Hunting the Golden State Killer

This transcript is the episode script as written and fact-checked, timed to the recording. Timestamps are approximate within a sentence.

0:05 What's up guys, welcome back to CrimeTimeSnacks. Here is the strangest detail in the case file, stated plainly. For decades, California police hunted three distinct monsters: the Visalia Ransacker, the East Area Rapist, and the Original Night Stalker. They turned out to be one single man, and while he was committing his earliest attacks, he was wearing a police badge. His name is Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. Between 1974 and 1986, he terrorized California, committing thirteen murders, more than fifty rapes, and well over one hundred burglaries.

0:34 Law enforcement agencies were completely siloed at the time, unable to easily share information across the county lines he crossed. It took decades of dead ends before investigators realized the predator attacking suburban homes in Northern California was the exact same person murdering couples in Southern California. The offender moved from breaking into houses in Visalia to assaulting victims in East Sacramento, Modesto, Stockton, and Contra Costa County, before escalating to murders in Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Orange counties.

1:03 He pried open doors and windows while victims slept, took personal souvenirs like coins and identification, and even taunted victims and police over the telephone. The turning point came in 2001 when DNA testing finally linked the East Area Rapist to the Original Night Stalker crimes. In 2013, author Michelle McNamara coined the name Golden State Killer to unite those scattered monikers under one roof. Then in 2018, investigators uploaded a profile built from a preserved Ventura County rape kit to the open-source site GEDmatch, narrowing almost a million profiles down to a single family tree.

1:37 After watching his movements, authorities gathered DNA from the door handle of his car and a discarded tissue to confirm the match. He was arrested outside his home at age seventy-two. In 2020, DeAngelo pleaded guilty to thirteen counts of murder and multiple kidnappings to avoid the death penalty, ultimately receiving multiple life sentences without parole. What the evidence actually shows is that this entire wave of violence started years earlier, in a quiet farming town in the Central Valley.

2:04 That is where we pick up the timeline. The case file takes us to Visalia, halfway between Sacramento and Los Angeles. Between April 1974 and December 1975, this farming community became the target of over one hundred burglaries. The prowler, dubbed the Visalia Ransacker, bypassed major valuables in plain sight. Instead, he rifled through personal belongings, scattered women's undergarments around rooms, and pocketed coins and low-value souvenirs. At the very same time, Joseph DeAngelo was wearing a badge.

2:33 From 1973 to 1976, he worked as a police officer in nearby Exeter. Law enforcement back then lacked cell phones, surveillance cameras, and shared computer databases. In an era where agencies were heavily siloed, an offender with badge access and forensic awareness could operate across town lines with complete impunity. The ransacking quickly turned deadly. On September 11, 1975, an intruder broke into the Visalia home of professor Claude Snelling in an attempt to kidnap Snelling's daughter.

3:00 When the father intervened, the intruder shot him twice, kicked the daughter three times in the face, and fled into the night. Snelling died from his wounds, marking the ransacker's first known homicide. Three months later, in December 1975, another attempted break-in and shooting occurred in Visalia. The ransacker slipped away from police once again, and just like that, the break-ins in town abruptly stopped. What nobody realized then was that the prowler had simply packed up and moved his hunting grounds north.

3:30 By the summer of 1976, burglaries and rapes began terrorizing the eastern district of Sacramento County. Prowling suburban single-story homes near open fields, an assailant known as the East Area Rapist began forcing open doors and windows. The ransacker had evolved into something far more dangerous, bringing a brand new wave of fear to Northern California. The case file shows that this was not random violence. Joseph DeAngelo conducted extensive surveillance on his victims, memorizing their daily routines.

3:57 He would break into their houses beforehand to unlock windows, unload any firearms he found, and leave ligatures made of shoelaces or cords from the house lying ready for when he came back. He telephoned some of them too, sometimes for months, learning when they were home and when they were alone. At first, he targeted single women or mothers with young children, but soon he began targeting couples. Victims would wake up to the blinding glare of a flashlight and a masked gunman standing right over their beds.

4:23 He tied up the man, often stacking dishes on his back with a direct threat: if those plates fell, he would kill them both. Then he would assault the woman repeatedly, sometimes raiding the refrigerator for beer and food in between attacks before vanishing back into the dark. The FBI noted that he routinely took cash, coins, jewelry, and identification from the residences he hit. On the rare occasion someone spotted him, he escaped on a bicycle or scaled suburban fences, easily evading capture.

4:49 Between the lack of home surveillance, no cell phones, and the complete absence of DNA technology at the time, law enforcement was operating in the dark. Agencies remained siloed, unable to track his movements across jurisdictional lines as his attacks continued across the East Bay. Then came the night of February 1978 in the Sacramento area. Brian and Katie Maggiore were simply out walking their dog through the neighborhood when they crossed paths with the prowler. Prosecutors later revealed that DeAngelo shot Brian before chasing Katie down as she screamed for help, shooting her in the head.

5:21 The East Area Rapist had crossed the line into murder, and he was about to shift his hunting grounds entirely. The murders of the Maggiores did not end the Northern California attacks. They carried on around Sacramento and out into the East Bay through the middle of 1979. Then, shortly after a rape that summer, the attacks shifted hundreds of miles south along the California coast, striking first in Santa Barbara County that October. Between 1979 and 1986, a lethal new spree took hold in Southern California, eventually claiming at least ten lives.

5:50 Because the location changed and the primary outcome was now murder rather than sexual assault, investigators treated this as an entirely separate predator. The press dubbed this new menace the Original Night Stalker. That moniker was created to distinguish him from Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker who terrorized the Los Angeles area during that same era. In Ventura, the killer was also briefly known as the Diamond Knot Killer after victims Charlene and Lyman Smith were found bound with an unusual decorative nautical knot.

6:18 Across many of these Southern California scenes, ligatures were recovered, and victims were assaulted before being beaten to death or shot. Back then, nobody put the pieces together. Law enforcement agencies across different counties didn't communicate effectively, and the sheer geography of the crimes suggested independent offenders at work. Without centralized tracking or DNA analysis to connect physical evidence across hundreds of miles, detectives found themselves running down false leads and hitting dead ends.

6:46 The killer effectively vanished into the suburban landscape between attacks, leaving behind taunting phone calls that continued to haunt past victims as late as 2001. The case did not sit entirely still. In 2001, DNA testing proved the East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker were the same man, and the two files became one under the acronym EARONS. Then it went quiet again. That changed when true crime writer Michelle McNamara began digging into the evidence, coining the name the Golden State Killer in 2013 to connect the Visalia Ransacker, the East Area Rapist, and the Original Night Stalker into one unified narrative.

7:22 By 2016, authorities launched a formal reinvestigation centered on modern forensic capabilities. The physical evidence had survived decades in storage, and science was finally catching up to the man who left it behind. Here is where the investigation turned into something unprecedented. The national database, CODIS, uses about twenty STR markers to match identical profiles. But solving this case required Investigative Genetic Genealogy, which uses single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs.

7:51 That meant investigators needed hundreds of thousands of genetic markers, and their standard STR profiles could not translate over to genealogy systems. STR and SNP profiles are completely incompatible, so detectives could not just port the old forensic files over into commercial databases. To get the data, detectives had to pull physical evidence from cold storage. They turned to a duplicate rape kit from 1980 that had been meticulously prepared, frozen, and preserved by a forward-thinking pathologist.

8:19 That preserved sample yielded the pristine, high-quality DNA required to build a completely new SNP profile. In 2018, investigators uploaded that genetic data to the public sharing website GEDmatch, where users freely share profiles originally processed by commercial testing services. The search did not return the killer directly. Instead, it surfaced distant third and fourth cousins. For four months, genealogists built out massive family trees, tracing separate ancestral lines backwards to find where they crossed.

8:47 By combining that genetic roadmap with traditional detective work, such as approximate age and geographic proximity, authorities narrowed almost a million profiles down to one family, and then to one man: former police officer Joseph James DeAngelo. On April 19, 2018, police formally identified DeAngelo as their suspect and placed him under direct surveillance. Investigators followed him, quietly collecting discarded items, including a swab from his car door handle and a used tissue he threw away.

9:15 The crime lab ran a standard STR test on that discarded sample. It produced a flawless, direct match to the crime scene profile that had been waiting in CODIS for decades. On April 24, 2018, authorities officially arrested and charged Joseph James DeAngelo. After more than forty years of dead ends and terror across California, the predator who had stalked suburbs under multiple names was finally in handcuffs. The sheer scale of what he left behind was staggering: at least thirteen murders, more than fifty rapes, and over one hundred burglaries stretching from Sacramento all the way to Santa Barbara County.

9:49 That arrest sparked an immediate national debate. The genetic genealogy method that caught him broke new legal and ethical ground. Investigators had tracked DeAngelo down using GEDmatch, a public site where everyday users upload raw data from consumer services like 23andMe and MyHeritage. DeAngelo himself had never submitted his DNA. He was exposed entirely because distant relatives did. Privacy advocates raised sharp alarms about government overreach, arguing that trawling through public genetic databases amounts to a breach of basic privacy.

10:20 The reach of that science is immense. A study published in Science Magazine showed that roughly sixty percent of Americans of European descent, and forty percent of those of Sub-Saharan African descent, can be identified through a database like MyHeritage alone. Yet for investigators and victims, the method answered questions that traditional policing simply could not crack. When you look back at the case file, the true timeline of DeAngelo's crimes reveals a calculated, escalating pattern.

10:44 Long before the public knew him as a killer, he operated as the Visalia Ransacker between April 1974 and December 1975. During those early months, he served as an active police officer in Exeter, California. While wearing a badge by day, he broke into more than a hundred homes at night, rifling through personal belongings, stealing small souvenirs and coins, and leaving valuables untouched. That ransacking phase served as his training ground. It also quickly turned lethal. On September 11, 1975, the ransacker broke into the Visalia home of professor Claude Snelling.

11:15 Prosecutors documented that the intruder attempted to kidnap Snelling's daughter. When Snelling intervened, DeAngelo shot him twice, killing him right in front of the young girl. Before fleeing the scene, DeAngelo kicked the daughter three times in the face. That fatal encounter marked a brutal shift. There was another attempted break-in and shooting in December of 1975, but the intruder slipped away from police once again. After that close call, the break-ins in Visalia abruptly stopped.

11:43 But the predator was simply moving his territory north. By the summer of 1976, burglaries and sexual assaults began terrorizing the eastern district of Sacramento County. The public did not know it then, but the Visalia Ransacker had evolved into what northern California came to dread as the East Area Rapist. Law enforcement had no way of connecting the dots across county lines back then. The case file shows how methodically he operated. He scouted single-story homes near open fields or forests, learning the daily routines of his targets.

12:14 Often, he broke in ahead of time to unlock windows, unload stored firearms, and stage ligatures like shoelaces or cords around the house. Victims woke up in the dark to the blinding glare of a flashlight and a masked man holding a weapon. He started by targeting single women or mothers with small children, but soon moved on to couples. He would tie up the male partner, stack household dishes on the man's back, and threaten to murder both of them if he heard the plates clatter while he assaulted the woman.

12:40 He lingered inside the homes, casually raiding kitchens for food and beer while his victims lay bound and terrified. When spotted outside by neighbors or patrols, he vanished by leaping over fences or speeding away on a bicycle. By February 1978, his northern campaign escalated to documented murder when Brian and Katie Maggiore were shot and killed while walking their dog. The case file shows that after the Maggiore murders, the attacks shifted. The burglaries spread through the East Bay area of Northern California, but soon the violence escalated down the coast.

13:11 Between 1979 and 1986, the predator moved his hunting ground into Southern California, carrying out a brutal new series of assaults and murders. At the time, investigators had no idea they were dealing with the same man. The geography was completely different, and the violence had turned explicitly lethal. The press dubbed this southern predator the Original Night Stalker, a title meant to set him apart from Richard Ramirez, who terrorized Los Angeles around the same era. At least ten people were murdered across Southern California during this window.

13:39 Many of the victims were found bound with ligatures, assaulted, and beaten to death, while others were shot. Briefly, investigators even called him the Diamond Knot Killer after two victims in Ventura, Charlene and Lyman Smith, were found tied with an intricate knot typically reserved for interior design or sailing. What the evidence actually shows is that law enforcement in the late 1970s and 1980s was severely handicapped. Departments were completely siloed, operating without cell phones, widespread surveillance, or shared digital databases.

14:06 Information did not travel easily across county lines, and without DNA profiling, linking crimes across hundreds of miles was nearly impossible. Detectives were forced to chase conflicting leads that repeatedly ended nowhere. Evidence found in areas of interest—like a discarded neighborhood map with the word punishment misspelled on the back, or notebook pages recounting a sixth-grade classroom—offered tantalizing clues but no solid suspect. The East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker remained two separate ghosts on paper, while one forensically aware offender continued to slip directly through the seams.

14:38 The turning point did not come from an old field interrogation card or a sudden confession. It came from the emerging field of Investigative Genetic Genealogy. For decades, cold cases relied on the national CODIS database, which looks at about twenty specific STR markers. But forensic genealogy searches for something entirely different. Genealogy databases rely on Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms, or SNPs. These encompass hundreds of thousands of genetic markers that chart a detailed ancestral roadmap.

15:05 STR profiles and SNP profiles are completely incompatible. If detectives wanted to run a genealogical search, they had to start over with preserved crime scene evidence. Investigators retrieved a duplicate rape kit from 1980 that had been frozen and preserved by a forward-thinking pathologist. That pristine sample gave them the high-quality DNA required to build a comprehensive SNP profile. In 2018, law enforcement uploaded that profile to GEDmatch, a public website where people voluntarily share genetic files from commercial testing services.

15:37 The search did not produce the killer directly. Instead, it matched distant relatives, likely third or fourth cousins. That data narrowed roughly a million users down to a single extended family line. From there, the real detective work began. For four months, genealogists mapped sprawling family trees, tracing disparate branches to find a single point of intersection. They factored in approximate age and geographic ties to California. The branches converged on one specific individual: Joseph James DeAngelo, who had quietly flown beneath law enforcement radar for decades.

16:09 Investigators quickly initiated covert surveillance to confirm the match. They collected discarded DNA samples, including swabs from his car door handle and a used tissue. Crime labs generated a standard STR profile from that discarded sample and ran it against the cold-case evidence. The profile matched the crime scene DNA perfectly. On April 24, 2018, California authorities officially moved in and charged Joseph James DeAngelo with the Golden State Killer crimes. Forty-four years after the Visalia ransackings began, the elusive predator who had terrorized the state under three different monikers was finally in handcuffs.

16:42 He was arraigned in a Sacramento courtroom, exposed after spending decades living in plain sight. When you look into the case file, his background makes the whole spree even more chilling. From 1973 to 1976, DeAngelo had actually served as a police officer in Exeter, California. While wearing a badge, he was operating as an active predator. Prosecutors documented that on September 11, 1975, while still employed as an officer, he broke into Claude Snelling's Visalia home, shot Snelling twice, killed him, and kicked Snelling's daughter in the face three times before fleeing.

17:15 That badge gave him an incredible advantage. He knew police procedures, he knew how to keep from leaving fingerprints, and he knew how to exploit the fact that local jurisdictions were siloed and rarely shared intelligence. He was eventually fired from police work, but not for murder or burglary. He was terminated after being caught stealing a can of dog repellent and a hammer. The capture sparked an immediate nationwide debate over genetic privacy. Investigators had cracked the cold case by uploading a crime scene profile to GEDmatch, using distant family members to identify a suspect who had never personally submitted DNA.

17:48 A study published in Science Magazine noted that databases like MyHeritage could identify roughly sixty percent of Americans of European descent, raising major questions about government surveillance. Yet the physical evidence had spoken. The discarded tissue and car door handle provided the exact STR match investigators needed. At seventy-two years old, DeAngelo was behind bars, ending forty years of unanswered questions for dozens of families across Northern and Southern California.

18:16 Looking back across the entire case file, you can clearly see how the era itself protected him. In the 1970s and 1980s, California suburbs were rapidly expanding, yet law enforcement agencies remained entirely siloed. Detectives had no centralized DNA databases, no cell phones, and no widespread surveillance footage. A forensically aware offender could simply cross a county line, leaving local investigators completely cut off from one another. That fragmentation created three separate legends for the same man.

18:44 Visalia police chased a burglar who scattered undergarments and stole trinkets. Sacramento detectives hunted the East Area Rapist, who pried open windows and terrorized sleeping couples with ligatures and flashlights. Years later, Southern California authorities were tracking the Original Night Stalker, trying to figure out nautical diamond knots at homicide scenes. Nobody realized these were all the work of a single predator. The geographic spread led police straight into dead ends for decades.

19:09 The evidence seemed entirely contradictory because his methods kept evolving, moving from petty burglaries in Visalia to coordinated attacks across the East Bay, and ultimately escalating to fatal bludgeonings and shootings along the coast. It took true crime writer Michelle McNamara coining the umbrella name in 2013 to finally help the public and modern investigators connect every phase of that forty-year trail. When Joseph DeAngelo was formally charged on April 24, 2018, the full scope of his double life began to emerge in the public record.

19:38 Investigators learned he had actually served as an Exeter police officer from 1973 to 1976, wearing a badge while the Visalia ransackings were underway. That official career had quietly ended after he was caught and fired for stealing a can of dog repellent and a hammer from an Auburn store. By the summer of 2020, the seventy-four-year-old former officer finally faced the reality of what he had done. DeAngelo agreed to plead guilty to thirteen counts of first-degree murder and thirteen counts of kidnapping.

20:05 California's statute of limitations had already run out on the rapes he committed in the 1970s, so he was never charged with a single one of them. Instead, as part of the bargain that spared him the death penalty, he admitted to those uncharged crimes in open court. That August, after sitting silent for nearly half a century, he was brought into a Sacramento courtroom to face the survivors and families who had waited forty years to look him in the eye. In August 2020, the formal legal proceedings came to a close.

20:31 Joseph DeAngelo was sentenced to more than twelve life terms, ensuring he will spend the rest of his life behind bars. The 74-year-old former police officer sat in court and was confronted directly by his victims and their family members. He had pleaded guilty to twenty-six counts in total: thirteen of first-degree murder, and thirteen of kidnapping. The statute of limitations had long expired on the dozens of rapes he was accused of committing, but his guilty pleas provided an official resolution on the record, accounting for a violent spree that left at least thirteen dead, more than fifty raped, and over a hundred homes ransacked.

21:04 Looking back across the decades, it is clear how deeply the technological limits of the 1970s and 1980s shaped this investigation. Law enforcement agencies were siloed, working without cell phones, surveillance networks, or modern DNA databases. A cunning offender could exploit those invisible county borders, leaving detectives to chase contradictory clues across Northern and Southern California while believing they were hunting entirely different men. In Visalia, they chased a burglar who scattered undergarments and shot Claude Snelling.

21:32 In Sacramento, they searched for a prowler who pried open windows and murdered Brian and Katie Maggiore. Along the southern coast, they looked for a killer tying diamond knots. The case files were separated by hundreds of miles and years of dead ends. The breakthrough only came when investigators stepped outside conventional tools. By pulling pristine genetic material frozen by a forward-thinking pathologist in 1980 and utilizing investigative genetic genealogy through GEDmatch, they navigated from distant cousins down to a single door handle and a discarded tissue.

22:02 That science solved a forty-year cold case, but it also ignited an ongoing national debate about privacy, government reach, and familial DNA searching. Studies noted that vast portions of the population could now be identified through public databases by relatives they had never even met. The file is closed on Joseph DeAngelo, yet the forensic precedent his capture established continues to reshape criminal investigations nationwide. Read the file. Form your own conclusion. That's it for this one.

22:29 Thanks for hanging out with me. This has been CrimeTimeSnacks, and I'll catch you next time.