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The Man Nobody Suspected: California's Most Prolific Violent Criminal
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
For twelve years, a badge-carrying California cop committed fifty rapes and thirteen murders — then vanished for four decades. This is where the Golden State Killer story begins: Visalia, 1974, and a pattern of crimes that nobody initially understood.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
For twelve years, a California police officer committed some of the most prolific violent crimes in American history. He used his department radio to monitor stakeouts designed to catch him.
Visalia is a mid-sized city in the San Joaquin Valley, about two hundred miles south of Sacramento. Starting in April of nineteen seventy-four, someone began breaking into homes there.
In September of nineteen seventy-five, the Ransacker crossed a line he hadn't crossed before. Claude Snelling was a journalism professor at the College of the Sequoias.
By nineteen seventy-six, a new pattern was emerging in Sacramento County, roughly two hundred miles north of Visalia. A masked man was breaking into homes at night, binding couples, and raping the women while the men lay helpless.
After nineteen seventy-nine, the rapes in Northern California stopped. But the murders began.
The technology that would eventually identify DeAngelo didn't exist when he committed most of his crimes. In the nineteen seventies and eighties, investigators depended on fingerprints, physical descriptions, and witness accounts.
The family tree analysis led investigators to a man living quietly in Citrus Heights. Joseph James DeAngelo.
In June of twenty twenty, DeAngelo pleaded guilty. The proceeding took place in a university parking lot, the only venue large enough to accommodate everyone while observing pandemic safety protocols.
The arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo didn't just close a forty-year investigation. It demonstrated something that law enforcement agencies across the country immediately recognized.
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