Original subtitles

[Sinister, troubling music]

[Intriguing music]

[Michael] In 1979, as abruptly as it began,

the rapes and terror in Sacramento stopped.

But in sunny, beautiful Santa Barbara,

a whole new wave of murder and rape was about to begin

in ways that no one could imagine.

[Sombre music]

[Jim] When Joe got fired at Auburn PD.

My sister Sharon, his wife,

had to take up the slack and become the main breadwinner.

She graduated school.

She became a lawyer and gets a job in the Los Angeles Center.

Joe and Sharon sold the house in Auburn.

He moved to Long Beach with her.

[Dark music builds]

At the same time that they've moved,

there's a botched attack in Goleta,

a small town to the west of santa Barbara.

And the MO as it turns out, was almost identical

to that of the East Area Rapist in Sacramento.

My name is Kim Stewart,

and I was a detective for the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office.

[Troubling music]

It was a breaking in in the middle of the night

to an unmarried couple.

The suspect ties up the male.

He put dishes on the male so that if he heard it fall,

he knew something was amiss.

So almost immediately,

you can see pieces of his East area MO

down in Southern California.

He takes the woman to another room, drank a beer,

had some food.

The woman was able to free herself.

She ran from the house screaming,

and it was at that moment that their neighbor,

an FBI agent, was driving up in his car.

And the assailant takes off on a bicycle, of all things,

and gets away.

[Tense music]

[Michael] It was a close call for DeAngelo, too close.

In fact, from that point on,

he's not going to leave any of his victims alive.

[Dramatic music]

On the 30th of December, 1979,

also in Goleta, a gruesome double homicide is reported.

The murder of Robert Offerman and Alexandria Manning.

My name is Investigator Larry Pool.

I was the case agent

for the Golden State Killer investigation.

In that case, he enters the residence, forced entry.

He confronts the victims in the room,

throws twine to Alexandria Manning,

has her tie up Robert Offerman.

We believe she had the presence of mind

to tie his ligatures too loosely.

And then he subsequently binds her hands behind her back

and her ankles together.

When she's being tied up,

this affords Mr. Offerman the opportunity to break free

of his ligatures.

He's trying to get to his feet and around the bed.

And as he does this...

[Gunshots]

he's met with several rounds.

Mr. Offerman falls to the foot of the bed where he dies.

The offender has discharged

a firearm multiple times at about two in the morning.

He needs to get out of there.

This is why he does not appear

to sexually assault Alexandria Manning.

So he shoots her, and then he leaves the scene.

[Dark music]

I learned from interviews with detectives in Santa Barbara

that they had been invited to a meeting in the Bay Area

regarding the East Area rapes.

And I was told two of them went, a sergeant and a detective,

and came back saying,

"This isn't related to anything in Santa Barbara."

But it was two to three in the morning.

You're using the same point of entry.

He would bring pre-cut cords.

They were not even marginally different.

They were exactly alike.

There were, I think, a litany of missed opportunities

on these cases from the very beginning.

[Michael] Three months after the murders in Goleta,

there is a double homicide in Ventura,

about 40 miles south of Santa Barbara.

[Pensive music]

My name is Jennifer Carroll, and the Golden State Killer

is responsible for the death of my father and my stepmother.

When I was 13, my parents ended up getting divorced,

so I was just with my brothers and my mom.

My dad was not really a dad.

He wasn't really into being a dad.

He was very much focused on his career

and where he needed to be.

[Sombre, pensive music]

On that evening, Lyman and Charlene Smith

were attacked in their home.

What the offender did in that case

was wood pile outside the home used for firewood.

He picks up a log, enters the home,

encounters the victims in the bedroom.

He binds them with drapery cord.

Charlene is raped and they're bludgeoned to death

with the log from the wood pile, and he leaves.

My brother, Gary, is 12 years old and had a job,

a weekly job of going up and mowing my dad's lawn.

[Ominous music]

He went to the front door and it opened.

That was unusual.

And then he heard the sound of an electronic alarm clock.

And it didn't make any sense.

And he followed it back to the bedroom

and that's when he saw dad and his stepmom dead.

[Alarm blaring over sinister music]

It's interesting because my dad and I didn't have

a good relationship, but I feel like this case

and catching his killer,

my dad and I were finally on the same team.

I don't know if it ever would have happened

if he had been alive, but we finally were fighting

for the same thing and we were on the same side of the table.

And that, that's what I keep with me.

That's huge.

Same with Charlene.

They're both with me now.

[Sorrowful music]

[Larry] The offender in that case, bludgeoned them

without covering their heads.

There was blood splatter on various parts of the room,

and no doubt, the offender got blood on himself.

He learned that this is not something that he should do

if he wants to continue to evade detection.

So, he evolves.

[Tense music builds]

Just south of LA, in Laguna Beach,

he broke into the home of Patrice and Keith Harrington.

Patrice was raped,

and they were bludgeoned to death with an unknown object.

This time, he did cover their heads before striking them.

Six months later,

DeAngelo struck again at the house of Manuela Witthuhn.

She was raped.

She was bound and she was bludgeoned

and that caused her death.

[Michael] July 27, 1981,

he struck one more time, this time back in Goleta.

Sherry Domingo has a boyfriend over.

That's Greg Sanchez.

The suspect shoots him, sexually assaults Sherry.

He covers her head with a blanket and then bludgeons her,

and then he leaves the scene.

[Sombre music]

[Paige] After killing nine people in a 24-month period

down in Southern California, the slayings stop.

In his own personal life,

DeAngelo has seen the birth of his first child.

He doesn't like his picture being taken, never did.

[Nostalgic music]

Joe and Sharon together at Mom's house,

and this was in like 1980 or so.

[Pensive music]

They had their first child in 1981

and then they had two more following later, all girls.

Joe was a very good father.

He loved his kids.

Almost a doting father, you know?

[Bryanna] How could this be?

This person is seemingly normal, living a suburban life

as a father, but at the same time,

he's this horrible, sadistic killer and rapist.

I think he was just very good at compartmentalizing.

For us, it was so unthinkable.

But for somebody that has no shame, no remorse,

thinks what they're doing is fine,

the only thing that they don't want is to get caught.

[Michael] So little is known

about what he was doing during that time.

Could he have been committing other crimes elsewhere?

I think it's important to look at DeAngelo's movements

during this time.

[Pensive music]

Around that time as their marriage went on,

he was not happy with the relationship so much,

so he bought the house in Citrus Heights.

He was working on that house,

and he may have had some temporary jobs in there

while he did this.

At the same time,

Sharon and the children, they were in Long Beach.

So he was commuting on so many weekends a month.

[Troubling music]

[Brad] In December 82,

he called me and asked if I would go with him down south

and help load up the rest of the items in the house.

He would be coming from up north, stop and pick me up

and drop me back home on the return trip.

I never asked what he was doing.

From what I had seen,

I believed he'd been doing some kind of security work somewhere.

My name is Richard Speaks.

And in 1983, I worked here at the Holiday Inn South,

Sacramento, as a security guard with Joe DeAngelo.

We worked from 9pm till five in the morning,

walking around this place.

One night in 1983,

I was sent to replace Joe DeAngelo

because he'd been a creep to some of the ladies.

One of the jobs here is to escort the ladies to their car,

and they're asking anybody else to do it other than him.

I remember my impression of him was that he was kind of cocky

and worldly, and a bit of a know-it-all.

And then we're sitting in his car having coffee

in a big station wagon.

And I remember thinking, he seems very neat,

but there's something about his car

that makes me think he lives in it.

There was a sleeping bag in there, a bag of laundry,

maybe a few fast food containers.

It had a look of a car that's, you've been in there a lot.

I was reading about the Zodiac at the time.

[Archive] The killer who calls himself Zodiac.

I might have even had the book with me.

[Archive] There's no specific person

that we suspect at this time.

We started talking about the Zodiac

and all the unsolved murders and how intriguing it was.

And he kind of leaned over and he goes,

"You remember the East Area Rapist?"

[Dark music]

Like 'Oh my god, that guy was terrifying.'

But he never killed anybody, as far as I know.

He went, "Yeah, he did."

He goes, "Oh, god, he's got more victims than the Zodiac

and Jack the Ripper combined."

He said, "He's killing people in Southern California.

He's traveling south."

I was getting slightly creeped out during that conversation.

I remember thinking about it driving home.

That was weird.

And I remember I was thinking, 'Oh, is he him? Is he him?'

I thought it.

But I went back and forth and I talked myself out of it.

And it makes me sick...

because I got it wrong.

[Sinister music]

[Bryanna] This dormant period where it seems like

he all of a sudden just stopped,

I'd be shocked if that was the case.

I think what really happened is he changed his MO,

or he went to a new location, and those crimes

just haven't been attributed to DeAngelo yet.

[Michael] We know that D'Angelo bought his house

in Citrus Heights in 1980.

We also know that his wife and child are living

in Southern California at the same time.

Is he traveling between the two?

There are a number of unsolved murders on the route

from Sacramento to Southern California during that time.

John and Christoria Bilkei, Orangevale, California.

Jenny Claire Campbell, Rancho Cordova.

Edward Boruk, Sacramento.

Claudia Bush, murdered in Visalia.

If so, this dormant period between the official timeline

needs to be looked at again.

[Intriguing music]

On the 4th of May, 1986,

in Irvine, California, the official hiatus stops.

DeAngelo strikes again.

[Larry] The murder of Janelle Cruz.

This victim is found face up.

She was sexually assaulted.

Her head is covered.

She received numerous blows to the face.

Numerous teeth were knocked out.

Janelle swallowed some teeth.

And according to the official reports,

that's DeAngelo's last crime.

Was it?

My name's Michael Cordua, and I believe

that my mom was a victim of the Golden State Killer.

[Pensive music]

My parents separated when I was around nine or ten,

about a year before this incident happened.

It was March 24th, 1991.

My mom and Mitch, they went out that night.

I think they were gonna go to a bar or something like that.

Mitch was a very close friend with my mom.

[Ominous music]

My mom lent her car to her friend,

and then that friend went to return it the next day.

And she noticed the door to my mom's place was cracked open.

She went upstairs looking for my mom and Mitch,

and she came across quite the scene.

[Keys rattle over dramatic stinger]

They were both bound and Mitch had been bludgeoned to death.

My mom, she was also bound and she had been bludgeoned

but she was still alive.

Her friend went and called 911

and then that's when the police showed up.

As a result of the attack,

my mom suffered such serious brain damage

that she needed round-the-clock care

pretty much the rest of her life.

[Sorrowful music]

I remember that my mom was a very vibrant person.

This is like the perfect picture

that shows exactly how my mom was laughing and smiling.

[Sorrowful music]

This is actually a photo after the incident on my birthday.

My mom just wasn't the same anymore.

My sister would often say

that she feels like we lost our mom that day.

Initially, when the police investigated the incident,

they obviously had suspects that they looked into,

and that led into nothing.

And then just like any cases, you know,

after a certain amount of time, it starts to get pushed

to the back of the files.

Then after time goes on, you know, years go by,

it starts to seem like it's hopeless now.

If they haven't caught the person by now,

they're not gonna catch him.

[Music fades]

Years later, when they arrested the Golden State Killer,

we were contacted by Fontana Police Department

because they had some information

regarding my mom's case.

They were 99.9% sure

that it was the Golden State Killer who committed the crime.

But they didn't have any conclusive evidence

to tie him to it officially.

They eventually just closed her case, and it just went unsolved.

I would like to see justice done.

[Camera clicks over wistful music]

Clearly, he knows why he did what he did.

So, why not give some of these families some closure?

[Soft, intriguing music]

During this period,

there was not much evidence of a home life at all.

[Jim] In the early 90s, Joe and Sharon partly separated.

So I'd asked her about it, and all she said was,

"I'm tired of his BS and he's very manipulative."

That was her quote, her words.

They stayed together, technically married,

and lived in two different houses.

Joe kept his house, the one in Citrus Heights,

and then Sharon had bought a nicer home

two miles apart for the kids' benefits.

[Distant sirens wailing]

[Larry] When I inherited this case back in the 90s,

we have three counties: Santa Barbara County,

Ventura County, and Orange County, linked by MO.

[Dramatic stinger]

So, we know we have a serial offender.

Santa Barbara called him the Night Stalker.

But in time, that moniker was attached to Richard Ramirez.

There was kind of this feeling that our killer

needed to be given a name.

I didn't want to do that because

I think it kind of glamorizes a killer when you do that.

So I just said, "Well, he is the original Night Stalker."

And it so happened that that was said in the presence of media.

And so that name, as poor as it was,

stuck with the offender for quite some time.

There were reports that Joe DeAngelo got a grant

from the state to retrain for a new occupation in life.

So, Joe had attended a truck mechanic school.

[Jim] Joe, when he got through with his training,

he got a job with the Save Mart store chain,

and he became a mechanic.

Everything seemed to be fine with him.

[Soft, rustic music]

I was a truck driver for, Save Mart supermarkets,

and he was a mechanic who worked in the shop, of course.

My name is Richard Mangang,

and I was friends with Joseph DeAngelo,

the Golden State Killer.

[Sinister stinger]

One day, I heard him and a few other guys

talking about fishing.

And being a fisherman,

I just chimed in and joined in the conversation.

So we just started out as fishing buddies,

and then it grew into a friendship.

[Pensive music]

I spent many hours with that guy.

I couldn't tell you how many hours.

Joe was very particular.

I mean, his neatness, the way he did lures,

the way he tied knots.

Joe was very good at tying knots.

When we were on that water,

we talked about various things,

but he never mentioned his background other than the Navy.

As far as being a police officer,

I didn't find that out till later.

He hid everything from me

just like he hid everything from everyone else.

I do believe that there's definitely two sides to Joe.

I mean, there's that normal side,

the diesel mechanic that nobody would suspect.

And then there's his nightlife

that he committed all these heinous acts.

[Dramatic music]

However, now I look back at that, knowing about the crimes,

I think this may have been when he stopped,

when he knew that he could have been identified with DNA.

He was probably thinking that it's just not worth the risk,

because that started happening in the 90s, pretty much.

[Anne Marie] In the mid-90s,

I had my very first DNA case involving a serial rapist.

And I realized doing that case,

that this is the greatest tool ever,

ever for law enforcement to find the truth.

In around 2001,

this case was just nagging at me because I understood

that it was going to be DNA that solved it.

I always knew that.

And so at the time, I went to my boss and I asked,

"Can we please start a cold case unit here in Sacramento?"

They supported it,

but I also advocated that we should solve

the East Area Rapist.

This should be one of our number one priorities.

I felt very strongly, whether he was alive or dead,

that we owed it to the victims, to their families,

to the community to find an answer, and if alive,

to hold them accountable.

The rape kits from the East Area Rapist crimes

that were preserved, were tested using DNA technology,

and they developed a DNA profile for the East Area Rapist.

While this is occurring,

the original DNA from the crime scenes in Orange County,

Ventura, and Santa Barbara County were also tested.

So now, we have the profile for the original Night Stalker.

And lo and behold, that profile also matched the DNA profile

that they had been pursuing up in Sacramento.

So now at this point,

we know that the East Area Rapist

is the original Night Stalker.

[Intriguing music]

That's when we all had our 'Aha' moment, like,

'Oh, my God, he's not just a serial rapist,

he's a serial killer as well.'

He became known as the Golden State Killer.

But it didn't identify the right... the person.

[Richard] In 2001, they announced the DNA connection

between the East Area Rapist and the original Night Stalker.

And it came back in a flood to me.

Back then, in 1983, I had decided it wasn't him.

But he almost confessed to me.

I was a mess

because I knew it was him then,

but I couldn't even remember his name.

[Pensive music]

I wanted so badly to call the police and tell them then,

but what am I going to tell them?

"I worked with this guy.

We had this conversation.

I don't remember his name or face anymore."

But what really makes me sick

is the fact that he wasn't done killing.

He killed people after he worked with me.

And if I had called,

when you think about it, I could have ended him.

[Regretful sigh]

I really wish I had called the police.

[Distant sirens over soft music]

So much work was done over the years by so many DNA people,

law enforcement, detectives.

So many people were working on this case.

[Larry] I looked at sex offenders,

I looked at parolees, prioritized by virtue

of what they were convicted of.

Rape, burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, kidnapping.

Nothing was working.

I became aware of other offenses in other locations,

for example, Visalia.

[Troubling music]

As I studied the Ransackers, I studied the cases

that we had already put together through DNA.

I believe that the Ransacker was also the original Night Stalker.

Not everybody shared that opinion.

But I was quite certain that the cases were linked.

But it still didn't give us who the killer was.

[Sorrowful music]

[Intriguing music]

What we decided to do in the fall of 2017

was to use a new and novel idea in terms of crime fighting

to take our DNA from our rapist and use a genealogy site

to find potential relatives of our assailant.

[Larry] In law enforcement, we'd not done this before.

And so, a genealogist was brought on board.

My name is Barbara Rae-Venter.

And using investigative genetic genealogy,

I would help people who were adopted

find their birth relatives.

In March of 2017,

I got a call from the folks in Contra Costa County.

They said, "Well, you know,

can you do the same thing with somebody who's a suspect

in a criminal case?"

I was totally confident that it would work.

The Golden State Killer case was, at the time,

a 42-year-old cold case.

And DNA, of course, had been collected from those cases.

The problem is getting it in a format

that we can actually use it

to do investigative genetic genealogy,

what we call a SNP profile.

So back at the time,

the only places that actually produced what we needed

we're the direct-to-consumer companies.

We're talking about Ancestry, 23andMe, and Family Tree DNA.

Ancestry says no.

23andMe says no.

We then go to Family Tree DNA.

It's the right thing to do.

We'll do it.

[Investigative music]

This was a whole new thing they were doing,

and they were building the plane as they were flying it.

[Barbara] So they then produced this new profile that we need.

And I then uploaded that to GEDmatch,

which is a giant family tree database.

We finally get the results back,

and we had a second cousin match.

So now, we were able to figure out who the relatives were.

I had put together a little profile

about who I thought we were looking for.

So what did we know about the Golden State Killer?

I believe the first rape was in 1976.

He'd probably be at least 20 years old.

So we figured that he was probably born in 1956

or earlier, probably lived in California.

We knew he had blonde hair.

He had a fairly athletic build.

And his DNA determined that he had blue eyes.

When I looked at data booths and in geography,

I came up with a list of nine men.

[Exciting music builds]

Only one of these guys has got blue eyes.

This was huge.

Excuse my language, that was the 'Holy shit' moment.

We're onto something.

[Intriguing music builds]

We put all the wheels in motion with the sheriff's department

to have him surveilled.

We went fishing that morning.

We came in.

We were in his garage and I looked down the street.

I said, "Joe, I just seen some guys in a black truck

get out their truck, nicely dressed,

walk around the truck, stretch, and get back in the truck.

I think they're watching you, Joe."

He said, "No, you're just paranoid. You're tripping."

I said, "Okay, fine. They're not watching you."

[Anne Marie] While he was under surveillance,

he parked his car in a public lot, and then they collected

his DNA from his door handle.

And it was expedited and sent to the crime lab.

Later on, my chief deputy calls me, and I'm like,

"what's happening? What's going on?"

He goes, "Anne Marie, all I can tell you is it's him,"

and they're shaking at the crime lab.

They are shaking, because they have now identified

the man that is the East Area Rapist, the Golden State Killer.

That's your guy.

And that guy was Joseph James DeAngelo Jr.

[Powerful music]

[Anne Marie] From that moment on,

we all kicked into high gear because we had warrants

to review, arrest warrants, search warrants.

They then went to his home in Citrus Heights,

and Joseph DeAngelo was arrested

within minutes of that warrant being signed.

[Dark music]

[Paige] I was asked to jump in a breaking news assignment

the day Joe DeAngelo was arrested in Sacramento.

It was very obvious when he was being interrogated

that this was not a person of sound mind

or in complete control.

He basically just didn't respond.

Whether contrived or not, he acted like he was catatonic.

Probably about one o'clock or so in the morning,

he starts talking about Jerry, Jerry trying to push.

He's trying to push Jerry out; Jerry made him do it.

'I tried for years, I tried to push him away.'

Basically, the demons made him do it.

It was fascinating to watch this man sit there

and try to craft a defense,

but essentially, confessing to the crimes.

[Tape running over sinister music]

I had the chance to listen to the audio tapes

of his police interrogation.

And I wish those would be made public.

But I heard the voices, the different voices.

And I thought,

how is there any shred of doubt

that this isn't an insane person?

[Bryanna] I think it was manipulation.

This is somebody who is not willing to take accountability.

And frankly, it will never take responsibility for his actions.

But these victims deserve justice.

I'm walking my dog real early in the morning

and I get a call from Detective Carol Daly.

And she said, "Kris, I want you to know

the East Area Rapist has been arrested.

100% DNA match, it's him."

[Broadcast music]

A major breakthrough in a cold case dating back to the late 70s

as authorities arrest a suspect believed to be

the notorious Golden State Killer.

[Dark, dramatic music]

I got a telephone call from my husband,

and my husband asked me one question.

He said, "What was the name of the guy that you dated

just before I met you?"

And I said, "You mean Joe DeAngelo?"

And he says, "Yeah, that's the guy."

He said, "They've just arrested him as the East Area Rapist."

[Dark, powerful music]

I was absolutely floored.

[Reporter] The words, 'I hate you, Bonnie,'

have been on law enforcement's radar for years.

Who is Bonnie and what's her connection to Joseph DeAngelo,

the suspected Golden State Killer?

Investigators say a victim once reported the suspect

saying the name Bonnie after an attack in 1978.

The articles began getting larger

and the name began to be in the news frequently.

And it was quite a shock.

[Intriguing music]

It took me a while to believe that Joseph DeAngelo

had done those things.

After looking at the news and coming to the realization

of everything else, I did shed a tear like,

'Wow. I was friends with a monster.'

[Pensive music]

I get home and Brad's looking like

I've never seen him look before.

And he told me that Uncle Joe had been arrested.

[Brad] 'This story for me, started the morning my father

had come over to my house and told me Joe had been arrested.

My first reaction was, "you're kidding."

I was thinking it was something minor or a misunderstanding.

My father told me it involved burglary, rapes and murder.

My response was, "No way."'

I belive out of the whole family, Brad was the most upset

finding out that Joe was the Golden State Killer.

[Sombre music]

[Whispers] I'm okay...

[Powerful, sorrowful music]

The Suspected Golden State Killer

was back in a courtroom today,

believed to be behind at least a dozen killings

and more than fifty rapes.

There were gazillions of photography people.

And then the moment came where he was being wheeled in.

[Powerful, dramatic music]

His first court appearance, he comes in, in a wheelchair.

Your Honor, on the 130 calendar page two, in custody, DeAngelo.

He can't hear, he can't talk.

He's feeble and old, and he's not capable of anything.

72-year-old, Joseph James DeAngelo, appeared frail,

and he showed very little expression

as he was wheeled into a packed Sacramento courtroom.

I knew it was all bullshit.

[Sinister music]

When Joseph DeAngelo was housed

at the Sacramento County Main Jail,

surveillance cameras proved that he was full of it.

[Dark, intriguing music]

He's jumping up and down, he's doing exercises.

He got up on the second bunk several times.

They're very telling.

Joseph DeAngelo was continuing to try to defraud the judge,

the Court, the prosecutors, whoever.

But I'm like, 'Oh, this is not happening.'

And so, we released all those videos and let the public

know that Joseph DeAngelo was not a demented,

feeble old man who was incapable of pleading guilty

or serving time.

[Reporter] This video is inside Joseph DeAngelo's jail cell,

never seen before.

It paints a different picture

of his physical and mental capabilities.

[Dark, intriguing music]

When Joseph DeAngelo was arrested,

he was charged with thirteen counts of murder

and I believe thirteen counts of kidnapping for purposes

of robbery, which were the crimes we could charge him with.

Joseph DeAngelo has a right to a defense.

And now the defense has thousands and thousands

and thousands of pages of what we call 'discovery.'

And so, if this case were to go to trial,

I have no doubt it would take five to eight years.

Do I think he deserved the death penalty?

Yes.

But in that time frame witnesses are getting older,

family members might be passing and there was no question

that given his age, DeAngelo might not even survive a trial

and so all of those things go into the thought process

of what's the right thing at the end of the day to do?

[Reporter] Court papers show DeAngelo's attorneys

are asking for a plea deal.

The plea deal takes the death penalty off the table

in exchange for life in prison

without the possibility of parole.

[Anne Marie] One of the challenges of cold cases is

this thing called with Statute of Limitations.

You are bound by the law at the time of the crimes.

So sadly, in California,

at the time that these women were sexually assaulted,

the statute of limitation was only three years.

It was pathetic.

As a result of that, we couldn't charge him with all the rapes.

So, part of that plea agreement was that he not only admit

the crimes he was charged with,

but all of the other crimes as well.

[Powerul, intriguing music]

There's a possibility and probably a high likelihood

that he committed way more crimes

than we ever will know about.

But we charged him with what we could prove.

How do you plead, sir?

Guilty.

A word Joseph DeAngelo's victims and their families

never thought they would hear.

[Sombre music]

I think it brought much more healing and closure

than him going through five years of trial.

It benefited us more than it benefits him.

[Reporter] DeAngelo's sentencing is scheduled for August 17th.

It is expected to last for days because survivors will be giving

victim impact statements.

We each had an opportunity to address him.

It took me six weeks to write that.

I had one chance.

Your Honor, my name is Kris Pedretti,

and thank you for allowing me to share the impact

that Joseph James DeAngelo had on me the night he raped

and threatened constantly to kill me.

I wanted him to know that he messed up my life.

[Sniffs back tears]

I struggled the next 41 years

with extreme panic attacks, failed relationships,

frequent job changes, unhealthy coping mechanisms,

and few friends.

But I also wanted him to know that he didn't ruin my life.

Though I have found my way to a happy and safe life once again,

DeAngelo deserves his sentence of life without parole

in the most dark and lonely containment.

If I had my way, DeAngelo would only be provided

our impact statements as reading material

for the rest of his days.

[Dark music]

As not one of his rape victims,

I had no standing in Court at that time

to make any kind of a statement.

However, I became good friends with Jane Carson-Sandler.

- Good morning. - Good morning, ma'am.

My name is Jane Carson-Sandler.

And, DeAngelo, I want you to look at me.

I want you to look at me, DeAngelo,

and I want you to remember what I have to say.

She had written her impact statement,

and she's a wonderful speaker.

Well, you know,

a quarter of me, being a Christian,

I want to say to you, may God have mercy on your soul.

But then there's another three quarters of me

that just want to tell you, buddy, to rot in hell.

When it came time for her

to give her victim impact statement, the night before,

we sort of cooked up a little plan.

I also want to especially thank a friend

that's accompanying me today.

And that friend is Bonnie.

[Tense stinger]

If Bonnie were able to speak, Joe, she would want you to know

that as just a teenager fifty years ago,

she broke her engagement to you

when she realized that you had become manipulative and abusive.

When you thought you could kidnap her

and force her to marry you,

even a gun pointed at her face could not make her choose you.

That was the day that I gave up being the Bonnie,

the Bonnie that Joe had mentioned

when he committed one of his rapes

and became the Bonnie that had joined with these other victims.

And the Bonnie that I am today.

[Sombre, pensive music]

Leading up to the sentencing,

there had been rumblings that it was possible that DeAngelo

would in fact address the victims or address the Judge.

He asked if he could give a remark.

Mr. DeAngelo would like to make a brief statement.

DeAngelo?

[Kris] A hush went over that whole room.

[Suspenseful music builds]

And we thought, first,

we're going to actually hear what he sounds like.

And second, what is he going to say?

[Suspenseful music]

I've listened to all your statements.

Each one of them.

[Dark, sombre music]

And I'm... really sorry...

to everyone I've hurt.

Thank you, your Honor.

You couldn't even make up something

that sounded like there was something good in you.

[Anne Marie] My reaction was, 'Pathetic.'

I thought it was pathetic.

It was forty years of chaos and destruction and despair

all wrapped up into two words.

'I'm sorry.'

That's it.

It was pretty weak.

Mr. DeAngelo, you're now remanded to serve the remainder

of your life in state prison.

We are adjourned.

[Courtroom applause]

Judge Bowman sentenced him

to thirteen consecutive life without parole terms.

So, effectively a death sentence.

[Wistful music]

After the victim impact statements.

I promised that today I'd start a new journey.

Today, I'm going to help people.

So I decided to start a nonprofit, Phyllis's Garden.

Phyllis was the very first victim of the East Area Rapist.

And when we talked about names,

I thought, 'Oh, what a great tribute to her.'

How do you treat a victim with compassion and respect?

Victims will be so much better at recalling details

if they feel respected.

And so, we decided we're gonna design soft interview rooms

for law enforcement agencies.

[Linda] Women and children could come in

and there'll be a soft blanket.

They can get something to drink.

It looks like it's a room in your house.

You don't feel like you're in the police station.

It can lower your anxiety down.

'I believe you' is the most important statement you can make

to a survivor of sexual assault.

[Powerful stinger]

[Emotive music]

Joe DeAngelo ultimately pled guilty to fifty rapes

and thirteen murders.

Are there more than that out there?

I think most people feel that there was far more than that.

[Birds singing over emotive music]

On April 14th, 2018,

two weeks before DeAngelo was arrested

and 10 minutes away from his home, a prowler was spotted.

[Sinister music]

Is this him?

[Tense, dark music]

I mean the nose is similar.

The facial structure, that could be Joe.

It could be.

It certainly could be.

Yes, this wouldn't surprise me in the least.

What gets me is the mouth, because Joe has a slack mouth.

It's so in keeping with the face that people saw

outside their window.

That's the haunting part of the image

that you're showing me right now.

It sure looks like him.

As with everything else in this case, the more you dig,

the more questions you get.

Did DeAngelo stop in 1986 and live peacefully

until his arrest in 2018?

I don't think so.

[Intense, sinister music]