to his neighbors Joseph D'Angelo was an unlikeable whinging kamuran no doubt he would have bitched at the nickname they gave him to crazy Joe but that's nothing compared with the label police and prosecutors in the United States are now trying to pin on him they accused the Angelo of being the Golden State killer a serial murderer and rapist as vile as has ever lived in the 1970s and 80s it's alleged he wreaked havoc all over the state of California all the while evading capture and he might have gotten away with it forever except for some
of the most innovative detective work you'll ever see in a court in Sacramento California an extraordinary and shocking piece of history is unfolding a frail old man is being accused of monstrous crimes but looking at this 72 year old now only an angry glare gives away any hint that for decades Joseph James D'Angelo was America's most wanted man the Golden State killer how confident are you that you have the right man it's 100% not a shadow of a doubt not a shadow of a doubt if D'Angelo is the notorious Golden State killer and the overwhelming
evidence says he is then he is evil beyond comprehension someone who committed at least 13 murders more than 50 rapes and an untold number of burglaries as if the violence wasn't enough the Golden State killer had another wicked signature of the victims he let live he would often ring them weeks and months after the attacks to continue the terror the taunting still haunts Margaret Wardlow and Jane Carson Sandler [Applause] he's evil so he's evil he's a psychological evil psychotic crazed madman madman do you think it's just luck of the draw that they didn't kill you
I think that had it been a couple years later I think I probably would have died a cruel sadistic serial predator D'Angelo eluded capture for 42 years until a clever cop used some extraordinary mouse to nail him that's his house there that is his house right there well Joe D'Angelo wasn't settled right here in the midst of this and nobody had any idea bringing the murderer to justice had been detective Paul Hall's unsuccessful obsession for more than 20 long years but frustration turned to fruition when he had the idea to upload DNA taken from the
Golden State killer's crime scenes to genealogy websites like ancestry.com and Jed match.com his hope was that someone searching their family tree might provide a full or partial DNA match so that's a bit like tinder for DNA I guess there's that's a way to kind of look at it the search takes anywhere from 24 to 48 hours within a day I had the list of potential relatives to the Golden State killer the results have pointed to Joseph D'Angelo a little old man living a double life in suburbia hiding behind the facade of a family man a
law-abiding neighbor and perhaps most incredibly of all a former police officer this is Sacramento capital of the world's fifth largest economy it's the Canberra of California home to the Golden State's Parliament its Treasury and the governor's residence and now tragically home to one of this country's worst ever serial predators a monster whose reign of terror began when this was the epitome of the American dream back in the mid 70s there were lots of open spaces jobs new housing developments and an almost small-town innocence an innocence that evaporated with each and every brutal attack he carried
out it was about 6:30 in the morning my husband was just leaving for work and mice and my three-year-old son came out of his bedroom and got in bed with me to snuggle within two minutes I saw a bright light shining down the hall and someone running down the hall I hardly had time to react when I looked up and there was a man wearing a ski mask holding a large butcher knife it was 1976 long before America knew of the Golden State killer and 30 year-old Jane Carson Sandler was about to become victim number
five of a serial rapist stalking the eastern suburbs of Sacramento he proceeded to tie us both up our our ankles and our wrists with shoelaces he was telling your son up yes and he gagged us both and he blindfolded us both I'm wondering what is this guy contemplating and he did it for the longest time and then as soon as he untied my ankles then I knew what he was there for the fear the fear was so overwhelming I'll never forget it callously after sexually assaulting her the attacker spent more than an hour inside Jane's
house helping himself to what was in her cupboards and even cooking a meal before finally leaving when you found out that you were victim number five and that your rapist was a serial offender did that make any difference to how you felt well I would figured if I was number five there's gonna be probably a number six seven eight but I never realized it wouldn't be up to 50 I mean it was crazy why the police can't catch the rapist and worried about their own homes being violated I put locks on my door a sex
attacker on the loose became the lead story the next raid to be anywhere in every Sacramento news bulletin he was quickly branded the east area rapist and each new assault led to ever-increasing fear in thousands of family homes and it was like at least once a week and one night we had two rapes in one night and that really sent us on a spin no wonder there was paranoia in the suburbs yes everybody everybody was afraid Carol Daly is a force to be reckoned with you must Angier in the 70s she was one of the
lead investigators tracking the movements of the east area rapist and counseling 27 of his victims it was absolutely an obsession to be able to find out who this rapist was he left an extensive trail of destruction didn't he hardware stores didn't have locks on the shelves any more guns were going flying off the shelves well everybody was a suspect and we got to thinking maybe he has a law enforcement background or maybe he's military because of the method of operation he was a pro at making sure nobody was going to know who he was this
is the house that I lived within with my mother when in 1977 when the attack took place and and where is your bedroom my bedroom was downstairs and he could say straight in he could see straight in yeah margarit Wardlow was 13 when she became the east area rapists youngest victim ironically she was obsessed with the case and had read dozens of newspaper stories on the attacks so when he came for her Margaret knew exactly what she had to do to survive he had an mo and that was he would place these plates on the
back of the husband until the husband if I hear these plates rattle I'm gonna kill your wife and I'm gonna come back in here and I'm gonna kill you I'm just not he put the plates on your mum's back yes I heard the plates and I could hear him go into her room and at that moment it was almost like um a calming voice inside of me that says you know you're gonna get raped this is what's gonna happen but you're gonna survive you're gonna get through this it's gonna be okay all the way through
the attack it was just I was just saying no in you know it's courageous he really got off on power and control through fear the fear in his victims is how he really got pleasure from what I could understand from everything I had read and so for me being able to tell him my don't care what you do that was my way of telling him you mean nothing to me I'm not afraid of you the Talia victims rapidly climbed to almost 30 and still nobody even knows what he looks like but what was more terrifying
the east area rapists passion for violence had begun to escalate we knew he was ready to kill we were afraid our next phone call was gonna be to a homicide scene instead of a rape scene and it was yes coming up the man who knew the accused killer best you thought he was quite smart did you know yeah he knew everything that need to be known about law enforcement the incredible breakthroughs newfangled DNA technology and I was like whoa let me see what I can do leads police to their man within a day I had
the list of potential relatives that's next on 60 minutes 72 year-old Joseph D'Angelo is accused of being one of America's worst serial murderers and rapists he managed to evade capture for over 40 years and that's likely because he was a police officer it was a career that began here in the tiny town of Exeter California and where he learned to hide his criminal perversions you thought he was quite smart did you oh yeah he knew everything about everything that need to be known about law enforcement up until a few months ago Farrell Ward countered Joseph
D'Angelo an old friend they worked together as police officers in Exeter and socialized on the weekends Farrell now looks back at the crime scenes they attended together with a very different perspective on his brother in arms D'Angelo had everyone including his law enforcement colleagues fooled if he'd committed a crime here in Exeter he would come out and do the follow-up investigation and there wouldn't be no evidence because if he turned up any evidence they thought it most likely been him he could destroy it very easily and nobody could have picked it up because he he
was just that good at what he did I mean he was he was free for what 40 years 45 viewers and the FBI and that in the very best technology they got out there they couldn't find a guy you know so maybe you were right maybe he was smart ofter oh oh yeah he was he was one smart cookie so this is the the neighborhood where the east area rapist started attacking but ultimately not as smart as detective Paul Hall's who after more than two decades of investigating finally figured out D'Angelo's lies all the houses
are single-story he rarely went into a neighborhood that had two-story houses you like to move around hop fences and move through the backyards detective Hall says in the mid-1970s Joseph D'Angelo moved from Exeter to the suburbs of Sacramento which then became the rogue cops new hunting ground as far as the law enforcement training he understood exactly how patrol was going to respond to an attack that had occurred and so he would park his car at locations so he could as law enforcement as potentially responding slipped through that and get to his vehicle many blocks away
from where the victims house was to be able to drive Joseph DeAngelo used to work here a police officer by day and by night the east area rapist the first 44 rapes and two murders were committed while he was a cop here until he was caught shoplifting a can of dog repellent and a hammer the police chief sacked him on the spot and a few weeks later a prowler turned up at the Chiefs home outside his daughter's window he was convinced it was a vengeful D'Angelo but staggeringly the police chief never followed it up it
was the one big clue that could have put a stop to all the killing Jane when no one followed up his dismissal from the police force for shoplifting it's crazy for rape victim Jane Carson sandler that oversight should have been the moment Joseph D'Angelo's secret was uncovered that's surprising it's not very surprising that's probably the biggest miss of the entire investigation I agree I agree I agree in 1979 the spree of sexual assaults in Sacramento stopped abruptly for no obvious reason what investigators didn't know was their biggest fear had come true this sadistic violent rapist
was on the move again and had become even more brazen when the east area rapist re-emerged in Southern California it was as a fully fledged serial killer so he starts off as the Asteria rapist that's correct and that name gets changed to the Golden State killer yes so you see an offender that over the course of more than a decade he's moving through the state and at that point in time law enforcement is not conclusively connecting the dots that this is the same guy he is probably the only offender that I know who has had
different monikers when it was an unsolved series the Golden State killer murdered 13 people across the state of California added to the 50 rapes and various other assaults and kidnappings he became one of the United States most hunted fugitives every detective in the country wanted to solve the crimes including detective Paul holes who first got his hands on the case files in 1994 you started investigating this just as DNA technology was becoming a real thing for law enforcement didn't you that is the reason why I initially decided I need to look at this case because
I have this this newfangled DNA technology and I was like well let me see what I can do and since 2001 the Golden State killer's DNA profile was up in the FBI's CODIS system which is the FBI's DNA database that's a national diet as national database it's over 16 million profiles in that database it didn't hit because Joseph de Angelo had never been convicted of any crime in trouble with the police on that level he was not in any database he had never been convicted of a crime that qualified him to be compelled to give
his DNA to put be put into a database so how about you fondant so that's where as I sat back just almost feeling defeated about all these years haven't found this guy how am I going to get this case to progress and that's when I learned about this technique using genealogy in DNA pulled holes discovered that family history websites like ancestry.com and Jed match.com can help track down persons of interest one of their features is that you can enter your own DNA to find long-lost family members but holes took it to the next step using
DNA collected from the Golden State killer's crime scenes he uploaded it to see if he could get any matches it was a brilliant thought smart modern detective work were you doing this though on a clandestine level did you have to create a false as well yes so he created an undercover profile and uploaded the Golden State killer's DNA profile into gen matches within a day I had the list of potential relatives to the Golden State killer out of gen match what was he a short list so we ended up with roughly five males that had
California connections that were of the right age that caused us to have to do a little bit more research on who these individuals were to see if they had any other aspects of them that caused us to know we might need to look at them closer as a potential suspect that shortlist had the name Joseph James the he fit the profile of the Golden State Killer perfectly he lived in Sacramento and was the right age to commit the crimes after secretly watching him for days police took a used tissue out of his garbage bin and
tested it for a definitive DNA match it came up positive the fantastic gotcha moment there is no question that Joseph D'Angelo is the Golden State killer the DNA evidence that we have in this case is conclusive coming up staring down the Golden State killer hopefully he'll stay here till the day he dies and case closed for a good call after 24 years of looking for this guy and I gotcha that's next on 60 minutes Margaret Warlow and Jane Carson Sandra have waited 40 years to look the man who raped them in the eyes today is
that day but looking at the shuffling frail elderly man in orange prison overalls it's hard to picture the Golden State Killer the monster behind at least 50 rapes and 13 murders seeing him in that orange jumpsuit it must have given you some pleasure I feel there's closure I know where he is now I've taken pictures of this building I know where he is and this is hopefully he'll stay here till the day he dies four pool halls it's surreal to know the man he'd spent half his life searching for is now behind bars after 24
years of looking for this guy and trying to identify him to see him you know on the in the interview room on the computer monitor as I'm watching him just sit there looking dejected was a reward in and of itself going I gotcha forty-two years after his first sadistic rape Joseph D'Angelo was finally arrested here at his home hiding in plain sight among his suburban hunting grounds a retired father of three daughters he's been married to a local divorce lawyer for all those years and ironically despite specializing in the trade and being estranged from him
since 1991 she has never divorced Joseph you see the law here says communication between spouses is privileged you can't be forced to testify against your husband or your wife in court in short we may never know exactly what she knows I have said all through the years somebody knew who the rapist was former lead investigator Carol Daley still can't work out why suspicions about D'Angelo weren't raised earlier he had a different ski mask for almost every rape a different jacket different shoes if he threw him away after each use I have no idea what did
he do with everything he stole did he bring him into his house did he hide him somewhere if you were a partner or a wife right you think you would have some sort of inclination that something was going on I think so but then you know if he was out all hours of the night it would either be divorced time or wondering you know what are you up to the Golden State killer case is unprecedented in many ways but above all for the way it was solved perhaps it's a look into where future police investigation
is heading and that could mean cold cases all over the world could be reopened to make use of the ever increasing wealth of DNA material stored on genealogy websites it's a much more precise tool to be able to allow law enforcement to actually identify this guy that is committing these atrocities and we're not seeing anything about who you are genetically we just know how you shared a common ancestor many generations ago with our guy and sometime somewhere in a penitentiary here in California somebody will walk in to a jail cell and say sorry I put
you in there Uncle Joe I was just looking for some distant relatives in Norway or Italy there there could be that scenario absolutely as it stands Joseph D'Angelo will be tried for the 13 murders he is accused of the 50 rapes fall outside the statute of limitations in California but for his victims including Margaret Wardlow any justice is enough for the cruel man whose identity she thought she'd never known what I hope for him is I hope that he lives a long and very healthy life he's gonna be doing that behind bars with some other
characters that the probably I could like him very much you'd like him to have a long time in that orange jumpsuit a long healthy life yes I like the fact that he's not gonna be fishing I like the fact that he's not gonna be riding his motorcycle I think these things are you know that's okay with me hello I'm Liam bartlett thanks for watching to keep up with the latest from 60 minutes Australia make sure you subscribe to our channel you can also download the 9 now app for full episodes and other exclusive 60 minutes
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