For 40 years he was nobody.

He cut grass. He waved at his neighbors. He lived an average life. The life of most Americans. Nothing special. No one noticed him. The type of person you see at the store and don’t think twice on the Golden state killer.

Joseph James DeAngelo was one of the most brutal serial killers in US history.

For 40 years, he was nobody.

—

**THE CRIMES**

The crimes began in Visalia, California in 1974. Initially he was a burglar. Breaking into houses and prowling around. Getting to know people. Learning their schedules. By 1976 he became something much worse.

Nightly he broke into people’s homes across Sacramento, Santa Barbara, Orange County, and San Diego counties. He tied up couples in their beds and sexually assaulted them. Sometimes he killed them. Then he would slip out into the suburban night without anyone ever noticing. He was known by multiple monikers depending on where the attacks took place. East Area Rapist in Sacramento county. Original Night Stalker in Southern California. Police didn’t know for years they were searching for the same person.

Over the years he committed at least 51 sexual assaults and 13 murders. He called investigators taunting them. Called some of his victims years later threatening them in the middle of the night. He was meticulous. Left little to no evidence.

By around 1986 he simply stopped. No news. No clues. No fan fair. The cases went cold, and wouldn’t be solved for 40 years.

—

**40 YEARS OF DEAD AIR**

Victims that survived lived with the knowledge that the man who invaded their home in the night was out there. Living. Unknown. Families of victims that were murdered were left with no answers. They had DNA from the crimes. It just didn’t match anyone in any kind of criminal database.

True crime writer Michelle McNamara obsessively worked on the case for years and published a book about it called I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, a reference to something the murderer said to one of his victims. She died in 2016 from unknown causes before the book was finished, before the case was solved.

Michelle McNamara would never know.

—

**THE DNA THAT DID**

In 2017 investigators decided to try something new. They uploaded the culprit’s DNA to GEDmatch“>GEDmatch (a public genealogy database used by people who take home DNA tests to discover relatives) and worked with genetic genealogist Barbara Rae-Venter to create family trees of distant relatives found through the DNA. They ruled people out one-by-one until one name kept popping up…**Joe DeAngelo. **

Joseph James DeAngelo Jr.**

Born November 8, 1945.

Police officer. 72 years old.

He lived alone in a house quietly in Citrus Heights, Sacramento. The same place his first attacks popped off forty years prior.

Investigators got DNA from his trash. They found a match.

On April 24, 2018 detectives swarmed his home. He walked out of his house. They handcuffed him in his driveway wearing his underwear.

Neighbors were shocked. Quiet. Private. “He was your basic, average Joe.”

He was hiding in plain sight.

—

**The Reckoning**

DeAngelo entered a guilty plea to 13 murders and various counts of kidnapping in June of 2020, receiving life in prison without the possibility of parole instead of a potential death sentence.

The subsequent sentencing hearing was exhaustive. Victim’s and family member after family member stood in front of him. They spoke at him. To him. Telling him what he took. What forty years of uncertainty cost them. What it felt like to finally put a face to the shadow that had entered their houses at night.

Joseph James DeAngelo sat staring straight ahead mostly vacant in his wheelchair.

When it was his turn to speak he said:

**”I am truly sorry to everyone I have hurt. “**

The meaning of those words mattered more than what he thought. Each victim and family member in that courtroom had to decide that for themselves.

Joseph James DeAngelo will die in a prison in California.

—

A man spent decades killing. A monster faced consequences of his actions.

He was right there. In your neighbor’s yard. Cutting his grass. Waving at children. Digging his fingers into the soil beside the ruins of his victims’ lives.

34 years elapsed. 13 dead bodies. 51 people violated. Innocent people who deserved answers got none until decades later.

The answer wasn’t ready to be revealed until detectives helped by a gaggle of distant relatives who used a genealogy website to find out who they were related to uncovered his DNA.

It took 40 years. Too late for the late Michelle McNamara. Too late to undo thirteen funerals. Too late for the lives those people would’ve lived had they not been murdered by a neighbor.

But we found out who he was.

—

*Joseph James DeAngelo · Age 72*
*A.k.a. The Golden State Killer*

*Arrested April 24, 2018*

*13 murders · 51 sexual assaults · Active 1974–1986*

*Sentenced to Life without parole · 2020*.

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