.380And the Zodiac wasn't actually caught, but, you know, leaving clues.
02:05:17.120And in the sniper case, you know, leaving clues, the tarot card, the notes and calling like it just seemed like it was cat and mousy.
02:06:35.380He probably communicated at times during the course of a series to law enforcement calling and dispatch, but he recognized that was too risky to him.
02:06:47.060And so when he is arrested and sitting in that interview room, he is so shocked that he got caught and so dejected.
02:06:57.700He just wanted to live out his life, not seeking notoriety like Zodiac or Raider was.
02:07:05.960Do you think if you hadn't caught him, he would have left a note, you know, and taken credit in that or he would have gone to his grave with a secret?
02:07:13.680He would have gone to his grave. I mean, to this day, he has never said a word to us about anything related to the attacks.
02:07:23.380So only he has answers to so many questions that all of us have.
02:07:28.060And he hasn't divulged anything. I don't think he likes the idea that now he's being seen as a Golden State Killer.
02:07:37.000And this is what's so important in terms of assessing him for potential interviews is how does he self-identify?
02:07:45.200Dennis Rader, BTK, what he's caught, you know, he was the president of his church, was married.
02:07:51.440He was active in his son's Boy Scouts. But he goes, that's just a facade. I'm BTK. That's how he identified in this world. And I know when we caught D'Angelo, it's like, well, does he identify as the grandfather or does he identify as Golden State Killer? And to this day, we don't know. But right now, he's not like saying, hey, look at me. I'm the Golden State Killer. He just wants it to be quiet.
02:08:19.940In discussing the snipers, you know, they they said, like, I am God, call me God, things like that.
02:08:26.840And they seem to suffer from a God complex.0.52
02:08:29.500I mean, the elder, you know, in particular, Mohammed, who was driving it, suffer from a God complex and really felt powerful in committing these murders.
02:08:38.920D'Angelo seems to have been driven by something very different.
02:08:44.960Yeah, you know, very complicated in terms of assessing what his motive is.
02:08:49.460True, you know, inner motive. Some of these killers, that God complex is very real. You know, they control if this person that they're attacking dies and when that person dies.
02:09:03.860And there's numerous examples of such as Samuel Little or even Jesperson, the smiley, happy face killer, where they would strangle these women to the point of unconsciousness and let them come back alive only to do it over and over again.
02:09:19.180This is what they said, gave them that power. D'Angelo, there is a true, there's a vindictiveness to him. There's also, you know, the sexual assault on these women, many of these women was driven by sex.
02:09:38.700And that's that's it's often a misnomer that it's all about power and control. Now, there's a sexual aspect to why these offenders are attacking them.
02:09:48.360They have sexualized violence, but the vindictiveness is where I think it gets interesting because I truly believe that many of the couples were attacked because D'Angelo had some sort of interaction, prior interaction with the man and decided it was a negative thing.
02:10:11.220And he decided, I'm going to come back and show you who I am and basically took control over that man, emasculated that man and then took his wife or girlfriend out into the other room and sexually assaulted her.
02:13:32.340You know, I would say probably to anybody, he's of average intellect based on just me kind of assessing him as a person.0.97
02:13:39.380But as a criminal, as a predator, he is he's savvy.
02:13:45.460And I think you use the term cunning. Absolutely.
02:13:48.120And he was trained. He was a law enforcement officer.
02:13:51.360And he was smart enough to draw upon that training and those tools in order to be a better criminal, a better predator.
02:13:58.940Now, those investigating him did suspect law enforcement ties, right? Like there was enough proficiency at the crime scenes that I've heard some of the former investigators say, yes, we did wonder whether he could have a connection to law enforcement or possibly a military background, which he also did have, if I'm not mistaken.
02:14:22.360He was a 27-year-old Navy veteran in 1973.
02:14:39.220But over the decades, there was always suspects that came up that were law enforcement or military.
02:14:46.360And there was some thought, you know, could he have that type of background?
02:14:52.920I took the position that because of, and this was kind of later during my investigation, once I kind of was like, aha, I know I've got a better read on who this offender is now, that the position I took was that the tactics he was employing would be tactics that an intelligent offender would naturally want to do to try to prevent themselves from being caught.
02:15:21.440I could not say, you know, that for sure anything he did demonstrated specialized military training or law enforcement training.
02:15:31.600It just was he doesn't want to get caught and he's employing those those strategies.
02:15:37.680Like he wore gloves at every crime scene, right?
02:15:40.840That we didn't do very well on the fingerprints.
02:15:45.940He would take the gloves off, you know, when he's sexually assaulting the women from time to time.
02:15:51.660But we don't have any latents across any of the cases that have matched back to D'Angelo.
02:15:56.780Of course, every house that you process have latent prints all over.
02:16:01.000So it's kind of tough to say, you know, leading into the identification of D'Angelo, whether you have the offenders print or not.
02:16:08.340But it turns out, no, you know, he never left a print that we were able to tie back to him once he was caught.
02:16:14.240But he's also, you know, back in the 70s, you know, he's wearing a ski mask all the time, but even while wearing a ski mask so they couldn't see his face, he's shining a flashlight in the victim's eyes, blinding them, and he's telling them, don't look at me or I'll kill you.
02:16:30.080So he's put in multiple, you know, layers to prevent the victims from seeing his face.
02:16:38.220So that's, you know, part of my entire pursuit of him.
02:16:42.420I only knew this this guy as has a masked man.
02:16:46.640And then finally, once D'Angelo was identified and he's in handcuffs walking into Sacramento homicide, it was like, well, there you go.
02:16:53.980You know, I've unmasked him and that's what he looks like.
02:16:56.860So that's, you know, he for the types of evidence that could identify him and the types of witness statements that could produce a composite for back in the day, he prevented all that from happening.
02:17:13.380What he didn't prevent and didn't know about was, you know, he was leaving his DNA all over the place.
02:17:19.440Oh, yeah. No, we'll get to that. We'll get to the DNA in just a bit. But how do we have composite sketches of him then?
02:17:25.780You know, I remember when they arrested him, the D.A. was standing next to three of them, which showed a younger D'Angelo in sketch artist form.
02:17:35.520Yeah, all of those composites that were produced back in the day were produced by neighbors that saw strange men walking in the neighborhood.
02:17:45.520I can't say that any of those composites are actually D'Angelo today.
02:17:50.400Some of them may look close to D'Angelo, but I have no confidence in any of those composites.
02:17:57.400I did wonder, because as you describe him jumping over the fences and racing around in people's backyards, and I remember you saying once that he liked neighborhoods that had mostly one-story houses.
02:18:10.000He wasn't a big fan of the two-story houses.
02:18:12.580My question was, why didn't the neighbors see him?
02:20:36.740comparing today to the 1970s in terms of, you know, how are these offenders going to be
02:20:45.380attacking? You know, most certainly with my kids, you know, going to college,
02:20:54.440avoid, you know, the first floor, you know, where there's a first floor window or the doors right
02:21:01.120there. You know, it's just offenders today have to do different things in order to be able to
02:21:10.240attack victims. It's relatively rare to see a predator consistently breaking into houses over
02:21:17.280and over again and getting away with it for any period of time, just due to technology,
02:21:23.460We all have cameras, surveillance systems. And yeah, you know, so there's so much that really limits the type of series that D'Angelo is doing. But predators are now doing different things. You know, in the 90s in my jurisdiction, you know, they really grabbed the serial predator was gravitating towards the sex workers because now these women are voluntarily getting into their cars.
02:21:47.380But then eventually, once the stroll area started to dry up out of fear, then they go online.
02:21:54.120You know, now you have the Craigslist killer or the escort services where they call in and then they have the victim meet them someplace where they have now isolated that victim.
02:22:03.900You know, so that's part of how the predator is evolving based on how technology and security consciousness has changed.
02:24:13.300Right. So in 1979, after he disappears up north, he turns out in October of 79, he shows up in Goleta, Santa Barbara area.
02:24:25.720Goleta is a small town next to Santa Barbara City in Santa Barbara, does a classic East Area rapist style attack from up north.
02:24:35.220But once he's got the woman out in the family room and the man bound in the bed, the woman hears him pacing back and forth.0.99
02:24:43.120I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him this time. I'm going to kill him. Well, D'Angelo at this point had already been terminated as a law enforcement officer.1.00
02:24:52.120That attack actually goes sideways because the victims end up kind of freaking out once the woman hears this.
02:24:59.840And then he ends up getting chased by an off-duty FBI special agent who hears the screams in his neighbor's house.
02:25:07.560But two months later, D'Angelo's back just a block south of that sideways attack and kills a couple there in Santa Barbara.
02:25:18.360Then he goes down to Ventura and bludgeons Lyman and Charlene Smith to death.
02:25:23.040Then he's down in Laguna Niguel in Orange County, where he bludgeons a couple to death there.
02:25:29.800He goes to Irvine a couple of times, kills two women there.
02:25:33.100He goes and attacks another couple in Santa Barbara.
02:25:35.800You know, so he is now moving through Southern California and killing.
02:25:43.620And then in 1986, after his last attack on beautiful 19 year old Janelle Cruz, he stops, you know, and that's that's one of the mysteries.
02:25:52.600Why does he stop? And I have my theories. But until he says, you know, why, we just don't know.
02:25:58.680So what you mentioned the couple. So he started off, as we discussed, burgling and raping.0.90
02:26:04.000But there was a point at which he graduated to going into homes to rape women where their boyfriends or their husbands were present.0.96
02:26:13.400And this is, I guess, right before he crossed over to just murdering, too.0.72
02:26:17.500And it was almost like a challenge to him after I think it was the Sacramento Bee wrote an article saying he had never done that before.
02:26:25.760He'd only attacked women sleeping by themselves in their homes at night.
02:26:30.720And just speak to that, because it almost seemed like he felt as though he'd been dared or his courage had been questioned.
02:27:17.460and makes her tie up the man face down in the bed and then he goes and ties the woman up once the
02:27:24.220man is somewhat secure and then ultimately you know he would go out and get dishes and put dishes
02:27:29.040on the man's back as an alarm system and tell the man if he heard if D'Angelo heard these rattle
02:27:34.320he would kill everything in the house would be a common phrase or cut off a piece of of his wife0.94
02:27:39.840and bring it back to him or you know cut off the fingers of the kids whatever and then he would1.00
02:27:44.160take the woman out into the family room and sexually assault her. He was challenged by that0.99
02:27:49.920Sacramento Bee article. But the interesting thing is, is that he proves in that very first attack
02:27:56.560with a man present, he could do it. But then two thirds of the attacks from that point on
02:28:02.460have men present. So this really underscores that that victimology is something that satisfied him.
02:28:12.120He really liked the idea of having that power and control over the man while he is being able to sexually assault that man's wife or girlfriend.
02:28:22.340And so this is where it gets interesting from a psychological standpoint is he didn't start doing that.
02:28:28.540But think about the risk he was taking to break into a house that has an entire family there, a man present.
02:28:36.940And oftentimes these men had guns nearby, and yet he's willing to take that risk in order to be able to commit to this style of crime.
02:28:46.500So I believe internally he realized I get more personally out of attacking with a man present than just just sexually assaulting a lone female.
02:28:59.700And the thing with the dishes is bizarre, too.
02:29:02.900I mean, it was his alarm system, as you point out, like if he heard the rattling, he he threatened to escalate it.
02:29:09.220And as far as I understand, all the victims complied with that.
02:29:12.600I mean, they they took him very seriously and they tried not to rattle those dishes.
02:29:17.500D'Angelo is so commanding and threatening.
02:29:22.620All these males ended up saying, you know, I had no choice.
02:29:27.380You know, my fear was if the male tried to struggle against his bindings and the dishes rattled, that he would harm their wife or girlfriend.
02:29:36.180There were times when the men would get uncomfortable because it is very uncomfortable.
02:29:40.160Their, you know, their hands would hurt from the tight bindings or ankles would hurt from the bindings.
02:29:45.060They're laying absolutely still. They don't know what's going on.
02:29:49.080And there were several times when the men would shift with this alarm system of dishes on their back and the dishes would rattle or fall.
02:29:56.460And D'Angelo was immediately in that room with the gun to the back of the man's head.0.99
02:30:01.760He would cock the hammer and say, do that again, and I'll kill you.0.96
02:30:07.240So these men were helpless at this point.0.99
02:30:11.380They had no control over what was going to happen to them or their wife.
02:30:15.520The only thing that they could control was, I have to stay still.
02:30:19.660And this is part of something I've been very outspoken about is, you know, of course, all these women that were sexually assaulted, you know, extraordinarily traumatizing.
02:30:31.040But a lot of people forget about the victimization of the man.
02:30:36.780These men, I interviewed several of the men, and I had several of these men crying, either on the phone or in front of me, face to face.
02:30:49.660And so these men were victims, too. You think about just remove the sexual assault and the woman out of the crime and just think about a masked man breaking into a house, tying a man up, putting a gun to the back of his head and pulling the hammer back and saying, I'm going to kill you.0.99
02:31:07.320In many states that practically can qualify as a life sentence in terms of the type of crime. You know, so this is a serious crime in and of itself.
02:31:18.000So tortured. He's really tortured. Yes. You know, psychologically, emotionally tortured. And D'Angelo knew that. In fact, one man in Danville, California, who was a very large man relative to D'Angelo, you know, D'Angelo could tell this man was not liking and wanted to, you know, liking the predicament and wanting to do something.
02:31:42.600And D'Angelo tells him, essentially, you don't like this, do you?
02:31:48.680Well, there's nothing you can do about it.
02:31:51.300You know, so this is where D'Angelo is expressing that he has power and control over that man.
02:31:59.720And then that's what, you know, victimizing these couples gave him, because now he was basically asserting himself as being more of a man than these men who were victims.
02:32:10.780Well, it makes sense from his perspective, because otherwise he would just kill the man.
02:32:15.320I mean, I'm understanding it better listening to you because one of my questions is, why0.70
02:32:23.540He didn't want to just end it for them.
02:32:26.600No, and that goes to, you know, this is where the sadistic aspect of him, you know, that
02:32:32.240getting gratification out of the suffering of others, you know, it's psychological.
02:32:38.800I mean, he wasn't beating these men. You know, he wasn't doing anything that was physically going to hurt them.
02:32:47.360But he was instilling fear as he was doing with the women.
02:32:52.160So, you know, this is where he is a complex offender from a psychological standpoint.
02:32:59.160And when he goes down south and he's starting to kill and it's really when he's bludgeoning the couples to death.
02:33:07.160Um, the evolution gets to where he is in essence, he's taking control of the man, but then likely killing that man very early in the attack to minimize that threat.
02:33:19.680Um, and so he, he changed in terms of what he needed to get out of the, the, the crime, the fantasy of the crime, uh, once he is a full blown killer.
02:33:30.460But now wait. So before we get to that, we you mentioned he lost his cop job around that time before he moved down south and he lost it.
02:33:39.840It's such a weird story that he explained what he did and like, why would he do this?
02:33:47.300You know, this this well-trained criminal who had managed to avoid capture and all these other crimes.
02:34:21.540And of course, that's reported back to his police department, Auburn Police Department.
02:34:26.360And he's now put on administrative leave. So as you would expect. So now they are investigating the shoplifting. And during their internal affairs investigation, they go inside D'Angelo's house, which was up in Auburn at the time.
02:34:44.520And the police chief told me we found all sorts of stolen commercial property, like power tools still in their boxes, like he had just taken them out of a store, but had never opened it up or tried to sell them.
02:35:00.340But that was never, you know, part of the case in chief.
02:35:59.300You know, and that is really, you know, you talk about Renato Ryder case, you know, that psychology really is also kind of a foundational psychology for D'Angelo doing that kind of thing, as well as escalating up into committing the burglaries.
02:36:17.300And then he's recognizing he's got fantasies of committing violence against people, which now takes him out well above the psychology of Winona Ryder.
02:36:26.800Yeah. Fundamentally, it's that gratification. You know, they it's that thrill.
02:36:32.220So I read something about the police chief shortly after firing D'Angelo.
02:36:39.100Like D'Angelo showed up at his house. He was almost an intruder. Like, what is that story?
02:36:44.220Well, this is where when I, you know, we were marching down on genealogy and D'Angelo's name came up.
02:36:52.520And now I was skeptical that this full time police officer could commit all these crimes across Northern California, like the East Area Rapist did.
02:37:03.480I end up tracking down the police chief that fired D'Angelo, Nick Willick.
02:37:08.960And Nick was telling me about, Nick was the one that was D'Angelo's sergeant when D'Angelo first came on board up in Auburn, but also ultimately became the police chief and was chief when D'Angelo shoplifted.
02:37:23.760So Nick is the one that put D'Angelo on administrative leave and started the IA investigation. And while D'Angelo is on admin leave, Nick told me the story that during this period of time, which would have been in that July, August 1979 timeframe, he's asleep in his house.
02:37:49.300and his daughter comes into his room and says,
02:37:54.800Dad, there's a man standing outside my window
02:38:16.700But he was confident that that was the answer. And when I'm talking to Nick, I'm not letting him know I'm I'm looking at the East Area Rapist or the Golden State Killer case.
02:38:26.080And once I heard that, I mean, that was where, you know, basically the hairs on my arm stood up.
02:38:32.240And I was like, yeah, that's exactly what the Golden State Killer would do if he was being terminated by his employer is that vindictive aspect.
02:38:42.500I'll show you who I am. Yeah. That's really when I started to turn about D'Angelo and his potential
02:38:51.840to be the Golden State Killer. It doesn't mean he was, but it was like, wow, that was D'Angelo.
02:38:57.200Because he was on he was on your suspects list. Is that what you're saying? But you didn't.
02:39:00.720You had a lot of people on your suspects list. Well, at this point, you know, we were working
02:39:06.320the genealogy angle and his name came up and i had just eliminated a guy in colorado or the team
02:39:13.660had just eliminated a guy in colorado that's when i turned to to d'angelo going well i might as well
02:39:19.180look at this this former cop and as i dug in you know i try to reach out to bonnie i'm researching
02:39:26.420him i'm visiting all sorts of things where he had when i talked to that police chief
02:39:32.400this is a big phone call i was just checking a box but now it's so painful paul because it's like
02:39:39.260i'm sure this poor cop is just kicking himself for not looking into it more back then i mean
02:39:45.860how could he know right but it's like those missed opportunities yes yeah no you know and
02:39:52.200that's just it is there is no way he could have at that point in time because d'angelo shoplifted
02:39:57.640that he should be considered. And I know there are probably that the chief received some public
02:40:03.840criticism after D'Angelo was arrested as the Golden State Killer. And I publicly said,
02:40:08.240absolutely not. You know, basically he did what he could do to D'Angelo based on the facts.
02:40:13.820And there's just no connection between the shoplifting and the East Area Rapist attacks
02:40:19.960that that chief could have even put to it. I'm talking about the moment that he saw somebody
02:40:25.040had come outside of his house and had shined the light in at his daughter you know like
02:40:31.720again they're not in any way blaming the guy but it's just like oh god what if he had followed up
02:40:36.260what if he had all these moments in time he'd like to go back to and have another look at
02:40:41.180yeah no sure absolutely i mean and that was part you know d'angelo was very good at what he did
02:40:48.560And that is the prime reason why his series was as long as it was.
02:40:56.560But there were multiple times within the series where he just flat out got lucky.
02:41:05.040So now he goes south in California and he escalates to just murdering.
02:41:10.600And when he started just murdering couples, did he get rid of the sexual assault altogether?0.96
02:41:15.660No, he still sexually assaulted the women. There's only one attack, well, two attacks down in Southern California where we don't have his DNA. And that's the first attack that went sideways, where basically he's being chased by the off-duty FBI agent in Goleta.
02:41:34.820And then the second attack, which also happened in almost that same neighborhood, in which it appears that the male slipped his bindings and got up and rushed him, and D'Angelo had to shoot the male, you know, out of, if you want to call it self-defense, and then went over and shot the female in the top of the head while she laid face down on the bed and ran off.
02:41:59.500So because that attack also kind of went sideways on him, he never got to the stage of sexually assaulting.
02:42:07.980But down in Ventura, the next attack and every attack after that, yes, he is sexually assaulting the women and also killing the women and men in the cases where men are present.
02:42:21.460So that and that's where it stood straight through to 1986.
02:42:30.760just in 1986 he he dropped off the face of the earth you know nobody uh there's no other cases
02:42:39.640that we can attribute to him um he's you know he's married his at the time of the last attack
02:42:47.520his wife was two months pregnant with their second daughter i believe um and uh you know
02:42:55.660Ultimately, they are back up in up in Citrus Heights, you know, living in the house where he was arrested back in 2018.
02:43:06.080So it wasn't becoming a father necessarily because he was already a dad at the time his wife got pregnant with their second child, obviously.
02:43:15.380Right. You know, in fact, so the second to last attack in July of 1981 in Santa Barbara, Gregory Sanchez and Sherry Domingo, his wife is seven months pregnant.
02:43:25.100with their first daughter you know and then he commits this attack at five years go by and we
02:43:31.380have nothing in those five years and then we have uh may of 1986 in irvine that's when he bludgeons
02:43:39.66019 year old janelle cruz to death and his wife's pregnant again two seven months pregnant with the
02:43:46.560second daughter but then after that nothing then they have a third daughter um and no no idea you
02:43:54.600know, from, you know, why is he not doing anything, you know, but as we talked earlier,
02:44:01.760at 1986, he's 41 years old. So now he's getting older as an offender. His life circumstances have
02:44:11.420changed. You know, he's got two daughters moving back up to Sacramento's. I think, you know,
02:44:17.840this is where he is really slipping back. He's slipping into that mindset. I've got to put the
02:44:23.560serial predator part of me aside and i'm now going to be you know a father a provider and then
02:44:30.880ultimately you know he's just becoming a truck mechanic and enjoying life he's out fishing with
02:44:36.700his buddies that's what i was gonna so how did he pay his bills after he got fired from the police
02:44:41.460force it's a big mystery uh we don't know uh he uh um hasn't told us what he was doing we haven't
02:44:51.460found a job that he was doing during the years as the original Night Stalker.
02:45:01.360And I forget exactly when she actually starts making money versus going to school.
02:45:07.240But he may have been living off of her for a period of time.
02:45:11.640Now, I believe that there's enough evidence to suggest that D'Angelo, even as an East Area rapist, was moonlighting as a security guard on construction job sites.
02:45:25.600And now I've had a relative from down south indicate that when D'Angelo is living in Long Beach, seeing a couple of security guard style shirts as well as a gun and a holster hanging in D'Angelo's residence.
02:45:43.220So I think he's probably still doing security work, which would make sense psychologically for him, because now he still has sort of that, you know, that that power and authority that he had as a full blown peace officer.
02:46:11.260And I know there's been a lot of investigation into D'Angelo since.
02:46:15.760And there may be some aspects of D'Angelo that I have not been updated on.
02:46:19.260That's fine. I mean, you've got your man. That's the thing.
02:46:22.060I want to get into how you caught him, because that's probably I don't know if it's the most interesting, but it's one of the most interesting things of the story.
02:46:27.460But before we do that, can I just ask you a couple of psychological issues on him?
02:46:30.740I know in one of the attacks, he the victim survived because this is how we know this.
02:46:35.980he sat at the end of the bed and started crying and talking about his mommy like mommy i don't
02:46:43.140want to be bad or mom i can't remember what it was do we what do we make of that you know well
02:46:49.080it actually is it is one of these oddities it wasn't just in one case in which victims
02:46:54.120heard him crying or sobbing you know after the sexual assault and you know we don't know for
02:47:02.400sure uh you know was this an act was was he trying to just like with the verbal staging was he trying
02:47:09.440to portray himself differently but then when he's being interviewed that night that he's arrested
02:47:17.520and he's being left alone he's got his head hung i i'm looking at him and at one point i almost see
02:47:24.180him looking like he's about to cry and he's talking to himself and then his neighbors would
02:47:30.320say that, you know, Joe, crazy Joe would be talking to himself. So I think it is possible
02:47:35.700that, you know, at a certain point in these attacks, some of the statements he's making to
02:47:42.460himself is what he does and the crime. From a psychological standpoint, an interesting aspect
02:47:51.060about D'Angelo is I'm not sure he would be characterized as a true psychopath. Everybody
02:47:59.880assumes he's a psychopath. He doesn't experience empathy. I saw enough acts that he did to his
02:48:07.000living victims over the course of 50 attacks where I'm going, you know what, he is showing
02:48:11.500that he is caring about how these victims are feeling. And part of it is MO. If they are getting
02:48:19.180uncomfortable because they're getting cold, you know, because sometimes they complain about being
02:48:22.620cold, you put a blanket on them, a pillow under their head. Is this just to keep them appeased
02:48:28.200So they don't become a problem. Or is he actually truly, you know, showing a level of empathy?
02:48:34.660And if that's the case, then I question whether he's a psychopath. And then at as time went up, went on during the series, it almost looked like he was struggling with what he was doing.
02:48:47.560It wasn't it was almost like he was compelled to do these attacks, but knew internally, I don't want to I don't want to do this.
02:48:54.740And then after the attack, that's when this emotional release would happen and the crying would happen.
02:49:01.740What what about his wife and his daughters?
02:55:06.880For a limited time, pick some up today and while you're at it, check out Footy Prime daily.
02:55:36.880event visit your ontario ford store or ford.ca
02:55:40.000forgive me for going back to this and i don't know if there are any lessons that we can extrapolate
02:55:49.020because every crime is different but i i want one you know i want one for myself and for my
02:55:54.140loved ones and for all the people out there is there any lesson from this series of murders on
02:56:00.900don't comply you know run scream or no because it seems like whatever you did with this guy
02:56:08.000it was going to end badly yeah you know this is and i've been asked this type of question
02:56:15.440like i'll talk at citizens academies and the women will say what do i do if i'm being attacked
02:56:20.960yeah and it really comes down to you you do have to fight there's no question from the very
02:56:28.800beginning. You have to fight, you have to make noise, but recognize that there is a type of
02:56:34.460offender that that is what he wants. And that is your sexual sadist. So a sexual sadist is somebody0.98
02:56:42.800who gets more amped up. The more you fight, the more you scream, the more pain that offender can0.98
02:56:50.760inflict on the woman. And so there are examples. In fact, I have a 1969 victim. You know, she was
02:56:57.500being attacked. She was trying to fight in the front seat of a car, and she realized she was
02:57:03.800going to be dead. She's looking out the window at nature and the sunlight, and she starts stroking
02:57:09.640the back of the guy's neck as he's raping her. The guy literally just stopped. He didn't want0.96
02:57:18.440that. He wanted her fear and her fight. There's another case example out of the Pacific Northwest0.69
02:57:26.140of a guy who's using a knife in a pickup truck on a woman. And she realizes she's dead and she
02:57:32.460just lays there and he pushes up and walks out. This is your sexual sadist. Once the woman goes1.00
02:57:39.820limp, he's not getting what he wants. So my recommendation is always fight, fight, fight.
02:57:46.180But if that is not working, if this guy is too powerful and he just seems to be amping up the
02:57:53.260more you fight just briefly, you know, do the opposite. Give it a try. What happens? Give it
02:57:59.540a try. But if that doesn't work, then you got to fight for your life. You just have to. Yeah. Be a
02:58:06.540difficult victim. Be a difficult victim, especially in the case of abductions. You know, do not go
02:58:11.120along. He's got a gun. Get in the car. Do not do that. Run, zigzag, serpentine, yell. Try it right
02:58:18.440there to not get in that car. Yeah. I tell my kids, if somebody grabs them and starts pulling
02:58:23.860them to a vehicle, and I don't care if they've got a gun or a knife, you do everything to prevent
02:58:30.140yourself from getting to that vehicle. Being shot or stabbed there is going to be so much better0.57
02:58:38.180than what they're going to do to you once they get you to the location they want to take you.
02:58:43.200Yes. Do not comply. The, it does make me wonder about his childhood. You know, what do we know? Abuse, sexual abuse, torture, like what happened during his childhood?
02:58:57.620You know, I, I don't have a lot of information on his childhood and I don't think there's a ton of information out there.
02:59:05.580What we do know was when his dad was military stationed over in Germany and D'Angelo and his younger sister, Connie, were walking and two soldiers abduct them.
02:59:20.860And D'Angelo watches these two soldiers rape his sister.
02:59:58.000And I think at this time it's his, uh, his stepdad.
03:00:01.240And she said, I didn't see anything that was really alarming.
03:00:05.540You know, his mom was one of the sweetest persons that she had ever met.
03:00:09.000So it wasn't like that prototypical, you know, the, you know, the overbearing mother and the, you know, drunk, alcoholic, abusive father.
03:00:18.340Bonnie didn't see that at this point in D'Angelo's life.
03:00:22.420Okay, so let's go forward to the end.0.98
03:00:26.000I should spend one minute on Michelle McNamara.
03:00:30.240so people may remember this this piece of the story she was married to Patton Oswalt and she
03:00:36.980died suddenly and he came out and talked about her and her work and I think that got a lot of
03:00:43.680our attention like what's he talking about this famous guy his wife suddenly died and he was
03:00:48.080talking about her work on this case and you came to know her very well and had spent a lot of hours
03:00:54.940working with her she was a writer i mean she wasn't a cop uh on this case and um i thought
03:01:04.040what you said about you know she died of a drug overdose it looks like you know potentially even
03:01:09.960an inadvertent drug overdose right just taking a bunch of self-medicating i should say and um
03:01:15.840so yeah yeah i'll let you speak to it but i i know you've said you have to understand what's
03:01:21.180going on in her life to get the full picture of her death.
03:01:26.520Right. And that, you know, with Michelle, you know, she initially, she was a true crime blogger.
03:01:34.780You know, she loved to write. She was blogging about cases. She found out about this unsolved
03:01:39.720case and eventually wrote an article for Los Angeles magazine. And in the lead up for that
03:01:47.680article, she reached out to the task force and, you know, interviewed each of us. And Michelle and
03:01:54.300I, you know, initially I just treated her as, you know, just another journalist. And I was very kind
03:02:00.460of standoffish, the Joe Friday type. But then as time went on, you know, I recognized she's very
03:02:07.660bright. She knew the facts of the case. And I really enjoyed, you know, at that time, our phone
03:02:13.860conversations and eventually divulge what I was doing investigatively to her, but off the record,
03:02:22.900and was so scared about when her Los Angeles Magazine article came out, you know, did she
03:02:28.500burn me in terms of what I told her? And she didn't. And she earned my trust. And then we
03:02:33.420just developed a closer working relationship and a closer relationship where when she's contracted
03:02:39.980to write a book about the case. She asked me if I thought that was a good idea, and she reached out
03:02:44.980to some of the other investigators. But then she came up, and we drove around, and I drove her to
03:02:49.460crime scenes, and we spent all this time together in a car chatting about the case, but chatting
03:02:54.520about our personal lives, and that's when we really, really bonded. And then at that point,
03:02:59.620I was wide open with her on what I'm doing. She was, instead of just writing a book, she now
03:03:06.040kind of got sucked into the rabbit hole and was starting to do the investigations.
03:03:09.980Um, and this is where, you know, this case, it's such a rollercoaster ride of emotions because, you know, you work so hard to develop a suspect and you get excited, you get high that I've got this case, I've got this guy only to have DNA show that it's not the right guy.
03:03:27.800And Michelle started to experience that roller coaster ride, you know, which is which is tough.
03:03:35.140But also she's talking to the victims, you know, victim family members.
03:03:40.460She's recognizing the trauma. She's thinking about these cases and had access to case files.
03:03:46.360So she knew exactly what this guy was doing, you know.
03:03:49.960And so now she's experiencing the trauma, you know, that law enforcement experiences when they're working these types of cases.
03:03:57.400And this is where I think, and I didn't know this, but it appears, you know, now she's, you know, self-medicating.
03:04:08.140And one of the drugs in her system was fentanyl, unfortunately.
03:04:12.140It deemed an accidental overdose from a lethal mix of Adderall, Xanax, and fentanyl.
03:04:17.980No one was aware that she was self-medicating.
03:04:20.300But I know you write in the book, few people know the pressures of the woeful world of homicide.
03:04:26.380it's a dreadful place and not one to be entered lightly no one leaves unscathed not even the
03:04:33.540hardened professionals michelle was a wife and a mom by day and living among psychopaths and
03:04:39.500their victims in the dark of night that's chilling it says so much so much paul well and you know
03:04:48.180one of the last communications i had with michelle was an email she sent me and she has taken her
03:04:54.800young daughter to a Girl Scout camp just north of Santa Barbara. And she emailed me, you know,
03:05:03.560letting me know, hey, I'm going to be off the grid, so to speak, for a few days. But she goes,
03:05:07.720it's so surreal to be with my daughter in the car driving past the same exits that the Golden
03:05:13.600State Killer would have taken for his attacks in Santa Barbara. And I could only envision the
03:05:20.120show with her cute little girl looking at these exits and starting to visualize the attacks,
03:05:28.460you know, and you don't want to be with your little girl and thinking about what happened
03:05:33.320to those victims, you know, and this is part of those interconnections, you know, that you make
03:05:39.480where now your family life is crossing over with your professional life. And it is tough,
03:05:46.740You know, and there's you have to you cope with it however you cope with it.
03:05:52.260And, you know, for me, I have my own coping mechanisms and Michelle had hers.
03:05:57.560Yeah. Like, how do you go out after a day?
03:06:00.280And I've spared the audience the most gruesome details of his crimes because they truly are dark marks on your soul once you've read them.
03:06:08.280And I'm sure once you've read them at your level, how do you go out and have a dinner with your family?
03:06:13.180How do you watch a sitcom and manage a laugh?
03:06:16.740well that you know like that's where you detach that's where i detached uh you know because for me
03:06:26.020when i was working you know i'm always thinking about the case um but you you mentioned the you
03:06:32.740know enjoying a sitcom you know to this day i can't get myself to to read a book or sit down
03:06:38.660and watch a movie right now it's where I have just completely um tuned turned away from
03:06:49.360trying to pursue things that are just entertaining and and that's where I have to get myself back
03:06:56.700you know to where I can start enjoying just the normal activities in life um and it is it is hard
03:07:03.700You know, that's for it for people. It's not everybody that gets into this field.
03:07:08.820But for people who really care about the cases, care about the victims, those are the people that are the most strongly affected.
03:07:17.540Because every minute of the day that you're not working on the case, you could be working on the case and working on the case is hugely important.
03:07:27.380That's just it. I've been called on that before. You know, hey, you're no longer at work.
03:07:33.240Well, you know, if your daughter was just killed or sexually assaulted and now the investigator is punching out at five o'clock and going home, I think you'd be a little upset.
03:07:45.180You're expecting this public servant, the investigator, to do everything possible as fast as possible to find out who did this.
03:07:55.340And that's the hard part. That's the balance of working this type of work is I've got a family, I've got a personal life, but I've also got this commitment. And that commitment, when you really get attached to cases like for me with Golden State Killer and other cases, that commitment ends up becoming overriding of everything else.
03:08:17.520hmm when he stopped with the with the spree the murder spree in 86 you were uh in your late teens
03:08:28.260you were not a cop working this case that would come later that would come later where you picked
03:08:34.360up a cold case file and the next thing you knew quarter century had passed and you had devoted the
03:08:41.780vast majority of your life to this thing that's right in fact 1986 i was a senior in high school
03:08:48.040yeah so and then you should get you got to read the book which you can see the picture of it
03:08:53.880behind paul now unmasked um to find out like his early thoughts on dna from these crime scenes and
03:09:00.900how could they be helpful and like let's get a let's get him in the system just in case this
03:09:05.100guy gets arrested so there'll be a hit and stuff like you'd been working all of that from the
03:09:09.660moment you got involved in this as a law enforcement officer. But let's jump forward
03:09:14.260to, you know, close to the end when you had a different idea and then you started studying it
03:09:19.640nonstop, of course, because you're you, about genealogy and what it's not working. We're not
03:09:25.400getting a hit on this guy just by having the DNA in the system. What's another way we can use the
03:09:29.840DNA to advance the case? Right. You know, I go back a little bit even further with genealogy.
03:09:38.860I started pursuing a type of genealogy in 2012, thinking this possibly could solve the case.
03:12:19.780What's done to it that's different than what was normally done to it?
03:12:24.560So, forensic DNA testing used by law enforcement uses a DNA tool that looks at discrete areas on the DNA that's known as short tandem repeats.
03:12:41.960It's just right now they're looking at 21 different markers that are going up into the FBI's DNA database, which is called CODIS.
03:12:52.880The genealogy process is the process that your major genealogy websites do in the background, like Ancestry and 23andMe, where you send your saliva sample in.
03:13:08.900And instead of just looking at 21 markers, they're looking at hundreds of thousands of points across the entire genome.
03:13:18.660And then once that type of profile, which is now called a SNP profile, is put up into a database and searched against others, it's able to look for other people that kind of cross over and share DNA fragments with you.
03:13:39.360And the more DNA they share with you, the more closely related they are.
03:14:03.440So now with that type of information and a list of potential relatives, it's a matter of just doing traditional genealogy, building family trees back in time until you find where these potential relatives intersect.
03:14:19.940They're descendants of a common ancestor.
03:14:22.700But it required them, it required some of the Golden State Killer's relatives to have gone through the 23andMe or Ancestry.com process.
03:14:30.780or other websites yes yeah so these these are you know with with the angelo our initial searches
03:14:39.880the closest relatives were third cousins so they're related at the great great grandparent
03:14:44.760level and for somebody of his generation these were individuals the common ancestor were
03:14:51.680individuals born in the 1840s oh boy that's not that helpful so then what well now it's you get
03:14:59.020this common ancestor it's like okay the golden state killer is a descendant from this great
03:15:04.860great grandparents so you have to identify everybody that you know are offspring of these
03:15:11.860this common ancestor and again it's just genealogy but part of the complexity is is people in the
03:15:18.3001840s would have 15 kids some would you know die at birth some wouldn't make it to uh you know
03:15:26.300were there actually having children themselves. So this tree, as we're building, identifying all
03:15:33.820the descendants, becomes huge. But we know something about the Golden State Killer. He is
03:15:41.980a man born between the years 1940 and 1960 by best estimates. We knew his physical size and we knew
03:15:50.740his geographic footprint, you know, from Sacramento down to Southern California. So as we're building
03:15:58.140these trees, we're now identifying men who had a California connection. And then it's just
03:16:03.280investigation 101. Could this person, you know, match up circumstantially with the person we're
03:16:11.180looking for? And that's where we get into just a small handful of individuals that required a little
03:16:16.620bit further investigative work and after eliminating each of these other individuals who
03:16:22.880to this day have no idea they were being eyeballed that's when i turned to d'angelo he was sort of
03:16:30.260the last one on the list and what was that like for you before the arrest before all that when
03:16:37.240you're you got this one last name as you say you start to check boxes and it's like bonnie
03:16:43.820law enforcement like you start checking the boxes what was that feeling like
03:16:48.760well i i also had the pressure i was retiring so am i going to get this figured out before i retire
03:16:58.320um and i had been there before uh i had multiple suspects i had other men that had bonnies in
03:17:07.300their past that were eliminated with dna that were also rapists uh who had geographic connections
03:17:12.060to some of the areas. So some of this circumstantial stuff that I'm using to evaluate
03:17:18.440D'Angelo, well, I had other suspects who had been eliminated that also had that circumstantial stuff.
03:17:23.660So you kind of become, I was a little bit numb to that. It was just like, okay, there's enough
03:17:29.780here that requires me to be much more involved than just sitting behind a computer. And that's
03:17:37.020when I start reaching out and driving up to Sacramento and taking a look at the locations
03:17:41.980where D'Angelo is at, researching, you know, going into the Sacramento recorder's office and looking
03:17:47.700for, you know, deeds and where he's purchased houses or what properties he's owned. And then
03:17:53.000ultimately, you know, reaching out to the Auburn police chief who fired him. And once I kind of
03:17:58.480gathered all that, I was like, oh, this guy now is very interesting circumstantially. We got onto
03:18:06.460him because of DNA. Uh, and, uh, he's now what I would classify as a prime suspect where it's now
03:18:16.120we should get DNA from him. Um, and my, my bud, Steve Kramer was in full agreement. Uh, but now
03:18:23.600I am, I'm retiring in two days. No, I couldn't. I couldn't. I made the decision, you know, six
03:18:34.880months prior. And it had to do with personal financial deadline. Can't you just say, I'm just
03:18:40.100going to do four more. I'm like, I'm seeing this case through to the end. What does it even matter?
03:18:43.600Even if you retire, can you no longer work on it? Well, from a retirement standpoint,
03:18:50.760you know, just the way the pension system works, they really encourage you to retire at age 50,
03:18:56.340you know, from a sheer financial purpose. But I had made the decision. I'd already been out
03:19:02.720to colorado with my wife shopping for homes you know and and we had a schedule to to go out my
03:19:09.600kids were going to be transferring schools and so everything in my personal life really was like this
03:19:15.580is the time i need to retire even though we were so close on golden state killer but weren't you
03:19:21.280allowed to continue working on it even post-retirement like what would what would change
03:19:25.000from friday of goodbye to the monday of i no longer work here
03:19:29.780Yeah, I wouldn't have peace officer privileges in terms of the accessing criminal databases, you know, going out and being able to identify myself as a sworn investigator if I'm talking to people. So I'm a civilian once I retire.
03:19:48.640There's no like, you know, day pass for a day.
03:19:53.100Well, the way it worked out, though, is that once I did retire, the genealogy team that I was working with, which was a group of six of us, they kept me on board.
03:20:04.180They kept communicating with me as if I was still active.
03:20:08.760You know, and that's why you're the expert on the case.
03:20:11.300They needed your expertise. They needed you as much as you wanted to be with them.
03:20:16.000And I yeah, I brought something to the table on the case.
03:20:19.380And then ultimately, you know, when D'Angelo is arrested, I helped author the the arrest warrant and provided information for the search warrant, you know, up at Sac Homicide.
03:20:33.080And again, I was so appreciative that Sacramento Sheriff's Office, you know, kept me involved in the case.
03:20:48.660you got your prime suspect but you don't have his dna i mean you may you have an old sample of it
03:20:55.880but you need a present day sample from this man you've identified as d'angelo and um tell us what
03:21:02.700happened there because there were two passes at it so yeah so i i had driven up to his house
03:21:09.040and you know seen his car in the driveway knew he was living there and that was last literally the
03:21:15.100last thing I did and debated if I should get a DNA sample, just knock on his door and say,
03:21:21.180hey, Joe, this is Paul Holtz and blah, blah, blah. You know, can I get a DNA sample and eliminate
03:21:26.600him? But I decided there was too much on him and drove away. I then retire the next day.
03:21:32.660But then once I'm retired, we get him under surveillance. And so Sacramento, Homicide and
03:21:39.500FBI start surveilling him. And at a certain point, he drives to a Hobby Lobby and he actually had a
03:21:47.700hobby of building these remote controlled airplanes out of wood. So he's going there Hobby Lobby as
03:21:54.800he's building another plane. And while he's at the Hobby Lobby, an undercover agent swabs his car door
03:22:03.520handle. And that's submitted to the Sacramento Lab. I happen to be in Colorado Springs buying a
03:22:10.740house during this time. And I'm getting updated on how the surveillance is going. And I'm at P.F.
03:22:20.000Chang's with my wife celebrating putting an offer on a house. And Lieutenant Kirk Campbell from
03:22:27.100SACDA's office was calling me. I figured it's another update on the case. I excused myself.
03:22:32.360I go stand outside. It's snowing. And instead of the typical salutation, hey, Paul, how's it going?
03:22:39.840It's Paul, you can't tell anybody this. I was like, oh, this is here's something.
03:22:46.900And Kirk tells me, hey, I don't know exactly what it means, but we got that car door handle.
03:22:52.660The DNA results back and and the lab's really excited.
03:22:58.060There's a lot of markers that are matching up with the Golden State Killer.
03:23:01.200And I was, and Kirk's not a DNA guy. And I said, okay, Kirk, how many markers? And he said, well, they got, they got 21 markers.
03:23:11.480Kirk, it's him. So, so now we finish up that conversation. I go back into the restaurant and I'm, I'm now, you know, kind of, kind of in this weird state. I've been on this case for 24 years. I now know DeAngelo's a golden state killer.
03:23:30.240And so I'm in this numb space emotionally. I sit back down. My wife is super excited because her fortune cookie is saying, you know, you're going to find your dream home.
03:23:42.340And we had just put, you know, an offer down on the house, the house that I'm sitting in right now, in fact.
03:23:48.160and uh she just happened to say no so so what did kirk want and i i didn't know what to say
03:23:55.380because i i was like i'm not going to just say you know hey it's him because i don't want her
03:23:59.300blowing up in the middle of the restaurant right and she is a dna analyst and so um i just kind of
03:24:06.440look at her and and she i don't do anything and she looks at me and she says well are the dna
03:24:11.900results back. And I just do a single nod. And she was like, well, and I didn't do anything.
03:24:19.460I'm just staring at her. And she goes, no. And all I did is another single nod. And then she's
03:24:27.020like, practically pushing me out of the restaurant to get into our rental vehicle so she can hear
03:24:32.780what exactly is going on. And then as I'm letting her know, and she's super excited,
03:24:37.060That's when Steve Kramer calls me because now he knows. And then it's it's game on because now it's no longer surveillance. It's it's an arrest has to be affected.
03:24:48.180Interviews need to occur. And it's a lot of work. So that's where I end up flying back to California.
03:24:56.700wait wait what did your fortune cookie say i could i couldn't tell you it was one of those
03:25:04.260things where you know i i was so because my wife was excited open up your fortune cookie and and
03:25:09.680i was just so focused on golden state killer i did it and i just kind of dropped it on the plate
03:25:14.940and that's when she starts asking what kirk wanted right you know you make your own fortune
03:25:18.840make your own fortune all right so you got it and by the way my wife's a huge fan of yours she
03:25:23.260listens to your stuff all the time oh tell her i said my regards and i'm already a huge fan of hers
03:25:28.920um that i can feel her excitement in this moment i wouldn't have known whether to leave or to order
03:25:33.960like a double martini you know it's like oh what do i do i'm not sure i'm technically retired but
03:25:39.520yeah i think i need to go back so but there was they did a second pass at it right they did they
03:25:44.380decided the da who i also interviewed um who was in who was running this the woman uh forgive me i
03:25:50.160forget her name right now. Anne-Marie Schubert. She was like, let's be really sure, right? And
03:25:57.180that's when there was a dumpster dive, right? Somebody took his garbage. You guys took his
03:26:01.980garbage. Right. No, and in part, you know, the car door handle, of course, multiple people,0.98
03:26:07.140you know, touch a car door. And so even though everything, the 21 markers, you know, were shared
03:26:13.960with Golden State Killer, there was a second person in that sample and DNA. And so that's
03:26:21.340where Anne Marie, her office were like, no, we want a better sample. So now trash day is,
03:26:29.880I believe it was Tuesday or Monday, but Sacramento has a very clever way to collect
03:26:40.500trash without it being noticed and i'm not going to divulge the process because they like to use
03:26:45.300that on a on a regular basis great but they were able to get his trash collected and they you know
03:26:51.580ken clark the the the homicide sergeant from sacramento and and lieutenant paul bella you
03:26:58.780know i've heard the story is as they're filtering through the trash that was collected from d'angelo
03:27:03.720they're selecting items that look like the most promising to have his dna on them and they got
03:27:10.22011 items. And then the last item that they looked at said, oh, there's a piece of tissue over there.
03:27:15.200We might as well grab it. What would it hurt? Well, that turned out to be the actual evidence
03:27:21.260item that came back with D'Angelo's single source DNA profile and 100% matched the Golden State
03:27:28.700Killer. Wow. You had your man. That was it. I think in your book, I'm trying to remember,
03:27:36.480there was a line something like that the face of evil had been identified after all these years
03:27:42.220you knew who it was who'd been taking up your life your life's work and you were going to be
03:27:49.920able to provide that to the victims who had survived his attacks whose lives he had all
03:27:56.160but ruined in so many cases and so many lives he had taken what a huge huge moment for law
03:28:02.100enforcement for you everyone involved and i just i can't even imagine the flow of emotions when you
03:28:08.280actually got to see him in cuffs and be at the at the da's office that night yeah and again it was
03:28:14.940it was such a surreal moment because now that this this uh masked man that i've been chasing
03:28:21.500for 24 years, there he is unmasked. And such a weird place to be. I can't even describe the
03:28:32.340emotion because in part, you know, I still had a lot of work that needed to be done that night,
03:28:37.340as well as the following day. But at the same time, there was a sense of accomplishment. And
03:28:47.440And it was like, OK, you know, this this is this is a big deal.
03:28:52.460And personally, I am very gratified that I had a role in getting the Golden State Killer here in handcuffs, sitting in an interview room.0.80
03:29:05.160Crazy. So what did he say when when the cops went up to him?
03:29:09.620I know they decided we got to go now and they got him on this on his side lawn.
03:29:14.280what what happened did he say anything what was he like well again you know they they ended up
03:29:21.680using a specialized team uh because he was such a threat if you think about who this man is
03:29:30.280d'angelo he's a law enforcement officer he's a serial killer he has shot at a cop in his past
03:29:37.060down in visalia he had more guns registered to him over the years than what the california
03:29:43.840a firearms database could print out at once. And, you know, we were so concerned that he would fight,
03:29:54.640he would be armed, he would take his daughter hostage, grandkids hostage. So, you know,
03:30:02.120the hope was, is that he would be arrested away from his house. And they were going to do a
03:30:07.640very covert type of arrest, but that didn't play out. And so they had to arrest him in front of
03:30:14.820his house. But fortunately, he moved himself over to the side yard where he was a lot isolated from
03:30:20.460from doors and stuff. And then they approached him. And there was some interactions. And those
03:30:27.620interactions are part of the sheriff's specialized arrest team that I'm not going to divulge.
03:30:33.920but he was quickly taken into custody by, uh, you know, multiple individuals. Each individual
03:30:41.640had to control a limb and, uh, he's handcuffed and placed in the back of a van. And then that's
03:30:47.360when he makes that, that famous statement. Uh, I've got a roast in the oven. Yeah. Crazy.
03:30:53.820So he winds up obviously being charged and he pleads guilty. I mean, there was no way around
03:31:01.160And they're really realistically to talk about having him dead to rights, that there was just no way around it.
03:31:06.440He had he had to plead guilty if he wanted to spare himself the death penalty.
03:31:11.100Yes, he had to plead guilty. But the the notable aspect about his his plea deal is he had to admit to everything.
03:31:23.020So he over the course of the series, you know, some of the cases in northern California that were not homicides, he could not be prosecuted for because there were past statute of limitations.
03:31:35.940And we wanted all of those victims to have that sense that their case was just as important as the other cases that he could be prosecuted for.
03:31:48.260So he pled guilty to everything that he was charged with. But then he also admitted to all those other cases that he wasn't charged with. So it's a very interesting process that occurred.
03:32:00.960So he did, right? I mean, he did list the crimes. Do we believe he listed all the crimes for which he was responsible?
03:32:07.980You know, he he didn't list the crimes. The crimes were these are the crimes.
03:32:15.040And then him and his attorneys basically had him plead, plead guilty or admit to them in a court of law.
03:32:22.640Now, if he has other crimes out there and there are crimes that he could be prosecuted for, if there's other homicides out there,0.97
03:32:30.660he would be stupid to have not thrown those out of the table during that plea deal,0.88
03:32:36.500Because now he can still be prosecuted, prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, including the death penalty on those cases.0.99
03:32:44.840So the court held a hearing, of course, and did allow victim testimony, which is so important.
03:32:53.080And one of those to testify, we have a short soundbite, was a woman named Mary Berward, who was only 13 years old when she was attacked by the Golden State Killer.
03:33:06.240Here's that soundbite in part number three.
03:33:08.680On June 25th, 1979, at 4 a.m., Joseph James D'Angelo forced his way into my home, into my life, into my room.
03:33:23.080A child's room, personally decorated with hand-painted hearts and rainbows,
03:33:46.960No 13-year-old should have to find out what a rape kit is.
03:33:53.080and then it turned out i had been ovulating so steps were taken to prevent a pregnancy
03:34:03.020oh my god talk about putting a real face on just a list of victims you know that that brings it
03:34:13.520home not that the judge was ever gonna go light on this guy but it's somewhat cathartic i've
03:34:19.540talked to enough victims to know it's somewhat cathartic to just have your say yeah mary you
03:34:27.740know i had reached out to her about 10 years prior and we chatted briefly on the phone i want to come
03:34:34.540in and have a face-to-face talk it's just too too much for her to do at that point in her life
03:34:39.440but i always had her number in my cell phone and so after the press conference where we announced
03:34:49.100D'Angelo was arrested. I'm driving to lunch to meet the genealogy team. And Mary calls me.
03:34:58.200And I answer it. Hi, Mary. And she asks, and is such a meek voice on the phone. Is it him? Is it
03:35:09.940really him? And I told her, yes, it's him and he will never get out. And she starts to sob.
03:35:19.100And after sobbing for five seconds, 10 seconds, she's just going, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm not upset.
03:35:29.000I am so, so happy. And here, after 30 some odd years, this 13 year old girl, now as an adult woman, you know, those 30 years of trauma were pouring out.
03:35:42.160And, you know, to see her be so strong in confronting him was amazing.
03:40:31.240He's down in ADSEG, administrative segregation down in Coquran.
03:40:37.220And they have what I've been told by a CDC authority is that that's the best location for him.
03:40:45.180They have the most robust ad seg component of any of the prisons in California.
03:40:54.600I mean, based on the history you just told me, I feel like the best way to get him to sit might be to say he's not man enough to do it.
03:41:00.700well that's you know what we've talked a variety of strategies on what would make him
03:41:08.860most willing to talk and right that that conversation is ongoing what about you now
03:41:17.380you got your man you got your house in colorado you got your retirement your pension now what
03:41:24.580well my retirement hasn't gone the way i thought it was going to go
03:41:30.360Um, so, you know, I obviously have gotten very involved on the media side of things, uh, both TV as well as podcasting, um, and I'm pursuing those opportunities.
03:41:45.220And, and I really, in many ways, they keep me involved because I focus in on projects where I can help out on the case.
03:41:54.560I can help law enforcement, you know, consult and not just tell a story.
03:41:59.160You know, that's I that's going to be my goal moving forward is to continue to take on projects where, you know, let's see if we can get other family members answers as to what happened.
03:42:10.140I don't see you just doing golf and fishing and skiing, but it would be nice, given the way you've lived, if you could get a bit more of that into your day.
04:33:38.140That's a nice little touch, though, with the French bulldog.
04:33:40.040and the crazy thing is that guy's like the sweetest man in the world i i i feel terrible
04:33:44.580for that guy and he he took it really well like as far as like i even seen him recently like on
04:33:49.700twitter like promoting the documentary yeah um no way yeah so he's a you know i feel i feel sorry
04:33:57.100for him but it's a it's a you know hopefully he's not too upset about it at this point i was actually
04:34:01.640shocked he um he did that scene because when we listened to sorby's trial there was like a dial
04:34:07.660in thing during covid i i truly felt the worst for him out of like every victim because he didn't
04:34:13.640invest anything he's like teaching a class one day and then like the mounties and the fbi roll
04:34:19.480up and they're like we need to talk to you um and apparently he's like the sweetest guy ever so
04:34:24.000he seems pretty sweet who wrote the obit who came up with the french bulldog stanley i'm just
04:34:29.440curious that's definitely a sorby thing as soon as you hear french bulldog i think of sorby or
04:34:34.880bird friend, if anything, but I was never a French bulldog guy. It's incredible. And now you need a
04:34:43.060new fake CEO. And this is where your grandpa comes in, your 79 year old grandpa. So you put
04:34:49.200his picture on there and a new profile fake for him. And not surprisingly, Nathaniel was not fooled
04:34:57.560and pretty soon unearthed the fact that this is your grandpa and not, not another Harvard grad.
04:35:05.760Yeah. No, I don't think we put him even as a Harvard grad. We used his real background and we just put his real name as the CEO. So like essentially I even asked him before I did it, which I feel bad that I even asked him, but it was a weird one because he was like on his deathbed at that point.
04:35:25.160hmm okay so but he has no experience in this lane so it was clearly just a figurehead that
04:35:31.700you know was meant to stave off further questions it didn't work and then just as things are looking
04:35:37.660pretty dire like the new york times is on to you i think the new york times piece had hit
04:35:42.740and it was extremely unfavorable like a like the like the tech guy who mistook you for another
04:35:51.180company and wrote this favorable article. In come the South Koreans and resurrected Centratech
04:36:00.160for no good apparent reason. I don't understand at all how they sniffed around and said,0.95
04:36:07.820sure, I want in. So explain what happened with them.
04:36:11.920Yeah. So even though the New York Times article was bad and people make it sound more dire than
04:36:17.580the situation was no one started taking their money out everybody because the price was being
04:36:23.160controlled on the back end by me uh it kept going up everybody was see that they'd be like oh the
04:36:28.560new york times is just this is a hit piece they were just like no matter what would happen as
04:36:33.920long as that price was going up everybody stayed around um and then the south korean thing comes
04:36:40.080about they they came into the chat rooms and they're like oh we want to invest big money and
04:36:44.120everybody says big money you know like we're like all right yeah sure and they're like you got to
04:36:47.800come to south korea and we're like uh yeah sure we're definitely not going to south korea but
04:36:52.860then right away they just send five million dollars we're like oh shit um i guess we'll go
04:36:57.760to south korea and but i wasn't i wasn't gonna go i was not going to south korea and uh sorby just
04:37:03.500jumps on a plane by himself and goes down there to present basically we hadn't finished developing
04:37:09.780The app was in a prototype stage right there at that point.
04:37:13.840It wasn't finished, but we basically connected it to our bank account
04:37:18.300so that if he swiped his card, it would look as if the app worked properly.
04:45:25.440yeah yeah he was just like some random young kid that was in college
04:45:29.940my god this is crazy he wasn't even a lawyer he wasn't even like he hadn't even graduated from
04:45:36.960college yeah he was uh he was like uh students for trump at the time in in college and he was
04:45:43.980doing this like on the side while he's like just playing video games and stuff my you must be a
04:45:49.380little disappointed in yourself that you didn't spot that particular con right he was kind of
04:45:52.860conning you i yeah i never spoke to him sore we did but yeah he definitely got us he was uh he
04:45:58.420you know i think ray's uh reaction to it is more like well that was a good one like yeah yeah i
04:46:04.740don't like i don't take like i'm not like oh this guy got us like we gotta get him back i mean it is
04:46:09.500what it is we were doing you know scammy stuff and he did the same yeah you're like going over
04:46:16.180on us. Yeah, I guess like, it's not like a respect. I'm not like proud of them, but
04:46:22.180it's again, but they're very audacious who pretends they're a lawyer and starts giving
04:46:27.540advice to a crypto company on whether they're a security. That's really bold. Again, all these
04:46:33.820guys out there who could be using these talents for good. All right. So long story short, you
04:46:38.300wind up cutting a deal with the government because it did, it did turn criminal and you get time
04:46:43.620served. So did you serve any time while awaiting that final negotiated settlement? I did about
04:46:52.420five days in, in Florida when I first got arrested and then they released me to rehab. I did like a
04:46:58.00030 day rehab and I was on house arrest for about a year. And, uh, no, besides that, that was my
04:47:03.640time served. Did the government want you to get more than time served? No, no, they, they didn't
04:47:10.560I think they were like like how they break that down is what people don't realize is they really believe that I was never going to commit another crime.
04:47:18.480And I think, in my opinion, that the government is smart.
04:47:22.420I don't think that they're just like out of pocket, like, oh, he helped us so much.
04:48:25.500And then during that time, I also got married, had kids, and I became a drug counselor for about three years leading up into my sentencing.
04:48:34.140and sorby on the other hand was breaking curfew going to strip clubs so it's like
04:48:38.180there's a pretty clear reason why in my opinion that i got time served and then all my the money
04:48:44.840that i made i owe in restitution so i pay that monthly so it's like i don't i hear what you're
04:48:50.600saying as far as like but that's just what the government's recommendation it wasn't the the
04:48:56.280judge the judge they cut out a small snippet of what the judge was saying to me she gave me a hard
04:49:00.920time at first. And there's just basically that the cooperation was essentially better than what
04:49:08.520they typically have as a cooperator. Okay. So what about the victims? Because, you know, we've been
04:49:18.100laughing and there's some aspects of the story. They're just so sort of extraordinary. You can
04:49:23.340only laugh. But in this case, as with Sam Bankman-Fried, there are people who actually got
04:49:29.760hurt. And they're going to watch this and they're going to want to know what you have to say to them.
04:49:36.320Yeah, no, absolutely. And out of everything, that's the one thing that I truly regret the
04:49:41.000most is that people lost money. They also have, you know, we were charged with a $32 million
04:49:46.740fraud. They have $33.5 million to give back. The only reason that the money has been held up is
04:49:54.280because there's a class action suit to try to be able to control how the distribution works.
04:49:59.760So there's more money than we were charged with in seized assets.
04:50:05.600That's actually also like Sam Bankman-Fried.
04:50:08.300Most of his victims, maybe all, got repaid,
04:50:13.300but the allegation in court was they could have earned more on that money
04:50:17.780had it been invested in the way they thought it was being invested.
04:50:20.860I mean, is that parallel to your case too?
04:51:53.660Ray's very honest about who he is, and I think that's a big part of, like, the draw, and I think it comes across as genuine, and you kind of tend to, especially when you're talking to him and, like, he's being so honest and open with everything, you kind of just tend to forget about that, and you're, like, just talking to, like, a charismatic person, so I could kind of see how that happened.
04:52:18.220do you think he's gonna do you think he's gonna stay on us on the straight and narrow
04:52:24.460like if you had to bet so we i we talk about this a little bit at the um the end of the podcast
04:52:31.600where ray and i were like we went out to atlantic beach and we were sitting there and you know
04:52:37.340there's a big test coming up ray's eventually going to get off probation and then he's not
04:52:42.500going to have these like court mandated drug tests i actually lived with ray the last time
04:52:47.340got off probation and didn't have court mandated drug tests. And after three years or something of
04:52:53.040being sober, he was back on drugs within like a week or something like that. And I, I, there's
04:52:58.920always that fear there. Um, and you know, we could just take it day by day. I don't think it's going
04:53:04.900to happen. And I think he's in like such a good place mentally now compared to where he was earlier
04:53:10.940in his life that I'm less worried, but it's still a worry. What are you doing for a living now,
04:53:16.920Ray? Me? I mean, I'm trying to write a book, did a podcast, and I'm trying to start a new business
04:53:23.060now. I'm afraid. What is it? Just like web development. I mean, I'll definitely never do
04:53:30.360another crime, like a web development company. So talk to me about how you know that, because
04:53:35.900in other interviews I've done with criminals, especially those who spend a life doing frauds,
04:53:41.560they talk about the adrenaline rush from doing it and how that is something that is hard
04:53:46.300in the way a drug addict wants the rush of the drug.
04:53:49.620Some of these criminals need the rush of the adrenaline.
04:53:52.400They really like and are addicted to living life on the edge.
04:57:39.860Like I had two wives at the same time.
04:57:42.080You know, this is the greatest game ever for you with your friends who don't know this story and haven't watched Netflix or listened to the pod.