Man in the window: He was a spectral figure whose first killings involved dogs. Over the course of two decades of burglaries, animal killings, rapes and, finally, murders, he was called by many names: the Cordova Cat, the Visalia Ransacker, the East Area Rapist, the Creek Killer, the Diamond Knot Killer, the original Night Stalker and most famously, the Golden State Killer. More than 40 years passed before investigators concluded it was the work of one man.
Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. stands accused of 13 murders and suspected of some 225 other home invasions, including 50 rapes from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. To understand the makings of a suspected killer, the Los Angeles Times interviewed his teenage fiancée, his family and friends, detectives who struggled to piece together a broad spectrum of disturbingly similar crimes and rape victims whose pain was compounded by a society that afforded little protection or understanding. Almost from the start, psychiatrists and psychologists warned that a dark impulse drove such a criminal mind – and that it could not be stopped. Case detailsProsecutors accuse DeAngelo Jr., 72, of committing 60 home invasions; 50 rapes; 13 murders during the 1970s and ‘80s. It could be years before a trial starts, but prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty. DeAngelo has not yet entered a plea and there has been no preliminary hearing and no presentation of the physical evidence against him. There’s been no release of information on the quality of the DNA used to link the cases. DeAngelo and his public defender have refused to comment.
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June 2019
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