Golden State
In 1976, Rocky, Carrie and Logan’s Run came out and in Sacramento, ten women were raped when their homes were broken into by the same man. In 1978 the first human baby conceived by in-vitro fertilization was born, and the Sacramento East Area Rapist shot and killed Brian and Katie Maggiore while they were walking their dog. In 1986, Halley’s comet approached the earth from the opposite side of the sun, Billy Ocean had a hit with ‘When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going,” and Janelle Cruz was bludgeoned to death in her home by the same man. In April of 2018 in Citrus Heights, California, seventy-two-year-old Joseph deAngelo was arrested and charged for eight counts of first degree murder, with special circumstances.
It would take years to consume every bit of media ever released about this person, called at times the Vidalia Ransacker, the East Area Rapist, the Diamond Knot Killer, the Original Night Stalker, or the Golden State Killer. They include at least three books, television episodes of multiple true crime series, and of episodes of almost every true crime podcast ever conceived. These offer the chance to hear about bludgeoning and dismemberment on earphones and a private screen. Most of these end with sad features on the survivors or victim’s family members who chose to participate, and shots of a detective looking out into space moodily, and a note about how the case still remains unsolved. Until the arrest on Wednesday, April 24th. The mugshot of a 72-year old Citrus Heights resident was just part of the news for some people. For many others, it was a “Where I Was When I Heard the News” moment of shock. The emotional resonance from the wave breaking over the heads of many can be felt all over Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and maybe even the odd water cooler.
“The Golden State Killer: It’s Not Over” was the unfortunate title of a four-part Investigation Discovery special. It’s not really useful or poignant to point out that the Golden State Killer is not over. The term ‘over’ makes no sense here: it’s irrelevant. Can you say that Dennis Rader is “over,” or that Columbine is “over,” or that the Beast of Jersey is “over”? For that matter, is smallpox “over”? Is it over when the last person who knew a victim dies? When the memory is gone? We know it’s not over when an arrest is made. The next weeks and months are sure to be full of indictments for a long list. The sense of relief is faint, buried under the weight of forty years.
In a special arrest response episode, the hosts of the popular podcast My Favorite Murder say they’re like “Eagles fans.” “It’s like our team was cursed for like forty years, and we’re finally winning.” This is true as far as it points to the emotional entanglement between those who choose to involve themselves in something happening far away between strangers. Hearing the news that your team won or lost can upset or elate somebody even more than a phone call from a friend or an argument with a coworker. People who don’t like sports may be only vaguely aware of the circumstances or events, but understand the basic point of the faraway, abstract sports world becoming personal and concrete in a bad day. The ‘team’ metaphor is awkwardly applied to the arrest of a former law enforcement officer by members of the next generation for forty-year-old crimes. Presumably, a person could be equally interested in this week’s arrest of deAngelo and next week’s NFL draft. But for some reason, it’s difficult to picture.
Within a few days of the deAngelo arrest, Ronnie Dean Busick was charged in Vinita, Oklahoma for the murders of Ashley Freeman and Laura Bible. Authorities said an informant who had lived with Welch told them about the abduction, rape, torture and murders of the girls in Welch’s trailer. The crimes took place in 1999.
To be concerned or worried sick about these stories, to be a true crime fan or follower, is to reject statistics and logic. Death is far more likely to come in the form of a Buick or a blood clot than a stalker in a balaclava. We know that stranger rape is incredibly rare. It is easier, and more thrilling, to focus on the statistic of 45–50 rapes and 12 murders connected to one man. True crime is partly a way to alleviate the monotony of get and spend and the dirty dishes of daily life. It can also be a way of experiencing emotion, of stretching the boundaries of your own empathy and all the feelings that come with it.
There are no hard exclusions to collective trauma. The ends of the butterfly effect are indistinct at best, and nonexistent to some. Every time someone points out the absurd and asks “Can you imagine?” the answer is probably “No.” It is nonetheless human to try, and try again, and reread the article and really think about it, one more time.
The urge to merge is compelling. The need to stare at a local newspaper clipping about the engagement of Joseph James deAngelo and Bonnie Jean Colwell and hear, in your mind, the survivor description of the rapist lying in bed next to her and sob-whispering “I hate you, Bonnie” over and over, has the power to grip. Then there’s the need to place the clipping before deAngelo joining the navy in 1970 and marrying Sharon Huddle in 1973. The shoplifting of a hammer and dog repellent by a police officer seems bizarre, but also very ordinary, and in its own way, lines up with the details. The Golden State Killer left behind many of the burglary tools and murder weapons that he brought to the crime scenes, either on the night of the crime or in the weeks before, perhaps because he felt sure they couldn’t be traced through purchase records. His evasion of his victims’ pet dogs has been the source of much discussion. There is no way to make sense of what happened, and what didn’t happen, and what is happening now. There is a still a desperate need to connect all the little pieces out of the nauseating miasma and form them into a digestible semisolid. Some kind of narrative would help, we feel, even though we’re not sure why and even if much of the incoming information is nauseating.
From the sound of it, many people didn’t realize that law enforcement investigations sometimes involve searches of public DNA databases. In a tweet, no less, a reporter for Motherboard called it a “dystopian nightmare.”
That there is a database for the DNA identities of accused and convicted felons is well-known. The state of California has one of the largest such projects in the country, in part created because of the Golden State Killer and the dedicated advocacy efforts of a murder victim’s brother. No details have been released on how many familial relations search leads authorities pursued, or which databases were involved in the effort. The arrest took place a few hours away from Ancestry.com’s “DNA Day” celebrations, attached to a special sale price for the company’s services, just before their Mother’s Day push. “Where will your DNA take you?” the banner ad reads. Suddenly, it seems like a pretty good question. Forty years of secrets, abandoned hammers, dead dogs and breathy phone calls and it’s all unraveled when a second cousin gets curious about being 32 or 33 percent Pirez.
This isn’t the first time this has happened in a cold case, although the Ronnie Dean Busick scenario of law enforcement acting off a tip from someone who knew an offender is much more common. 23andMe made a blog post about it in 2016, just after their FDA-ordered two-year hiatus, trying to distance themselves from any concerns about consumer privacy. They said outright that they have never acquiesced to a law enforcement request. Ancestry.com complied with a search warrant from a 1999 Idaho murder in 2014.
These statements are missing an important caveat: as far as we know. Investigators working on the Golden State Killer case didn’t inform GEDmatch, the relevant database trying desperately to pull itself away, of its intentions or actions. They made a fake profile to access DNA sequencing services, uploaded the sample from a frozen rape kit, and proceeded to investigate the familial matches that came up. GEDmatch itself doesn’t provide DNA testing services: it’s a place for people to upload what they received from services that do to find matches. It’s not clear how many of these leads were followed, but they did lead to a judge ordering that a 73-year-old Oregon man provide a sample this year and later, to deAngelo’s arrest.
The specter of possible new technologies of facial reconstruction from DNA is remote: the problems of scandal-ridden labs, uneducated analysts, low court standards and a backlog of untested sexual assault evidence kits are immediate.
The online genealogical community, as it apparently prefers to be known, has responded in outrage, anger and disgust. Why exactly they would prefer law enforcement to be excluded from using the data is unclear, beyond the general squeamishness. They are certainly happy to share heartwarming stories of adoptees and distant relatives reuniting through using the services and the databases, proving that it’s okay to sift, for some people and for some reasons.
DeAngelo’s next expected appearance in court is on May 14. The news cycle is already rolling away to the next crises and flash point. A legion of people who watched the episodes, read the books and listened to the analysis will be watching.
