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imago/ZUMA Press
![Plead guilty: Joseph James DeAngelo aka the Golden State Killer.]()
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Plead guilty: Joseph James DeAngelo aka the Golden State Killer.
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AFP
![The hearing was attended by victims and their families, as the]()
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The hearing was attended by victims and their families, as the “San Francisco Chronicle” reported.
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keystone-sda.ch
![The confession spares the perpetrator a trial with a possible death penalty. DeAngelo has received a life sentence.]()
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The confession spares the perpetrator a trial with a possible death penalty. DeAngelo has received a life sentence.
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imago/ZUMA Press
![Investigators had relied on genealogy platforms that contained genetic information about a relative in their long search for the criminal.]()
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Investigators had relied on genealogy platforms that contained genetic information about a relative in their long search for the criminal.
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AFP
![He left DNA traces on the many crime scenes that only brought him into connection with the crimes much later.]()
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He left DNA traces on the many crime scenes that only brought him into connection with the crimes much later.
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More than four decades after the start of a series of murders and rape in California, a 74-year-old man has been sentenced to life imprisonment, according to media reports. Accordingly, a court in Sacramento ruled on Friday that Joseph James DeAngelo – the so-called Golden State killer – was also not entitled to a possible interpretation of parts of his prison sentence on parole. The defendant pleaded guilty to 13 murders and dozen rapes at the end of June.
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After a series of murders and rape in various parts of California in the 1970s and 1980s, DeAngelo was arrested in April 2018 in a suburb in Sacramento, Northern California. The ex-police officer is said to have murdered a young couple there in 1978. Other districts brought charges in long unresolved cases. Investigators had relied on genealogy platforms that contained genetic information about a relative in their long search for the criminal.
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He escapes the death penalty by admission of guilt
According to the Washington Post, DeAngelo was dressed in a white sweatshirt and a surgical mask in court on Friday. He hardly showed any emotion when the verdict was pronounced. The court’s decision was expected. Because of the confession of guilt, the murderer was spared the death penalty – and the surviving victims and relatives of the murdered a lengthy process with painful testimony.
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During the trial, prosecutors compared DeAngelo to Hollywood serial killer Hannibal Lecter for his “cruel, intelligent and sadistic” murders. With his cold-bloodedness and cruelty, the Golden State killer terrified the West Coast state for over ten years. The first murder in 1975 was followed by dozens of rapes in Northern California, followed by a series of brutal murders in the southern part of the state until 1986.
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He often wore a ski mask and startled his victims with a bright flashlight. On his nightly forays through quiet suburbs he had knives, pistols, ropes and shoelaces with him. He often handcuffed the husbands, raped the women and killed both of them after long tortures. Most of the time he stayed at the crime scenes, helped himself to the refrigerator and stole objects from the houses.
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Perpetrators identified through genealogical websites
He left traces of DNA at the many crime scenes, which decades later became his undoing. During their long search for the fugitive, investigators finally found what they were looking for on platforms for genealogical research that contained genetic information about a relative. In April 2018, DeAngelo was arrested in a suburb of Sacramento. The ex-policeman who was divorced had lived quietly with one of his three daughters.
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The youngest victim was 13 years old. A young couple had married months earlier. Among the dead was a native of Frankfurt who was found dead in her bed in Irvine, Southern California, in 1981. The last victim attributed to the serial killer was an 18-year-old woman who was raped and murdered in 1986.
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The crime series, which had not been clarified for years, also occupied the American crime writer Michelle McNamara. In February 2018, her book “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” was published in the United States. The TV broadcaster HBO commissioned a six-part documentary series. (SDA)
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