DNA match catches alleged ‘East Area Rapist,’ who murdered 12, raped 45

Police arrested Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, in connection with crimes attributed to the East Area Rapist, over 30 years since he allegedly committed 12 murders and 45 rapes from 1976 to 1986. Police arrested Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, in connection with crimes attributed to the East Area Rapist, over 30 years since he allegedly committed 12 murders and 45 rapes from 1976 to 1986. Photo: Sacramento Sheriff’s Department Photo: Sacramento Sheriff’s Department Image 1 of / 50 Caption Close DNA match catches alleged ‘East Area Rapist,’ who murdered 12, raped 45 1 / 50 Back to Gallery

A onetime cop who’s been living quietly in the Sacramento suburbs was fingered Wednesday as the “East Area Rapist,” with authorities saying DNA helped link him to a string of at least 12 slayings and 45 rapes that terrorized communities in the Bay Area and across California from 1976 to 1986.

Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, a police officer in Placer and Tulare counties at the time some of the crimes were committed, was arrested in what had been one of the most heinous unsolved crime sprees in U.S. history.

He was booked on suspicion of two counts of murder into Sacramento County Jail at 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, accused of shooting a young couple to death near their Rancho Cordova home in 1978 as they walked their dog. He was being held without bail.

Following the arrest, prosecutors in Ventura County and Orange County announced that they would be filing murder, rape, robbery and other charges in at least six other killings.

The East Area Rapist — also known as the “Golden State Killer” and the “Original Nightstalker” — was connected to a series of rapes in Danville, Walnut Creek, San Jose, Fremont and San Ramon in 1978 and 1979. In addition to the homicides and rapes, authorities suspect DeAngelo committed more than 150 home break-ins across the state.

Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert said she and many others who grew up around the state capital vividly recall the fear the East Area Rapist’s crimes inspired.

“It is fitting that today is National DNA Day,” Schubert said at a news conference, flanked by district attorneys from four other California counties, the Sacramento sheriff and FBI agents. “We found the needle in the haystack, and it was right here in Sacramento.”

Law enforcement agencies from across the state formed a task force in 2016, after Schubert held a news conference to mark the 40-year anniversary of the first known crime. She said the investigation became “more than a professional commitment. It became personal for many of us.”

While not providing specifics on how DeAngelo was caught, Sacramento Sheriff Scott Jones said examination of old crime-scene DNA had narrowed the suspects.

“It was detective work from that point forward,” Jones said. “The universe (of suspects) before (DNA evidence) was everyone — everyone in the state and beyond. That reduced the universe to a manageable level.”

Once DeAngelo was identified as a suspect, officials said, detectives monitored his behavior and collected two DNA samples from discarded items. The second sample linked DeAngelo to crime scenes, said Jones, who added that many in law enforcement had speculated the East Area Rapist had ties to law enforcement or the military because of how he carried out crimes.

DeAngelo was a police officer in Exeter (Tulare County) from 1973 to 1976, before joining the force in Auburn (Placer County) until he was fired in 1979, officials said. They said it was likely DeAngelo committed his first rape while still with the Exeter department.

DeAngelo was arrested outside his Citrus Heights home, where law enforcement had set up surveillance for several days. Officials said his DNA matched evidence connected to the East Area Rapist’s first suspected murder victims: Mather Air Force Base Sgt. Brian Maggiore and Katie Maggiore.

When the young couple were shot in 1978, they were near their Rancho Cordova home, walking their dog. The killer chased them into a backyard, seemingly at random, said Ray Biondi, a retired Sacramento County sheriff’s lieutenant who was then in charge of the homicide division.

At that time, the East Area Rapist was “in full sway,” but had yet to kill anyone, Biondi said. There was no connection until investigators discovered the suspect’s calling cards at the scene: a ski mask and shoelaces he would use to bind people.

Biondi, now 81, said he had nightmares about the case and wondered, “Are we ever going to solve it?” The Maggiore case once had hundreds of suspects, he said.

“That’s great,” Biondi said of the arrest. “I’ll sleep easier for the rest of my life.”

DeAngelo’s DNA, authorities said, was also linked to the 1980 murders of Charlene and Lyman Smith in Ventura County — one of 10 counties in California in which DeAngelo is suspected of committing crimes.

Ventura County District Attorney Greg Totten said DeAngelo will face two counts of murder in the killing of the Smiths along with special circumstances that make him eligible for the death penalty: multiple murders, murder during the commission of rape and murder during the commission of burglary.

“It is the culmination of a decades-long unrelenting investigation that was singularly focused on bringing this rapist and killer to justice,” said Totten.

Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas also announced that four counts of murder, among other charges including rape and robbery, were filed against DeAngelo on Wednesday.

DeAngelo is accused of raping and killing 18-year-old Janelle Cruz in Irvine in 1986, raping and murdering 28-year-old Manuela Witthuhn in Irvine in 1981 and killing 24-year old Keith Harrington and his wife, 28-year-old Patrice Harrington, in Dana Point (Orange County) in 1980.

Bruce Harrington, Keith’s brother , said DeAngelo’s arrest brings “some closure to the anguish that we’ve suffered for 40-odd years.”

Others who’d been waiting on justice were relieved as well. William Oakley and his wife discovered the bodies of their good friends, Robert Offerman and his girlfriend Alexandria Manning, when they came over to their Goleta (Santa Barbara County) home for a game of tennis with the couple in December 1979.

“I was hoping they’d find him,” Oakley said in a phone interview. “They were good friends of mine and I was disappointed that nothing had been done all these years.”

On Wednesday morning, FBI agents and other officers taped off and searched DeAngelo’s Citrus Heights home.

A man who lives four houses away said DeAngelo had lived in the home on Canyon Oak Drive for nearly 30 years with at least one daughter. The neighbor, who declined to give his name, said DeAngelo “seemed nice, but he was very high-strung.”

“He was always talking or yelling,” said the neighbor, who had done window repairs over the years for DeAngelo. “I wouldn’t have expected this at all.”

Penny Ryan, 48, said she nearly dropped her coffee when she saw news of the arrest. She ran out of her house before making her way from Rocklin (Placer County) to DeAngelo’s home. Growing up in the Pocket area of Sacramento, Ryan called the East Area Rapist her childhood “boogeyman.”

“The whole neighborhood was so scared,” she said. “My dad bought a gun and loaded it every night before we went to bed.”

Her father kept the gun under his pillow, she said, and was once accidentally shot in the back when her younger brother jumped on the bed and the gun discharged. Ryan’s father survived.

“All the Ted Bundys and Charles Mansons weren’t as scary as him, because he never got caught,” Ryan said. “To find out he was only 15 minutes away from where I lived is really scary.”

DeAngelo was fired from Auburn’s police force in 1979 after he shoplifted a can of dog repellent and a hammer from a Sacramento drugstore, according to archives of the Auburn Journal. In 1967, the Journal reported, DeAngelo returned home from serving in the U.S. Navy in North Vietnam.

Investigators believe the East Area Rapist went out night after night, targeting multiple houses within a neighborhood to stoke fear among residents. Targets were often single women living in one-story homes. His victims spanned the state.

From 1976 to 1978, the suspect developed one of his most sadistic signatures, authorities said.

If the home he chose for his crime had a couple living inside, he would incapacitate the man first, binding him with strips of towels or shoelaces. He would then balance a stack of dishes from the kitchen on the male victim’s back and warn the couple that, if a plate broke, he would kill both the man and the woman. He would then rape the woman.

From May 1976 to 1977, the East Area Rapist terrorized Rancho Cordova, Citrus Heights, Sacramento, Carmichael and Orangevale. In June and July 1978, attacks were reported in Davis and Modesto before the spree moved on to the Bay Area and continued from 1978 to 1979.

In 1986, the suspect killed victims in Southern California, police said, before disappearing for more than 30 years.

SFGate Senior Producer Katie Dowd contributed to this story.

Sarah Ravani, Melody Gutierrez, Jenna Lyons and Sophie Haigney are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com, mgutierrez@sfchronicle.com, jlyons@sfchronicle.com, sophie.haigney@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani @JennaJourno @MelodyGutierrez @SophieHaigney