BONUS EPISODE: Retired FBI Profiler Julia Cowley on the Golden State Killer case

From 1973 to 1986, an unknown rapist and murderer was terrorizing northern California.

Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. was arrested in 2016, having finally been identified as the so-called Golden State Killer.

DeAngelo committed at least 13 murders, 50 rapes, and 120 burglaries. He was uncaught for decades until being arrested at his home.

In 2020 DeAngelo was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

One of the FBI profilers who worked the case was Julia Cowley.

If you have any information on Jodi’s case, call the Mason City Police Department at [phone] or the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) at [phone].

You can also reach us anonymously at FindJodi: (970) 458-JODI or via email at [e-mail]

Episode Transcript

(00:05):
Before sunrise on a mild summer morningin June nineteen ninety five, a twenty
seven year old television news anchor namedJody Housen Trutz hurriedly left her apartment in
Mason City, Iowa, headed forwork, but she never arrived, and

(00:26):
her disappearance has never been solved.In two thousand and three, two television
news reporters created finds Jody dot Com, a website dedicated to preserving Jody's memory
and keeping her case alive. Thisis the official Finds Jody podcast. Welcome

(00:56):
back to the Find Jody Podcast.I'm Scott Fuller. What kind of person
would have abducted and likely murdered TVnews anchor Jody? Who's in trute on
the morning of June twenty seventh,nineteen ninety five. As you likely know
from the television and movies, there'san entire segment of the FBI dedicated to
answering questions like that. The BehavioralAnalysis Unit or BAU contains agents who are

(01:19):
certified criminal profilers. Their role isto provide investigators all over the country a
resource to determine who an offender mightbe in the abstract. They do this
through analyzing crime scenes, victims,and other factors to point police investigators working
these cases in the right direction toidentify unknown violent criminals. On this bonus

(01:40):
episode of the Fine Jodi podcast,Caroline Low and I spoke to a retired
certified FBI profiler named Julia Cowley,who worked for the FBI for twenty two
years and worked at the BAU fromtwo thousand nine until her retirements last year.
If you want to learn more aboutprofiling and Julia's analysis of Jody's case
using public information, you want tolisten to episode thirty one of this podcast.

(02:06):
But here in this bonus episode,Julia discusses one of the major cases
she worked in her career. Fromnineteen seventy three to nineteen eighty six,
in California, an unknown rapist andmurderer was terrorizing the northern part of the
state. Joseph James DeAngelo Junior wasarrested in two thousand and sixteen, having
been identified as the so called GoldenState Killer. De'angelo committed at least thirteen

(02:30):
murders, fifty rapes, and onehundred twenty burglaries. He was uncaught for
decades until being arrested at his homein twenty twenty, D'Angelo was sentenced to
life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. One of the FBI profilers who worked
on this case was Julia Cowley.Last year, in May of twenty twenty

(02:51):
one, I retired after twenty twoyears with the FBI. And during my
career with the FBI, I beganin eighteen ninety nine. I was assigned
to the Boston Division of the FBIand I was assigned to a white collar
crime squad and I worked there fora couple of years, and then I
went to a public corruption civil rightssquad and I worked there for a number

(03:15):
of years, and I was alsoa member of and a team leader on
the evidence Response team. So followingthat, in at the end of two
thousand and nine, I was selectedI applied for and was selected to the

(03:38):
FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, and Iwas assigned to the Crimes against Adults Unit,
which is the unit that I wantedto be in, and I went
through the training became a certified profiler, and then in twenty fourteen, I
came back up to Massachusetts and becamethe supervisor of an office out of the

(04:00):
Boston Division in Springfield, Massachusetts,so I supervised the Criminals squad from my
last several years in the FBI,and also on occasion had a chance to
help the state and local police onsome cases up here. During my time
and when I was at BAU,I had the opportunity to work on some

(04:26):
big cases, which it was fortunatebecause I was fairly new at the time.
So I got to work on theGolden State killer case, and we
now know that that offender his nameis Joe DeAngelo and he was arrested in
twenty eighteen and pled guilty to thirteencounts a first degree murder in twenty twenty

(04:53):
in June of twenty twenty, Sothat was a case that I had involvement.
I was the lead profiler on thatcase. And I think an important
part of my background as well isthat prior to joining the FBI, I
was a special agent forensic scientist withthe Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which is

(05:14):
in addition to behavioral analysis, forensicscience is also my other passion and I
think my first one true passion wasforensic science. So that's how I started
out working in a crime lab,and I would I was also a member
of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations ViolentCrime Response Team. So in that role,

(05:40):
I would go to homicide scenes witha team of people and we would
process those scenes. So I feltlike my experience at TBI worked really well
for me, not only when Ijoined the FBI's Evidence Response Team, but
also really helped and I joined theBehavioral Analysis Unit because I think one of

(06:02):
the strengths that I brought to theunit was my ability to sort of provide
a better understanding of the crime scenedynamics when we look at some of these
cases and kind of piece back togetherwhat happened between the offender and the victim.
And that's usually where I start,is I look, Okay, what

(06:24):
happened here? What do we know? What can we determine from the crime
scene, from the evidence that's beenleft behind, what was the interaction here?
So in summary, that's my background. And like I said, I
retired last May, so it hasn'teven been a year yet. And your

(06:45):
last big case not long before youretired was a Golden State killer. I
mean, you ended on I oneof the most well known infamous cases in
our country. That's kind of interestingbecause one of the things when you are
working as a profiler, don't reallyget involved in the investigation itself. I'm
not responsible for conducting interviews or processingthe crime scene anymore. I don't conduct

(07:10):
surveillance. So once you review thefiles and provide an analysis, it's really
not your investigation. So I don'treally become involved in it. So you
provide that in the police departments,I mean, we don't take over the
investigation. I think that can bea little bit of a myth that the
FBI comes in and we take overeverything. In this case, that's not

(07:31):
what happens at all. We're merelyconsultants. We provide an analysis, and
the detectives and the investigating agencies theycan decide what they find useful what they
don't. They don't have to listento a word we say. So in
terms of when he was arrested andinterviewed and convicted, I really didn't have

(07:54):
a role in that. I watchedfrom afar, and I talked to several
of the investigators that I worked withwhen I was consulting on the case,
so I did get a lot ofgreat inside information, But in terms of
being part of the investigation at thatpoint, I was no longer a part,
and I had to watch from afar, but it was it was great.

(08:18):
It was really great to see thatthe science caught up to him and
he was caught and he was heldaccountable for what he did. Can you
share with our listeners some of thekey parts of your role in that case

(08:41):
and specifically what you identified, whatcame out to be true in terms of
his background, and some things thatyou were surprised by what you learned.
After they identified Joe Delane D'Angelo,the FBI out in the Sacramento Division,
along with the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office, had requested assistance from the Behavioral Analysis

(09:01):
Unit, and this is I thinkthis was back in twenty eleven. I
don't know if they knew exactly whatthey were looking for, but I think
one of the main things they wanteda profile of an unknown offender, and
they wanted linkage analysis because, inaddition to the attacks that were happening in

(09:24):
the Sacramento area at the time,and this is between nineteen seventy six and
nineteen seventy nine, that Joe DeAngelowas breaking into homes at night and ransacking
the homes and sexually assaulting female victims, and he started to enter homes at
night when there was also a malevictim present, and he would sexually assault

(09:46):
the female victims in the presence ofthe male victims in a different room,
but in the same location, thesame residence. Between nineteen seventy four at
nineteen seventy six, there was aseries of ransackings in Visalia, California,
which is about four hours from Sacramento. These ransackings were happening during the day

(10:07):
and somebody was going into the houseand ransacking the home and stealing items,
some items of value and some itemsweren't of value, but also doing some
strange things like going through lingerie drawersand in one case he poured orange juice
on a bed, and he wouldmove things around the homes. You know.

(10:28):
It was a series of over ahundred of these residential burglaries between nineteen
seventy four nineteen seventy six. Butin the midst of that, the offender
they believed to be the Vicelia ransacker, which was what his moniker was,
had gone into a home and attemptedto kidnap a sixteen year old girl and

(10:50):
as he was trying to take herout of the house. Her father confronted
him and the offenders shot and killedhim. And his name was Claude Snelling
and he was a professor at alocal university. This became much more serious.
It wasn't just nuisance somebody breaking intohomes and ransacking. It became there
was a murder. So one ofthe things that I thought was really important

(11:15):
was to answer, was the Viceliaransacker also the East Area rapist or you
know, as we know now wecall them the Golden State killer or these
was this the same offender? Andthere was a real divide amongst the investigators.
You had some that said absolutely not, it's not the same offender,

(11:35):
and that a large part had todo with very differing descriptions of the offender.
And then you had the other sidethat would say, no, these
have to be linked. It's thetiming of it and the ransacking and the
fact that the Vicelia ransackings seemed tostop when the East Area rapes began.

(12:00):
So I thought that was one ofthe questions I also needed to answer.
You provide a linkage to this.And the trouble with the Vicelia cases is
that there was no DNA, sowithout the linkage, it was very unlikely
to have been solved. But interms of the East Area rapes there,
you know, he committed between nineteenseventy six to nineteen seventy nine about fifty

(12:24):
or so rapes. I looked atforty five. In terms of the entire
investigations, I reviewed forty five casesout of Sacramento in northern California, and
then in nineteen seventy nine there wereattacks that occurred in southern California and ultimately

(12:46):
the offender escalated to homicide, killinghis victims, and there were a total
of twelve victims that he killed,and these cases were not linked until approxim
only two thousand and one, whenthe sexual assaults, well at least a
couple of the sexual assaults were linkedto a few of the homicides in southern

(13:09):
California by DNA. So that's howthey found out. Okay, we have
one offender and he became known asEast Area rapist slash original night Stalker.
So I called him Urons and alot of investigators just shortened it to that
Urons and that's how I knew himuntil until he was dubbed the Golden State

(13:35):
Killer by a true crime author namedMichelle McNamara, so compelling to make you
see a linkage that maybe some othersdidn't see, because typically burglars don't fit
aren't killers. And what did yousee that made you think that maybe it
was the same person. Typically theyaren't And how well, I actually should
say, typically we don't think thata burglar is going to escalate to be

(14:00):
coming a killer. And I thinkthat's the view that many detectives had.
I mean, you don't just gofrom this to you know, raping to
murder. It just didn't seem plausibleto many of the detectives. But what
I saw in the scenes in visaliais number one. There seemed to be

(14:20):
like a sexual component to the ransackings, you know, looking at women's underwear,
and he would display underwear, hewould lay him on the bed,
or in one case, he tookfemale lingerie and placed it all the way
down the hall of the homes.The other thing that he did was he
made makeshift alarms, So in theransackings he would place a fragile object of

(14:46):
some sort on a doorknob, sothat if someone came home, the object
would fall and he would hear,and he'd be able to escape well.
He engaged in similar behavior in Sacramentowhen he would tie up the victims.
He particularly the male victims. Heplaced fragile objects such as cups and saucers
on their backs and he threatened themand say, if you move or make

(15:09):
a sound, theses are going tofall and I'm going to hear and I'm
going to come back and kill you. So I thought that was a unique
trait and unique characteristic. The otherthing was just the intensity of the ransacking,
and you know, not only wasa sexual component to it, but
the intensity of it. And thenthe thing I started noticing in the Sacramento

(15:31):
cases and it was kind of Idon't want to say funny, but as
I was going through them, Idon't know how many i'd gotten through.
I was probably maybe on between tenand fifteen, and it finally hit me.
It's like, wait a second,he does not commit a sexual assault
until after he's ransacked the house.And so I started over again. I
started the kid, let me justdouble check, this says he only ran

(15:54):
sack or he ran sacks before anysexual assault, And so I kept back
of all the cases. And thenI also noted that if a victim was
assaulted more than one time in duringthe evening because he spent several hours in
the victim's homes, if he wouldransack in between the assaults, I'm like,

(16:18):
ransacking is a key component to him. This is where he gets his
sense of control and power. Thisis really how he prepares for the sexual
assault. And the other thing Inoticed as well is that in terms of
the reports and by Celia they were, they were really short because especially when

(16:40):
it first started, because I don'tthink investigators realized what they were dealing with.
All. We just have a residentialburglary. Nobody was home, nobody
was hurt. It's you know,probably just some kids. But there are
a couple of incidents where it wasnoted in the report that that the offender
had either brought lotion or accessed lotionwhile he was in the house. In

(17:06):
one case, he poured lotion onthe carpet down the hallway. In another
case, they found fingerprints in lotion. I thought this was evidence he was
masturbating at the scene. That justseemed odd that in a lot of these
cases there was a lotion being usedin ransackings. So then I looked at
when I was looking at the EastDya rapes. One of the things that

(17:30):
he did is he always used lotionas lubricant when he sexually assaulted the female
victims. So I thought that wasanother tie to these ransackings having a real
sexual component to them. So theseare the things I noticed. There's some
other things I can't really recall offto the top of my head, but
I became convinced this is the sameindividual. I was like one hundred percent

(17:55):
convinced, But then of course somebodywould point out, well, he doesn't
look anything like the East Airy rapist, and then I'd start to doubt myself,
and then I look at the behavioragain and I'd say, but the
behavior is there. I think it'sthe same person. So that that's kind
of how I linked the cases together. And of course, when I say
I I want to I mean Iwas the lead on this and I did

(18:19):
the review of everything, but peoplein my unit also reviewed it with me.
I went over everything with them,and this was a group analysis,
So I just want to point thatout. But you know, when I
first started, I was, youknow, I'm you know, as the
lead person, you're the one thatactually reads every file and looks at every

(18:40):
crime scene photo and you present thatto your colleagues and then you discuss it
and come up with an analysis.So that's that's the process of profiling.
So I don't want to sound like, oh, I just came up with
this all by myself, because Icertainly didn't do it all by myself,
But these were the thoughts that Iwas having as I was reviewing the files.

(19:04):
So in terms of linkage, thatwas important, the unknown offender profile,
and then also like what can theydo to catch him? Like what
kind of investigative suggestions can we offer? You know, being a former forensic
scientist, I knew, okay,science is going to get him. Someday,

(19:25):
he's gonna get caught because he leftforensic evidence at the scenes, and
that's that's what's gonna get him caught. But can we do something, you
know, to help identify potential suspectsto take DNA from. Of course,
this is back before they were doingor using the genetic genealogy. So the

(19:47):
thing I just said for the postpartis said, you have DNA, this
is probably your last chance to catchhim. Release everything, release all the
information everything that he stole, andprovide real detail on these items. Maybe
somebody saw it because he stole thingslike jewelry, and he stole weapons,

(20:07):
and he stole, you know,some items that were of value. So
put all that information out there isas descriptive as you can be. Put
out every comment he made, whetherwe believe those comments to be true,
like he claimed he was in themilitary, and he claimed certain you know,
living in certain areas and traveling andhaving a van and stuff like that.

(20:30):
So everything he claimed to be orsay to victims and the way that
he said it, Put all thatout there because maybe somebody will recognize the
language, or maybe somebody will recognize, Oh, I heard that phrase before
put out his profile, we're notlooking for you know, I felt like

(20:55):
he was portrayed. You know,he's he's a very very dangerous person,
but I thought he was sort ofmisportrayed as being this brazen, bold,
brave, confident guy when really whatthe analysis was telling me is that he's
not confident, he's insecure. Hefeels ineffective, and that's why he behaved

(21:22):
the way he did so over thetop, taking control, wanting to possess
people, wanting to possess other men'sfemale companions right when they're in the home,
because a lot of people would think, well, he must be really
brave if he's breaking into homes whenthere's another male present. I thought it
was quite the opposite. And Ithought everything that he portrayed to his victims

(21:47):
and tried to be was just thisfalse front and you know, almost the
ultimate over compensation to who he reallywas. And so I thought, putting
out the profile and what we wouldexpect him to be like in real everyday
life, maybe somebody that would triggersomebody to come forward and say, no,

(22:11):
this guy's kind of strange and heyou know. And the other thing
I thought was really important was thegeography of these crimes, and they're very
specific areas. So put out thedates and times of all the offenses in
his location and really highlight where hewas at specific times, like these years
he would have been in Sacramento,these years he had access to northern California,

(22:36):
these years he was down in southernCalifornia, And name all the towns
and cities that he offended in andmaybe somebody'll say, you know, he
was here in Sacramento and then hemoved here. So that was the investigative
suggestions, It was really not.I mean, I just think it was
kind of just like, just throweverything out there and see what happens.

(23:00):
And they made the FBI put outa video of some sort of public service
message with some of the information butnot all of the information. But ultimately
what caught him was the forensic geneticgenealogy. One of the things that you
came up with. And I understandthat some of the investigators did not agree

(23:22):
with you at the time, asyou thought it was likely that he had
been a police officer. Can youexplain why, how you reach that conclusion?
The reason why? So, Ithought he was likely at least trained
in law enforcement and potentially a policeofficer, because he's very tactical. He's
very good at what he did,and you know, for example, when

(23:44):
he would first enter the homes,he'd wake his victims up by shining a
flashlight, blinding them and shining aflashlight in their eyes, and that's a
law enforcement tactic. And I thought, okay, that's kind of, you
know, interesting. But the othereverything that really made me think that he
had some kind of potentially law enforcementtraining and firearms training is because he was

(24:07):
very effective at using firearms. Hewhen he was confronted by a competent male
and and he didn't have complete control. What he did is he escalated directly
to deadly force and he shot andkilled his victims. And he did this

(24:29):
in almost every every occasion where hewas going to have to, you know,
have a physical confrontation with another man. And he was very good at
it. He was very you know, he was a good shot. He
you know, he didn't miss theonly time he missed somebody was when he

(24:49):
shot it a police officer and Viceliaright before the right before he left and
went up to Sacramento, and heshot his flashlight and just by the grace
of God, the police officer survived. So I thought, okay, he's
had some training in law enforcement.And he was stealing weapons as well.

(25:10):
He was stealing weapons and guns outof home. So like this is somebody's
very familiar with firearms, very comfortablewith firearms. He can escalate right to
deadly force, and he's very accurate, and he kills his victims. So
those things combined as well as justhis ability to escape and sort of seemed

(25:36):
to have this sense of where thepolice where they were doing surveillance where they
weren't. I don't know if hehad access at the time to communications,
but that led me to believe hemight be a police officer. And I
don't think that anyone necessarily disagreed withthe assessment. I think that there were

(25:57):
some concerns that it was was overstatingit. Perhaps I should tone it down
just a little bit, and soI in my formal report I said that
he likely had some sort of formalfirearms training in some capacity. So and
I was okay with that. Ididn't think that that really made a difference.

(26:17):
I mean, most of the detectivesthat I spoke with knew that I
thought he might be a police officer, and there were several other detectives that
also thought the same thing. Andyou were correct. It turned out to
be he had been a police officer. He had been and during the time
he was offending and Visalia, hehad been a police officer in a town

(26:40):
right close by an Exeter and thenhe went up and he was a police
officer in Auburn, which is inthe Sacramento area, and he was ultimately
fired because he got caught shoplifting.And it was really around this time which
is interesting to look back and inhindsight around this time that he was down
in southern California and things just sortof seemed to be going wrong for him.

(27:02):
He's been fired from the police department, he had a couple of really
near misses where victims they got outof their bindings and he had to kill
them immediately, and so things werejust kind of all going wrong for him.
And this is about the point intime where he escalated to, you
know, the ultimate control over hisvictims by by killing them in the end.

(27:25):
So yeah, so that that wasthat was really interesting to find out
he really had been a police officers. I think I was even surprised myself.
I'm like, oh, wow,well that makes sense, Caroline.
You had asked what was you know, what we said and what was right
and maybe what you know I canalso kind of point out where I think
I missed a bit. But interms of his personality traits and his characteristics,

(27:52):
I mean, we really felt likethis was a very insecure, ineffective
individual who can't handle stress very well. And so when he was brought into
court, he was in a wheelchairand he was perfectly fine. I mean,
when they were when the detectives priorto his arrest were doing surveillance,
I guess he was out on amotorcycle and he was very physically fit in

(28:15):
doing you know, work around thehouse. And then when he was arrested,
he pretty much, I would say, just kind of imploded and you
know, didn't communicate and almost seemedlike he was not understanding what was going
on around him. So when Isaw him, you know, I wasn't

(28:37):
surprised by that. I thought thatwas actually the truest version of Joe DeAngelo.
That's that's the real hymn. That'swhat happens when he doesn't have complete
control over everything he can, hecan't handle it. You know, if
you think about it, it seemslike he had an extreme reaction to the

(28:59):
arrest and not willing to walk inaccord and appearing to be a very you
know, confused, old decrepit man. That's that's really who he is.
He's this very insecure individual, andit's it's so bad that he compensated for

(29:22):
that by taking complete control over people'slives, breaking into their homes, rummaging
through all their belongings, sexually assaultingthe female victims, and in the presence
of their male companions and you know, possessing them for hours at a time.
This person is in extreme need tobe in control, and when things

(29:48):
do not go his way, hecan't handle it. And another thing that
is stuck out to me is thatwhen he seemed to be under stress when
things weren't going according to plan inone case and by Celia, somebody followed
him, saw him and thought,oh, that's that might be the ransacker,
and they followed him. He startedmumbling to himself. And some of

(30:11):
the victims in these cases, whenhe would be going through their homes,
they would hear him mumbling to himselfand talking to himself, and I thought
this was a real characteristic. Ididn't think this was part of his show
to appear stronger and tougher than hewas. I thought this was something that
was really part of his personality andthat people would know who knew him would

(30:34):
recognize that, Yeah, he mumblesand talks to himself and curses to himself
when he's under stressed or not happy. But I thought that was probably a
real characteristic, not something he wasnot an impression he was trying to leave
on his victims. And you knowit turned out. You know some interviews

(30:56):
that were done with people that knewhim, is that he would behave that
way when things weren't going his way, so to speak. Find Jodi is

(31:30):
a nonprofit run by volunteers with amission of keeping Jody's unsolved case in the
spotlight. Anyone with information about Jody'scase can reach out to the Mason City
Police Departments. Information can also beprovided to the Iowa Department of Criminal Investigations.
You can also contact Find Jodi anonymouslyif you prefer don't sit in silence.

(31:53):
The time to talk is now.For the entire finds Jodi team,
I'm Scott Fold. Thank you forlistening.