Golden State Killer Joseph DeAngelo faces his victims in 1st day of hearings

SAN FRANCISCO – Victim after victim lined up Tuesday to describe Joseph DeAngelo as a “sick monster,” “terrible man,” and “subhuman” who stole her innocence and changed her life from rape and murder during more than a decade in reign have earned him the nickname of the Golden State Killer. Golden State Killer.

The daughter of a rape victim waved him obscenely and cursed him for the first of four days of trial in the Sacramento Supreme Court before he was officially sentenced to life in prison on Friday.

Some read statements made on behalf of loved ones who couldn’t testify in person, while others proudly gave their names after DeAngelo, 74, went to jail.

“He and his knife were in complete control of me for the next two hours,” read rape survivor’s daughter Patricia Murphy from her mother’s testimony. “He really is an evil monster with no soul.”

Murphy raised her middle finger on her own testimony, saying DeAngelo “can go straight to hell.”

He was a retired California police officer who had escaped capture for four decades.

The scale of the crimes “is simply mind-boggling,” said prosecutors in a court summary released on Monday: 13 known murders and nearly 50 rapes between 1975 and 1986.

Sixteen of his Sacramento County rape victims began confronting him on Tuesday in a courthouse that is otherwise still protected from the public due to the coronavirus. A similar number was set to tell Sacramento Supreme Court Justice Michael Bowman on Wednesday and Thursday how DeAngelo’s crimes changed her life.

Pete Schultz shared how he “did terrible deeds against our mother while she was handcuffed and blindfolded”. He himself was tied to a bed post at the age of 11 while his 7-year-old sister was locked in her room during the attack on Wini Schultz. He called DeAngelo a “sick monster” and noted that the only trait that was his Mother could remember was that “she was certain he had a very inadequate penis”.

This was a recurring theme for Witnesses trying to break through to DeAngelo. He was sitting in orange prison overalls, wearing a mask to slow the spread of the coronavirus, and staring straight ahead.

DeAngelo pleaded guilty to 13 murders and 13 rapes in June, but publicly admitted dozens more after the statute of limitations for sexual assault had expired.

Defense attorneys did not respond to requests for comment and did not respond to the prosecutor’s outline.

In total, he admitted harming 87 victims at 53 different crime scenes in 11 California counties, saving him the death penalty, prosecutors said. That is a larger number of victims than prosecutors, who were charged in 161 crimes involving 48 people after his admission in June. However, Ventura District Attorney Greg Totten said the higher number includes those who chose not to publicly admit DeAngelo to crimes where he could not commit crimes will not be officially charged.

His nicknames showed the escalation and geographic spread of his crimes, prosecutors said: The Visalia Ransacker, believed to be responsible for about 100 break-ins and one murder in this farm town in the San Joaquin Valley; the East Area Rapist; the original night stalker. And finally, the Golden State Killer, when investigators finally linked the crimes that spanned much of the state.

“Each time he escaped, slipped silently into the night and left the communities frightened for years,” said the prosecutor.

He wasn’t identified and arrested until 2018 using a new form of DNA tracking.

“I’ve had that in my head for 44 years. It’s been a long time,” said Jane Carson-Sandler before her testimony.

Certain triggers can still bring back flashbacks to that night in 1976 when DeAngelo confronted her with a butcher knife while snuggling into bed with her 3-year-old son after her husband went to work at a nearby military base.

“I hope he is listening, but we know he never raised his head during the hearing when he pleaded guilty,” she said.

She is one of the survivors and prosecutors who claim that DeAngelo is simply disguised as a weak old man in a wheelchair.

Prosecutors cited “his slow pace, the twisted twist of his hands” and his hesitant replies to Bowman in June. But they said his “agile movement and behavior in his prison cell suggest a person who is healthy and physically active”. ‘

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