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A man in his seventies wheels his trash can to
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the curb. It is just past eight in the morning
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on a quiet street in Citrus Heights, California. The man
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wears an old shirt. His walk is stiff. He sets
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the bin down, turns around, and shuffles back up the
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driveway toward his front door. A car is parked across
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the street. Inside it, two investigators watch him go inside.
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They wait. They wait a little longer. Then they step
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out of the car, cross the street, and pick up
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the trash. Not the whole bag, just a few things
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inside it. A tissue, the handle of his car door,
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wiped down and bagged. Small things, discarded things, things he
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will never miss. Those small things are about to end
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the longest manhunt in American history. For more than 40 years,
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law enforcement had been hunting a ghost. He had different
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names in different decades. The Visalia Ransacker. The East Area Rapist.
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The Original Night Stalker. The Golden State Killer. One man...
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least 87 victims murders rapes burglaries prowlings then in 1986
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silence the case went cold not for a year not
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for five years for 32 years then in 2018 investigators
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did something that had never been done before They took
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the killer's DNA from a decades-old rape kit, uploaded it
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to a public genealogy website, and built his family tree backwards.
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Thousands of distant cousins, months of genealogy, a tree that
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narrowed branch by branch until only six men were left.
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Then driver's license records, one man with blue eyes, matching
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the descriptions of survivors from the 70s. Joseph James D'Angelo,
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72 years old, a retired grandfather, living in a beige
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suburban house 10 miles from where the East Area rapist
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attacks began. And here is the part that stopped the
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room cold when investigators briefed the district attorney. D'Angelo was
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not just any man. He had been a police officer.
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The Exeter Police Department from 1973 to 1976. The Auburn
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Police Department from 1976 to 1979. The years of the terror,
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wearing a badge. He was fired from the Auburn force
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for shoplifting a hammer and a can of dog repellent
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from a drugstore. The firing lined up exactly with the
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end of the Northern California attacks. Nobody noticed the pattern.
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Nobody could have. But a family tree is not an arrest.
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A DNA profile from a genealogy database is not courtroom evidence.
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The investigators needed a direct match. They needed Joseph D'Angelo's
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DNA taken from something he had thrown away. So they
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watched him. For weeks, surveillance teams followed his routines. They
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noted his walk, stiff and deliberate, matching witness descriptions from
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the 70s. They watched him take out his trash. And
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they collected it, legally, from the curb. The lab worked fast.
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The DNA from the discarded tissue and the car door
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handle matched the crime scenes. The Visalia Ransacker. The East
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Area Rapist. The original Night Stalker. All of them. One match.
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One man. On the morning of Tuesday, April 24th, 2018,
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the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office moved in. It was not
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a raid. There were no battering rams, no shouting, no
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dramatic chase. Deputies waited until D'Angelo was outside in his
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own driveway. They stepped forward and told him he was
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under arrest. Witnesses said he looked stunned. A 72-year-old man,
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standing in the driveway of the house he had lived
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in for decades, being told that he was the Golden
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State Killer. During the ride to the Sheriff's Department, according
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to a law enforcement source quoted by the Sacramento Bee,
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D'Angelo spoke. A short sentence, almost a whisper. I did it.
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The news broke that afternoon. and California went silent in
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a different way. Neighbors poured onto the quiet street in
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Citrus Heights, staring at the house they had walked past
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a thousand times. Reporters asked how it felt to learn
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that a monster had lived next door. A woman who
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had lived nearby for years
Load full transcript
said she was in shock.
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a man said D'Angelo was just the quiet grandfather down
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the street, the one with the boat in the driveway,
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the one who used to grill for his family. He
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had lived there for decades, raising a family, mowing the lawn,
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while the names of his victims sat in evidence boxes
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40 years cold. But perhaps the strangest image of that
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day did not come from Citrus Heights at all, It
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came from the home of Paul Holes. Holes was the
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cold case investigator who had carried this file for more
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than two decades. He had found Barbara Rae Venter. He
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had bet his last months before retirement on genetic genealogy.
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And he had retired just weeks before the arrest, never
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knowing if the gamble would pay off. On the morning
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of April 24th, Paul Holes was retired. He was home.
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He watched the arrest of the Golden State Killer happen
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on live television, in a house that was not an office,
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wearing clothes that were not a uniform. His phone lit
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up before the broadcast even finished. Detectives, reporters, survivors, more
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than 20 years of obsession. and the end arrived while
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he was standing in his own kitchen. He later said
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he felt something he had not expected. Not triumph. Something quieter. Relief, maybe.
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And the weight of all the people who had not
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lived to see it. Because the arrest was never just
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about a man in a driveway. It was about the
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people who had waited. the survivors who had rebuilt their lives,
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the families of the murdered who had buried mothers, fathers, daughters, sisters,
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and then waited decades for a name. Debbie Domingo was
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15 when the killer murdered her mother in their Santa
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Barbara home in 1981. When the arrest was announced, she
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told reporters the news was overwhelming. The man had taken
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her mother when she was a child. Now she was
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a grown woman, and the man was an old one.
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The former fiancé, who had broken off their engagement back
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in 1970, learned that the man she had feared for
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decades had finally been found. She had been afraid he
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might come back. She had been right to be afraid.
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Three days after the arrest, on April 27, Joseph DeAngelo
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appeared in a Sacramento courtroom. He was wheeled in wearing
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an orange jail jumpsuit, his face gaunt, his voice barely audible.
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The ghost of California was a frail old man who
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could hardly speak. The district attorney charged him with eight
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counts of first-degree murder. with the expectation of more charges
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to come from other counties. The man who had eluded
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more than a thousand suspects, dozens of task forces, and
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the FBI sat slumped in a wheelchair and said almost nothing.
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Outside the courtroom, the cameras kept rolling. Survivors held each other.
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Retired detectives stood in the hallway with tears in their eyes.
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44 years. That is how long the hunt had lasted.
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44 years, and it ended with a trash bag on
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a Tuesday morning. But the arrest was only the beginning
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of the end. The evidence would have to survive a courtroom.
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The families would have to survive the trial. And Joseph D'Angelo,
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the quiet grandfather of Citrus Heights, would have to answer
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for every name on the list. Next episode, justice, 40
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years late. The guilty plea, three days of victim impact statements.
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And a courtroom where the survivors finally get to speak,
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face to face. to the man who haunted them. This
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is Case Files, new episodes daily.