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It’s been fewer than 24 hours since police announced the arrest of the man believed to be the so-called Golden State Killer, a former cop suspected in the serial murders of 12 people and 45 rapes around California starting 40 years ago.
And while only eight homicide charges have been filed so far, more are expected as country prosecutors where Joseph James DeAngelo brought his murderous rampage work out case-filing details.
Thanks to the website Cold Case – EARONS, which you can access here, a group of amateur sleuths who’ve been following the cases for decades have laid out in great detail each and every one of the killer’s horrific deeds. From the files of EARONS (EAR for East Area Rapist and ONS for Original Night Stalker) we offer five of the more shocking acts perpetrated by the killer, a man authorities have now identified as DeAngelo.
Attack # 1
Date: June 18, 1976
Location: Rancho Cordova
Details: Victim worked for Pacific Bell Telephone and moved to Rancho Cordova to live with her father in May. At the time of the assault, her father was vacationing. Starting in May, victim felt she was being watched. On several occasions an older, dark, medium-sized American car drove through the neighborhood. Every time the car passed her the driver turned his face away. Her father left town for about six weeks. The attack happens four weeks after he’s left. Starting sometime in the two weeks before the attack, she started receiving hang-up phone calls. There was only silence on the other end.
Around 5 p.m. on June 17th, the East Area Rapist used the railroad tracks near the house, and then made his way through backyards, to approach the residence. He moved a plastic birdbath under the telephone line, stood on it, and cut at the line with a knife. If he was trying to cut the line, he was unsuccessful. The assault begins at around 4 a.m. most likely. He then used the knife to chip away at the back door’s lock. He was able to successfully enter. Sometime before he entered the residence or woke her up, he had donned a mask and gloves and removed his pants.
He went to the doorway of the victim’s room and tapped on the doorway to wake her up, and then turned on the bedroom lights. He continued tapping the doorway. The assailant was calling her name as well. He was wearing a black t-shirt and a ski mask. He had no pants or underwear on. His naked penis was erect.
She pulled the covers over her head, and he jumped on the bed, straddled her legs, and tore the covers off of her head. He pressed the knife against her left temple so hard that blood flowed from the wound and stained her pillow. “If you make one move or sound, I’ll stick this knife in you,” he said.
He commanded her to roll over. She did, and then she felt his gloved hands grab her arms and pull them behind her. He had brought rope with him and he tied her tightly with it. He ordered her to roll over again. He began raping her, and touched her breasts with his gloved hands, only briefly.
After trying her feet and ankles together with the cord on her dryer, he tied her bra around her ankles, then left her bed and wandered around her bedroom. He picked up her slip from the floor and again approached the bed. “Don’t make a move while I’m here or I will kill you,” he said.
He left the room. Then she heard nothing. She waited, expecting the masked figure to return. Slowly she inched toward the kitchen, waiting for him to jump at her, expecting him to emerge at any moment. The door to the backyard stood open. She kicked it closed with her foot, only to have it bounce back as the dead bolt prevented it from closing. She knocked the phone receiver from the wall and frantically tried to reach the dial. She couldn’t reach it. She ran back down the hall to her father’s bedroom and knocked his phone off the bed stand. She managed to dial the operator, deputies soon arrived, but the rapist was gone.
The Community Meeting
Carol Daly, who retired as Sacramento County undersheriff in 2001, was one of the original investigators on the case. In a Sacramento Bee story, Daly recalls how she and her colleagues would hold community meetings to ease fears and answer questions as police tried desperately to stop the killer terrorizing their community. At one meeting, Daly told the Bee, a man stood up and berated law enforcement and, by extension, the husband of victims of the East Area Rapist, for not fighting back as the killer would rape their wives.
Not long after, someone broke into that man’s home and assaulted his wife, said Daly, now 76. “I know the rapist was at that community meeting.”
Kitchen Plates on the Husband’s Back
Date: Dec. 2, 1978
Location: San Jose
Details: The female victim was a registered nurse. The assailant went to the sliding glass door leading into the living room. He broke the glass near the lock, reached in, unlocked it, and entered. He went to the bedroom and shined his flashlight on the couple. The wife woke and saw the ski masked intruder at the foot of their waterbed. She screamed twice, waking her husband up. “Shut up or I’ll kill,” the intruder hissed. “Don’t look at me.”
The husband tried to get out of bed to attack the stranger, but the assailant hit his shin with the barrel of the gun twice. He made the woman tie her husband’s hands behind his back, repeatedly threatening to kill them both. The attacker used torn strips of a towel from the kitchen to blindfold the couple. They were gagged with more strips of the towel.”If these fall, I’ll hear them,” he hissed as he placed kitchen dishes on Clark’s back. “I’ll kill you if I hear them fall.”
The point of the knife pressed against her neck. “You better make it feel nice or I’ll cut your throat,” he said, referring to his penis. Several seconds later she was pushed to the floor. Her nightgown was raised, her red underpants pulled down over her legs and a gun barrel was pressed against her head. “If you scream, I’ll blow your brains out,” he hissed.
After raping the woman, the assailant left the room. She could hear him crying in the kitchen, as he paced back and forth. Deep sobs. Dishes crashed to the floor in her bedroom and she heard her attacker run down the hall toward her husband. “Just try that again, mother—-, and I’ll shoot your wife first, then you,” he hissed at the husband as he picked up the dishes and replaced them on the husband’s back. Dishes actually crashed to the floor twice, and both times the assailant went to the husband as quickly as he could. Both times he stuck the gun on the husband’s head and threatened him with death.
After about five minutes of this, the wife heard the attacker crying for several minutes and then, once again, silence. And he was gone.
The Youngest Victim and Maybe the Last
Date: Sunday, May 4, 1986
The victim: Janelle Cruz, 18
Location: 13 Encina, Irvine
Details: It had been four years, nine months, and eight days since killer’s the last known murder. Janelle, a cashier at Bullwinkle’s pizza, was the murderer’s youngest known homicide victim. Janelle had completed $2,000 worth of dental work shortly before her untimely death.
On the evening of May 4, a male co-worker of Janelle dropped by to visit. As they were sitting in the home they heard noises outside the window. Janelle looked outside but saw nothing. Later they heard noises again. It sounded like a door shutting in the garage or a gate closing in the side yard. Again they saw nothing.
At approximately 10:45 p.m. Janelle’s friend left. At 11:15 p.m.a neighbor heard Janelle’s Chevette drive up to her home. One car door slammed. He knew it was Janelle’s car because of the defective muffler. The next day at around 5 p.m., a real estate agent wanting to show the home to a prospective buyer discovered Janelle’s body.
Officers responding to the scene found Janelle’s body lying diagonally across her bed. Her bloodied head, face and neck were covered with a blanket. She had been battered about the face with the most serious injury to her forehead. Blades of grass were located at the head of the bed and near her feet and knees. Her bra had been pulled down to her waist.
Medium blue colored lint was found on and near her body. The Orange County Crime Lab determined them to be pieces of fabric from material that had been ripped. This would be consistent with the East Area Rapist’s earlier Northern California rape scenes where he tore towels to use as blindfolds and gags. Although there were no ligature marks, fresh abrasions and scrapes were present on Janelle’s wrists.
She was first struck in the back of the head and then viciously struck in the face. The weapon was thought to be a pipe wrench missing from the backyard.
The Guy from the “American Pet Association”
Date: May 14th, 1977
The location: Citrus Heights
Details: The wife was a waitress and the husband was manager of a restaurant. They lived close to where another assault took place. Police were staking out the area as a result, but they weren’t able to stop this attack.
The victims started getting hang-up phone calls almost right after moving in, which was three months before the attack. A white male in his 30’s knocked on the door to a house. The female of the house answered it. He stated he was with the American Pet Association and asked her if she had any pets she needed registered. When she told him no, he left, but paused in front of her garage and appeared to be examining the door lock. She became uneasy and checked outside for him, but he was gone. She checked with a neighbor who saw him and the neighbor said that hers was the only house the man had gone to. The woman checked with the Better Business Bureau and was told there was no such association in Sacramento or California.
The night of the attack the woman who’d been visited by the man woke up, thinking she’d seen a light turn on or a light turn off. She did not investigate. Nothing else happened at her residence. Late on the night of May 12, a neighbor thought she heard noises in her garage. Other strange events were reported around this time by neighbors of the victims.
It was a Friday night, and the couple was watching a movie on TV. The wife fell asleep on her husband’s shoulder. She woke up when the movie was done, and then they watched a basketball game. It was nearly 3 a.m. when they went to bed.
Shortly after going to bed, the wife sat up with a start. “I hear something! I hear something!” she cried. Her husband told her it was the cat, but she insisted that it was something at the side of the house. It was actually the assailant removing the screen from a window. He used a screw driver to pry the lock, he forced the window open, and he entered an empty bedroom on the other side of the house. The couple’s German Shepherd puppy didn’t react to any of the activity.
They were asleep when he entered their doorway and shined a flashlight in their eyes. The wife woke up first. “You make a sound and I’ll kill you,” said the intruder. “I have a .45 and I’ll kill you if you move.”
“Get on your stomachs. I’m just going to tie your hands and legs.” He removed shoelaces from his jacket pocket and threw them on the bed beside the woman. “Tie his hands.” She moved slowly, and tied his wrists in bowties. The intruder got angry. “Do it over. Tie them tighter. In a knot, or I’ll kill you.”
She tied him again. He pushed her to the bed, pulled her arms back behind her, and violently began tying her tightly.
“Don’t hurt her!” her husband barked.
“Shut up or I’ll kill you.”
He lifted the blankets up off of their feet and ordered them to cross their ankles. He tied the woman’s feet, then went over to the husband and retied his hands tightly, then tied the husband’s feet. On the dresser, the intruder found a bottle filled with pennies. He smashed it by hitting it with his gun. He rummaged through the closet. The dog, who had no reaction to the intruder at all except perhaps fear, was picked up and moved to another bedroom by the assailant.
After a while, he untied her feet with one pull of the slip knot and pulled her off of the bed. “Walk and don’t look at me. If you don’t do as I tell you I’ll kill you both.” His gun dug into her back as he pushed her toward the living room.
He removed a beer from the refrigerator and rejoined the victim. “Please God, don’t kill me. Please!” she whispered softly. “Shut up. You better cooperate or I’ll kill you.” He went back to the bedroom to check on the male. He put the gun against the man’s head.
“You move and I’ll kill you,” he threatened. He took his knife and pressed it against the man’s neck. “I’m going to rest now and have a beer.” He left the room.
After he came back, he stood over the woman and tore a towel in half. One half went over the front of the television set, held in place by a candleholder. He turned the television on for light and turned the sound off.
“If you move I’ll kill you,” he told her, placing a cup and saucer on her back. Then he took the other half of the towel and blindfolded her with it.
He took off his pants. She began pleading again, crying and sobbing. “No,” she begged. “Just leave me alone and go.”
“Be quiet or I’ll kill you. I’ll slit your throat.”
He eventually rolled her over, untied her feet, removed her pajama bottoms, and removed her underwear. He then lifted part of his mask and orally copulated her.
“You’re beautiful,” he hissed. “I’m going to take you in the van with me. How would you like to be in the river?”
She began to sob louder.
“Shut up. Don’t make a sound or I’ll kill you.”
He continued his sexual assault. When he was finished, he rolled her back onto her stomach and put the cup and saucer on her back again. As he was getting ready to leave, he reached down and grabbed her left hand and tried to pull her rings off.
“No, please don’t take them. Please don’t take them off,” she begged.
“Shut up or I’ll kill you,” he said, putting the gun to her head.
He took the rings, grabbed his bag, and left through the back door.
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