Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. It's nighttime. You're sound asleep in your nice, safe, Northern California home. Suddenly, you're woken by a man shining a flashlight directly into your eyes, instantly blinding you.
This suddenly becomes the worst night of your life. That's if you survive. This is what happened to countless people throughout the state of California from 1973 all the way up to 1986. During this time period, 13 people were murdered, over 50 women were raped, and over 120 homes were burglarized.
These horrendous crimes were committed by the same monster who was able to evade police capture for over 40 years. Until some good old-fashioned detective work, with a little help from genetic genealogy, could finally bring a serial killer and rapist to justice. This is Forensic Tales, episode number two, The Golden State Killer.
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast that discusses real, bone-chilling true crime stories and how forensic science has been used in the case. Some cases have been solved through cutting-edge forensic techniques, while other cases remain unsolved.
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Another way you can support Forensic Tales is by leaving us a rating with a review. Now, let's jump right into this week's episode. Hi, everyone. I am really excited about this week's case.
I want to talk to you about one of our nation's most notorious serial rapists and killers who somehow managed to evade police capture for over 40 years. This is a case that hits so close to home for me because many of the crimes occurred in my home state of California.
And even more personal is that a couple of the murders actually occurred right in my very own backyard. This man is accused of being responsible for killing 13 innocent people and raping over 50 women across the entire Golden State. He's sometimes been called the East Area Rapist, the Original Night Stalker, the Visalia Ransacker,
And most recently, he's been called the Golden State Killer. The case will take us from Goleta to Ventura, all the way up to Sacramento, and then back down to Irvine, and several more cities all up and down the beautiful coast of the Golden State.
Many of these places are super close to where I grew up, where I spent my childhood, and even where I currently live right now with my fiance. So this story just feels so personal and real for not only me, but my entire community. And I can hardly believe something like this could even happen.
Now, it's believed that the training ground for the serial rapist and killer who would become known as the Golden State Killer was in the city of Visalia, California. Now, if you're not familiar with this region of California, Visalia is a agricultural city located about 230 miles southeast of San Francisco.
And between April 1974 and December 1975, there were reported over 120 home burglaries right there in the Visalia area. Most of these burglaries involved breaking into houses and the person just rifling through the homeowner's possessions.
Even stranger, though, was that the intruder would often scatter women's underclothing, underwear, all around the house. And they would even steal things like cheap coins, often leaving behind much more valuable possessions.
So this type of criminal behavior was unusual because we typically see home burglaries occur when the offenders are after valuable items, maybe money, maybe expensive jewelry. But the M.O. of this intruder was so distinct and consistent that
Law enforcement officers at the time believed these burglaries were connected and began referring to their suspect as the Visalia Ransacker.
If you're just getting in to the true crime obsession, MO is what we refer to as an offender's modus operandi, which literally translates to method of operation. So a criminal's MO is their particular way or method of doing something. It's usually behavior that is so unique to one particular offender.
This suspect became somebody who was only targeting the Visalia, California area. And this person was simply ransacking the homes, basically breaking in, maybe stealing a couple items, and then just kind of emptying out drawers and leaving behind a mess.
However, the Visalia Ransacker's crimes escalated from simple house burglaries to his very first murder victim. On September 11, 1975, police believed that the Visalia Ransacker broke into the home of 45-year-old Claude Snelling, who worked as a journalism professor at the College of the Sequoias.
Claude Snelling lived on Whitney Lane. And around 2 o'clock in the morning, Snelling woke after hearing some very strange noises coming from the downstairs. So he got dressed a little bit, he left his bedroom, and headed downstairs. Right when he got to the bottom of the stairs, that's when he was confronted by an intruder. An intruder wearing a dark ski mask in his carport.
The masked intruder was attempting to kidnap his young teenage daughter. Now, like any father trying to save his own daughter's life, he started to attack the intruder. But after a short struggle with the man, Snelling was shot twice by the intruder and was killed almost instantly, right before his wife and right before his teenage daughter.
After the shooting and subsequent murder of Claude Snelling, a second shooting occurred on December 12, 1975, when a masked man entered the backyard of a house, kind of near the area the ransacker was known to frequent. By this time, law enforcement officers began surveilling areas that they believed were potential targets for the ransacker.
Detective William McGowan was one of them. Detective William McGowan, who actually happened to be there conducting a stakeout right there inside the garage, saw the masked intruder and attempted to detain the masked man. William McGowan actually fired a warning shot in the intruder's direction, saying,
But somehow the man was able to jump over a fence while retrieving a revolver of his own. The intruder fired once right near Detective McGowan's face and the bullet actually hit and shattered his flashlight. Basically, the flashlight that the detective was holding ended up saving him from becoming a victim himself.
Although this was an extremely close encounter between the Visalia Ransacker and law enforcement, he was once again able to escape and just slip away into the night. Following the December 12, 1975 encounter between Detective McGowan and the Ransacker, the Golden State Killer is believed to have moved from Visalia into the Sacramento area.
Now, again, if you're not familiar with the area, Sacramento is, of course, the capital of California. And it's a very large city, kind of close to Oakland and not too far from San Francisco. This area is often referred to as the East Bay. So this move occurred after nearly 120 reported burglaries in the Visalia area.
We aren't exactly sure why the Golden State Killer decided to move out of the Visalia area. It could be because of his latest encounter with the police where he was almost shot himself. Who knows? But what we do know for sure is that the burglaries in Visalia completely stopped by the end of 1975.
This is around the time in mid-1976 that the Golden State killer's crimes progressed from burglary to rape. The majority of his attacks centered in the unincorporated areas of Carmichael, Citrus Heights, and Rancho Cordova. These are all communities in the east area of Sacramento. Now, similar to the home burglaries,
The killer had a very unique and consistent MO. Essentially, he would stalk middle-class neighborhoods at night, basically in search of women who lived alone in one-story homes, usually homes located near a school, creek, trail, or some other open space that would provide a quick escape.
Now, as someone who lived by herself in a one-story ground-level apartment for many years, this idea of someone doing this absolutely terrifies me. This is why I feel like we can never be too comfortable or feel too safe, even inside of our very own homes.
So ladies, take this opportunity, log into Amazon, buy some pepper spray, maybe an extra lock or two on your door, whatever you got to do. So during this time is when this man became known as the East Area Rapist as a result of this huge increase of rapes that were occurring in the East Area of Sacramento.
Unfortunately, at this time, law enforcement officials in Visalia didn't know about the rapes that were occurring in the East Bay, and the two agencies weren't able to connect the rapes to the earlier burglaries.
Now, this is just another example of why it is so important for different law enforcement agencies to communicate with one another, to share information about crimes. But unfortunately, this doesn't happen too often. Even today, it's not entirely uncommon for police departments to
even from neighboring towns, to just not communicate with one another. And that's exactly what was happening here. Now, even if law enforcement were communicating at the time, it appeared to police that they might be unrelated. Because in Visalia, the main crime was burglary. And now in the East Bay, Sacramento area, burglary.
The majority of crimes were rapes. They weren't home burglaries. So on the outside, it would be totally reasonable to believe that police in this case were looking for two entirely different suspects when the entire time there was only one. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are some of your self-care non-negotiables? Maybe you never skip leg day or therapy day.
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That's betterhelp.com. The East Area Rapist didn't just target Sacramento women living alone. He eventually preferred attacking couples. He would break in through a window or a sliding glass door, awaken the sleeping couple by shining a flashlight directly into their eyes, and then he would threaten them with a gun.
And because the attack was so sudden and the flashlight was shined directly in their face, these victims were almost always unable to provide law enforcement any type of description of what this intruder looked like. The victims would be bound with ligatures, often shoelaces found from inside of the home. They would be blindfolded and gagged with towels and
The female victims were usually forced to tie their male partner up before she was bound herself by the intruder. I actually read some police reports that described the bindings as being so tight that the victim's hands were numb for hours, even after being untied. I think this speaks to the skill and the strength of the intruder.
And it tells police that this most likely isn't his first time doing this. Next, he would separate the couple. One person would usually be in the bedroom, typically the female, and then the male would be left outside. Oftentimes, he would stack dishes found from the kitchen and he would place the dishes on the man's back.
And he would threaten to kill everybody in the house if he so much as heard a rattle from the dishes. Next, he would move the woman, again, into the bedroom, typically, where she would be repeatedly raped. This would go on often for hours. As someone who studied forensic psychology in grad school, I
I always thought that the unique behavior of criminals was so fascinating. And the one thing that stands out about the East Area rapist behavior is that he would often spend hours and hours inside of his victims' homes after the rapes would take place. And even while the couple is still tied up somewhere in the house.
He would do odd things like ransack the closets and drawers throughout the home, and he would even drink beer and eat some food in the kitchen. This was all occurring while the victims were still tied up.
Eventually, he would creep away from the house, leaving his victims uncertain if he had left or not. They were usually blindfolded, and they had already been threatened that if they made a sound or moved, that he would kill them. So they would often, the victims, lay there for hours, not knowing if he left. Law enforcement believed that he would escape on foot through a series of backyards.
He would then use a bicycle to either bike home or bike to a car parked nearby. This was also problematic to law enforcement because the victims would often remain tied up in an immense amount of fear of being attacked or worse, killed by that intruder for so long. The East Area Rapists would be long gone.
So even when police finally arrived at the scene, it might be hours after their suspect was long gone. There's a lot of discussion and debate about the next part of the story.
Allegedly, during this time, community members of the East Bay Area held a town hall style meeting to basically discuss what was going to be done to try and stop the serial rapist who was attacking members of their community.
And during this community meeting, a man stood up and he really criticized law enforcement and their investigation of the rapes. He was reported as saying, quote, how can anyone get away with raping a woman in front of her husband? End quote. Shortly after this town hall meeting, that man and his wife were attacked.
most likely by the East Area Rapist himself. Because of the attack, it was widely believed that the rapist must have attended the meeting himself, and he was there. He heard the man speak out against him, kind of taunting him.
Now, again, this part is not 100% verified. I have read some articles that say the meeting absolutely happened in 1976, and some articles say it couldn't have happened. So the articles that say that this never happened
argue the fact that the East Area Rapist didn't even begin his rapes in that particular community until 1977, which would have been the year after this supposed town hall meeting. But who knows?
I'll post a couple of the articles and the alleged photo that was taken at this very town hall meeting to the website ForensicTales.com and you can be the judge. So just like what we saw in Visalia, the same man was able to elude and completely escape police capture for several more years while he continued to terrorize both women and men.
The rapes in the East Bay area continued to occur from June 1976 through the end of July 1979. He continued to strike homes in nearby San Juan King County before eventually returning to Sacramento for an additional 10 victims. He attacked five times during the summer of 1978 in Stan Sloss and Yolo Counties,
before he decided to move his crimes to Contra Costa County in October 1979 through July. During this time period from 1976 through 1979, it's believed that the Golden State Killer raped more than 50 women.
Shortly after the July 1979 rapes, the Golden State Killer made a move to Southern California. And similar to what occurred with the move from Visalia to the East Bay, we're not 100% sure why he decided to move, why he even relocated. But as expected, the rapes in the East Bay area completely stopped during this time.
Between October 1979 through May 1986, this same offender became known by police as the original Night Stalker. Again, we see this occur time and time again. The same individual is responsible for all of these crimes, but different.
Law enforcement and the public are completely unable to connect the crimes together. So now, during the late 70s and early 80s, he becomes known as the original Night Stalker. He made his first strike in Santa Barbara, California in October 1979.
It's believed that these attacks lasted until 1981, when his M.O. started to change for the worse. Instead of raping his victims, the Golden State Killer, known locally as the original Night Stalker, started to kill his victims.
Reports indicate that at least seven people were murdered by the original Night Stalker from 1979 to 1986. His victims include Robert Offerman and Deborah Manning in Goleta, California, Charlene and Lehman Smith in Ventura, Keith and Patrice Harrington in Dana Point, Manuela from the city of Irvine,
Sherry Domingo and Gregory Sanchez in Goleta, once again, and Janelle Cruz, also right here from the very city that I live in, Irvine, California. Now, I wasn't born yet when this was happening in Orange County, but it's just so scary, so real to me that this could happen, especially in Irvine.
Because over the past five years or so since I've lived here, Irvine in particular has always been named one of the safest, if not the safest places to live in the entire United States. During this time period, the Golden State Killer really took away any sense of safety or security in so many parts of Southern California.
I can't even imagine what it would have been like to live in a community where it was possible that this rapist and killer could just enter your home at any time and just attack you while you're sound asleep when you're most vulnerable. People really didn't know if they were going to become his next victim or if your neighbor was going to become a victim. This fear continued throughout the entire state of California forever.
Until, one day, it just stopped. The murders that were occurring in Southern California were not initially believed by law enforcement to be in any way connected to the earlier home burglaries or, in fact, the rapes occurring in Northern California.
As we've learned, police agencies just weren't able to communicate and share resources to be able to determine if all of these incidents were connected to a same suspect. This lack of communication and sharing of police resources led local police to follow false leads,
and even falsely charge a man with two of the Golden State Killer's murders. Now, fortunately, DNA evidence was able to clear this individual, but it's obvious that law enforcement would have greatly benefited from sharing information and sharing of vital evidence.
The ability to share information might have even saved a life or two during the long course of the Golden State Killer's terror. The last known attack believed to have been committed by the Golden State Killer occurred in 1986. After the year 1986, the rapes, the killings, just completely stopped.
I think people all throughout Northern and Southern California still remained on edge, just waiting for the next attack. But the next attack just didn't come. After 1986, there would be zero burglaries, zero rapes, and zero murders committed by this offender.
In fact, nearly 20 years would pass before there would even be a break in the case. And although law enforcement had their suspicions and began connecting some of the earlier Visalia ransacking cases to the Sacramento rapes, simply based on the suspect's M.O., they just had absolutely no one to tie them to. They had no names, no suspects, no persons of interest.
On June 15, 2015, the FBI released further information related to the crimes and put it out there to the public. This new information included a new composite sketch as well as some details of certain crimes. And the FBI even offered up a $50,000 reward for any information that would lead to an arrest.
At this time, law enforcement officials were starting to connect the dots using DNA found at many of the crime scenes. But even though police had a DNA profile from many of the scenes, they didn't have a suspect to compare the profile to. This is often the problem faced by crime labs. They have a DNA profile.
but they don't have a second sample to compare it to. This is common if a suspect has no prior criminal record or simply they've never been forced to provide a DNA sample to the state. Right now, right at this very moment, across the entire United States,
have so many unsolved cases in which we have the suspect's DNA, but we either don't have the resources to conduct the proper tests, or we simply don't have a second profile to compare it to.
So law enforcement in this case begin to think of some creative ways that they can find that second DNA profile to be able to test it against the DNA that was found at many of the crime scenes in California. They knew their suspect was out there. They just had to find someone, anyone who was close enough to him.
On April 24th, 2018, authorities finally apprehended 73-year-old Joseph James D'Angelo, the man they believed was the Golden State Killer. Law enforcement had waited 42 long years for this moment. Not only was the announcement that the Golden State Killer was finally in police custody shocking enough, but
But how he was discovered was even more shocking. Police used a new tool referred to as genetic genealogy. Basically, genetic genealogy is the use of DNA tests combined with traditional genealogical methods to connect biological relationships between people. In case you've been living underneath a rock for
Genetic genealogy has become extremely popular in the last few years, largely because of this emergence of DNA kits like 23andMe and AncestryDNA. These DNA kits allow for people just like you and I to pay about $100 to receive a kit at our house. We provide our DNA and
And we turn it back in to find out information regarding our ancestry. I heard an ad just this morning on a local radio station advertising one of these DNA kits. So they are extremely popular. For the record, I myself have not done one yet, but maybe I will. So an aspect to these DNA kits that I don't think many people are even aware of is
is the fact that once you submit your DNA, your unique DNA is no longer private. Meaning, once you sign up to participate in one of these kits, you're kind of signing an agreement with that company that your DNA can be found and it can be studied.
Of course, there are certain safeguards in order to protect customer privacy and things like that. But basically, it's totally possible for your DNA profile to be used for purposes other than finding out you're half European or whatever.
So going back to the Golden State Killer, police saw this opportunity to use DNA kits and to use genetic genealogy to ultimately lead them to their suspect. They believed that if they could locate someone who was genetically close or related to their suspect, they would eventually get their man.
And as I mentioned earlier, the police had the suspect's DNA. They've had it for years. They've been collecting this DNA, this same profile across many different crime scenes. They just couldn't match it to anyone they knew. So they started looking into DNA profiles of people that may be related to their suspect.
If you can imagine, this can be an extremely tedious project. Imagine having one DNA sample and having to compare it to thousands upon thousands of other DNA samples, not even being 100% sure the sample you're searching for even exists. This definitely isn't something that law enforcement can do overnight.
It can easily take agencies months or even years for them to be able to go through all of these DNA profiles, all in hopes of just finding one person related to the individual that they're looking for. Well, after months and months of searching, police finally got a break they were searching for.
Authorities used a free genealogy and DNA database known as GEDmatch. GEDmatch contains just under 1 million genetic profiles, which, when you think about it, is an incredible resource for law enforcement to be able to use this type of technique to solve crimes, especially cold cases.
So authorities were able to first connect the Golden State Killer with his great-great-grandparents using GEDmatch. At the same time, investigators comparing DNA samples found at crime scenes from Visalia to Sacramento to Orange County and everywhere else found
are connecting them all back to the same exact suspect. Once authorities found their match on GEDmatch, it is now a priority to narrow down their suspect search. And they were able to narrow down this search by focusing on things like a person's age at the time of the crimes,
where they might be living. So they had this great-great-great-grandparents DNA that was related to Golden State Killer, but...
That's a pretty wide range of family members to have to search through. So they looked at, again, age at the time of crimes, how old that person would have been in late 1970s, early 1980s, and where they were living. And closely and more closely, one person after the next, their search led them to one single person in that family.
And his name was Joseph James D'Angelo. Once police narrowed their search down to D'Angelo, they obtained his DNA on some discarded trash outside of his residence. Just a friendly public service announcement. In case you didn't realize, your discarded trash does in fact become public access to
becomes free game as soon as you place it out there. You put the trash on the curb, it is free for the taking. So once scientists tested the DNA sample from D'Angelo's trash and then compared it to the samples collected at the various crime scenes, they moved in for the arrest.
There were so many incredibly talented and smart investigators who worked on this case, including one of Contra Costa's cold case investigators, a man by the name of Paul Holes. Paul Holes has made such a huge difference in the advancements of being able to identify potential suspects using both DNA and genetic genealogy.
He will be forever remembered as one of the many dedicated law enforcement authorities that spent so much of their life, time, resources, probably missed a lot of vacations with their families in order to catch the Golden State Killer. If you want to learn more about Paul Holes and some of his work, which you definitely should, I highly recommend him.
He has a super great podcast. He co-hosts it with Billy Jensen, which is also an incredible crime writer that I know all of you true crime addicts will love. The podcast is called The Murder Squad.
The podcast does an amazing job by calling attention to unsolved cases and figures out ways for people like you and I to get involved and help solve some of these cold cases. So definitely check out the Murder Squad podcast. They're great. So currently right now, D'Angelo is in police custody. He is facing 13 murder charges and 13 rape-related charges.
Although there are so many more victims to his crimes, we may never know why or how he was able to get away with his crimes for so long, nearly four decades. But slowly, law enforcement is putting the pieces together on who Joseph James DeAngelo really is. We now know that the ski-masked intruder who was ransacking homes in Visalia
was actually a former police officer with the Auburn Police Department. We also know that the serial rapist attacking women and couples throughout the East Bay Area was a Vietnam War veteran. And we know that the man who evaded police capture for nearly 40 years and was later named the Golden State Killer was a husband and a father.
When Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Sherbert was asked what it was like to finally catch the Golden State Killer, she reported, quote, We all knew that we were looking for a needle in a haystack. We found the needle in the haystack, and it was right here in Sacramento, end quote. And this is all, it's all thanks to genetic genealogy.
It's so great how law enforcement has started to use genetic genealogy and these kinds of mainstream at-home DNA kits to help solve cases. The potential in using this technique is practically endless. DNA kits and genealogy is going to continue to grow and really expand in the field of forensic science.
And I am first in line. I'm so excited to see just how many cold cases are going to end up being solved by using this technique right now. There are literally thousands of cold cases throughout the United States that might be able to be solved by using genetic genealogy. And it's certainly my hope that
that law enforcement agencies can continue to come up with creative ways to improve on this investigative technique. And I hope that it can become widely available for any law enforcement agency who chooses to use it. Like I said,
I personally believe that the possibilities are endless when it comes to using these types of DNA databases and comparing them with evidence collected at different crime scenes. Who would have thought a DNA kit could have solved a 42-year-old cold case like the Golden State Killer? ♪
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