Original subtitles

[Dark music]

There is no better description of Joseph DeAngelo

than being a serial sexual sadist,

meaning that he gained sexual satisfaction

from inflicting harm.

[Clerk] The Superior Court of California is in session...

When Joseph DeAngelo went to court after he was arrested,

part of the plea agreement

was that he was going to admit these other crimes.

[Judge] Regarding the uncharged act of kidnapping

with intent to commit rape of Elizabeth Snelling,

having occurred on September 11th, 1975.

Do you admit or deny?

I admit.

He confessed and admitted through his plea

that he was in fact, the individual

who killed Claude Snelling

and ultimately, that he was in fact, the Visalia Ransacker.

There's a possibility and probably a high likelihood

that he committed way more crimes

than we ever will know about.

He wanted to prove to the world,

one, that he could get away with it,

but two, that he could outsmart everybody.

[Troubling music]

[Dark, troubling music]

As these ransackings are happening in Visalia

and totally befuddling the police department,

DeAngelo is living in Exeter,

about four miles south in the Central Valley.

His mom lives in Exeter.

One of his sisters lives in Exeter with her husband.

[Jim] I went to visit Joe and Sharon in Exeter a few times.

You know, they had a duplex down there that they were renting.

And there was no indication for me that there was anything awry

in any way, shape, or form.

You know, you would think he was just a happy police officer

doing what he wanted to do.

That's what I thought.

[Paige] Here he is in a small farming community police force

of ten people and is heading up a task force

to investigate crimes very much like those happening in Visalia.

They just never thought it could be law enforcement...

One of their own.

They were looking everywhere but somebody like DeAngelo.

[Jim] He did work the night shift.

He liked working the swing shift or the actual night shift,

you know, from eleven to seven in the morning.

It gave him that opportunity to do what he did.

[Marjorie] In 1975, I lived in Visalia.

I had three young children.

I became aware that there was some guy out on the streets.

I would sit by the front window,

which was a big, huge picture window, with a loaded shotgun,

until my husband got home from work.

My name is Marjorie Smith.

When I was 25 years old,

the Visalia Ransacker was hitting

in an area where I lived.

And that's what triggered my interest.

I personally think that he has a lot more rapes

and a lot more murders than those he has admitted to.

I've always been very curious, and if I start something,

I get my teeth into it until I finish it.

I didn't know it would be a fifty year investigation.

[Intriguing music]

When I was beginning the research,

I was going through old newspapers.

And there was one newspaper clipping

that talked about five unsolved murders.

And this young girl's name that was murdered in 74, was there.

Her name was Jennifer Lynn Armour.

She went to Mount Whitney High School.

She was in the same age group as Beth Snelling.

The last place that this young girl was seen alive

was a few blocks away from where Beth Snelling lived.

That's when I thought, that's kind of a strange coincidence.

[Tense, dramatic music]

[Rob] My sister, Jennifer, was very independent, very outgoing,

athletic, a softball player.

[Soft, nostalgic music]

Blonde hair, blue eyes, average build, but big smile, big smile.

We grew up in a typical sixties strict family.

So, I was 12 and my sister was 14 when we moved to Visalia.

Picture of my sister Jennifer.

The last picture of her,

her sophomore picture in high school.

Just a couple months before she was taken from us.

Ah, she's wearing the necklace that I made for her,

and she's wearing a blouse.

I think that was her favorite blouse,

and I think that was the blouse she actually had on

when she was taken.

She was 15, just 15 and three or four months, three months.

[Sinister stinger]

November of 1974, she was on her way to a football game

between the two big high schools in town, a big rivalry game.

[Troubling music]

She wanted to go to that game with her friends and...

had quite the battle with mom about going to that game,

but she finally got to go.

[Marjorie] Jennifer was going to meet a group

in the K-Mart parking lot,

which is maybe two blocks from where Best Snelling lives.

She never made it to the game.

[Dark, sinister music]

This paper here is the last thing that Jennifer ever wrote.

It says, 'Mom, thanks for letting me go to the game.

Love, Jen.'

Oh, the next morning after the game, she wasn't home.

So she hadn't come home over the night.

It wasn't like you see today

when people go and put posters everywhere

and make flyers and large groups of people get together

to go out and search.

It was nothing like that.

Just a 15-year-old girl, missing.

[Sombre, troubling music]

She was never seen again,

until her body was found in Exeter

in the irrigation canal.

It turned out to be a county case.

So, Tulare County sheriffs were investigating it.

[Marjorie] She's been in water for nine days.

There was no evidence.

I mean, they did not find any of her clothing.

Her body was decomposed.

[Rob] I was the one that opened the door.

There was two detectives standing there,

holding a necklace in a bag.

And that necklace was obviously the one I had made.

She wore it all the time.

So, as soon as I saw that, there was no question.

[Sombre music]

[John] Jennifer Armour has always bothered me.

As I recall the first time,

it wasn't investigated as a homicide.

She was found naked with her hands tied with a bra.

And I could never figure out

why they said it was accidental death.

It's kind of hard to believe it wasn't a homicide

if someone was swimming in a canal in November

with their hands tied behind their back.

First of all, you wouldn't swim in that canal in November.

And I don't know anybody

who swims with their hands tied behind their back.

After looking at her friends,

I don't think they had anyone else to look at.

They came to a dead end there.

Which is quite puzzling to me...

when you look at it now; very puzzling.

My husband, Brad, lived in Exeter till his passing in 2024.

When Brad got to be a teenager,

Joe was a policeman there in Exeter.

Brad being a 14-year-old boy, and your uncle's a policeman,

you believe everything your uncle tells you.

When Joe was arrested in 2018,

of course, it was a shock to everyone.

Brad started investigating so he could prove

that Joe was not this evil monster

that everybody was saying he was.

However, he changed his mind.

Events kept coming back to him, so he started writing.

The more he thought, the more he remembered

about the time that he spent with Joe

when these crimes were happening.

[Brad VO] Let's start in 1974, Jennifer Armour.

I do believe Joe may have kidnapped and killed her.

Why?

The location where she was last seen

around the Kmart parking lot.

Well, that is where Sharon, Joe's wife,

worked security for Kmart.

I do believe he had taken Sharon to work,

seen Jennifer, kidnapped her,

drove to the canal and killed her.

[Sorrowful music]

The place where her body was found, Joe and I knew well.

That would have been a place we drove, hunted,

and rabbit hunted many times.

He would have known there's never anybody in that area.

It was always quiet out there.

Here we are, 2026, and nobody has been arrested.

I do not know if they are still looking to find the murderer

of Jennifer Lynn Armour.

I don't even know that they really looked at Joe DeAngelo.

[Camera clicks]

[Dark, intriguing music]

[Michael] 1975, DeAngelo was ransacking.

Despite the fact that there were more than 50 burglaries

in less than two years, it didn't get much attention.

The Ransacker wasn't big news.

[Marjorie] Most people in Visalia

didn't know anything about the Visalia ransacker

until September 11th, 1975, when we all heard

that Professor Claude Snelling had been murdered.

[Gunshots]

And that changed everything.

[John] We got a lot of front page articles in the paper.

And the pressure on city council

and the Chief of Police was enormous.

So, we called in more officers and worked more stakeouts.

[Tense, intriguing music]

We asked the sheriff for deputies to help us.

We got reserves to help us.

We got highway patrol officers to come into the city.

It just got more intense trying to catch the ransacker.

I was assigned the case.

McGowen was a detective.

One night, while we were looking for the shoe tracks,

which we had good shoe tracks,

McGowen checks on this house, and saw a shoe track.

[Investigative music]

Under the bedroom window of the young female

was a ring in the dirt.

And looking down the house, he saw a flower pot.

So he says, "Hey, somebody moved a flower pot over there,

stood on it, and looked in the bedroom window of the girl."

We said, "We're going to stay right here till he comes to us."

[Suspenseful music]

McGowen was in the garage,

looked out the window, when a figure walked by the window

and went in the backyard.

[Tense, intriguing music]

When he confronts him, he says, "Freeze or I'll shoot,"

and the guy starts screaming like a girl.

"Oh, don't hurt me!

Please don't hurt me! I give up."

And he reaches with his right hand, pulls his ski mask off.

Now McGowen sees the Ransacker for the first time.

The Ransacker comes up with his left hand and shoots McGowen,

hits his flashlight.

[Farrel] And DeAngelo, he jumped the six-foot fence

and got away.

That's when I took my K9 over there

and we searched houses, we searched outbuildings,

and couldn't find him, couldn't catch him.

He was smart.

The impact knocked me back.

And he continued to run,

throwing some items,

apparently taken at the burglary.

[Farrel] He dropped a sock

containing coins, one earring from a pair, a cheap ring,

and Blue Chip stamps.

So, we knew it was the Ransacker,

because another weird thing he did was

that he stole Blue Chip stamps.

[Marjorie] He shot a police officer and got away with it.

People were paying attention and getting worried.

They were just all... all scared.

And Visalia police, they was doing all they could,

setting up surveillance and watching the neighborhoods

and all that stuff.

But he was just a really sneaky guy.

I think there was two sides of Joe DeAngelo.

One side, he was a public servant, and then at night,

the werewolf would come out in him: rape, kill, or whatever.

Then he'd come back as a police officer with another face on.

[John] McGowen's composite under hypnosis

looked just like DeAngelo to me.

It was the best composite.

[Farrel] Some of the features that McGowen put on paper,

the way they did the hair, the facial look,

it looked like DeAngelo.

But at the time, we had no idea who it could have been.

Not at all.

We showed the composite a thousand times.

We put it in the paper and showed it around in Visalia,

and we didn't get anything out of it.

After McGowen's shooting,

he was really upset that he didn't recognize the guy.

Now, let me tell you, we failed.

We didn't catch him.

We should have caught him.

That was our chance.

That was what we all worked for all that time.

And if we had caught him,

just think, there would be no Golden State Killer.

[Troubling music]

[Bryanna] It was clear something was going to come

of this string of ransackings that happened in Visalia.

The media attention was too great.

DeAngelo knew if he kept doing this,

the police would be just looking for him,

and he was probably going to get caught.

Joe was pretty lucky in that he got away with...

the McGowen incident, that was a close call.

So somehow, he was going to have to do something

to get the heat off.

And he thinks, 'Well, I want to direct the police.'

Maybe I can get all of them hooked onto somebody else.

[Sinister music]

[Marjorie] On December 26th,

another young girl with a very similar physical description

and age to Beth, to Jennifer, and to Elizabeth Silva

went missing in Exeter.

Donna Richmond and two of her girlfriends

were peddling over to her boyfriend's house on bicycle.

And then she had to get home

because she was going to be late.

We don't know what direction she went.

We know she never made it home.

She was never seen alive again.

[Farrel] Exeter Police Department

didn't have no authority to investigate.

That was Tulare County Sheriff's Department.

Because the police only take care of their city limits.

Just Exeter.

I just heard it on the radio,

and I was home, so I came out on my own just to help search.

I had a dog, and I was concerned about her missing.

And we started searching orange groves.

My first orange grove was up here on the right hand side.

And then I searched this one here.

[Troubling music]

[Sorrowful music]

Found her bicycle on the railroad track

about one mile out of Exeter.

[Sinister music]

This is the third row.

So, she was down probably 10, 15 trees, underneath the tree.

Stabbed 17 times in the back.

[Marjorie] Donna was naked from her waist down.

She did have her socks on.

She had her jackets on.

The stab wounds were both on her front and her back.

She was trying to crawl and get away,

and apparently, he was stabbing her

while she was trying to get away.

The whole community, when that happened,

all of her friends at school,

relatives, mom and dad, everybody was just devastated.

I was devastated myself.

[Sorrowful music]

[Marjorie] Where Donna's body wawas found in the Orange Gro,

you can actually see that canal where Jennifer was found.

We have Jennifer and Donna both found a mile apart

in Exeter, dead.

In the same orchard where Donna was found,

pulled underneath a tree, they also found a striped ski mask.

And where her bicycle was found, they found a receipt book,

and it had the name, 'Clifton', inside of it.

Oscar Clifton was a handyman.

He was married and he had children.

One of the investigators knew where he lived.

Oscar had a previous conviction 10 years before.

[Michael] In 1965, an 18-year-old girl testified

that a man she identified as Oscar Clifton, grabbed her,

put his hand over her mouth, and forced her to the ground.

But luckily, the girl was able to escape.

Oscar Clifton was convicted of assault

with intent to commit rape and spent six months in prison.

[Marjorie] Part of Donna's clothing,

her ditto jeans and her panties and her shoes,

were found on the street leading to Oscar Clifton's house.

[Intriguing music]

The officers who were investigating the scenes

felt that Oscar had thrown out the shoes and the ditto pants

and her panties, as he was heading directly to his house.

Oscar Clifton was arrested within hours.

[Tense music builds]

Sergeant Bob Byrd was the one who headed up the investigation

of Donna Richmond's murder.

Joe DeAngelo wasn't involved in the investigation.

When Oscar Clifton was arrested for it,

I saw Bob Byrd saying, "Oh, yeah, he did it.

I'm going to get that son of a bitch."

[Marjorie] Once Oscar was convicted,

he was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.

[Farrel] He swore up and down he had nothing to do with it.

He'd written letters to all kinds of Exeter residents.

He even sent one to me,

requesting that we look into the situation again.

[John] I think the investigation on Oscar Clifton

was blind tunnel vision.

I just felt like they should have investigated more suspects.

It seemed like they just decided, 'He's our guy,'

and worked toward that.

[Marjorie] I thought they had the right guy

until I heard about the receipt book.

And that's when I started, that doesn't make any sense.

He didn't do it.

What idiot's gonna leave their receipt book there

with his name in it, For heaven's sakes!?

There were no fingerprints found on the outside of the book,

but there were some fingerprints of Oscar on the inside pages

But it's like somebody had perhaps wiped the outside clean.

I mean, I thought it immediately.

That was planted.

If Joe DeAngelo knew where Oscar Clifton lived,

it would have been easy enough

to have lifted it out of his pickup or his car.

Nobody wanted to look at Donna's case because it had been solved.

He was in prison.

Once I got involved, it became an obsession.

I am sure there has been an injustice.

I wholeheartedly believe that it was Joe DeAngelo.

[Dramatic stinger]

I believe he left some items there,

framing Oscar Clifton for Donna Richmond's murder

to cover his tracks of previous murders.

[Sombre music]

The fact that DeAngelo was on the police force

at the time this crime occurred

and potentially could have been involved

either with planting evidence, misleading the investigation,

or just being clever enough to take something

from somebody else and leave it at the crime scene

knowing what the police were going to pick up on

and using that to frame somebody else,

is exactly what somebody as calculating and cold

and plotting as DeAngelo would do.

This would not have been just a random framing.

I think he knew of Oscar Clifton's previous conviction

and that made Oscar an easy patsy.

[Sirens wailing]

[Farrel] A police officer knows what to do and what to cover up;

when not to leave evidence.

It was like a cat and mouse game to him.

[Marjorie] I think a major driver for Deangelo

was the fact that he would be able

to go into work in the morning, hear that he got away with it,

that he was not attributed

to the crimes that he committed the day before.

He must have thought he was so much smarter

than the other cops, that he's better than them.

He's the one in control.

And that's really what he was seeking.

So I think that was just additional validation for him.

[Intriguing music]

[Farrel] This is the old police station.

DeAngelo had the window pointed

directly at Exeter Union High School

so he could check out whomever he wanted to with field glasses.

Sick bastard.

Donna Richmond went to Exeter High School when she was killed.

[Wanda] When Brad was in high school,

somebody came to Brad and told him,

"Hey, your uncle is sitting in his patrol car

with his binoculars, watching the girls playing tennis."

Brad believes that he was watching Donna Richmond.

[Investigative music]

[Marjorie] In order to understand,

you really have to look through the whole case.

It goes very deep.

When she was killed, there is no possible way

Oscar could have been out murdering Donna.

There was a young boy who saw him working on a house

15 miles away from the crime scene.

The young boy described Oscar,

gave an approximate time that this had happened.

He could not have been in two places at once.

They interviewed the boy.

but that tape never made it into the trial.

It was misplaced in files at the sheriff's office.

[Tense music]

If you take into consideration Oscar's alibi,

the trial would have been over with right then and there.

[Pensive music]

Brad one hundred percent believes

that Joe murdered Donna Richmond

because of something that Joe told him that only someone

that was there when Donna was being murdered would know.

[Brad VO] 1975, Donna Jo Richmond.

I don't know if this next statement was kind of strange.

He told me Donna was getting screwed from behind

and was being stabbed in the back at the same time.

I also think the case against Oscar Clifton

was weak and wrong.

There are a lot of things about this case that point to Joe.

[Tense, sinister music]

[Marjorie] Where Donna was found,

they also found a ski mask

that made the connection

between the Visalia Ransacker and Donna Richmond.

We've got a striped ski mask with Beth Snelling,

and we have a striped ski mask with Donna.

Here is the connection.

They matched.

[Wheelchair rustles over tense music]

So, he left the receipt book to link Oscar Clifton to Donna.

The ski mask to link Donna to the Ransacker.

Why would he leave his ski mask there?

So that they would start looking at Oscar Clifton

as being the Ransacker.

There were hairs adhering to the ski mask.

But they can't test it against Joe DeAngelo's hair

because all the evidence was destroyed

in Oscar Clifton's case within a year.

[Pensive music]

[Southern music]

In 1974, he could have kidnapped and raped Elizabeth Silva,

who was only 12 at the time.

We have Jennifer Lynn Armour

floating in the Frient Kern Canal, dead.

And we have Bess Snelling, September 11, 1975.

Her father was murdered in the attempt to abduct her.

And then to December, we have Donna Richmond.

I think there is an obvious connection.

Oh my gosh, here's another blonde girl.

Similar build, similar size, look the same.

Seemed to be his preference.

A lot of offenders,

especially at the beginning of their crime series,

have a very specific type of victim that they target.

So if you have one case that you know is attributed to DeAngelo,

and then others that are very similar, in MO, location,

victimology, crime scene behaviors,

you have a lot of reason to put them all attributed to DeAngelo.

[Rob] It's so hard to understand why no connection was ever made

by the people who were actively

investigating the Visalia Ransacker.

I just will never for the life of me understand

why nobody could put those two things together.

And stop this person, this thing,

from going and doing all the horrible things he did.

[Sinister music]

I would just like someone to go talk to DeAngelo.

If they think he may have done it,

why haven't they spoken with him?

Why don't they go out and ask DeAngelo

if he murdered my sister?

[Bryanna] Psychologically, they think,

'What's in it for me if I give all of this away?'

And they can maintain some control over the narrative

and have people still talking about them

because the cases are unsolved.

The offender gets to keep that secret all the way to the grave.

[Intriguing music]

[Marjorie] Oscar died 2013 in prison,

maintaining his innocence up to his dying day,

and always felt that they would find the real killer.

[Farrel] Joseph DeAngelo wasn't arrested until 45 years later.

The DA's office reviewed Oscar Clifton's case again,

just in case there was a slip-up someplace.

[Marjorie] In 2019, it revealed that the DNA found in the semen

that was found on Donna had a partial profile match

to Oscar Clifton,

and it cleared Joseph DeAngelo.

I and others, dispute this,

because the evidence is decades old

and I believe it's cross contaminated.

[Jim] Joe and I had spent some time together

riding motorcycles, and Joe brought up

me being very careful.

He said, "You never talk to the police.

You always get a lawyer."

And I'm thinking, 'Why is he telling me this?'

But he went on about it for like two or three minutes.

I do believe that he said, Oscar, "Yeah, this guy Oscar,"

and then he stopped.

At the time, I did not know that Oscar was going through

all kinds of appeals.

So in my mind, I'm thinking, 'Holy mackerel.'

And I think he knew right then that he might spill the beans

or say too much.

[Motorbike engines revving]

When I had this epiphany,

you might say, whatever, I called Tulare County and said,

"Remember that Oscar Clifton guy and Joe Deangelo?"

I said, and I told them my story.

And they never called me about it,

never wanted to talk about it.

[Paige] While people are looking

at Donna Jo Richmond's murder,

there were so many missteps taken by police at the time

that you don't have the body of evidence

that would have told you more.

[Courtroom chatter]

The ripples of trauma just that surround Joe DeAngelo

just don't end.

[Birds singing over sorrowful music]

[Marjorie] Oscar had three children,

people in high school pointing out

that their father had been a murderer.

So yes, they suffered.

[Rob] We all dealt with it differently.

But it's always there.

It's always... It's always a part of your life.

[Birds singing over sorrowful music]

It's never ending. It just never stops.

[Sorrowful music]

I miss Jennifer very much.

[Sniffs back tears]

I miss that she didn't get to live

and we didn't get to see what she could have become.

I would have liked to see

what she could have done with her life.

[Soft sobbing]

I would have wanted her to see what I did with mine.

I wish I could've taken care of my sister.

[Melancholy music fades]

[Dramatic stinger]

[Marjorie] In 1976, everything just stopped.

I mean, there were no more break-ins.

I was back to normal, raising my family.

Didn't have a shotgun sitting by the front window anymore.

I mean, it was over.

I felt safe.

I believe once Oscar was convicted in June of 76,

Joe DeAngelo had to stop ransacking here in Visalia,

because if he was trying to set Oscar up

as the Visalia Ransacker and he was in jail,

that wouldn't make any sense.

That's when Joe DeAngelo left Exeter

and went to become a police officer up in Auburn.

[Bird squawking]

[Intriguing music]

Joe DeAngelo and his wife decided

that it's time to go for greener pastures

back toward home, to Auburn,

which is on the eastern side of Sacramento.

Sharon is struggling to work extra jobs

to help pay for law school and get established

and started in life as a respected family lawyer.

His mother has remarried,

and his stepfather has a home up there, too.

So he is still near family.

Joe and Sharon, my sister, together at Mom's house.

He doesn't like me taking pictures of him.

He never did.

He's giving me this sinister look, the evil, evil eye.

He doesn't want to be part of this scene because deep inside,

he knows that he's this evil monster.

It's totally two different people,

even though it's in the same body.

His evil, sinister night activity

and whenever he was doing wrong,

and then his normal loving, caring thing.

[Retro, upbeat music]

[Paige] So, Sacramento in the mid 70s

is like Sacramento today.

It's the Midwest of California and kind of middle class life.

Sacramento thought of itself as a very safe place.

[Joyful laughter over upbeat music]

But if you were a prowler,

we had these canals, which became bike trails.

So you could get anywhere you wanted to get and never be seen.

[Troubling music]

You could move through backyards and through the bushes.

And you had easy access.

You had this picture window.

Everybody had a picture window out front.

You could look inside the homes.

[Suspenseful music]

So physically, Sacramento and its suburbs

were a perfect place to commit these kinds of crimes.

It was a playground for someone like Joe DeAngelo to operate in.

MO evolves over time.

Either it works, and they keep getting away with it.

The other hand is, sometimes they think,

'That really wasn't what I got the most thrill

or pleasure out of,' and that crime series stops right there.

So, they're really working through this,

and they're developing their MO,

and they're escalating, but it isn't linear.

It's not like a video game, where you level up,

and, 'I'll stay on that level,

and then level up again and stay on that level.'

Offenders bounce between.

[Sinister music builds]

[Paige] In early 1976,

after Joe DeAngelo has moved to the Auburn Police Department,

a series of rapes begin to be reported in Rancho Cordova.

These are distinctive enough

that they're able to cluster these rapes.

This is the same attacker.

[Marjorie] And the first victim was found

just like Jennifer Lynn Armour,

with her hands tied behind her back with a bra.

[Deep breathing over dark, suspenseful music]

[Investigative music builds]

It's the first time the so-called East Area Rapist

has struck here in the Foothill Farms area of Sacramento.

There was fear in the community.

I was his tenth victim.

I had just turned 15.

[Farrel] This time the rapist struck

in the northeast part of Sacramento.

He kept saying, "I'll kill you, I'll kill you, I'll kill you."

He could spend up to three hours at a time

in the house, terrorizing people.

'Oh, my god. I think I'm going to be raped.'

I just prayed to God.

I said, 'Let me live. I want to live through this.'

[News] She is struck on the average once every two weeks,

sometimes every two days, sometimes a week apart.

There was nobody that was safe in the entire city.

We want all the women in Sacramento to stand up

and do something.

Many women in the Concord area are close to panic, afraid they'll be next.

When you saw the sun go down,

you have this pit in your stomach.

[Dark, pensive music]