Trial For Suspected Golden State Killer Joseph DeAngelo To Take Place In Sacramento
(CBS13/AP) - A criminal complaint was filed Tuesday encompassing all of the murder charges against Joseph DeAngelo, the man suspected of terrorizing Sacramento for years as the East Area Rapist and elsewhere as state as the Golden State Killer.
In a press conference Tuesday, officials said there have been meetings statewide about the case, and that they were united in their decision to hold the trial for 72-year-old Joseph DeAngelo in Sacramento, where 9 of the 13 charges originated.
"It is very fitting that this journey for justice will end in Sacramento," she said.
The Sacramento D.A. Ann Marie Schubert will lead the statewide investigation.
Authorities finally arrested DeAngelo in April at his Citrus Heights home and said they believed he was the killer who had long proved elusive to authorities. He had been working as a mechanic at a grocery store chain.
Read More About The Golden State Killer/East Area Rapist Case
He has been charged with 13 killings throughout the state in the 1970s and 1980s that authorities say were committed by one of the state's most elusive serial killers. The 13th charge was added earlier this month for Claude Snelling, who was shot while stopping the kidnapping of his 16-year-old daughter in Visalia, Tulare County District Attorney Tim Ward said.
Detectives are also confident that DeAngelo is a burglar known as the Visalia Ransacker, who struck more than 100 homes in the 1970s, terrorizing the farming community about 40 miles (64 kilometers) south of Fresno, Visalia police Chief Jason Salazar said.
DeAngelo is also suspected of committing roughly 50 rapes but he can't be tried on those crimes or the burglaries because the statute of limitations has expired.
DeAngelo worked as a police officer in the nearby town of Exeter from 1973 to 1976.
Investigators linked DeAngelo to some of the killings by plugging DNA collected from a semen sample at one of the crime scenes into a genealogical website that they say showed a match to a distant relative of DeAngelo.
Authorities say they later collected DNA from a tissue left in trash outside DeAngelo's house to make the final match.
DeAngelo was fired from the Auburn police department in 1979 after he was caught shoplifting a hammer and dog repellent, authorities said.
He will be arraigned in Sacramento on Thursday.
(© Copyright 2018 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
