November 11, 2025 • 51 mins
WARNING: This episode contains detailed references to rape and sexual assault. If you or someone you know has been affected by sexual assault, confidential support is available at RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline: 800-656-HOPE
Emily and Shane are sitting down with the Sacramento County DA and lead prosecutor on The Golden State Killer case, Thien Ho.
Thien’s new memoir, “The People vs. The Golden State Killer” gives readers an inside look at this serial rapist/killer and the many victims he impacted along the way.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This podcast episode contains detailed references to rape and sexual assault.
If you are someone you know has been affected by
sexual assault, confidential support is available at RAIN. That's our
ai NN national Sexual Assault hotline. The number is eight
hundred sixty five six Hope. Hi, guys, welcome to another
(00:22):
episode of Legally Brunette. I will be your host today
Emily Simpson with my co host Shane We are going
to go into the Golden State Killer. He actually has
a few names also, he's been called the original night Stalker,
which if you remember, the night Stalker is Richard Ramirez. Correct,
(00:42):
but this guy pre dates Richard Ramirez. His name is
Joseph James DiAngelo, also known as the Golden State Killer.
He is a former police officer who terrorized California from
nineteen seventy four to nineteen eighty six, committing a series
of more than one hundred burglaries, over fifty rapes, and
at least thirteen murders. His crime spree began in Visalia,
(01:05):
where he was known as the Visalia Ransacker, breaking into
homes and stealing personal items before escalating to violence and murder.
He later became known as the East Area Rapist in
the Sacramento region, attacking women in their homes, often binding
and tormenting couples in carefully planned assaults that left entire
(01:26):
neighborhoods paralyzed by fear. By the late nineteen seventies, DiAngelo
had moved south and evolved into the original night Stalker,
later dubbed the Golden State Killer. He was committing brutal
rapes and murders across southern California before abruptly stopping in
nineteen eighty six. Let me ask you, you are a
native Californian. Do you remember this crime spree? I know
(01:49):
you told me before that you remember Richard Ramirez when
you were a child.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Richard Ramirez. I remember as it was happening, as it
was unfolding all the different attacks that he had, and
you know, we would be shutting our windows and closing
our doors, and you know, as a kid, I didn't
pay attention to the timeline of events, but it was
just it felt like every night there was something going
on with him.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Right now, this guy predates the Richard Ramirez crime spreeze.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
So him I don't remember, but you don't.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Remember him, no, you know, for some reason, even though
the amount of crimes that he committed across all these
multiple counties in California. He doesn't have the notoriety like
some of these other serial killers, even though I would
say his crimes are as, if not more brutal.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Could it be because a lot of his crimes went
without a face like they did like Richard Ramirez. You know,
it was happening, so obviously it was on the news,
and then it started to unfold the investigation, like there
was a you know, someone survived I think someone survived
a gunshot to the head, which he assumed they were dead,
so they were able to give a description. And then
(02:58):
there was a sketch artist and went around everywhere, and
so it was like, you know, real time trying to
catch him. I'm wondering if this Golden State killer, if
it was so mysterious and so unknown who this person was,
that maybe it just didn't stay in the media.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
And also because of the time period, this is the
seventies and eighties, I don't think there was a lot
of collaboration between the stuff between the police departments, and
I don't think they were connecting that all of these
crimes were committed by the same person. So for more
than three decades, his identity remained a mystery as investigators
struggled to link the crimes committed across multiple jurisdictions. The
breakthrough finally came in twenty eighteen, when detectives used genetic
(03:38):
genealogy to trace DNA from old crime scene evidence to
DiAngelo through an online ancestry database. At age seventy two,
he was arrested at his home in Citrus Heights, California.
Because the crimes spanned six counties, prosecutors from each jurisdiction
joined forces to bring a single consolidated case Sacramento County.
(04:01):
Ten Ho, the Sacramento County Assistant Chief Deputy DA, led
this unprecedented multi county prosecution. Now I read, so we're
going to interview ten Hoe in a little bit. He
was a prosecutor, the lead prosecutor on the Golden State Killer.
He's in Sacramento. His book is called The People Versus
the Golden State Killer. I actually read the entire book.
(04:24):
It was interesting. But you know, one of the things
I learned is all the red tape and bureaucracy behind
all of this, all these different He committed all these
crimes in all these different counties and they had to
come together and figure out how they were going to
prosecute this guy. And one of the big issues was venue,
like what county all the counties wanted, you know, which
county could prosecute him, where the venue would be. And
(04:47):
also I realized reading his book that all the prosecutors
had to agree whether they would seek the death penalty
or not, and they all had to be in agreement.
So there were a lot of interesting things logistically that
I learned from his book.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
When was the first murder believed to be because he
said it properly stopped in Selve seventy.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Four is when he started burglarizing, But his crime spreeze evolved,
which we'll talk about. It started out as burglary, then
I think he then he went to you know, burglarizing couples.
Then it was rape, then it was.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
When did he and his career as a law enforcement.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
He wasn't a police officer for very long?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Okay, he he.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Was fired from the police force because he was arrested
for stealing and then and then he was he was fired, Yeah,
I mean because he was arrested he was a thief.
They caught him stealing this is funny. I didn't even
know this existed. He was caught stealing dog repellent.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Dog I mean, like where you sprayed a dog with
their attacking year.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
I don't know it was dog repellent. I didn't know
there was such a thing. Now now you we have
three dogs, are you googling dog repellent over there?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
I google spouse repellent.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Rather than pursue the death penalty, Tinhoe and his team
reached an agreement ensuring that DiAngelo would plead guilty to
thirteen counts of murder and thirteen counts of kidnapping with
intent to rob, while also admitting to numerous uncharged rapes
and burglaries. This approach spared survivors and families the trauma
of a lengthy capital trial, while forcing DiAngelo to publicly
(06:18):
accept responsibility for every known crime. During his sentencing in
twenty twenty, more than forty survivors and victims relatives confronted
him in court, describing decades of pain and fear. You know,
they all got to give their impact statements, which I'm
sure took hours and hours and hours because there were
so many, well, I mean the ones that were able
to come. I mean, you're talking about people at advanced
(06:39):
ages at this point. I mean's crime spece go back
to the seventiescades, and eighties. But they also had to
they had to use a different space. They couldn't fit
everyone in a traditional court room, so I believe they
used a ballroom. That's how.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
And he was like, how many victims he had? Ye,
they had a rent venue for victim was ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
During this proceding, DiAngelo offered a faint apology before being
sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
He is currently eighty years old.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
When was the when was he convicted?
Speaker 1 (07:14):
He well, he took he didn't go to trial. He
took a plea deal, and this was twenty twenty, I believe,
And then he was he was sentenced in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
So eighty six, as far as they know, he abruptly
stopped his crime spree.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Well, he had children, so some people think that, I
mean he was married and had three.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Have it at eighty six, he stopped, as far as
we know, and then it wasn't until two thousand, Well,
it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Until two thousand and eighteen. I believe that they found
they were able.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Three years, yeah, thirty two years.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
The case became a landmark in criminal justice, not only
for introducing genetic genealogy as a revolutionary investigative tool. And
if you remember when we talked about the Brian Coburger case,
that's also how Remember they found the DNA on the sheath,
but they ran up through Cotis and they didn't get
any hits. So then they used the genealogy websites. I'm
(08:10):
not sure exactly which ones, but then they got the
I believe they got a hit on his dad. And
then remember they went to the parents' house and they
were able.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
To find other relatives in the system and try to
draw him. They try to connect to find him, and
they did.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Okay, we're going to have ten come on in a
little bit. We're going to ask him about his book
and about the case, and let me just give you
a little bit about his background. So ten Hoe was
elected District Attorney of Sacramento County in twenty twenty two
and officially took office in January of twenty twenty three.
Prior to the election, ten served in executive management as
a Sacramento County Assistant Chief Deputy DA over the Justice
(08:46):
and Community Relations Bureau. Over Ten's twenty five year career
as an attorney, he successfully prosecuted sexual assault, gang and
homicide cases. He was the supervisor of the Gang and
Hate Crime Unit and has personally charged and prosecuted hate crimes.
Most notably, he successfully prosecuted the East Area rapist Golden
State Killer. He's this is his crime spree was so long.
(09:10):
He has multiple monikers.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah, and then there's probably investigators and stuff that live
out like he outlived.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Oh yeah, there were, there were, there were people that
were retiring. We're moving on exactly. He committed thirteen murders
and over fifty sexual assaults in eleven different jurisdictions throughout California.
Michelle McNamara wrote about the case in her book I'll
Be Gone in the Dark. The case has also been
featured on CNN, HBO twenty twenty, and countless news outlets
(09:40):
across the world. Michelle macnamara, I don't know if you
know this, but that's Patton Oswalt's wife, and Patton Oswald
is the comedian. It's on SNL, right, and I think
he not on SNL.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
It might have been on SNL, but no, he does
the voice of the narrating voice for Goldbergs that you
like to watch.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Oh, that is him.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
He was on Tun and a Half Men for a
little while with Ashton Kutcher. He's done quite a few things.
He's mostly stand up comedian, or I should say is
Bread and Butter's stand up comedian. The niece fortunate to
get a lot of acting gigs.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
So Patten's wife was a writer and also a true
crime just a fixionado. So I think she was very
invested in the case. She followed it, she knew its
ends and outs, and so she wrote a true crime
book covering it, and then he finished it after her.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Pretty cool that he did that.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
He must have known how passionate she was about this project.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
In November of twenty twenty five, da Ho published his
first true crime memoir, The People Versus the Golden State Killer,
chronicling his journey from a Vietnamese refugee to the lead
prosecutor in this landmark case against serial killer and rapist
Joseph DiAngelo. In twenty seventeen, he was presented with both
the National Asian Pacificer Islander Prosecutors Association and Sacramento District
(11:01):
Attorney's Office Prosecutor of the Year award, So we're gonna
pick his brain. We're going to talk to him about
the Golden State Killer and his new book, The People
Versus the Golden State Killer. Hi, Tenmi, Welcome to the podcast.
First of all, I want to let you know that
I did my due diligence and I read your entire book.
So I loved it. Yeah, it was great. You know,
(11:24):
I think my takeaway just in a general sense. I
just wanted to ask you about a lot of times
I think when people write about true crime, they really
focus on the criminal. And I was pleasantly surprised that
you spent so much time really humanizing the victims in
this case and giving us such a detailed background of
(11:45):
who they were, what their life was like, what their
relationships were like. So I just wondered, was that something
when you were prosecuting it that you were like, I
want to write a book, or where did the idea
come from for the book?
Speaker 4 (11:58):
You know, the book.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
The case has been closed for about five years now,
but what I can tell you is that when I
look at the true crime genre, right, they're usually focused
on the criminal or the crimes.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
And I wanted to be different.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
I wanted to focus on number one, the generation of
law enforcement officers that never gave up their search for him,
but more importantly to the survivors and the victims and
amplify their voices. And I made it a very conscious
effort to highlight that in the book. And I'm so
glad that you saw that and you felt.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
That I really did. I mean, I would say that
was my biggest takeaway was how I felt like, instead
of knowing the criminal and kind of trying to understand
his psychology, I felt like I knew the victims and
I felt like I could see them and see them
at home and in their lives. And so I appreciate
that you did that. I felt like that was different
(12:50):
and that really connected with me. You know, why do
you think that the Golden State killer doesn't have the
notoriety kind of like your other serial killer, like your
Ted Bundy's and things like that. Do you think it's
a because the case goes back so far or what's
your take on that.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
I think that's part of it.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
I mean, he committed his crimes from nineteen seventy four
to nineteen eighty six, and then he went dark for
three decades, you know, and we kept searching, kept looking
for him, and in the meantime, other people filled that space,
whether it was Ted Bundy, whether you know BTK Killer,
(13:28):
the Grim Sleeper, right, other people filled that hole, that
missing part of it. And when we found him, he
was seventy two years old. He looked like your drunk
grandpa or drunk uncle at the Thanksgiving dinner, wearing cargo shorts,
tube socks and a T shirt. Right, And so I
think that took away some of the some of the
mysticism or you know, behind such a notorious killer that
(13:54):
really gripped entire communities for so long.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
You know, let's go back a little bit because I
had this in the book, but I want you to
just kind of elaborate on it. I know that there
was DNA collected at all the crime scenes, and then
a lot of the DNA was lost due to the
statute of limitations. It was lost, it was thrown out,
it was discarded. How how was he just kind of
give me I know it's complex because of the forensics
(14:18):
and everything, but can you kind of just give a
brief overview of how he was actually caught?
Speaker 4 (14:24):
Great question, So for many years.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
We took the crime scene DNA and uploaded into COTIS,
which is the national DNA database that's you know, run
by the.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
FBI, and we never got a hit because COTIS.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
To get into COTIS, you have to be a defendant
who was arrested or convicted of certain crimes.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
And it really started happening, you know, after.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Nineteen eighty six, after nineteen eighty seven, when DNA and
forensic DNA came into play. So what we did was
we needed some crime scene DNA that we could use
in genetic genealogy.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
Now, I like, I don't know, have you or anybody
you know.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Ever used twenty three and meters ancestry some of those genealogies,
have you?
Speaker 4 (15:01):
Yeah? You know I have.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
I've actually, you know, I've done the SPIT tests and
I set it in. I believe I used me specifically,
I used twenty three in me and then I got
the reading back. But I was trying to think, because
this seems this is obviously a new, a new way
of you know, connecting to criminals. And we talked about
it in the Brian Coburger case as well, how they
(15:23):
caught him. But I don't know, I mean, maybe I
just clicked through at the end, but did I don't
know if I specifically agreed to allow my DNA to
be used to I don't know where where I know.
I know it's a constitutional issue, but it doesn't seem
to be out there right now.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
And I sort of explained it in the books.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
So really what happened was we took some of the
DNA from the crime scene, and it was a whole
adventure to get some DNA because one of the other
counties wouldn't let us use their crime scene, so we
had to go to a second county. And Paul Hoe
is my colleague who's a criminalist from Contra cost that
came up with the idea. So especially we took the
DNA from one of the crime scenes, the Charlene rape
(16:04):
kit out of Ventura County. We converted into what we
call SNIP profile. That's SNP that stands for single nucleotype polymorphism,
and it's a profile that measures a million different areas
in your chromosome. We uploaded into one of the genealogy
databases and from there what happens is it's compared to
all the other profiles in there, and the more areas
(16:26):
you have in commo somebody, the more closely related you are.
So when we uploaded it, we found out that a
distant cousin to the god of State Killer was in
the database.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
And so now we built a family tree.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Okay, this distant cousin, did they have any brothers and sisters,
who were their parents, who were their uncles and aunties, grandparents,
great grandparents. We built all the way up the family
tree to the common ass jester back down again. We
had over a thousand people on this family tree, and
so then we had to go through and fill to them.
How many of them are male, how many of them
are blue eyes, how many of them were cops or
(16:59):
military that lived in Sacramento, in Orange County, in Ventura.
And so we came down with three different suspects. And
so one of them lived to Sacramento. He was Joseph Diangels.
So on the day in question that he put his
garbage out to be picked up, we lined up this
garbage truck with plastic. We took one of the detectives,
dressed him up as a garbage truck guy, drove up there,
(17:23):
picked up his garbage, threw it in there, went down
the street, went through his trash and we tested eight items.
The last item we tested was a piece of tissue,
and the DNA on that tissue came back as a
positive DNA hit to all the rapes and murders in
SoCal and some of the rapes and contra costs up
here in Northern California.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
So that's how we found him.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Now, I just have to ask you, how does it
feel when you get that back? Like, what is that
feeling when that DNA matches?
Speaker 4 (17:51):
You know, I wasn't yet assigned to the case.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
And the crazy story behind it was I was in
homicide at the time, and you know I heard years
earlier about the East Area rapist to go to State killer.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
He was notorious in our area.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
And I'd never asked for a case in my life,
but I said, you know, if they refine them, I'll
make the exceptions. So in the day in question, in
April twenty eighteen, I saw the supervisor of the homicide team,
my boss, and the number two in the office. They're
huddled together, they're whispering, they're talking, they're pointing to something.
They're running in and out of the office. And so
I said to my secretary, Hey, what's going on? And
(18:26):
she said, ah, nothing, So they came into their office,
they closed them. Their office is right next door to mine,
and Emily, if you know anything about government buildings, they're
poorly constructed, poorly built. The walls are very thin. If
you know, if you put your ear up to the wall,
you can hear what's being said on the other side.
So I put my ear up against the wall and
(18:47):
I could overhear my supervisor and the number two in
the office said, there's a one and sixteen Septelian DNA
match to the eaar and as Sacramento, the EA armies
won thing and one thing only the East Area rapist.
I nearly fell out of my chair. I couldn't contain
myself that they finally caught them. So that night I
(19:08):
kept looking on my phone, kept looking on you know,
the newspaper, and c and ed did they catch him?
At four o'clock in the morning, there was a notice
of a new development in the case and there was
going to be a press conference that morning.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
I was completely shocked.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Now, I know in your book you said that you
really wanted that case more than anything that correct, and
that you really advocated to be the lead prosecutor. Now
I didn't realize that because in your book you talk
about all these different prosecutors from all these different jurisdictions
where he committed all these crimes. You all kind of
had to get together and have all these meetings and
be on the same page. What was that like having
(19:53):
to deal was that frustrating having to deal with all
the different prosecutors in the case.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
So, you know, the most prosecutors, they try their cases
by themselves. You don't have like two people on the
team unless it's a big case, and in Mike County
it's usually just one person. And here we are, we
have prosecutors, like almost ten prosecutors from six different counties,
and you know, prosecutors and lawyers.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
You know, we're a type personality.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
And what I can tell you is on the team itself,
we got along beautifully. But it was the politics from
the elected days above that sometimes made the case challenging.
But you know, we divided up the case slow because
we had nearly three million pages of police reports.
Speaker 4 (20:37):
We had tens of thousands of suspects.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
We had reports after reports, we had pictures, videos, all
this stuff. So the more people you had, the more
we could more efficiently prosecute the case. But there were
political machinations that were happening above where the cases would
be tried, who was.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
Going to try him?
Speaker 3 (20:56):
And all the drama and the politics that we had
to deal with from above. But it was great working
with the team itself done.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Yeah, So you eventually landed on the case being tried
in Sacramento.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Correct, Yes, but after some drama that I talked about
in the book because at one point the then District
Attornity of Orange County, who is not the current one
Tony Ricaccus, they actually issued an order or got didn't
order issue from a judge and try to take him
out of Sacramento and bring him to Orange County to
(21:28):
try the case down there, And so we had to
get a court order.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
To stop that from happening.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
So there were, like I said, a lot of different machinations,
but we ultimately decided that we were going to try
the case in Sacramento, which frankly was where it belonged.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Now, let me ask, was there the only one? Was
there only one thing that he did in Orange County?
Was that the data point one? Or were there multiple?
Was there more than one? That happened in Orange County.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Yes, there was more than one, and in fact, most
of the murders happened in Orange County.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
So there was the murder of of MANUELA.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Whithewn, there was the murder of Janelle Cruz in nineteen
eighty six, that was the last no murder. And also
there was the rape murder of the Harringtons down in
Dana Point. So there were a total four murders and
three rapes down in Orange County. There were four murders
in Santa Barbara County, and then there were two in
(22:24):
Ventura County. There were two murders in Sacramento, there was
one in by Seat. I mean, he's just prolific. You're
talking about thirteen known murders, upwards of fifty sexual assaults,
one hundred and twenty burglaries, and eleven different counties up
and down the state of California.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Why do you think that he was able to elude
the police for so long?
Speaker 4 (22:43):
That's a great question. You know, there's a couple of reasons.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Number one is, during most of his crime spree, he
was a cop, so he had inside knowledge. He knew,
for example, how long it would take the police to
respond to a scene. He knew where they would set
up their blockades, right where the road stops.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
He knew where the ingress and egress were.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
He knew all the techniques right, and so he was
able to avoid capture for a period of time. The
other thing was, back then, everybody was siloed. Sacramento's not
talking to Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara's not talking to Orange County.
And if you think about it, in this day and age,
we have what everybody has a ring camera, everybody has
surveillance cameras. Everybody has a cell phone, right, we have DNA,
(23:27):
we have everything that's shared online. Now, I don't think
you could commit this crime in this day and age.
But from nineteen seventy four to nineteen eighty six, he
ran a monk across the entire state.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
And frankly, that's what happened.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
I mean, it's inside knowledge and just the siloed nature
of law enforcement back then.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
I also, I believe, and I think you talked about
it in your book about how he changed his crimes changed.
I believe didn't he just start out as burglarizing, that
was it. Then it moved on to ra Then I
believe he for some reason, targeted couples, and I think
there was some psychology there where he wanted the husband
(24:08):
and the wife together so he could separate him because
that was some type of terror. Then he went on
to murder. Is that just his psychology of just having
to up the ante each time that he gets bored
with what he's doing.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
You're absolutely right.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
I mean, this was an evolution of a predator, and really,
why did he do what he did and how did
he go about doing it? You know, I have a
chapter in the book, it's called The Monster Behind the
Mask where we really cover his entire life, but on
the moment he was born in Bath, New York, all
the way to the time he was arrested. But you
have to understand he was a creature of both genetics
(24:47):
and his own environment. When you looked at it. He
was about ten years old or so, he was on
a military base because he came from a military family,
and he witnessed his little sister, Connie getting raped in
front of him by two service members while he was
held down, right, so, and then he was beaten by
his parents, and then he started abusing animals. I mean,
(25:09):
which isn't you know which is typical of serial killers.
And when you look at it, a lot of his victims,
his rape victims, described him as having a micro penis,
extremely small. And so when we arrested him, I went
to court and ordered, you know how the judge ordered
the execution of his search board to take pictures of
(25:29):
his penis, and lo and behold it was indeed a
micro penis. So he felt very powerless, basically, emotionally, mentally
in his own life. And here he was right evolving
as a predator, as a peeping tom, as somebody who
went into people's home. And what did he do. He
ate their food, he drank their beer. It was as
(25:49):
if he took control over their homes. And then when
he was sexually assaulting the victims, you know, he had
the men get on all fours and put a blanket
over them and stack plates on top of them because
he was exercising control.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
It was the god complex.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
And then after the rape, he would take the wedding band,
violating the relationship, and then he would take one earring
but leave the other one behind, just like he did
in Visalia, because he was playing god. And when he
was in southern California, what he was doing then, was
he took the bindings with him, the ligatures right the
rope with him. And we could tell that was the
(26:25):
case because the victims had their hands behind their back
and you could see the marks and the wrists and
their ankles. Because he was evolving and he was killing
all his witnesses, all his victims, right, so he was evolving,
but he was playing god over their lives.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Was taking one earring to send a message to whoever
came to the crime scene that I took what I wanted,
Like if they were both missing, then maybe people wouldn't
notice it was taken. So did he take one to
say I could take one if I want.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
So when he was doing that, when he was the
Viceilia ransacker, that was absolutely the case. He was taking
one earring and leaving the other one so he says,
I can take whatever I want. And on top of that,
was when you looked at that one earring, what would
you think about the missing one? Just like one the
woman that had been raped. When you look at your hand,
you see the missing wedding band, right or the husband
(27:14):
with the missing wedding band. Where you look at that
one ear ring, but now the other one so every
time you see it, you know, you're reminded of what happened.
So it's him continuing to exert control and dominance over
his victims, being.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
God, I do know. I mean he spent a lot
of times in these homes. I mean he ate their food,
he drank their beer, he hung out, he wandered around,
he opened their drawers, he got their clothes out.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Would he leave a mess to like, leave everything unattended,
so it was like I was here, I was everywhere.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
Yes, that's all part of the mentality.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
And the key part was he would sometimes break into
these homes days and weeks ahead of time and leave
something in a seat cushion or move something and see
if they noticed it or not. Right, he would cut
out pictures of them from their photo albums, right, all
these little things. That was meticulous, but it demonstrated that
(28:09):
he it was a message of omnipotence over people when
he felt such impotency in his own life and in
his own self.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Now, I know in the book you talked about how
you had thought that you might have found where he
was putting all these things that he had stolen. You
were hoping to be able to recover them and get
them back to the victims, and then it ended up
not being the case. I believe you. How did that happen?
You dug somewhere, right, They used like some kind of
I don't know what I'm saying, like some kind of
metal detector type of thing right to look and see
(28:39):
where he had buried them.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
So, you know, one of the things that all the
victims asked us, hey, did you find any of the trophies?
Speaker 4 (28:46):
Did you find my class.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Ring, the wedding band, the ear ring, you know, the photograph, right,
And we couldn't really say anything in the beginning, but
we didn't find anything when we did the search warm
but we always felt that he kept the trophies year
into the case, and this was not previously publicized until
I wrote the book. So the book is filled with
a number of you know, details and information that's never
(29:08):
been revealed for and this is one of them. About
a year into the prosecution, we received word from one
of his coworkers that said, hey, he told me the
Angelo did that before his house and Citrus Heights was built,
before the foundation was laid. What we did was he
had dug underneath and put in a secret compartment underneath
(29:32):
the foundation. So we wrote a piggyback warrant to get
back into the house. And you know, when you have
people that are doing utilities and stuff for digging into
the ground, they bring somebody in that has ground penetrating
radar sonar. So we brought somebody in to do that,
and he literally scanned the entire house. He scanned the backyard,
every inch of it, right, and we were digging back there,
(29:56):
you know. Unfortunately, and I tell the story about, you know,
where we dug and how we dug it in the book.
Speaker 4 (30:01):
We did not find any trophies.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
But one of the things that we founded there, which
was really unique, was one of his daughters. One of
the Golden State killer's daughter was a psychology major.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
And do you know what she was fascinated with studying.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
I think it was serial killers, wasn't it?
Speaker 4 (30:20):
It was serial killers. She had books in the house
on serial killers and here her dad was a serial killer.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Now let me ask you a question. Is that the
same daughter that wrote the letter to the court or
is that a different daughter?
Speaker 4 (30:33):
You know, a couple of the daughters ended up writing it,
but she was the same one.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Oh, okay, letters well, I'll let I'm sure you know
much more than I do. But I did read that
they submitted letters on behalf of their father talking about
what a great daddy was, and you know, he was
the stand up guy and things like that, which I
don't know how I felt about that. I understand that
they're the victims in all of this and that their
(30:57):
perception of who their dad is is completely different, but
I don't I guess from my perspective, I felt like
it was almost disrespectful to the victims to to talk
about what a stand up guy he is. But that's
that was just my takeaway from it. Did you have
any feelings about what they said or you know?
Speaker 3 (31:14):
Number one, I don't believe that they knew that he
was a serial killer or a serial rapist, but the
evidence is undisputable, and he even admitted.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
They were, in my mind, victims as well of him.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Now, I would not have written a letter the way
they have written a letter, or or I would not
have said the things that they said, but you know,
that's how they felt in regards to it. I would
spend more time recognizing and honoring and being more empathetic
towards you know, some of the survivors. But I understand where,
you know, from their perspective, and he was a master manipulator.
(31:54):
He was able to compartimentalize his life and be a
master and he manipulated them. He used them as a
mask to mask who he really was. So in a sense,
I see them as victims as well.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Now, why why did First of all, it blows my
mind that his wife was an attorney. I don't know why,
but it just just the fact that she's clearly an intelligent,
you know, educated woman. But I didn't they separate like
back in the nineties or something, and they just never
actually got divorced until after he was after he was caught.
Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (32:29):
That is correct? And people ask me, well did she know?
And I honestly believe that she did not know. And
the reason why is when he was committing his rapist
as the East Era rapist and the East Bay rapists,
he was, you know, a police officer. She was going
to school at night to be a lawyer. They had
(32:49):
completely different schedules, They slept in different rooms, they led
different lives, and honestly, you know, we interviewed her and
she's very self centered.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
She's very focused on herself.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
Some people would describe hers as narcissistic, and so she
was so focused on herself that she probably didn't realize
who she was married to. However, I would note that,
you know, after the fact, she didn't start putting the
pieces together. She found shoelaces, three tied shoelaces underneath one
of the things, and he was known to bring to
(33:20):
pre tied shoelaces to help tie up the victims much quicker.
So I think that she was a victim of him
as well. But you know, they separated back in the
late eighties early nineties, and but the divorce wasn't finalized
until after he was arrested.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Did you ever get any sense from her that she
was surprised by his arrest or. I don't know. I
just couldn't find much information about that was her reaction.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
I think shocked. Yeah, she was surprised. The kids were
all surprised. I think his family, nobody in his inner
circle ever imagined that he was in fact the East
Air Rapist, the Original Nights, the Vicelia Ransacker, and the
Golden State Killer.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
He was that good of a manipulator.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
And even then after he was arrested, you know you
saw his manipulation in court.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Oh yeah, he pretended to be feeble and incoherent and
all those things. But I know you in your book
you talk about how you had well there was a
secret recording of his jail cell, and he would just
kind of run around in his jail cell and jump
on his bed and jump off his bed, and so
he clearly didn't know he was being recorded at that time.
(34:32):
What did you take away from writing the book? Was
it helpful for you? I can assume as a prosecutor
and you're dealing with homicides and rapes and all these
terrible things. Did you find that it was therapeutic for you?
Was it helpful for you? Did you feel like giving
a voice to the victims helped you get through it?
Speaker 3 (34:52):
You know, as prosecutors, just like first responders and law enforcement.
Speaker 4 (34:56):
We see so much evil. We see so much darkness,
you know.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
You. When I meet people in my job, it's at
the worst moment in their lives. Either they are a
victim of a crime and they've had the tapestry of
their lives shredded apart, or they're a defendant and they're
facing life in prison. I talk about in the book
the notion or the idea of sin eaters. Right in
England you had sin eaters, people that were hired to
attend funerals and then eat a piece of bread representing
(35:21):
the sins.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
Right.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
And I feel as prosecutors we see the darkest moments
of humanity and flashes of humanity, and so it's tough,
you know, sometimes, you know, it's not like a switch
I can turn on and off. I mean, for years,
you know, I don't sleep well. And when I do sleep,
I dream about my cases. I dream about my victims
and the defendant. But what I learned from this, and
(35:44):
I'll tell a little story about it, is the very
first rape victim in Sacramento was Phyllis and she was
twenty three at the time.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
She was home alone.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
I read the police report, I saw the pictures, the
description of her.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
And what happened forward. It's the very first court appearance.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
I walk into court and this little lady in her
early sixties with gray hair, walks up to me. She's
barely five feet tall. She has these coke bottled glasses.
She reaches her hand out to me. She shakes my
hand and says, Hi, I'm victim.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
Number one.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
I'm Phyllis, right, and somebody else comes up high. I'm Chris,
I'm victim number ten. They were all identifying themselves by
their number, the order in which they were assaulted, and
I remember Phyllis seeing her and shaking her hand. It
was as if I was reaching through time and space.
And every time I come to court, Phyllis would be
right there in the front row and we sit and
we talk and I give her an update on what
(36:37):
was going on. Near the end of the case, Phyllis
told me that, you know, she wasn't going to be
in court next time because she had been diagnosed with cancer.
Speaker 4 (36:46):
Her mom had die of cancer, and she was going
through treatment.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
And so when it was time for him to admit responsibility,
you know, we're in this makeshift court room in the
middle of COVID and we give the allocution, which is
of the facts as it relates to Phyllis's case. She
couldn't be there, so all the other victims stood up
for her. And then fast forward when he received a sentence,
I look across the courtroom two months later and there
(37:11):
was Phyllis. She had this twink on her eye for
the first time in forty years, she was able to
obtain justice. You know, Phyllis died three months later of cancer.
And so when I think of the case, I think
of her, I think of her resiliency. I think of
the fight that we all gave to give those victims
closure in justice after forty years.
Speaker 4 (37:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
I remember reading that part in your book and I thought,
I thought it was really beautiful that she got to
see it to the end and that she got some
closure from that. You know, that's another question that I
have as far as the victims go. And I know
they all got to give their victim impact statements, and
I do know originally in your book you talk about
how all the prosecutors got together and originally you all
(37:53):
had to agree to seek the death penalty in this case.
And I believe that was the first route that you
were going to go. And if anyone deserves death penalty,
I mean, you can debate death penalty all day long.
I go back and forth myself, but I don't go
back and forth on someone like this. I mean this,
this man doesn't deserve to live. That's just my personal perspective.
(38:13):
But then you end up taking or he ends up having.
There's a plea deal, right, so that he gets life
in prison. But can you just walk through that a
little bit and why you guys decided to do that?
And I guess it had to do with the timing
and making sure the victims could all be there and
give their impact statements and things like that.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
You know, if anybody deserved the death penalty was him.
But we were faced with a couple of different challenges.
The first is back in the nineteen seventies rape the
statue of limitation for rape in California was three years,
which means that from the time that a victim is raped,
if we don't find and charge her perpetrated within three years,
we can't file charges.
Speaker 4 (38:51):
It's three years in a day, we can never file charges.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
And so a lot of the cases in Sacramento and
Nordcaw with the sexual assault, we couldn't file those charges,
and Phyllis was one of them.
Speaker 4 (39:01):
Chris was another one.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Now, there was some that we found a loophole and
we could charge when they moved the victim, and we
could charge kidnapping because that was a life offense. But
for the vast majority, we couldn't charge them, which meant
that they would never get their day in court. They
never get to stand up and give an impact statement,
to hear them admit to it. That was the first hurdle.
The second hurdle is in the midst of prosecuting this case.
And I'm trying to get this into a courtroom, right.
(39:24):
I have a detective in Orange County who's ninety six,
half death and half blind. I have another witness who's
ninety two. We have to get them in the courtroom.
In the midst of getting this case into the courtroom,
in March of twenty twenty, we were hit by a
pandemic that the war had not seen for one hundred years.
Speaker 4 (39:41):
Everything shut down.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
I mean you remember, we couldn't even buy toilet paper,
right right, everybody's wearing a mask, and this thing caused
social distancing, remember the first time you heard that, right,
And so now we had to get into the courtroom.
Speaker 4 (39:53):
And so we ended up crafting a plea.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
Deal, where a plea where he would plea and admit
to everything, even admit to the cases where we couldn't
charge like Phyllis, but then give Phyllis a chance to
give an impact statement. And if we didn't do that,
Phyllis would have never had her day in court. So
we did it for the victims. We did it for
all the victims, charge and uncharged.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
I was worried when I was reading the book. I
was worried that the defense attorneys weren't going to agree
to that plea deal. And I was surprised as well
that he actually said something in court and he did it.
I mean, I guess it was a very short sentence.
I don't remember exactly what he said, but he did
apologize some type of like, I admit to it and
I apologize. Were you surprised that he stood up and spoke.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
No, Because I believe he's the master manipulator who has
to always be in control.
Speaker 4 (40:45):
Right. He has to be in control when he was
wearing the mask.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
He had to be in control when he was committing
his crimes, and now is just in his mind a
way of seizing control and the narrative. And so I
don't give very much credit to anything he said, because
he is the master manipulator.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
I guess I was surprised that he admitted to all
the crimes, the crimes that were you know, you were
that you could prove with the DNA, but also the
uncharged crimes. But I also found it interesting on your
part that you had the wherewithal to ask that he
wear the clear shield so that his victims could actually
(41:21):
look in his face for the first time and actually
see him and look him in the eye and give
their impact statement and have him have to look at them.
And I thought that was very clever that that you
thought of. That was that something that was like a
last minute type of thing or did was it?
Speaker 3 (41:36):
You know, as we were getting close to the court
here and right, and we're in the middle of COVID,
everybody's wearing a mask. Right. You remember the days where
you walk into a room, you had to get your
temperature measured, you had to, you know, wear a mask.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
Right.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
It's been five years since COVID and the world's changed, right,
But back then we were right in the middle of it,
right in the beginning of it.
Speaker 4 (41:55):
And so we're coming.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
To court and I was having a dream and I
was waking up with a nightmare that you know, when
he committed his crimes, he wore a mask. You know,
the badge in the uniform that he wore as a
police officer was a bag, was a mask. His family,
his kids. They were all masks. His life is a
mechanic was a mask. And I didn't want him sitting
there in the courtroom on the day that all the
(42:19):
victims were supposed to get justice wearing yet another mask, right,
and wearing COVID and everybody wears a mask. And so
I came up with the idea to go on Amazon
and buy the clear face shield.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
And then I came up with a.
Speaker 3 (42:31):
Strategy and an idea, and I talk about in the book,
you know how to get him to wear that. But
if you go back and you look at the video
of that court hearing, see him wearing a mask, and
now you get to once you read the book, the
inside story about how that happened, what.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
Do you think the takeaway was for the victims to
be able to have that final piece of the puzzle
that they needed after all those years. I mean, we're
spanning forty years for them to be able to stand
up and talk and act. And how long did that take?
I know, you had to have a makeshift courtroom. It
was it wasn't it a ballroom somewhere because it was large,
You had a lot of media there. What was that like?
What was what was the feeling like, what was the vibe, like,
(43:10):
what was the victims like?
Speaker 3 (43:13):
It was initially electric, right, because we're in the middle
of COVID. We had to create a makeshift courtroom where
we could fit in two hundred people was six foot
of social distancing, right, and so we ended up using
a ballroom at the Sacramento State University converting into a
makeshift courtroom and separating people. And it was just there
(43:34):
was a level of relief for me to get the
victims justice, because there's never joy for me in these
cases because somebody had the fabric of their lives ripped apart,
Somebody lost a loved one that you know, would never
get to celebrate another anniversary, see another sunset or sunrise,
and so there's never joy.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
There's only relief, reliefed it the judge didn't.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
Mess it up, Relief that the jury didn't mess it up,
Relief that law enforcement didn't mess it up, relief that
I didn't And so it's just a sense of relief
for me. But when I think about it, what it
did for the victims, which I think was your kind
of original question, It gave them a measure of justice
and closure.
Speaker 4 (44:13):
And some of the victims.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Afterwards, they were able to turn their tragedy into triumph
a Chris who was victim number ten, and Gay who
was another victim. They ended up starting a nonprofit called
Phyllis's Garden in honor Phyllis, because Phyllis was their friend.
They were with Phyllis on her deathbed and she took
her last breath, and so they started a nonprofit. And
(44:36):
part of the proceeds of my book goes to fund
that nonprofit, Phillips's Garden. So I would love to have
your viewers and listeners donate to that. I'll be donating
to it. And what they do is this Chris, when
she was interviewed after she was raping, she was only fifteen,
she was interviewed in the same place she was raped.
And a lot of victims when they interviewed at the
(44:56):
police station, they're interviewed in the interrogation room. What Phyllis's
Garden does is it creates these soft interview rooms with
like a nice warm rug couches and chairs and paintings
and flowers in there, so that when a victim is interviewed,
that they're interviewed in a place that has some humanity.
To it, and so that's Phyllis's Garden. I'm a big
(45:18):
supporter of them as well. You can help them out
online and we'll be donating to it.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Okay, that's awesome. I love that. We'll definitely post a
link to that, so we'll make sure that we get
that from you so I can post it as well.
And you know, I think another thing that I took
away was I bet that there were so many friendships
formed between these victims who all got to come together
after all these years. They're all meeting each other, they're
telling their stories and just like you were talking about
(45:45):
Phyllis's Garden and how they were with her when she
was on her deathbed and how they support her nonprofit,
I bet they've formed some really forever friendships between all
of them that they can really rely on each other.
And I think if anything positive you can take away
from that is that they have each other and so
and also I was going to ask you, do you
still have Brian and Katy's photo in your office?
Speaker 4 (46:07):
I do. I still so.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Brian and Katie Magguary were murdered in Sacramento, and I
kept a photo of them in my office during the
case and I still do. And a lot of the
victims in the survivors state. They're part of a survivor group,
survivors helping survivors, you know, and there's gonna be a
number of them at the book signing Wednesday in Sacramento.
(46:30):
They keep in touch, They wially help each other, you know,
and so they keep in touch and it's incredibly powerful.
And honestly, I still keep in touch with them, and
some of the detectives on the case, and even some
of the other prosecutors.
Speaker 4 (46:43):
You know, there's some in Southern California.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
So unfortunately, you know, I'm not gonna be able to
connect with some of the other prosecutors when I'm down
in Southern California this Friday, but I'm gonna be down
for a book signing in LA this Friday.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
Well that's great. Well, thank you so much for coming
on legally Brunette and discussing your new book. I loved it.
I enjoyed it. It was it was an easy read
because I think you did such a great job of
just making us all just kind of get engrossed into
the victims and their and their you know, their lives
and who they were, and so I really appreciate that
about the book. And again, thank you so much for
joining us today. Ten, we really appreciate the conversation.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
Well, EMILYI thank you so much for having me on
your show. I love the conversation. So you know, I'm
going to be down in LA at the Downtown LA
this Friday, the fourteenth of November, three pm, so please
come join us.
Speaker 4 (47:30):
I'll be there with the LA District Attorney side chat.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
That location is the It's going to be the Downtown LA,
the main Library, Downtown LA. So I'll be down there
and we'll send you the address on that and then
you can find the book on Tinhoe dot org. You'll
connect you to a place where you can buy the
book from a local bookstore. So that's Tinhoe th h
I E n h O dot org. But thank you
so much. Love being on your show, and I love
(47:54):
the name of your your podcast as well.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
Thanks so much, Ten, We appreciate it nice chatting with
you. You have a great day.
Speaker 4 (48:00):
Thank you all right, take care r bye bye bye bye.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
So when Ten made reference to they did they got
a search warrant to take photos of the Golden State
killers Penis while he was in jail. And that is
because his victims repeatedly in interviews talked about how he
had an extremely small penis. This was an ongoing theme
with all of his victims, like so small that it
(48:24):
was like that was something they said, like his penis
was so small. So then when I'm reading the book,
he actually says that the photographer when he went in,
because you know, they bring him into the room, they
take his clothes off, the photographer said something to the
effect of I can't find it, Like he couldn't even
find it to take photos of it. I'm not joking.
Speaker 2 (48:43):
I need a bigger lens.
Speaker 5 (48:44):
Yes, yes, Then he describes his penis and the book
as being like with girth wise is no bigger than
a dime, and link like the like the length of
a pinky.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
Wow, well then that basically it would be a pinky.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Yeah, like can you imagine? No, can you imagine shape?
Speaker 2 (49:07):
I choose not to imagine.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
So anyway, I mean, I'm no wonder this guy had
like a.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
God conxcuse anything.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
No, it doesn't. I'm sure he's not the only one
that has an exceptionally small penis that he doesn't go
out and rape women. But I'm just saying I think
that contributed to his need to control and to and
to terrorize. And it's a it's a very it's the insecurity. Yeah,
I don't, and he's a psychopath.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
I don't have that insecurity.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
I know you don't. You're fine, You're very well. Inoub
chainge something. We'll just leave that at that. No crimes here,
no crimes there. Okay, A big, huge thank you to
ten Hoe for being on the show today again. The
book he wrote is called The People Versus the Golden
State Killer, and I love that he said that a
portion of the proceeds we're going to go to Phyllis's Garden,
which you know, honestly, I when I was reading the
(49:58):
book and I was I was thinking about how they
interrogated these rape victims. I mean it was I can
you imagine going through an ordeal like that and then
just or not interrogate. They don't interrogate the victims. I'm
I feel like the victims as to what happened, But
can you imagine being questioned it never happened.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
I never thought about that in the space and kind
of a cold space, in the space.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
Where it happened, where you literally have like a blanket
over you and you're just being questioned in a cold
space where it happened with police. So I love the
idea of this Phyllis's Garden where it's like you take
the victims and you move them to a low one
in a safe space, a safe space where you have therapists.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
And well and they feel I think you feel valued
because you're in a nice designated area instead of just
you know, a cubby right somewhere.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
Did something wrong because you're being you know, questioned or
interrogated in a space that feels cold and and you know,
lonely and like you don't have an advocate. So anyway,
I think that's great. Again, his book is called The
People of This is the Golden State Killer. Thank you
guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed the interview,
and as always, please DM me with any questions or
comments or cases that you would like us to discuss.
(51:09):
Thanks so much, thank you,
This podcast episode contains detailed references to rape and sexual assault.
If you are someone you know has been affected by
sexual assault, confidential support is available at RAIN. That's our
ai NN national Sexual Assault hotline. The number is eight
hundred sixty five six Hope. Hi, guys, welcome to another
(00:22):
episode of Legally Brunette. I will be your host today
Emily Simpson with my co host Shane We are going
to go into the Golden State Killer. He actually has
a few names also, he's been called the original night Stalker,
which if you remember, the night Stalker is Richard Ramirez. Correct,
(00:42):
but this guy pre dates Richard Ramirez. His name is
Joseph James DiAngelo, also known as the Golden State Killer.
He is a former police officer who terrorized California from
nineteen seventy four to nineteen eighty six, committing a series
of more than one hundred burglaries, over fifty rapes, and
at least thirteen murders. His crime spree began in Visalia,
(01:05):
where he was known as the Visalia Ransacker, breaking into
homes and stealing personal items before escalating to violence and murder.
He later became known as the East Area Rapist in
the Sacramento region, attacking women in their homes, often binding
and tormenting couples in carefully planned assaults that left entire
(01:26):
neighborhoods paralyzed by fear. By the late nineteen seventies, DiAngelo
had moved south and evolved into the original night Stalker,
later dubbed the Golden State Killer. He was committing brutal
rapes and murders across southern California before abruptly stopping in
nineteen eighty six. Let me ask you, you are a
native Californian. Do you remember this crime spree? I know
(01:49):
you told me before that you remember Richard Ramirez when
you were a child.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Richard Ramirez. I remember as it was happening, as it
was unfolding all the different attacks that he had, and
you know, we would be shutting our windows and closing
our doors, and you know, as a kid, I didn't
pay attention to the timeline of events, but it was
just it felt like every night there was something going
on with him.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Right now, this guy predates the Richard Ramirez crime spreeze.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
So him I don't remember, but you don't.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Remember him, no, you know, for some reason, even though
the amount of crimes that he committed across all these
multiple counties in California. He doesn't have the notoriety like
some of these other serial killers, even though I would
say his crimes are as, if not more brutal.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Could it be because a lot of his crimes went
without a face like they did like Richard Ramirez. You know,
it was happening, so obviously it was on the news,
and then it started to unfold the investigation, like there
was a you know, someone survived I think someone survived
a gunshot to the head, which he assumed they were dead,
so they were able to give a description. And then
(02:58):
there was a sketch artist and went around everywhere, and
so it was like, you know, real time trying to
catch him. I'm wondering if this Golden State killer, if
it was so mysterious and so unknown who this person was,
that maybe it just didn't stay in the media.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
And also because of the time period, this is the
seventies and eighties, I don't think there was a lot
of collaboration between the stuff between the police departments, and
I don't think they were connecting that all of these
crimes were committed by the same person. So for more
than three decades, his identity remained a mystery as investigators
struggled to link the crimes committed across multiple jurisdictions. The
breakthrough finally came in twenty eighteen, when detectives used genetic
(03:38):
genealogy to trace DNA from old crime scene evidence to
DiAngelo through an online ancestry database. At age seventy two,
he was arrested at his home in Citrus Heights, California.
Because the crimes spanned six counties, prosecutors from each jurisdiction
joined forces to bring a single consolidated case Sacramento County.
(04:01):
Ten Ho, the Sacramento County Assistant Chief Deputy DA, led
this unprecedented multi county prosecution. Now I read, so we're
going to interview ten Hoe in a little bit. He
was a prosecutor, the lead prosecutor on the Golden State Killer.
He's in Sacramento. His book is called The People Versus
the Golden State Killer. I actually read the entire book.
(04:24):
It was interesting. But you know, one of the things
I learned is all the red tape and bureaucracy behind
all of this, all these different He committed all these
crimes in all these different counties and they had to
come together and figure out how they were going to
prosecute this guy. And one of the big issues was venue,
like what county all the counties wanted, you know, which
county could prosecute him, where the venue would be. And
(04:47):
also I realized reading his book that all the prosecutors
had to agree whether they would seek the death penalty
or not, and they all had to be in agreement.
So there were a lot of interesting things logistically that
I learned from his book.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
When was the first murder believed to be because he
said it properly stopped in Selve seventy.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Four is when he started burglarizing, But his crime spreeze evolved,
which we'll talk about. It started out as burglary, then
I think he then he went to you know, burglarizing couples.
Then it was rape, then it was.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
When did he and his career as a law enforcement.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
He wasn't a police officer for very long?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Okay, he he.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Was fired from the police force because he was arrested
for stealing and then and then he was he was fired, Yeah,
I mean because he was arrested he was a thief.
They caught him stealing this is funny. I didn't even
know this existed. He was caught stealing dog repellent.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Dog I mean, like where you sprayed a dog with
their attacking year.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
I don't know it was dog repellent. I didn't know
there was such a thing. Now now you we have
three dogs, are you googling dog repellent over there?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
I google spouse repellent.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Rather than pursue the death penalty, Tinhoe and his team
reached an agreement ensuring that DiAngelo would plead guilty to
thirteen counts of murder and thirteen counts of kidnapping with
intent to rob, while also admitting to numerous uncharged rapes
and burglaries. This approach spared survivors and families the trauma
of a lengthy capital trial, while forcing DiAngelo to publicly
(06:18):
accept responsibility for every known crime. During his sentencing in
twenty twenty, more than forty survivors and victims relatives confronted
him in court, describing decades of pain and fear. You know,
they all got to give their impact statements, which I'm
sure took hours and hours and hours because there were
so many, well, I mean the ones that were able
to come. I mean, you're talking about people at advanced
(06:39):
ages at this point. I mean's crime spece go back
to the seventiescades, and eighties. But they also had to
they had to use a different space. They couldn't fit
everyone in a traditional court room, so I believe they
used a ballroom. That's how.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
And he was like, how many victims he had? Ye,
they had a rent venue for victim was ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
During this proceding, DiAngelo offered a faint apology before being
sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
He is currently eighty years old.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
When was the when was he convicted?
Speaker 1 (07:14):
He well, he took he didn't go to trial. He
took a plea deal, and this was twenty twenty, I believe,
And then he was he was sentenced in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
So eighty six, as far as they know, he abruptly
stopped his crime spree.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Well, he had children, so some people think that, I
mean he was married and had three.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Have it at eighty six, he stopped, as far as
we know, and then it wasn't until two thousand, Well,
it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Until two thousand and eighteen. I believe that they found
they were able.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Three years, yeah, thirty two years.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
The case became a landmark in criminal justice, not only
for introducing genetic genealogy as a revolutionary investigative tool. And
if you remember when we talked about the Brian Coburger case,
that's also how Remember they found the DNA on the sheath,
but they ran up through Cotis and they didn't get
any hits. So then they used the genealogy websites. I'm
(08:10):
not sure exactly which ones, but then they got the
I believe they got a hit on his dad. And
then remember they went to the parents' house and they
were able.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
To find other relatives in the system and try to
draw him. They try to connect to find him, and
they did.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Okay, we're going to have ten come on in a
little bit. We're going to ask him about his book
and about the case, and let me just give you
a little bit about his background. So ten Hoe was
elected District Attorney of Sacramento County in twenty twenty two
and officially took office in January of twenty twenty three.
Prior to the election, ten served in executive management as
a Sacramento County Assistant Chief Deputy DA over the Justice
(08:46):
and Community Relations Bureau. Over Ten's twenty five year career
as an attorney, he successfully prosecuted sexual assault, gang and
homicide cases. He was the supervisor of the Gang and
Hate Crime Unit and has personally charged and prosecuted hate crimes.
Most notably, he successfully prosecuted the East Area rapist Golden
State Killer. He's this is his crime spree was so long.
(09:10):
He has multiple monikers.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah, and then there's probably investigators and stuff that live
out like he outlived.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Oh yeah, there were, there were, there were people that
were retiring. We're moving on exactly. He committed thirteen murders
and over fifty sexual assaults in eleven different jurisdictions throughout California.
Michelle McNamara wrote about the case in her book I'll
Be Gone in the Dark. The case has also been
featured on CNN, HBO twenty twenty, and countless news outlets
(09:40):
across the world. Michelle macnamara, I don't know if you
know this, but that's Patton Oswalt's wife, and Patton Oswald
is the comedian. It's on SNL, right, and I think
he not on SNL.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
It might have been on SNL, but no, he does
the voice of the narrating voice for Goldbergs that you
like to watch.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Oh, that is him.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
He was on Tun and a Half Men for a
little while with Ashton Kutcher. He's done quite a few things.
He's mostly stand up comedian, or I should say is
Bread and Butter's stand up comedian. The niece fortunate to
get a lot of acting gigs.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
So Patten's wife was a writer and also a true
crime just a fixionado. So I think she was very
invested in the case. She followed it, she knew its
ends and outs, and so she wrote a true crime
book covering it, and then he finished it after her.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Pretty cool that he did that.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
He must have known how passionate she was about this project.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
In November of twenty twenty five, da Ho published his
first true crime memoir, The People Versus the Golden State Killer,
chronicling his journey from a Vietnamese refugee to the lead
prosecutor in this landmark case against serial killer and rapist
Joseph DiAngelo. In twenty seventeen, he was presented with both
the National Asian Pacificer Islander Prosecutors Association and Sacramento District
(11:01):
Attorney's Office Prosecutor of the Year award, So we're gonna
pick his brain. We're going to talk to him about
the Golden State Killer and his new book, The People
Versus the Golden State Killer. Hi, Tenmi, Welcome to the podcast.
First of all, I want to let you know that
I did my due diligence and I read your entire book.
So I loved it. Yeah, it was great. You know,
(11:24):
I think my takeaway just in a general sense. I
just wanted to ask you about a lot of times
I think when people write about true crime, they really
focus on the criminal. And I was pleasantly surprised that
you spent so much time really humanizing the victims in
this case and giving us such a detailed background of
(11:45):
who they were, what their life was like, what their
relationships were like. So I just wondered, was that something
when you were prosecuting it that you were like, I
want to write a book, or where did the idea
come from for the book?
Speaker 4 (11:58):
You know, the book.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
The case has been closed for about five years now,
but what I can tell you is that when I
look at the true crime genre, right, they're usually focused
on the criminal or the crimes.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
And I wanted to be different.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
I wanted to focus on number one, the generation of
law enforcement officers that never gave up their search for him,
but more importantly to the survivors and the victims and
amplify their voices. And I made it a very conscious
effort to highlight that in the book. And I'm so
glad that you saw that and you felt.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
That I really did. I mean, I would say that
was my biggest takeaway was how I felt like, instead
of knowing the criminal and kind of trying to understand
his psychology, I felt like I knew the victims and
I felt like I could see them and see them
at home and in their lives. And so I appreciate
that you did that. I felt like that was different
(12:50):
and that really connected with me. You know, why do
you think that the Golden State killer doesn't have the
notoriety kind of like your other serial killer, like your
Ted Bundy's and things like that. Do you think it's
a because the case goes back so far or what's
your take on that.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
I think that's part of it.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
I mean, he committed his crimes from nineteen seventy four
to nineteen eighty six, and then he went dark for
three decades, you know, and we kept searching, kept looking
for him, and in the meantime, other people filled that space,
whether it was Ted Bundy, whether you know BTK Killer,
(13:28):
the Grim Sleeper, right, other people filled that hole, that
missing part of it. And when we found him, he
was seventy two years old. He looked like your drunk
grandpa or drunk uncle at the Thanksgiving dinner, wearing cargo shorts,
tube socks and a T shirt. Right, And so I
think that took away some of the some of the
mysticism or you know, behind such a notorious killer that
(13:54):
really gripped entire communities for so long.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
You know, let's go back a little bit because I
had this in the book, but I want you to
just kind of elaborate on it. I know that there
was DNA collected at all the crime scenes, and then
a lot of the DNA was lost due to the
statute of limitations. It was lost, it was thrown out,
it was discarded. How how was he just kind of
give me I know it's complex because of the forensics
(14:18):
and everything, but can you kind of just give a
brief overview of how he was actually caught?
Speaker 4 (14:24):
Great question, So for many years.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
We took the crime scene DNA and uploaded into COTIS,
which is the national DNA database that's you know, run
by the.
Speaker 4 (14:32):
FBI, and we never got a hit because COTIS.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
To get into COTIS, you have to be a defendant
who was arrested or convicted of certain crimes.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
And it really started happening, you know, after.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Nineteen eighty six, after nineteen eighty seven, when DNA and
forensic DNA came into play. So what we did was
we needed some crime scene DNA that we could use
in genetic genealogy.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
Now, I like, I don't know, have you or anybody
you know.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
Ever used twenty three and meters ancestry some of those genealogies,
have you?
Speaker 4 (15:01):
Yeah? You know I have.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
I've actually, you know, I've done the SPIT tests and
I set it in. I believe I used me specifically,
I used twenty three in me and then I got
the reading back. But I was trying to think, because
this seems this is obviously a new, a new way
of you know, connecting to criminals. And we talked about
it in the Brian Coburger case as well, how they
(15:23):
caught him. But I don't know, I mean, maybe I
just clicked through at the end, but did I don't
know if I specifically agreed to allow my DNA to
be used to I don't know where where I know.
I know it's a constitutional issue, but it doesn't seem
to be out there right now.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
And I sort of explained it in the books.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
So really what happened was we took some of the
DNA from the crime scene, and it was a whole
adventure to get some DNA because one of the other
counties wouldn't let us use their crime scene, so we
had to go to a second county. And Paul Hoe
is my colleague who's a criminalist from Contra cost that
came up with the idea. So especially we took the
DNA from one of the crime scenes, the Charlene rape
(16:04):
kit out of Ventura County. We converted into what we
call SNIP profile. That's SNP that stands for single nucleotype polymorphism,
and it's a profile that measures a million different areas
in your chromosome. We uploaded into one of the genealogy
databases and from there what happens is it's compared to
all the other profiles in there, and the more areas
(16:26):
you have in commo somebody, the more closely related you are.
So when we uploaded it, we found out that a
distant cousin to the god of State Killer was in
the database.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
And so now we built a family tree.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Okay, this distant cousin, did they have any brothers and sisters,
who were their parents, who were their uncles and aunties, grandparents,
great grandparents. We built all the way up the family
tree to the common ass jester back down again. We
had over a thousand people on this family tree, and
so then we had to go through and fill to them.
How many of them are male, how many of them
are blue eyes, how many of them were cops or
(16:59):
military that lived in Sacramento, in Orange County, in Ventura.
And so we came down with three different suspects. And
so one of them lived to Sacramento. He was Joseph Diangels.
So on the day in question that he put his
garbage out to be picked up, we lined up this
garbage truck with plastic. We took one of the detectives,
dressed him up as a garbage truck guy, drove up there,
(17:23):
picked up his garbage, threw it in there, went down
the street, went through his trash and we tested eight items.
The last item we tested was a piece of tissue,
and the DNA on that tissue came back as a
positive DNA hit to all the rapes and murders in
SoCal and some of the rapes and contra costs up
here in Northern California.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
So that's how we found him.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Now, I just have to ask you, how does it
feel when you get that back? Like, what is that
feeling when that DNA matches?
Speaker 4 (17:51):
You know, I wasn't yet assigned to the case.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
And the crazy story behind it was I was in
homicide at the time, and you know I heard years
earlier about the East Area rapist to go to State killer.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
He was notorious in our area.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
And I'd never asked for a case in my life,
but I said, you know, if they refine them, I'll
make the exceptions. So in the day in question, in
April twenty eighteen, I saw the supervisor of the homicide team,
my boss, and the number two in the office. They're
huddled together, they're whispering, they're talking, they're pointing to something.
They're running in and out of the office. And so
I said to my secretary, Hey, what's going on? And
(18:26):
she said, ah, nothing, So they came into their office,
they closed them. Their office is right next door to mine,
and Emily, if you know anything about government buildings, they're
poorly constructed, poorly built. The walls are very thin. If
you know, if you put your ear up to the wall,
you can hear what's being said on the other side.
So I put my ear up against the wall and
(18:47):
I could overhear my supervisor and the number two in
the office said, there's a one and sixteen Septelian DNA
match to the eaar and as Sacramento, the EA armies
won thing and one thing only the East Area rapist.
I nearly fell out of my chair. I couldn't contain
myself that they finally caught them. So that night I
(19:08):
kept looking on my phone, kept looking on you know,
the newspaper, and c and ed did they catch him?
At four o'clock in the morning, there was a notice
of a new development in the case and there was
going to be a press conference that morning.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
I was completely shocked.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Now, I know in your book you said that you
really wanted that case more than anything that correct, and
that you really advocated to be the lead prosecutor. Now
I didn't realize that because in your book you talk
about all these different prosecutors from all these different jurisdictions
where he committed all these crimes. You all kind of
had to get together and have all these meetings and
be on the same page. What was that like having
(19:53):
to deal was that frustrating having to deal with all
the different prosecutors in the case.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
So, you know, the most prosecutors, they try their cases
by themselves. You don't have like two people on the
team unless it's a big case, and in Mike County
it's usually just one person. And here we are, we
have prosecutors, like almost ten prosecutors from six different counties,
and you know, prosecutors and lawyers.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
You know, we're a type personality.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
And what I can tell you is on the team itself,
we got along beautifully. But it was the politics from
the elected days above that sometimes made the case challenging.
But you know, we divided up the case slow because
we had nearly three million pages of police reports.
Speaker 4 (20:37):
We had tens of thousands of suspects.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
We had reports after reports, we had pictures, videos, all
this stuff. So the more people you had, the more
we could more efficiently prosecute the case. But there were
political machinations that were happening above where the cases would
be tried, who was.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
Going to try him?
Speaker 3 (20:56):
And all the drama and the politics that we had
to deal with from above. But it was great working
with the team itself done.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Yeah, So you eventually landed on the case being tried
in Sacramento.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Correct, Yes, but after some drama that I talked about
in the book because at one point the then District
Attornity of Orange County, who is not the current one
Tony Ricaccus, they actually issued an order or got didn't
order issue from a judge and try to take him
out of Sacramento and bring him to Orange County to
(21:28):
try the case down there, And so we had to
get a court order.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
To stop that from happening.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
So there were, like I said, a lot of different machinations,
but we ultimately decided that we were going to try
the case in Sacramento, which frankly was where it belonged.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Now, let me ask, was there the only one? Was
there only one thing that he did in Orange County?
Was that the data point one? Or were there multiple?
Was there more than one? That happened in Orange County.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Yes, there was more than one, and in fact, most
of the murders happened in Orange County.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
So there was the murder of of MANUELA.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Whithewn, there was the murder of Janelle Cruz in nineteen
eighty six, that was the last no murder. And also
there was the rape murder of the Harringtons down in
Dana Point. So there were a total four murders and
three rapes down in Orange County. There were four murders
in Santa Barbara County, and then there were two in
(22:24):
Ventura County. There were two murders in Sacramento, there was
one in by Seat. I mean, he's just prolific. You're
talking about thirteen known murders, upwards of fifty sexual assaults,
one hundred and twenty burglaries, and eleven different counties up
and down the state of California.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Why do you think that he was able to elude
the police for so long?
Speaker 4 (22:43):
That's a great question. You know, there's a couple of reasons.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Number one is, during most of his crime spree, he
was a cop, so he had inside knowledge. He knew,
for example, how long it would take the police to
respond to a scene. He knew where they would set
up their blockades, right where the road stops.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
He knew where the ingress and egress were.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
He knew all the techniques right, and so he was
able to avoid capture for a period of time. The
other thing was, back then, everybody was siloed. Sacramento's not
talking to Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara's not talking to Orange County.
And if you think about it, in this day and age,
we have what everybody has a ring camera, everybody has
surveillance cameras. Everybody has a cell phone, right, we have DNA,
(23:27):
we have everything that's shared online. Now, I don't think
you could commit this crime in this day and age.
But from nineteen seventy four to nineteen eighty six, he
ran a monk across the entire state.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
And frankly, that's what happened.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
I mean, it's inside knowledge and just the siloed nature
of law enforcement back then.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
I also, I believe, and I think you talked about
it in your book about how he changed his crimes changed.
I believe didn't he just start out as burglarizing, that
was it. Then it moved on to ra Then I
believe he for some reason, targeted couples, and I think
there was some psychology there where he wanted the husband
(24:08):
and the wife together so he could separate him because
that was some type of terror. Then he went on
to murder. Is that just his psychology of just having
to up the ante each time that he gets bored
with what he's doing.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
You're absolutely right.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
I mean, this was an evolution of a predator, and really,
why did he do what he did and how did
he go about doing it? You know, I have a
chapter in the book, it's called The Monster Behind the
Mask where we really cover his entire life, but on
the moment he was born in Bath, New York, all
the way to the time he was arrested. But you
have to understand he was a creature of both genetics
(24:47):
and his own environment. When you looked at it. He
was about ten years old or so, he was on
a military base because he came from a military family,
and he witnessed his little sister, Connie getting raped in
front of him by two service members while he was
held down, right, so, and then he was beaten by
his parents, and then he started abusing animals. I mean,
(25:09):
which isn't you know which is typical of serial killers.
And when you look at it, a lot of his victims,
his rape victims, described him as having a micro penis,
extremely small. And so when we arrested him, I went
to court and ordered, you know how the judge ordered
the execution of his search board to take pictures of
(25:29):
his penis, and lo and behold it was indeed a
micro penis. So he felt very powerless, basically, emotionally, mentally
in his own life. And here he was right evolving
as a predator, as a peeping tom, as somebody who
went into people's home. And what did he do. He
ate their food, he drank their beer. It was as
(25:49):
if he took control over their homes. And then when
he was sexually assaulting the victims, you know, he had
the men get on all fours and put a blanket
over them and stack plates on top of them because
he was exercising control.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
It was the god complex.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
And then after the rape, he would take the wedding band,
violating the relationship, and then he would take one earring
but leave the other one behind, just like he did
in Visalia, because he was playing god. And when he
was in southern California, what he was doing then, was
he took the bindings with him, the ligatures right the
rope with him. And we could tell that was the
(26:25):
case because the victims had their hands behind their back
and you could see the marks and the wrists and
their ankles. Because he was evolving and he was killing
all his witnesses, all his victims, right, so he was evolving,
but he was playing god over their lives.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Was taking one earring to send a message to whoever
came to the crime scene that I took what I wanted,
Like if they were both missing, then maybe people wouldn't
notice it was taken. So did he take one to
say I could take one if I want.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
So when he was doing that, when he was the
Viceilia ransacker, that was absolutely the case. He was taking
one earring and leaving the other one so he says,
I can take whatever I want. And on top of that,
was when you looked at that one earring, what would
you think about the missing one? Just like one the
woman that had been raped. When you look at your hand,
you see the missing wedding band, right or the husband
(27:14):
with the missing wedding band. Where you look at that
one ear ring, but now the other one so every
time you see it, you know, you're reminded of what happened.
So it's him continuing to exert control and dominance over
his victims, being.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
God, I do know. I mean he spent a lot
of times in these homes. I mean he ate their food,
he drank their beer, he hung out, he wandered around,
he opened their drawers, he got their clothes out.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Would he leave a mess to like, leave everything unattended,
so it was like I was here, I was everywhere.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
Yes, that's all part of the mentality.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
And the key part was he would sometimes break into
these homes days and weeks ahead of time and leave
something in a seat cushion or move something and see
if they noticed it or not. Right, he would cut
out pictures of them from their photo albums, right, all
these little things. That was meticulous, but it demonstrated that
(28:09):
he it was a message of omnipotence over people when
he felt such impotency in his own life and in
his own self.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Now, I know in the book you talked about how
you had thought that you might have found where he
was putting all these things that he had stolen. You
were hoping to be able to recover them and get
them back to the victims, and then it ended up
not being the case. I believe you. How did that happen?
You dug somewhere, right, They used like some kind of
I don't know what I'm saying, like some kind of
metal detector type of thing right to look and see
(28:39):
where he had buried them.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
So, you know, one of the things that all the
victims asked us, hey, did you find any of the trophies?
Speaker 4 (28:46):
Did you find my class.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Ring, the wedding band, the ear ring, you know, the photograph, right,
And we couldn't really say anything in the beginning, but
we didn't find anything when we did the search warm
but we always felt that he kept the trophies year
into the case, and this was not previously publicized until
I wrote the book. So the book is filled with
a number of you know, details and information that's never
(29:08):
been revealed for and this is one of them. About
a year into the prosecution, we received word from one
of his coworkers that said, hey, he told me the
Angelo did that before his house and Citrus Heights was built,
before the foundation was laid. What we did was he
had dug underneath and put in a secret compartment underneath
(29:32):
the foundation. So we wrote a piggyback warrant to get
back into the house. And you know, when you have
people that are doing utilities and stuff for digging into
the ground, they bring somebody in that has ground penetrating
radar sonar. So we brought somebody in to do that,
and he literally scanned the entire house. He scanned the backyard,
every inch of it, right, and we were digging back there,
(29:56):
you know. Unfortunately, and I tell the story about, you know,
where we dug and how we dug it in the book.
Speaker 4 (30:01):
We did not find any trophies.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
But one of the things that we founded there, which
was really unique, was one of his daughters. One of
the Golden State killer's daughter was a psychology major.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
And do you know what she was fascinated with studying.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
I think it was serial killers, wasn't it?
Speaker 4 (30:20):
It was serial killers. She had books in the house
on serial killers and here her dad was a serial killer.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Now let me ask you a question. Is that the
same daughter that wrote the letter to the court or
is that a different daughter?
Speaker 4 (30:33):
You know, a couple of the daughters ended up writing it,
but she was the same one.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Oh, okay, letters well, I'll let I'm sure you know
much more than I do. But I did read that
they submitted letters on behalf of their father talking about
what a great daddy was, and you know, he was
the stand up guy and things like that, which I
don't know how I felt about that. I understand that
they're the victims in all of this and that their
(30:57):
perception of who their dad is is completely different, but
I don't I guess from my perspective, I felt like
it was almost disrespectful to the victims to to talk
about what a stand up guy he is. But that's
that was just my takeaway from it. Did you have
any feelings about what they said or you know?
Speaker 3 (31:14):
Number one, I don't believe that they knew that he
was a serial killer or a serial rapist, but the
evidence is undisputable, and he even admitted.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
They were, in my mind, victims as well of him.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Now, I would not have written a letter the way
they have written a letter, or or I would not
have said the things that they said, but you know,
that's how they felt in regards to it. I would
spend more time recognizing and honoring and being more empathetic
towards you know, some of the survivors. But I understand where,
you know, from their perspective, and he was a master manipulator.
(31:54):
He was able to compartimentalize his life and be a
master and he manipulated them. He used them as a
mask to mask who he really was. So in a sense,
I see them as victims as well.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Now, why why did First of all, it blows my
mind that his wife was an attorney. I don't know why,
but it just just the fact that she's clearly an intelligent,
you know, educated woman. But I didn't they separate like
back in the nineties or something, and they just never
actually got divorced until after he was after he was caught.
Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (32:29):
That is correct? And people ask me, well did she know?
And I honestly believe that she did not know. And
the reason why is when he was committing his rapist
as the East Era rapist and the East Bay rapists,
he was, you know, a police officer. She was going
to school at night to be a lawyer. They had
(32:49):
completely different schedules, They slept in different rooms, they led
different lives, and honestly, you know, we interviewed her and
she's very self centered.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
She's very focused on herself.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
Some people would describe hers as narcissistic, and so she
was so focused on herself that she probably didn't realize
who she was married to. However, I would note that,
you know, after the fact, she didn't start putting the
pieces together. She found shoelaces, three tied shoelaces underneath one
of the things, and he was known to bring to
(33:20):
pre tied shoelaces to help tie up the victims much quicker.
So I think that she was a victim of him
as well. But you know, they separated back in the
late eighties early nineties, and but the divorce wasn't finalized
until after he was arrested.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Did you ever get any sense from her that she
was surprised by his arrest or. I don't know. I
just couldn't find much information about that was her reaction.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
I think shocked. Yeah, she was surprised. The kids were
all surprised. I think his family, nobody in his inner
circle ever imagined that he was in fact the East
Air Rapist, the Original Nights, the Vicelia Ransacker, and the
Golden State Killer.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
He was that good of a manipulator.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
And even then after he was arrested, you know you
saw his manipulation in court.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
Oh yeah, he pretended to be feeble and incoherent and
all those things. But I know you in your book
you talk about how you had well there was a
secret recording of his jail cell, and he would just
kind of run around in his jail cell and jump
on his bed and jump off his bed, and so
he clearly didn't know he was being recorded at that time.
(34:32):
What did you take away from writing the book? Was
it helpful for you? I can assume as a prosecutor
and you're dealing with homicides and rapes and all these
terrible things. Did you find that it was therapeutic for you?
Was it helpful for you? Did you feel like giving
a voice to the victims helped you get through it?
Speaker 3 (34:52):
You know, as prosecutors, just like first responders and law enforcement.
Speaker 4 (34:56):
We see so much evil. We see so much darkness,
you know.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
You. When I meet people in my job, it's at
the worst moment in their lives. Either they are a
victim of a crime and they've had the tapestry of
their lives shredded apart, or they're a defendant and they're
facing life in prison. I talk about in the book
the notion or the idea of sin eaters. Right in
England you had sin eaters, people that were hired to
attend funerals and then eat a piece of bread representing
(35:21):
the sins.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
Right.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
And I feel as prosecutors we see the darkest moments
of humanity and flashes of humanity, and so it's tough,
you know, sometimes, you know, it's not like a switch
I can turn on and off. I mean, for years,
you know, I don't sleep well. And when I do sleep,
I dream about my cases. I dream about my victims
and the defendant. But what I learned from this, and
(35:44):
I'll tell a little story about it, is the very
first rape victim in Sacramento was Phyllis and she was
twenty three at the time.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
She was home alone.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
I read the police report, I saw the pictures, the
description of her.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
And what happened forward. It's the very first court appearance.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
I walk into court and this little lady in her
early sixties with gray hair, walks up to me. She's
barely five feet tall. She has these coke bottled glasses.
She reaches her hand out to me. She shakes my
hand and says, Hi, I'm victim.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
Number one.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
I'm Phyllis, right, and somebody else comes up high. I'm Chris,
I'm victim number ten. They were all identifying themselves by
their number, the order in which they were assaulted, and
I remember Phyllis seeing her and shaking her hand. It
was as if I was reaching through time and space.
And every time I come to court, Phyllis would be
right there in the front row and we sit and
we talk and I give her an update on what
(36:37):
was going on. Near the end of the case, Phyllis
told me that, you know, she wasn't going to be
in court next time because she had been diagnosed with cancer.
Speaker 4 (36:46):
Her mom had die of cancer, and she was going
through treatment.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
And so when it was time for him to admit responsibility,
you know, we're in this makeshift court room in the
middle of COVID and we give the allocution, which is
of the facts as it relates to Phyllis's case. She
couldn't be there, so all the other victims stood up
for her. And then fast forward when he received a sentence,
I look across the courtroom two months later and there
(37:11):
was Phyllis. She had this twink on her eye for
the first time in forty years, she was able to
obtain justice. You know, Phyllis died three months later of cancer.
And so when I think of the case, I think
of her, I think of her resiliency. I think of
the fight that we all gave to give those victims
closure in justice after forty years.
Speaker 4 (37:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
I remember reading that part in your book and I thought,
I thought it was really beautiful that she got to
see it to the end and that she got some
closure from that. You know, that's another question that I
have as far as the victims go. And I know
they all got to give their victim impact statements, and
I do know originally in your book you talk about
how all the prosecutors got together and originally you all
(37:53):
had to agree to seek the death penalty in this case.
And I believe that was the first route that you
were going to go. And if anyone deserves death penalty,
I mean, you can debate death penalty all day long.
I go back and forth myself, but I don't go
back and forth on someone like this. I mean this,
this man doesn't deserve to live. That's just my personal perspective.
(38:13):
But then you end up taking or he ends up having.
There's a plea deal, right, so that he gets life
in prison. But can you just walk through that a
little bit and why you guys decided to do that?
And I guess it had to do with the timing
and making sure the victims could all be there and
give their impact statements and things like that.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
You know, if anybody deserved the death penalty was him.
But we were faced with a couple of different challenges.
The first is back in the nineteen seventies rape the
statue of limitation for rape in California was three years,
which means that from the time that a victim is raped,
if we don't find and charge her perpetrated within three years,
we can't file charges.
Speaker 4 (38:51):
It's three years in a day, we can never file charges.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
And so a lot of the cases in Sacramento and
Nordcaw with the sexual assault, we couldn't file those charges,
and Phyllis was one of them.
Speaker 4 (39:01):
Chris was another one.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
Now, there was some that we found a loophole and
we could charge when they moved the victim, and we
could charge kidnapping because that was a life offense. But
for the vast majority, we couldn't charge them, which meant
that they would never get their day in court. They
never get to stand up and give an impact statement,
to hear them admit to it. That was the first hurdle.
The second hurdle is in the midst of prosecuting this case.
And I'm trying to get this into a courtroom, right.
(39:24):
I have a detective in Orange County who's ninety six,
half death and half blind. I have another witness who's
ninety two. We have to get them in the courtroom.
In the midst of getting this case into the courtroom,
in March of twenty twenty, we were hit by a
pandemic that the war had not seen for one hundred years.
Speaker 4 (39:41):
Everything shut down.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
I mean you remember, we couldn't even buy toilet paper,
right right, everybody's wearing a mask, and this thing caused
social distancing, remember the first time you heard that, right,
And so now we had to get into the courtroom.
Speaker 4 (39:53):
And so we ended up crafting a plea.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
Deal, where a plea where he would plea and admit
to everything, even admit to the cases where we couldn't
charge like Phyllis, but then give Phyllis a chance to
give an impact statement. And if we didn't do that,
Phyllis would have never had her day in court. So
we did it for the victims. We did it for
all the victims, charge and uncharged.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
I was worried when I was reading the book. I
was worried that the defense attorneys weren't going to agree
to that plea deal. And I was surprised as well
that he actually said something in court and he did it.
I mean, I guess it was a very short sentence.
I don't remember exactly what he said, but he did
apologize some type of like, I admit to it and
I apologize. Were you surprised that he stood up and spoke.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
No, Because I believe he's the master manipulator who has
to always be in control.
Speaker 4 (40:45):
Right. He has to be in control when he was
wearing the mask.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
He had to be in control when he was committing
his crimes, and now is just in his mind a
way of seizing control and the narrative. And so I
don't give very much credit to anything he said, because
he is the master manipulator.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
I guess I was surprised that he admitted to all
the crimes, the crimes that were you know, you were
that you could prove with the DNA, but also the
uncharged crimes. But I also found it interesting on your
part that you had the wherewithal to ask that he
wear the clear shield so that his victims could actually
(41:21):
look in his face for the first time and actually
see him and look him in the eye and give
their impact statement and have him have to look at them.
And I thought that was very clever that that you
thought of. That was that something that was like a
last minute type of thing or did was it?
Speaker 3 (41:36):
You know, as we were getting close to the court
here and right, and we're in the middle of COVID,
everybody's wearing a mask. Right. You remember the days where
you walk into a room, you had to get your
temperature measured, you had to, you know, wear a mask.
Speaker 4 (41:48):
Right.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
It's been five years since COVID and the world's changed, right,
But back then we were right in the middle of it,
right in the beginning of it.
Speaker 4 (41:55):
And so we're coming.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
To court and I was having a dream and I
was waking up with a nightmare that you know, when
he committed his crimes, he wore a mask. You know,
the badge in the uniform that he wore as a
police officer was a bag, was a mask. His family,
his kids. They were all masks. His life is a
mechanic was a mask. And I didn't want him sitting
there in the courtroom on the day that all the
(42:19):
victims were supposed to get justice wearing yet another mask, right,
and wearing COVID and everybody wears a mask. And so
I came up with the idea to go on Amazon
and buy the clear face shield.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
And then I came up with a.
Speaker 3 (42:31):
Strategy and an idea, and I talk about in the book,
you know how to get him to wear that. But
if you go back and you look at the video
of that court hearing, see him wearing a mask, and
now you get to once you read the book, the
inside story about how that happened, what.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
Do you think the takeaway was for the victims to
be able to have that final piece of the puzzle
that they needed after all those years. I mean, we're
spanning forty years for them to be able to stand
up and talk and act. And how long did that take?
I know, you had to have a makeshift courtroom. It
was it wasn't it a ballroom somewhere because it was large,
You had a lot of media there. What was that like?
What was what was the feeling like, what was the vibe, like,
(43:10):
what was the victims like?
Speaker 3 (43:13):
It was initially electric, right, because we're in the middle
of COVID. We had to create a makeshift courtroom where
we could fit in two hundred people was six foot
of social distancing, right, and so we ended up using
a ballroom at the Sacramento State University converting into a
makeshift courtroom and separating people. And it was just there
(43:34):
was a level of relief for me to get the
victims justice, because there's never joy for me in these
cases because somebody had the fabric of their lives ripped apart,
Somebody lost a loved one that you know, would never
get to celebrate another anniversary, see another sunset or sunrise,
and so there's never joy.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
There's only relief, reliefed it the judge didn't.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
Mess it up, Relief that the jury didn't mess it up,
Relief that law enforcement didn't mess it up, relief that
I didn't And so it's just a sense of relief
for me. But when I think about it, what it
did for the victims, which I think was your kind
of original question, It gave them a measure of justice
and closure.
Speaker 4 (44:13):
And some of the victims.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Afterwards, they were able to turn their tragedy into triumph
a Chris who was victim number ten, and Gay who
was another victim. They ended up starting a nonprofit called
Phyllis's Garden in honor Phyllis, because Phyllis was their friend.
They were with Phyllis on her deathbed and she took
her last breath, and so they started a nonprofit. And
(44:36):
part of the proceeds of my book goes to fund
that nonprofit, Phillips's Garden. So I would love to have
your viewers and listeners donate to that. I'll be donating
to it. And what they do is this Chris, when
she was interviewed after she was raping, she was only fifteen,
she was interviewed in the same place she was raped.
And a lot of victims when they interviewed at the
(44:56):
police station, they're interviewed in the interrogation room. What Phyllis's
Garden does is it creates these soft interview rooms with
like a nice warm rug couches and chairs and paintings
and flowers in there, so that when a victim is interviewed,
that they're interviewed in a place that has some humanity.
To it, and so that's Phyllis's Garden. I'm a big
(45:18):
supporter of them as well. You can help them out
online and we'll be donating to it.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Okay, that's awesome. I love that. We'll definitely post a
link to that, so we'll make sure that we get
that from you so I can post it as well.
And you know, I think another thing that I took
away was I bet that there were so many friendships
formed between these victims who all got to come together
after all these years. They're all meeting each other, they're
telling their stories and just like you were talking about
(45:45):
Phyllis's Garden and how they were with her when she
was on her deathbed and how they support her nonprofit,
I bet they've formed some really forever friendships between all
of them that they can really rely on each other.
And I think if anything positive you can take away
from that is that they have each other and so
and also I was going to ask you, do you
still have Brian and Katy's photo in your office?
Speaker 4 (46:07):
I do. I still so.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Brian and Katie Magguary were murdered in Sacramento, and I
kept a photo of them in my office during the
case and I still do. And a lot of the
victims in the survivors state. They're part of a survivor group,
survivors helping survivors, you know, and there's gonna be a
number of them at the book signing Wednesday in Sacramento.
(46:30):
They keep in touch, They wially help each other, you know,
and so they keep in touch and it's incredibly powerful.
And honestly, I still keep in touch with them, and
some of the detectives on the case, and even some
of the other prosecutors.
Speaker 4 (46:43):
You know, there's some in Southern California.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
So unfortunately, you know, I'm not gonna be able to
connect with some of the other prosecutors when I'm down
in Southern California this Friday, but I'm gonna be down
for a book signing in LA this Friday.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
Well that's great. Well, thank you so much for coming
on legally Brunette and discussing your new book. I loved it.
I enjoyed it. It was it was an easy read
because I think you did such a great job of
just making us all just kind of get engrossed into
the victims and their and their you know, their lives
and who they were, and so I really appreciate that
about the book. And again, thank you so much for
joining us today. Ten, we really appreciate the conversation.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
Well, EMILYI thank you so much for having me on
your show. I love the conversation. So you know, I'm
going to be down in LA at the Downtown LA
this Friday, the fourteenth of November, three pm, so please
come join us.
Speaker 4 (47:30):
I'll be there with the LA District Attorney side chat.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
That location is the It's going to be the Downtown LA,
the main Library, Downtown LA. So I'll be down there
and we'll send you the address on that and then
you can find the book on Tinhoe dot org. You'll
connect you to a place where you can buy the
book from a local bookstore. So that's Tinhoe th h
I E n h O dot org. But thank you
so much. Love being on your show, and I love
(47:54):
the name of your your podcast as well.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
Thanks so much, Ten, We appreciate it nice chatting with
you. You have a great day.
Speaker 4 (48:00):
Thank you all right, take care r bye bye bye bye.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
So when Ten made reference to they did they got
a search warrant to take photos of the Golden State
killers Penis while he was in jail. And that is
because his victims repeatedly in interviews talked about how he
had an extremely small penis. This was an ongoing theme
with all of his victims, like so small that it
(48:24):
was like that was something they said, like his penis
was so small. So then when I'm reading the book,
he actually says that the photographer when he went in,
because you know, they bring him into the room, they
take his clothes off, the photographer said something to the
effect of I can't find it, Like he couldn't even
find it to take photos of it. I'm not joking.
Speaker 2 (48:43):
I need a bigger lens.
Speaker 5 (48:44):
Yes, yes, Then he describes his penis and the book
as being like with girth wise is no bigger than
a dime, and link like the like the length of
a pinky.
Speaker 2 (48:58):
Wow, well then that basically it would be a pinky.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Yeah, like can you imagine? No, can you imagine shape?
Speaker 2 (49:07):
I choose not to imagine.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
So anyway, I mean, I'm no wonder this guy had
like a.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
God conxcuse anything.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
No, it doesn't. I'm sure he's not the only one
that has an exceptionally small penis that he doesn't go
out and rape women. But I'm just saying I think
that contributed to his need to control and to and
to terrorize. And it's a it's a very it's the insecurity. Yeah,
I don't, and he's a psychopath.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
I don't have that insecurity.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
I know you don't. You're fine, You're very well. Inoub
chainge something. We'll just leave that at that. No crimes here,
no crimes there. Okay, A big, huge thank you to
ten Hoe for being on the show today again. The
book he wrote is called The People Versus the Golden
State Killer, and I love that he said that a
portion of the proceeds we're going to go to Phyllis's Garden,
which you know, honestly, I when I was reading the
(49:58):
book and I was I was thinking about how they
interrogated these rape victims. I mean it was I can
you imagine going through an ordeal like that and then
just or not interrogate. They don't interrogate the victims. I'm
I feel like the victims as to what happened, But
can you imagine being questioned it never happened.
Speaker 2 (50:16):
I never thought about that in the space and kind
of a cold space, in the space.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
Where it happened, where you literally have like a blanket
over you and you're just being questioned in a cold
space where it happened with police. So I love the
idea of this Phyllis's Garden where it's like you take
the victims and you move them to a low one
in a safe space, a safe space where you have therapists.
Speaker 2 (50:38):
And well and they feel I think you feel valued
because you're in a nice designated area instead of just
you know, a cubby right somewhere.
Speaker 1 (50:48):
Did something wrong because you're being you know, questioned or
interrogated in a space that feels cold and and you know,
lonely and like you don't have an advocate. So anyway,
I think that's great. Again, his book is called The
People of This is the Golden State Killer. Thank you
guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed the interview,
and as always, please DM me with any questions or
comments or cases that you would like us to discuss.
(51:09):
Thanks so much, thank you,
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