First, there was the Visalia Ransacker. Then there was the East Area Rapist. Then the Original Night Stalker. From 1974 until 1986, a string of burglaries, rapes, and murders were committed across California, in places including Sacramento, Contra Costa, San Joaquin, Ventura, and even right here in Santa Barbara County. It wasn’t until 2001 that breakthroughs in DNA technology proved what law enforcement had already suspected: These three attackers were the same man.
Crime writer Michelle McNamara chronicled the case in her 2018 book I’ll Be Gone in the Dark (published posthumously after her death in 2016), in which she coined the name “the Golden State Killer.” For the first time, many previously unconnected crimes would be linked in the consciousness of both law enforcement and the public as the work of one man, though his identity and whereabouts remained unknown.
With the advancement of DNA identification and genetic genealogy tracing, detectives were able to follow the threads of DNA they had gleaned from crime scenes through a family tree and land on one man by the name of Joseph James DeAngelo. In April 2018, at the age of 72, DeAngelo was arrested at his Sacramento home and officially charged with eight counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances, with four additional counts of first-degree murder added later.
A case of this magnitude — 13 known murders, more than 50 sexual assaults, and more than 120 burglaries that spanned decades, taking place across multiple cities and counties, and the possibility that new crimes could be uncovered or linked with further investigation — would require a prosecutorial team of organized, dedicated individuals unafraid of a challenge…