(LA Times) He slipped in through backdoors and windows in the dark. First he struck in the foothills east of Sacramento, raping at least 46 women, before he began killing and headed south.
From 1978 to 1986, he killed 12 people in attacks ranging from the Sacramento County city of Rancho Cordova to the Orange County cities of Irvine and Dana Point. In Ventura, he tied up a couple with a drapery cord and raped the wife before fatally bludgeoning them with a fireplace log. In Goleta, he bound a doctor and his wife, a clinical psychologist, and shot them both.
The unsolved slayings were not linked with each other for years, and not linked to the rapes until 2000.
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Science allowed authorities to connect the crimes but did not lead to a suspect. Victims' families speculated that the unidentified killer might have died unpunished.
But on Wednesday, a local and federal task force announced it had arrested a man suspected of being the so-called Golden State Killer Tuesday afternoon at his home in the Sacramento suburbs. Joseph James DeAngelo Jr., 72, a former police officer, was charged with eight counts of murder.
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