The Megyn Kelly Show - The Golden State Killer： A Megyn Kelly Show True Crime Special ｜ Ep. 344

00:00:00.420 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.620 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, another one of our true crime specials.

00:00:17.700 The sun was setting behind the ranch-style home in Citrus Heights, a suburb in Sacramento County, California.

00:00:25.100 A Volvo and a fishing boat occupied the driveway. The landscaping was impeccable.

00:00:31.660 A nice house in an idyllic neighborhood. And on that April 2018 day, the police were there too.

00:00:39.840 They were there to finally arrest a man named Joseph James D'Angelo Jr., now known as the Golden State Killer.

00:00:49.060 After four decades and advances in DNA technology, investigators were finally able to identify the serial rapist and killer.

00:00:59.620 The grandfather, who was in the middle of cooking a roast that day, was finally going to be held accountable for his heinous acts.

00:01:09.100 Former cold case investigator Paul Holes had been waiting for this day to come for 24 years.

00:01:15.560 He was integral in cracking the Golden State Killer case and documents his experience tracking down D'Angelo in a new book just out called

00:01:25.600 Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases. And he is with us here today.

00:01:36.180 Paul, thank you so much for being here.

00:01:38.620 Thanks for having me, Megyn.

00:01:39.700 This is such an amazing story. And we owe you such a debt of gratitude. The nation does.

00:01:46.800 Because you just never gave up. Just never gave up.

00:01:50.140 I know it was a team effort for sure.

00:01:52.800 It was. And that's that's nice and humble of you to say.

00:01:55.740 And it was a team effort. I know that's genuine.

00:01:57.800 But you were the person who just couldn't pull yourself away from this thing long after other people were like, you know, it seems to have died off.

00:02:06.500 Let's move on. Your family like, hey, would love to spend more time with you.

00:02:11.060 You couldn't stop. And it's to your credit, because even though when he was finally found,

00:02:16.800 he was 72 years old and we think had stopped the crime spree by then, we never would have known.

00:02:23.920 There's it's important to know. And it gives us such insights into why and how and how we can attack new cases differently and so on.

00:02:31.640 So before we kick it off, I just wanted to give you my own personal thanks and express to the audience how much we should appreciate what you and your colleagues did.

00:02:39.500 I appreciate the kind words. Thank you very much.

00:02:42.160 Of course. OK, so let's go. So wait, you look like such a young man, but you've been at this for so long.

00:02:48.800 You can't be that young. Do you mind if I ask you how old you are?

00:02:51.780 I am. I am 54 years old.

00:02:54.460 Yes, you're a baby. That's very, very young.

00:02:58.300 You know, and I don't I don't know if you realize this, but you actually had a role at the end as we were closing in on D'Angelo.

00:03:05.760 So wait, I know we covered this case on NBC and we spoke with the genealogist and then it was like then you guys caught him a month later after we did a big show on him.

00:03:17.140 And we put back on the show. Yeah, I remember I was on the show with Jane Carson and Debbie Domingo.

00:03:24.140 And I moved up my retirement date in order to fly out to New York to appear on the show.

00:03:30.300 And I had already sat in front of his house.

00:03:32.180 And later on that evening, I told these two victims, I think we're close.

00:03:36.400 And I'm looking at an Auburn cop.

00:03:38.500 And that was after talking to you that day.

00:03:41.140 Oh, my gosh, that's that's really cool.

00:03:43.480 It's cool to just know we had any sort of a role.

00:03:46.080 I remember we were all so into the story and it was just so puzzling.

00:03:49.200 And it's crazy as a reporter to to do that.

00:03:52.180 And then like a month later, he's caught.

00:03:54.240 It's like, wait, what do you mean?

00:03:55.480 After all this time, almost three decades of not being able to find him, boom, there he is.

00:04:00.420 And you're at your questions answered.

00:04:02.620 So this is a long and amazing story from a law enforcement perspective, from a serial killer perspective.

00:04:10.120 And and it was basically took place over a 10 year period.

00:04:12.940 If I have my facts right, 76 to 86. 0.94

00:04:15.140 Well, in terms of, you know, when he kind of evolved into a full blown rapist and killer 0.74

00:04:22.240 that was between those years. 0.51

00:04:23.780 But in the years prior to that, he was he was a fetish burglar and had already killed 0.61

00:04:30.660 a father of a 16 year old girl down in Visalia before he started as a serial rapist up in Sacramento

00:04:37.220 in 1976.

00:04:39.300 So we know that now at the time we know that now because we know his identity, right?

00:04:45.140 So in part, there was always so down in Visalia, 1974, 1975, there was a burglar that hit over

00:04:53.180 100 times in the Visalia area, right around, clustered around the College of the Sequoias.

00:04:59.300 And he was going in and going into the women's undergarment drawers, tossing the women's clothing 0.99

00:05:05.280 around, pulling out women's photos out of the photo albums and stealing blue chip stamps

00:05:10.700 and single earrings and was very prolific at about after about 85 attacks.

00:05:18.740 He goes into a house in the middle of the night and tries to pull 16 year old Beth Snelling

00:05:25.060 out of her bed.

00:05:26.880 She's kicking and screaming. 1.00

00:05:28.460 He actually gets her outside when her father, Claude Snelling, a professor at the College of

00:05:33.120 the Sequoias, tries to come to her rescue.

00:05:35.740 Well, D'Angelo drops Beth, shoots Claude Snelling three times, killing him and then runs off.

00:05:43.180 And so now at this point, he's actually killed.

00:05:47.160 And six months later, he ends up basically up in Sacramento and is now breaking into houses 0.98

00:05:55.140 and raping women. 1.00

00:05:57.560 So that's how it starts. 0.99

00:06:00.940 The crimes escalate.

00:06:02.660 So burglary to rape to murder, torture and on.

00:06:07.900 I mean, is that unusual to see or is it is it more typical to see somebody with like an 0.99

00:06:12.440 MO that they just carry through to the end?

00:06:15.180 Well, you know, in terms of the evolution of the serial predator, you know, we often see

00:06:20.480 them learning how to do the steps to get up to where they are going to be doing the violence

00:06:28.040 on people.

00:06:29.080 You know, they have to get comfortable being on somebody else's property, breaking into

00:06:33.200 the house and get good at breaking into a house when somebody's there.

00:06:36.540 And that's what D'Angelo is doing.

00:06:38.320 And then eventually they go hands on with with a victim.

00:06:42.780 And with D'Angelo, he was sexually assaulting the women and ultimately was attacking couples.

00:06:49.320 Um, before he evolved to just committing homicides.

00:06:55.200 So this is a almost a textbook example of the evolution of a serial predator from a serial

00:07:01.920 burglar to a serial killer.

00:07:04.780 It makes sense in a way.

00:07:06.700 I mean, it's tough to make sense of any murders, serial killings, but it does make some sense

00:07:11.580 to see him graduating to more serious crimes as his confidence builds builds.

00:07:16.220 And as weird as the sound sounds, he was very good at what he did.

00:07:21.640 I mean, he was very good at covering his tracks right from the get go.

00:07:27.000 That that was something he was always excellent at.

00:07:28.980 No.

00:07:30.240 Well, no, you know, he he was a criminal justice major.

00:07:35.820 And then, of course, he was a cop down in Exeter, which is a city right next to Visalia.

00:07:41.820 When he first starts as a Visalia ransacker, he was not very good.

00:07:46.340 He struggled to get into houses.

00:07:48.580 He was seen left and right by people, either victims, residents that lived where he's peeping

00:07:55.000 or people in the neighborhood.

00:07:56.780 But as he is developing in his law enforcement career, he ends up becoming part of a burglary

00:08:06.760 task force and goes to burglary investigation school.

00:08:11.680 And now he's learning how law enforcement is investigating these cases, as well as how burglars

00:08:19.600 commit their crimes.

00:08:20.600 So the public money that went into the law enforcement field basically paid DeAngelo's

00:08:27.300 way to become a better predator.

00:08:29.880 And so when he moved up to Sacramento, he realized all the mistakes he made.

00:08:35.380 And this is what makes him somewhat more of a sophisticated and intelligent offender is

00:08:39.680 he learned from his mistakes and he incorporated methodology, strategies and tactics for now as

00:08:47.700 a rapist, which up in Sacramento, he was known as East Area Rapist.

00:08:51.820 He is employing these methods, strategies and tactics and is very, very good at avoiding 0.90

00:08:58.920 being seen, avoiding witnesses and breaking into houses.

00:09:04.480 So he he basically evolved.

00:09:08.380 Now, knowing who he who is, you know a lot about him.

00:09:12.860 Is he above average intelligence?

00:09:14.960 Like, how would you describe his level of smarts?

00:09:18.920 You know, in terms of DeAngelo, I would say, yeah, he's above average intelligence for this

00:09:25.600 type of offender.

00:09:27.120 You know, he as a cop talking to a sergeant down in Exeter or actually up in Auburn when

00:09:34.880 he was a cop up in Auburn starting in 1976.

00:09:38.380 His sergeant said, you know, he wasn't a good cop.

00:09:41.140 He didn't employ good tactics.

00:09:44.600 So, you know, I can discern, you know, in terms of what he employed during the commission

00:09:50.540 of his crimes, that he's a deep thinker.

00:09:53.480 He was a forward thinker.

00:09:54.820 And then he utilized, you know, what he learned, you know, in his law enforcement aspects in

00:10:00.700 order to be able to commit these crimes.

00:10:02.620 But he's not very book smart.

00:10:05.940 You know, in fact, his ex-fiancée, Bonnie, who I have become great friends with, you know,

00:10:11.840 she went to school with him at Sac State as he's studying criminal justice.

00:10:16.960 And they took some classes together and he was constantly cheating off of her just to

00:10:21.220 be able to pass his classes.

00:10:23.680 When when was he engaged to Bonnie?

00:10:26.200 Uh, in 1970 ish, I can't remember if it was at the end of 69 into 70, but circa 1970.

00:10:35.140 And that's, you know, we had a case in Davis, California that occurred in June of actually

00:10:42.860 it was beginning of July of 1978, where as he is literally raping this woman, he's sobbing 0.98

00:10:51.460 and he's saying, I'm going to kill you, Bonnie, I'm going to kill you, Bonnie, over and over 1.00

00:10:56.260 again. 0.99

00:10:56.660 So we always knew there was a Bonnie in his life that was significant.

00:11:01.660 We just didn't know who this Bonnie was. 0.52

00:11:04.580 Was this a girlfriend?

00:11:06.160 Was this a wife, et cetera? 0.86

00:11:08.100 And then once we identified him through genealogy, uh, I'm looking through his past, uh, an analyst

00:11:15.660 up at Sacramento found a newspaper article announcing the engagement of Joseph DeAngelo

00:11:21.120 to Bonnie.

00:11:22.340 And that was, that was one of those check marks.

00:11:24.720 Oh, he's got a Bonnie in his life.

00:11:26.960 Well, that's interesting.

00:11:27.760 But of course that doesn't prove that he's the golden state killer, but it was one of 0.51

00:11:32.000 those facts that, Hey, there's something here.

00:11:36.100 What did she say he was like?

00:11:38.060 I'm curious because that was before, you know, the 10 year serious rape and murder spree that,

00:11:43.880 you know, he's known for 76 to 86.

00:11:46.000 How does she describe the then relatively young DeAngelo?

00:11:49.800 You know, the primary characteristic that she really emphasizes is that, um, rules didn't

00:11:58.420 apply to him.

00:11:59.780 Uh, you know, he, he didn't demonstrate anything to her, at least through the course of the

00:12:04.860 relationship, uh, until the very end of that, there was anything criminal about him in terms

00:12:11.760 of indicating that he was capable of violence, but he just didn't care about rules.

00:12:18.440 You know, he would speed, he would go and trespass, you know, in the Folsom Lake area or on the,

00:12:25.080 uh, old Rocketdyne property in Rancho Pordova.

00:12:28.760 Uh, and then he would, you know, he was a thrill seeker.

00:12:31.460 Uh, so he would have her on the motorcycle and try to scare her, you know, as she's holding 0.95

00:12:36.840 onto him, as he's bombing, you know, off road, you know, and, and purposefully just trying

00:12:42.600 to intimidate her that way.

00:12:44.020 So, you know, it w it was an interesting, but short relationship.

00:12:48.640 And then when she, you know, they got engaged, um, when she broke it off, uh, that's when

00:12:55.200 he shows up, knocks on her window at night.

00:12:58.480 And when she opens up the drapes, DeAngelo standing there with a gun pointed at her and

00:13:04.060 basically tells her you're coming with me.

00:13:06.680 We're going to go get married.

00:13:08.020 I think in Reno, she closed the drapes, got her dad, her dad goes out front and this is

00:13:13.840 up in Auburn, the Auburn area and, uh, confronts him and, uh, DeAngelo ends up leaving and Bonnie

00:13:21.560 never talked to him again.

00:13:23.820 Wow.

00:13:24.620 She must consider herself so lucky.

00:13:28.720 She does, uh, you know, absolutely.

00:13:31.280 Uh, but you know, she was so courageous.

00:13:33.960 She, you know, uh, the victim that was on your show, Jane Carson, I introduced those

00:13:40.340 to Bonnie and Jane and Jane actually had Bonnie in the courtroom when Jane gave her impact 1.00

00:13:47.240 statement and Bonnie stood up, couldn't say anything, but she was there and let DeAngelo

00:13:53.380 know I'm here, you know?

00:13:55.400 So she showed tremendous courage to be able to let him know that she recognized that she

00:14:01.600 really was a victim of his, uh, just fortunately he didn't physically attack her like he did

00:14:08.280 the other women in the series. 0.75

00:14:11.080 Oh, that moment of, of her standing up while Jane was there, gave me the chills.

00:14:15.340 Like they, they finally had their say and he was alive to hear it.

00:14:19.820 That's thanks to you.

00:14:21.240 You know, so often it's like even the Jeffrey Epstein case, you know, he killed himself,

00:14:26.540 whatever he died and his victims only gave these impact statements that he never really

00:14:33.160 got to hear.

00:14:34.060 It was to the frustration of the victims in those circumstances is terrible.

00:14:38.280 And, and these women managed to avoid at least that piece of the terror. 0.99

00:14:42.480 They got to confront him, but it wasn't easy.

00:14:45.280 You know, I saw, you know, one of the San Jose victims, uh, she had a large contingent of

00:14:52.080 her family in the courtroom with her.

00:14:53.820 She gave her statement.

00:14:54.900 I happened to be out in the lobby outside the courtroom when she walked out and she literally 1.00

00:15:00.360 collapsed after giving her statement, her family had to hold her up.

00:15:04.140 So, you know, this really underscores, you know, to this day, you know, how traumatized,

00:15:10.480 you know, these families are, these victims who were personally attacked as well as the

00:15:15.840 families that lost their loved ones.

00:15:18.340 He was so cruel in the way he pursued these attacks.

00:15:23.560 He was clearly a sadist.

00:15:26.600 I mean, he enjoyed the torture and harming of others and the suffering seemed to be part 0.83

00:15:32.340 of what he enjoyed the most, not just of the women he was attacking and the men who he

00:15:37.200 ultimately added to the mix, but even of the children who were, who were there in the homes

00:15:42.740 that he went in.

00:15:43.320 He didn't, he couldn't have cared less if he bumped into a three-year-old or a seven-year-old

00:15:48.100 paw.

00:15:49.460 No, well, he used the children against the adults.

00:15:51.940 You know, he knew due to his surveillance, either prior to entering the house or while

00:15:58.460 he's in the house and walking around, he knew they had children and he would threaten the 0.99

00:16:03.360 parents, you know, do what I say or I'll kill everybody in this house. 1.00

00:16:07.940 I'll kill everything in this house. 1.00

00:16:09.740 That was a common phrase that he would say. 0.97

00:16:12.940 But also when, when you start talking about the sadistic aspect of him, he wasn't a physical

00:16:19.900 sadist by classic definition.

00:16:22.220 He was a psychological sadist.

00:16:24.480 You mentioned the fear.

00:16:25.640 That's what he wanted to invoke in his victims.

00:16:29.560 And so he would do things while he's got his victims bound just to get that fear response.

00:16:36.200 And then he would continue after he's attacked them and left, he would call the victims.

00:16:41.380 We have one victim who was attacked in 1977 and in 2001, 24 years later, he calls that

00:16:50.640 victim and tell, and basically says, remember when we played, you know, so he was still wanting

00:16:57.720 to have that victim live in fear after a quarter century.

00:17:03.460 We have one example and you can hear that the torture and how scary this would have been,

00:17:08.160 especially to someone who had been attacked by this guy and lived only to hear him revisit

00:17:15.400 her.

00:17:16.480 Take a listen.

00:17:17.040 This is again, 1978.

00:17:18.320 Hello?

00:17:22.620 Hello?

00:17:23.220 I'm here.

00:17:23.420 My God, it is still scary.

00:17:49.200 It's right.

00:17:49.720 I'm looking at my assistant, Abby, we both like, just get the chills like down your spine

00:17:54.280 at that.

00:17:55.760 And that was the point.

00:17:58.920 Yeah.

00:17:59.420 Well, and that's exactly what he's doing.

00:18:01.300 You know, that's where he wants that victim to know he's still around and to be scared.

00:18:07.240 That phone call, that victim that he called in that call was a very first victim that

00:18:15.340 we know of when he was East Area Rapist, which occurred in June of 1976.

00:18:20.240 And just let me jump in for one second, Paul.

00:18:21.800 Hold on that.

00:18:22.380 Because they call him East Area Rapist first because he started with rapes for the most

00:18:26.420 part.

00:18:26.740 We talked about the burglary, but that was sort of what they dubbed him East Area Rapist

00:18:30.560 or EAR while he was primarily focused on rape. 0.99

00:18:34.240 So if you may hear different names for this guy over the course of this interview, we're

00:18:37.780 talking about the same guy, Golden State Killer.

00:18:39.340 Sorry, go ahead.

00:18:40.780 Yeah, no.

00:18:41.220 And I probably should clarify that he had multiple monikers over the course of his career.

00:18:46.220 East Area Rapist, when he starts attacking the East Area of the Sacramento suburbs, that's

00:18:51.940 when he got to that moniker.

00:18:54.200 And with that first victim, it was June of 76.

00:18:57.240 That recorded phone call came in January of 1978, 18 months later.

00:19:04.960 So he kept on top of his victims.

00:19:08.820 And that victim that he called 24 years later, she had remarried, moved all the way across

00:19:16.080 town.

00:19:16.820 So now she's living in a different location, different last name.

00:19:20.900 Her phone number was under her husband's name.

00:19:23.920 And yet, D'Angelo had that victim's phone number to call her after the Sacramento Bee published

00:19:31.960 an article in the newspaper about how DNA had linked the East Area Rapist in Northern California

00:19:37.400 to an unsolved series of homicides down south committed by the original Night Stalker.

00:19:44.980 It turns out it's all the same guy.

00:19:46.340 I cannot imagine going through that where, you know, you've been attacked, you've survived,

00:19:52.920 you've dealt with it, hopefully, you know, with the help of therapists and friends and

00:19:56.560 God.

00:19:57.460 And then 24 years later, the guy resurfaces to spark the terror all over again.

00:20:04.520 You know, the kids today use that term triggering.

00:20:07.100 This is true triggering.

00:20:08.980 Sure.

00:20:10.700 And, you know, these victims, you know, they suffered a ton of trauma during their attacks.

00:20:17.020 None of them at that point, up until 2001, realized that their attacker would blossom

00:20:22.620 into a serial killer.

00:20:24.360 And in fact, the rumor on the street that many people, when I was doing the investigation,

00:20:28.380 when I was talking to victims or other people in town at the time of the attacks, thought,

00:20:34.400 well, he got killed when he tried to break into house.

00:20:37.200 That was the rumor.

00:20:38.100 They just thought he was he was gone.

00:20:40.900 And then now the phone call comes in and he's with that one victim.

00:20:45.580 He's now letting her know I'm still around and letting law enforcement know, too.

00:20:50.460 I mean, right.

00:20:51.300 Because after 86, was there a question about whether this guy was still alive that the

00:20:55.700 crime spree seemed to be over?

00:20:58.500 Oh, yeah.

00:20:59.020 No, absolutely.

00:20:59.960 You know, and that was, you know, part of the struggles that I had, personally, with

00:21:06.200 my management, if you will, is, you know, I had my boss at the DA's office was saying,

00:21:14.080 oh, Paul, he's dead.

00:21:14.820 Why are you spending so much time on this case?

00:21:17.180 You know, and and I was pretty convinced.

00:21:19.760 No, I think he's still out there.

00:21:22.300 And turns out he was.

00:21:24.760 In fact, when I was on your show, I mentioned to your audience, he could be sitting here

00:21:28.320 watching this show right now.

00:21:30.160 I remember that and we were all freaked out.

00:21:34.280 It is very possible that he is still alive.

00:21:37.140 He's still monitoring the investigation.

00:21:39.240 He's possibly even still watching the show.

00:21:41.540 He could be.

00:21:42.260 He could be in this audience.

00:21:43.700 Oh, well, that's chilling.

00:21:46.540 That was a great moment.

00:21:47.900 We talked about it a lot after the fact with the audience.

00:21:50.140 And then, of course, you did find him.

00:21:51.440 So why did you think he was still alive?

00:21:54.160 Why?

00:21:54.600 Why did you believe that?

00:21:55.460 Because before the phone call, you didn't really have any evidence of that.

00:21:58.460 No, and that phone call was, you know, at that time, you had occurred 17 years prior.

00:22:05.000 You know, there's there's always a possibility he could have died or, you know, been in custody.

00:22:11.440 But in taking a look at the age range, he likely was at the time he was committing these attacks.

00:22:20.380 He most certainly was, you know, at an age that he easily could still be alive at the time that I made that statement.

00:22:29.100 But 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.

00:22:48.100 I thought, no, this this is an offender that has stopped committing these crimes and is living a normal life.

00:22:55.640 And just like the guy that I think is most similar to D'Angelo, Dennis Rader, BTK.

00:23:02.320 You know, I felt the same thing that he just blended back into his life.

00:23:07.040 He was getting older, knew he couldn't commit to these types of attacks anymore.

00:23:11.300 Um, and, you know, the fact that after, what was that, 15 years after his last known attack, he reached out and contacted a victim.

00:23:24.260 OK, this guy can go quiet for a long period of time.

00:23:28.520 And that's where I kind of just put my eggs in that basket, going he's still alive.

00:23:33.820 And quite frankly, he's still a threat to the public and we need to find him.

00:23:38.500 It's just shocking to think that somebody this committed to this level of depravity could stop, could just turn it off one day.

00:23:47.640 Yeah, and that's that's something, you know, the myth out there is that, you know, serial killers, once they start, they don't stop.

00:23:55.300 But we've seen as some of these notorious serial killing cases have been solved.

00:24:02.500 Well, these killers do stop.

00:24:04.240 You know, we go to Gary Ridgway, Green River Killer, or as I mentioned before, Dennis Rader with BTK and interviews with those killers.

00:24:13.760 You know, they have reasons for why they stopped.

00:24:15.920 Gary Ridgway said, well, I got married.

00:24:18.360 Dennis Rader said, you know, in my last attack, there is a man inside the house that I didn't realize was going to be there.

00:24:24.020 I got into a fight and I left scared.

00:24:26.500 I thought I could have been hurt, killed or captured, and I didn't want any of that and I was getting older.

00:24:32.300 And that's part of why I thought with D'Angelo, you know, in his last Santa Barbara attack in 1981, possibly stopped because he got into a physical fight with six foot three Gregory Sanchez.

00:24:44.580 So as these cases have been solved, we're starting to see that there is the possibility that some of these offenders, not necessarily all, but some of them, after committing the most horrific crimes imaginable, have the ability to go ahead and start living a normal life that compartmentalize their past.

00:25:03.960 They continue to fantasize about that.

00:25:06.440 But they are now the family man.

00:25:09.660 D'Angelo was the doting grandfather at the time of his arrest.

00:25:14.580 If my math is correct, he would have been born in 46, 40, 45, 46.

00:25:25.420 Yes.

00:25:26.040 OK, so when he was committing these crimes, he was between 30 and 40 or so.

00:25:30.560 Of the East Area Rapist attacks.

00:25:32.660 Yes.

00:25:32.980 You know, but we were pretty confident Ken Clark from SAC Homicide, who was also, you know, part of the core East Area Rapist Task Force, a Golden State Killer Task Force.

00:25:44.580 He's pretty sure that D'Angelo in 1973 was the Cordova cat burglar, you know, breaking into the houses while people were inside the houses in the very same neighborhood where the East Area Rapist starts up in 1976.

00:25:59.660 I'm I know actually from a high school friend that called in after D'Angelo was arrested through my contacts with SAC DA's office.

00:26:10.560 This friend said we used to commit burglaries as high schoolers in that very neighborhood.

00:26:15.000 So D'Angelo has been committing crimes at least as far back as being a teenager.

00:26:21.840 But my my point in raising the 30 to 40 year old range, which was 76 to 86, is that's you can see it like that's when a man would be probably at his strongest, you know, feeling his most confident.

00:26:34.140 You get in your 40s, you know, things start to change a bit and you could see consistent with what you just told me, maybe the confidence level going down.

00:26:42.180 Well, and as the East Area Rapist and even as the original Night Stalker, D'Angelo, his crimes were very physical.

00:26:49.300 He liked to prowl around the houses and go through backyards and then move through neighborhoods by jumping fences.

00:26:56.960 If 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 Rapist, you know, he is running and jumping fences and is very adept at it.

00:27:13.160 But, 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.

00:27:21.520 And 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.

00:27:28.900 So that's part of, you know, D'Angelo, you know, self-assessing.

00:27:34.840 Can he continue to commit these crimes and and get away with them?

00:27:38.940 And as he's getting older, the risk elevates because he's realizing he's no longer as physically capable.

00:27:45.380 So because we just we did a show on the Zodiac Killer or who our guest believes is a Zodiac Killer.

00:27:51.800 And we did a show on the D.C. snipers, you know, those two guys.

00:27:56.680 And in both of those cases, it seemed pretty clear that the person wanted to be caught.

00:28:01.540 And the Zodiac wasn't actually caught, but, you know, leaving clues and in the sniper case, you know, leaving clues, the tarot card, the notes and calling.

00:28:12.060 Like, it just seemed like it was cat and mousy.

00:28:15.440 But this case seems very different.

00:28:18.080 D'Angelo, to me, seems the opposite, did not want to be caught at all.

00:28:22.280 No, absolutely the opposite.

00:28:24.200 You know, and I've I've actually looked into Zodiac.

00:28:27.560 That, you know, Zodiac cases were in my backyard and I would drive by, you know, I would drive by, you know, the first Zodiac crime scene on my commute into work every day.

00:28:38.960 So, you know, I'm very familiar with the Zodiac case.

00:28:42.700 Now, Zodiac, you think about, you know, first the styles of attacks, you know, with the exception of Lake Berryessa and Napa.

00:28:52.420 You know, he's he's like David Berkowitz out there in New York.

00:28:56.400 He's walking up on young couples that are parked inside a car and shooting them.

00:29:01.980 This is about as cowardly a type of crime that can be committed.

00:29:06.640 But the communication is demonstrating sort of that narcissistic, ego driven attitude, just like BTK.

00:29:15.060 BTK was communicating, you know, with law enforcement.

00:29:19.060 And that's ultimately what got him caught.

00:29:22.080 D'Angelo did not want to get caught.

00:29:24.520 He probably communicated at times during the course of a series to law enforcement calling and dispatch.

00:29:31.320 But he recognized that was too risky to him.

00:29:36.160 And so when he is arrested and sitting in that interview room, he is so shocked that he got caught and so dejected.

00:29:46.080 He just wanted to live out his life, not seeking notoriety like Zodiac or Raider was.

00:29:54.620 Do 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?

00:30:02.320 He would have gone to his grave.

00:30:03.740 I mean, to this day, he has never said a word to us about anything related to the attacks.

00:30:12.140 So only he has answers to so many questions that all of us have.

00:30:16.760 And he hasn't divulged anything.

00:30:19.880 I don't think he likes the idea that now he's being seen as a Golden State killer.

00:30:25.440 And this is what's so important in terms of assessing him for potential, you know, interviews is how does he self-identify?

00:30:33.800 Dennis Raider, BTK, what he's caught, you know, he was the president of his church, was married.

00:30:40.200 He was active in his son's Boy Scouts.

00:30:42.880 But he goes, that's that's just a facade.

00:30:47.540 I'm BTK.

00:30:49.200 That's how he identified in this world.

00:30:51.660 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?

00:31:00.460 And to this day, we don't know.

00:31:02.200 But right now, he's not like saying, hey, you know, look at me.

00:31:05.420 I'm the Golden State killer.

00:31:06.720 He just wants it to be quiet.

00:31:09.060 In discussing the snipers, you know, they they said, like, I am God.

00:31:14.040 Call me God.

00:31:14.800 Things like that.

00:31:15.440 And they seem to suffer from a God complex.

00:31:18.180 I 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. 0.93

00:31:27.500 D'Angelo seems to have been driven by something very different.

00:31:33.520 Yeah.

00:31:34.220 You know, it's very complicated in terms of assessing what his motive is true, you know, inner motive.

00:31:40.620 Some of these killers, that God complex is very real.

00:31:45.260 You know, they control if this person that they're attacking dies and when that person dies.

00:31:52.580 And 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.

00:32:07.800 And this is what they said, gave them that power.

00:32:11.620 D'Angelo, there is a true there's a vindictiveness to him.

00:32:18.900 There's also, you know, the sexual assault on these women.

00:32:23.800 Many of these women was driven by sex. 1.00

00:32:27.320 And that's that's it's often a misnomer that it's all about power and control.

00:32:31.940 Now, there's a sexual aspect to why these offenders are attacking them.

00:32:37.020 They have they have sexualized violence.

00:32:41.060 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 and decided I'm going to come back and show you who I am.

00:33:02.520 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. 0.93

00:33:12.880 And this is a vindictive act.

00:33:15.820 So but until he talks, we don't know exactly why, you know, he's choosing any of these victims in this series.

00:33:23.200 Hmm. There were some clues.

00:33:26.000 He made small statements to various victims that would pique your curiosity and so on.

00:33:32.820 Like I I watched you or somebody he said something to one woman who was like, do I know this person?

00:33:37.760 You know, how do I like there were little clues, but they weren't meant for you.

00:33:42.500 It was just, you know, slips of the tongue where he had revealed a little too much.

00:33:45.680 Well, actually, this is this is going towards the sophistication of D'Angelo.

00:33:53.060 Those weren't slip of the tongue.

00:33:55.040 What he was doing is verbal staging.

00:33:58.180 So you think about typical when we say a crime is staged, you know, this is where evidence has been changed at a crime scene in order to make, let's say, a homicide look like a suicide.

00:34:10.560 So the the offender isn't, you know, draw the attention of the investigation of what D'Angelo was doing was making statements to these victims, knowing that they were going to talk to law enforcement.

00:34:27.320 So he was planting seeds. And any time somebody stages a crime, whether it be the physical evidence or the verbal aspect, that is to try to push the investigation away from themselves.

00:34:41.860 So D'Angelo would say certain things like, you know, as an example, you better not tell the cops you saw my van parked outside.

00:34:50.060 And he said, man, over and over and over throughout the second half of the East Area Rapist series.

00:34:57.780 Guarantee he never drove a van to any of these scenes. He's probably in a motorcycle, driving a motorcycle or another vehicle or, you know, I killed two people down in Bakersfield prior.

00:35:08.280 You know, so he's trying to push. I've already killed, you know, down in Bakersfield. I'm going to do that to you.

00:35:14.400 But he's also wanting the victim to relay that, you know, he is from the Bakersfield area, which he wasn't.

00:35:21.460 And most notably, one prime example is when he's asking this victim where her husband was at that she said Roseville, which is just a city just north of Sacramento.

00:35:31.580 He says he asks, where's Roseville? Like he doesn't know the area from out of town.

00:35:37.660 Well, D'Angelo was a police intern for Roseville PD. So this shows how this staging was working in his mind to try to throw off the investigation again.

00:35:49.780 I mean, absolutely cunning. That's why I asked you what level of smarts did this guy have?

00:35:54.820 Because he sounds, I don't want to say brilliant, but he sounds very intelligent.

00:35:59.580 It's interesting to hear you say, not really. It's just he studied this particular field.

00:36:05.440 He worked in this particular field and he made himself a bit of an expert in how to misdirect.

00:36:12.040 No, absolutely. You know, he's not, you know, he's not going to score off the charts on an IQ test, but I'm not saying he's done.

00:36:20.900 You know, I would say probably to anybody, he's of average intellect based on just me kind of assessing him as a person.

00:36:27.980 But as a criminal, as a predator, he is, he's savvy. And I think you use the term cunning. Absolutely.

00:36:36.740 And he was trained. He was a law enforcement officer and he was smart enough to draw upon that training and those tools in order to be a better criminal, a better predator.

00:36:47.540 Now, those investigating him did suspect law enforcement ties, right?

00:36:54.240 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.

00:37:09.400 If I'm not mistaken, he was a 27-year-old Navy veteran in 1973. He served in the Navy.

00:37:19.180 He served in the Navy back in the 60s. He never, it was during Vietnam War, but he never saw combat. He was on a ship.

00:37:26.640 But over the decades, there was always suspects that came up that were law enforcement or military.

00:37:35.220 And there was some thought, you know, could he have that type of background?

00:37:41.460 I 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.

00:37:55.420 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.

00:38:10.040 I could not say, you know, that for sure, anything he did demonstrated specialized military training or law enforcement training.

00:38:20.200 It just was, he doesn't want to get caught and he's employing those, those strategies.

00:38:26.280 Like he wore gloves at every crime scene, right? That we didn't do very well on the fingerprints.

00:38:31.120 He always wore gloves. He would take the gloves off, you know, when he's sexually assaulting the women from time to time.

00:38:40.260 But we don't have any latents across any of the cases that have matched back to D'Angelo.

00:38:45.380 Of course, every house that you process have latent prints all over.

00:38:49.620 So it's kind of tough to say, you know, leading into the identification of D'Angelo, whether you have the offender's print or not.

00:38:56.460 But it turns out, no, you know, he never left a print that we were able to tie back to him once he was caught.

00:39:03.360 But he's also, you know, back in the back in the 70s, you know, he's wearing a ski mask all the time.

00:39:09.000 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. 0.76

00:39:15.760 And he's telling them, don't look at me or I'll kill you.

00:39:18.680 So he's put in multiple, you know, layers to prevent the victims from seeing his face.

00:39:26.400 So that's, you know, part of my entire pursuit of him.

00:39:30.860 I only knew this this guy as a as a masked man.

00:39:35.380 And then finally, once D'Angelo was identified and he's in handcuffs walking into Sacramento homicide, it was like, well, there you go.

00:39:42.620 You know, I've unmasked him and that's what he looks like.

00:39:45.460 So 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.

00:40:01.940 What he didn't prevent and didn't know about was, you know, he was leaving his DNA all over the place.

00:40:08.060 Oh, yeah. No, we'll get to that. We'll get to the DNA in just a bit.

00:40:11.280 But how do we have composite sketches of him then?

00:40:14.380 You 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.

00:40:21.880 So how do we have that?

00:40:24.180 Yeah, all of those composites that were produced back in the day were produced by neighbors that saw strange men walking in the neighborhood.

00:40:33.680 I can't say that any of those composites are actually D'Angelo today.

00:40:39.400 Some of them may look close to D'Angelo, but I have no confidence in any of those composites.

00:40:45.480 I 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.

00:40:58.580 He wasn't a big fan of the two-story houses.

00:41:01.240 My question was, why didn't the neighbors see him?

00:41:04.740 He struck so often.

00:41:06.380 It's not like one crime every five years.

00:41:09.180 How has he not seen, spotted, and had the cops called on him?

00:41:14.940 Well, most certainly he targeted neighborhoods.

00:41:20.740 Now, just to back up a little bit, you know, victim selection.

00:41:24.780 You know, we don't know how he's selecting all his victims.

00:41:28.320 He's multimodal.

00:41:29.540 Some victims he likely followed home.

00:41:32.240 Some victims he's in a neighborhood prowling and runs across them.

00:41:35.820 Some victims he may have had an interaction with and decided that they fit his needs.

00:41:41.200 But he did choose neighborhoods that had certain characteristics that would minimize the threat of him being seen.

00:41:52.100 And that very first neighborhood that he attacks in, in June of 76, in Rancho Cordova, this Cordova Meadows neighborhood, single-story houses, you know, five-foot fences, which are relatively easy to get up and over.

00:42:06.540 There was no streetlights in that neighborhood.

00:42:09.880 The houses, the windows on the houses and between the houses were situated to where he could easily just walk between these houses.

00:42:19.620 And nobody could see him.

00:42:20.820 They're like dark alleys.

00:42:22.440 So this was a perfect prowling neighborhood.

00:42:24.880 And I believe he chose that neighborhood because he's familiar with it.

00:42:29.640 And he knew that it was tough for people to see him if he employed those types of strategies.

00:42:36.220 But we have examples of neighbors outside seeing a man kind of walk past them, you know, towards a victim's house later on that night.

00:42:48.040 And then they, as they're out front and they look and to see, well, where did this man go?

00:42:53.320 He has absolutely just disappeared into the shadows.

00:42:55.980 So he was very stealthy and he knew how to use lighting to his advantage.

00:43:02.080 Now, I know you have three adult children of your own at this point.

00:43:05.940 As while we're here, is there any sort of advice you want to offer to people?

00:43:10.860 And like, where should we live?

00:43:13.380 Where shouldn't we live?

00:43:14.440 What like we shouldn't live in a neighborhood like that if we can avoid it.

00:43:17.560 Right.

00:43:17.760 I mean, just like what are your thoughts on that, the general safety aspect of that?

00:43:21.640 Well, you know, it is it's tough comparing today to the 1970s in terms of, you know, how are these offenders going to be attacking?

00:43:33.040 You know, most certainly with with my kids, you know, going to college, avoid, you know, the first floor, you know, where there's a first floor window or the doors right there.

00:43:49.260 You know, it's just offenders today have to do different things in order to be able to attack victims.

00:43:57.520 It's relatively rare to see a predator consistently breaking into houses over and over again and getting away with it for any period of time just due to technology, surveillance systems.

00:44:12.400 And, yeah, you know, so there's so much that really limits the type of series that D'Angelo is doing.

00:44:20.980 But predators are now doing different things.

00:44:23.540 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. 0.73

00:44:34.620 But then eventually, once the stroll area started to dry up out of fear, then they go online.

00:44:40.560 You 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.

00:44:49.840 You know, so that's part of how the predator is evolving based on how technology and security consciousness has changed.

00:44:58.260 That is just terrifying.

00:45:02.660 So back to D'Angelo.

00:45:06.420 So he committed several rapes and he, as you point out, he had studied criminal justice.

00:45:12.400 He got a criminal justice degree from California State University.

00:45:14.820 And it seems to me he was actually he was a cop when he was committing the rapes and even what the first two murders, he was still an active duty police officer.

00:45:26.840 Yes, he was.

00:45:27.740 He was a law enforcement officer for everything that happened in Visalia, all those burglaries, including the homicide of Claude Snow.

00:45:36.900 In fact, he was a sergeant at the time that he left the police department down in Exeter.

00:45:44.620 And when he's hired on by Auburn Police Department, he is now becoming the East Area Rapist.

00:45:51.680 And for every single attack in northern California, you know, from Sacramento down to Modesto, Sacramento down to San Jose, 50 attacks.

00:46:02.040 He is an active law enforcement officer and that's part and the two of the double homicide of Katie and Brian Maggiore up in Sacramento.

00:46:11.200 He is a law enforcement officer.

00:46:13.420 It isn't until after all those attacks, when he gets arrested for shoplifting and he's put on administrative leave and then ultimately terminating, does he go down south?

00:46:26.140 And every attack after that, he is wanting to kill or does kill his victims.

00:46:31.540 So that change from, you know, having authority as a law enforcement officer going down south where that authority has been stripped, you know, now he becomes a serial killer.

00:46:43.860 Yeah, just straight up.

00:46:46.380 He's not even trying to do anything else.

00:46:48.960 And we and when you say down south, we're still obviously in California, hence Golden State Killer.

00:46:53.900 Never, never left California.

00:46:56.140 Right. So in 1979, after he disappears up north, he turns out in October of 79, he shows up in Goleta, Santa Barbara area.

00:47:08.520 Goleta is a small town next to Santa Barbara City in Santa Barbara.

00:47:13.580 Does a classic East Area Rapist style attack from up north.

00:47:18.040 But once he's got the, you know, the woman out in the family room and the man bound in the bed, the woman hears him pacing back and forth. 0.99

00:47:25.960 I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. 1.00

00:47:27.960 I'm going to kill him. Well, D'Angelo at this point had already been terminated as a law enforcement officer. 1.00

00:47:34.980 That attack actually goes sideways because the victims end up kind of freaking out once the woman hears this.

00:47:42.480 And then he ends up getting chased by an off-duty FBI special agent who hears the screams in his neighbor's house.

00:47:50.580 But two months later, D'Angelo's back just a block south of that sideways attack and kills a couple there in Santa Barbara.

00:48:00.600 Then he goes down to Ventura and bludgeons Lyman and Charlene Smith to death.

00:48:05.860 Then he's down in Laguna Niguel in Orange County where he bludgeons a couple to death there.

00:48:12.560 He goes to Irvine a couple of times, kills two women there.

00:48:15.940 He goes and attacks another couple in Santa Barbara.

00:48:18.600 You know, so he is now moving through Southern California and killing.

00:48:26.540 And then in 1986, after his last attack on beautiful 19-year-old Janelle Cruz, he stops.

00:48:33.560 You know, and that's one of the mysteries.

00:48:35.400 Why does he stop?

00:48:36.240 And I have my theories.

00:48:37.240 But until he says, you know, why, we just don't know.

00:48:40.360 So what you mentioned, the couple. 0.83

00:48:43.860 So he started off, as we discussed, burgling and raping. 0.84

00:48:46.940 But 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

00:48:56.180 And this is, I guess, right before he crossed over to just murdering, too. 0.72

00:49:00.280 And 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.

00:49:08.480 He'd only attacked women sleeping by themselves in their homes at night.

00:49:13.520 And just speak to that, because it almost seemed like he felt as though he'd been dared or his courage had been questioned.

00:49:22.800 No, no, absolutely.

00:49:23.940 You know, Sacramento Bee has that article.

00:49:25.760 In essence, it says he has never attacked when a man is home.

00:49:31.160 And the attack number 16 up there as East Area Rapist, he goes into a house with a woman and a man.

00:49:43.820 And this is where he breaks in.

00:49:45.740 The couple's sleeping.

00:49:47.100 He wakes them up.

00:49:48.460 He blinds them with a flashlight.

00:49:50.140 He tells them he has a gun. 0.98

00:49:51.660 He's going to, you know, spatter their brains all over the wall if they don't do what he says.

00:49:56.140 And he tosses bindings to the woman and makes her tie up the man face down in the bed. 0.97

00:50:04.180 And then he goes and ties the woman up once the man is somewhat secure.

00:50:08.300 And then ultimately, you know, he would go out and get dishes and put dishes on the man's back as an alarm system and tell the man if he heard, if D'Angelo heard these rattle, he would kill everything in the house would be a common phrase.

00:50:20.180 Or cut off a piece of his wife and bring it back to him or, you know, cut off the fingers of the kids, whatever. 0.94

00:50:26.580 And then he would take the woman out into the family room and sexually assault her. 0.99

00:50:30.800 He was challenged by that Sacramento Bee article.

00:50:34.180 But the interesting thing is, is that he proves in that very first attack with a man present, he could do it.

00:50:41.000 But then two-thirds of the attacks from that point on have men present.

00:50:47.180 So this really underscores that that victimology is something that satisfied him.

00:50:55.180 He 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.

00:51:04.240 And so this is where it gets interesting from a psychological standpoint, is he didn't start doing that.

00:51:11.280 But think about the risk he was taking to break into a house that has an entire family there, a man present.

00:51:19.860 Oftentimes, these men had guns nearby.

00:51:22.380 And yet he's willing to take that risk in order to be able to commit to this style of crime.

00:51:29.320 So I believe internally, he realized, I get more personally out of attacking with a man present than just sexually assaulting a lone female.

00:51:43.060 And the thing with the dishes is bizarre, too.

00:51:45.880 I mean, it was his alarm system, as you point out.

00:51:47.800 Like, if he heard the rattling, he threatened to escalate it.

00:51:52.020 And as far as I understand, all the victims complied with that.

00:51:55.340 I mean, they took him very seriously, and they tried not to rattle those dishes.

00:51:59.320 But D'Angelo was so commanding and threatening.

00:52:05.340 All these males ended up saying, you know, I had no choice.

00:52:10.480 You 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.

00:52:19.160 There were times when the men would get uncomfortable because it is very uncomfortable.

00:52:22.780 You know, their hands would hurt from the tight bindings.

00:52:25.940 Their ankles would hurt from the bindings.

00:52:27.740 They're laying absolutely still.

00:52:30.100 They don't know what's going on.

00:52:31.760 And 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.

00:52:39.280 And D'Angelo was immediately in that room with a gun to the back of the man's head. 0.99

00:52:44.580 And he would cock the hammer and say, do that again, and I'll kill you. 0.97

00:52:49.400 So these men were helpless at this point. 0.99

00:52:54.280 They had no control over what was going to happen to them or their wife.

00:52:58.400 The only thing that they could control was, I have to stay still.

00:53:02.480 And 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 traumatized.

00:53:13.200 But a lot of people forget about the victimization of the man.

00:53:19.560 These 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.

00:53:28.800 After 35 years, they were attacked.

00:53:33.120 So these men were victims, too. 0.99

00:53:35.760 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.

00:53:50.460 In many states, that practically can qualify as a life sentence in terms of the type of crime.

00:53:57.280 You know, so this is a serious crime in and of itself.

00:54:01.560 You've been tortured.

00:54:02.500 These men were tortured.

00:54:04.820 Yes.

00:54:05.500 You know, psychologically, emotionally tortured.

00:54:10.260 And D'Angelo knew that.

00:54:11.260 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, you know, liking the predicament, wanting to do something.

00:54:25.400 And D'Angelo tells him, essentially, you don't like this, do you?

00:54:31.500 Well, there's nothing you can do about it.

00:54:34.080 You know, so this is where D'Angelo is expressing that he has power and control over that man.

00:54:39.480 He loved that.

00:54:40.720 That's what the badge gave him.

00:54:42.120 And 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.

00:54:53.600 Well, it makes sense from his perspective, because otherwise he would just kill the man.

00:54:58.140 I mean, I'm understanding it better listening to you, because one of my questions is, why didn't he just kill the men? 0.90

00:55:02.940 But he wanted to torture them. 0.80

00:55:04.880 He enjoyed that piece of it.

00:55:06.360 He didn't want to just end it for them.

00:55:08.180 No, and that goes to, you know, this is where the sadistic aspect of him, you know, that getting gratification out of the suffering of others, you know, it's psychological.

00:55:22.100 I mean, he wasn't beating these men, you know, he wasn't doing anything that was physically going to hurt them.

00:55:29.220 But he was instilling fear, as he was doing with the women. 0.97

00:55:35.280 So, you know, this is where he is a complex offender from a psychological standpoint.

00:55:41.240 And when he goes down south, and he's starting to kill, and it's really when he's bludgeoning the couples to death, 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.

00:56:01.860 And so he changed in terms of what he needed to get out of the crime, the fantasy of the crime, once he is a full-blown killer.

00:56:13.860 But now, Abe, so before we get to that, you mentioned he lost his cop job around that time, before he moved down south, and he lost it.

00:56:22.380 It's such a weird story that he explained what he did, and like, why would he do this?

00:56:30.140 You know, this well-trained criminal who had managed to avoid capture and all these other crimes.

00:56:38.400 What happened to him?

00:56:40.660 Well, July of 1979, up in Citrus Heights, Sacramento, he's off-duty, plainclothes.

00:56:49.920 He goes into just a local convenience store there and shoplifts dog repellent and a hammer and is caught.

00:57:00.720 And Sacramento Sheriff's responds.

00:57:02.900 He's arrested.

00:57:04.120 And, of course, that's reported back to his police department, Auburn Police Department.

00:57:09.720 And he's now put on administrative leave.

00:57:13.240 So, as you would expect.

00:57:14.920 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.

00:57:27.340 And the police chief told me, we found all sorts of stolen commercial property, like power tools still in their, you know, boxes.

00:57:37.200 Like, he had just taken them out of a store, but had never opened them up or tried to sell them.

00:57:43.240 But that was never, you know, part of the case in chief.

00:57:48.300 It was always the shoplifting.

00:57:49.640 And it's like, why is he taking the risk of, you know, shoplifting, you know, when he's the serial killer?

00:57:58.220 But this goes back to Bonnie's assessment of D'Angelo's personality.

00:58:03.440 Rules don't apply.

00:58:04.620 He got a thrill out of doing these little things.

00:58:07.500 Yes.

00:58:07.800 And he probably was doing it all the time.

00:58:10.060 It's just he got caught this one time.

00:58:11.840 In no way do I mean to compare Winona Ryder to this guy.

00:58:16.780 But remember when she got arrested for shoplifting, and it was at the height of her fame, and everyone was so confused.

00:58:23.380 It's like, why would this very rich, very successful celebrity shoplift?

00:58:28.680 She could afford anything in that store.

00:58:31.000 And there were a lot of reports on why people do that.

00:58:33.980 And it did relate to the thrill of it.

00:58:35.920 You know, there's something, there's a Jones from, like, doing it and getting away with it.

00:58:40.320 No, absolutely.

00:58:42.380 You know, and that is really, you know, you talk about Winona 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.

00:59:00.100 And then he's recognizing he's got fantasies of committing violence against people, which now takes him out, you know, well above the psychology of Winona Ryder.

00:59:09.600 Yeah.

00:59:10.400 Fundamentally, it's that gratification.

00:59:12.300 You know, they it's that thrill.

00:59:13.960 So I read something about the police chief shortly after firing D'Angelo.

00:59:22.020 Like, D'Angelo showed up at his house.

00:59:24.440 He was almost an intruder.

00:59:25.780 Like, what is that story?

00:59:28.180 Well, this is where when I, you know, we were marching down on genealogy and D'Angelo's name came up.

00:59:35.140 And, you know, I was skeptical that this full-time police officer could commit all these crimes across Northern California, like the East Area Rapists did.

00:59:46.320 I end up tracking down the police chief that fired D'Angelo, Nick Willick.

00:59:51.780 And Nick, you know, was telling me about, you know, Nick was the one that was D'Angelo's sergeant when D'Angelo first, you know, came on board up in Auburn, but also ultimately became the police chief and was chief when D'Angelo shoplifted.

01:00:07.320 So Nick is the one that put D'Angelo on administrative leave and started the IA investigation.

01:00:14.820 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 and his daughter comes into his room and says,

01:00:37.460 Dad, there's a man standing outside my window, shining a flashlight into him.

01:00:42.940 And Nick goes, Paul, I rabbited out of my bed and went outside and I could see shoe impressions in the dirt all around the perimeter of the back of my house.

01:00:53.980 And he goes, I know for sure that was D'Angelo.

01:00:57.400 Now, he didn't identify D'Angelo, but he was confident that that was D'Angelo.

01:01:02.220 And when I'm talking to Nick, I'm not letting him know I'm looking at the East Area Rapist or Golden State Killer case.

01:01:07.640 And once I heard that, I mean, that was where, you know, basically the hairs on my arm stood up and I was like, yeah, that's exactly what the Golden State Killer would do if he was being terminated by his employers.

01:01:23.560 That vindictive aspect. I'll show you who I am.

01:01:28.360 That's really when I started to turn about D'Angelo and his potential to be the Golden State Killer.

01:01:36.700 It doesn't mean he was, but it was like, wow, that was D'Angelo.

01:01:40.000 Because he was on he was on your suspects list. Is that what you're saying? But you didn't you had a lot of people on your suspects list.

01:01:45.380 Well, at this point, you know, we were working the genealogy angle and his name came up and I had just eliminated a guy in Colorado or the team had just eliminated a guy in Colorado.

01:01:59.100 And that's when I turned to D'Angelo going, well, I might as well look at this this former cop.

01:02:04.620 And as I dug in, you know, I try to reach out to Bonnie and researching and I'm visiting all sorts of things where he had.

01:02:12.580 But when I talked to that police chief, this is a big phone call. I was just checking a box.

01:02:18.580 It's so painful. It's so painful, Paul, because it's like, I'm sure this poor cop is just kicking himself for not looking into it more back then.

01:02:28.580 I mean, how could he know? Right. But it's like those missed opportunities.

01:02:33.320 Yes. Yeah. No, you know, and that's just that is there is no way he could have at that point in time because D'Angelo shoplifted that he should be considered.

01:02:43.280 And and I know there are probably that the chief received some public criticism after D'Angelo was arrested as a Golden State killer.

01:02:49.580 And I publicly said, absolutely not. You know, basically, he did what he could do to D'Angelo based on the facts.

01:02:56.460 And there's just no connection between the shoplifting and the East Area rapist attacks that that chief could have even put to it.

01:03:05.340 I'm talking about the moment that he he saw somebody had come outside of his house and had shined the light in at his daughter, you know, like, again, not in any way blaming the guy, but it's just like, oh, God, what if he had followed up?

01:03:19.120 What if he had all these moments in time you'd like to go back to and have another look at?

01:03:25.120 Yeah, no, sure. Absolutely. I mean, and that was part, you know, D'Angelo is very good at what he did.

01:03:31.440 And that is the primaries why he his series was as long as as it was.

01:03:39.140 But there were multiple times within the series where he just flat out got lucky.

01:03:44.400 And that was one of those times. Yes. Right.

01:03:47.560 So now he goes south in California and he escalates to just murdering.

01:03:53.460 And when he started just murdering couples, what did he get rid of the sexual assault altogether? 0.96

01:03:59.980 No, he still still sexually assaulted the women. 0.86

01:04:04.200 There's only one attack. Well, two attacks down in Southern California where we don't have his DNA.

01:04:10.720 And that's the first attack that went sideways, where basically he's being chased by the off-duty FBI agent in Valida.

01:04:18.100 And 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.

01:04:29.100 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.

01:04:42.620 So because that attack also kind of went sideways on him, he never got to the stage of sexually assaulting.

01:04:50.820 But down in Ventura, the next attack, and every attack after that, he is sexually assaulting the women and also killing the women and men in the cases where men are present.

01:05:04.320 So that, and that's where it stood, straight through to 1986.

01:05:11.000 And then what happened?

01:05:13.600 Just in 1986, he dropped off the face of the earth.

01:05:20.320 You know, nobody, there's no other cases that we can attribute to him.

01:05:25.840 He's, you know, he's married.

01:05:28.320 His, at the time of the last attack, his wife was two months pregnant with their second daughter, I believe.

01:05:35.920 And, you know, ultimately, they are back up in, up in Citrus Heights, you know, living in the house where he was arrested back in 2018.

01:05:49.320 So it wasn't becoming a father, necessarily, because he was already a dad at the time his wife got pregnant, you know, with their second child, obviously.

01:05:57.020 Right, 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, you know, seven months pregnant with their first daughter, you know, and then he commits this attack at five years go by, and we have nothing in those five years.

01:06:15.040 And then we have May of 1986 in Irvine, that's when he bludgeons 19-year-old Janelle Cruz to death, and his wife's pregnant again, seven months pregnant with the second daughter.

01:06:29.420 But then after that, nothing.

01:06:30.880 Then they have a third daughter, and no idea, you know, from, you know, why is he not doing anything, you know?

01:06:41.720 But as we talked earlier, at 1986, he's 41 years old, so now he's getting older as an offender.

01:06:51.820 His life circumstances have changed, you know, he's got two daughters moving back up to Sacramento's.

01:06:59.080 I think, you know, this is where he is really slipping back, he's slipping into that mindset, I've got to put the serial predator part of me aside,

01:07:07.940 and I'm now going to be, you know, a father, a provider, and then ultimately, you know, he's just becoming a truck mechanic and enjoying life.

01:07:18.140 He's out fishing with his buddies.

01:07:19.860 That's what I was going to ask.

01:07:20.520 So how did he pay his bills after he got fired from the police force?

01:07:24.380 It's a big mystery.

01:07:25.440 We don't know.

01:07:26.960 He hasn't told us what he was doing.

01:07:30.620 We haven't found a job that he was doing during the years as the original Night Stalker.

01:07:37.560 Wow.

01:07:38.000 His wife was an attorney, and I forget exactly when she actually starts making, you know, money versus going to school.

01:07:47.180 But he may have been living off of her for a period of time.

01:07:51.380 Now, I believe that there's enough evidence to suggest that D'Angelo, even as East Area Rapist, was moonlighting as a security guard on construction job sites.

01:08:05.360 And now I've had a relative from down south indicate that when D'Angelo is living in Long Beach, seeing, you know, a couple of security guard style shirts, as well as a gun and a holster hanging in D'Angelo's residence.

01:08:22.760 So 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 power and authority that he had as a full-blown peace officer, but just not quite there.

01:08:37.800 I thought he worked at a grocery store.

01:08:39.820 And that may be something that I just don't know about.

01:08:42.960 And one of the things that I did after this case was solved, I was so burnt, I literally pushed away.

01:08:49.300 And I know there's been a lot of investigation into D'Angelo since.

01:08:53.800 And there may be some aspects of D'Angelo that I have not been updated on.

01:08:57.360 That's fine.

01:08:57.880 I mean, you got your man.

01:08:58.660 That's the thing.

01:09:00.140 I 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.

01:09:05.520 But before we do that, can I just ask you a couple of psychological issues on him?

01:09:08.800 I know in one of the attacks, he the victim survived because this is how we know this.

01:09:14.040 He sat at the end of the bed and started crying and talking about his mommy, like mommy.

01:09:20.480 I don't want to be bad or mom.

01:09:22.120 I can't remember what it was.

01:09:23.800 Do we what do we make of that?

01:09:26.680 You know, well, it actually is.

01:09:28.320 It is one of these oddities.

01:09:30.120 It wasn't just in one case in which victims heard him crying or sobbing, you know, after the sexual assault.

01:09:36.680 And, you know, we don't know for sure, you know, was this an act?

01:09:43.920 Was was he trying to just like with the verbal staging?

01:09:46.980 Was he trying to portray himself differently?

01:09:51.520 But then when he's being interviewed that night that he's arrested and he's being left alone, he's got his head hung.

01:09:59.480 And I'm looking at him.

01:10:01.000 And at one point, I almost see him looking like he's about to cry and he's talking to himself. 0.67

01:10:06.380 And then his neighbors would say that, you know, Joe, crazy Joe would be talking to himself.

01:10:11.880 So I think it is possible that, you know, at a certain point in these attacks, some of the statements he's making to himself is what he does.

01:10:22.840 And the crime from a psychological standpoint, an interesting aspect about D'Angelo is I'm not sure he would be characterized as a true psychopath.

01:10:37.580 Everybody assumes he's a psychopath.

01:10:39.840 He doesn't experience empathy.

01:10:41.980 I saw enough acts that he did to his living victims over the course of 50 attacks where I'm going, you know what?

01:10:48.480 He is he is showing that he is caring about how these victims are feeling.

01:10:53.560 And part of it is M.O., if he if they are getting uncomfortable because they're getting cold, you know, because sometimes they complain about being cold.

01:11:01.000 You put a blanket on him, a pillow under their head.

01:11:04.160 Is this just to keep them appeased so they don't become a problem?

01:11:08.080 Or is he actually truly, you know, showing a level of empathy?

01:11:12.800 And if that's the case, then I question whether he's a psychopath.

01:11:16.300 And then at as time went up, went on during the series, it almost looked like he was struggling with what he was doing.

01:11:25.620 It 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.

01:11:32.900 And then after the attack, that's when this emotional release would happen and the crying would happen.

01:11:39.800 What what about his wife and his daughters?

01:11:42.880 You know, what have they said?

01:11:43.800 Oh, well, the daughters were absolutely clueless about his past life.

01:11:51.840 You know, they didn't even know that he had been a cop.

01:11:55.540 So obviously, D'Angelo and their mom kept a lot of what was happening before the daughters were born secret from them.

01:12:05.220 And the wife, Sharon, you know, she they end up getting married in 1973.

01:12:16.380 She becomes ultimately a divorce attorney.

01:12:18.940 And, you know, she has not really engaged with the investigation to the fullest extent.

01:12:31.000 And I have to be careful about how I I describe this.

01:12:34.560 You know, the Sacramento D.A. asked me not to be too blunt about my thoughts.

01:12:40.620 You know, the only thing that I will say along those lines is, you know, D'Angelo and Sharon separated in 1991.

01:12:50.480 Yet they were still technically married in 2018 when D'Angelo was arrested.

01:12:55.740 And Sharon's a divorce attorney. 1.00

01:12:58.900 So it's really odd that that spousal connection, spousal privilege was kept intact.

01:13:07.400 Oh, that's riveting information.

01:13:10.620 Sharon, what accountability does she have? 1.00

01:13:13.860 What did she know and when did she know it?

01:13:15.840 That's awful.

01:13:16.900 I mean, you got to feel for these daughters who at some point, you know, were delivered the news that their father.

01:13:22.880 I saw the I saw the I saw the middle daughter, the two younger daughters.

01:13:30.160 They were at Sacramento homicide that night and they I saw them sobbing.

01:13:35.680 An FBI agent had been assigned to to basically tell them why their father was in custody.

01:13:42.160 And they both were allowed to go in separately to talk to their dad.

01:13:48.380 And he he basically kicked them out.

01:13:50.420 So I don't know.

01:13:53.480 I've said, you know, you know, they really are victims of his, you know, and it's so sad.

01:14:02.140 And, you know, what's what's pitiful is that they've received death threats, you know, and it's like they have nothing to do with what D'Angelo did.

01:14:10.280 He is solely responsible for these attacks.

01:14:13.200 And, you know, now these two two girls are having to figure out how their life is going to to work moving forward. 1.00

01:14:21.300 Back to the wife, Sharon. 0.75

01:14:23.340 I'll just speculate.

01:14:24.220 This isn't you.

01:14:24.820 But it does make you wonder if in 1991 she found something.

01:14:28.980 You know, usually these serial killers keep some sort of treasures from their crime scenes.

01:14:33.940 They can't let the entire thing go because they're important to reliving the sick moments.

01:14:39.660 And it does make you wonder whether she found something that led her to get out of there, but was smart enough not to.

01:14:47.740 Well, I don't know.

01:14:48.220 Not smart enough.

01:14:48.880 I don't mean that.

01:14:49.460 I mean, most of us would run to the police to say, my God.

01:14:51.980 But she had children and at some point grandchildren.

01:14:55.460 And that does complicate it.

01:14:58.160 Yeah.

01:14:58.400 You know, and I would say 1991 is probably, you know, whatever happened in 91 that caused them to separate is probably just the tip of the iceberg in terms of D'Angelo and Sharon's relationship.

01:15:10.620 Well, did Bonnie shed any light on weird sexual predilections with, you know, anything about that?

01:15:18.280 No.

01:15:18.760 So, you know, outside of his ability to be able to repeatedly have sex in a very short timeframe, that was really the only thing that she brought up that seemed to really stand out to her.

01:15:40.620 Which is consistent with what happened during these crimes.

01:15:43.740 It wasn't just one rape and he was out of there.

01:15:45.720 He repeatedly assaulted the women sexually. 0.82

01:15:48.760 That is right. 0.57

01:15:50.420 You know, and sometimes, you know, sometimes these attacks would last over the course of hours, but sometimes he's repeatedly sexually assaulting, you know, to the point of ejaculation within a very short timeframe.

01:16:03.040 So there is some consistency from a physical aspect with what Bonnie's recollection of their interactions were like.

01:16:09.560 But she does not, she does not remember anything that would indicate that he enjoyed violence, you know, during the course of sex.

01:16:21.740 And quite frankly, D'Angelo, when he's sexually assaulting these women, obviously it's an act of violence, but he is not the type of a rapist that is punching these women as he's having sex with them. 0.62

01:16:37.620 He's only striking them when they fight him back. 0.85

01:16:41.940 And there are times when it appears that he's enjoying and engaging in more of a consensual type of sexual encounter than an actual rape where he's making the woman put high heel shoes on and having her straddle him while he's up on the sofa.

01:16:57.900 Like he's living out a fantasy of being with her versus, you know, these really assertive rapists that are using derogatory terms and striking the women or holding knives against their throats, you know, outside of having to control these, doing things to control the women.

01:17:15.320 D'Angelo wasn't like that.

01:17:20.620 Forgive me for going back to this.

01:17:21.960 And I don't know if there are any lessons that we can extrapolate because every crime is different, but I want one.

01:17:27.100 You know, I want one for myself and for my loved ones and for all the people out there.

01:17:31.960 Is there any lesson from this series of murders on don't comply, you know, run, scream or no?

01:17:40.580 Because it seems like whatever you did with this guy, it was going to end badly.

01:17:46.960 Yeah, you know, this is and I've been asked this type of question, like I'll talk at Citizens Academies and the women will say, well, what do I do? 1.00

01:17:55.300 I'm being attacked.

01:17:56.400 Yeah.

01:17:56.560 And it really comes down to you do have to fight.

01:18:02.380 There's no question from the very beginning.

01:18:04.340 You have to fight.

01:18:05.100 You have to make noise.

01:18:06.600 But recognize that there is a type of offender that that is what he wants. 0.99

01:18:13.020 And that is your sexual sadist. 0.97

01:18:15.200 So a sexual sadist is somebody who gets more amped up. 0.99

01:18:20.820 The more you fight, the more you fight, the more you scream, the more pain that offender can inflict on the woman. 1.00

01:18:26.920 And so there are examples, in fact, of a 1969 victim.

01:18:31.340 You know, she was being attacked.

01:18:33.820 She was trying to fight in the front seat of a car. 1.00

01:18:36.360 And she realized she was going to be dead and she's looking out the window at nature and sunlight. 0.98

01:18:43.580 And she starts stroking the back of the guy's neck as he's raping her. 1.00

01:18:47.960 And the guy literally just stopped. 0.99

01:18:50.520 And he didn't want that.

01:18:53.900 He wanted her fear and her fight.

01:18:56.720 And there is another case example out of the Pacific Northwest of a guy who's using a knife in a pickup truck on a woman.

01:19:05.100 And she realizes she's dead.

01:19:07.260 And she just lays there.

01:19:08.720 And he pushes up and walks out. 1.00

01:19:11.000 This is your sexual sadist. 1.00

01:19:12.480 Once the woman goes limp, he's not getting what he wants. 1.00

01:19:17.740 So my recommendation is always fight, fight, fight.

01:19:21.460 But if that is not working, if this guy is too powerful and he just seems to be amping up the more you fight, just briefly, you know, do the opposite.

01:19:32.820 Give it a try.

01:19:33.440 See what happens.

01:19:34.480 Give it a try.

01:19:35.740 But if that doesn't work, then you've got to fight for your life.

01:19:39.560 You just have to.

01:19:41.040 Yeah.

01:19:41.220 Be a difficult victim.

01:19:42.480 Be a difficult victim, especially in the case of abductions.

01:19:45.700 You know, do not go along.

01:19:47.120 You know, he's got a gun.

01:19:47.980 Get in the car.

01:19:48.740 Do not do that.

01:19:49.640 Run, zigzag, serpentine, yell.

01:19:52.900 Try it right there.

01:19:53.880 Do not get in that car.

01:19:54.840 Yeah.

01:19:55.100 I tell my kids if somebody grabs them and starts, you know, pulling them to a vehicle, you know, and they I don't care if they've got a gun or a knife, you know, you do everything to prevent yourself from getting to that vehicle.

01:20:06.980 You know, doesn't mean being shot or stabbed there is going to be so much better than what they're going to do to you.

01:20:15.360 Once they get you to the location they want to take.

01:20:18.220 Yes.

01:20:18.760 Do not comply.

01:20:20.740 The it does make me wonder about.

01:20:23.000 His childhood, you know, what do we know, abuse, sexual abuse, torture, like what happened during his childhood?

01:20:31.400 You know, I don't have a lot of information on his childhood and I don't think there's a ton of information out there.

01:20:40.740 What 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.

01:20:56.020 And D'Angelo watches these two soldiers rape his sister.

01:21:01.200 He's 10 years old at the time.

01:21:03.860 Obviously, a very traumatic event for a 10 year old boy to see.

01:21:08.160 Um, but in terms of the family dynamics, I have not been updated to see if there's been anything, um, that has been discovered.

01:21:19.980 Yeah, that would explain.

01:21:21.160 And Bonnie's, you know, Bonnie's dating D'Angelo.

01:21:24.800 She's younger.

01:21:25.780 She, I think, was 19 and he's, you know, in his 20s.

01:21:29.780 But she knew, you know, his, uh, his mom.

01:21:33.020 And I think at this time it's his, uh, his stepdad and she said, uh, didn't see anything that was really alarming.

01:21:40.360 You know, his mom was one of the sweetest persons that she had ever met.

01:21:43.920 Uh, and so it wasn't like that prototypical, you know, the, uh, you know, the, uh, overbearing mother and the, you know, drunk, alcoholic, abusive father.

01:21:53.480 Bonnie didn't see that at this point in D'Angelo's life.

01:21:57.580 Okay.

01:21:58.100 So let's go forward to the end.

01:22:00.060 Um, I should spend one minute on, um, Michelle McNamara. 0.64

01:22:05.540 So people may remember this, this piece of the story.

01:22:08.800 She was married to Patton Oswalt and she died suddenly.

01:22:13.020 And he came out and talked about her and her work.

01:22:17.300 And I think that that got a lot of our attention.

01:22:19.200 Like, what's he talking about?

01:22:20.180 This is famous guy.

01:22:21.160 His wife suddenly died.

01:22:22.420 And he was talking about her work on this case.

01:22:25.840 And you came to know her very well and had spent a lot of hours working with her.

01:22:31.660 She was a writer.

01:22:33.280 I mean, she wasn't a cop, uh, on this case.

01:22:37.740 And, um, I thought what you said about, you know, she died of a drug overdose.

01:22:43.140 It looks like, you know, potentially even an inadvertent drug overdose, right?

01:22:47.120 Just taking a bunch of self-medicating, I should say.

01:22:50.160 And, um, yeah, well, I'll let you speak to it, but I know you've said you have to understand

01:22:56.100 what's going on in her life to get the full picture of her death.

01:23:00.640 Right.

01:23:02.820 And that, you know, with Michelle, you know, she initially, she was a true crime blogger.

01:23:10.000 Uh, you know, she loved to write.

01:23:11.600 She was blogging about cases.

01:23:13.080 She found out about this unsolved case and, uh, eventually wrote an article for Los Angeles

01:23:20.900 magazine.

01:23:21.460 And in the lead up for that article, she reached out to the task force and, you know, interviewed

01:23:27.260 each of us.

01:23:28.080 And, and, and Michelle and I, you know, initially I just treated her as, you know, uh, you know,

01:23:33.640 just another journalist.

01:23:34.520 And I was very kind of standoffish, the Joe Friday type.

01:23:38.580 Um, but then as time went on, you know, I recognized she's very bright.

01:23:43.220 Uh, she knew the facts of the case and I really enjoyed, you know, our, at that time, our phone

01:23:49.000 conversations and, and eventually divulged what I was doing investigatively to her, but off

01:23:57.000 the record and was so scared about when her Los Angeles magazine article came out, you know,

01:24:03.280 did she burn me in terms of what I told her and she did it.

01:24:06.780 And she earned my trust.

01:24:08.120 And then we just developed a closer working relationship and a closer relationship, uh,

01:24:13.520 where when she's contracted to write a book about the case, she asked me if I thought that

01:24:18.320 was a good idea.

01:24:19.420 And she reached out to some of the other investigators, but then she came up and we drove around and

01:24:24.140 I drove her to crime scenes and we spent all this time together in a car chatting about

01:24:28.800 the case, but chatting about our personal lives.

01:24:30.760 And that's when we really, really bonded.

01:24:33.040 And then at that point I was wide open with her, uh, what I'm doing.

01:24:37.600 Uh, she was, instead of just writing a book, she now kind of got sucked into the rabbit hole

01:24:43.000 and we're starting to do the investigations.

01:24:44.680 Um, and this is where, you know, this case, it's such a rollercoaster ride of emotions because,

01:24:52.340 you know, you work so hard to develop a suspect and you get excited, you get high that I've

01:24:57.820 got this case.

01:24:58.520 I've got this guy only to have DNA show that it's not the right guy.

01:25:03.060 And Michelle started to experience that rollercoaster ride, uh, you know, which is, which is tough.

01:25:09.920 Um, but also she's talking to the victims, you know, victim, family members, uh, she's

01:25:16.240 recognizing the trauma.

01:25:17.820 She's thinking about these cases and had access to case files.

01:25:21.440 So she knew exactly what this guy was doing, you know?

01:25:25.100 And so now she's experiencing the trauma, you know, that law enforcement experiences when

01:25:31.060 they're working these types of cases.

01:25:32.480 And this is where I think, and I, I didn't know this, but it appears, you know, now she's.

01:25:37.420 She's, you know, self-medicating, uh, and, uh, unfortunately it caught her in one of the,

01:25:44.120 one of the drugs in her system was fentanyl, unfortunately.

01:25:47.300 It deemed, um, an accidental overdose from a lethal mix of Adderall, Xanax, and fentanyl.

01:25:53.040 No one was aware that she was self-medicating, but I know you write in the book, few people

01:25:58.280 know the pressures of the woeful world of homicide.

01:26:01.520 It's a dreadful place and not one to be entered lightly.

01:26:06.060 No one leaves unscathed, not even the hardened professionals.

01:26:10.960 Michelle was a wife and a mom by day and living among psychopaths and their victims in

01:26:15.860 the dark of night.

01:26:17.640 Oh, that's chilling.

01:26:18.940 It says so much, so much, Paul.

01:26:21.720 Well, and you know, one of the last communications I had with Michelle was an email she sent me

01:26:28.440 and she is taking her young daughter to a Girl Scout camp just north of Santa Barbara.

01:26:35.600 And, uh, she emailed me, you know, letting me know, Hey, I'm going to be off the grid,

01:26:40.920 so to speak for a few days.

01:26:42.340 But she goes, it's so surreal to be with my daughter in the car driving past the same exits

01:26:47.980 that the golden state killer would have taken for his attacks in Santa Barbara.

01:26:52.660 And I could only envision Michelle with her cute little girl looking at these exits and

01:26:59.580 starting to visualize the attacks, you know, and you don't want to be with your little girl

01:27:06.840 and thinking about what happened to those victims, you know, and, and, and this is part

01:27:11.300 of those interconnections, you know, that, that, that you make where now your family life is

01:27:16.500 crossing over with your professional life.

01:27:19.560 And it is, it is tough, you know, and, and, and, and there's, you have to, you cope with

01:27:25.600 it, however you cope with it.

01:27:27.120 And, you know, for me, I, I cope, I have my own coping mechanisms and Michelle had hers.

01:27:32.700 Yeah.

01:27:33.140 Like how do you go out after a day?

01:27:35.420 And I've spared the audience the most gruesome details of his crimes because they truly are

01:27:40.720 dark marks on your soul once you've read them.

01:27:43.400 And I'm sure once you've read them at your level, um, how do you go out and have a dinner

01:27:47.700 with your family?

01:27:48.480 How do you watch a sitcom and manage a laugh?

01:27:53.180 Well, that, you know, like that's where you detach.

01:27:57.660 That's where I detached.

01:27:58.900 Uh, you know, cause for me when I was working, you know, I'm always thinking about the case.

01:28:05.420 Um, but you, you, you mentioned the, you know, enjoying a sitcom, you know, to this day,

01:28:10.500 I can't get myself to, to, to read a book or sit down and watch a movie right now.

01:28:15.300 It's where I have just completely, um, tuned, turned away from trying to pursue things that

01:28:27.520 are just entertaining.

01:28:28.580 And, and that's where I have to get myself back, you know, to where I can start enjoying

01:28:34.000 just the normal activities in life.

01:28:36.500 Um, and, and it is, it is hard, you know, that's for it, for people, it's not everybody

01:28:42.260 that gets into this field, but for people who really care about the cases, care about the

01:28:47.780 victims.

01:28:49.220 Those are the people that are the most strongly affected.

01:28:51.680 Because every minute of the day that you're not working on the case, you could be working

01:28:57.220 on the case and working on the case is hugely important.

01:29:02.580 That's just it.

01:29:03.380 You know, and I, I, I've been called on that before, you know, Hey, you're, you're no longer

01:29:07.780 at work.

01:29:08.420 Well, you know, if your daughter was just killed or sexually assaulted, and now the investigator

01:29:15.740 is punching out at five o'clock and going home, I think you'd be a little upset.

01:29:20.300 You're expecting this public servant, the investigator to do everything possible as fast

01:29:27.440 as possible to find out who did this.

01:29:31.180 And that, that's the hard part.

01:29:33.320 That's the balance of working.

01:29:35.080 This type of work is I've got a family, I've got a personal life, but I've also got this

01:29:41.140 commitment and that commitment.

01:29:43.160 When you really get attached to cases, like for me with golden state killer and other cases,

01:29:47.880 you know, that commitment ends up becoming overriding of everything else.

01:29:54.420 When he stopped with the, with the spree, the murder spree in 86, you were, uh, in your

01:30:02.800 late teens, you were not a cop working this case that would come later.

01:30:07.360 That would come later where you picked up a cold case file.

01:30:10.920 And the next thing you knew quarter century had passed and you had devoted the vast majority

01:30:17.440 of your life to this thing.

01:30:20.040 That's right.

01:30:20.760 In fact, 1986, I was a senior in high school.

01:30:23.900 Yeah.

01:30:24.900 So you should get, you got to read the book, which you can see the picture of it behind

01:30:29.400 DePaul now unmasked, um, to find out like his early thoughts on DNA from these crime

01:30:35.580 scenes and how could they be helpful?

01:30:37.080 And like, let's get a, let's get them in the system just in case this guy gets arrested.

01:30:40.880 So there'll be a hit and stuff like you'd been working all of that from the moment you

01:30:45.200 got involved in this as a law enforcement officer.

01:30:47.520 Uh, but let's jump forward to, you know, close to the end when you had a different idea and

01:30:53.600 then you started studying it nonstop, of course, cause you're you about genealogy and what it's

01:30:59.520 not working.

01:31:00.180 We're not getting a hit on this guy just by having the DNA in the system.

01:31:03.340 What's another way we can use the DNA to advance the case.

01:31:08.480 Right.

01:31:08.880 You know, I go back a little bit even further with, with genealogy.

01:31:14.020 I started pursuing a type of genealogy in 2012, thinking this possibly could solve the

01:31:19.760 case.

01:31:20.160 And after five years and hadn't, um, and I was frustrated then just out of a sheer coincidence.

01:31:32.460 I had another case, uh, with an unidentified little girl.

01:31:38.240 She was alive, uh, but, uh, we didn't know who she was.

01:31:41.240 And we're sure she had been abducted from somewhere.

01:31:43.800 And I went into a, uh, a conference call with a detective out of San Bernardino down

01:31:49.000 South, and he had identified her, um, and I was like, how did you do that?

01:31:55.360 And he had gone to a website called DNA adoption.com and worked with a genealogist that was doing

01:32:02.180 a completely different type of genealogy process with DNA than what I had been doing the last

01:32:09.340 five years.

01:32:10.700 So now I reach out to that genealogist, Barbara Ray Venter.

01:32:14.820 And I asked, Hey, with what you're doing to identify that little girl, would it work

01:32:19.800 to identify an unknown offender?

01:32:21.940 And she was like, no, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't.

01:32:26.480 And I sent her what I had, but she didn't know what case it was, but then she stopped

01:32:30.420 communicating.

01:32:31.060 So I was left to my own devices to try to figure out, well, how is this process working?

01:32:35.480 And that's when myself, and then I had a partner on this, Steve Kramer from the FBI, we're doing

01:32:42.140 a deep dive.

01:32:43.420 And since I had the DNA background and I'm literally watching YouTube videos and reading

01:32:48.380 website information, I'm going, Oh my God, this is powerful.

01:32:53.560 And I go, I got excited.

01:32:55.040 This is how this case can be solved.

01:32:57.100 And that's what we pursued.

01:32:58.560 And then we just had to get DNA and I had to get DNA from an agency down South with homicide

01:33:06.100 case where they still had their evidence.

01:33:08.500 And then ultimately Ventura DA's office stepped up and gave us a sample of the golden state

01:33:13.720 killers DNA.

01:33:14.380 So we could do this genealogy process.

01:33:17.560 Okay.

01:33:18.040 So now you've got it and you'd been working with it for a while.

01:33:21.040 You'd been earlier on.

01:33:22.340 And again, people should read the book, but looking at the rape kits that had been taken 0.98

01:33:25.740 from his victims that were no longer prosecutable.

01:33:28.540 So it was okay to, you know, test them and deal with them.

01:33:32.260 But respectful of the DNA samples and all that, you'd been thinking about the DNA for

01:33:36.480 quite some time.

01:33:37.020 So now you're at the point where they give you a sample, you know, this is the killer's

01:33:40.580 DNA.

01:33:41.740 And what year is this 2017 or 18?

01:33:45.260 We are right at the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018 when we get our first DNA results.

01:33:52.980 Okay.

01:33:53.340 So what do you do with that DNA?

01:33:54.920 What's done to it that's different than what was normally done to it?

01:34:01.280 So forensic DNA testing used by law enforcement uses a DNA tool that looks at discrete areas

01:34:13.000 on the DNA that's known as short tandem repeats.

01:34:17.080 It's just right now they're, they're looking at 21 different markers that are going up into

01:34:24.200 the FBI's DNA database, which is called CODIS.

01:34:28.980 The genealogy process is the process that your major genealogy websites do in the background

01:34:38.680 like Ancestry and 23andMe, where you send your saliva sample in.

01:34:44.040 And instead of just looking at 21 markers, they're looking at hundreds of thousands of points

01:34:52.080 across the entire genome.

01:34:53.820 And then once that type of profile, which is now called a SNP profile, is put up into a

01:35:03.060 database and searched against others, it's able to look for other people that kind of

01:35:10.760 cross over and share DNA fragments with you.

01:35:13.780 And the more DNA they share with you, the more closely related they are.

01:35:19.520 And the opposite is true.

01:35:20.760 The less DNA they share with you, the further related they are.

01:35:25.300 And you can get a sense on how close or how distantly related by how much DNA is shared.

01:35:30.860 So you can tell, well, this is likely a first cousin.

01:35:33.720 This is pretty close to me.

01:35:35.040 Or this is a fourth cousin.

01:35:36.800 This is very distantly related.

01:35:38.580 So now with that type of information and a list of potential relatives, it's a matter

01:35:44.820 of just doing traditional genealogy, building family trees back in time until you find where

01:35:50.940 these potential relatives intersect.

01:35:55.080 They're descendants of a common ancestor.

01:35:57.840 But it required them.

01:35:59.000 It required some of the Golden State Killers relatives to have gone through the 23andMe or

01:36:04.560 Ancestry.com process.

01:36:05.920 Or other websites.

01:36:09.020 Yes.

01:36:09.560 Yeah.

01:36:09.740 So these are, you know, with D'Angelo, our initial searches, the closest relatives were

01:36:16.240 third cousins.

01:36:17.320 So they're related at the great, great grandparent level.

01:36:21.100 And for somebody of his generation, these were individuals.

01:36:25.580 The common ancestor were individuals born in the 1840s.

01:36:29.400 Oh, boy.

01:36:29.920 That's not that helpful.

01:36:31.120 So then what?

01:36:32.620 Well, now it's you get this common ancestor.

01:36:35.240 It's like, OK, the Golden State Killer is a descendant from this great, great grandparents.

01:36:40.720 So you have to identify everybody that, you know, are offspring of these, this common 0.76

01:36:48.060 ancestor.

01:36:49.080 And again, it's just genealogy.

01:36:51.040 But part of the complexity is, is people in the 1840s would have 15 kids.

01:36:57.260 Some would, you know, die at birth.

01:36:59.120 Some wouldn't make it to, you know, where they're actually having children themselves.

01:37:04.720 So this tree, as we're building, identifying all the descendants becomes huge.

01:37:12.640 But we know something about the Golden State Killer.

01:37:16.280 He is a man between, born between the years 1940 and 1960 by best estimates.

01:37:22.440 We knew his physical size.

01:37:25.060 And we knew his geographic footprint, you know, from Sacramento down to Southern California.

01:37:31.180 So as we're building these trees, we're now identifying men who had a California connection.

01:37:37.720 And then it's just investigation 101.

01:37:40.180 Could this person, you know, match up circumstantially with the person we're looking for?

01:37:47.480 And that's where we get into just a small handful of individuals that required a little

01:37:51.760 bit further investigative work.

01:37:53.940 And after eliminating each of these other individuals who to this day have no idea they

01:38:00.660 were being eyeballed, that's when I turned to D'Angelo.

01:38:04.860 He was sort of the last one on the list.

01:38:08.180 And what was that like for you before the arrest, before all that, when you got this one last

01:38:13.780 name, as you say, you start to check boxes and it's like, Bonnie, law enforcement, like

01:38:20.960 you start checking the boxes.

01:38:22.720 What was that feeling like?

01:38:23.940 Well, I also had the pressure.

01:38:27.960 I was retiring.

01:38:29.060 So am I going to get this figured out before I retire?

01:38:34.820 And I had been there before.

01:38:37.320 I had multiple suspects.

01:38:39.860 I had other men that had Bonnie's in their past that were eliminated with DNA that were

01:38:44.520 also rapists who had geographic connections to some of the areas.

01:38:48.320 So some of this circumstantial stuff that I'm using to evaluate D'Angelo, well, I had other

01:38:55.380 suspects who had been eliminated that also had that circumstantial stuff.

01:38:58.740 So you kind of become, I was a little bit numb to that.

01:39:03.200 It was just like, okay, there's enough here that requires me to be much more involved than

01:39:09.500 just sitting behind a computer.

01:39:11.220 And that's when I start reaching out and driving up to Sacramento and taking a look at the locations

01:39:17.140 where D'Angelo is at, researching, going into the Sacramento reporter's office and looking

01:39:22.840 for deeds and where he's purchased houses or what properties he's owned.

01:39:26.960 And then ultimately, you know, reaching out to the Auburn police chief who fired him.

01:39:32.560 And once I kind of gathered all that, I was like, oh, this guy now is very interesting

01:39:39.740 circumstantially.

01:39:40.800 We got onto him because of DNA.

01:39:44.500 And he's now what I would classify as a prime suspect, where it's now we should get DNA from him.

01:39:53.200 Um, and my, my bud, Steve Framer was in full agreement.

01:39:58.000 Uh, but now I am, I'm, I'm retiring in two days.

01:40:02.200 Can't you get an extension?

01:40:04.620 No, I couldn't.

01:40:07.580 I couldn't.

01:40:08.080 I made the decision, you know, six months prior and it had to do with personal financial.

01:40:13.000 Isn't that like a fake deadline?

01:40:14.480 Can't you just say, I'm just going to do four more.

01:40:16.280 I'm like, I'm seeing this case through to the end.

01:40:17.940 What does it even matter?

01:40:18.740 Even if you retire, can you no longer work on it?

01:40:20.900 Well, from a retirement standpoint, you know, just the way the pension system works, they

01:40:28.420 really encourage you to retire at age 50, you know, from a sheer financial purpose.

01:40:34.460 But I had made the decision.

01:40:37.160 I'd already been out to Colorado with my wife shopping for homes, you know, and, and we had

01:40:42.680 a schedule to go out.

01:40:44.620 My kids were going to be transferring schools.

01:40:47.200 And so everything in my personal life really was like, this is the time I need to retire,

01:40:52.160 even though we were so close on Golden State Killer.

01:40:56.080 But weren't you allowed to continue working on it even post-retire?

01:40:58.580 Like what would, what would change from Friday of goodbye to the Monday of I no longer work

01:41:04.720 here?

01:41:05.860 Yeah.

01:41:06.260 I, I w I wouldn't have peace officer, uh, uh, privileges in terms of the, the, the access

01:41:11.620 and criminal databases, um, you know, going out and being able to identify myself as a,

01:41:17.540 you know, a sworn investigator if I'm talking to people.

01:41:20.960 So I'm a, I'm a civilian.

01:41:22.260 Once I retire, there's no, like, you know, day pass.

01:41:27.260 Got for a day.

01:41:28.380 Well, the way it worked out though, is that once I did retire the genealogy team that I

01:41:34.260 was working with, which was a group of six of us, they kept me on board.

01:41:39.340 They kept communicating with me as if I was still active, you know, and that's one of

01:41:44.640 those things I appreciate.

01:41:45.820 Of course, you're the expert on the case.

01:41:46.780 They needed your expertise.

01:41:48.240 They needed you as much as you wanted to be with them.

01:41:51.300 And I, yeah, I, I brought something to the table on the case.

01:41:54.540 And, and then ultimately, you know, uh, when D'Angelo is arrested, uh, I helped author

01:42:01.240 the, the arrest warrant and, uh, provided information for the search warrant, uh, you

01:42:06.600 know, up in, at Sac homicide.

01:42:07.920 And, and again, I was so appreciative that's, uh, Sacramento Sheriff's office, you know, kept

01:42:12.360 me involved in the case.

01:42:13.820 So I was able to-

01:42:14.940 You're the grateful ones.

01:42:16.000 They're, they're the grateful ones.

01:42:17.680 All right, wait, let back up though.

01:42:19.620 Cause we got to get to arrest.

01:42:21.260 So now something big needs to happen.

01:42:23.820 You got your prime suspect, but you don't have his DNA.

01:42:28.860 I mean, you may, you may have an old sample of it, but you need a present day sample from

01:42:32.580 this man you've identified as D'Angelo.

01:42:35.840 And, um, tell us what happened there.

01:42:38.260 Cause there were two passes at it.

01:42:40.860 So, yeah, so I, I had driven up to his house and, you know, seeing his car in the driveway,

01:42:47.320 knew he was living there.

01:42:48.560 And that was last, literally the last thing I did, uh, and debated if I should.

01:42:53.800 Get a DNA sample, just knock on his door and say, Hey Joe, this is Paul Holtz and blah,

01:42:58.400 blah, blah.

01:42:58.840 You know, can I get a DNA sample and, and eliminate them?

01:43:02.560 But I decided there was too much on him and drove away.

01:43:05.760 I then retired the next day, but then once I'm retired, uh, we get him under surveillance.

01:43:12.360 And so Sacramento homicide and FBI start surveilling him.

01:43:17.480 And at a certain point he drives to a hobby lobby and, uh, he actually had a hobby of building

01:43:23.820 these, uh, remote controlled airplanes out of wood.

01:43:27.080 So he's going there, hobby lobby as he's building another plane.

01:43:32.160 And, uh, while he's at the hobby lobby, an undercover agent swabs his car door handle,

01:43:39.120 uh, and that's submitted to the Sacramento lab.

01:43:42.180 I happen to be in Colorado Springs buying a house, uh, during this time.

01:43:47.820 And, uh, and I'm getting updated on how the surveillance is going, uh, and, uh, I'm at

01:43:54.540 P.F. Chang's with my wife celebrating putting an offer on a, on a house and, uh, Lieutenant

01:44:01.120 Kirk Campbell from, uh, SACDA's office, you know, is calling me.

01:44:04.680 I figured it's another update on the case.

01:44:06.720 I excused myself.

01:44:07.640 I go stand outside.

01:44:08.980 It's snowing.

01:44:10.580 And, uh, instead of the typical salutation, Hey, Paul, how's it going?

01:44:15.000 It's all, you can't tell anybody this.

01:44:19.220 I was like, Oh, this is there.

01:44:21.100 Here's something.

01:44:21.580 Uh, and Kirk tells me, Hey, I don't know exactly what it means, but we got that car door

01:44:26.920 handle, uh, the DNA results back and, and, uh, uh, the lab's really exciting.

01:44:32.840 Yeah.

01:44:33.280 There's a lot of markers that are matching up with the golden state killer.

01:44:36.540 And I was, and Kirk's not a DNA guy.

01:44:38.080 And I said, okay, Kirk, how many markers?

01:44:41.700 And he said, well, they got, they got 21 markers.

01:44:46.640 Kirk, it's him.

01:44:49.920 So, so now we finish up that conversation.

01:44:54.340 I go back into the restaurant and I'm, I'm now, you know, kind of, kind of in this weird

01:45:00.200 state.

01:45:00.860 I've been on this case for 24 years.

01:45:03.080 I now know D'Angelo is a golden state killer.

01:45:05.840 And so I'm in this numb space emotionally.

01:45:08.940 I sit back down.

01:45:10.620 Uh, my wife is super excited because her fortune cookie is saying, you know, you're going to

01:45:16.500 find your dream home.

01:45:17.460 And we had just put, you know, uh, an offer down on, on the house, the house that I'm sitting

01:45:22.220 in right now, in fact.

01:45:23.300 And, uh, you know, she just happened to say, you know, so, so what did Kirk want?

01:45:29.100 And I, I didn't know what to say.

01:45:30.540 Cause I was like, I'm not going to just say, you know, it's him because I don't want her

01:45:34.460 blowing up in the middle of the restaurant.

01:45:35.800 Right.

01:45:36.160 And she is a DNA analyst.

01:45:38.220 And, uh, so, um, I just kind of look at her and, and she, I don't do anything.

01:45:45.000 And she looks at me and she says, well, are the DNA results back?

01:45:47.760 And I just do a single nod.

01:45:51.040 And she, she was like, well, and I, I didn't do anything.

01:45:54.600 I'm just staring at her.

01:45:55.660 And she goes, no, and all I did is another single nod.

01:46:01.620 And then she's like, practically pushing me out of the restaurant to get into our rental

01:46:06.660 vehicle so she can hear what exactly is going on.

01:46:09.720 And then as I'm letting her know, and she's super excited, that's when Steve Kramer calls

01:46:14.100 me because now he knows.

01:46:15.380 And then it's, it's game on because now it's no longer surveillance.

01:46:19.820 It's, it's, uh, and the rest has to be affected.

01:46:23.340 Interviews need to occur and it's a lot of work.

01:46:27.440 Um, so that's where, you know, I ended up flying back to California.

01:46:32.560 Wait, wait, wait.

01:46:33.740 What did your fortune cookie say?

01:46:36.180 I could, I couldn't tell you.

01:46:37.980 It was one of those days where, you know, I was so, cause my wife was excited.

01:46:43.080 Open up your fortune cookie.

01:46:44.220 And, and I was just so focused on golden state killer.

01:46:47.620 I did it and I just kind of dropped it on the plate.

01:46:50.200 And then that's when she starts asking what Kirk wanted.

01:46:52.320 Right.

01:46:52.680 You know, you make your own fortune, make your own fortune.

01:46:55.100 All right.

01:46:55.320 So you got it.

01:46:55.960 And by the way, my, my wife's a huge fan of yours.

01:46:58.280 She listens to your stuff all the time.

01:47:00.540 Oh, tell her.

01:47:01.100 I said my regards and I'm already a huge fan of hers, um, that I can feel her excitement

01:47:06.460 in this moment.

01:47:07.040 I wouldn't have known whether to leave or to order like a double martini.

01:47:10.240 You know, it's like, Oh, what do I do?

01:47:12.660 I'm not sure.

01:47:13.200 I'm technically retired, but yeah, I think I need to go back.

01:47:15.960 Like, so, but there was, they did a second pass at it.

01:47:18.640 Right.

01:47:18.840 They did.

01:47:19.360 They decided the DA who I also interviewed, um, who was in, who was running this, the woman,

01:47:24.260 uh, forgive me.

01:47:25.240 I forget her name right now.

01:47:26.600 Ann Marie.

01:47:27.080 Thank you.

01:47:27.500 She was like, let's be really sure.

01:47:31.680 Right.

01:47:32.120 And that's when, um, there was a dumpster dive, right?

01:47:35.240 Somebody took his garbage. 0.80

01:47:36.400 You guys took his garbage. 0.98

01:47:37.480 Right. 0.88

01:47:38.220 No.

01:47:38.580 And, and, and in part, you know, the car door handle, of course, multiple people, you

01:47:42.460 know, touch a car door.

01:47:43.480 Uh, and, and so even though everything, the 21 markers, you know, were shared with golden

01:47:49.520 state killer, there was a second person in that sample and DNA.

01:47:53.960 Uh, and, and so that's where Ann Marie, her office, uh, were like, no, we, we want a better

01:48:01.300 sample.

01:48:02.100 So now, uh, trash day is, I believe it was Tuesday or Monday, but Sacramento has a, uh, a very clever

01:48:14.640 way to collect trash without it being noticed.

01:48:17.160 And I'm not going to divulge the process because they like to use that on a, on a regular basis,

01:48:22.300 but they were able to get his trash collected and they, uh, you know, Ken Clark, the, the,

01:48:27.980 the, the, the homicide, a Sergeant from Sacramento and, and Lieutenant Paul Bella, you know, I've

01:48:34.140 heard the story that says they're filtering through the trash that was collected from

01:48:38.260 D'Angelo.

01:48:38.980 They're, they're selecting items that look like the most promising to have his DNA on

01:48:43.880 them.

01:48:44.580 And they got 11 items.

01:48:46.220 And then the last item that they looked at said, Oh, there's a piece of tissue over there.

01:48:50.300 We might as well grab it.

01:48:51.340 What, what would it hurt?

01:48:53.520 Well, that turned out to be the actual evidence item that came back with D'Angelo's single

01:48:59.880 source DNA profile.

01:49:01.340 And at 100% matched the golden state killer.

01:49:05.660 You had your man.

01:49:08.560 That was it.

01:49:09.780 I think in your book, I'm trying to remember, there was a line, something like that.

01:49:12.880 And the face of evil had been identified after all these years, you knew who it was, who'd

01:49:20.180 been taking up your life, your life's work.

01:49:23.980 And you were going to be able to provide that to the victims who had survived his attacks,

01:49:29.580 whose lives he had all but ruined in so many cases and so many lives he had taken.

01:49:34.200 What a huge, huge moment for law enforcement, for you, everyone involved.

01:49:41.000 And I just, I can't even imagine the flow of emotions when you actually got to see him

01:49:44.740 in cuffs and be at the, at the DA's office that night.

01:49:48.220 Yeah.

01:49:49.000 And again, it was, it was such a surreal moment because now that this, this masked man that

01:49:56.020 I'd been chasing for 24 years, there he is unmasked, uh, and such a weird place to be.

01:50:05.860 I can't even describe the emotion because in part, you know, I still had a lot of work

01:50:10.940 that needed to be done that night as well as, uh, the following day.

01:50:15.160 But at the same time, there was a, a sense of, um, accomplishment and it was like, okay,

01:50:23.740 you know, this, this is, this is a big deal.

01:50:27.620 And personally, I am, uh, very gratified that I had a role in getting the golden state killer

01:50:35.720 here in handcuffs, sitting in an interview room. 0.94

01:50:40.300 Crazy.

01:50:40.780 So what did he say when, when the cops, you know, went up to him?

01:50:44.680 I know they decided we got to go now and they got him on this, on his side lawn.

01:50:50.180 What, what happened?

01:50:51.400 Did he say anything?

01:50:52.240 What was he like?

01:50:53.740 Well, again, you know, they, they ended up using a specialized team, uh, because he was

01:51:00.880 such a threat.

01:51:02.940 If you think about who this man is, D'Angelo, he's a law enforcement officer. 0.52

01:51:07.640 He's a serial killer.

01:51:09.080 He has shot at a cop in his past down in Visalia.

01:51:13.640 He had more guns registered to him over the years than what the California, uh, firearms database

01:51:20.820 could print out at once.

01:51:22.360 Um, and you know, we were so concerned that, uh, he would fight, he would be armed.

01:51:31.100 He would take his daughter hostage, grandkids hostage.

01:51:35.400 So, you know, the hope was, is that he would be arrested away from his house, um, and they

01:51:41.540 were going to do a very covert type of, uh, arrest, uh, but that didn't play out.

01:51:48.280 And so they had to arrest him in front of his house, but fortunately he moved himself over

01:51:52.460 to the side yard where he was a lot isolated from, from doors and stuff.

01:51:56.880 And then they approached him and, uh, there was, uh, some interactions and, and those interactions

01:52:03.260 are part of the, the sheriff's, uh, specialized arrest team that I'm not going to divulge,

01:52:09.080 but he was quickly taken into custody by, uh, you know, multiple individuals.

01:52:15.940 Each individual had to control a limb and, uh, he's handcuffed and placed in the back of

01:52:21.520 a van.

01:52:21.940 And then that's when he makes that, that famous statement, uh, I've got a roast in the

01:52:26.500 oven.

01:52:27.380 Yeah.

01:52:27.880 Crazy.

01:52:29.120 So he winds up obviously being charged and he pleads guilty.

01:52:35.220 I mean, there was no way around it.

01:52:36.560 They're really realistically to talk about having him dead to rights that there was just no way

01:52:41.180 around it.

01:52:41.580 He had, he had to plead guilty if he wanted to spare himself the death penalty.

01:52:46.560 Yes, he, he had to plead guilty, but the, the, the notable aspect about,

01:52:51.680 uh, his, uh, his plea deal is he had to admit to everything.

01:52:58.540 So he, over the course of the series, you know, some of the cases in Northern California

01:53:04.980 that were not homicides, he could not be prosecuted for because there were past statute of limitations.

01:53:10.360 And we wanted all of those victims to have that sense that their case was just as important as the other

01:53:21.280 cases that he could be prosecuted for.

01:53:23.700 So he pled guilty to everything that he was charged with, but then he also admitted to all those other

01:53:30.320 cases that he wasn't charged with.

01:53:32.320 So it was a very interesting process that occurred.

01:53:36.240 So he did, right?

01:53:37.420 I mean, he did list the crimes.

01:53:40.060 Do we believe he listed all the crimes for which he was responsible?

01:53:44.880 You know, he, he, he didn't list the crimes.

01:53:47.500 The crimes were, these are the crimes.

01:53:50.200 And then him and his attorneys basically had him plead, plead guilty or admit to them in a court

01:53:56.260 of law.

01:53:57.760 Now, if he has other crimes out there and there are crimes that he could be prosecuted for, 0.97

01:54:03.600 if there's other homicides out there, uh, he would be stupid to have not thrown those out 0.93

01:54:09.940 in the table during that plea deal, because now he can still be prosecuted, prosecuted to the 0.95

01:54:14.900 fullest extent of the law, including the death penalty on those cases.

01:54:18.800 Hmm.

01:54:20.080 So the court held a hearing, of course, and did allow victim testimony, which is so important.

01:54:26.740 It's such an important piece of this.

01:54:28.520 And one of those to testify, we have a short soundbite, was a woman named Mary, um, Burwart,

01:54:35.440 who was only 13 years old when she was attacked by the Golden State killer.

01:54:41.080 Uh, here's that soundbite in part number three.

01:54:43.400 On June 25th, 1979, at 4 a.m., Joseph James D'Angelo forced his way into my home, into my

01:54:56.560 life, into my room, a child's room, personally decorated with hand-painted hearts and rainbows

01:55:06.640 and quotes about love and kindness. 0.99

01:55:11.240 He raped me. 0.99

01:55:12.900 He stole my innocence, my security, threatened my life, threatened the lives of my family. 0.99

01:55:20.980 I was 13 years old.

01:55:23.400 No 13-year-old should have to find out what a rape kit is.

01:55:31.960 And then, it turned out I had been ovulating.

01:55:34.880 So, steps were taken to prevent a pregnancy.

01:55:40.280 Oh, my God.

01:55:42.140 Talk about putting a real face on just a list of victims, you know, that, that brings it

01:55:48.660 home.

01:55:48.940 Not that the judge was ever going to go light on this guy, but it's somewhat cathartic.

01:55:54.560 I've talked to enough victims to know it's somewhat cathartic to just have your say.

01:55:59.140 Yeah, Mary, you know, I had reached out to her about 10 years prior, and we chatted briefly

01:56:07.700 on the phone, but she didn't want to come in and have a face-to-face talk.

01:56:11.460 It was just too, too much for her to do at that point in her life.

01:56:14.660 But I always had her number in my cell phone.

01:56:21.920 And so, after the press conference where we announced D'Angelo was arrested, I'm driving

01:56:27.000 to lunch to meet the genealogy team, and Mary calls me.

01:56:32.680 And I answer it, hi, Mary.

01:56:36.700 And she asks, and there's such a meek voice on the phone, is it him?

01:56:44.880 Is it really him?

01:56:46.800 And I told her, yes, it's him, and he will never get out.

01:56:50.180 And she starts to sob.

01:56:56.140 And after sobbing for five seconds, 10 seconds, she's just going, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm

01:57:03.440 not upset.

01:57:04.340 I am so, so happy.

01:57:07.400 And here, after 30 some odd years, this 13-year-old girl, now as an adult woman, you know, those 30

01:57:15.360 years of trauma were pouring out, and, you know, to see her be so strong in confronting

01:57:23.380 him was amazing.

01:57:25.120 Oh, my gosh, Paul.

01:57:26.680 And the relief she must have felt to know he cannot hurt anyone ever again.

01:57:32.760 He can put no other children, women, men through this.

01:57:37.560 He did speak.

01:57:39.160 He did speak two days later, August 21st, 2020.

01:57:44.700 As you point out, he hasn't said much, but we have a little bit of what he did say in

01:57:49.620 Soundbite 4.

01:57:52.900 I've listened to all your statements, each one of them.

01:58:02.300 And I'm really sorry to everyone I've heard.

01:58:20.060 Thank you, Your Honor.

01:58:21.060 What do we make of that?

01:58:26.540 Well, a little bit of backstory from those victim impact statements is not once did he

01:58:33.180 look at his victims as they were talking to him. 0.97

01:58:36.080 And some of them called him out saying, you're such a coward. 0.97

01:58:38.560 Now, we talked earlier about Diagelo and how vindictive he is. 0.95

01:58:45.600 And he, all along during the course of, you know, all his court appearance, he's been playing

01:58:51.880 this frail old man.

01:58:53.520 We know he's not. 0.99

01:58:54.520 And so here he is being called a coward. 0.82

01:58:57.820 And so he took that moment.

01:59:00.560 He easily could have just leaned forward from his wheelchair and talked in the microphone

01:59:05.160 and said, sorry, in a wimpy little voice.

01:59:08.360 But he chose to stand up, turn and face the part of the audience where those victims were

01:59:15.360 sitting.

01:59:16.340 This is him basically saying, I'm not a coward.

01:59:23.100 And I think his apologies are hollow.

01:59:27.860 He took that moment to psychologically instill fear into these victims once again, because

01:59:35.780 I will tell you, when he stood up, even though he's lost a lot of weight, his physical presence

01:59:41.320 resonated throughout that space, that conference room we were in.

01:59:46.340 I'm sure.

01:59:47.540 So this was him basically, I won't say it on your show, but, you know, sort of an F you

01:59:56.100 to the victims.

01:59:57.340 Yeah.

01:59:57.780 And someone like that, I do believe in one's aura, you know, whatever it is, energy, spiritual,

02:00:05.300 who knows, but they have an evil aura.

02:00:08.420 When you're in the presence of evil, oftentimes you actually do know.

02:00:11.980 You can feel it.

02:00:13.020 And looking at him and knowing what he had done, I'm sure they felt it that day.

02:00:16.140 So it is scary.

02:00:17.620 I mean, it's, it is.

02:00:19.400 I felt it.

02:00:20.100 Hellacious.

02:00:20.640 Yeah.

02:00:20.780 It's like the devil incarnate right there.

02:00:24.100 Nope.

02:00:24.980 So he's in prison for the rest of his life.

02:00:26.920 That's, that's that.

02:00:28.240 He hasn't written a book.

02:00:30.140 He hasn't done a big interview.

02:00:32.240 He, do you think we'll ever know more?

02:00:35.100 He has been contacted, of course, by numerous individuals, outlets, you know, to come in and talk to him.

02:00:48.300 And he's refused every single request.

02:00:52.060 There is hope that maybe he will talk to select individuals from the investigation under certain circumstances.

02:01:02.540 And that's something that we're talking about, and Marie Schubert, myself, as time goes on.

02:01:11.540 Um, and, and I hope we get that opportunity because, you know, there is knowledge to be gained by law enforcement and by the community with what he knows about reasons for his attack and how he committed these attacks.

02:01:29.700 But I don't know when, when that's going to occur, if it's going to occur and, you know, he's, he's not getting any younger and quite frankly, he's probably the number one target in the nation in the prison system for other inmates.

02:01:43.940 So I just hope the prison system does keep him safe, even though that seems contradictory, you know, from considering the horror of the crimes that he, he, he, uh, he committed.

02:01:55.220 But I, I, I really do want to have a chance to talk to him, or I hope somebody gets a chance to talk to him eventually.

02:02:03.880 Is he in solitary?

02:02:06.440 He's in, uh, uh, down in ADSEG, uh, administrative segregation down in Kokoran.

02:02:12.980 Uh, and, uh, they have, what I've been told by a CDC authority is that that's the best location for him.

02:02:20.180 You know, they have the, the most, they have the, the, the most robust ADSEG, uh, component of any of the prisons in, in, uh, California.

02:02:29.640 I mean, based on the history you've 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.

02:02:37.960 Well, that's, you know, what we've talked a variety of strategies on what would make him most willing to talk.

02:02:46.640 And, uh, that, that conversation is ongoing.

02:02:51.400 What about you now?

02:02:53.100 You got your man, you got your house in Colorado, you got your retirement, your pension.

02:02:59.040 Now what?

02:03:02.120 Well, my retirement hasn't gone the way I thought it was going to go.

02:03:05.920 Um, so, you know, I obviously have gotten very involved on the media side of things, uh, both TV as well as podcasting.

02:03:16.120 Um, um, and I'm pursuing those opportunities and, and I really, in many ways, they keep me involved because I focus in on projects where I can help out on the case.

02:03:29.740 I can help law enforcement, uh, you know, consult and not just tell a story, you know, and that's, uh, 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.

02:03:44.420 Hmm. I, I 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.

02:03:56.240 I, I, well, I, you know, out here in Colorado, you know, I've, I've taken up mountain biking.

02:04:01.480 I've got a Jeep where I can go out into the back country and, and what I call my dandelion brakes, where I just kind of get away.

02:04:08.240 Um, but I've been so pulled in so many directions that, you know, those instances of that type of, uh, activity are few and far between.

02:04:17.160 Okay. Paul, what a pleasure. Thank you so much for being here and for telling us the story.

02:04:22.800 Well, thank you very much for having me.

02:04:25.660 And don't forget, I want our audience to go buy your book, support you in your retirement. You've earned it.

02:04:30.740 The book is called Unmasked, uh, and it is absolutely riveting. My team read it and I'm in the process of reading it.

02:04:37.440 And you will not be sorry that you picked this one up. Thanks again.

02:04:40.240 What an incredible journey and a testament to Paul and all the others who worked so tirelessly on this case.

02:04:48.020 Thanks to all of you for listening. Uh, we're going to be back with you again soon.

02:04:51.940 Just a little vacay for yours truly. And, uh, until then you can find all of our shows at youtube.com slash

02:04:59.160 Megan Kelly, or you can download the podcast on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts for free.

02:05:06.020 I'll continue to read your comments on Apple. So let me know your thoughts. All the best.

02:05:13.420 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - June 17, 2022

The Golden State Killer： A Megyn Kelly Show True Crime Special ｜ Ep. 344

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