Posted on 04/25/2018 4:34:50 PM PDT by Morgana
More than 40 years after the so-called Golden State Killer began terrorizing California, raping dozens of women and killing at least 12, authorities announced Wednesday that they had arrested 72-year-old Joseph James DeAngelo, charging him with capital murder.
DeAngelos arrest offered a shocking, abrupt development in what had long been one of the most notorious unsolved string of crimes in U.S. history. The gruesome attacks unfolded across California for more than a decade during the 1970s and 1980s, shattering families and frightening communities. Then the crimes stopped, remaining a mystery for a generation, with little sign the case would ever be solved.
The trail ultimately led authorities to DeAngelo, a former police officer living in Citrus Heights, Calif., a city outside Sacramento. Authorities said DeAngelo who was an officer during the years when police believe the attacks began was found through DNA evidence obtained in recent days. Though investigators declined to elaborate on what the DNA evidence was or how it was obtained, they said it clearly linked him to the crimes that had transfixed them for so long.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Kind of reminds you of the Frank Dodd character in Stephen King’s “The Dead Zone”, in which Dodd (a young deputy sheriff) was discovered to have been the perpetrator of a rash of rapes and strangling deaths of local women in recent years.
Lived there during that time but I can’t read at WP site...
Awesome. I had a feeling this guy was still alive after following a link from the Delphi murders. I had never heard of him but I was surely sure he was alive. That said, the teen girls had a picture and audio of their killer in the woods and still over a year later no arrest. I hope it does not take decades!
a stunning high percentage of govt employees are psycho
Security too. ADT alarms employed the BTK!
I found another one - thank you....
I’m sure curious to know what DNA they had - and the link you sent said it was discarded... We should learn more soon - hopefully!
It depends on who the killer is.
Well I am impatient.
This is fascinating. Just a couple of days ago, the Australian media was carrying stories linking the Golden State Killer to some of Australia’s most notorious crimes. The suggestion was he’d moved from the US to Australia, which is why he’d stopped there.
As best I can work out, this arrest would blow that idea out of the water (I can’t find any reference to him coming to Australia) but it’s interesting to see two stories about the same crimes so close together.
Openly, too.
That was a chiling movie.
That is an absolute mystery. Such a horrible crime and nothing?!
This is incredible.
I JUST started watching part of the “Unmasking a Killer” series recorded earlier this calendar year, which was all about this crime spree.
I just finished the last ep last night.
And today I was trying to look up unsolved/unknown serial killers based on watching that, what with Jack the Ripper and Zodiac and so on. And I had never heard of this Golden State Killer before seeing the ads for that show (yes, I’m curious about murder mysteries, especially mass/serial crimes).
Then my husband points this out to me tonight (no, never noticed it on my own today).
I’ll bet they scoped him out (based on some tip?) to see when they could nab a paper cup he threw out in public.
I think the Delphi police bungled the evidence and the fbi was useless. Is it a cop? Is it a serial killer on vaca ?
They need to explain what “was found through DNA evidence obtained in recent days.”
I wonder what made him a suspect at all - someone who knew something finally talked?
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