He wore a badge that promised to protect you, yet he spent his nights learning exactly how to bypass your locks. Let’s look closer at the man who hid in plain sight.

There is a particular kind of silence that falls over a room when someone begins to tell a story they have carried for decades. It is not an empty silence. It is heavy. It is thick with things left unsaid, with doors left unlocked, with lives interrupted in the dark. As I sit here, thinking about the women whose stories we are gathering today, I feel that weight pressing against my chest. We are archivists of the unseen, but some things are seen too clearly, burned into the collective memory of a state. Her name matters. Not just the names of the victims, though those are sacred. But the name of the man who took them. Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. Born November 8th, 1945, in Bath, New York. A boy who grew up in the shadow of violence, long before he became the monster the world would come to know by many different names.

To understand the darkness, we must sometimes look at the light that was extinguished early on. DeAngelo’s childhood was not safe. He was regularly beaten by both parents, a fact that sits uncomfortably in the record. When his family lived in West Germany, where his father, a sergeant in the United States Army, was stationed, young Joseph witnessed something traumatic. He says he was forced to watch as two airmen raped one of his sisters in a warehouse on the base. These are not details we use lightly. They are artifacts of a broken beginning. Between 1959 and 1960, he attended school in Rancho Cordova, then moved to Folsom High School. By 1964, he had received his GED. But while others were planning futures, prosecutors note that during his teenage years, DeAngelo was already committing burglaries, stealing mail, and torturing and killing animals. The patterns were forming. The cruelty was finding its shape.

He joined the Navy in September 1964, serving during the Vietnam War aboard the USS Canberra and the USS Piedmont. But it was after the military, during college, that he began to craft the mask he would wear for years. He graduated with honors in police science from Sierra College in Rocklin. He earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Sacramento State University in 1971. He even completed a thirty-two-week police internship with the Roseville Police Department. This is the part that chills me the most. He studied how to catch criminals. He learned the protocols, the patrol routes, the psychology of fear. From May 1973 to August 1976, he served as a burglary-unit officer in Exeter. He relocated from Citrus Heights to take this job. And then, in a twist of fate that feels almost impossible to comprehend, he assisted in the search for himself as the Visalia Ransacker. He walked among the victims, wearing a uniform, knowing exactly what they feared because he had planned it.

His crimes did not start as murders. They started small, then grew teeth. In Northern California, specifically the San Joaquin Valley, he committed a minimum of one hundred and twenty burglaries and one murder. Then he moved to Sacramento County. Between 1976 and 1979, the violence escalated. At least fifty-one rapes. Two more murders. He was linked to attacks in Stockton, Modesto, and Contra Costa County. He taunted his victims and the police through obscene phone calls and possibly written notes. He was playing a game, and he believed he was winning. When he moved south, to Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Orange counties, the pattern shifted again. From 1979 until 1986, he murdered at least ten people there. Thirteen murders total across three regions. Dozens of rapes. Over a hundred burglaries. He went dormant in 1986, perhaps sensing the noose tightening, or perhaps just moving on. For decades, he vanished into the background of his own life.

For thirty years, the case spun in circles. Suspects were cleared. Alibis were checked. DNA testing eventually indicated in 2001 that the offenders labeled as the East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker were the same person. The acronym EARONS was born. The case became a catalyst for change, helping establish California’s DNA database, which collects DNA from all accused and convicted felons in the state. It is considered second only to Virginia’s in effectiveness for solving cold cases. But the database alone was not enough to catch him. Crime writer Michelle McNamara coined the name Golden State Killer in the 2010s, bringing renewed attention to the files. In 2016, the FBI and local agencies held a news conference, offering a fifty-thousand-dollar reward. The pressure was on. But it was still quiet. Too quiet for the families waiting for answers.

Then, the technology caught up. Forensic genetic genealogy changed everything. Investigators uploaded crime scene DNA to public databases like GEDmatch. They weren’t looking for a direct match; they were looking for distant relatives. They found them. And from those connections, they traced the lineage back to Joseph James DeAngelo. On April 24th, 2018, California authorities charged the seventy-two-year-old former police officer with eight counts of first-degree murder. This was also the first time investigators officially connected the Visalia Ransacker crimes to him. He could not be charged for the rapes in the seventies due to statute of limitations, but in August 2018, he faced charges for thirteen related kidnapping and abduction attempts. Truth is slow work. But when it arrives, it arrives with the force of a tidal wave. The man who hid in plain sight was finally pulled into the light.

In June 2020, DeAngelo pleaded guilty to multiple counts of murder and kidnapping. He admitted to numerous crimes he had not been formally charged with, including rapes. In exchange, he spared himself the death penalty. On August 21st, 2020, he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Later, in January 2022, he received consecutive life terms for the Sacramento convictions. The investigation highlighted significant flaws in how cold cases were handled in the seventies and eighties. It marked a turning point in law enforcement’s use of genetic genealogy. But for the families, the sentence is just ink on paper. The loss remains. The silence returns, but now it is shared. They are not alone in remembering. We hold these stories with care, treating each fact like a fragile artifact, ensuring that the truth is preserved accurately. Her name matters. His actions do not define her legacy. Only his guilt defines him.

Thank you for sitting with me today. Thank you for listening to the parts of history that are hard to hear. We preserve these stories not to dwell on the horror, but to honor the resilience of those who survived and the dignity of those who were lost. This story is drawn from public records and widely reported accounts. Our thoughts are with everyone affected. I’m Jasmine Riley. Keep your locks locked, but keep your hearts open. Goodnight.