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When he breaks into a home and he shines a flashlight into people's eyes.

He witnesses the fear on their faces.

He runs a knife along their skin.

He presses the muzzle of a gun against someone's head.

Welcome to Very Scary People. I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

He was a ruthless predator, a remorseless serial rapist, and a killer

brutal rampage.

He took down his prey with the cold eye of a professional, hunting in the pre

-dawn hours, catching his victims asleep in bed.

He was a living nightmare who rushed out of the darkness to attack, then

disappeared back into the shadows.

For more than 40 years, no one could figure out who he was.

But the Golden State Killer left key evidence behind.

And when police finally put a name and a face to this Phantom of the Night, the

mystery of how he got away with his crimes for so long would end in a

reveal.

This is part one of The Golden State Killer.

The worst thing is not knowing, not knowing when the rapist will strike

not knowing if you'll be his next victim.

Hope that he gets caught before he gets to you.

The Golden State Killer is frightening to so many of us because he's a very

violent sex offender.

Most of the rapists at that time that we knew of, they were there for the

satisfaction of the sex.

The Golden State Killer, he was there.

because of the terror he wanted to put in people.

He showed us who he really was, an extremely angry person who essentially

women.

In 1976, I was 30 years old, and I was happily married.

My husband was the captain in the Air Force at McClellan Air Force Base. I was

also in the Air Force Reserve as a flight nurse.

October 5, 1976.

Jane Carson's husband leaves for work at about 6 .30 in the morning.

My little three -year -old had just climbed in bed with me for a nice

Suddenly, just a few minutes later... The next thing I saw was

the light shining down the hall.

And then there was this man standing in front of the bed with a ski mask on.

and a large knife in his hand.

And the minute I screamed, he said, I'll kill everything in the house.

He gagged us both.

He blindfolded us both.

And he tied us up.

And then the next thing I know, he had some kind of cloth that he began ripping

in a very ritualistic manner.

I'm thinking, oh my God, is he going to hang us?

That was so scary.

Jay's son was just a toddler at the time.

He took my son away.

My heart was just pounding out of my chest.

What did you do with my son? Where did you put him?

Then he untied my ankles, and then I knew what he was there for.

I don't remember anything about the rape.

My whole attention was, where's my son?

That was what's so terrifying.

He did move my son back next to me.

If I hear you move, if I hear anything, I'm going to come back and kill you.

He would actually stay in the house for hours.

He's going into the fridge.

He's going to go in my kitchen and eat something after he just raped me.

Not only does he possess the victims, he possesses their belongings. He

possesses their house.

I knew that I just needed to wait until I didn't hear anything to know that he

was gone.

I was able to get my blindfold down just a little bit, and then I could look at

my son. And I just remember hugging him and just thanking God that my little guy

was still there with me.

I was a detective in the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department.

Jane was at a neighbor's house, and I met her there, and I took her to the

hospital. I would sob and sob and sob because of what had just happened.

After the rape, I was looking over my shoulder all the time at any male that I

came in contact with.

I didn't know if he was going to come back.

Oh, my goodness.

I overate. I didn't wear makeup. I isolated.

I decided that maybe I could medicate myself with alcohol, and I became very

ill.

I'd be walking down the street and getting the urge and picking out a house

going in there and...

You know, perpetrating an attack or what's behind it?

We had five cases that all had the same method of operation.

He was entering the homes either through an unlocked door or had forced his way

in and always confronting the victims in bed, shining a flashlight in their

eyes. He had a ski mask on.

He's saying the same things to the victims.

Shut up. All I want is food and money.

He always had a weapon, a knife.

The gun, we knew that we had one single person doing these crimes.

We've got a serial rapist, and this is a bad guy.

From June 1976 to December of 1977, there were 28 attacks.

And he attacked twice in the same 24 -hour period of time.

We responded to one rape, and next thing we know, we're turning around and we're

at another crime scene.

We need to do everything we can to stop him.

What is happening is he is prowling a neighborhood.

Reconnaissance and tracking, surveillance, stalking.

He was looking through windows. He was following people home, watching the

to see who came and went.

He knows when the trash man comes. He knows when the milkman comes.

He's already got an escape route planned that would avoid law enforcement's

response. He's crisscrossing like a spider doing a web.

so that he never comes and goes from the same direction.

Some of these rape victims were repeatedly raped, just act after act

Each thing that this person did is a separate crime.

We're seeing this guy for what he is. He's a predator. He's hunting human

beings. There probably was no other series of cases that were as

horrific as the East Area rape.

He came running right down the sidewalk and he looked up and saw me standing

right here.

In October of 1976, 30 -year -old mother Jane Carson is sexually attacked by a

serial rapist in her own home.

Her mysterious attacker goes on to commit one brutal sexual assault after

another. The same incredible, absolutely unbelievable brazenness that is so

often characterized as work before, the East Area Rapist is once again struck in

precisely the same neighborhood that has been his target so many times before.

There were other sexual offenders and predators out there, but nobody really

captured the sort of collective imagination and fear.

as what we called the East Area Rapist. So what will you do now?

Have a dog in the house, a big dog.

The victims were very consistent in describing a white male, somewhere

'8 to 5 '10, reasonably athletic build, 160 to 180 pounds.

We knew he had a size 9 foot from the footprints.

We got all sorts of eye color, blue, green, brown.

We didn't have that much to go on.

But police gathered 11 different descriptions from witnesses who had seen

unmasked suspect as he fled several different crime scenes.

He came running, running right down the sidewalk.

And he looked up and he saw me standing right here.

The witness made a sketch of the fleeing man's face in the minutes after seeing

him close up.

I'm an art student and I drew out.

A picture of him standing next to the tree as I saw him, and I drew a picture

him running down front and back.

But investigators were not able to positively identify a suspect from that

sketch.

Nothing they did seemed to be able to stop this person. He just kept going and

going.

And then he targets a 13 -year -old schoolgirl named Margaret Wardlow.

My parents were divorced.

And I was living with my mom. My mom was a single parent.

She's living in a two -story structure that backed up to the levee to the

American River.

I was only 13 years old.

I never considered the fact that I might become a victim.

It's very possible he's just wandering along the levee looking into houses and

sees Margaret and decides, you know what, I'll take the risk, but I think I

get away with it.

I went to bed fairly early, and I was awoken with a flashlight in my face.

And it didn't take me very long to realize that it was these air rapists.

I was blindfolded. I was gagged.

My hands and feet were both tied.

The mother was in another bedroom, and the rapist went in there and tied her

bound her and gagged her.

There's no question the East Area Rapist really got off on inflicting fear.

Everything that he said was in this harsh whisper.

Do you want to die? Do you want me to kill your mother? And I realized it

at that very moment.

He's going to rape me.

This is not just about the rape. This is about causing incredible fear and

exhibiting a rage.

After we realized that he had gone, my mom started screaming out for the

neighbor to come.

And he came over with a shotgun.

And then the neighbor's wife came in and untied me.

My mom was in shock after what happened.

My mom took it really, really hard.

My role was to be there to interview the victims as soon as possible

after the rape had occurred.

I was hoping that they wouldn't catch this guy.

A man downtown calls the police department and says, I know the identity

East Area Rapist.

And the officer that they dispatched to take that report is Joe D 'Angelo.

D 'Angelo writes nothing in the report about what the man says, just the

HBD has been drinking, and closes the vial.

After a stint in the military, Joseph DeAngelo got his degree in criminal

justice and joined the men and women in blue.

He moves to Exeter and becomes a police officer for three years.

There was a huge increase in burglary, and the department was really struggling

to find the culprit.

He was very proud whenever he wore a uniform.

DeAngelo was kept busy on patrol, but on off hours he had a seemingly

traditional home life as a family man.

Joe D 'Angelo and Sharon got married in 1973.

We call her Sherry. They were happy together.

Joe's childhood friend Judy Schneider and her parents were Joe's very special

guests at the wedding.

When you look at the wedding picture, you can see the pride in Joe's face. You

can see the pride in my parents' face.

And the strong bond D 'Angelo shared with Judy and her family grew as Joe

a father.

They'd come out here to the house all the time and visit Mom and Dad, bring

babies. They were very proud parents.

His wife was in law school at the time.

My sister and I, you know, would go out and babysit because then we found out,

well, Joe would help put in her through school.

He worked nights.

Joe would be fixing dinner or paying bills, shopping.

He was doing all that so that she could have the time to go to school and not be

disturbed with other stuff.

The women he was attracted to were very strong women, very outgoing.

This is not a man who surrounded himself with meek women.

In 1976, Mr. D 'Angelo relocates to another Sacramento area police agency,

Auburn Police Department.

When he's in Auburn, he begins not only as a patrolman, but he is at the bottom

of the rung. And he is sent out to take a report of a broken manhole cover or

barking dogs. This is the lowest of the low policing, but he never...

takes initiative to try to rise above that. He remains on patrol.

I talked with Chief Nick Willick. I initially called him up and asked him if

remembered a Joe D 'Angelo. He goes, oh, yeah, I was his sergeant. Joe D 'Angelo

was not a very good law enforcement officer.

He was not really popular among the officers.

They did send something in him that did not seem to allow him to fit in to the

ranks.

He liked the trappings of being a police officer. He liked the power, the

control, wearing a gun.

You think that you're safe because your husband is in bed alone with you?

You think he can protect you?

The East Area Rapist is different.

He terrorizes his victim.

He's now calling the victims after he's attacked them and letting them know he's

still around.

I'm still here.

I'll kill you.

I'll kill you.

He likes that fear.

The problem is no one knows where or when he'll strike again.

The East Area Rapist seemed to know.

Everything that we were doing.

We knew that he was reading the newspaper.

He has never been caught in a home where there was a man present.

I'll show you.

I'll show you who I am.

Joanne Miao and her husband lived in the city of San Jose.

I was a nurse at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto.

I also wanted to start a family.

December 2nd, 1978, you have Joanne and her husband asleep in their bed when a

masked man with a gun comes in.

I woke up to a flashlight in my eyes and this guy yelling, I have a gun.

I screamed at the top of my lungs.

He ordered Joanne to tie up her husband and then he tied up Joanne by her wrist

and her ankle.

He brought that gun to my head.

I thought this was going to be it.

And then he got a plate and he put it on the back of my husband.

And he said, if these plates fall, I will hear it and I will kill you.

He took Joanne into the living room and raped her multiple times.

I just kept on saying to myself that you're not going to get me.

You either survive or you don't.

I heard the refrigerator open and then him crying.

The victims report that the offender, usually after the sexual assault, would

kind of isolate himself and they'd hear him crying.

My mommy's making me do it.

What's going on with this guy?

Clearly he has some deep -seated issues from childhood that are behind these

attacks.

Finally, I couldn't hear anything. So then I got up, and somehow I was able to

dial zero to get the police.

I went to the hospital.

They didn't have rape kits or counseling services.

My husband and I really never talked about what happened to us that night.

I wasn't allowed to talk about it.

which I don't think was good for me.

Joanne held back powerful emotions.

Tension and a lot of grief and shame and guilt, but mostly grief.

About a year into the East Area rapist attacks, Sacramento detectives get a

from a police department in Visalia, California.

They think they have a potential lead.

Visalia experienced a rash of residential burglaries.

About 120 cases.

It was a streak of alarming home invasions from 1974 to 1975, ending just

months before the start of the East Area Rapist in Sacramento.

They called him the Visalia Ransacker.

And police felt he had a number of similarities to the East Area Rapist.

Visalia Ransacker evolve and become the Sacramento Rapist?

It was a theory. A good theory.

It was about the same height, same weight.

Both offenders ransacked and burglarized.

The Visalia ransacker would go into the homes. When people were away from the

homes, they would come home and find their house completely ransacked.

Items were pulled out of the drawers, out of the cabinets, strewn on the bed.

There is a sexual component to these burglaries.

He would take out bra and panties and lay it out on the bed.

Almost anatomically, like a person was laying there.

He was masturbating inside the home.

This pattern does fit the evolution of a serial rapist. Somebody doesn't wake up

one day and just become a very experienced predator.

This behavior starts at a much earlier age.

An offender learns over time how to commit crimes.

how to break in without being caught.

What kind of a weapon do I need to bring with me?

So they get better and better.

If these serial crimes were perpetrated by one lone predator, police now had

something deeply troubling to worry about, an evolving angry sex predator

sinister urge to commit murder.

He witnesses the fear on their faces.

You can think about him witnessing these women's reactions to seeing their

husbands or boyfriends killed.

He would have enjoyed that.

Welcome back to Very Scary People. I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

The East Area Rapist has been playing a haunting game of catch me if you can

with investigators while he continues his reign of terror in Sacramento.

But after committing dozens of rapes, he mysteriously vanishes, leaving

frustrated law enforcement agents to wonder if the East Area Rapist is gone

good or if he will return one day as a killer.

They shut our task force down.

And even though we were told, let it go, we couldn't.

That was the hardest part for me to deal with, that there was no closure.

With an offender like this, and I've seen it with psychopathic individuals,

get bored with what they are doing, and they ratchet it up.

And they take on new challenges.

The biggest fear for me was that my next call was going to be a homicide call.

We had so much fear that this man was ready to kill.

Approximately three months after the East Area Rapist had his last attack in

Northern California, a series of homicides begins in Southern California.

And women and couples start being killed in their beds.

The killer was somebody who could blend into these upscale communities.

The couples that were being targeted were in no way related to crime.

They had no enemies.

Dr. Robert Opperman, who was an orthopedic surgeon.

Dr. Deborah Manning was a psychologist.

Lyman Smith was a former DA.

Charlene Smith was his wife.

She was running her own home -based business, selling different types of

jewelry.

Manuela Whithun, a loan officer, was raped and murdered in her home.

Keith and Patty Harrington, a young medical student and a nurse.

It's very scary because there's really no clue, nothing left behind about who

the offender is that's committing these crimes.

As this terrifying new serial killer emerges in Southern California.

Joseph D 'Angelo has been an Auburn police officer for three years.

Auburn is located right outside of the city of Sacramento.

That part of his career ended when he was caught stealing.

D 'Angelo was arrested for shoplifting dog repellent and the hammer.

It was a very stupid thing to do.

It's what happened afterward in apprehending this man that has kind of

mind of the deputies who are taking the report.

When two sheriff's deputies arrive at the store, they're surprised to find the

clerks have tied D 'Angelo up in a chair.

He's faked a heart attack.

He began ranting and acting crazy and insane.

And then when the deputies arrive, he says he's got a head injury.

The clerks leave the room. The Insanity Act stops.

The deputies are so concerned of what they've just witnessed that they call

Auburn. That's why he loses his job instantly.

Not because of the hammer, but because of what happened in the arrest.

And so the process to terminate was underway.

There is an internal affairs investigation.

No longer be a police officer. He's been terminated. He's been shamed in that

community, whether it's from the termination or there's something else

in his life at that point in time. He still has that anger. He is mad at his

circumstances. So what does he do?

I'm the surviving daughter of Sherry Domingo, who was one of the murdered

victims in the Golden State Killer case.

My mom met Greg when she was newly divorced.

She was a single mom on a budget. What really made Greg attractive was his

personality. Greg was just so down to earth.

The relationship between me and my mom was really complex.

As a teenager, I had already started to desire kind of that independence.

I was 15 at the time, just a few weeks before my 16th birthday. Mom and I had

been arguing a lot that summer.

I had had this argument with my mom on the phone. I had yelled at her, I don't

have to comply with your rules anymore. I'll just go wherever I want.

And I disappeared.

The next day, I got another phone call, and it was from my mom's best friend.

The tone of her voice convinced me that...

maybe there was something important enough that I really did need to come

Over the years, my mom and Greg would be together, and then they would break up,

and they would be together again and on again, off again.

But when I saw Greg's car, for some reason, I got this little glimmer. I

thought, oh, man, if Greg's here, everything's going to be okay. I said, I

to see my mom. I want to see Greg. And finally, somebody said, no, you can't go

in. It's too messy.

They were in a downstairs bedroom and in bed. The offender appeared to have

gained access to the house by opening a bathroom window.

There were deep shoe impressions in one specific spot in the

bathroom carpet, which would indicate that he stood in that particular spot

a very, very long period of time.

The door that led into the bedroom was a little bit warped, so when the door

opened, it made a scraping noise. We believe that it was probably that that

Greg the ability to get to his feet and lunge at the offender as he made entry

into the bedroom.

Greg had to go into fight mode to try and save his own life and my mother's.

Greg actually got shot through the left cheek. It was a non -fatal wound.

It was enough of a blow that dropped Mr. Sanchez to his knees.

If I close my eyes, I can picture that bedroom, and I can picture Greg fighting

for his life.

At that point, I think it's probably when he went and tied my mother.

Her legs were pulled up behind her, and the wrist and ankle bound together

behind her back.

Sherry was killed by multiple blows to the head.

In the midst of this... He's constantly having to go back and deal with Greg.

It looks like he probably rushed the offender and gets shot again.

He goes crumpled down in the closet.

And that is where he died and was found deceased.

How was he able to...

commit these very violent acts and then walk away and presumably have a lot of

blood on them and not have people notice.

Working in these cases takes over your life. It gets in your mind. I still to

this day can't take a shower without someone else in the house.

I don't like to put my head back.

with my eyes closed, the shower running over my ears because I can't hear what's

happening.

That changed me.

Women and couples start being killed, usually by bludgeoning, sometimes by

getting shot.

And it was one offender, a serial killer.

He fed off of their terror.

And the more terrifying he was, the more...

He enjoyed what he was doing.

He stalked people at night. In Santa Barbara County, a detective there said

a night stalker.

And he was raping and murdering them.

By that point in time, there was already a night stalker known as Richard

Ramirez. So they called him the original night stalker.

The way he is eliminating the victims through blunt force trauma is an

brutal way to kill anyone.

He was able to escape.

He disappeared for the next five years.

No one's sure why there was no homicide between 1981 and 1986.

There could be some very logical reasons.

It takes a lot of strength and physical fitness to commit a murder, to break

into somebody's home. And so there could have been the aging process, but the

urges. who continued to do what he was doing, were probably still there.

And then, I believe, somehow, some way, he sees Janelle, and he can't help

himself.

Janelle Cruz, my older sister by one year, she was 18 and I was 17.

She was like Marilyn Monroe.

She could walk down the road, and guys would just be...

staring at her.

She was actually getting ready to go to college.

She was looking forward to a lot of different things.

Janelle Cruz happened to be home alone.

Her family ended up doing a vacation down in Mexico.

She had a friend, a male friend, over to the house.

We know what happened because he lived to tell about it.

They were listening to music. They did hear noises.

They disregarded those noises as maybe it was a cat outside.

So they closed the shutters and continued listening to music.

Janelle's house backed up to a park, and there's a low wall that separates that

park to her rear yard.

It appears that he ends up getting into her house through a sliding door at the

rear of the house.

At that point in time, the young man decided, it's getting late, I better

That was about 11 .15 in the evening. He left.

And not too much later, she was fighting for her life.

At midnight, another one of our friends had returned a phone call, and Janelle

never answered.

Hours later, the body of Janelle Cruz was found in her bedroom.

Janelle showed evidence that she had previously been bound, but the bindings

been removed.

He didn't leave her tied up for the investigators to find.

He was trying to throw them off.

The difference of Janelle Cruz's case was that it was more violent than the

others. The offender not only bludgeoned her by the back of the head, he had

bludgeoned her in the forehead.

Across the bridge of her nose, she swallowed her teeth.

She's the one victim where the offender hit her in the face. He's face -to -face

with her versus the other victims who were always face -down.

There's a reason he's doing this.

Firing a gun is noisy. He knew he's in an affluent neighborhood.

Gunshots are not normal.

Bludgeoning is quieter.

The offender is progressing.

What has caused that level of anger, or has it actually been elevated to hatred?

Because hatred and anger are not the same emotion. And if you hate someone,

you're able to turn them into an object.

She was depersonalized by him, which does suggest that he hated her.

Janelle had been raped before she was killed.

The way in which Janelle Crew's body was found...

One arm was located raised slightly above her head. I believe this indicates

that she fought back against the offender, was able to flip over, and was

fighting with him.

And that's what haunts me all the time, is just how she died.

I still live my life in fear because I didn't know who killed Janelle, so I

didn't know if they were watching me or following me.

What made it more terrifying is what if one day they decide to flip that switch

again and go back to their violent tendencies? That is scary.

People that are involved in serial sexual murder don't go home at night and

regret what they did.

They enjoy hunting for human beings. They enjoy wrapping them up in ligatures

and sexually assaulting them.

To you and me, that sounds horrific.

They don't care.

In 1986, the homicide of Janelle Crude was the last known original Night

murder. How does this guy keep getting away?

How is he evading everybody?

Maybe something else is going to happen that's going to cause him to commit a

different type of crime.

And get caught. But it just never happened.

They're chasing ghosts.

So now time goes by. You start losing a little bit of hope.

Years pass.

And the cases go cold.

I felt like he was out there watching.

Everything going on.

As the case went cold.

Joseph DeAngelo settled into a routine life of work and family.

In 1986, Joseph DeAngelo and his wife Sharon welcomed their second daughter.

A third daughter would follow a few years later.

They would have these weekend family movie nights.

But by the early 1990s, his marriage had fallen apart.

Joe's house was directly behind ours.

My family kind of... referred to him as Mr. Mom because Joe had raised his

three daughters, from what I could tell, mostly on his own.

He saw that his daughters had whatever they wanted, horse riding lessons,

skating lessons.

Maybe he was trying to compensate for the family he didn't have as a child.

The kids seemed really happy.

I've known Joe since I was 14.

When he asked me if I could babysit, I said, yeah, sure.

He would never say why or where he was going.

He would just go.

He was never dressed up like he was going out for dinner.

He just seemed to always wear a T -shirt.

He never seemed like happy or sad when he came back. He was just very much

business as usual.

He was always building things.

He built them a pool, and he built them a shaded area for the pool.

He ultimately gets a job as a truck mechanic.

At a local grocery distribution center. Save Mart.

I started in 1993 as a driver, and Joe was a very good mechanic.

He had a good work ethic. He could fix just about anything on the trailer.

Joe became close friends with one of his co -workers.

I've been to his house. I've met his family.

He was a compassionate person.

We went out three or four times a week sometimes.

He was a happy fisherman. He would love to catch fish.

Can you imagine when it was in action and it was blasting them frickin' guns

shit?

Fabulous.

But while one minute he was friendly Joe D 'Angelo, in the next minute, he could

show a much more explosive side of himself.

Being curious little kids, you would sometimes look through the fence flats

see in other people's backyards.

He was the scary man on the other side of the fence that used to yell a lot.

He would yell at us to get away from the fence and stop looking at him. We were

always told to kind of avoid him by our parents.

His girls were swimming in the pool, and he said, make sure that you stay in the

shady part of the pool.

And so just to kind of mess with their dad, one of the girls put their arm in

the sunny spot and said, Look, Dad, I'm in the sun.

And he just turned around and exploded at the girl and said, I told you, get in

the shade.

Get out of the sun.

It's not okay.

And it was just this really huge overreaction.

Something just started to feel not right.

The house was just very sparse.

And it just kind of had this sad feeling to it.

There wasn't a lot of pictures.

Everything was very brown.

The kitchen was empty.

Most notably was the fridge. There was like a gallon of milk and ketchup and

like a jar of pickles.

His fishing buddy witnessed Joe's instant fury in a disturbing act of road

We were on our way to the lake and a gentleman cut us off.

Joe. Ran up to the gentleman's truck, pounded on his window.

He was hollering at the guy.

He said he would have snatched his eyes out of his eye socket.

But even that was not as disturbing as Joe's admission to hearing voices.

There was one time he asked me, do you hear things?

I was like, excuse me?

He said, do you ever hear things?

And we really didn't get into it. I said, no, I don't.

I thought it was very strange at the time he asked me that.

We were dealing with somebody who was very intelligent. He would see what was

happening, so he had all of this information.

He was always steps ahead of me.

I was of the opinion he was dead. And then to learn that not only is he not

deceased, but he's living a stone's throw away from

myself and, you know, still in this community, was very jarring.

I decide I'm going boots on the ground where this guy was living.

Someday in the future, he will die in prison.

After more than 40 years, over 50 rapes, 13 murders, and countless dead ends,

there's a stunning break in the case.

Investigators are finally closing in on this brutal and elusive serial rapist

and killer.

To take down the Golden State Killer.

In part two.

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

Thanks for watching.

Good night.

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