Full Interview: Golden State Killer investigator Paul Holes

not that he does, there are two main reasons, the first is that now that we have identified D'Angelo, he was 31 years old when the east area rapist phase of attacks began in June 1976 of the sacraments, June 1976 he had 31 years old, so he is much older. people thought he was late, like an 18 year old felon, a 22 year old felon, at the time he was 31 when he killed Janelle Cruz, he was 41, so now this is entering the older range for these predators serially and that's a range when you start to see the frequency of attacks decrease with these guys Penry Sanchez and Cherie Domingo, kill Gregory Sanchez in Syria Domingo and then we have nothing for five years until he kills four thousand.

Cruz gets into a physical fight at six foot three. Gregory Sanchez and I believe that the interactions scared him, we see that the same thing happened with Dennis Rader, who is BTK, who entered a house expecting only a woman and a boy Dennis Rader, there is a man there, his brother is fighting with this guy and him. He walked away from him and during his confession said: I could have lost that fight. He could have hurt me. He could have caught me or he could have killed me. I don't want any of that to happen. Also, I was getting older and I realized that he was not as physically capable, so Dennis Rader said he was done and never committed another crime after that, as far as we know.

I think the Golden State Killer possibly had the same reaction after being confronted with Gregory Sanchez and that's why we don't have anything for five years and then what we do have is that by beating 19-year-old Janelle Cruz to death, in her bed, there is no man present in that house, which for the last part of the series her preference was to have a partner there, so I think she is deliberately avoiding a man in that last attack, but five years passed between Sunday And now, what do you think might have caused him to visit a stressor in his life?

We know that his wife was pregnant with his middle child at seven months of pregnancy, it just happens that for Domingo Sánchez she was pregnant with the eldest daughter so for the eldest daughter his wife is pregnant he kills Domingo Sánchez five years later wife is pregnant with the middle daughter ends up killing Janelle Cruz those are stressors in his life why is he an Irvine in 1986 why Janelle Cruz that's a question I don't have an answer to right now. I don't know if he was filming at the time you brought it up, but what happened to the last one? couple the Domingo couple where you think that made him stop, so in that case the criminal, the Golden State Killer, enters Gregory Sanchez's house based on a reconstruction of the crime scene, he is ready, he has a flashlight and now he is face to face with this criminal, the criminal shoots Gregory Sánchez in the face and a bullet enters Gregory Sánchez in the left cheek and exits behind his ear. then she and Gregory Sanchez basically reanimate and regain consciousness.

Now the offender and Gregory Sánchez are in a physical fight. This is a face-to-face combat in which the criminal ends up gaining the advantage and finally beats Gregory Sánchez to death. However, Gregory Sánchez was very physically imposing. In relation to the criminal, Freddy Sanchez is 6 foot 3, the criminal is 510,511, so I think our criminal possibly got scared and got into this physical battle with a guy who was bigger than him and walked away from the scene of crime going. He could have been hurt He could have been killed He could have been caught and I don't want any of that to happen, so we don't have any known attacks after that, just a theory, maybe there were some attacks during that five year span between the case of Domingo Sánchez and Cruz and then that theory might not hold up, but right now that is my best theory as to why we have that five-year gap.

Some people thought he was detained during that five-year span, but we recently found out that in October. of 1982 called the previous victim when she was working at a Denny's in Rancho Cordova and did not call collect from CDC. I think he was actually a customer at that restaurant and he saw one of his previous victims and decided to call her and torment her five years after he attacked her in 1977, so he returned to the Sacramento area in 1982 after having committed all of those attacks in Southern California, except Janelle Cruz. You're saying he called a previous victim while she was working at Denny's, yes, and was she a rape victim?

Vicki, a rape victim, is what she was thinking. She was sexually assaulted in 1977 and five years later, he calls her when she is working at a Denny's in Rancho Oso. You mean 1982, not 92. Sorry, 1982, yes. She, then, the victim was sexually assaulted in 1977 and in 1982 he calls her while she is working at a Denny's in Rancho Cordova. He is back in the Sacramento area even though he has committed all but one of his attacks in Southern California at that time, one of the reasons I always thought this guy is based in Sacramento and always was based in Sacramento, he always came back to Sacramento even though he was moving and attacking in the Central Valley, attacking in the East Bay, attacking in Southern California, his base of operations.

It's the Sacramento area, what was that indicator other than he called someone and back in Sacramento, okay, the indicator is that he had to see her at work, so he's not out of

state

and I couldn't guess that she was working at the dentist, didn't she have any association? with Denny's when he attacked her in 1977 and then how did he know she was actually at work at the time? He had to have seen her there, or followed her from her house, her house was in a different location than when she was attacked five years earlier, I think the most likely scenario is that when she went into Denny's for breakfast, lunch and dinner , he saw a previous victim and couldn't help himself and had to make a phone call to terrify her.

Do you think that in all of his victims, whether it was murder or rape, he took the time to find out who these people are? Yeah, it's not like he broke into a house because the windows or the wooden doors open and they know there are some victims of opportunity. I think most of his victims understood who they were, especially after the fact, now that he was going on the attack. , he would have observed them, he would have understood their patterns, he may not have known their names at the time, often during the course of the sexual assault when he enters once the victims are tied up inside the house, he would normally go to the purse the woman, threw him away and saw the IDs, they took his driver's license, he stole several driver's licenses through his victims, but he read their name and then when he returned to the room, he made sure to call the victim his name, what caused that woman to be, he knows me, you know how he knows me, but then they started to think.

After the back, he saw my name on the driver's license because he was trying to make them believe that he knew them from some other previous interaction, so some of the victims were surely just victims of a chance or he found out about them during the course. of the attack and then he remembered that so he could call them and torment them later. I think there are some victims that he had a prior interaction with, he interacted with these victims, whether it was the woman or the man where he is. someone they've talked to or bumped into and whatever that interaction was was enough for him to decide: I'm going to make him a victim.

Do you think there could be at least one more homicide added to the Golden State Killer? Well, if you look at the Golden State Killer series we know that we potentially have the double homicide with Brian and Katie Maggiore in February 1978 in Sacramento and then we have the six homicide cases with ten victims in Southern California that are absolutely committed for the Golden State Killer Now that we have identified D'Angelo, we have to include the possibility that he is also the Visalia looter and that was one of the big questions that was actively debated by the

investigator

s act: is this Dude, I say, Lia looted it or not?

Investigators were absolutely convinced she was, some

investigator

s were undecided, and to be honest, I was the one going. I don't think they're the same guy, but now that we've identified D'Angelo as the Golden State Killer. I think I was wrong, I think for sure he was also the Visalia looter and the Visalia looter or killed Claude Snelling in 1975, so that would be the 13th homicide that essentially the Golden State Killer is responsible, why did you change your mind because of? With the circumstantial evidence surrounding D'Angelo, we can place him as a cop with the Exeter police starting in 1974, just outside of Visalia.

He was attending the police academy at the College of Sequoias at the time of the beginning of the Visalia looting or series in which the college is located. The heart of all these robberies that are happening in Visalia was committed by the looter and then when the looter shot Officer McGowan in December of 1975, what you see with Angelo is that he is now moving up and joining the police force of Auburn. like he's trying to get away from Visalia because in his mind he knows that at the concerts there an officer was just shot and law enforcement is putting all kinds of resources into investigating who shot this officer, so I think he It was my time. short down here and if I stay down here I could potentially get caught for that in the Galant shooting and then linked to the Claude Snelling homicide, so he comes back to Auburn after only two years exactly and then he starts at Auburn and when he he moves to Auburn, literally that same time period is when the series about east area rapists begins in Sacramento, so in Visalia he lives in a city and commits attacks in the adjacent city when he moves north. living in another city of Auburn committing attacks in the adjacent city of Sacramento, the pattern matches what your reaction was when you kissed him in court on Friday in a wheelchair and I can barely hear what he is saying, which is absolutely faking , that is not possible. the man we know was seeing the week before was under surveillance for a week we saw a man driving his motorcycle at high speed on the highway and moving around his house in a way that the surveillance team was reporting.

This guy doesn't look like he's 72, he looks like he's 50, the way he moves around the house, his neighbors even say that this guy was very physically capable, he was in good physical shape, he had a bike in his room and they saw him walking Seeing him brought onto the court was such a dramatic change from the man who was seen all week directly observed from all week before that there's no doubt he's trying to play a game this guy has always played about self-preservation and now that he's been caught, he's trying to downplay his current set of circumstances by presenting himself as an old Stiebel and he's not, he's a very physically capable man, he's a very dangerous individual at a hundred miles an hour, you said I'm in his motor statistics, what?

I was informed that he was going 100 miles, if not over 100 miles per hour, on a motorcycle on the highway the week before he was caught, why did you go to his house tonight before you retired, so at that time Did he conduct the research? What we were doing based on DNA, he was the only one who still seemed like a possibility, so I had adopted my traditional research practices of starting to learn about this person. I talked to his former Auburn police chief, a chief who had fired him for shoplifting in 1979, and that chief told me certain things he remembered about Joe DeAngelo that stood out to me, and based on that information, I thought: "Okay, this guy is interesting." I didn't think, "Oh, he's absolutely the Golden State."

killer

, but it was interesting enough that I started evaluating this guy and part of my evaluation is always seeing where he lives.

I want to see his house. I want to see his garden. I want to see the cars he drives. I want to see his garden. to see if there's anything you can tell me more about him and things I can observe, so when I get back to the office I have some additional research. What did the boss tell you that piqued your interest? The boss told me that during the firing process, the hearing officer after D'Angelo was fired told the boss that D'Angelo threatened to kill him and then the boss relayed and recounted a situation that during that process, after that he told Angelo to go home, he basically fired him right then and there. the moment he was formally fired from town when in the middle of the night his daughter, the Chief's daughter, came into his room and said dad, there's a man standing at my window shining a flashlight in my room, the chief get up and run. outside, whoever that man was, he was gone and there are fresh shoe prints around the back perimeter of her, that's the hit from her house that is absolutely consistent with who the east area rapist was, the

golden

state

killer

and the boss meI was saying that I firmly believe that was D'Angelo, so if you have Angelo threatening to kill him and showing up at his house, that was fine, that is absolutely consistent with the type of man I'm looking for, she threatened to kill the boss that he threatened. killing the boss during the firing process, now you have that type of employer-employee, well, you have a lot of anguish as a result of that type of action, but when the boss told me the other thing and the boss didn't know it, I was researching the series of Eastern era rapists.at that moment when you are broadcasting this why I think this happened and I think it was Angelo shining the flashlight into his daughter's room okay now this is interesting if it really was D'Angelo , that's what I would expect the oriental rapist to do.

This is how I would expect you to respond if you are being investigated and possibly fired from your job because you are a vengeful individual, yes Denise about a light in people's faces, I mean when she used a flashlight when she went and could wake up a beam couple and blind them as you know, you are trained in the police academy, why didn't she enter his house? You were thinking about that I was thinking about that I was sitting there and at a certain point you know I've been I've been through this so many times with so many suspects that seemed good only to be eliminated by DNA.

I literally had the thought what is the likelihood that this is the guy, he's just going to be another guy I've looked at, I should knock on the door. at the door, introduce myself, say, hey, you know what I normally do, hey, I'm looking into an old case, you know, can you, can I?, ask you some questions and build a rapport and then eventually you see if I can ask and you care. If you give me a DNA sample and I thought about it, it was the second one where I don't know enough about him and that's what made me not go in because it's like, well, what if he's the guy I don't want? ruin it right now and I moved on and just walked away from this point where you're retired, huh?

What do you think will be your participation in the accusation? You know, and at the PFA, Aelia, they're still working on it. No I don't know that yes, they conclusively happened. I know scientism, so you know it for sure. I am available to current researchers in an advisory capacity. I have stepped away from active research at this time. I was active until now. The press conference was announced and at that point I was literally doing media

interview

s and telling the active investigators who don't report to me keep moving forward in essence, you know I've accomplished what I set out to do. which was identifying it and I certainly want to emphasize that it was a team effort.

You know, I started the process that led to identifying it, but I couldn't have done it without other people contributing heavily to the process. If it were you who said. The DNA will probably bring us the person. I had another case that exposed me to the technology that we used and I educated myself on how that could apply to the Golden State Killer case and then essentially I needed the DNA source, so I kept going. what I call a roadshow where I went to the agencies that had DNA samples from the Golden State Killer trying to sell this possible strategy and fortunately the Ben-tor district attorney's office said we will allow them to use our DNA and that agency took the initiative. and doing that allowed us to get to the point we are at today in identifying D'Angela.

I'm a little confused, were you the one who suggested we watch Jed in that jet match? Yes, that was me and I was the one who uploaded the profile of the Golden State Killer to Jonas dr. Fincher was the only one who gave you a DNA, they were the ones who were willing to do it, so you know, only if there are a few samples in the series where there was enough and then luckily Tora had enough so that we could use it and wouldn't you, wouldn't you upload your DNA into the jet match in January of this year, so it's been a while?

I mean, we got results in a day, but doing the genealogy side is very labor-intensive and time-consuming. he does it, it just draws you in, it doesn't go straight to him, that's exactly it, he brings us a group of people and it turns out that the people closest to him related to him that we found were in the order of third cousins, so you're talking. about having to go back to the great-great-grandparents to begin to find your common ancestor that these individuals could share with the offender and once you have these common ancestors who were born in the early 19th century, you now need to identify all the descendants of those of those ancestors landed in the sweet spot, we knew that our attacker was probably born between 18:40 in 1960, so we were looking for males within this family lineage that were born in that time frame and then from there we knew that our attacker It was in California in the 1970s, so now we have to determine which of these men had a presence in California in the 1970s, ideally a presence in Sacramento in 1976-1977 t7 and then the correct size that we knew of our offender if they met that criteria and if we look at other things like their custody status if they were arrested and in jail or prison when we've known attacks that we could eliminate, but in the absence of something like that, if we had all that crap checked in those boxes, then we would do it.

Start your traditional investigation by going out to talk to people who possibly knew them, learn more about them and then, crucially, if they reached the level of still being interesting, then we make the decision that we need to obtain a DNA sample, either by asking them directly or getting a surreptitious sample you decided obviously the surreptitious thing with Angelo we took the surreptitious route yes because because it could be it could be dangerous he would even refuse right you don't want him to know you're looking he went up to the level where we felt there was enough chance that he was the guy that if we went and asked for a consent sample, even if he gave us a sample, it would take some time for the lab to analyze it, he would be gone or he would commit suicide or something, so we had to keep it secret about how we got his DNA to prevent those bad things from happening.

Did you think you'd ever get it? I've always been optimistic that we would get it. We would catch him sooner and yes, it took a lot longer and it's been a very frustrating and humiliating journey to get to this point, but now that we're here it's a great feeling. I was going to say gratifying when he was able to crown your career. that's a set, you know, I retired and I thought I always wanted the goal to be to catch him before I retired, since the retirement date was coming up, it was like again, I have to get him back and then he came and it was like he didn't I got it and then I had the satisfaction of knowing that the process that I implemented, the team that is working on it was going to continue and it was only a matter of time to see the results as we moved through the process.

I knew it was only a matter of time before we identified it, it could have been next week, it could have been three months from now or even five years from now, but we would have identified it through that process, fortunately we identified it three weeks after I retired and now he's in custody, which I thought, I mean I know you thought you'd get him the way I'm positioned, I never thought it would happen this way, have you had a chance to talk to him? No, no, I want, yes I want. I was actually going to help with part of the

interview

, but the way things went didn't go according to plan, so I didn't get that opportunity, but in the future, maybe I'll get a chance as a private citizen if I end up wanting to. talk and you know I have a lot of questions.

I'd like to know a lot about how he, you know, strategized, how he chose to victimize him, of course, that's why you know, why would you do this kind of thing? the psychological things that send one of these guys not like to admit those internal compulsions and really divulge the real reason why they do this, so I'm looking more from the perspective of what can I learn from this guy to help. I solve other cases. How much do you think Bonnie Jean Cole really played in? Well, I think her last name is ex-fiancee after you raped someone she supposedly said, I hate you, I hate you, Bonnie, well, you know, I won't say it.

She, yes, she is known because she is funny, he was committed to a body and we know that in the third attack that occurred in Davis, California, on July 5, he died on the sixth of 1978, while he is literally raping that victim, He says while sobbing: I hate you, Bonnie, I hate you. Bonnie over and over again, so we always knew this guy had an important body or at least we thought this guy had an important Bonnie in his life, whether it was a mother, a wife, an ex-wife, a girlfriend he didn't he was very happy, and so when We were researching D'Angelo and we came across an engagement to Bonnie back in 1970 and then we're looking for marriage and we don't see a marriage.

It seems that the relationship went sideways. I thought it was possibly consistent with this. I hate you, Bonnie, what the criminal was saying in that particular, so it's possible that the sperm at least allowed that attack. I mean, he might have internal angst against Bonnie in other cases, so he's what I call a criminal who retaliates with anger, gets angry at something during his normal life. life and instead of retaliating against what makes him angry, he takes it out on the victims as representatives, which is why he gets angry at Bonnie. He takes it out on the victims.

He can't say that he is doing that. He is angry at Bonnie throughout the entire series, at least in that one. In one attack there was something that made him think about Bonnie and express that anger while he violated that particular victim. Are you surprised that he is a former police officer? I'm not surprised, but I didn't expect that to be something he had applied for. about before and some of the traits in terms of the tactics employed in terms of the dominant personality some attributed perhaps to having experience in law enforcement. I looked at him saying that an intelligent person who didn't want to get caught would learn, study and employ the same type of tactics because they don't want to get caught now that we know he is a law enforcement officer.

He was an Auburn police officer during the entire East Area rapist series from June 1976 in Sacramento to the late North. Attack in California in July of 1979 and Danville, he was a police officer with the Auburn police, it becomes very evident when you read the case files. He obviously trusts his training as a police officer. His knowledge of how police respond to crime scenes, how police send patrol cars in response to a call. in the sense that he relied on that training to help him escape and succeed as a predator and it worked and it absolutely worked and during the attacks he is making misleading statements to the victims because he knows the victims are going to talk to the detectives and he doing what I call verbal staging where he's, you know, simple, kind of simple, don't tell the pigs you saw my truck parked outside, which means don't tell the police I have a truck, well, the warranty It wasn't driving a truck because he doesn't want the police to know what type of vehicle he had.

He's planting that seed with the victims knowing they were going to tell the police and he did that for a lot of things over the course of the series. Paul, is there something I've done? I'm not asking you guys, you think it's important for the public to know that you know. I think it's important for the public to know that I have no doubt that Joe D'Angelo is the Golden State Killer, that's 100% certain, obviously he's a team. He has his day in court, but at this point the Golden State Killer has been identified. CODIS didn't work, obviously, that's why you thought about doing everything you know, JED matching works in another case you were kissing, that's right.

You know and you know that CODIS is an extremely powerful tool that has been absolutely successful as a law enforcement tool, but we have had the Golden State Killer's DNA on CODIS in 2001, no results, we have done family searches here in California . every year it's been legal without success we've done international searches we've done everything without success the authorities have been chasing this guy for 44 years I couldn't tell you the number of investigators that have worked on this case more law enforcement resources tried Catching this guy for decades longer than any other case in California history for 44 years, once we started in this world/path of genetic genealogy, it took us four months with five people plus some outside consultations to do it.

What was your reaction when? They handcuffed him and took him away to everyone in that war room as soon as we heard on the radio say suspect in custody, people were jumping out of their seats, they were high-fiving there screaming and yelling, my reaction was a little bit more, we got him then . Now we have to think about how we're going to get him to talk, so I'm moving on to the next phase at that point. I'm not a guy who gets cute and excited, he thinks he's going to talk and I admit I'd be surprised if he's all about self-preservation and I thinkYou know, I was seriously debating just going over and knocking on his front door, but I never got out of the vehicle, I never opened the door, my window was down, I'm just looking. in the house and that's just one.

I decided I didn't know enough and walked away. How long were you there? I was there for about five minutes. I mean, this is one of those things where you play what the Auburn police chief told you in your head because you already knew it at the time, so yeah, I had that information at the time and that was one of those things. things you just go to, he had, he ticked enough boxes, I don't know enough about him, it was like, was that what he did to you? I'm not going to enter. I can't put it that way.

I think that was it, Bonnie, that you know the fact that we have a genealogical connection to the criminal. You know, you start looking at everything you know. you're checking and you're like yeah, you know there's enough in there like he was a maybe, but at no point during that session did I think it's more than just a maybe, he was the one, I'm glad you didn't come in. something stopped me if something did something good you're fantastic