Unmasking the Golden State Killer: dark investigation into Joseph DeAngelo | 60 Minutes Australia

To his neighbors, Joseph D'Angelo was an unpleasant, whiny kamuran, no doubt he would have complained about the nickname they gave Crazy Joe, but that is nothing compared to the label that the police and prosecutors of the United States are now trying to put it. The Angelo of being the Golden State Killer, as vile a serial

killer

and rapist as there ever was in the 1970s and 1980s, is alleged to have wreaked havoc across the

state

of California while evading capture and may have gotten away with yours forever, except For some of the most innovative detective work I have ever seen in a Sacramento, California courtroom, an extraordinary and shocking piece of history is unfolding.

A frail old man is being accused of monstrous crimes, but looking at this 72-year-old man now there is only a glare. reveals any hint that for decades Joseph James D'Angelo was America's most wanted man, the Golden State Killer, how sure are you that you have the right man? There is no shadow of a doubt if D'Angelo is the notorious Golden State Killer and the overwhelming evidence says he is, then he is evil beyond comprehension, someone who committed at least 13 murders, over 50 rapes and a number incalculable thefts. As if the violence wasn't enough, the Golden State Killer had another. evil signature of the victims he let live he often called them weeks and months after the attacks to continue the terror the taunts still haunt Margaret Wardlow and Jane Carson Sandler he is evil then he is evil he is an evil psychological psychotic crazy crazed crazy You think it's It was luck that they didn't kill you.

I think if he had been a couple of years later, I think he probably would have died as a cruel, sadistic serial predator. D'Angelo eluded capture for 42 years until a smart cop used an extraordinary mouse. catch him that's his house there that's his house there well Joe D'Angelo wasn't settled here in the middle of this and no one had any idea bringing the

killer

to justice had been Detective Paul Hall's fruitless obsession for over 20 years. years. long years, but frustration became reality when he came up with the idea of ​​uploading DNA taken from the Golden State Killer's crime scenes to genealogy websites like ancestry.com and Jed match.com.

His hope was that someone searching his family tree could provide complete or partial information. DNA matching, so it's a bit like Tinder for DNA. I guess there's a way to look at it. The search takes between 24 and 48 hours in a day. He had the list of potential relatives of the Golden State Killer, according to the results. For Joseph D'Angelo, a little old man living a double life in the suburbs, hiding behind the facade of a family man, a law-abiding neighbor and perhaps most incredible of all, a former police officer, this is Sacramento, the capital of the world's fifth largest economy, is Canberra, California, home of the Golden State Parliament, its Treasury and the governor's residence, and now, tragically, home to one of the world's worst serial predators.

This country, a monster whose reign of terror began when it was the epitome of the American dream in the mid-70s. There were many open spaces, jobs, new housing developments and an almost small-town innocence, an innocence that evaporated with each brutal attack that led to After all, it was about 6:30 in the morning, my husband had just left for work and the mice and my three My two-year-old son came out of his room and climbed into bed with me to snuggle in two

minutes

. I saw a bright light shining down the hallway and someone running down the hallway.

I barely had time to react when I looked up and there was a man wearing a ski mask and holding a large butcher knife. It was 1976, long before America knew about the Golden State Killer and 30-year-old Jane Carson Sandler was within reach. about to become victim number five of a serial rapist lurking in the eastern suburbs of Sacramento who proceeded to tie both of our ankles and wrists with shoelaces, she was saying yes to her son and gagged us both. both of us and blindfolded us both. I wonder what this guy is contemplating and he did it for so long and then so soon.

When he untied my ankles then I knew he was there because of fear, the fear was so overwhelming that I will never forget it cruelly. After sexually assaulting her, the attacker spent more than an hour inside Jane's house helping himself to what was in her cupboards and Even cooking a meal before you finally left, when you found out you were victim number five and your rapist was a serial offender, that made some difference in how well you felt. I thought if I was number five, there would probably be a number six. seven eight but I never realized it wouldn't be until 50 I mean it was crazy why can't the police catch the rapist and I was worried about the rape of her own homes.

I put locks on my door. A sex attacker on the loose became the The top story of the next raid appeared in any Sacramento news bulletin. He was quickly branded an east area rapist and each new assault brought increasing fear to thousands of family homes and it was like at least once a week and one night we had two rapes in one night and that really sent us into a spin. no wonder there was paranoia in the suburbs yes everyone was afraid Carol Daly is a force to be reckoned with, you must Angier in the 70's she was one of the lead investigators tracking the movements of the east area rapist and advising For 27 of his victims, it was absolutely an obsession to discover who this rapist was.

He left an extensive trail of destruction. Did hardware stores no longer have locks on the shelves? guns were flying off the shelves, well everyone was suspicious and we got to thinking maybe he has a law enforcement background or maybe he's military because of the method of operation, he was a pro at making sure no one knew who was. It's the house I lived in with my mother in 1977, when the attack took place, and where is your bedroom? My bedroom was downstairs and he could tell he could see directly, yes, Margarit Wardlow was 13 when she became the east area.

Ironically, the rapist's youngest victim was obsessed with the case and had read dozens of newspaper articles about the attacks, so when he came looking for her, Margaret knew exactly what she had to do to survive. He was one month old and it was that he would place these plates on the husband's back until the husband, if I hear these plates clinking, I will kill your wife and I will come back here and kill you. Just no, he put the plates on your mother's back, yeah. I heard the dishes and I could hear him walk into her room and in that moment it was almost like a calming voice inside me saying, you know you're going to be raped, this is what's going to happen, but you're going to survive.

You're going to get through this, everything will be fine throughout the attack, he was just saying no, you know, he's brave, he really gained power and control through fear, fear in his victims is how he really gained pleasure. from what I could understand from everything I had read and from that being able to tell her that I don't care what you do that was my way of telling her that you mean nothing to me I'm not afraid of you Talia's victims quickly rose to almost 30 and still No one knows what he looks like, but what was most terrifying was that the rapists in the eastern area, the passion for violence had begun to escalate, we knew he was ready to kill, we were afraid that our next phone call would be to a scene of homicide. instead of a rape scene and yes, the man who knew the accused killer best showed up, you thought he was pretty smart, did you know that yes, he knew everything there was to know about law enforcement, the incredible advances, the novel DNA technology and I said?

Wow, let me see what I can do. Take the police to his man in one day. He had the list of potential family members that follows on 60 Minutes. Joseph D'Angelo, 72, is accused of being one of America's worst serial killers and rapists that he led. to evade capture for over 40 years and that's probably because he was a police officer. It was a career that he began here in the small town of Exeter, California, and where he learned to hide his criminal perversions. You thought he was pretty smart. Oh yeah? Farrell Ward knew everything there was to know about law enforcement until a few months ago.

Farrell Ward responded to Joseph D'Angelo, an old friend with whom they worked together as police officers in Exeter and socialized on weekends. Farrell now looks back on the crime scenes they attended together with a very different perspective on his brother in arms D'Angelo had fooled everyone, including his law enforcement colleagues, if he had committed a crime here in Exeter, he would get out and he would do the follow up

investigation

and there would be no evidence because if any evidence turned up they thought it was probably him, he could destroy it very easily and no one could have picked it up because he was so good at what he did, I mean he was free to do what he did. 40 years, 45 viewers and the FBI and with the best technology they had they couldn't find a guy you know, so maybe you were right, maybe he was smart often, oh oh yeah he was, he was a cookie smart, so this is the neighborhood where the east area rapist started attacking, but ultimately he wasn't as smart as Detective Paul Hall, who after more than two decades of

investigation

finally uncovered D'Angelo's lies.

All houses are one story. He rarely he entered a neighborhood that had two. stories houses that he likes to move around jump fences and move through backyards, Detective Hall says that in the mid-1970s, Joseph D'Angelo moved from Exeter to the suburbs of Sacramento, which he then became the new hunting ground for rogue cops when it came to police training. He understood exactly how the patrol was going to respond to an attack that had occurred and that is why he would park his car in places so that he could, as a possible response, drive by and reach his vehicle many blocks from where the victim's house was. to be able to drive Joseph DeAngelo used to work here a police officer day and night the east area rapist the first 44 rapes and two murders were committed while he was a police officer here until he was caught stealing a can of dog repellent and a Hammer, the police chief fired him on the spot, and a few weeks later, a prowler showed up at the Chiefs' house outside his daughter's window.

He was convinced that he was a vengeful D'Angelo, but surprisingly the police chief never followed up, he was the big one. clue that could have put an end to all of Jane's murders when no one followed up on her dismissal from the police for shoplifting. He's crazy to rape victim Jane Carson Sandler. That oversight should have been the moment Joseph D'Angelo's secret was discovered. That is surprising. Not very surprising, it's probably the biggest mistake in the entire investigation I agree I agree I agree in 1979, the wave of sexual assaults in Sacramento stopped abruptly for no obvious reason, which investigators didn't know was her greatest fear had come true: this sadistic, violent rapist.

He was on the move again and became even more brazen when the eastern area rapist resurfaced in Southern California. He was like a full-fledged serial killer, so he starts out as Asteria's rapist, that's right and that name is changed to Golden State Killer. Yeah, so you see a criminal who over the course of over a decade is moving around the

state

and at that point authorities are not conclusively connecting the dots, that this is the same guy, he's probably the only criminal that know. has had different nicknames when it was an unsolved series, the Golden State killer murdered 13 people throughout the state of California, added to the 50 rapes and several other assaults and kidnappings, he became one of the most wanted fugitives in the America that every detective in the country wanted to solve the crimes, including Detective Paul Holes, who first had access to the case files in 1994.

You started researching this just as DNA technology was becoming a real thing for the law enforcement, right? That's why I initially decided I needed to look. in this case because I have this newfangled DNA technology and I thought, well, let me see what I can do and since 2001 the Golden State Killer's DNA profile was in the FBI's CODIS system, which is the FBI's DNA database. which is a national diet as a national database there are more than 16 million profiles in that database which did not affect because Joseph de Angelo had never been convicted of any crime in trouble with the police at that level he was not in any database data had never been convicted of a qualifying crime he will be forced to give his DNA to put into a database, so whatHow about fondant?

That's where, as I sat almost feeling defeated for all these years, I haven't found this guy, how am I going to take this case? I progressed and that's when I learned about this technique that uses genealogy in DNA holes. I have found that family history websites like ancestry.com and Jed match.com can help locate people of interest. One of its features is that you can enter your own DNA to find long-lost family members, but the holes took it to the next step using DNA collected from the Golden State Killer's crime scenes. He uploaded it to see if he could find matches.

It was a brilliant idea. A modern and intelligent detective work. Were you doing this on an underground level, did you have to create a fake as well? Yeah, so he created a covert profile and uploaded the Golden State Killer's DNA profile into gen matches. in a day. I had the list of potential relatives of the Golden State Killer out of coincidence gen., what was it? It's a short list, so we ended up with about five men who had connections in California and who were the right age, which required us to do a little more research into who these individuals were to see if they had other aspects of them that gave us let them know that we might need to take a closer look at them as a possible suspect, that short list had the name Joseph James, he fit the profile of the Golden State Killer perfectly, he lived in Sacramento and was the right age to commit the crimes after observing him in secret for days, police removed a used tissue from his trash bin and tested it to determine a definitive DNA match.

The result was positive, fantastic timing of catching him, there is no doubt that Joseph D'Angelo is the Golden State Killer the DNA evidence we have in this case is conclusive, we are looking at the Golden State Killer, hopefully he stays here until the day he dies and the case will be closed for a good call after 24 years of looking for this guy and I understand you, that's next on 60

minutes

Margaret Warlow and Jane Carson Sandra have waited 40 years to look at the man that raped them in the eyes today is that day, but looking at the frail, shuffling old man in an orange prison jumpsuit it's hard to imagine the Golden State.

Kill the monster behind at least 50 rapes and 13 murders. Seeing him in that orange jumpsuit must have given you some pleasure. I feel like there is closure. I know where he is now. I have taken photographs of this building. I know where it is and this is it. Hopefully, he will stay here until the day he dies. Four billiard rooms. It's surreal to know that the man who spent half his life searching is now behind bars after 24 years of searching for this guy and trying to identify him to see him. I know in the interview room on the computer monitor as I watch him, just sitting there looking dejected was a reward in itself.

I've Got It Forty-two years after his first sadistic rape, Joseph D'Angelo was finally arrested here in his home hidden in plain sight among his suburban hunting grounds. A retired father of three daughters has been married to a local divorce attorney for all those years and ironically despite specializing in commerce and being separated from him since 1991 she has never divorced Joseph, you see. The law here says that communication between spouses is privileged, you cannot be forced to testify against your husband or wife in court, in short, we may never know exactly what she knows. I have said over the years that someone knew who the rapist was.

Investigator Carol Daley still can't understand why suspicions weren't raised about D'Angelo sooner. He had a different balaclava for almost every rape. A different jacket. Different shoes. If he threw it in the trash after each use. I have no idea what he did. What do you have to do with everything he stole? Did He bring Him to his house? Did he hide it somewhere? If you were a partner or wife. TRUE? Do you think you would have any kind of inclination that something was going on? I think so, but then you know if he was. Being out at all hours of the night would be time to get divorced or wonder what you're doing.

The Golden State Killer case is unprecedented in many ways, but especially because of the way it was resolved, perhaps it is a look at where the future police investigation lies. and that could mean that unsolved cases around the world could be reopened to make use of the growing wealth of DNA material stored on genealogy websites. It's a much more accurate tool to be able to allow law enforcement to actually identify this guy that's committing these atrocities and we don't see anything about who you are genetically, we just know how you shared a common ancestor many generations ago with our guy and at some point somewhere in a penitentiary here in California someone will walk into a cell and say sorry.

Stand there, Uncle Joe. He was just looking for some distant relatives in Norway or Italy. That scenario could happen as it is. Joseph D'Angelo will be tried for the 13 murders of which he is accused and the 50 rapes that are outside the statute. of limitations in California, but for his victims, including Margaret Wardlow, any justice is enough for the cruel man whose identity she thought she had never known. What I hope for him is that he lives a long and very healthy life. He's going to do that. behind bars with some other characters he could probably like me a lot.

You would like him to spend a lot of time in that orange jumpsuit and a long, healthy life. Yeah, I like the fact that he doesn't go fishing. I like the fact that he is there. I'm not going to ride his motorcycle. I think these things are, you know, okay with me. Hi, I'm Liam Bartlett. Thanks for watching to stay up to date with the latest news from 60 Minutes Australia. Make sure to subscribe to our channel. You can also download 9 now. app for full episodes and other exclusive 60 minute content