November 4, 2025 • 56 mins
On today’s MKD, we are joined by Sacramento District Attorney Thien Ho to discuss his new book, The People vs. the Golden State Killer! We talk about the Golden State Killer's reign of terror, how the killer was caught decades later with DNA, and how Thien successfully sought justice for dozens of victims.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Mother Knows Dad starring Nicole and Jemmy and Maria qk.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Everyone welcome The Mother Knows Death. Today's guest played a
crucial role in putting the Golden State Killer in prison
for life.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
But before we talk with.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Our guests, we're going to talk a little bit about
the Golden State Killer. For those of you who are
unfamiliar with the story.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
Let me tell you this episode is such an honor
for me in particular because this is one of my
favorite true crime cases that got me really interested in
covering DNA and genetic genealogy, so I do a lot
of that on the Grossroom. But this story has really
interesting facts behind it. So for those of you unfamiliar
with this case, from nineteen seventy four to nineteen eighty six,
(00:57):
there was this reign of terror throughout California. So the
crime started in nineteen seventy four with over one hundred
and twenty known burglaries in Visalia, California, so that's just
north of LA and it eventually migrated to Sacramento and
eventually Orange County, where over fifty women and girls were
raped and thirteen people were brutally murdered. So what makes
(01:17):
this case so interesting is that throughout the years they
thought this perpetrator was different people in all these different areas,
and they eventually connected them to one. So first it
started with the burglaries in Visalia, so that started in
seventy four. They refer to that perpetrator as the Visalia Ransacker.
Then when the sexual assault started in Sacramento, that suspect
(01:40):
was known as the East Area Rapists, and then the
killings were attributed to the nickname the Original Nightstalker. Because
this was before Richard Ramirez's time as her YouTube live.
People know we've talked about him in the past, but.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
These are different people.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
So by their early two thousands, there's advancements in DNA
and detective pall Holes. Anybody that's familiar with crime Coon
will be very familiar.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
With Paul Holes.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
He figures out that the easter Aia Rapist and Original
Night Sotalcer are the same guy after comparing very early
DNA samples, and so at that point they're referring to
the killer as Euron's which was Easteria rapist, Original Night Sotalcer.
So then at some point they figure out that he
has the same MO as the Vicealia Ransacker all the
way over there, so they're kind of like, what the
(02:23):
hell we thought this was different people this entire time,
and now we have these three people connected together. So
fast forward a couple of years. Patton Oswald's wife, Michelle McNamara,
is writing about the case and she coins the term
Golden State Killer, so that kind of encapsulates everything going
on in California. And you have to remember these crimes
were going on between seventy four and eighty six, and
(02:45):
by the time Michelle McNamara was writing her book, it's
twenty sixteen. So all this time they don't know who
this killer is, what was her.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
What was her background that caused her? Is she just
a reporter? She was just interested in the case, like
what got her to reopen this case?
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Kind of so she had a true crime blog. It
was kind of like one of the first things ever
liked that that was huge, And then I guess, living
in California, you just have this arguably one of the
most horrific serial killers of our time, doing these terrible things,
which we'll get into in the episode, and how nobody
has caught him.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
So she started and that's so scary.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
It is so scary, and they, you know, for all
these years, are like, is this guy dead? Is he
still living amongst us?
Speaker 3 (03:31):
What is going on?
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Why did nobody ever catch him? He had really weird mos.
He was doing very bizarre things, like at some of
the scenes, he would put a towel over the TVs
and the computers, or not the computers that was because
that wasn't around you, but he would put towels over
the televisions while he's actually assaulted these women. He would
break into their houses and act like he lived there,
(03:52):
make himself a meal. He would slide in the door,
hide in somebody's closet for hours before letting himself so scary, yes,
before they knew he was even there. He would call
the victims years after the assaults and torture them. It's terrifying.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
So the last crime that this Golden State killer committed.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Was what year eighty six? Well, these are known crimes, remember,
so he might have committed even more that they don't
even know where connected to him, but they believe his
reign of terror was seventy four to eighty six.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
It's just really crazy too, that someone could be that
out of their mind and violent for such a long
period of time and then all of a sudden stop
for years were seemingly that we know about stop and
not do anything else for such a long time.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
I don't want to give too many spoilers away, but
this person was captured in twenty eighteen using genetic genealogy.
This man was in his early seventies and had committed
all these crimes. So this was kind of the beginning
of using genetic genealogy to solve cold cases. And it
was huge in California because this guy terrorized the communities.
(05:06):
I mean, in this book, the author goes over how
all these communities people weren't locking their doors, and after
the crime started going on, these people were families were
sleeping in one bedroom and terrified because they just didn't
know what was to come.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, I mean, that's just the scariest kind of crime ever.
And we've talked about this, which I'm going to bring
up with him in this interview as well, about we
wrote the inspiration for the movie Scream last week and
we were talking about the Gainesville Ripper and just with
(05:43):
something like that is going on in your neighborhood or
what did we talk about the DC Sniper for example
a little bit closer to us, like when things like
that are happening and you have to live and do
life every day and go to sleep at night at
your house, but you know that this person is on
(06:04):
the loose that wants to kill more people. There's a
huge possibility that you could be next. So I can't
imagine how terrifying that is for people.
Speaker 4 (06:13):
No, And I think what I want to discuss too
in this interview is that you know, this book was
written largely from the perspective of the victims, which I
appreciated having read so many true crime books, because you're
not really giving the killer, you know, the fame they're
desiring in some regard. But also we don't remember often
that these cases are affecting real people, and by telling
(06:35):
the story through their perspective of how the crime occurred,
what was going on in their lives, and how it
affected them for decades later, it was so impactful.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
All Right, So let's talk a little bit about the author.
His name is Tien Howe, and he has prosecuted hundreds
of high profile sexual assault, gang and homicide cases over
the twenty five year course of his legal career. He's
best known for successfully prosecuting Joseph DiAngelo, who is known
as the Golden State Killer. As Maria said, Tin has
(07:07):
an interesting background. He came to the United States from
Vietnam as a refugee as a child. He didn't even
know how to speak English, and he rose all the
way from being an intern to elected Disacramento County District Attorney,
where he currently is serving office today. He now has
a book called The People Versus the Golden State Killer,
(07:29):
which is going to be released next Tuesday. So we're
going to get to talk to Tin in a second.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
This episode is brought to you by the Grossroom Guys.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Our yearly sal is over right now, but you could
still get into the Gross Room for five ninety nine
a month, so if you are not a current member,
you should definitely try it because you'll have access to
thousands of post videos, art goals, and more. This week
we did our so every week we do either a
high profile death dissection, which is on cases that were
(08:10):
not famous until usually crimes or even medical things have
happened that have made people famous, or we do celebrity
death dissections. So last week we did one on the
movie Scream. As we had mentioned, earlier, and that one
was really interesting because we talk about the real life
serial killer case that inspired that movie. This week, we
(08:31):
are working on Lindsey Clancy, who, if you recall a
few years ago, she was the mother who strangled her
three children and then tried to kill herself by jumping
out of a window. She survived and is now a paraplegic,
and we get into all of the details of that
case and what may have motivated her to do something
(08:53):
like that. We also have a couple interesting cases in
the gross Room this week, showing a video that was
going viral on the internet and talking about you know,
all the comments that I see underneath the videos are
like what the Hell's going on? And all these people
tagging me in it. So I posted it in the
Grossroom and explain what I believe is happening in that video.
(09:16):
All that and more in the Grossroom.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
Head over to the grossroom dot com now to sign up.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Hi ten, Welcome the Mother Knows Death.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Hi. How you doing. It's truly an honor to be
on your show, And as I've said, love the title
of the podcast, mother Thank you.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
Before we get started, I just want to say this
is one of the best true crime books I've ever read.
I did it all in one take. I could not
get enough of it. I think you did such an
amazing job hopping between the timelines of when the crimes
occurred versus what was going on in your world in
modern day. And the bonus for me is as a layperson,
you laid everything out very simply so I could understand
(09:57):
everything between the DNA what you guys did in the
process Suter's Office. I can't I appreciate it so much.
I can't thank you for the way you laid it out.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
That means a lot to me on it, and that
is one of the challenges really of writing a book
where you're jumping back and forth in time because the
scope was so big and trying to figure that out.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
No, definitely, So I guess let's get started with you know,
you talk about in the book when you first learned
about the Golden State Killer, and then you kind of
talk about in the office what went down when you
guys discovered the DNA match.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Can you talk about that time a little bit?
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Most definitely.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
So.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
You know, I've been a prosecutor for twenty five years,
I've been a lawyer for almost twenty eight, and this
was back in originally in twenty twelve. In twenty twelve,
I tried my very first homicide case and it involved
Rajni Singh. Her half naked body was found behind a
brick wall in Rancho Cordova, not far from where the
(10:56):
East era rapist had committed his crimes. And so I
was just going out to the crime scene, getting ready
for trial and kind of seeing where everything was placed.
And I happened to be in the car with my buddy,
who was another homicide prosecutor, Billy who he grew up
in Rancho Cordova, and then the sergeant of the homicide team,
Jim Barnes, and so we were driving out there and
(11:18):
I just happened to look out and I noticed, like
all the businesses, all the homes, the apartments, everything had
metal bars on both the doors and the windows. I'm like,
you know, I've never seen so many metal bars before.
And then they commented that it was because of the ear,
and I was like, the ear, Who's the ear? And
that's when Billy, who grew up in Rancho Krdova, said
(11:40):
the ear and he almost like whispered it. It's the
East area rapist. He was the boogeyman of my childhood.
And so they were talking about how, you know, the
rampage of East Area rapists who then morphed into the
original night Stark and the Golden State Killer, and they
thought he was dead and said, well, if they were
(12:00):
find if you guys ever find them, that's the one
case I would want to prosecute and have and then
boom fast forward six years later was when they arrested them.
But before they did, there was a whole scene that
played out in the office about how I found out
about it, and so you know, the way I found
(12:24):
out about it was I saw the supervisor of the
team and then our number two, the supervisor of the
homicide team, in there whispering to each other in hush tones,
and then they're running around and there was something going on.
And they went to their office, which is right next
door to mine, and they closed the door, and I'm
in a government building that's been about fifty years old.
The wall is real thin, it probably blow on it,
(12:46):
it'd probably fall over. So there was and I just
remember I was, you know, I put my ear up
against the wall kind of eavesdrop, you know, like you
do as kids. And I remember hearing the word one
sixteen septillion match to the EAAR.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Wow, And that's the DNA match and that's in Sacramento.
The ar means one thing and one thing only, the
East Area rapist. I nearly fell out of my chair
and that's when I realized they found them.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Yeah, in your office made the press conference on National
DNA Day, which is pretty incredible that it could link.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Up like that.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Most definitely. I mean, you know, it's interesting sometimes in
universe and the stars they just all lined up together,
and that was the day it lined up because it
was DNA that solved the case.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Had you ever heard of the case before this that
used genetic genealogy to link semen from a scene to
a killer.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
No.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
This was the very first case in which forensic evidence
from the crime scene was used through genetic genealogy to
solve the case, and since then there's been a thousand
cases around the world world that have used this technology
to solve code cases. Are you familiar with with sort
(14:07):
of how how genetic genealogy works.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
Yeah, and I thought you explained it really well in
the book too. So they get the they extract the
DNA sample, and then you basically can ping from a
public database a family member, and then you have this
really tenuous job of building this family tree and then
getting back to the generation that you believe the matches from,
and then narrowing it down based on circumstantial evidence to
(14:34):
where that person lives, what they looked like based from
the victim's accounts. It is really amazing work.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
All right, you sound like a lawyer. You sounded like
a prospect trial. Where that's exactly how it was. But
there was a lot of drama behind the scenes, which
I covered in the book about how we got that
DNA sample. Because what happens is you need really good
amount of DNA where we send it over to a
(15:02):
LAP to convert it into what we call SNIP profile
that's single nucleotype polymorphism. So that type of profile is
used by the genealogy databases and it measures a million
different areas in your chromosome versus a million different areas
on somebody else's chromosome. The more places you have in
common with somebody, the more closely related. We didn't have
(15:22):
any DNA in Sacramento because unfortunately we threw ours away
contra Costa used it. All Orange County had the DNA,
but they wouldn't give it to us, and so we
had to go somewhere else to get the DNA. And
I talk about that in the book.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
Yeah, I wanted to bring that up too, because you
had discussed how you face challenges with the Orange County
office not handing it over and really assisting you guys
when you know. Detective Paul Hols was like, I think
I could figure this out, but I need this sample.
Do you find that police departments and other DA's offices
are often not working together or is this just in
(15:59):
certain high profile cases where they want to try to
figure it out themselves and take credit for it.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
What I would tell you is this a couple of
different things. I think that all law enforcement, all DA's officers,
we want to solve crime. We want to be able
to bring justice to victims. Now there will be disagreements
on the best way to do it, and in the
process there's going to be ego and politics that get
involved as well. When we prosecuted the case, I worked
(16:28):
with the line deputies at the Orange County DA's office,
some of the best das that I've ever worked with.
In my life now at the very top. There's a
lot of politics involved, right, and so they wouldn't give
us the DNA. They wouldn't give Paul Hose the DNA
from their case, and there was plenty of DNA. Part
of it, I think, is you know, part of this
(16:52):
thing where they wanted to solve it. They thought their
ideas were the best way to do it, and they
didn't want to hand it over. And so we had
to go to Ventura DIA's office to get their DNA
and get their agreement. Because in the murder of Lyman
and Charlene Smith, the corner in that case in Ventura,
(17:14):
doctor Speth, he had a unique and peculiar practice, which
was he always collected two different rate kits from the victims.
Most corners and pathologists collect only one, but he did two.
And he was brilliant in his foresight. Because what happens
(17:34):
is when you collect one sample, that sample goes to
the crame lab. The crime lab will retest items after
items after items, and so because of that, they're gone
and they're stored in different areas. So the corner's office
took a second sample and kept it pristine in their
freezer for forty plus years, and a detective on another
(17:58):
case happened to be searching around at the corner's office
and lo and behold found that second rate kit from
Charlene Smith and that's what helped break the case open.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
That's amazing, Mom.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Did you see that at your time at the medical
examiner's office where they're keeping samples like that for decades?
Speaker 1 (18:18):
No, And I think that the vision of that guy
is remarkable that he thought ahead like that that and
it makes total sense. I mean, working in this field,
things get lost. I mean, it's just so important that
you can't ever recollect it, so you have to you
have to have it. And it's really awesome to hear
(18:40):
that that guy, even before he really knew if anything
could be done with it, was thinking about that.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Spoken like the true medical examiner it. I mean, doctor
Speth was ahead of his time.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
Do you think during the seventies in the early eighties
when this was all going down to that GSK could
have possibly been caught if the police departments and you're
said in the book, he committed crimes over eleven different jurisdictions,
so is it possible they might have caught him quicker
if police departments were more willing to communicate with each
other at that time.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
I think we would have had a better chance to
catch him. You know, back then, law enforcement they were siloed,
you know, in different departments. Northern California wasn't sharing information
with Southern California. Southern California wasn't sharing information with other
Southern California jurisdictions. Now everything's online, Now everything is connected together.
(19:38):
I don't think that he could have committed the crimes
to the degree that he committed and the scope in
this day and age without getting caught. We have forensic evidence,
we have cell phone evidence. I mean, everybody has a
ring camera, everybody has a surveillance camera, we have license
plate readers. So I think it's very difficult this age
to have to commit the scope of the crimes that
(19:59):
he did back then. And I think that did contribute
to the fact that he he wasn't caught for so long.
And the other thing was, let's not forget he was
a police officer. He was a police officer who knew
the techniques and the investigative you know, protocols of law enforcements.
I talked about in the book. The very first series
(20:20):
was the Visalia Ransacker was the Ransacker was committing one
hundred and twenty burglaries in a three miles square Radi's
in Bisalia and the central part of California, breaking into
home sometimes as much as wore five six times a night.
And it turned out that Joseph DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer,
the East Era rapist, the original night so Soccer, was
(20:41):
also the Visalia Ransacker, but he was a police officer
in nearby town. He helped out on the task force
to find the Ransacker, and he was in fact the Ransacker.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
It is so bizarre.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
Remember when we cover Jeffrey Dahmer that he had gone
to the memorial for some of his victims. It is
very bizarre that they like to watch their work with
seeing these people being in distress, but knowing you're the
person committing them.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
I was thinking with Brian Coberger too, for example, like
he was in school to be a criminal justice major.
It's it's almost you have to wonder if these people
are purposely trying to get into these professions so they
could try to get away with crimes.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
I think that's a great point. I think there's an
element of that where they want to learn the techniques
and be able to utilize those techniques to commit their
crimes into evade capture. I mean when you were looking
at you know, the even the TV show what was
that Dexter? Right, you know, and other different like that.
(21:45):
And I think it gave him an advantage. It gave
DiAngelo an advantage to escape capture and to commit his crimes.
It gave them access to a database. But I think
the other thing is when you get into the psychology
of somebody like Joseph DeAngelo, right, is if he was
above the law and beyond the law, that the law
didn't apply to him, and when he became a police
(22:07):
officer it was an extension in his mind. I enforced
the law, but the law doesn't apply to me, and
it's that for him. For him in particular, it wasn't
to serve the community. It was to serve his sick depravity.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
It is interesting that he had no foresight about leaving
his seamen at this scene, because obviously that ended up
catching him so many years later. But there was just
so many circumstantial piece of evidence that were so disturbing,
Like you had discussed in your book that he had
left doctor Pepper at many of the scenes, and then
when he was arrested, you found all this doctor Pepper
in his home. And I remember Paul Holes had discussed
(22:48):
that he had covered the TVs up with towels, and
how eerie it was when they went in the home
and saw tows covering his devices too, and just little
things like that that are so niche that could not
possibly be connected to another person.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
And I think with the towel, so in some of
the sexual assault he turned on the TV or he
turned on the lamp, he put a towel to create
this warm glow as he committed his crimes. And Paul
was right when we did the search warrant to get
into his house, he put a towel over his monitor,
his TV mark, his computer monitor. But the other thing
(23:24):
that people don't know or realize is when he was
in his jail cell, he would cover the fluorescent light
with a towel to create that glow. So it was
almost as if he was reliving his crimes. It was
almost as if he was continuing to do it. And
when you talk about the PTK killer, right, he said
(23:45):
that while there was a certain point where he did
stop committing his crimes because he physically couldn't do anymore,
he was still replaying and committing crimes in his head.
He was looking at a victim and thinking, how am
I going to kidnaps or how am I going to torture?
How am I going to kill her? He was still
replaying and thinking about in his mind of committing the crime.
(24:08):
In the same way, Joseph D'Angelo, at the age of
seventy three, was in his jail cell and there's a
I have it on video where he was looking out
his cell and there was a young blonde female that
was working the pod area delivering food to the different inmates,
and he's looking at her and you can tell that
he was masturbating to her. So even at the age
(24:30):
of seventy three, the sexual depravity had not yet left him.
Speaker 4 (24:35):
That's interesting. So I want to shift some more to
the pathology component of this. So a lot of the
victims had described that he had an unusually small penis,
and then after his arrest, you guys took photos of that.
Did you kind of just have that feeling like this
is definitely the guy after seeing something.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Like that, definitely. So the interesting thing is, you know,
in the Orange County crimes, in the Ventura crime is,
three of the Contra Costa, and one of the Santa Barbara.
We had evidence connecting him, but in none of the Sacramento,
in many of the other crimes in Northern California, and
in the murder of double Manning and uh, you know
(25:15):
in Santa Barbara, there was no d and evidence in
that case, you know, doctor Offerman and doctor Manning, there
was no DNA. So we had to prove those cases
by modus operandi. And since many of the victims in
Northern California described his penis as being abnormally small, we
(25:38):
wanted to verify that piece of evidence to establish that
circumstantial evidence. And it was, in fact extremely it was.
It was a micro penis, as some people have described it.
And so when you're talking about the pathology of it,
you know, he witnessed his own sister, who was eight
(25:59):
years old that he was a few years older, being
raped on a military base when he was a young boy,
and he was tied up, and he felt very helpless
from that. He was beaten by his parents, and so
when you look at the pathology of it, he felt
very powerless, both physically mentally and emotionally in his own life,
(26:20):
and so he needed to regain some of that control.
Now he doesn't justify it in any way whatsoever, but
we tried to understand the monster behind the masks and
the pathology of it. And so he was a hunter
of people instead of animals. And when he was in
people's homes, he wanted to play god over them. He
(26:42):
draped towels over them, stack of perfume bottles on them,
He threatened them, he sexually assaulted them, he ate their food,
he drank their beer. He played God over their lives,
and it gave him back that sense of control that
he probably didn't feel in any aspect of his life.
And that's how the monster was creating.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
The micro penis is very interesting to me because although
it can just occur and they don't really know why,
a lot of times it's often associated with an underlying
genetic disorder or a hormonal disorder, particularly a lack of
testosterone in infancy, which they would usually treat with to
(27:22):
try to to make it grow a little bit larger,
and it's better treated as a child. And I'm not
sure if that's anything that they would have done when
he was a younger person. But it's just interesting that
that may play a role in it, as well as
far as hormone levels of him growing up and different
(27:43):
things like that.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
You know, when I look at that, we had to
recreate his life, you know, from the moment we found him.
You know, I recreated every step of his life, from
when he was born in Bath, New York, all the
way to when he was rested even afterwards, and the
way I look at it, we saw the death penalty
at one point in the case. You know, it's always
interesting to understand what created a monster, but at the
(28:10):
end of the day, I still have a monster sitting
in front of me, and I needed to hold him
accountable for what he did because many people have been
victims and have felt trauma in their lives, and yet
they don't turn into the monster. He became an inflicted
trauma on other people. But you know, the stuff you
mentioned is really interesting there.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
I did think after reading that part of the book
about his childhood and what he had witnessed with his sister,
that it kind of, you know, it added up to
what was going on. Because I've been covering this case
or reading about this case since you guys arrested him
in twenty eighteen, and his MO was so specific, you know,
putting plates on people's backs so they couldn't move, covering
(28:50):
up the televisions, going through their homes and eating their food,
calling them, harassing them after. It's just very specific, and
I feel like with all the cases we cover, I
haven't heard anything so meticulous and well thought out. And
after hearing that, I'm like, Okay, this kind of really
is adding up to why he's doing this ritual because
he's in a way recreating the scene he witnessed, but
(29:12):
like you're saying, trying to take control of it this time,
but in the worst possible way.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Absolutely, And that's really interesting perspective that you just laid
out there. So you watched this or you know, follow
this from the beginning. Were you familiar with it before
we caught him? You know? With Michelle McNamara's book.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
I really wasn't so when I first started. When after
he was arrested, I saw that a case was solved
with genetic genealogy. I've always been very fascinated with DNA,
and then I started reading about it and it just
completely blew my mind to become one of my favorite
cases ever.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
So I have to ask you guys a question in
terms of reading the book, and so there are things
that were in the media, things that were covered before.
You know, Michelle McNamara obviously wrote her book, Paul Hols
wrote his book about the investigation, but my book covered
the investigation, the capture, and the prosecution of it. You know,
was there something in my book that kind of caught
(30:10):
your attension, that kind of just fascinated you that perhaps
you didn't know before, just out of you know, for
my own curiosity.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
Oh, definitely.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
When it came down to his whole background, I feel
like I didn't know anything about how he grew up.
All I knew was he had a military background and
he was a police officer. He was divorced and that
will not officially divorced, separated, but had daughters. So that's
kind of all I knew about his background. So I
feel like the way you laid it out, and then
when you detailed what happened with the sister, it started
(30:39):
a lot of things started adding back up to me. Also,
that you guys had searched the house looking for the trinkets.
I had no idea that happened, and you gave such
a great perspective from the victims that I feel is
so rare in true crime books.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yeah, that was my favorite part of it too, because
last week we actually were looking at because it was Halloween,
we were looking at the movie score and we were
saying that it was inspired by the Gainesville Ripper. And
we had a lot of questions after writing that that
that movie was released only six years after the murder,
(31:12):
and then you find out that Brian Coberger may have
been inspired by the Gainesville Ripper and stuff. And sometimes
there's so much of a focus on the actual murders
that you're wondering if it is inspiring other people instead
of thinking about how these victims' families feel with a
movie coming out about the deaths of their loved ones,
sensationalized only six years after they were murdered.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
I think what you both said was extremely eloquent and relevant.
You know, one of my inspiration for writing the book,
and I wrote it five years after the case ended,
was really to give a voice to victims. You know what.
I was first assigned the case, the first thing I
did was I went on Amazon and bot Michelle mcnamir's
(31:58):
book because I just wanted a whole kind of view
of the case. And when I read it, I couldn't sleep.
And Michelle wrote her book and then she passed away
before we found him, so she was you know, focused
on him and focused on the crime and trying to
find him. And then Paul wrote his book in terms
of how he used a came up with an idea technology,
(32:20):
forensic technology to solve the case, you know, an I view.
My book is the third in the trilogy, right, you know,
the the end that covers everything. But I really wanted
to give voice to and honor the generations of law
enforcement that never gave up their search for him. But
in addition, I wanted to make sure that the victims
(32:43):
that their voice came through, that they did. I show
how they turned pain into power, and they really drove
what happened on the end of the at the end
of the case, and that stuff, frankly was never really
talked about publicly, and so I wanted to make sure
I did that to honor them. And a part of
my proceeds from the book, it goes to honor you know,
(33:04):
a nonprofit, Phillis's Garden, that was started by several of
the survivors.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
No, that's absolutely incredible, and I thought, you know, the
detailing of the crimes itself and how it affected each
victim individually, and then you having to deal with them
decades later and having to tell them, you know, we
caught this guy. We're potentially seeking the death penalty. Never mind,
there's a plea deal. Nobody really talks about how emotional
(33:31):
that could be over the years, and some of these
people weren't even able to see justice. This happened forty
years ago. Some people passed away, you know. So to
see you guys handle this case with such care and
be able to let them go up there do their
victim impact statements and share their stories in such a
tasteful way was really great.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
As a reader.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Thank you. That means a lot to me.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
The victim impact statements.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I know that you said that that some of them
had a huge impact on you. Can you describe some
of that for us.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Yes, And I'll talk about the two of them in particular.
The first was Phyllis so Phyllis is the first sexual
assault victim in Sacramento. And I remember the first time
I met Phyllis. She it was my first time in court,
(34:26):
and there is this lady that comes up to me
and she's in her early sixties, late fifties. It looks
like a gray hair. She's got these thick, round coke
bottled glasses. And she comes up and she reaches her
hand down. She shakes my hand and she says, HI,
my name is Phyllis. I'm victim number one. And we
(34:47):
sat down and we talked, and other victims came up. Hi,
I'm Chris, I'm victim number ten, right, But I sat
down in and talked with Phyllis, and I was kind
of just going over what was happening in the case.
But it was surreal for me because I had read
Phyllis's police report, I'd read her victim impact, you know,
her victim statement to law enforcement. I'd seen the pictures,
(35:09):
and I had this image of Phyllis, and now I
am forty something years later, and it was as if
I was reaching across time and space right the sweetest
person in the world. And every time I come to court,
Phyllis was sitting right there. But near the end of
the case, Phyllis told me that she was diagnosed with
cancer and she couldn't make it to court, and so
(35:30):
she couldn't make it to the date where we you know,
he accepted guilt. And so when we did the allocution
and went to the facts of Phyllis's case, she wasn't there,
but all the other victims stood up for her. Fast
forward two months later, we're going through the impact statement,
and I'm looking forward to seeing Phyllis and hearing her
(35:51):
and just you know, you know, coming over and sitting
with her. And she was going to come to read
her impact statement, but she was just so tired. She
was just so tired and worn out from the chemo
and everything else, and she couldn't make it. And her
sister came and read the impact statement about how it
affected or how she couldn't sleep alone anymore, how she
had to set up an alarm system and locked all
(36:13):
around her house, and her husband couldn't leave town for
very long. She became a prisoner or in her own home.
But what does that do to you over the years?
How does that eat away at you? Right? And then
I remember a couple of days later when DiAngelo was
going to get his sentence, and I look across the
makeshift court room and I see Phyllis sitting there and
(36:33):
she had this mask on. We're in the middle COVID.
She had this twinker on her eye, and for the
first time in forty years, she was able to obtain
a measure of justice. Three months later, Phillis passed away
from cancer, and so it meant the world to me
that we were able to get her that justice that
day in court, because if we kept moving forward, she
(36:54):
would have never seen that moment because she passed away.
And that's something that was staying with me forever. The
other person that really affected me in terms of their
impact statement was was Jane Carson. You know, Jane wrote
her own book, Frozen in Fear. She became a colonel
in the military. She was a nurse. He assaulted her,
(37:17):
you know, with her her infant, you know, or Toddler's
son nearby. And Jane at the at the impact statement,
she brought Bonnie, and Bonnie was di'angelo's ex fiance and
it was a very dramatic moment in the courtrooms and
(37:38):
Jane went and here's Bonnie, you know, and and she
did it to try to get a reaction from DiAngelo.
And I'm sitting no more than six feet away from DiAngelo.
He's got a mask on. He's sitting there looking straight ahead.
But when Bonnie's name was mentioned, I could tell that
his breathing stop for a moment. You could see him gulp,
(37:59):
and it became a rapid breathing. So it had an effect,
which is exactly what Jane wants. And Jane is such
a you know, a really powerful you know, advocate for victims.
And you know, I really, you know, really always think
highly of Jane. You know, I talked to her about
once a year. She was recently out doing true crime
(38:23):
stuff at Comic Con or Crime Con, and so she
goes every year, and we're talking about connecting as well.
Speaker 4 (38:31):
That's amazing. That kind of reminds me of the Coburger
victim impact statement, you know, because when the when the consolve,
his family went up and started attacking his character, that's
when you could really see him getting mad. He doesn't
care that people are upset. He cares about people going
after him.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yeah, And we were sitting there watching it live and
then the first couple ones. I mean, like, I understand
that victims want to cry and they want to say, oh,
my life has been a affected, but I just.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Don't think that these people care.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
And I was saying to Maria, if that was me,
I would be studying that guy to see how I
could get under his skin, you know. And it sounds
like that's what happened in your case, and it happened
with the Brian Coburger case when the one victim's sister
went up and was just digging into him and you
(39:25):
could see him physically sitting there and being uncomfortable, and
that I guess that gives the victim's family some kind
of satisfaction that you could still bother a person that's
that sick.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Yep, they got to him, and that's what Jane was doing.
I mean, Jane's a just a source of power. And
I can see that, you know, that's exactly what you do.
That's what I would do. And Coburger, I mean the sister.
I mean that's great because you want to get to them,
You want to make him feel something, make him swarm.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
Right, Oh totally.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
And it was so bad ass that you made him
are that clear mask because he was essentially behind the
mask his whole life. He needs to now own up
to what he did. Does it matter that he's an
old man trying to fake being this people old man
when you guys know that's not the deal.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Well, I'm glad you enjoyed that part. You know that
has never been made public. So you know, when he
committed his crimes, he wore a mask. And as we
were getting ready for the case to come to a
conclusion and we were in court. You know, it's in
the middle of COVID, Right, what do we wear in public? Right?
A mask? But I didn't want him hide behind the mask.
(40:33):
So I had to go through a lot of machinations
and stuff, you know, in court with the judge to
make sure that he wore a clear face shield he
couldn't hide behind it. So if you go and you
look at that first court appears that's exactly what he has.
And so it's interesting, you know, putting the pieces. If
you read the book and then you go back and
watch some of the videos, it'll give you insight on
the stuff that was behind the scenes that people don't
(40:55):
really know about.
Speaker 4 (40:58):
Oh definitely, So before this case, had you ever had
to work a case before with so many other DA offices,
because I can't imagine that was awesome for you guys
to have to deal with.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
It's very rare. So typically in my office, you tried
the case by yourself. You got nobody else with you.
Other in the courtroom there could be two three defense attorneys,
you know, So alone I walk into that courtroom alone,
I sit there and a loan, you know, I try to,
you know, slay the monster before us. In rare situation,
we will assign two prosecutors to it. And it's very
(41:33):
rare that you have this many prosecutors. I mean, he
committed his crimes in eleven different counties and there were
six participating counties, and nearly every one of those counties
had somebody assigned to it. So, you know, attorneys, you know,
we're a type personalities, were aggressive by nature, We're drivers,
so you had to figure out how to deal with it.
Now among the line deputies. So the way we work is,
(41:54):
you know, you have your your you elected DA, you
have your executives, you have your supervisors, you have your
line deputies. The line deputies are the ones that are
in the trenches, on the front lines. And that's what
I was, you know, for most of that case. I'm
not anymore obviously, but at that time I was, and
we got along great among the line deputies. I mean,
because we were all moving in one direction. Some of
(42:17):
us would work on a mental defense, some of us
would work, you know, on the DNA stuff. Other ones
of us would you know, work in different areas of
it and strategize and do some research motion, and so
it was a collaborative experience from the line deputy above
that it was a bit more challenging, as I talked
about in the book.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
Yeah, that's interesting. And you had one of our previous guests,
Matt Murphy on your team as well.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Yes, so, yeah, so Matt came on your show. What
was Matt talking about?
Speaker 4 (42:47):
By the way, Matt came on when his book came
out last year, and he talked about, you know, all
the cases he had worked on. We got really into
Rodney Ill call of the Dating Game Killer and he's
been in the Awesome resource. We met him at Crime
Con the last two years and he's.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
A great guy.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Yeah, Murph is a good dude. I mean I joked
around with him when he was on the case. He
was only on there for a short period of time
before he left the office. But you know, Murph, he
goes surfing. You know, he out there. You know, in
his wet suit out there, and he was a great prosecutor,
I mean, a good legit trial lord. He knows this
(43:25):
stuff and it was good to have him on the
case for the short time that we did, and jored
working with him. And so he's a good guy and
well verse in the criminal justice area.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
What first got you interested in this field?
Speaker 2 (43:42):
You know? So in the book, and it's interesting how
I set it up. So have you guys watched the
movie The Titanic? Yeah, yeah, of course the Titanic, right,
and the way I shut up the book and explain why.
You know, the Titanic has the the B and the
C story. So the A stories the search for the
(44:03):
Hope Diamond, the B stories the love story between Kate
and Leo, and the C story is the sinking of
the Titanic, right, And so in the book I set
up the A story is the investigation, capture, and prosecution
of GSK, the B stories my story, and the C
story is the story of the victims and the survivors.
(44:24):
In terms of my story, and I covered in the
book as the B story. I was born in Vietnam.
You know, my family left when we faced a dictatorship
in Vietnam and South South Vietnam fell, So we left
and escaped on a fishing boat, ran on a gas,
food and water. We were just drifting on the ocean,
near death until we were rescued. I spent six months
(44:44):
in a refugee camp in Malaysia. When I came to
this country, I couldn't understand a single word of English.
I joke around that I learned how to speak English
by watching Bucks Budding cartoons. Twenty years later, graduated from
law school. And when I when I graduated from law school,
I wanted to give back to this country. Gave my
family everything we could have ever imagined, and so I
(45:04):
became a public servant, you know, And there's no greater
public servant in my mind than a prosecutor who stands
up for victims and fights for victims. You know, in Vietnam,
there was no system of justice. There was no prosecutor,
no no jury, no you know, no defense attorney. There
was just you know, a dictator who made decisions about
people's lives. And so I became a prosecutor to really
(45:25):
give back to this country. And so in that process,
I wanted to be a voice for victims. You know,
who is the voice for the child that was molested,
Who stands up for the undocumented mother that was beaten
by her boyfriend and is afraid to call the police.
Who stands there for the mother who lost a child
and a drive by shooting, you know, by a gang member.
It's the prosecutor. And so to me, that was just
(45:47):
a way of giving back to this country. And once
I got into it, I loved it. I love the
notion of service.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
Do you ever get I mean, I guess you hear
the most hard stories of how people treat each other.
Is it anything that you ever take home with you
and affect your life outside of work?
Speaker 2 (46:09):
You know? I wrote about it in the book about
the sin Eaters. Right in England. They had these people
that were sin eaters that they would pay and bring
to funerals. They eat a piece of bread and it
was not to absolve the individual of their sins, but
to take away some of that darkness so that the
(46:30):
person can then move on to the afterlife. And I
think first responders, whether you're a firefighter or police, a
prosecutor a medical examiner, we see people at their worst.
Right when somebody comes and sees me or comes into
my world. It's either because they are a victim of
a crime with the very fabric of their lives ripped apart,
(46:50):
or they're a defendant who's looking at life in prison.
Same thing with a medical examiner. You're seeing people at
the worst moment that their death, the aftermath, and all
the victim's family, and it's hard not to take that in.
It's hard not to be hardened by it, you know.
I remember, you know, when I was prosecuting sex crimes,
in particular child molestation crimes. I would, you know, look
(47:13):
at a you know, grandfather playing with his grandkids in
the pocket. I'd be thinking, is that guy a molester? Right?
My daughters when they were growing up, they never had
a sleepover never, you know. It's just that part of me, right,
Nothing good happens after midnight, you know, and so we
had a curfew, you know. And so it does affect
(47:36):
you at Jade, you I mean, I'm sure in your line,
I mean, did it do that to you for example?
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Oh yeah, I'm you know, you pick certain things and
ignore other things just for some reason. I'm very terrified
of my kids getting i mean they're getting older now,
but getting hit by a car when they were younger,
just because you know, they just dart into the street
things like that. I would never let my husband ever
go on a motorcycle.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
It's my only role in my.
Speaker 4 (48:04):
Marriage, even though he's a fireman and goes in burning
bid bangs every day.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
That's exactly why, though, because I say, Okay, you could
potentially die at work every day, you're not dying on
your day is off exactly. But do you do anything
else like that in your life besides not letting your
kids have sleepovers. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
So my son, he's a he's a teenager, he's in
high school. So I told him, you would never ride
a motorcycle in your life. And I told my girls,
you would never ride a motorcycle be on a motorcycle.
But I told the same Well, because I've seen the images.
I've seen the pictures. You know, my kids are. I
have two that are in college and one that's in
(48:46):
high school. But you know, I track them, I track
where they go, and nothing good ever happens after midnight.
But you know, there's only so much I can do
on it because we see the worst of people, So
it does, you know, And I had I have a
difficult time sleeping. I don't sleep very much. You know,
when you're when you're absorbing all this in. It's not
(49:09):
like a light switch that you can just turn on
and off. It stays on all the time. And it's
been years since, you know, the Golden State Killer was
the GSK was the last case that I that I
personally handled. If I'm going to handle the last case,
that's going to be the last case. But you know
(49:29):
the case is they still hot you. There are things
that will trigger you, but that's you know, we took
in a lot of darkness and sins.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
Well.
Speaker 4 (49:38):
I think on that note, you know, you did such
a good job speaking from from the victim's perspective and
giving that insight into how it affected their lives, what
was going on, how his crimes affected the whole community.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
So that's why, you know, I would love for people
to buy the book. Like I said, part of the
proceeds go to the victims, but it really gives them
a voice and it changes the perspective I think of
the true crime genre. I mean, I know that you
guys probably read a lot of true crime books, and
you know, and I hope that it lived up to
some of the expectation, you know, I do sort of,
(50:16):
you know, when I talk to people about the book
who've read the book. You know, one of the challenges
I had was kind of jumping back and forth between time,
and I was just curious, were you able to kind
of follow the time jumps and the juxtaposition and all
that and the different storylines.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
Oh, definitely.
Speaker 4 (50:38):
I actually liked that format a lot because I feel
like you were describing the crime and then what was
happening in modern day with those specific set of circumstances,
And I found that easier to follow than in some
books where they lay out everything that happened forty years
ago and then everything that happened today. So I really
liked that different way of writing. I thought it was
really good to follow the case that was especially if
(51:01):
people don't know about it. I think it's very easy
to follow what was going on because this case is
very involved and there are a lot of details and
it's easy to get confused. Yeah, and especially for people
like us. We I mean I went to school for pathology,
Maria went to art school. We have no idea what
happens in the legal world, and we always have questions
(51:22):
and just all of this terminology that we read in
articles all the time, we don't really understand what it
means and how they get to those conclusions.
Speaker 3 (51:30):
So it was really helpful for that stuff too.
Speaker 4 (51:34):
Yeah, I appreciated you too, just saying like I had
to go back to textbooks from that time and see
what the laws were at that time, because as a
regular person, I'm just I don't understand. I wish I
could be a lawyer. But I always joke that I
cry when I get emotional, and nobody's a lawyer that's crying.
Speaker 2 (51:49):
So you know what that could be powerful of itself.
You know who you are and where your emotion. Yep,
you know it was. I'd never written a book. This
is my first book, and honestly I never thought that
a was, you know, as a kid learning English, you know,
being in EESL, English is a second language for six years.
I never thought I'd be a lawyer, much less write
(52:09):
a book. And so the process of writing what was interesting.
I wrote the book in seven months essentially, and I
sat down, I wrote a very detail outlining, outline. It
was thirty pages long, and every morning when I when
I decided all right, got to get to work, got
(52:29):
to write the book right because I had a deadline.
I just wake up at five o'clock in the morning
and write for two hours and and just you know,
write a section, send it to my editor in New
York who to review it, fix the grammar, fix the structures, suggestions,
send it back to me. And then I just add
on to it and send it back. But you know, go,
(52:52):
you know, and I had to you know, do research
and go back and look at some some stuff, look
at my notes, kind of jogged my memory, you know,
different things. But it was it was a really interesting
process writing the book. And one of the things I
try to really do is simplify some of the legal
terms so that people were non wards could understand it.
Give a little bit of knowledge, but not too much.
(53:13):
Make it interesting, you know, with without getting lost in
the weeds.
Speaker 3 (53:19):
Amazing.
Speaker 1 (53:20):
Well, you're a really awesome writer, and I think that
you should not stop with this book. And I think
that I know the title for your next book, which
is nothing Good Happens After Midnight but perfect.
Speaker 2 (53:33):
I love that. I love that. Well, you know, I
hope that you know, because you guys go to crime
con every year, is that yeah? Yeah, Well, so are you,
and I have to admit I have not been to
crime Con. I almost went this year, but I had
a scheduling conflict. Do you have a podcast role that
(53:53):
you're at during crime Con?
Speaker 4 (53:56):
The last two years we've had a live show and
then my mom does a solo lecture, so we haven't
had a booth, but we might in the future.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
All right, Well, this year is I mean, this coming
year is going to be in Vegas, and my intention
is to go. I would love to meet you both
in person to do a little you know whatever show
or anything that we could do, you know, live from Vegas.
We'll call it Live Vegas Those Death.
Speaker 1 (54:24):
Now, that would be so cool. I'd love that.
Speaker 4 (54:28):
No, absolutely amazing. Thank you Tim so much for coming
on our show. The People Versus the Golden State Killer
is coming out next Tuesday, November eleventh. Please pre order
the book. That is huge for sales. I can't recommend
this book enough. Guys, Good luck with everything. Seriously, it's
it's awesome.
Speaker 2 (54:47):
Awesome, Thank you so much. Love being on your show.
Speaker 1 (54:52):
Thank you for listening to Mother Knows Death. As a reminder,
my training is as a pathologist assistant. We have a
master's level education and specialize in anatomy and pathology education.
I am not a doctor and I have not diagnosed
or treated anyone dead or alive without the assistance of
a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website, and social
(55:16):
media accounts are designed to educate and inform people based
on my experience working in pathology, so they can make
healthier decisions regarding their life and well being. Always remember
that science is changing every day and the opinions expressed
in this episode are based on my knowledge of those
subjects at the time of publication. If you are having
(55:39):
a medical problem, have a medical question, or having a
medical emergency, please contact your physician or visit an urgent
care center, emergency room, or hospital. Please rate, review, and
subscribe to Mother Knows Death on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or
anywhere you get podcasts. Thanks Yo,
Mother Knows Dad starring Nicole and Jemmy and Maria qk.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Everyone welcome The Mother Knows Death. Today's guest played a
crucial role in putting the Golden State Killer in prison
for life.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
But before we talk with.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Our guests, we're going to talk a little bit about
the Golden State Killer. For those of you who are
unfamiliar with the story.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
Let me tell you this episode is such an honor
for me in particular because this is one of my
favorite true crime cases that got me really interested in
covering DNA and genetic genealogy, so I do a lot
of that on the Grossroom. But this story has really
interesting facts behind it. So for those of you unfamiliar
with this case, from nineteen seventy four to nineteen eighty six,
(00:57):
there was this reign of terror throughout California. So the
crime started in nineteen seventy four with over one hundred
and twenty known burglaries in Visalia, California, so that's just
north of LA and it eventually migrated to Sacramento and
eventually Orange County, where over fifty women and girls were
raped and thirteen people were brutally murdered. So what makes
(01:17):
this case so interesting is that throughout the years they
thought this perpetrator was different people in all these different areas,
and they eventually connected them to one. So first it
started with the burglaries in Visalia, so that started in
seventy four. They refer to that perpetrator as the Visalia Ransacker.
Then when the sexual assault started in Sacramento, that suspect
(01:40):
was known as the East Area Rapists, and then the
killings were attributed to the nickname the Original Nightstalker. Because
this was before Richard Ramirez's time as her YouTube live.
People know we've talked about him in the past, but.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
These are different people.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
So by their early two thousands, there's advancements in DNA
and detective pall Holes. Anybody that's familiar with crime Coon
will be very familiar.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
With Paul Holes.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
He figures out that the easter Aia Rapist and Original
Night Sotalcer are the same guy after comparing very early
DNA samples, and so at that point they're referring to
the killer as Euron's which was Easteria rapist, Original Night Sotalcer.
So then at some point they figure out that he
has the same MO as the Vicealia Ransacker all the
way over there, so they're kind of like, what the
(02:23):
hell we thought this was different people this entire time,
and now we have these three people connected together. So
fast forward a couple of years. Patton Oswald's wife, Michelle McNamara,
is writing about the case and she coins the term
Golden State Killer, so that kind of encapsulates everything going
on in California. And you have to remember these crimes
were going on between seventy four and eighty six, and
(02:45):
by the time Michelle McNamara was writing her book, it's
twenty sixteen. So all this time they don't know who
this killer is, what was her.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
What was her background that caused her? Is she just
a reporter? She was just interested in the case, like
what got her to reopen this case?
Speaker 4 (03:03):
Kind of so she had a true crime blog. It
was kind of like one of the first things ever
liked that that was huge, And then I guess, living
in California, you just have this arguably one of the
most horrific serial killers of our time, doing these terrible things,
which we'll get into in the episode, and how nobody
has caught him.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
So she started and that's so scary.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
It is so scary, and they, you know, for all
these years, are like, is this guy dead? Is he
still living amongst us?
Speaker 3 (03:31):
What is going on?
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Why did nobody ever catch him? He had really weird mos.
He was doing very bizarre things, like at some of
the scenes, he would put a towel over the TVs
and the computers, or not the computers that was because
that wasn't around you, but he would put towels over
the televisions while he's actually assaulted these women. He would
break into their houses and act like he lived there,
(03:52):
make himself a meal. He would slide in the door,
hide in somebody's closet for hours before letting himself so scary, yes,
before they knew he was even there. He would call
the victims years after the assaults and torture them. It's terrifying.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
So the last crime that this Golden State killer committed.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Was what year eighty six? Well, these are known crimes, remember,
so he might have committed even more that they don't
even know where connected to him, but they believe his
reign of terror was seventy four to eighty six.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
It's just really crazy too, that someone could be that
out of their mind and violent for such a long
period of time and then all of a sudden stop
for years were seemingly that we know about stop and
not do anything else for such a long time.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
I don't want to give too many spoilers away, but
this person was captured in twenty eighteen using genetic genealogy.
This man was in his early seventies and had committed
all these crimes. So this was kind of the beginning
of using genetic genealogy to solve cold cases. And it
was huge in California because this guy terrorized the communities.
(05:06):
I mean, in this book, the author goes over how
all these communities people weren't locking their doors, and after
the crime started going on, these people were families were
sleeping in one bedroom and terrified because they just didn't
know what was to come.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Yeah, I mean, that's just the scariest kind of crime ever.
And we've talked about this, which I'm going to bring
up with him in this interview as well, about we
wrote the inspiration for the movie Scream last week and
we were talking about the Gainesville Ripper and just with
(05:43):
something like that is going on in your neighborhood or
what did we talk about the DC Sniper for example
a little bit closer to us, like when things like
that are happening and you have to live and do
life every day and go to sleep at night at
your house, but you know that this person is on
(06:04):
the loose that wants to kill more people. There's a
huge possibility that you could be next. So I can't
imagine how terrifying that is for people.
Speaker 4 (06:13):
No, And I think what I want to discuss too
in this interview is that you know, this book was
written largely from the perspective of the victims, which I
appreciated having read so many true crime books, because you're
not really giving the killer, you know, the fame they're
desiring in some regard. But also we don't remember often
that these cases are affecting real people, and by telling
(06:35):
the story through their perspective of how the crime occurred,
what was going on in their lives, and how it
affected them for decades later, it was so impactful.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
All Right, So let's talk a little bit about the author.
His name is Tien Howe, and he has prosecuted hundreds
of high profile sexual assault, gang and homicide cases over
the twenty five year course of his legal career. He's
best known for successfully prosecuting Joseph DiAngelo, who is known
as the Golden State Killer. As Maria said, Tin has
(07:07):
an interesting background. He came to the United States from
Vietnam as a refugee as a child. He didn't even
know how to speak English, and he rose all the
way from being an intern to elected Disacramento County District Attorney,
where he currently is serving office today. He now has
a book called The People Versus the Golden State Killer,
(07:29):
which is going to be released next Tuesday. So we're
going to get to talk to Tin in a second.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
This episode is brought to you by the Grossroom Guys.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Our yearly sal is over right now, but you could
still get into the Gross Room for five ninety nine
a month, so if you are not a current member,
you should definitely try it because you'll have access to
thousands of post videos, art goals, and more. This week
we did our so every week we do either a
high profile death dissection, which is on cases that were
(08:10):
not famous until usually crimes or even medical things have
happened that have made people famous, or we do celebrity
death dissections. So last week we did one on the
movie Scream. As we had mentioned, earlier, and that one
was really interesting because we talk about the real life
serial killer case that inspired that movie. This week, we
(08:31):
are working on Lindsey Clancy, who, if you recall a
few years ago, she was the mother who strangled her
three children and then tried to kill herself by jumping
out of a window. She survived and is now a paraplegic,
and we get into all of the details of that
case and what may have motivated her to do something
(08:53):
like that. We also have a couple interesting cases in
the gross Room this week, showing a video that was
going viral on the internet and talking about you know,
all the comments that I see underneath the videos are
like what the Hell's going on? And all these people
tagging me in it. So I posted it in the
Grossroom and explain what I believe is happening in that video.
(09:16):
All that and more in the Grossroom.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
Head over to the grossroom dot com now to sign up.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Hi ten, Welcome the Mother Knows Death.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Hi. How you doing. It's truly an honor to be
on your show, And as I've said, love the title
of the podcast, mother Thank you.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
Before we get started, I just want to say this
is one of the best true crime books I've ever read.
I did it all in one take. I could not
get enough of it. I think you did such an
amazing job hopping between the timelines of when the crimes
occurred versus what was going on in your world in
modern day. And the bonus for me is as a layperson,
you laid everything out very simply so I could understand
(09:57):
everything between the DNA what you guys did in the
process Suter's Office. I can't I appreciate it so much.
I can't thank you for the way you laid it out.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
That means a lot to me on it, and that
is one of the challenges really of writing a book
where you're jumping back and forth in time because the
scope was so big and trying to figure that out.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
No, definitely, So I guess let's get started with you know,
you talk about in the book when you first learned
about the Golden State Killer, and then you kind of
talk about in the office what went down when you
guys discovered the DNA match.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Can you talk about that time a little bit?
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Most definitely.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
So.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
You know, I've been a prosecutor for twenty five years,
I've been a lawyer for almost twenty eight, and this
was back in originally in twenty twelve. In twenty twelve,
I tried my very first homicide case and it involved
Rajni Singh. Her half naked body was found behind a
brick wall in Rancho Cordova, not far from where the
(10:56):
East era rapist had committed his crimes. And so I
was just going out to the crime scene, getting ready
for trial and kind of seeing where everything was placed.
And I happened to be in the car with my buddy,
who was another homicide prosecutor, Billy who he grew up
in Rancho Cordova, and then the sergeant of the homicide team,
Jim Barnes, and so we were driving out there and
(11:18):
I just happened to look out and I noticed, like
all the businesses, all the homes, the apartments, everything had
metal bars on both the doors and the windows. I'm like,
you know, I've never seen so many metal bars before.
And then they commented that it was because of the ear,
and I was like, the ear, Who's the ear? And
that's when Billy, who grew up in Rancho Krdova, said
(11:40):
the ear and he almost like whispered it. It's the
East area rapist. He was the boogeyman of my childhood.
And so they were talking about how, you know, the
rampage of East Area rapists who then morphed into the
original night Stark and the Golden State Killer, and they
thought he was dead and said, well, if they were
(12:00):
find if you guys ever find them, that's the one
case I would want to prosecute and have and then
boom fast forward six years later was when they arrested them.
But before they did, there was a whole scene that
played out in the office about how I found out
about it, and so you know, the way I found
(12:24):
out about it was I saw the supervisor of the
team and then our number two, the supervisor of the
homicide team, in there whispering to each other in hush tones,
and then they're running around and there was something going on.
And they went to their office, which is right next
door to mine, and they closed the door, and I'm
in a government building that's been about fifty years old.
The wall is real thin, it probably blow on it,
(12:46):
it'd probably fall over. So there was and I just
remember I was, you know, I put my ear up
against the wall kind of eavesdrop, you know, like you
do as kids. And I remember hearing the word one
sixteen septillion match to the EAAR.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Wow, And that's the DNA match and that's in Sacramento.
The ar means one thing and one thing only, the
East Area rapist. I nearly fell out of my chair
and that's when I realized they found them.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Yeah, in your office made the press conference on National
DNA Day, which is pretty incredible that it could link.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Up like that.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Most definitely. I mean, you know, it's interesting sometimes in
universe and the stars they just all lined up together,
and that was the day it lined up because it
was DNA that solved the case.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Had you ever heard of the case before this that
used genetic genealogy to link semen from a scene to
a killer.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
No.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
This was the very first case in which forensic evidence
from the crime scene was used through genetic genealogy to
solve the case, and since then there's been a thousand
cases around the world world that have used this technology
to solve code cases. Are you familiar with with sort
(14:07):
of how how genetic genealogy works.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
Yeah, and I thought you explained it really well in
the book too. So they get the they extract the
DNA sample, and then you basically can ping from a
public database a family member, and then you have this
really tenuous job of building this family tree and then
getting back to the generation that you believe the matches from,
and then narrowing it down based on circumstantial evidence to
(14:34):
where that person lives, what they looked like based from
the victim's accounts. It is really amazing work.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
All right, you sound like a lawyer. You sounded like
a prospect trial. Where that's exactly how it was. But
there was a lot of drama behind the scenes, which
I covered in the book about how we got that
DNA sample. Because what happens is you need really good
amount of DNA where we send it over to a
(15:02):
LAP to convert it into what we call SNIP profile
that's single nucleotype polymorphism. So that type of profile is
used by the genealogy databases and it measures a million
different areas in your chromosome versus a million different areas
on somebody else's chromosome. The more places you have in
common with somebody, the more closely related. We didn't have
(15:22):
any DNA in Sacramento because unfortunately we threw ours away
contra Costa used it. All Orange County had the DNA,
but they wouldn't give it to us, and so we
had to go somewhere else to get the DNA. And
I talk about that in the book.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
Yeah, I wanted to bring that up too, because you
had discussed how you face challenges with the Orange County
office not handing it over and really assisting you guys
when you know. Detective Paul Hols was like, I think
I could figure this out, but I need this sample.
Do you find that police departments and other DA's offices
are often not working together or is this just in
(15:59):
certain high profile cases where they want to try to
figure it out themselves and take credit for it.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
What I would tell you is this a couple of
different things. I think that all law enforcement, all DA's officers,
we want to solve crime. We want to be able
to bring justice to victims. Now there will be disagreements
on the best way to do it, and in the
process there's going to be ego and politics that get
involved as well. When we prosecuted the case, I worked
(16:28):
with the line deputies at the Orange County DA's office,
some of the best das that I've ever worked with.
In my life now at the very top. There's a
lot of politics involved, right, and so they wouldn't give
us the DNA. They wouldn't give Paul Hose the DNA
from their case, and there was plenty of DNA. Part
of it, I think, is you know, part of this
(16:52):
thing where they wanted to solve it. They thought their
ideas were the best way to do it, and they
didn't want to hand it over. And so we had
to go to Ventura DIA's office to get their DNA
and get their agreement. Because in the murder of Lyman
and Charlene Smith, the corner in that case in Ventura,
(17:14):
doctor Speth, he had a unique and peculiar practice, which
was he always collected two different rate kits from the victims.
Most corners and pathologists collect only one, but he did two.
And he was brilliant in his foresight. Because what happens
(17:34):
is when you collect one sample, that sample goes to
the crame lab. The crime lab will retest items after
items after items, and so because of that, they're gone
and they're stored in different areas. So the corner's office
took a second sample and kept it pristine in their
freezer for forty plus years, and a detective on another
(17:58):
case happened to be searching around at the corner's office
and lo and behold found that second rate kit from
Charlene Smith and that's what helped break the case open.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
That's amazing, Mom.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Did you see that at your time at the medical
examiner's office where they're keeping samples like that for decades?
Speaker 1 (18:18):
No, And I think that the vision of that guy
is remarkable that he thought ahead like that that and
it makes total sense. I mean, working in this field,
things get lost. I mean, it's just so important that
you can't ever recollect it, so you have to you
have to have it. And it's really awesome to hear
(18:40):
that that guy, even before he really knew if anything
could be done with it, was thinking about that.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Spoken like the true medical examiner it. I mean, doctor
Speth was ahead of his time.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
Do you think during the seventies in the early eighties
when this was all going down to that GSK could
have possibly been caught if the police departments and you're
said in the book, he committed crimes over eleven different jurisdictions,
so is it possible they might have caught him quicker
if police departments were more willing to communicate with each
other at that time.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
I think we would have had a better chance to
catch him. You know, back then, law enforcement they were siloed,
you know, in different departments. Northern California wasn't sharing information
with Southern California. Southern California wasn't sharing information with other
Southern California jurisdictions. Now everything's online, Now everything is connected together.
(19:38):
I don't think that he could have committed the crimes
to the degree that he committed and the scope in
this day and age without getting caught. We have forensic evidence,
we have cell phone evidence. I mean, everybody has a
ring camera, everybody has a surveillance camera, we have license
plate readers. So I think it's very difficult this age
to have to commit the scope of the crimes that
(19:59):
he did back then. And I think that did contribute
to the fact that he he wasn't caught for so long.
And the other thing was, let's not forget he was
a police officer. He was a police officer who knew
the techniques and the investigative you know, protocols of law enforcements.
I talked about in the book. The very first series
(20:20):
was the Visalia Ransacker was the Ransacker was committing one
hundred and twenty burglaries in a three miles square Radi's
in Bisalia and the central part of California, breaking into
home sometimes as much as wore five six times a night.
And it turned out that Joseph DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer,
the East Era rapist, the original night so Soccer, was
(20:41):
also the Visalia Ransacker, but he was a police officer
in nearby town. He helped out on the task force
to find the Ransacker, and he was in fact the Ransacker.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
It is so bizarre.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
Remember when we cover Jeffrey Dahmer that he had gone
to the memorial for some of his victims. It is
very bizarre that they like to watch their work with
seeing these people being in distress, but knowing you're the
person committing them.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
I was thinking with Brian Coberger too, for example, like
he was in school to be a criminal justice major.
It's it's almost you have to wonder if these people
are purposely trying to get into these professions so they
could try to get away with crimes.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
I think that's a great point. I think there's an
element of that where they want to learn the techniques
and be able to utilize those techniques to commit their
crimes into evade capture. I mean when you were looking
at you know, the even the TV show what was
that Dexter? Right, you know, and other different like that.
(21:45):
And I think it gave him an advantage. It gave
DiAngelo an advantage to escape capture and to commit his crimes.
It gave them access to a database. But I think
the other thing is when you get into the psychology
of somebody like Joseph DeAngelo, right, is if he was
above the law and beyond the law, that the law
didn't apply to him, and when he became a police
(22:07):
officer it was an extension in his mind. I enforced
the law, but the law doesn't apply to me, and
it's that for him. For him in particular, it wasn't
to serve the community. It was to serve his sick depravity.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
It is interesting that he had no foresight about leaving
his seamen at this scene, because obviously that ended up
catching him so many years later. But there was just
so many circumstantial piece of evidence that were so disturbing,
Like you had discussed in your book that he had
left doctor Pepper at many of the scenes, and then
when he was arrested, you found all this doctor Pepper
in his home. And I remember Paul Holes had discussed
(22:48):
that he had covered the TVs up with towels, and
how eerie it was when they went in the home
and saw tows covering his devices too, and just little
things like that that are so niche that could not
possibly be connected to another person.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
And I think with the towel, so in some of
the sexual assault he turned on the TV or he
turned on the lamp, he put a towel to create
this warm glow as he committed his crimes. And Paul
was right when we did the search warrant to get
into his house, he put a towel over his monitor,
his TV mark, his computer monitor. But the other thing
(23:24):
that people don't know or realize is when he was
in his jail cell, he would cover the fluorescent light
with a towel to create that glow. So it was
almost as if he was reliving his crimes. It was
almost as if he was continuing to do it. And
when you talk about the PTK killer, right, he said
(23:45):
that while there was a certain point where he did
stop committing his crimes because he physically couldn't do anymore,
he was still replaying and committing crimes in his head.
He was looking at a victim and thinking, how am
I going to kidnaps or how am I going to torture?
How am I going to kill her? He was still
replaying and thinking about in his mind of committing the crime.
(24:08):
In the same way, Joseph D'Angelo, at the age of
seventy three, was in his jail cell and there's a
I have it on video where he was looking out
his cell and there was a young blonde female that
was working the pod area delivering food to the different inmates,
and he's looking at her and you can tell that
he was masturbating to her. So even at the age
(24:30):
of seventy three, the sexual depravity had not yet left him.
Speaker 4 (24:35):
That's interesting. So I want to shift some more to
the pathology component of this. So a lot of the
victims had described that he had an unusually small penis,
and then after his arrest, you guys took photos of that.
Did you kind of just have that feeling like this
is definitely the guy after seeing something.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Like that, definitely. So the interesting thing is, you know,
in the Orange County crimes, in the Ventura crime is,
three of the Contra Costa, and one of the Santa Barbara.
We had evidence connecting him, but in none of the Sacramento,
in many of the other crimes in Northern California, and
in the murder of double Manning and uh, you know
(25:15):
in Santa Barbara, there was no d and evidence in
that case, you know, doctor Offerman and doctor Manning, there
was no DNA. So we had to prove those cases
by modus operandi. And since many of the victims in
Northern California described his penis as being abnormally small, we
(25:38):
wanted to verify that piece of evidence to establish that
circumstantial evidence. And it was, in fact extremely it was.
It was a micro penis, as some people have described it.
And so when you're talking about the pathology of it,
you know, he witnessed his own sister, who was eight
(25:59):
years old that he was a few years older, being
raped on a military base when he was a young boy,
and he was tied up, and he felt very helpless
from that. He was beaten by his parents, and so
when you look at the pathology of it, he felt
very powerless, both physically mentally and emotionally in his own life,
(26:20):
and so he needed to regain some of that control.
Now he doesn't justify it in any way whatsoever, but
we tried to understand the monster behind the masks and
the pathology of it. And so he was a hunter
of people instead of animals. And when he was in
people's homes, he wanted to play god over them. He
(26:42):
draped towels over them, stack of perfume bottles on them,
He threatened them, he sexually assaulted them, he ate their food,
he drank their beer. He played God over their lives,
and it gave him back that sense of control that
he probably didn't feel in any aspect of his life.
And that's how the monster was creating.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
The micro penis is very interesting to me because although
it can just occur and they don't really know why,
a lot of times it's often associated with an underlying
genetic disorder or a hormonal disorder, particularly a lack of
testosterone in infancy, which they would usually treat with to
(27:22):
try to to make it grow a little bit larger,
and it's better treated as a child. And I'm not
sure if that's anything that they would have done when
he was a younger person. But it's just interesting that
that may play a role in it, as well as
far as hormone levels of him growing up and different
(27:43):
things like that.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
You know, when I look at that, we had to
recreate his life, you know, from the moment we found him.
You know, I recreated every step of his life, from
when he was born in Bath, New York, all the
way to when he was rested even afterwards, and the
way I look at it, we saw the death penalty
at one point in the case. You know, it's always
interesting to understand what created a monster, but at the
(28:10):
end of the day, I still have a monster sitting
in front of me, and I needed to hold him
accountable for what he did because many people have been
victims and have felt trauma in their lives, and yet
they don't turn into the monster. He became an inflicted
trauma on other people. But you know, the stuff you
mentioned is really interesting there.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
I did think after reading that part of the book
about his childhood and what he had witnessed with his sister,
that it kind of, you know, it added up to
what was going on. Because I've been covering this case
or reading about this case since you guys arrested him
in twenty eighteen, and his MO was so specific, you know,
putting plates on people's backs so they couldn't move, covering
(28:50):
up the televisions, going through their homes and eating their food,
calling them, harassing them after. It's just very specific, and
I feel like with all the cases we cover, I
haven't heard anything so meticulous and well thought out. And
after hearing that, I'm like, Okay, this kind of really
is adding up to why he's doing this ritual because
he's in a way recreating the scene he witnessed, but
(29:12):
like you're saying, trying to take control of it this time,
but in the worst possible way.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Absolutely, And that's really interesting perspective that you just laid
out there. So you watched this or you know, follow
this from the beginning. Were you familiar with it before
we caught him? You know? With Michelle McNamara's book.
Speaker 4 (29:32):
I really wasn't so when I first started. When after
he was arrested, I saw that a case was solved
with genetic genealogy. I've always been very fascinated with DNA,
and then I started reading about it and it just
completely blew my mind to become one of my favorite
cases ever.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
So I have to ask you guys a question in
terms of reading the book, and so there are things
that were in the media, things that were covered before.
You know, Michelle McNamara obviously wrote her book, Paul Hols
wrote his book about the investigation, but my book covered
the investigation, the capture, and the prosecution of it. You know,
was there something in my book that kind of caught
(30:10):
your attension, that kind of just fascinated you that perhaps
you didn't know before, just out of you know, for
my own curiosity.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
Oh, definitely.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
When it came down to his whole background, I feel
like I didn't know anything about how he grew up.
All I knew was he had a military background and
he was a police officer. He was divorced and that
will not officially divorced, separated, but had daughters. So that's
kind of all I knew about his background. So I
feel like the way you laid it out, and then
when you detailed what happened with the sister, it started
(30:39):
a lot of things started adding back up to me. Also,
that you guys had searched the house looking for the trinkets.
I had no idea that happened, and you gave such
a great perspective from the victims that I feel is
so rare in true crime books.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yeah, that was my favorite part of it too, because
last week we actually were looking at because it was Halloween,
we were looking at the movie score and we were
saying that it was inspired by the Gainesville Ripper. And
we had a lot of questions after writing that that
that movie was released only six years after the murder,
(31:12):
and then you find out that Brian Coberger may have
been inspired by the Gainesville Ripper and stuff. And sometimes
there's so much of a focus on the actual murders
that you're wondering if it is inspiring other people instead
of thinking about how these victims' families feel with a
movie coming out about the deaths of their loved ones,
sensationalized only six years after they were murdered.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
I think what you both said was extremely eloquent and relevant.
You know, one of my inspiration for writing the book,
and I wrote it five years after the case ended,
was really to give a voice to victims. You know what.
I was first assigned the case, the first thing I
did was I went on Amazon and bot Michelle mcnamir's
(31:58):
book because I just wanted a whole kind of view
of the case. And when I read it, I couldn't sleep.
And Michelle wrote her book and then she passed away
before we found him, so she was you know, focused
on him and focused on the crime and trying to
find him. And then Paul wrote his book in terms
of how he used a came up with an idea technology,
(32:20):
forensic technology to solve the case, you know, an I view.
My book is the third in the trilogy, right, you know,
the the end that covers everything. But I really wanted
to give voice to and honor the generations of law
enforcement that never gave up their search for him. But
in addition, I wanted to make sure that the victims
(32:43):
that their voice came through, that they did. I show
how they turned pain into power, and they really drove
what happened on the end of the at the end
of the case, and that stuff, frankly was never really
talked about publicly, and so I wanted to make sure
I did that to honor them. And a part of
my proceeds from the book, it goes to honor you know,
(33:04):
a nonprofit, Phillis's Garden, that was started by several of
the survivors.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
No, that's absolutely incredible, and I thought, you know, the
detailing of the crimes itself and how it affected each
victim individually, and then you having to deal with them
decades later and having to tell them, you know, we
caught this guy. We're potentially seeking the death penalty. Never mind,
there's a plea deal. Nobody really talks about how emotional
(33:31):
that could be over the years, and some of these
people weren't even able to see justice. This happened forty
years ago. Some people passed away, you know. So to
see you guys handle this case with such care and
be able to let them go up there do their
victim impact statements and share their stories in such a
tasteful way was really great.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
As a reader.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Thank you. That means a lot to me.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
The victim impact statements.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I know that you said that that some of them
had a huge impact on you. Can you describe some
of that for us.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Yes, And I'll talk about the two of them in particular.
The first was Phyllis so Phyllis is the first sexual
assault victim in Sacramento. And I remember the first time
I met Phyllis. She it was my first time in court,
(34:26):
and there is this lady that comes up to me
and she's in her early sixties, late fifties. It looks
like a gray hair. She's got these thick, round coke
bottled glasses. And she comes up and she reaches her
hand down. She shakes my hand and she says, HI,
my name is Phyllis. I'm victim number one. And we
(34:47):
sat down and we talked, and other victims came up. Hi,
I'm Chris, I'm victim number ten, right, But I sat
down in and talked with Phyllis, and I was kind
of just going over what was happening in the case.
But it was surreal for me because I had read
Phyllis's police report, I'd read her victim impact, you know,
her victim statement to law enforcement. I'd seen the pictures,
(35:09):
and I had this image of Phyllis, and now I
am forty something years later, and it was as if
I was reaching across time and space right the sweetest
person in the world. And every time I come to court,
Phyllis was sitting right there. But near the end of
the case, Phyllis told me that she was diagnosed with
cancer and she couldn't make it to court, and so
(35:30):
she couldn't make it to the date where we you know,
he accepted guilt. And so when we did the allocution
and went to the facts of Phyllis's case, she wasn't there,
but all the other victims stood up for her. Fast
forward two months later, we're going through the impact statement,
and I'm looking forward to seeing Phyllis and hearing her
(35:51):
and just you know, you know, coming over and sitting
with her. And she was going to come to read
her impact statement, but she was just so tired. She
was just so tired and worn out from the chemo
and everything else, and she couldn't make it. And her
sister came and read the impact statement about how it
affected or how she couldn't sleep alone anymore, how she
had to set up an alarm system and locked all
(36:13):
around her house, and her husband couldn't leave town for
very long. She became a prisoner or in her own home.
But what does that do to you over the years?
How does that eat away at you? Right? And then
I remember a couple of days later when DiAngelo was
going to get his sentence, and I look across the
makeshift court room and I see Phyllis sitting there and
(36:33):
she had this mask on. We're in the middle COVID.
She had this twinker on her eye, and for the
first time in forty years, she was able to obtain
a measure of justice. Three months later, Phillis passed away
from cancer, and so it meant the world to me
that we were able to get her that justice that
day in court, because if we kept moving forward, she
(36:54):
would have never seen that moment because she passed away.
And that's something that was staying with me forever. The
other person that really affected me in terms of their
impact statement was was Jane Carson. You know, Jane wrote
her own book, Frozen in Fear. She became a colonel
in the military. She was a nurse. He assaulted her,
(37:17):
you know, with her her infant, you know, or Toddler's
son nearby. And Jane at the at the impact statement,
she brought Bonnie, and Bonnie was di'angelo's ex fiance and
it was a very dramatic moment in the courtrooms and
(37:38):
Jane went and here's Bonnie, you know, and and she
did it to try to get a reaction from DiAngelo.
And I'm sitting no more than six feet away from DiAngelo.
He's got a mask on. He's sitting there looking straight ahead.
But when Bonnie's name was mentioned, I could tell that
his breathing stop for a moment. You could see him gulp,
(37:59):
and it became a rapid breathing. So it had an effect,
which is exactly what Jane wants. And Jane is such
a you know, a really powerful you know, advocate for victims.
And you know, I really, you know, really always think
highly of Jane. You know, I talked to her about
once a year. She was recently out doing true crime
(38:23):
stuff at Comic Con or Crime Con, and so she
goes every year, and we're talking about connecting as well.
Speaker 4 (38:31):
That's amazing. That kind of reminds me of the Coburger
victim impact statement, you know, because when the when the consolve,
his family went up and started attacking his character, that's
when you could really see him getting mad. He doesn't
care that people are upset. He cares about people going
after him.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yeah, And we were sitting there watching it live and
then the first couple ones. I mean, like, I understand
that victims want to cry and they want to say, oh,
my life has been a affected, but I just.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Don't think that these people care.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
And I was saying to Maria, if that was me,
I would be studying that guy to see how I
could get under his skin, you know. And it sounds
like that's what happened in your case, and it happened
with the Brian Coburger case when the one victim's sister
went up and was just digging into him and you
(39:25):
could see him physically sitting there and being uncomfortable, and
that I guess that gives the victim's family some kind
of satisfaction that you could still bother a person that's
that sick.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Yep, they got to him, and that's what Jane was doing.
I mean, Jane's a just a source of power. And
I can see that, you know, that's exactly what you do.
That's what I would do. And Coburger, I mean the sister.
I mean that's great because you want to get to them,
You want to make him feel something, make him swarm.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
Right, Oh totally.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
And it was so bad ass that you made him
are that clear mask because he was essentially behind the
mask his whole life. He needs to now own up
to what he did. Does it matter that he's an
old man trying to fake being this people old man
when you guys know that's not the deal.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Well, I'm glad you enjoyed that part. You know that
has never been made public. So you know, when he
committed his crimes, he wore a mask. And as we
were getting ready for the case to come to a
conclusion and we were in court. You know, it's in
the middle of COVID, Right, what do we wear in public? Right?
A mask? But I didn't want him hide behind the mask.
(40:33):
So I had to go through a lot of machinations
and stuff, you know, in court with the judge to
make sure that he wore a clear face shield he
couldn't hide behind it. So if you go and you
look at that first court appears that's exactly what he has.
And so it's interesting, you know, putting the pieces. If
you read the book and then you go back and
watch some of the videos, it'll give you insight on
the stuff that was behind the scenes that people don't
(40:55):
really know about.
Speaker 4 (40:58):
Oh definitely, So before this case, had you ever had
to work a case before with so many other DA offices,
because I can't imagine that was awesome for you guys
to have to deal with.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
It's very rare. So typically in my office, you tried
the case by yourself. You got nobody else with you.
Other in the courtroom there could be two three defense attorneys,
you know, So alone I walk into that courtroom alone,
I sit there and a loan, you know, I try to,
you know, slay the monster before us. In rare situation,
we will assign two prosecutors to it. And it's very
(41:33):
rare that you have this many prosecutors. I mean, he
committed his crimes in eleven different counties and there were
six participating counties, and nearly every one of those counties
had somebody assigned to it. So, you know, attorneys, you know,
we're a type personalities, were aggressive by nature, We're drivers,
so you had to figure out how to deal with it.
Now among the line deputies. So the way we work is,
(41:54):
you know, you have your your you elected DA, you
have your executives, you have your supervisors, you have your
line deputies. The line deputies are the ones that are
in the trenches, on the front lines. And that's what
I was, you know, for most of that case. I'm
not anymore obviously, but at that time I was, and
we got along great among the line deputies. I mean,
because we were all moving in one direction. Some of
(42:17):
us would work on a mental defense, some of us
would work, you know, on the DNA stuff. Other ones
of us would you know, work in different areas of
it and strategize and do some research motion, and so
it was a collaborative experience from the line deputy above
that it was a bit more challenging, as I talked
about in the book.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
Yeah, that's interesting. And you had one of our previous guests,
Matt Murphy on your team as well.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Yes, so, yeah, so Matt came on your show. What
was Matt talking about?
Speaker 4 (42:47):
By the way, Matt came on when his book came
out last year, and he talked about, you know, all
the cases he had worked on. We got really into
Rodney Ill call of the Dating Game Killer and he's
been in the Awesome resource. We met him at Crime
Con the last two years and he's.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
A great guy.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Yeah, Murph is a good dude. I mean I joked
around with him when he was on the case. He
was only on there for a short period of time
before he left the office. But you know, Murph, he
goes surfing. You know, he out there. You know, in
his wet suit out there, and he was a great prosecutor,
I mean, a good legit trial lord. He knows this
(43:25):
stuff and it was good to have him on the
case for the short time that we did, and jored
working with him. And so he's a good guy and
well verse in the criminal justice area.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
What first got you interested in this field?
Speaker 2 (43:42):
You know? So in the book, and it's interesting how
I set it up. So have you guys watched the
movie The Titanic? Yeah, yeah, of course the Titanic, right,
and the way I shut up the book and explain why.
You know, the Titanic has the the B and the
C story. So the A stories the search for the
(44:03):
Hope Diamond, the B stories the love story between Kate
and Leo, and the C story is the sinking of
the Titanic, right, And so in the book I set
up the A story is the investigation, capture, and prosecution
of GSK, the B stories my story, and the C
story is the story of the victims and the survivors.
(44:24):
In terms of my story, and I covered in the
book as the B story. I was born in Vietnam.
You know, my family left when we faced a dictatorship
in Vietnam and South South Vietnam fell, So we left
and escaped on a fishing boat, ran on a gas,
food and water. We were just drifting on the ocean,
near death until we were rescued. I spent six months
(44:44):
in a refugee camp in Malaysia. When I came to
this country, I couldn't understand a single word of English.
I joke around that I learned how to speak English
by watching Bucks Budding cartoons. Twenty years later, graduated from
law school. And when I when I graduated from law school,
I wanted to give back to this country. Gave my
family everything we could have ever imagined, and so I
(45:04):
became a public servant, you know, And there's no greater
public servant in my mind than a prosecutor who stands
up for victims and fights for victims. You know, in Vietnam,
there was no system of justice. There was no prosecutor,
no no jury, no you know, no defense attorney. There
was just you know, a dictator who made decisions about
people's lives. And so I became a prosecutor to really
(45:25):
give back to this country. And so in that process,
I wanted to be a voice for victims. You know,
who is the voice for the child that was molested,
Who stands up for the undocumented mother that was beaten
by her boyfriend and is afraid to call the police.
Who stands there for the mother who lost a child
and a drive by shooting, you know, by a gang member.
It's the prosecutor. And so to me, that was just
(45:47):
a way of giving back to this country. And once
I got into it, I loved it. I love the
notion of service.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
Do you ever get I mean, I guess you hear
the most hard stories of how people treat each other.
Is it anything that you ever take home with you
and affect your life outside of work?
Speaker 2 (46:09):
You know? I wrote about it in the book about
the sin Eaters. Right in England. They had these people
that were sin eaters that they would pay and bring
to funerals. They eat a piece of bread and it
was not to absolve the individual of their sins, but
to take away some of that darkness so that the
(46:30):
person can then move on to the afterlife. And I
think first responders, whether you're a firefighter or police, a
prosecutor a medical examiner, we see people at their worst.
Right when somebody comes and sees me or comes into
my world. It's either because they are a victim of
a crime with the very fabric of their lives ripped apart,
(46:50):
or they're a defendant who's looking at life in prison.
Same thing with a medical examiner. You're seeing people at
the worst moment that their death, the aftermath, and all
the victim's family, and it's hard not to take that in.
It's hard not to be hardened by it, you know.
I remember, you know, when I was prosecuting sex crimes,
in particular child molestation crimes. I would, you know, look
(47:13):
at a you know, grandfather playing with his grandkids in
the pocket. I'd be thinking, is that guy a molester? Right?
My daughters when they were growing up, they never had
a sleepover never, you know. It's just that part of me, right,
Nothing good happens after midnight, you know, and so we
had a curfew, you know. And so it does affect
(47:36):
you at Jade, you I mean, I'm sure in your line,
I mean, did it do that to you for example?
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Oh yeah, I'm you know, you pick certain things and
ignore other things just for some reason. I'm very terrified
of my kids getting i mean they're getting older now,
but getting hit by a car when they were younger,
just because you know, they just dart into the street
things like that. I would never let my husband ever
go on a motorcycle.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
It's my only role in my.
Speaker 4 (48:04):
Marriage, even though he's a fireman and goes in burning
bid bangs every day.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
That's exactly why, though, because I say, Okay, you could
potentially die at work every day, you're not dying on
your day is off exactly. But do you do anything
else like that in your life besides not letting your
kids have sleepovers. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
So my son, he's a he's a teenager, he's in
high school. So I told him, you would never ride
a motorcycle in your life. And I told my girls,
you would never ride a motorcycle be on a motorcycle.
But I told the same Well, because I've seen the images.
I've seen the pictures. You know, my kids are. I
have two that are in college and one that's in
(48:46):
high school. But you know, I track them, I track
where they go, and nothing good ever happens after midnight.
But you know, there's only so much I can do
on it because we see the worst of people, So
it does, you know, And I had I have a
difficult time sleeping. I don't sleep very much. You know,
when you're when you're absorbing all this in. It's not
(49:09):
like a light switch that you can just turn on
and off. It stays on all the time. And it's
been years since, you know, the Golden State Killer was
the GSK was the last case that I that I
personally handled. If I'm going to handle the last case,
that's going to be the last case. But you know
(49:29):
the case is they still hot you. There are things
that will trigger you, but that's you know, we took
in a lot of darkness and sins.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
Well.
Speaker 4 (49:38):
I think on that note, you know, you did such
a good job speaking from from the victim's perspective and
giving that insight into how it affected their lives, what
was going on, how his crimes affected the whole community.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
So that's why, you know, I would love for people
to buy the book. Like I said, part of the
proceeds go to the victims, but it really gives them
a voice and it changes the perspective I think of
the true crime genre. I mean, I know that you
guys probably read a lot of true crime books, and
you know, and I hope that it lived up to
some of the expectation, you know, I do sort of,
(50:16):
you know, when I talk to people about the book
who've read the book. You know, one of the challenges
I had was kind of jumping back and forth between time,
and I was just curious, were you able to kind
of follow the time jumps and the juxtaposition and all
that and the different storylines.
Speaker 3 (50:37):
Oh, definitely.
Speaker 4 (50:38):
I actually liked that format a lot because I feel
like you were describing the crime and then what was
happening in modern day with those specific set of circumstances,
And I found that easier to follow than in some
books where they lay out everything that happened forty years
ago and then everything that happened today. So I really
liked that different way of writing. I thought it was
really good to follow the case that was especially if
(51:01):
people don't know about it. I think it's very easy
to follow what was going on because this case is
very involved and there are a lot of details and
it's easy to get confused. Yeah, and especially for people
like us. We I mean I went to school for pathology,
Maria went to art school. We have no idea what
happens in the legal world, and we always have questions
(51:22):
and just all of this terminology that we read in
articles all the time, we don't really understand what it
means and how they get to those conclusions.
Speaker 3 (51:30):
So it was really helpful for that stuff too.
Speaker 4 (51:34):
Yeah, I appreciated you too, just saying like I had
to go back to textbooks from that time and see
what the laws were at that time, because as a
regular person, I'm just I don't understand. I wish I
could be a lawyer. But I always joke that I
cry when I get emotional, and nobody's a lawyer that's crying.
Speaker 2 (51:49):
So you know what that could be powerful of itself.
You know who you are and where your emotion. Yep,
you know it was. I'd never written a book. This
is my first book, and honestly I never thought that
a was, you know, as a kid learning English, you know,
being in EESL, English is a second language for six years.
I never thought I'd be a lawyer, much less write
(52:09):
a book. And so the process of writing what was interesting.
I wrote the book in seven months essentially, and I
sat down, I wrote a very detail outlining, outline. It
was thirty pages long, and every morning when I when
I decided all right, got to get to work, got
(52:29):
to write the book right because I had a deadline.
I just wake up at five o'clock in the morning
and write for two hours and and just you know,
write a section, send it to my editor in New
York who to review it, fix the grammar, fix the structures, suggestions,
send it back to me. And then I just add
on to it and send it back. But you know, go,
(52:52):
you know, and I had to you know, do research
and go back and look at some some stuff, look
at my notes, kind of jogged my memory, you know,
different things. But it was it was a really interesting
process writing the book. And one of the things I
try to really do is simplify some of the legal
terms so that people were non wards could understand it.
Give a little bit of knowledge, but not too much.
(53:13):
Make it interesting, you know, with without getting lost in
the weeds.
Speaker 3 (53:19):
Amazing.
Speaker 1 (53:20):
Well, you're a really awesome writer, and I think that
you should not stop with this book. And I think
that I know the title for your next book, which
is nothing Good Happens After Midnight but perfect.
Speaker 2 (53:33):
I love that. I love that. Well, you know, I
hope that you know, because you guys go to crime
con every year, is that yeah? Yeah, Well, so are you,
and I have to admit I have not been to
crime Con. I almost went this year, but I had
a scheduling conflict. Do you have a podcast role that
(53:53):
you're at during crime Con?
Speaker 4 (53:56):
The last two years we've had a live show and
then my mom does a solo lecture, so we haven't
had a booth, but we might in the future.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
All right, Well, this year is I mean, this coming
year is going to be in Vegas, and my intention
is to go. I would love to meet you both
in person to do a little you know whatever show
or anything that we could do, you know, live from Vegas.
We'll call it Live Vegas Those Death.
Speaker 1 (54:24):
Now, that would be so cool. I'd love that.
Speaker 4 (54:28):
No, absolutely amazing. Thank you Tim so much for coming
on our show. The People Versus the Golden State Killer
is coming out next Tuesday, November eleventh. Please pre order
the book. That is huge for sales. I can't recommend
this book enough. Guys, Good luck with everything. Seriously, it's
it's awesome.
Speaker 2 (54:47):
Awesome, Thank you so much. Love being on your show.
Speaker 1 (54:52):
Thank you for listening to Mother Knows Death. As a reminder,
my training is as a pathologist assistant. We have a
master's level education and specialize in anatomy and pathology education.
I am not a doctor and I have not diagnosed
or treated anyone dead or alive without the assistance of
a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website, and social
(55:16):
media accounts are designed to educate and inform people based
on my experience working in pathology, so they can make
healthier decisions regarding their life and well being. Always remember
that science is changing every day and the opinions expressed
in this episode are based on my knowledge of those
subjects at the time of publication. If you are having
(55:39):
a medical problem, have a medical question, or having a
medical emergency, please contact your physician or visit an urgent
care center, emergency room, or hospital. Please rate, review, and
subscribe to Mother Knows Death on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or
anywhere you get podcasts. Thanks Yo,
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