“I am elated”, she said.
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Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert said the break in the case came in the last six days and was the result of DNA evidence that was examined at the Sacramento County crime lab. Sheriff Scott Jones said deputies had been conducting surveillance on DeAngelo and obtained DNA that confirmed his identity.
“He had to have felt awfully secure that he wasn’t going to be found out because he wasn’t hiding in his house”, Wammer said.
Harrington worked with the Orange County District Attorney’s Office in 2004 to secure the passage of Proposition 69, which expanded the state’s criminal DNA database to every convicted felon in California. “The memories are very vivid”.
Future killings would be much more meticulous, and spread from Sacramento to southern California.
She said DeAngelo had been identified through DNA technology but declined to provide any more details about what led to his arrest after all these years. “We just have nothing at this point”.
Carson-Sandler, now living near Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, said she didn’t know DeAngelo or recognize his name.
DeAngelo has grown children who are cooperating with investigators, he added. “Everyone has a story”.
In Ventura County, he is accused of murdering Charlene Smith after raping and burglarizing her in March 1980, and murdering and burglarizing Lyman Smith the same months.
Most of the crimes, predominantly sex assaults but also two slayings, occurred in the three years he was an Auburn police officer in the Sierra foothills outside Sacramento.
Sheriff’s detectives then traveled to Sacramento to help investigate Santa Barbara County-related cases. The genetic evidence was later used to connect the same suspect to dozens of rapes in Northern California.
The Golden State Killer’s fifth victim, Jane Carson-Sandler, said she was “overwhelmed with joy” when she was informed about DeAngelo’s arrest.
Joseph James DeAngelo was described Wednesday as an odd but decent neighbor in the Sacramento suburb of Citrus Heights. I got into it as just a way to use my computer skills to help out.
“I was not terribly interested in true crime”. The FBI said the victims were tied up in the same way and had their homes ransacked in the same way as the Sacramento area victims.
“All too often we forget to talk about the victims and today we at least brought the first step towards closure for those victims of these horrendous crimes”, Jones said.
DeAngelo built remote-controlled model airplanes and took meticulous care of his house and manicured lawn, neighbors said. But he was known for an explosive temper and loud cursing. “He said ‘if these plates rattle, I will kill your daughter and I will come back and kill you'”.
“I had the creeps about this guy for a long time”, Verdon told the newspaper.
“He’s not like an overly creepy person, but he definitely, you know, kept to himself and kind of was. a little different”, Tapia told HLN.
“When news broke Wednesday of DeAngelo’s arrest, Oswalt expressed shock about the “surreal” turn of events but also wrote: “(Michelle) would be beyond excited about this.
“These maneuvers gave him a crucial advantage because when you woke from a deep sleep to the blinding flashlight and ski-masked presence, he was always a stranger to you, but you were not to him”.
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Melley reported from Los Angeles.
