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GEDmatch, Genealogy, and the Arrest That Changed Cold Cases Forever
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
The Golden State Killer terrorised California for over a decade — fifty rapes, thirteen murders, three identities — until a DNA genealogy breakthrough on GEDmatch finally unmasked him. This chapter traces the crimes, Michelle McNamara's obsession, and the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo that rewrote cold case investigation.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
One arrest changed how law enforcement solves cold cases. Not just in California.
By nineteen seventy-six, the attacks had moved north. Sacramento County.
In nineteen seventy-nine, the crimes shifted again. The rapes stopped.
There's another thread in this story that matters. A writer named Michelle McNamara became consumed by the Original Night Stalker case.
The investigator who finally broke the case open was Paul Holes. He'd worked on it for years before retiring from the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office.
The legal process that followed was unusual even by the standards of a case this complex. In June of two thousand twenty, DeAngelo entered his guilty plea from a courthouse parking lot.
The lasting consequence here isn't the conviction. It's the methodology.
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