Original subtitles

- He was a sex offender, a rapist.

- They called him the Golden State Killer.

- The pressure to catch this man has been mounting.

Citizens began buying everything they could think of

to protect themselves.

Gun sales are way up.

- He was extremely frightening.

He was entering homes in the middle of the night

when the victims were sleeping.

He'd ransack their homes

and would sexually assault the female victim.

- He favors quiet, upper-class suburbs.

Usually works in the predawn hours, wearing a ski

or stocking mask.

- All told, over 50 women were raped and 13 people murdered.

- But no one could ever catch him.

None of the sexual assault victims got a look at him.

- We have a composite. It's a guy wearing a ski mask.

- And that's it. So how do we identify him?

- By going after their DNA.

- We knew it was a long shot,

but the FBI was not going to let this go.

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- In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines--

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drug busts, mob stings,

terrorist takedowns.

Get down!

- We understand why people want to tell stories about us.

- Mark it. - Freeze!

- FBI. - FBI!

- Action! - But they don't know

the half of it.

What really goes down,

we save that for each other,

when we're talking agent-to-agent.

This is "FBI True."

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Kristy Kottis is a 24-year veteran of the FBI.

She worked gangs, crimes against children,

as well as human and drug trafficking.

Kottis was the supervisor of the FBI's

threat response squad

overseeing the Bureau's response to terrorism threats

in New York City.

- Julia, why don't you tell me what your role was in the FBI,

and how did you get on the case?

- At the time that I was assigned this case,

I was assigned to the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit.

- Julia Cowley was with the FBI for over 22 years.

She was selected to join the Bureau's

Behavioral Analysis Unit.

Cowley was the lead FBI profiler on this case.

- When I joined the FBI, this was the kind of case

that I hoped to work on and to contribute to.

I was still fairly new in the unit,

and my boss called me in, and he said,

"Have you ever heard of the East Area--"

and I said, "East Area Rapist?"

I had heard about the case many years before.

I was a younger agent, and I was on maternity leave,

and I saw a documentary on the case.

And I became very interested in the case.

- It was the first case that was assigned

to me as a homicide detective.

- Larry Pool worked as an investigator

with the Orange County Sheriff's Department

for over 15 years.

In 1994, he was the first law enforcement officer

to spot OJ Simpson fleeing in the White Ford Bronco.

He's assigned the case of the East Area Rapist in 1998.

- Julia, what was it about this case that intrigued you?

- Just how frightening that this individual was.

- A California community unhinged.

Every month from 1976 to 1979,

the so-called East Area Rapist would strike.

Who was he? And was he hiding in plain sight?

- He was entering homes in the middle of the night

when the victims were sleeping.

He threatened to kill them,

and then he would sexually assault the female victim.

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- Residents are so horror-stricken,

some women rent motel rooms.

- Just out of fear?

- I believe so.

Yes, I definitely believe so, yes.

- Which motel are they going to?

- The one gal that I know went to Howard Johnson's.

- Citizens began buying everything they could think of

to protect themselves.

Gun sales are way up.

- I live alone, and I would like to learn

how to protect myself.

- And, you know, just to clarify,

he was called the East Area Rapist

for the series of sexual assaults.

- By the early '80s, the East Area Rapist

was now linked to several murders.

By the 2010s, he got a new moniker--

the Golden State Killer.

The relentless evil was startling.

Over 50 women raped,

13 murdered.

- The last homicide that was attributed to him

was in 1986, so he had stopped.

So how do we identify him?

How are we going to find him?

So I ended up reviewing 45 sexual assault cases

and 13 homicides.

Behaviors are really important.

How did they commit their crime?

What steps did they take or not take?

What did they say? What words did they choose?

All this stuff can tell you a lot.

I got involved many years

after Larry had been on the case.

- Detective Larry Pool in Santa Ana

is obsessed with finding a brutal serial murderer

and rapist who frequently telephoned his victims

before his attacks.

- Not only is the killer terrorizing his victims,

he also taunts the Sacramento Police.

- Our offender is one of the most brazen,

if not most brazen, serial killers

of perhaps American history.

There was a lot of public pressure

to identify the Golden State Killer.

We have a composite for that person.

It's a guy wearing a ski mask.

But it's of no investigative value.

- But the rapist and killer does leave

something behind that could unravel

the mystery of his identity.

Semen was found with several of his murder victims.

- In August 19, 1980, the murder

of Keith and Patrice Harrington,

and then February of 1981,

Manuela Witthuhn in Irvine.

And then May of 1986, Janelle Cruz, also in Irvine.

And thankfully, through our crime lab,

they were able to extract the perpetrator's DNA

from his semen.

- Why didn't this lead to the identification of the killer?

- There are a lot of databases that investigators

back in the original homicides didn't have access to.

The FBI National DNA databank

didn't come online until about 1998.

- So even though we have DNA for the East Area Rapist,

we don't have that in a database.

- Yes, that's correct.

- That must have been frustrating.

So now you're back to square one.

So what are you doing?

Take me through that.

- So it started with me looking back

through the investigations,

ensure that I had every document, note,

anything that had ever been written

pertaining to each investigation.

What I was thinking was that when the killing stopped,

something interrupted him.

- So one of the studies that I did is people who

are incarcerated during that period of time,

and I figure that's probably where he was--in prison.

So I place a heavy emphasis on looking at people

who were free up until July 27th in 1981

and then in custody at least up until,

let's say, May 4th of 1986,

in that window of time.

There was a time when I went to death row,

looking at offenders on death row.

Because I figured, well, we've got a pretty captive audience

here that we know that they're committing,

you know, the worst, worst crimes.

- Pool's hunch about incarcerated perps

doesn't lead anywhere.

- The case went cold, so what am I doing wrong?

That's where Julia comes in.

- So we're going to bring in a profiler

to have access to more information that potentially

could identify him.

- That's correct.

- Julia, how long did you work on the case

before you contacted Larry?

- I had been working on the case about six months

before Larry and I actually had any contact.

I went out to California from Quantico.

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All the different jurisdictions were there

all the detectives.

And he looked over at me and said,

"I'll be very interested to see what the FBI has to say.

That is, if they're willing to share their opinion."

And I just said, "I'll tell you what I think.

I'm not afraid to tell you what I think."

And he just went, "OK."

And I wasn't sure

how to take that, but I took it

as maybe he was skeptical.

But I took it to heart because

I didn't want to disappoint him.

I had gone through all the material,

and I had a pretty good understanding of the offender.

- What did you come up with?

- In my initial assessment,

I thought he was a very insecure individual,

that this was the ultimate overcompensation

for his lack of confidence

and his feelings of ineffectiveness.

He was very ritualistic in what he did.

And he did it the same way almost every single time.

He would put fragile items on the doorknobs

so that if people came home, he would hear them,

and he'd be able to escape.

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- He usually works in the pre-dawn hours,

wearing a ski or stocking mask, and often spends

several hours in the home,

tying up husbands or male companions.

- Once he had the victims bound,

he would go ransack the house,

and he was very loud about it.

He would open and close drawers and slam cabinets.

And he would be gulping food in their kitchen.

And once he spent a lot of time doing this,

he'd separate the female victim from the male,

I think to mitigate any risk that the male victim

was going to try to intervene.

- Cowley believes the attacker's motivation

was not just about his female victims.

- In my opinion, the victim selection was really

about the male victim.

This is a man who wanted to dominate other men,

and this was a way that he could exert his control

and take over-- take over their home,

have sexual access to their female companions

right in the same home with them.

And I was very interested in evidence that really

factored in to this idea

that he was a very insecure individual.

The majority of the female victims,

in describing the offender,

said he had an abnormally small penis.

- Even in the erect state?

- Yes. And they were very descriptive about its size.

I didn't put all the weight-- oh, he's got to be insecure,

he's got a small penis.

It was all of the behavior he exhibited

in front of his victims when he tried to portray

this big, tough, scary individual in control.

And from then on out, he's taken the ultimate control,

which is to murder them.

- Larry, when you first heard Julia's findings

on the profile of the potential subject,

what were your thoughts?

- My thoughts were everything that

she described was consistent with my feelings at the time.

I felt that it was pretty spot on.

As you take all those elements into consideration,

it gives you a better chance of being able

to solve the investigation.

- There was also evidence he was

very good at entering homes.

- Through either prying a regular door, a sliding door,

removing screens from windows, prying windows,

opening windows--

he essentially entered a home just about every way but,

you know, coming down the chimney.

- There is also evidence of the Golden State Killer's

tactical expertise.

- When he was confronted with a life or death situation

or with a situation where he would have to get

into a physical fight with an able-bodied, competent male,

he immediately went to deadly force,

and that was with a gun.

And he was very good at using a gun, very accurate,

able to hit his target in a high-stress situation.

And I ended up telling the working group

that I thought he had some sort of formal firearms training.

- What I was thinking was that, was he prior military?

- Why did you think that?

- Military history was a fairly common thread to be found

in many serial offenders.

- Right.

- But the other really interesting part of this case

was his ability to evade law enforcement.

I mean, at the height of his attacks in Sacramento,

patrols were everywhere.

And I wondered if he had some sort of inside information,

if he understood law enforcement tactics

when it came to surveillance

and where they would be sitting.

And I thought he potentially was

a police officer at some point in time.

- Larry, what are you thinking? - It really wasn't a stretch,

especially back in the '70s and '80s,

to say that a serial offender could be in law enforcement.

There are other well-known cases

where police officers were convicted of serial crimes.

I felt that we should be putting more information out,

getting things out on social media, to the media,

informing the public as much as we can

without actually hindering the investigation.

- That might help to identify him.

- Our Top Story At 6:30, the FBI is making a renewed effort

to find a serial murderer and rapist

who struck all around the Bay Area in the '70s and '80s.

Agents say he's been on the loose ever since,

and they believe he can still be found.

- Did the FBI offer a substantial financial reward

for any information?

- They offered $50,000 reward.

- The unknown suspect committed more than 45 rapes

and a dozen homicides between 1976 and 1986.

- They did this public information campaign,

put out a lot of information about the case,

about the offender to try to get him identified.

- His primary entrance into a residence

was by prying open doors or windows.

- The campaign and the reward failed

to produce any strong leads.

- It was almost becoming a last chance that we were

going to be able to catch him.

- But fortunately there was hope due to advancements

in DNA technology.

- By 2018, the DNA analysis available to law enforcement

has evolved significantly, with up to 13 million

criminal profiles in the FBI's DNA databank.

- And with that, we stood more of an opportunity

to identify the subject.

- So the DNA from semen found decades earlier was submitted

to the crime lab to see if it could

lead to some potential subjects,

possibly a police officer.

- So I had more candidates than I thought I would.

We had about 1,000. - Wow.

- But we had some very talented analysts in Sacramento

at the DA's office that began to work on that list.

Essentially that initial list of 1,000

was reverse engineered back to about a list of 25.

And that 25 was a workable list.

- And this one suspect really stood out.

- What was it?

- I think the number one thing is that

he was living in Sacramento, in Citrus Heights.

- Yeah, he was a police officer

at Exeter Police Department from '73 to '76.

In '76, he's resigned.

And then he moved from Exeter to the Sacramento area

right around the time when our East Area Rapist occurs.

- And that suspect is?

- Joseph DeAngelo.

- Divorced and a father of three adult daughters,

DeAngelo becomes the prime suspect in the case.

- So in 2018, the deputies at the Sacramento County

Sheriff's Office, they put him under surveillance

and they obtained a DNA sample surreptitiously.

- There was DNA that was lifted from the door handle

of DeAngelo's car, and additional DNA

material was obtained after that from a discarded tissue.

- Wow. Amazing.

- I was getting pretty excited, but at the same time

I learned to not get very excited over the years.

Because the more excited you get,

the more let down you are.

- So Paul Holes, who was one of the investigators on the case

had this idea to submit one of the samples of DNA

from a crime scene to one of these online ancestry

companies that track heritage.

- And then that was ingested into the ancestral databanks

where that information is pooled.

- The genealogical website GEDmatch.com contains

the genetic profiles of thousands of users

looking to research their family trees.

It's a Hail Mary from investigators,

but if Joseph DeAngelo or any of his relatives

have entered their DNA into the site,

it could confirm the investigators' suspicions.

- That DNA sample was a match.

- I think the initial list was around 1,000,

but that was culled down,

and people were brought on board

with the expertise in having that ability

to reverse engineer a family tree

until we were whittled down to a list of 25.

And certainly, on that list, Mr. DeAngelo bopped.

- That ultimately led to the identification

of the Golden State Killer.

That's what solved it.

- And we begin with breaking news out of California,

where authorities tonight say they have arrested

a serial killer tied to dozens of murders

and sexual assaults,

72-year-old Joseph James DeAngelo.

- We all knew as part of this team

that we were looking for a needle in a haystack.

We found the needle in the haystack.

- And what did that feel like?

What are you both thinking?

- I was exhilarated.

- I got the call as soon as he was arrested,

and I couldn't have been happier to hear it.

- DeAngelo is a former police officer,

and DNA led investigators to him,

police arresting him at his home in Citrus Heights

near Sacramento, accused of at least

12 murders, 45 rapes, and dozens of burglaries

across the state.

- A tent was set up as FBI agents collected evidence.

Neighbors looked on, wondering if they had been living

in close proximity to the notorious rapist

and killer who spread fear across the state.

- Joseph James DeAngelo has been called

the Golden State Killer.

Today, it's our pleasure to call him defendant.

- His first appearance in court,

his eyes were vacant.

- 72-year-old Joseph DeAngelo, handcuffed to a wheelchair,

looked like he could barely hold his head up as he made

his first court appearance.

- He looked as though he was a decrepit, old man,

his posture, his gaze.

He seemed very feeble.

- That's Joe DeAngelo when all his control

has been taken away. - Yeah.

- He completely imploded.

- Do you understand, Mr. DeAngelo, that you'll

be entering guilty pleas to 13 counts of murder

in the first degree, omitting special circumstances?

- I don't think he could have sat there and gone through

a trial, and he didn't.

- How do you plead?

- Guilty.

- I heard just the incredible toll and impact that

it's had on all the victims.

- In the early morning of July 17, 1976,

my life was changed forever.

I was 15 years old.

- He raped me, stole my innocence, my security,

threatened my life, threatened the lives of my family.

I was 13 years old.

- DeAngelo, I want you to look at me.

I want you to look at me, DeAngelo.

- You hid in plain sight, and you are now visible

for everyone to despise, loathe, and abhor.

The devil can keep you company in your prison cell

as he gnaws away at whatever soul you have left.

- Everyone is changed forever by an experience like this.

The far-reaching impact that this man

had on all of their families is really

an untold number of people that this man has affected.

- Today, I am in the room with the pathetic excuse

of a man who will now finally be held

accountable for his actions.

- From now on, while he is withering away in prison,

I will be spending my days fishing on the river,

enjoying my family and grandchild,

eating out and relaxing in the comfort of my home, free.

I will be free of the fear he put me through for so long.

- I think what's really alarming is that if you saw

Joseph DeAngelo walking down the street,

you would never guess that this normal-looking

old man was capable of carrying out such evil acts.

- It was an element of closure, although I think that word is

inadequate to describe the feeling of satisfaction

that you derive from having an offender like this identified.

I know that many other law enforcement officers

who were involved in the investigation over time

felt the same way.

- I think I was equally as happy for the detectives that

have spent their entire careers working on it, as I was,

for the victims and the victims' families.

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