THE PEOPLE vs THE GOLDEN STATE KILLER—Thien Ho

In The People vs. the Golden State Killer, Thien Ho, the current District Attorney of Sacramento, recounts his harrowing and exhilarating experience as the lead prosecutor responsible for capturing and prosecuting Joseph DeAngelo. Referred to at various times by law enforcement and the media as the Visalia Ransacker, the East Bay Rapist, the Original Nightstalker, and finally the Golden State Killer, DeAngelo, a former policeman, is widely considered “one of the most notorious serial predators in American history.
Ho’s book is the first official account of how the Golden State Killer was apprehended and put behind bars for life. Ho led an elite team of law enforcement from six California prosecutor's offices, using a newly developed tool known as “investigative genetic genealogy” to connect DeAngelo to multiple cold cases stretching back nearly a half century.
Many previous narratives about DeAngelo, including two bestselling books and multiple documentaries, focused largely on the killer and his heinous crimes. This book not only provides hundreds of facts and details never revealed to the public about the Golden State Killer’s crimes, it also presents the real-life story of the people who worked tirelessly to bring DeAngelo to justice. It also offers the unprecedented authorized perspective of three survivors of DeAngelo's crimes who courageously turned their pain into empowerment and activism. A portion of the book’s proceeds will be donated both by the author and Third State Books to Phyllis’s Garden, a nonprofit advocating for victims’ rights begun in honor of a GSK survivor.
The People vs. the Golden State Killer also recounts Ho’s fascinating personal journey, from escaping communist Vietnam with his family as a child to working his way up from an internship to an elite homicide division and eventually becoming one of only ten Asian American district attorneys out of 2,400 nationwide. THE PEOPLE vs THE GOLDEN STATE KILLER: Sacramento District Attorney—Thien Ho

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
killers in true crime history and the authors that have
written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Knightstalker VTK Every
week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your

(00:29):
host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Good Evening. In The People Versus the Golden State Killer,
Tin Hoo, the current District Attorney of Sacramento, recounts his
harrowing an exhilarating experience as the lead prosecutor responsible for
capturing and prosecuting Joseph di'angelo, referred to at various times
by law enforcement and the media as the Visalia Ransacker,

(01:03):
the East Aeo Rapist, the Original Nightstalker, and finally the
Golden State Killer. DiAngelo, a former policeman, is widely considered
one of the most notorious serial predators in American history.
Poe's book is the first official account of how the
Golden State Killer was apprehended and put behind bars for life.

(01:28):
Hoe led an elite team of law enforcement from six
California prosecutors' offices using a newly developed tool known as
investigative genetic genealogy to connect DiAngelo to multiple coal cases
stretching back nearly a half century. Many previous narratives about DiAngelo,

(01:50):
including two best selling books and multiple documentaries, focus largely
on the killer and his heinous crimes. This book not
only provides its hundreds of facts and details never revealed
to the public about the Golden State Killer's crimes, it
also presents the real life story of the people who
work tirelessly to bring DiAngelo to justice. It also offers

(02:15):
the unprecedented, authorized perspective of three survivors of DiAngelo's crimes
who courageously turn their pain into empowerment and activism. A
portion of the book's proceeds will be donated both by
the author and Third State Books, to Phyllis's Garden, a
nonprofit advocating for victims' rights, begun in honor of a

(02:38):
Golden State Killer survivor. The People Versus the Golden State
Killer also recounts Hoe's fascinating personal journey from escaping communist
Vietnam with his family as a child, to working his
way up from an internship to an elite homicide division,
and eventually becoming one of om ten Asian American district

(03:01):
attorneys out of twenty four hundred nationwide. The book that
we're featuring this evening is The People Versus the Golden
State Killer with my special guest, Sacramento District attorney and
author Tin Ho. Welcome to the program, and thank you

(03:21):
very much for this interview. Tin Ho.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
So thank you so much for having me in the show.
It's an honor to be on your podcast.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Well, thank you. It's a thrill and an honor to
have you on The People Versus the Golden State Killer.
First off, but before we start off outlining this extraordinary
case and your involvement, can you tell us about your
personal journey of you and your family coming from Vietnam
to Southern California.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
Well, Dan, thank you for the introduction. So, I was
born in Vietnam, and as many of your listeners know,
in nineteen seventy five, South Vietnam fell to the Communist North,
and so at that point in time, the Calmunist dictatorship
came in. They arrested my uncle, who worked for the
soft Vintemy's government, without a judge, without a jury, without
a prosecutor. They sent them to a re education camp

(04:11):
for seven years, where he was tortured and starved for
nineteen seventy six, when I was a young boy, my parents,
my brother, and my little brother, and a group of
other friends and family escaped Vietnam on a tiny fishing boat.
My father stolen an army uniform and took my toy
gun and painted at black. We escaped. We went through

(04:33):
all the checkpoints, and my dad is up on deck
wearing that stolen uniform to help us slip past these
armed guards along the checkpoints in the delta. And at
the last checkpoint, the guard said to my dad, why
are you out here. My dad says, oh, I just
bought this boat from this captain over here. I'm on

(04:53):
a little cruise, you know, with my wife and my
two boys who were below deck. And the guard looked
at my dad and then he kind of nodded it,
and he turned his head and says, nah, I think
you have a bunch of refugees below deck, and I
want to search right here, right now. And there were
like fifty of us refugees below the deck, all huddled together.

(05:13):
And I remember, even as a child, I was terrified.
You could sense the fear coming from the adults. And
so my dad looked at the guard and he says,
go ahead and look, if you find a bunch of refugees,
you can kill all of us, starting with me. But
if you look down there and all you see is
my wife and my two boys, I'm going to take
this gun. And he's pointing to my toy gun and

(05:35):
he said, now I'm gonna blow your brains out, because
how dare you question me? I rank you, And he's
pointing to the stolen uniform. So the guard looked at
my dad for a moment and he went, h we
don't need a search, and so he let us go.
We made it out to see. The problem was the
captain on the boat his family got stuck on short
they missed the rendezvous point, and the captain didn't want

(05:58):
to leave his family behind, so he jumped out the
ship and he swam back and left us there. And
so we had to decide whether we're going to keep
going or turn back. But if you turn back and
you get caught, you're dead. Nobody on the boat knew
how to navigate the ocean. Dan my dad was a
school teacher. So we decided to make a run for it.
Ran out of gas, ran out, food, ran out of water,
just drifting on the ocean. We were rescued after about

(06:19):
two weeks. I spent six months in a refugee camp
in Malaysia, and when I landed in this country, I
didn't understand a single word of English. I joke around
that I learned how to speak English by watching bugs
bunny cartoons. Twenty years later, graduated from law school and
I became a prosecutor and worked my way up through
the office until I became the prosecutor of the Golden

(06:40):
State Killer.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
This incredible story, and this case begins in Visalia, California,
in nineteen seventy four to seventy five. Tell us, just
give us an outline of what happens in Visalia and
how this killer progresses.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
Seventy four to nineteen seventy five, there were one hundred
and twenty burglaries in a three mile square radius in
the city of Asalia. The media had dubbed in the
Visalia Ransacker. There were nights that he would hit multiple
homes in one night, and his emma was consistent. He
would break into a home when nobody was there. He
would place glasses by the front doors of makeshift for
alarm system. He would lay women's clothing out on the

(07:22):
bed in the form of a human body. He was
still coins stamps, and this was the key. He'd take
one ear ring but leave the other earring behind. If
he found a pornographic magazine in the house, he would
masturbate to the playboard magazine and leave his his seamen there,
almost as if to mark his territory like a feral animal.

(07:42):
In the midst of the Ransacking series, in September of
nineteen seventy five, there was a young sixteen year old girl,
Best Snelling. She was at home sleep in her bed.
Somebody had broken into the house the week before. The
ransacker didn't and took a picture. When the ramsacker returned,
Beth woke up and there was a man sitting on
her bed, pressing up against her chest with a knife

(08:03):
to her neck, and he told her that you know,
don't move, don't scream. He dragged her out of that
bed and was trying to kidnap her out of the house.
He started to scream to whimper, and her father was
Claude Snelling, a professor at the local community college, the
College of the Sequoias. Rod heard his daughter ran out

(08:24):
to save her. Just at that moment when he was
saving his daughter, the ransacker took out a gun, shot
Professor Snelling and killed him. Now, the bullet that was
retrieved from Professor Snelling was fired, We did the casing
analysis on it and it turned out that it was
fired from a Moroku handgun that was stolen in a

(08:44):
ransacker burglary just about a week or two before. So
the ransacker kicked Beth in the face and then took
off running. But now we had the ransacker who was
a prowler keeping tom somebody who was breaking into people's homes,
eating their food, drinking their beer. It had now escalated

(09:05):
to a sexual predator who's trying to kidnap a sixteen
year old girl, and then a murderer. The Visalia Police
Department then decided to create it to do a series
of sting operations. So in December of nineteen seventy five,
the police department that point the Visalia did a sting operation.

(09:25):
Officer Bill McGowan was in a garage with the door open,
sitting in the dark waiting for somebody to come up
and lo and behold, he saw the ransacker crawl up
next to the house and come into the garage. Look around.
So McGown says, freeze, don't move to shine a flashlight

(09:45):
on him. The two men looked at each other for
a moment. The ransacker pulled his mask off, and just
at that moment they looked at each other and boomed.
The anser took off running. The ransacker jumped over fence
over fence. Officer McGowan's chasing him, chasing him until he
had him cornered in the backyard and Oster McGowan there
used to be able to do this in the old days,
was fired a shot into the ground and said freeze

(10:08):
or I'll shoot. The ransacker put his hands up in
the air. He says, don't shoot me, and so as
he was turning around, the ransacker pulled out a gun
with his left hand and shot Officer McGowan, but the
bullet struck the flashlight and the shattered the glass, which
hit offs from McGowan in the eye. When Ostar McGowan

(10:29):
looked up, the ransacker was gone. This was the closest
that any law enforcement officer actually came to catching the
Visilia Ransacker, the East Area rapist, the original Knightstock or
the Golden State killed her. When the other officers asked
Officer McGowan, you know, you got to look at his face.
What he did look like? Oster McGowan says, well, you know,

(10:51):
I couldn't put a name to the face, but it
looked familiar. Lo and behold the ransacker. Wash Joseph de'angelo,
who was an officer in a near by police department,
and from time to time he was on the task
force to help define the ransacker. And here he was
the ransacker. He left by Salia and became a police

(11:12):
officer up in Auburn, near Sacramento, and that's when the
Sacramento rapes began to happen.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
And that's when he earned the moniker East Area Rapist.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
Right, Yes, that is correct, because he committed his rapes
in the beginning in the eastern part of Sacramento County.
So they dubbed him the East Area Rapist.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
With that close call within Visalia. He never returned to Versalia,
did he.

Speaker 3 (11:38):
No, he left by Salia and he began to hunt
and pray in Sacramento and in northern California.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
Tell us how he progresses as the East Area Rapist, as.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
The East Air Rapist. You know, he would break into holmes,
you know, usually with a single female at home and
commit the sexual assault. He would also oftentimes try to
break into multiple homes. And one night in the midst
of the East Area Rapist series, the East Area Rapists,
or the Ear, which is what he was called here
the acronym, there was a report that was put out

(12:13):
by the PIO for the local Sheriff's department says he's
focusing on homes or there are just a single woman there.
Immediately he changed his mo. He would now took upon
himself as a challenge and broken. You know, he would
break into homes or there was a husband and wife,
a boyfriend and girlfriend, and his mo became very consistent there.

(12:34):
He would first of all stock people. He would watch
them meticulous. He would break into holmes days before, leave
something in a seat cushion or take something and come
back to see if they found it or not. But
what he would do is break in about one o'clock
in the morning and the husband and wife in bed.
He'd shine a flashlight in the gun and he would
say to them, freeze, I'm just here for drugs and money,

(12:57):
right and I'll go back to my van down by
the river. And then what he would do is he
throw some pretie shoelaces to the wife, have the wife
tie up the husband. And then after tying up the husband,
the wife tying up the husband, he would tie up
the wife. He would ransack their house, he would eat
their food, he would drink their beer, and then he
would come back and say, where's your purse, and using

(13:18):
that as a ruse, he'd separate the wife from the husband.
He'd come back, force the husband and all fours, put
a bed sheet on him, back glasses or perfumes or
plates on him, and whisper, look, if I hear anything
fall to the ground, your son's ear off and bring
it to you. I'll kill everybody in the family. Then
he would go into the other room and he would
sexually assault the wife again and again and again. And

(13:40):
when he left, he would take the wedding bed or
one airring and leave the other one behind, just like
the ransack. And so he committed those crimes, and in
the midst of that, just like down in Visalia, it
escalated into a homicide. In Sacramento.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
You take us to after twenty two years after arriving
in the US, you graduate from law school and become
a prosecutor. And you talk about Michelle McNamara and I'll
be Gone in the Dark before her untimely death, and
she coined the name the Golden State Killer before that
in her book or on her plan book. Tell us

(14:19):
about your colleague, criminalist Paul Holes his book on Masks,
and just how you got involved in this story and
this case.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
So you know, Michelle mcnamura wrote her book, but she
passed away before he was caught, so her book was
really focused on the criminal and the crime. Paul Holmes,
my colleague from Contra Costa, was a criminalist there and
then an investigator. He came up with the idea to
use genetic genealogy for the first time on a criminal case.

(14:51):
Who identify a suspect, and it entails taking some crime
scene DNA such as seamen converted into a special d
the profile that measures a million different areas in the chromosome,
floating it to a genealogy database where you get a hit,
maybe a distant cousin related to the suspect, and they
have to build this family tree because we know the

(15:12):
suspects on there and then you have a list of
a thousand suspects and then trying to figure out who
in that suspect list and that family tree matches your suspect,
and you do follow up investigation. So he wrote a
book focus on that, and then my book is obviously
the third. I call it the third in the trilogy,
and it's the trilogy where it covers the investigation, capture,

(15:33):
and prosecution. And I first got into the case because
I was a homicide prosecutor for many years and the
first homicide I ever had was in Rancho Cordova, where
you know, I obviously met you know, I got to
go out to the there, and I heard about the
East Area and rapist. And so when we caught him
in Sacramento and I heard about it, the way that

(15:55):
went down was I was in my office and I
saw the homicide supervisor and he's talking to the number
two in the office, and they're whispering to each other
and they're all really you know, kind of just engage
in talking about things, and so I sort of eavesdropped
on them and found out that they had found the
East Area rapist. And so, you know, when we caught him,

(16:16):
I was assigned the case. I asked for it, and
I was assigned the case, and I started prosecuting it.
And the first thing I did was, you know, I
ordered Michelle mcnamary's book to read it so I could
get a full picture of kind of just a feel
of the case.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
You're right early on in this book about victims that
face D'Angelo later in the sentencing in the court case
as victims. Your first victim is a woman named Phyllis,
who was twenty three years old when she was assaulted
while her dad was out of town. Can you tell

(16:52):
us about this case for us?

Speaker 3 (16:55):
You know, it was important for me, and you mentioned
some of the victims. So in the book, I profile
several of the victims, what they were like before, what
happened to them, and how they struggled for many years afterwards,
and how they found their voice. And Phyllis was one
of them. You know. The very first time I went
to court, a woman walked up to me, and he

(17:21):
was in her early sixties. He was not even five
feet tall. He had thick most like coke bottle glasses.
She came up to me with a warm smile and
a warm man shake and leaned in and shook my hand.
My name is Phyllis and I'm victim number one. He

(17:41):
was the very first sexual assault victim in Sacramento. And
I met Chris, and Chris came up high. My name
is Chris, and I'm victim number ten. And the victims
would introduce themselves by number, the order in which they
were assaulted. But here I was standing talking to Phyllis,
and I'd read the police reports, you know, I knew
what had happened to her. I'd seen the pictures, the

(18:03):
physical description of her. But here I was, forty something
years later, olding her hand, and it was as if
I was reaching through space and time. Now I don't
know what. I was just overcome by the moment because
I never make promises, but with Phyllis, I promised her
that I would get her justice. I would find a

(18:23):
way to get her justice, because she'd waited so long,
and you could see the pain on her face and
the toll that all those years had taken on Phyllis.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
You say prosecutors don't do this job for the money.
You talk about in this book about nightmares, insomnia, and
the obsession that a trial attorney would have to have
for a case. Tell us why this was so important
to you, other than meeting these victims, Why the prosecution

(18:55):
of this case was so important to you.

Speaker 3 (18:59):
You know, when you say, think about the job of
a prosecutor, we see people at the worst moment in
their lives. Either they are a victim and they've had
the very tapestry of their lives literally shredded apart. They
are either a survivor or a victim, or they are
defendant who is now facing life in prison because of

(19:19):
the choices they made, the dark choices they make, and
so we see the worst in humanity. We see the
darkness and the sins and the pain and the anguish
we take in all the sins of the world. And
it's not as if we can just for me at
least turn it on and off like a light switch.
It's always on. So you know, I found it very

(19:42):
difficult to sleep, and even now years later, the last
case that I ever handled was the Golden State killer case,
and even now I still find it hard to sleep.
But these cases are important because if you think about
it for a moment, Dan, the victims themselves, who are
the survivors, They've had to live for years with uncertainty

(20:04):
with question who was my rapist? Who was my tormentor?
And they're constantly looking over their shoulders. That person at
the grocery store, the East Air rapist, is that person
who I see at the park? That person are they
following me? And then for the families of the murder victims,
they never got to celebrate another quality and other Thanksgiving

(20:26):
or Christmas, another anniversary, or saw a graduation or a
birth of a child, or see a beautiful sunset or
a sunrise. And so to bring them justice after so
many years of having that pain bottle up, and pain
and trauma, it doesn't disappear at stays there, especially if
there's no closure. And so to bring closure and a
measure of justice for victims on a cold case, it

(20:48):
means the world. You know, this country gave me and
my family everything it could. It took us in, It
welcomed the huddled masses with its open arms. The only
thing I can do is to repaid back with that
second chance that I had gotten, that my family received.
And I hope that in that time that I've earned
that second chance.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yes, but Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages. This crime spree encompasses eleven jurisdictions. You write
and many counties tell us how it's decided on who
will be able to prosecute this case in and what
county and why.

Speaker 3 (21:31):
Well, obviously you have eleven different counties, but the main
players in the case where we had the murders and
most of the rapes and sexual So with Sacramento, Entra Costa,
Orange County, Sana Barbara, Ventura, and to Larry County where
by Salia was located. Those are the six main counties
with either murders or rapes where there's DNA, and so

(21:55):
we found them, we arrest We solved the case in Sacramento.
We arrested him in Sacremental County. He was housed in
Sacramento County, and frankly, I was ready and I talked
to my wife about it to move to southern California
and try the case down there, because I was anticipating
that it would go to Ventura County or it would
go to Orange County. But in the process of that,

(22:18):
you know, there's I got along great with the line deputies,
the other prosecutors on the prosecution team, but at the
level above that where you have the elected district attorneys,
there was a lot of politics, a lot of gamesmanship
that was coming, especially with Orange County and the prior
Orange County, not the current but the prior Orange County
District Attorney, Tony Racakis. Ultimately we felt that and I

(22:42):
write about it extensively in the book, the machinations, the maneuverings,
the politicking behind it, and the backroom deals, in the
back room brawls about where to try the case, and
ultimately we had the body. We had them here in Sacramento,
and there's a term in law, possession is possession is
nine tenths of the law. We had them and we

(23:04):
weren't going to give them up. And it was important
to try the case in Sacramento because so many of
the rapes occurred in Sacramento. He grew up in Sacramento,
he lived in Sacramento, he was arrested in Sacramento. And
the dilemma for the Sacramento prosecutor, like myself as the
leading prosecutor, is none of the Sacramento cases had DNA.

(23:24):
The Sacramento cases we could only prove it through circumstantial evidence.
In Mo so we needed to have and put on
the case in a certain way. And because of that,
we needed to have that case tried in Sacramento, and
it took a lot of maneuvering to get it there.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but you wanted these
people that were raped by the East Area rapist, by
the Golden State killer. You wanted these cases to be recognized.
But there was a little bit of a problem on
how you say the perspective, how rape was considered or
in the seventies, tell us about this statute of limitations dilemma.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
You know, that's a great point that you bring up
in it. And it's clear that you took very detailed
notes and died into every new conclianity of the book,
and I appreciate that, Dan. So you know, rape in
the nineteen seventies was viewed not as seriously unfortunately, as
it is today. Today. We recognize sexual assault as a violent,

(24:25):
vicious crime where somebody needs to be able responsible to
the fullest extent, and the laws and the statute of
limitation and the seventies was three years, right, which means
that from the time that the rape occurred to the
time that is the prosecutor could charge the case was
three years. If it went past three years in a day,
we were barred from prosecuting it. So the rape case
is in Sacramento. The statute expired many many years ago,

(24:47):
and when that happened, the police department and the Sheriff's
department threw away all the evidence, the forensic evidence, and
so we were left with now statute of limitation. Having
run no physical evidence on the case, we had to
find a way around the statue of limitation. Now, if
somebody was facing a life crime such as murder, where

(25:07):
we could charge them at any point. When you commit
a murder, you could go to prison for life. That's
called a life crime. A life crime have no statue
of the limitation. You could charge that at any point.
And so I was looking for a crime back in
the seventies that was a life crime that we could
fit this case under. And I found that aggravated kidnapping,

(25:30):
where you kidnap somebody and you move them and increase
the danger to them, that that was a life crime.
And so I took that square what's the term the
square hole and the round peg? Is that the term
that you use on that trying to fit a yes, right,
So we had to try to find something just to

(25:51):
fit in there. That's what we found, and so we charged.

Speaker 4 (25:53):
Them with cases where he moved the victim of substantial
distance that increased the danger to the I mean, we
had a number of charges here in Sacramento and contra
cost to where we could charge them make sure that
those victims had an opportunity to be heard in the courtroom.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
This case is about DNA forensic evidence. There were problems
with DNA protocol as well. Tell us about the destruction
of some DNA and your reaction and the miraculous solution.

Speaker 3 (26:25):
Well, obviously when I got into the case, you know,
and I've tried a bunch of DNA cases before then,
so I had prosecuted childless adult rapes and then homicide
and gain cases. I was well versed in all types
of crimes, you know, especially using forensic in DNA. So
I'm expecting once I get the fun Okay, what DNA
evidence do we have in Sacramento. Is there's some semen,

(26:46):
some blood that we can survive it that we can
retest right from the crime scenes that was preserved. And
I was still it's all gone, and I'm like, what
it's all gone. What do you mean, it's all gone,
limitation pass thro away all the evidence. I'm just beside
myself in it. And in one of the cases in Sacramento,

(27:08):
next to the body of Brian Maggiori, detectives found a
pre tied shoelace. Remember he would break into the homes
in Sacramento the ear dead and bring pre tied shoelaces
to have the wife tie up the husband quickly with it,
and he tie up the victims quickly. And here we
have it's dropped by the killer of Brian Majory and
it's a pre tied shoelace. And the technology that we

(27:30):
have this day is you know, contact DNA. If you
touch something, you touch an air pod, right, you touch
an AirPod, you touch a cell phone case, you are
leaving behind your DNA on this item right here, okay,
a shirt. You're touching it, so we can then srab
it and collect that DNA. It's called contact or touch DNA. Well,

(27:52):
he's touching the shoelaces. By the time of twenty eighteen,
we had the ability to take that shoelace, immerse it
in a solution and then filter out the DNA from
that solution something and I'm like, let's see what we
can do here with it. What I found out was
we couldn't find that we'd lost the shoelaces. I mean,

(28:13):
I was cursing by a sailor the day that happened.
You know, I was just losing my mind. But we
were using you know, obviously genetic geniality to solve the case,
and then really connecting the cases through mo modus opera
and di and that's what we had to build the
case up.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
You chronicle in this book the fascinating interrogation of Joseph
DiAngelo once he's in custody. And what I found most
interesting is that they recorded his conversations. He was talking
to himself while he was in that interrogation room. A
technique by the police is to keep them or the
district attorneys to keep them in that room and possibly

(28:55):
uttering something tell us about this incredible enterroration and recording.

Speaker 3 (29:02):
Well, the interrogation room, as I wrote, the interrogation room,
it never sleeps, never forgets, it sees, and it hears everything.
And so we put them in the interrogation room. One
of the techniques that law enforcement uses, they put them
in there, and they just let them sit there, not
for like fifteen minutes, not for like half an hour

(29:25):
or an hour, sometimes as much as two hours, and
the point where sometimes they just fall asleep in the
interrogation room and we let them sit there in their
own juices and stew and think about how did they
arrest me? What evidence do they happen? And so we
just let their mind run wild. What was unique about
Dangelo is they put them in the room and he's

(29:47):
sitting there and he's just staring right ahead, doesn't even move.
When I watched the video a couple of times, I
had to make sure that it wasn't on pause and
it hadn't just frozen, because he wasn't even moving, not
even blinking. And so when they came into the room,

(30:08):
when we came into the room, you know, they started
questioning him, and because we knew that he'd be curious,
and they started peppering him with the rapes, the murders
of Brian and Katie, the venture rapes of Lineman and
Charlene Smith. And when they left the room, he started
mumbling to himself. He started trying to set up a defense,

(30:28):
A split personality or a dissociative identity defense, and he
was sitting there talking to himself, and we were all
least listening in, leaning in trying to hear it, and
had the interrogation video in hands, and he was saying
things like, you know, Jerry made me do it, somebody
else made me do it. I didn't want to do it.
I try to push him out. And so he was

(30:49):
trying to set up this mental defense that ultimately would
not work for him.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages he kind of utterances he made in that room, though,
how useful could those be? Were they admissible in court?
Tell us about that, Oh.

Speaker 3 (31:12):
When you were sitting in a room, they are absolutely admissible.
There's the Miranda warnings. Miranda warning is you know you
have a right to remain silent now if you say, hey,
I want to stay silent, okay, But that is only
triggered if there is police questioning. When he was in
the room talking to himself, there was no question. He

(31:34):
was just talking to himself. And he basically admitted to
committing all the crimes in Sacramento, the rapes, the murders.
He admitted them now, Albeit he blamed it on Jerry
forcing him to do it, but he admitted to doing it,
and so I could definitely use that, and I was
planning to use that to prove the Sacramento crimes, and

(31:56):
so it was a key piece of evidence.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
Talking about a key piece of evidence, you chronicle the
case of Charlene and Lyman Smith, a district attorney, Lyman Smith,
just because of the value of that evidence in this prosecution.
Can you tell us about that particular case.

Speaker 3 (32:18):
That was a key element of starving We go to
state cure prime spree doctor Spell, who was a medical
examiner pathologist. He had a practice of taking two rape kits.
Usually pathologists would only take one rape kit from a victim,

(32:40):
send it off to the crime lab where it would
be tested, retested, used, up, stored, not stored and be gone.
But he took a second rate kit, was his practice,
and he kept one in the freezer at the foreigner's office.
And so it was that second rate kit we were

(33:01):
able to use the semen from to do the genetic
genealogy testing and that solved the case. Without that second
rate kit, without that information, we would not have been
able to solve the case.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Tell us about this team this assembled with various counties,
various prosecutors, and various help from such as investigators.

Speaker 3 (33:25):
Oh you know, it was an all star team from
these offices, you know. So you know a moment ago
I talked about the DNA evidence from was taken from
Charlene Smith, a second rape kit. In the book, I
detail a lot about why we had to use that
and everything behind it. But as part of that, the
Ventura sent their number two, their chief deputy, Cheryl Temple,

(33:48):
who I think is a phenomenal trial and of the
best trialoers I've ever prosecutors I've ever met my life,
and she had handled multiple death penalty cases. And we
had other prosecutors. We had one down in Orange he
had argued in front of the California Supreme Court on
the Kala case. He was the dating game serial killer
from Orange County. We had another prospect from Orange County

(34:10):
that was phenomenous. So we had really good prosecutors on
the case. We divided certain things like I was on
multiple teams dealing with the mental defense, deal with his
background whole host of different issues, another team that dealt
with law and motion. We were anticipating a change of
venue motion emotion that sever all the cases and separate

(34:32):
them out. So we were ready to argue that, defend that.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
What's your position personally on the death penalty and tell
us about this case if it fit the criterion for
the death penalty.

Speaker 3 (34:47):
So I believe that the death penalty in certain rare
situations should be utilized. It is the ultimate sanction by
the state in response to the ultimate cross. You had
an individual here who committed thirteen known murders, upwards of
fifty sexual assaults, one hundred and twenty burglaries in eleven
different counties. Some of his murders were apps were vicious,

(35:09):
bludgeoning people to death with a log with a brass
sprinkler after sexually assaulting and brutalizing them, raping fifty women
in all these different locations. He was a sadistic monster,
and I think if the death penalty was right for him.
If not him, then whom we recently in my office

(35:30):
prosecuted and successfully prosecuted somebody who committed a killed a
police officer, a young police officer, Tarot Sulvan, who had
just been out in the force, who was a rookie
who shot and killed her and she lay dying, shot her,
you know, continued to shoot at her, and he received
the death penalty. In this particular case, we sought the
death penalty, but ultimately we moved off of the death

(35:52):
penalty because we were able to obtain justice for all
the victims. As part of the resolution of the case,
he had to admit to everything, charge and uncharge crimes,
and that really gave us the ability for us to
keep the promise to people like Phyllis. Her case was
we couldn't charge it. We couldn't charge Phyllis's case because

(36:13):
the statue of limitation had run. But as a result
of taking the death under the off the table and
having compleed to life, he had to admit to Phyllis's crime,
and it gave her an opportunity to give an impact statement.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
Tell us the victims, because we haven't spoken about their
individual stories. Tell us about the victims that were there
for this hearing and proceeding.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
You know, one that always stands out to me is Chris.
Chris Pindretti was victim number ten. He was fifteen at
the time that she was sexually assaulted. She may have
just turned sixteen. She was at home, her parents were
out for the evening, and he brutalized her, assaulting or
raping her multiple times. And she went through such a

(37:00):
dark period of her life. She moved to three different
schools within a year. She got into drugs, into drinking,
failed relationships over the year, and just trying to find
her path back. Phyllis, for example, after her assault, you know,
she lived in a prison. She put all sorts of
alarms and bars on her house. Her husband couldn't go

(37:21):
out of town for very long because it would just
leave her distraught. And just the trauma that it took
on these victims. And I remember now Chris was an
I detailed in the book, Found her Voice, found her voice,
and Phyllis did to advocate on behalf of the uncharged victims. Chris,

(37:43):
along with another victim, Gay Hardwick, started a nonprofit called
Phyllis's Garden in honor of Phyllis, where they really support
survivors supporting survivors. So what they ended up doing with
Phyllis's Garden is Chris was interview in the location where
she was raped. So what Phyllis's Garden endeavors to do

(38:06):
is create these soft interview rooms where there's a knife,
couch rugg there's a painting on the wall flowers, warm colors,
so that when somebody goes to the police station, they're
not interviewed in an interrogation room, but rather these interview rooms.
And it's to create that victim centered approach. And a
part of the proceeds from the sale of my book,

(38:26):
The People Versus to Go to State Killer goes to
support Phillis's Garden. I'll be donating a portion of proceeds
of the book to support the nonprofit.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
You chronicle about your team interviewing survivors, getting their important
stories and preparing them somewhat for being able to confront
DeAngelo at court. But also that the prosecutors and the
investigators all visited all the crime scenes that were involved.

(38:58):
That's extraordinary.

Speaker 3 (38:58):
I think, you know, I love the fact that you
brought that up. You know, I've been on a few podcasts,
are you're the first person that picked that up. You know,
we visited all the crime scenes, and we have to
because we have to get a feel for two things
that I will tell you. One is one of the
crime scenes in Santa Barbara, there's a creek that runs
through all three crime scenes, and that's where he was

(39:19):
going down in the creek, coming up to his crime
scene and escaping from it. And I was standing on
the edge of the of the creek back in twenty nineteen.
I was looking down and even now, what something years later,
I could still sense the darkness. I could still see
him coming out of that creek in the middle of
the night with a mask and a gun and a knife.

(39:40):
You could still sense the evil there. The other thing
that we did was, and I talked about it quite
a bit in the book, is we started flying drones
over some of the crime scenes because we wanted to
preserve the evidence. In some big cases, what we do
is we do a jury view. We take the jury
to the crime scene to check the crime sheet. But
there's so many crimes in eleven different counties we couldn't

(40:02):
do it here. So we started preserving the evidence through
drone videos.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
Now you he definitely D'Angelo definitely qualified for the death penalty.
Tell us explain why a plea deal was agreed to
and what were the advantages of it versus the disadvantages.

Speaker 3 (40:25):
You know, I wanted to seek the death penalty. I
believe in it that he deserved it. The fact of
the matter is that in the midst of prosecuting this
case and trying to get it to a preliminary hearing
and a trial, we were hit by a pandemic that
the world not seen for one hundred years. It was
March of twenty twenty. I think that to take us back,
you know, you couldn't even get quillet paper. People were

(40:49):
hoarding it. Schools shut down, the streets were empty, everybody's
wearing a mask. You hear about the words of social distancing,
and the courts shut down. I mean, we had an
investigator down in Orange County that was ninety six, half
blind and half death. We had another witness who was
ninety two that I absolutely needed to come and testify.

(41:09):
And here we are with all the unknowns of COVID
at that time and how serious it was, and people
dying from it, bodies piling up, and so we were
faced with that very real struggle, and at the same
time we had to find a way to make sure
that the victims where the statue of limitation had run,

(41:32):
how are we going to be able to get justice
for them? And so, as part of the resolution in
the case D'Angelo had to admit, he had to say
I admit I did those things, or guilty to the
charge in uncharged crimes. And each of those victims, like
Phyllis or Chris, had the chance to stand up and
give their impact statement. And ultimately, whatever disadvantage we had

(41:53):
on it was far weighed by all the advantages of
giving those victims of waste that they deserve and the
closure that they deserve.

Speaker 2 (42:01):
And obviously they agreed to what your decision was and
thank you for it. You have an extraordinary scene in
this book where again those victims are there to confront D'Angelo.
You have an idea, though, to honor the social distancing
and the protocols regarding COVID nineteen. What is your idea

(42:24):
regarding a shield for DiAngelo?

Speaker 3 (42:29):
Remember we're in the middle COVID. Everybody's wearing a mask.
I mean, you remember if you were on public and
you didn't have a mask, I mean, somebody would tell
you put a mask on. Right, they took your temperature.
You remember the days when you entered into a building
and they took your temperature. Right. I mean, it's been
five years since COVID, and the world has changed so

(42:49):
much from it. And so you know, when he committed
his crimes, he wore a mask. Everything about him was
a mask to cover up the monster behind it. And
so when he ended up, you know, admitting guilt and
was there in front of everybody, I wanted to make
sure that he couldnot hide behind a mask. So I

(43:11):
went on Amazon and I bought a clear face shield, right,
and I maneuvered it and machinations, you know, in front
of the judge, had the judge essentially and I talk
about it quite a bit in the book, Adam basically
forced to wear this clear face shield so the victims
could see him, and he had to see the victims.
He couldn't hide behind that. And so if you go

(43:31):
and you look at videos online on YouTube at the
court proceeding, you will see him in that clear face
shield that I bought from Amazon.

Speaker 2 (43:40):
Tell us about some of the confrontations, some of the
impact statements, some of the reaction from victims towards Joseph
t'angelo at that sentencing hearing.

Speaker 3 (43:53):
You know, the one that stood out to me, one
of them was gay Hardwight. She had been salted. Her
husband was in the of the room and it changed
the trajectory of her life. You started and she talked
about how she was on this career, you know, as
a businesswoman, you know, going to be an executive, and

(44:15):
then she just shut down and locked herself in and
she ended up becoming a teacher and working with kids.
She worked with kids because she knew that kids couldn't
hurt her, like toddlers couldn't hurt her. So it changed
the trajectory of her life. And what stood out to
me at the end, she says, you know, you know,

(44:36):
because D'Angelo, you know, had a traumatic child and he'd
seen his sister get sexually assaulted as a child. And
Gay put it perfectly. She says, you know what, I
understand that you saw this as a child, but you
assaulted us, you rape me, and I didn't turn around
and become a monster like you. It's about the choices

(44:56):
that you make in life, and that's really what it is.
It's about the twishes we make, whether to embrace lightness
or darkness, love or hate. He chose to embrace hate
and darkness, and that impact statement, really, you know, stood
out to me.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
There was another dramatic scene where the chairs were rearranged
so that the defence table could face di'angelo. And then,
of course you say that it was done for security reasons,
but it ended up being exactly what the victims wanted
and needed.

Speaker 3 (45:39):
Absolutely. You know, I wanted him to wear that mask,
but I also wanted him to be faced onto the
victims because I didn't want him hiding anymore. I didn't
want him to be able to escape responsibility, not on
that day, not on that time, after forty plus years.
And so you know, again, everything that we do, everything

(46:00):
that I try to do, that the prosecution team tried
to do was to honor the victims, and that's what
we did.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
You're right too that he just continued the same ruse,
with this vacant look and a feeble old man ruse
that he was using from from the very beginning.

Speaker 3 (46:19):
He was. I mean, I have videos of it in
his yelsa like that movie from The Usual Suspects. Have
you seen that, Dana? Oh yes, yes, oh you know
where you know he walks out of the police station,
you know, with that limp, and he's further, he gets away,
the limp disappears in the same way. He's in court
in this wheelchair, and I have video of him walking
into a cell with his cane, the moment that and limping,

(46:41):
the moment that door closed, the king goes down, the
limp disappears. He's doing jumping jacks. He's climbing up and
down the bunk bed. It was all but a ruse.
He is the master manipulator, the master malinger, trying to
constantly get one over on us. But we weren't gonna
let him do that.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
Tell us about the sentencing, What exactly was the sentence itself,
What did it all entail.

Speaker 3 (47:07):
It? It's essentially entailed eleven plus life without the possibility
of parole sentences, meaning he'll never get out of prison.
But the thing about it that always stands out to
me is, and I write about in the book. You know,
Phyllis had been diagnosed with cancer. You couldn't make some
of the court appearances, but she made that very last one,

(47:29):
and I looked over and I saw her. She had
a mask on, she had this twink in her eye,
and I was so happy. I was so relieved, I
think is the word. I don't think i'd used the
word happy. I was so relieved that Phyllis was able
to be there and to get that measure of justice
after forty years passed away from cancer three months later.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
Incredible, And so.

Speaker 3 (47:51):
I always think of Phyllis. Now when I think of
the case, I don't think of him anymore. I don't
think of the crimes. I think of Phyllis. And to me,
that's how when you read the book, that's where to
me it begins and where it ends.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
Absolutely you talk about insomnia and nightmares. Was there some
relief regarding sleep after this resolution and this court case?

Speaker 3 (48:19):
You know, as a prosecutor, especially one who has prosecuted
sex crimes and murders, I never feel joy when I
get a conviction. I never feel joy when we find them,
arrest them, charge him, and convict him. Because somebody had
the very fabric of their lives ripped apart. Somebody will
never be the same again. So how can I feel
joy from this process? All I feel is relief, relief

(48:41):
that the judge didn't screw it up, belief that the
jury didn't screw it up, that the cops didn't screw
it up, and most of all, relief that I didn't
screw it up. To the PLEI I slept and after
the sentencing, I slept like a baby and slept that
much in a long time. But you know my position.
Now I carry a different burden, not of an individual case,

(49:02):
but of an entire office. And so you know, you
trade one in for responsibility in for another. You know,
now in the elected dare you know of an office
that is five hundred employees, one hundred and ninety prosecutors,
that has its own crime lab, the second largest office
in northern California, so that that has a different set
of responsibility than the one I had before.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
Tell us about the release of this book. When is
it to be released, and just tell us anything in
closing that you gained primarily from the writing of this book.

Speaker 3 (49:38):
The book is released next week on November the eleventh.
It's called The People Versus the Golden State Killer. You
can pre order the book on tin Ho dot org.
That's th h I e n Ho dot org. If
you go on there, you'll have a link where you
can support a local bookstore. I'll be doing a few
book tours around the country. I'm headed off to Saint Louis,

(50:00):
I have one in Seattle, and then there's going to
be the main event is going to be on the
twelfth of November at the library downtown, and then I
have one on the thirteenth and excuse me, the fourteenth
in la at the downtown Library. So we're going to
be doing a couple of big book tours and book
siting now. We'll do one later this year and early

(50:21):
next year as well. But what I learned from it
is the triumph and the perseverance and the resiliency of
the human spirit, especially when you read about the stories
of the survivors.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
Thank you, absolutely, thank you so much. Tin Hoe, Sacramento
District Attorney, the people versus the Golden State Killer. Thank
you so much for this interview, and you have a
great evening and good night.

Speaker 3 (50:48):
Thank you. Dan appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
Thank you,