12/26/75-Tony Reid

Turning to the public for information, mister Reid created the twelve twenty six to seventy five podcasts based on primary evidence and new interviews surrounding the murder of Donna Joe on that date in Exeter, California. The team re examined every possibility. The investigator soon found something more than a terribly failed verdict. They discovered connections to the unsolved murders of Jennifer Armour and Claude Snelling and links to the

East Area rapist. The uncovered shocking corruption by the original lead investigator, who illegally destroyed trial evidence and looked into the unexplained death of the original defense attorney. This pursuit led them right back to Exeter, where a new suspect and these murders emerged Joseph DiAngelo, who was then a full time sergeant with the local police department, the officer

in charge of violent crimes and burglary investigations. This book is more than an adaptation of the twelve twenty six seventy five podcasts. It shares new insight formed during the investigation and provides a firsthand look at the Tullari crimes, as well as exposing the faulty evidence used to obtain

and maintain the false conviction. More than anything else, twelve twenty six seventy five demonstrates the enormous consequences of letting a serial killer go free, made worse when combined with the painful mistakes, infighting and finger pointing by certain jurisdictions, the catastrophic results are undeniable. Now that the mystery of how it unfolded is revealed, we can also begin to examine the reforms necessary to prevent this tragedy from happening again.

The book that we're featuring this evening is twelve twenty six, seventy five with my special guest attorney, private investigator and author, Tony Reid. Welcome to the program, and thank you so much for this interview. Tony Reid.

a number of years. In his capacity, he was sergeant and was the lead investigator on the promise side of Claude Snelling, who was killed in Visilia on September eleventh eineteen seventy five, and John really then led the investigation for several months afterwards, pursuing this aspect and then followed the tracks of the offender, who was then unknown up to Sacramento, was repudiated there turned away and the connections were denied, and really kind of just held a lot

of the problems of the investigation in his own part, good idea to get involved again, But quickly when he saw what the evidence was and why I was asking, he more than willingly opened up his heart and his mind back to get into the case again, and it truly helped sort out so many of the immense mysteries that were present, how things got flubbed and what happened, and so really without John's assistance that the case would have not been possible, no part of this investigation would

have been there. He really helped solve so many of those critical mysteries.

Quite interestingly too, it just so happens that on the day that we're talking about, the principal date of the book, December twenty sixth, eighteen seventy five, that she was working at the office of the real term whose name is Bill Rose, and Margie was working there as secretary and had seen Oscar Clifton the day that he came in, and had known him through those connections and just never seemed to fit right that this person with whom she

had very brief contact, stories that she really helped set a lot of the mysteries in action.

rapist emergen Sacramento. He was the lead investigator there and at the time when the connection was first presented as a possibility between Visilia and Sacramento. He was working the case, and so he really also understood what was going on, and the Sacramento investigators so really quite understanding what happened with the breakdown between why this suspect lead was very valuable, suspect lead was not properly investigated, how they got derailed.

Richard was the person who really answered that question. And in one word, it comes down to hypnosis. And that's something that I get into quite extensively in the book, because I don't believe people really understood exactly how it was used, how it was treated as evident in this period kind of became popularized. But how also it can be either extremely beneficial to a case, where it can

be very detrimental. However, regardless of however you look at it, after nineteen eighty one, it was absolutely forbidden in the courtrooms of California, and it never should have after that had the impact on the case that it did. And so the other individual that you mentioned, Larry Pool. By the time I was contacting him, Larry had left law enforcement.

He was out in the private sector, and since several messages engaging him about the case, pointing out some of the evidence that we had developed for the Exeter suspect, and bouncing off the ideas about the timeline, the evidence, the connections, and saying you know too, Larry was one of the few individuals who really believed the viability of the Visiliate connection, and so it was very important to have his perspective on the case and for him to

assist early on in attempting to have some referrals go to the then current investigators, those who were still involved, and then unfortunately having that derailed as well. That's very painful.

of my initial investigations. In fact, after I had met with the current team at Vicilia police department, and word was getting around the community about some of the investigation, and one of the leaders of the local road asked me to come to a presentation, and Margie and actually did this together and kind of gave a quick overview of the case and talked about some of the important connections, what we were looking at, the idea of the suspect

being an exeter. And after that presentation at the rotary, lu Griswold approached me and then you know, he kind

of said, hey, this this sounds quite interesting. And Louis still then a reported with the Fresno b so he was friends with the with Sergeant Vaughn and remembered the investigation and kind of got interested, reinvigorated in the story and helped write some of the early interviews, but also wrote a really important interview post arrest which thanked John Vaughan for his contributions to the original investigation, and he titled that article sweet Vindication for the simple reason that

John never really got the credit that he fully deserved for having put together the investigation correctly. In the first and then the other two that you mentioned Lilia and Mike, I worked with those two reporters for the better part of a year, gave them full access to the case, gave them, you know, a lot of my list of witnesses, showed them at every page of the police reports, of the transcripts, anything they wanted to see, they got access to.

Any questions that they had, they got access to. So it was really, you know, it was an immense task that this case is and you had mentioned earlier that this is this whole story is so overwhelming, how do you keep it straight? They had done, you know, a full year's worth of investigation. They traveled with me around the various locations for a couple of days and we

recorded on site interviews. They had also gone and spoken to many of the locals in question, and of course with the District Attorney's office, and really put together fantastic series which is still available on YouTube, Asking the Question framed by the Golden State Color. That's the title of the series, and it's in five different parts and is really worthwhile watching for anyone who's interested in the story to be able to understand, you know, where these locations were,

who was involved. It's a great summary of the case, and so they deserve tremendous amount of credit for getting some very valuable interviews and providing some new insights beyond even what I could provide.

When it came back, it came back as crickets. There is a terrible le legacy in this case, and that is that once the Visalia linkage was broken, and that happened in nineteen seventy eight, fully and firmly, once that got derailed, no one wanted to hear the name of that city who was involved in this investigation. Nobody wanted to hear that name place again. And anytime it came up,

it was that's been disproven, that's debunked, that's garbage. I'm not even going to listen to anything that was wrong. For so many reasons that John explained. However, that was the accepted narrative, and when we put together the idea, it's like, how are we going to repair this? If law enforcement aren't taking this seriously now and the public have this misperception, how do we go about correcting it?

So that was really the genesis of the idea for the podcast, the website, the social media is to set out the idea to say, let's re record some of these original transcripts and police reports. Let's tell the story about what happened, what went wrong, and see if there are enough people who are interested in this who can come forward and supplement some of this information and perhaps set it right and explain what happened with some of

the misconnections. And really, there were a couple of things that happened in response to this, and I'll summarize those

as being the polar opposite. We had a tremendous number of people who reached out and provided first hand accounts, agreed to interviews, provided some new evidence for what was going on, and then quite the opposite, the people who wanted to continue the narrative that the connection was improper in the first place, to debunk it, and then to go so far as to publicly expound to in as many ways as they could, whether it was a national media or local media, to continue this narrative that was

completely flawed. It was in essence of this battle between two opposingarratives and was this true or was this not true? So that's really the genesis of the podcast and why it was important to be able to write the book and everything else for.

eight he began his career Polease studies. He got two years here at college, got his AA. Then by nineteen seventy two he had completed his advanced degree, his BA at Sacramento State, and shortly thereafter he joined the Roseville Police Department as an intern in their Investigation and Identification Bureau. And so what had happened there was, you know, one of the critical mysteries is where was the lead up

series to the ransacker? Where did he start? Was one of the questions that Larry Pool was very creative in asking about his investigation. One of the things he pent back was where was Jodyangelo when he started? And come to find out that the lead up series was actually in Rancho Cordova. We now know that he was the

Cordova cat burglar. He then moved down to Exeter in the first part of nineteen seventy three, but really for that time period where he'd finished at Sex State in seventy two, and before he had moved there, he had spent a good almost a year being this home invasion cat burglar in the Ranch Cortdova area, and so that

really is his genesis. But it's very important, and I want to reemphasize the fact that this case is extremely unusual and remains relevant and important for the simple fact that we still don't fully understand exactly the role of his police training. What did he know and how did he use that advantage to escape detection? For all of this time it was clear that he was a police officer, and what does that mean for society? How can we

prevent this from happening again? If we don't really fully explore the role of his participation in law enforcement For six and a half years he was an active, sworn police officer in the state of California. What does that mean you talk.

is too smart is going to get bored. And we don't know exactly what happened in the mind of Jody Angel. He has not spoken in any way about that part of his experiences and what happened to why he joined Exeter PD. What we do know is that when he did join, many of his colleagues had asked, I think a very reasonable question, why is it someone like you, with all of your training and experience, when you're so smart you should be with the FBI, Why are you

here in this small little city of Exeter. And so it turns out, yes, that there is a there is a threshold, and law enforcement entities really do prefer to keep people within a very tight range of the bell curve and not too smart and certainly not unintelligent, and

as police officers. So when it gets down to motive, one of the things that is very clear from the pattern of activity is that Jodi Angelo was always responding to the press and was directly it appears to me as if he was directly engaging with some of the particular officers his you know, want by putting the crimes

onto maps and understanding the exact locations and everything. One of the things that became very clear and checking this out, sounding this out with the investigators, it was quite obvious that the offender would strike in and with great knowledge of jurisdictional boundaries. Jurisdictional boundaries play a big role in policing. If you're even if you're half a mile outside of city limits and into the county, that affects exactly who

is going to be investigating this crime. And we certainly see that in the book twenty six to seventy five. There is there are two other beyond the Richmond case, or two other very compelling instances where it's documented the

offender is striking with great jurisdictional precision. To me, that demonstrates that it was a knowledge of those areas that allowed him to perhaps play what I call a game of cat and mouse, hitting in particular areas, knowing that certain officers would get that case and to be able to play that chase game with them directly.

if we can figure that out. But one of the things that is clear, like for instance, with Cordova, that wasn't that was a name that was used only internally, and that name does not appear in any of the newspaper stories. It didn't really even receive much attention outside the burglary unit for the Sheriff's department there, And the same is very much true with the Vasilia Ransacker. The name was barely used at all during the time that the bulk of the burglaries were occurring. It was something

that was kind of whispered around town. It's like, you know, what, what what do we call this person? When you have an unknown subject, they often then take on a name. And I've got a few others that are named here in the book other relevant cases, and those would be examples like the Portville rapist or even the Tillary Cap burglar. And these names get floated around as to to help in a way to help law enforcement identify it and solicit information, but to at least have a way to

refer to the case easily. The monikers serve those purposes. It's really hard to say with jody'angelo exactly what rule he had, if any, in you know, creating these other than you know, his his jurisdictional precision, striking specifically within a very narrow range in Rancho Cordova and then returning to that exact same neighborhood as the Easter Area rapist. What does that mean? I don't know the answer to that question.

it was just more than three years. And something I think another error that's floating rout there in the public narrative is this idea that as soon as the composite sketch came out in Visalia following the encounter with Sector McGowan, the shooting in the backyard of the war residents that happened in late mid December excuse me, of nineteen seventy five, so well after D'Angelo had already been in that area

for two and a half years. And this narrative that as soon as the sketch came out, as soon as he was identified, D'Angelo fled and went up to Auburn. That's not true. He actually named in Exeter and as a sergeant and was the lead investigator for the violent crimes unit for Exeter PD after that for another eight months. So it's an absolute misconception to say that as soon as that sketch was out there and as soon as

he was identified, he fled. The better critical part about this is that the first two attacks in the Easter A Rapist series occur while Sergeant D'Angelo is still with Exeter PD. The first of those is June eighteen of seventy six, and the next is in July, and we know that he's still active and reporting for duty and Exeter while that's going on. You know, was he aware

that he needed to move? Very likely? Was he setting up some kind of confusion again with his ability to strike in a jurisdiction and create the confusion to know how these crimes are going to be investigated? And indeed, that question of you know, where did this offender live

throughout the course of the series. You know, we know that the Assyria Rapist series starts in Sacramento and then it expands and there were many theories floated around from law enforcement about, you know, did he live in Concord, did he live in Stockton or Modesto at all of these other places? And later on, why was he in

Galita and how did he end up in Irvine? No one lives in all of these areas, but to be able to create the confusion that exists to know how crimes are going to be investigated, and to know that people are going to start with the assumption, Hey, the

person lived in this area at this time. To be able to create the subterfuge of having those first two ar attacks occur in Sacramento while he's still on exeter ped I think as a very fine example of both his tactical awareness as a police officer and his situational awareness as the offender to be able to create that confusion.

he's kind of moved areas within the town. And if we draw these these lines, this intersection over the map of the Cilia, we can see how he's kind of shifted. Then they started going back through the reports and pouring back through things, and one of the reports that they

found was from a few months prior, in July. There was a report of the ransacker having encountered a young girl who returned midday to her home and as she was walking in through the gate, the subject was fleeing through the apartment that was over the garage, and as he fled down the stairway he saw the girl. He punched her, knocked her to the ground, and then fled the scenes. When they went upstairs and look, they found

sure enough, this was a ransacker burglary at this residence. Well, they this got noted then by the new team of investigators and very carefully said, you know, hey, look we're mapping everything out here. Let's definitely put this one on here because this is the first time that someone actually saw the offender. So that was an important crime. Well, a few months had gone by and the young girl's mother, everything is sloading around town. After the homicide. Everybody is

on high alert. Well, this young girl's mother had noticed that there were several footprints outside of their bedroom and bathroom windows, and they she called the police department and Agent McGowan responded to the scene. So he's looking around and he's looking at these footprints and noticing this looks this looks curious. There are these weird circular impressions that are in the ground underneath the bathroom window. I wonder

what these are. And so he stands there and he looks around the yard and he realizes across the way that there's a flower pot that has been moved, but it was slightly out of place, and so when he picked up the flower pot and he moved it over to the spot where these other circular impressions were, he realized this is the pot where the offender had used

to peer into the windows. So it's like he found the clue and realized too that if the offender was coming back act that this would be a valuable piece

of information. The second part of what was going on was that in between September and December, as the events were unfolding, it was very frustrating for VISILIAPD because every time they were putting out the burglary reports about what was going on and where the patrols were going to be that night, as if by magic, the offender would strike in a completely different area with precision again, and so on the night that they said, hey, look, in

case the offender comes back to this residence, let's do a few things differently. Let's have only the team who are assigned to this location be aware of the investigation. We don't want anybody else, even on the force, to be to have knowledge of what's going about to unfold. And the second thing is we're going to be radio silent, absolutely no chatter unless until there's a some kind of emergency.

And they even went so far as to put like this invisible ink on the sidewalk so in case the offender stepped on the sidewalk, they would be able to follow his tracks away from and then follow where he went. So they had that, they had, They had set up patrol cars around the area to block off as much traffic as they could, and realized, you know, let's let's

set the trap. And they did, and on the night in question, the offender started a few blocks away and had another signature ransacking burglary at the home of a medical doctor nearby who had two children on one of them was one of the cheerleaders that was obviously being stocked.

The offender had broken into the home while they were away, classic Vicilia ransacker entry, stolen a bunch of items and had them on his person when he came to the ward residence next And in that moment, Asian McGowan had discovered that there appeared to be some activity. He was positioned at the garage across the street with the lights off, and then followed the subject over to the yard, had a herbal encounter and there was an exchange of gunfire

during that incident. But before that gunfire erupted, the offender had done something very mysterious. He had lifted up his He was wearing a ski mask at the time to conceal his identity. But as McGowan told him, you were under arrest, the offender turned very slowly towards McGowan, lifted the mask up and bield his face. But that was with one hand, and it appears to me as if simply a distraction, because with his other he then reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out his disguised revolver and

turns and fires at agent McGowan. Because Bill had been with LAPD, one of the things that he was trained to do that was perhaps different and saved his life in that moment, was to hold his flashlight away from his body. So rather than being able to shoot where the flashlight was had hit the policeman, he shot at the flashlight and said it was an extended distance by his arm. The shrapnel from that, however, broke apart the

flashlight had the glass. A piece came up and hit him in the eye and went down to the ground. He called out for help, fired another warning shot, and then the pursuit followed. They tried to capture this aspect and in fact the paint works they were able to follow a short distance down backtracked, ended up in some shrubbery along the highway, but disappeared into the night. So for a very brief period of time, for what essentially ten to fifteen seconds, jody'angelo was under arrest in the

backyard of the Ward residence. And it's the only time any law enforcement entity had D'Angelo under arrest as this suspect during any part of the investigation. Whether you want to look at anytime from nineteen seventy five until Pru's homicide in nineteen eighty six, at no other point in time was the Angelo under arrest. And so FACILIPD deserved a lot of credit for having such a creative stakeout and for actually capturing the suspect.

very athletic. One thing that was consistent in all the descriptions in terms of the activities of the Visilia ransactor was a strong athletic ability to be able to jump over fences, jump through shrubbery, to run and evade any detection. And so all of this lined up, and so it was very clear from the moment that McGowan was describing his suspect that we were talking about the same person. This was the same person who shot at him killed Claude Snelling. This is the same person, and in fact,

it's the same caliber of weapon. It was not the same exact weapon, but it was the same caliber of weapon. And anyone who talks about the importance of police training to the case should realize in both of these instances, we're talking about a snubnose thirty eight and at a short distance that can be a very deadly and precise instrument. Any distance away and becomes a lot harder to be

able to control and hit a particular target. One thing that's very clear from DeAngelo's activities as the ransacker is that his targets are a good distance away from him, and he shot at and hit each of his targets with great precision. He shot at and Claud Snelling twice and hit Claud Snelling twice. He shot at Bill McGowan once and hit Bill McGowan's flashlight dead center. So that told a lot of people that this was someone who

was very experienced with handling a thirty eight revolver. The typical revolver carried by police officers tell.

considered to be reliable. In fact, the Los Angeles Police Department had developed a whole unique squad that was training other law enforcement entities around the state of California. They had a federal grant and were going around trying to build up their notoriety. There is even an important article in Time magazine about this squad, and they called themselves this Bengali Squad, or at least they were referred to

that publicly. And in going through this, there was the opportunity to take Bestinelling down to Los Angeles and to be hypnotized by the lead investigators there and to draw out hopefully some information and the way that Vaughan describes that trip is that with Beth and her mom and to officers taking the family down to Los Angeles, there was a lot of apprehension that the young girl had regarding what had happened, and was any part of this her fault, you know, And the fact that her father

rescued her and gave his life to rescue her certainly, you know, wore heavily on her brain and her conscious That's very understandable. But when she got down there, she went through the hypnosis section session and they drew out a few things. There was only really one very minor detail that came out through the hypnosis that that was

in any way different from the three other descriptions. She had met with the SILIPD three times before this and had given a very clear set of information, was always clear and consistent, and then after that, going back through things, there was only one really thing that was that was substantially different, and that was the addition of this unusual note of the offender having short study fingers, and other than that, it was it was very much a re telling.

The only thing that was added to that was, you know, on the way back home from you know, Visilia is about halfway between Los Angeles and Sacramento, so it's a good ways away, and on the way on return trip home, one noted that that really had a sense of peace that she didn't have before, and understanding and a calmness about her that wasn't there before the before the hypnosis. However, after the McGowan shooting, we've got a whole other cattle efficient.

This really illustrates exactly why hypnosis is so flawed. For some people, it's very beneficial and therapeutic, and for other people it's perhaps the worst thing possible you could do. What had happened with the McGowan hypnosis was again Bill, I think, you know, as a law enforcement officer, certainly

felt some apprehension himself. He after all, had this suspect under his gun, he told him he was under arrest, and I'm certain that he felt he had his own emotion as a law enforcement officer for letting this murderer get away, So he certainly wanted to do everything he could to be helpful to the story. One of the things we know, however, is that after the before his hypnosis, they had put out a suspect description in the local newspaper.

They published a composite sketch. They've gone through and really worked out quite a lot of information before he went to the hypnosis, and we're starting to get some clues come in from members of the public. And there was

a case that God investigated before the hypnosis. And it appears to me as if the court's warning about hypnosis is exactly correct, that what you're thinking about during the time of the hypnosis subsequent to the events gets mixed into your understanding, your awareness, and sometimes the ability then to incorporate thoughts, fears, concerns, suspicions, anything like that. It's

incorporated and becomes fact. And that appears to be what happened with the McGowan hypnosis, is that he incorporated a completely different person, peeping suspect who was spotted a couple of years prior and was reported, an encounter was reported, and all of those details got conflated into his new description. If you go back and look pre hypnosis and compare that to the garbage, the literal garbage that comes out

during hypnosis, it's dis disturbing. And Jaun was present in the room while McGowan was undergoing the hypnosis, and he said that he was completely agitated, He was sick to his stomach. He kept calling out where Shipley, the other officer who was with him at the scene of the Ward residence, and the scene and the shooting that night, where Shipley where Shipley, and all of this intensely emotional. They even had to stop the session once and resume

it for him to be able to continue. It was the complete opposite of what had happened with Best Knowlling. And unfortunately too, every time that MacGowan was a later on cold to think about his description, he got to the point where it got so confused for him in his own mind. He would look at this aspect description and read this aspect description he had read and drawn out before the hypnosis, and said, that's not the guy

he got sewing his head about what happened. That got mixed up, Which is exactly why a few years later, in nineteen eighty two, there's a very important decision in a state caled surely, and that case told California law enforcement that's it. No more hypnosis in the courts. It's completely unreliable. And on top of that, there is actual demonstrable proof that people are giving incorrect descriptions, they're incorporating

what law enforcement wants them to say. And if law enforcement is in any way involved in these hypnosis sessions, this isn't admissible evidence. The witness is completely tainted and you can't just pick out part of this the witness. That witness is no longer able to testify reliably about the incident.

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leading psychologist at the time. His name was Jewel Fort, and they're at that point trying to put together the information that they have from the various reports, from the information from McGowan, the composite schedule, what they know about the offender, and they do a pass at an early psychological profile, and he in this profile is the determination that the offender very likely did not live in the area where the crimes were being committed, that he appeared

to have a pattern that would be consistent with someone who lived approximately ten to fifteen miles away, would drive to the areas where the crimes were occurrent and then return home and try to relive the events. Whatever else we might say about some of the other remarkable things that are in their report, that's astonishingly correct. There's a lot in there that we look at now and go, well, that might not be such a good thing to say.

But other than that, that was one thing in the re course that was really fantastic, and so essentially through the efforts of combining the information. One of the other things critical things that the Facilia Police Department had done was to use an early computerized system that was being developed by the California Department of Justice, and this was

the CII system. So they had the ability in the CII system to track things like stolen property and even we're developing what was called anmo a method of operation or motorceparandi database that would allow the Department of Justice to receive tips to say if we've got an a

vendor who's following these particular traits. And they put in some of the things that the psychologist had developed, and they put in together some of the things that were in the report and created this profile that was uploaded to the California system. Well after the e is a Rapist series was started in Sacramento in June of seventy six and then continued and accelerated through the first year

or so. It turns out that they too, Sacramento, were inputting information into the same system, which is exactly what it's designed to do, and it hit emerged and that clue was then followed as soon as both entities got the alert, Hey there's a match of your information. You both should check this out. So that was the first trip that Facility Police Department had made to Sacramento. So they carried up with them their reports about the Ransack

or his unusual burglaries. This report of the Snelling homicide, the very strong similarities in the Snelling homicide to the East Airy rapist series. The fact that the offender appears suddenly in the bedroom of the sleeping victim, puts hands over her mouth, is completely disguised, disguises, his voice in his face, uses a weapon, is transporting the victim out of the residents, and a number of other strong similarities.

So they're looking Facility are looking at this, they're looking at the burglaries, and they're going up to Sacramento and saying, so we're showing you are cards, you show us yours, And they have an initial conversation and they're looking at this and they're saying, this is pretty strong. This is looking pretty good as far as a match at that point in time too. By the time they're actually up there, they're now looking at a total of thirteen. Thirteen in

the series are on this list. I have the list that was written out which cases those were, and they were looking essentially at that point in time. Well, when another year goes by and there's still not been any activity, they go up and they make a second trip to Sacramento, and this time, you know, they're going through the cases and they're looking a little closer. They make the decision to say, you know, hey, maybe we should do a public appeal, maybe we should seek information. Because we did

this in Basilia, we got some great leads. So they went to the Sacramento Union and I gave them an interview. And one of the things that Vond put in that interview that is just truly remarkable and perhaps one of the greatest clues that he had noticed. One of the most unique mo points was that the offender who was known to him as the ransacker benefit Sacramento was the

Hysteri rapist. Both of these offenders, the v R. And the er both had the habit of taking stolen items from one scene and leaving them at another scene, eitherby trying to implicate someone from the victim's residents and planting evidence at another location, or taking items from one burglary

and planting them the victim's residents. It was nonsensical in a way that it was the same thing that kept happening over and over again, and it was clear to DeVaughn and his words were both men have the peculiarity of taking things from one scene and leaving them at another.

And those words were something that became really important for the Richmond homicide where Oscar Clifton was the suspect, because that's exactly the only critical piece of physical evidence in the case, an invoice book that was discovered the scene belonged to Oscar Clifton. There's no doubt about it. He did not ever deny that the book was his, but that was the impetus for making this connection between Visilia

and Sacramento in the first place. And as further proof of this, that's exactly what happened later on when the Easteria rapists would move down to the Galida area. In your Santa Barbara, another mo hit came up on the same CII system. Aliorni Department of Justice told Sacramento, hey, your offender matches these other weird burglaries and this homicide

down in Galita, you guys should take a look. So here's Sacramento Jeff's department completely sandwiched between the pre years where Basilia follows them up using the CII system, and as he exits following the same CII system away from Sacramento. It's quite disturbing when you look at it in retrospect that the information was there the whole time and that

it was not properly followed. But again because the Basilia ran connection got so derailed, and you know, going back to this story of the Sacramento Union, the thing that seemed to upset Sacramento Jeff's department the most was the implication that the hysteria rapist had been the Visilia Ransack or not becase because of the burglaries, but because of

this snelling homicide. The quote that's in the newspaper from the spokesman Bill Miller pulls out the fact that it was unprofessional and irresponsible for Viacilia PD to suggest that the East Area rapist was a person who was capable of homicide. And obviously, now when we're sitting here in twenty twenty two and we know that it was the same person, that's even more reprehensible. But looking at it, even then, the thought I believe was that they just

didn't want to scare the community. They didn't want them to be on high alert. They didn't want them to be facing the fact that not only was this person who had committed essentially fifty rapes in the Sacramento area just going around causing complete terror and panic and seem to escape every possible trap that they were trying to set for him, that this person was also a killer.

I think now that we know the exact timeline, there's one more piece that's that's devastating to that narrative, because what we're talking about there is June of nineteen seventy eight, on the second visit when Vasili are there, and what we know now is that Jodyangelo had in fact killed in Sacramento, that he admitted responsibility for the double homicide of Brian Katy Masori, and that happened in February of nineteen seventy eight, so a few months before this a

case that was not connected to the Easteria rapist until much later nineteen ninety nine or two thousand. I believe it's the first instance where Sacramento said, Hey, we're now looking at the easter Aia rapists for being responsible for this parent murders. Why is it that such a a terrible conflation of these homicides and this motive of not scaring the public. How did this happen? How did this unfold?

And knowing the timeline we know now that he did get away with those homicides for many years, and what does that say about not following the evidence. It's pretty painful, and I understand why now in retrospect Sacramento doesn't really want to talk about that exact timeline and how things line up with the warning that came from Sergeant Vaughn and Vacilia PD tell.

because he's really moved his area of activity. In nineteen seventy four, he was very active, but it was in a different part of town. And I drew these four quadrants for John and I said, what do these quadrants mean in terms of, you know, your patrol zones? And he said, that's an exact match for where we did our patrols. Us are the boundaries for our patrol zones.

And so you could look and say he was active in zone one in this first part of nineteen seventy four and then shifted and so Vaughan said, you know, let's let's investigate these other crimes more carefully. Well. The implication for that, unfortunately for Jennifer Armer's case, is that her abduction occurred in November of nineteen seventy four, just a month where shy of where this line had been

drawn by Vasilia PD. And it's unclear now you know what would have happened if YE had noticed that and said, hey, we've got this other case. So I noticed this case as being an unsolved troumise I from another investigation that I was doing and picked this up and said, you know, hey, how does this line up because this young girl lived in this zone where he was most active in nineteen seventy four, and then when she is actually abducted, did we can see that she's only two blocks away from

where the Snelling homicide occurred? Is there any correlation here? And the second part of that question, was this case ever investigated by you? Do you know anything about this? And I basically got a blank look, one of the only times that I got a blank look from John, and very we missed it. He was very honest and upfront, and he said, you know, had I known about this, I definitely would have explored this, but no, we simply

I was simply unaware. And I think the principal cause of that was the way that the case was investigated. This young girl was on her way to the cross town football game homecoming night. It's a big deal in Vicelia, It's called the Cowhide Game, and met Whitney versus Redwood and she was walking from her home down in the Zone one and ends up in Zone two near the Snelling house. Where she's last seen, a few blocks away from where she's supposed to meet her friend and get

a ride to the game. She never shows up, and this fifteen year old girl didn't have a car, didn't have a driver's license, didn't have any way to transport herself, so she goes missing that night. Her mom reports her missing the next day, and a police presume that she's a runaway. However, nothing appears for the better part of ten days. On that day, a rancher out just north of Exeter discovers her body in the frank Kurn Canal.

She's pulled out and it's discovered that her hands are bound behind her back using her own bra She's partially disrobed. Some of the items of clothing are found nearby. The quote in the newspaper, and I kid you not is we don't know how she got there, we'd sure like to note. And that's as much as I seemed to be put out publicly about the case. And as a matter of fact, they go so far as to say it could be foul play. But where it could be a runaway, we simply don't have enough information here to

tell us what happened. So in essence. For the first year after her death, law enforcement treated the case as a runaway and that she'd met some unfortunate mishap. We don't know what happened, and certainly had the case been in front of Vaughan to say, hey, wait a minute, we've got another student, an actual classmate, best Snelling, who is abducted, transported to Exeter where she had no reason, no connection to be, and she's taken from the exact

area where where the Snelling homicide occurs. What's going on here? So that was the first clue that took the investigation

back to Exeter. But another one that was equally important was that shortly after the Snelling homicide, there were two items that were found in between another city, farmers Bill and Exeter, well out closer towards Exeter, on a connecting road called Avenue two fifty six, one of the only roads that connects all the way through from Viacilia to to Exeter, and they found there a gun that had a serial number that matched one of the vr burglaries.

And they found some loot. They found in wrapped inside a clear plastic raincoat, a screwdriver that matched the prime marks of the Visilia rants are plus some additional loots some AMMO that was noted that matched the description of some of those items, and they found those on both sides of this very narrowest road, local offshoot called Hypericum

Road that becomes important later on in the story. And in essence, that was the second clue that said to So we said to John, so other than this young girl who was taken from Visili and found out in Exeter and this loot found in Exeter, you know, what are some of the other things. And it was noted too that the psychologists who were one of the places that he mentioned as a possibility was the city of Exeter.

And so, you know, putting these things together, it led to the strong possibility to Jennifer Armor was a abducted by the Basilia ransacker, that there was an Exeter connection and with the loot, what happened with that investigation. So being able to talk to John and ask him the questions about how that was explored, what the suspects they looked at, and where that ended, I think became really

critical to answer the question about Jennifer Armer. Other note that I want to make is that after we were proceeding and talking about the case, and well before the Angelo's identification, we asked for a meeting with the sheriff's office. And because the case was even though it was an abduction in the Salia and the body was found near Exeter, neither one of those municipalities was actually involved in the investigation because the body was placed in the canal north

of Exeter. Where the body is found is in California, where the homicide jurisdiction is based. In this since the homicide of Jennifer Armer was being handled by the Tillary County Sheriff's Office and by no other entities, it is quote unquote their case. So when we sat down, we said, hey, look,

this was in September of twenty seventeen. We said, you know, hey, look, here's all of this evidence that connected the Visilia ransacker, that connected the Exeter loot, that connected these Exeter locations. Because the meeting also incorporated, hey, this is why these clues exist to connect the Visilia ransacker to the Richmond investigation and the end the wrongful conviction of Oscar Clifton.

They certainly didn't want to hear that. As a matter of fact, there are exact words, we have no interest in litigating that case. So in that moment they had zero point zero zero interest and hearing out the armor case and about that investigation.

Her day that day is completely around the city limits of Exeter. She starts off at her home. She's writing around, visiting friends, taking care of some animals for some people that are out of town. Visits her friends on the west side of town. Goes up and last scene at her boyfriend's house in the northwest corner of town. So she's supposed to be home. According to her father, she's supposed to be home at four o'clock. He gets home at five o'clock and he says, fortunately the worst words

that any parent could say, where's Donna. She's not home And they begin a search and can't find her. Report missing to the police department, to the Exeter police department by the way, and they don't find anything for several hours. Shortly they're around this time, her brother with a friend goes out on a siding road nearby a grove road that runs behind the home. A shortcut that they used, and they find her brother and the friend find a bicycle and it's hers and it's sitting there in the grove,

in the dark grove. At this point five is setting in and they're at the scene. There are some bottles and cans there is there are these two notebooks that are on the ground and no sign of Donna, and they go back to get the dad. They start driving around asking more questions. Exeter PD responds to the scene and they call the Sheriff's office, and the Sheriff's office realize, hey,

we're outside the city limits. We're taking lead, and that's all really going full force now by eight pm, so the investigation I can encapsulate, the investigation of this homicide is occurring between eight pm and twelve pm that night in that location, well before worked on his body. Has ever found. All of the evidence that they quote unquote ever needed to convict this man was found at this place at this time. And that comes down to one thing.

That is Oscar Clifton's invoice book, which I mentioned previously. It is the only piece of physical evidence that connected him to the crime, and he didn't deny that it was his. His only statement was, I have no idea how I got there. How did my invoice book end up at this location? Well, the other thing that is present there at this location is a small notepad at jotder notepad, the very style that police officers are known to carry, and that notepad is filled with numerical equations,

some aditions, and production and some other things. No handwriting is on it. But curiously, the Sheriff's Apartment notes that on the outside of both this small jought notepad and the invoice book there are no fingerprints. Both appear to have been quote unquote smudged or wiped clean fingerprints. We don't know what happened or why. We don't know who did that, but there are no fingerprints on the inside. And at the time, there was no investigation made into

this small jot or notepad. The only thing that we have is that it was a photographed and that a photograph of the drawing. The numbers that are peer inside are are captured in that form. Other than that, we don't know anything else about it. And during the course of the trial, when this becomes an important dietam of evidence, an important question, it simply became we determined that it was not part of the case. There was never any explanation for the identity of that note pattern. The whole

focus was on Oscar Clifton's invoice book. Well, the problem immediately ensues if in a case like this with an alibi, you know, if you're not at this location committing this homicide, where are you right? And fortunately for Oscar Clifton, the sheriff's office just did not investigate his alibi. The trial was actually starting, so about six months later they go and ask some important questions, only after all of this other time had elapsed and people's memories were shortened, et cetera.

But there is one critical witness who was not revealed to the defense, who very clearly places Oscar Clifton at the work site in Visalia, eleven miles away from the crime at the time it occurred according to the prosecution timeline, and there is no way to reconcile those two events. This witness a young boy about eleven years old. His testimony was just never provided and never never disclosed, and that accounts for the many years of mystery about this.

As a matter of fact, that the tape of that interview is found in the desk rour of the lead investigating officer who I mentioned in the name by Name book. His name is Bob Byrd. Detective Sergeant Bird work with the Sheriff's Department for many years. He illegally ordered the destruction of the case evidence after the trial was over.

There is no reason to believe now I feel that, in light of his illegal actions later on, that he was not also involved in fighting this alibi tape that very clearly identified Oscar Clifton being at the alibi location at the time of the crime.

Clifton in nineteen sixty five to ten years prior. For this is this same officer who's involved in the destruction of the evidence in hiding this tape. It's Bob Bird. You know, it's really hard because you feel like, you know, why would anyone, you know, go so far out of his way to pin so many things on an individual, what would cause such hate? And what we know now is that there was a great deal of personal animosity

between the individuals. And as a matter of fact, one of the reasons that I think Lily Luciano and Mike Bonel for their work on the case is they actually captured an interview with Bob Bird wherein he describes his role in the cases and his knowledge of Clifton. In particular, he says two things. One he says, yes, there was animosity between us, and number two, he says, I didn't have anything to do with arresting Oscar Cliff in nineteen sixty five, and secondly, I didn't have anything to do

with arresting in nineteen seventy five. And third is I didn't have anything to do with destroying the evidence. His three statements about that are absolutely one hundred percent factually false. The police report from nineteen sixty five, he's signed at the bottom as the arresting officer. We know he was

the arresting officer number two regarding the evidence destruction. His name is specifically on the evidence destruction by the two other officers who admit in writing then to completing this illegal act that they did so at the direct order bought Bird and third that you know for a Bird. In his statement to Lilia, he admits that had he done that, that would have been in the illegal act.

It's one of the only things that he says in the interview and that is very true, is that, yes, going back clearly to nineteen sixty five, it was very well founded California law. If you were in custody, if you're either arrested for a time or you've been tried and convicted, so long as you're in the jurisdiction of the state, the race of the state, that the state is compelled to hold and maintain the evidence used for your trial and conviction for the period where you are

in custody and for one year thereafter. So here we've got an instance where Bob Bird ordered the destruction of this evidence within within six months of the time that the conviction was garnered. Right, That is incomprehensible by any standard. As a matter of fact, every law enforcement officer I talked about too about this case is like, are you sure? Are you certain about that? That is deeply disturbing and illegal. That is almost like it can't happen, and yet it did.

And yet that's the very reason why so much of the tree proof that we now want to know about this case. What was the evidence? Were there anything items that could have been tested that could still have exonerated Oscar Clifton through DNA, and so had that material been preserved, would have been available when DNA testing was finally ordered in the case in twenty ten, And it was not

until that time. It was not until twenty ten when this state, when Tilaia County finally admitted to the court that yes, these items were destroyed in our custod and they were ordered at the destruction of this lead investigator on this case. It's in writing, it's a court admission.

This sad part about that is that there was never any criminal investigation into the significance of that had been clear that had there been a hearing on this, it could have come out that, yes, in fact, since the evidence is no longer available to be tested, that would have been used to exonerate. Now that's a due process violation and Oscar Clifton could have been exonerated in that moment. Instead, he would die in prison three years after that round of DNA testing happened.

actions were true, he would have committed a crime. Me point out something that I think is really significant here is that in the state of California, there is a penal code statute that says if evidence, if false evidence is used to obtain a death penalty conviction, which Oscar Clifton was ultimately charged with and found by the jury.

As part of the verdict, Oscar Clifton was given the death sentence initially that was later commuted for the simple fact that, as the evidence would show, there was not a rape. The charge that was presented at trial was attempted rape, not rape. There was never any revidence of that. The autopsy confirmed it, the testimony of the corner confirmed

all of this. There was no actual rape. So it comes down to the question of what evidence was there at the time, and if we're presenting false evidence, what is the implication of that. This crime provides for the death penalty for the person who procures false evidence to obtain a false conviction. And that's really important because the death penalty, any death penalty case has no statute limits.

So I would say, even though there has never once been any prosecution of this particular statute, would be a great time for the State of California to be looking at this and saying, wait a minute, did we put an innocent man on death row? Did we subject him to a death penalty through false evidence? And if so, that case is still has no statute limitations. This could

be investigated today. So that's why number one, this is everything else that I'm about to say is still viable information number two because of the way that the crime was really investigated that night December twenty six, nineteen seventy five. It was focused on this invoice book and around the bicycle and really well before the body is found, and this idea that they needed to arrest Oscar Clifton as soon as they could, and that's exactly what they did.

By one am, they had him in custody on suspicion and promicide and kidnapping charge and anything that they could and to search his home illegally without a warrant. They arrested him without a warrant. And again it's Bob Bird's name at the bottom of those documents, so his denial

that he was there is once again highly suspicious. Then we go back to the question of Bird and Dangelo, and the other thing that's that's really important is the way that the Sheriff's office and the city police department

in Exeter worked. The Sheriff's office at that time didn't have a lot of extra money to have a lot of substations, so they would essentially ask you to the municipalities to carve out a corner where they could put a desk in a radio and have the sheriffs be able to use this little corner is their quote unquote substation. And that's exactly what happened in Exeter the night of December twenty sixth. While this investigation is proceeding. They are

using the Exeter Police Department to conduct this investigation. That's in his that's in Bird's notes about where they're meeting and where all this is being coordinated. Jody Angelos is working as the violent He is the head of the violent crimes unit in Exeter starting in October of seventy five, so two months prior to this, he is the lead investigator for violent crimes. So we have that nexus. Then we have another problem. We have the loot that I

mentioned earlier. The loot is found on Avenue two fifty six out near Exeter, and it's found on a road called named Hypericum Road. If you look at the nineteen seventy five phone directory, as I have many times, the only address listing for Oscar Cliffson because he'd been away from the area for a number of years. After his initial arrest, he'd moved back, but he had had his phone for very long and so he wasn't in the directory. In fact, the only listing there is his parents who

live on Hypericum Avenue. Deeply suspicious. Number two. Number three is that the at the Richmond homicide location where she's found the day after the bicycle's found, she's found me out early that afternoon. At that location. There's also a ski mask which matches the description exactly that provided by bet Snelling. It's a zigzag pattern. It's very unusual design, and you know was the offender. Was D'Angelo trying to say,

I'm painting this picture. I'm telling you that the person who killed Dono Joe Richmond was the same person who killed blood Snelling and he wore this mask and you should follow this lead and an interesting coincidence and something that we'll never know because among the items destroyed was the ski mask. So again, had that been available for testing, that she certainly would have been powerful physical evidence. Then on top of that, we have another critical issue for Bombert.

One of the other things that he denies in his interview with Lily Luciano is that he ever knew the name jody'angelo. He said, I have no familiar ay with that name. Never heard it before. That's pretty incredible for someone a who works at the Exeter substation and is in the city. Bobard not just lived in Exeter for this kind of frame that worked there as well.

Sergeant Bob Bird. It would be absolutely the greatest coincidence in the world for him to live two doors away, and the way that the streets are aligned for him, the only way for him to act, says his home from the west side would be to drive around the corner King and then Emperor and then on to Beach. The only way for him to access his home would be to drive by the spot where everybody else in town described seeing Jody Angelo's police car parked outside his

Emperor residents. I have no explanation for but Bird's Bird's involvement. Finally, I want to say one more thing about Bird and what he knew that was unique and the course of the proceedings. Oscar Clifton is brought to trial in late June of nineteen seventy six, and there's another offender who's been operating in the area at the time who went

under the moniker, the Porterville rapist. He was arrested, charged and confessed to ultimately I believe it was seven though he was charged with thirteen, charged with these seven particular rapes, and he confessed to them and was found guilty for those charges. During the trial. He's arrested. While the trial's going on, He's being surveilled and then arrested immediately. I

think it's maybe two days after the verdictsrendered. And it turns out that during the time that right after his arrest is procured that Sacramento Sheriffs, the same investigators for the Easter Area rapists, contact the Tillaria County Sheriff's Department and tell them to put a hold on their suspect. Ben Galloway because his description and the activities that he did inside the home appear to be such a close

match to the Easter Aia rapist. So what they do is they deliver the information about the series and they put a hold on him, and it's not until there is another rape immediately well Galoway's in custody, after he's in custody, that they say, wait a minute, we got the wrong guy. Obviously the series is continuing. You can take off our hold. But in that intervening period they had delivered to Bird, the head of the violent Crimes Unit,

they had delivered to him. That's one of the first people Disney the verse two arm points that anyone in law enforcement had seen at that point, so he had had some familiarity already with the Easteria rapist. M The second thing is is that by February of nineteen seventy seven, they had developed enough of a profile about the Easter

Aia rapist to deliver an interagency memorandum. And in this memo they describe not just his MO but his physical description and one other key attribute, and that is the blood type of the offender. The blood type is type A, and that is DeAngelo's blood type, and you say, well, wait a minute, isn't the a non secretor It turns out that the reason they were able to get it, yes, they did confirm through the blood tester, through the zerology that they were doing at the time, that yes, the

defender wasn't a nonsecrator. But the blood type came from a scuffle during one of the rape victims. She had used his own knife and caused him to cut himself and he bled on the victim, and she being a different blood type, they were able to distinguish this and they said, ah, this is the offender's blood that came from the knife wound. We now know that he's a Type A. They had a lot of information about the offender and so that when they put out this interagency

memo in February of nineteen seventy seven is suspicious. And the reason I use the word suspicious because February twenty eight, nineteen seventy seven, is the date that Er had ordered the destruction of the evidence in the Clifton case. I mean, without any explanation, without any benefit of the law or any other reason. There had been only one blood type that was identified in the analysis of the evidence during

the Richmond case. And this goes exactly contrary to the statement that the Tillarry County DA's office issued in their quote unquote conviction integrity review stated improperly in that review that the offender, whoever all of the material that they examined in that that there was the criminalist, had never identified a blood type of any of the samples. That

is not true. At grand jury, one of the criminalists testified that the sample that he tested of the trusted collection of mud and debris from the skin of the victim, he developed a blood type A. That was not his testimony at trial. It appeared to be exculpatory information which was hidden from defense council. There's no explanation for why

defense council didn't himself read the grand jury transcript. There's a lot of other reasons to call into question ray dono hughes integrity and actions as defense counsel in this case. That aside, it is an absolute misstatement for anyone to say that no criminalists identified a blood type. In fact, there was, and it was type A. Type A is d'angelo's blood type, and it was the ear's blood type confirmed in this memo that was distributed at the exact time.

So here is Bob Bird now looking at all of these different things. He now sees that the person that if he had any reason to suspect that d'angelo's timing for his departure for the Steria Rapist series, a person that Sacramento had contacted him to say, Hey, wait a minute, did do you have any information about maybe someone who left Tlarry and came up here? Do you have any

other crimes in the area that you were working. Do you have any other forces or factors that could make anyone from your area be an new steria rapist suspect. He has all of that information, and apparently he says nothing. He knows too, that the blood type that they did develop in the Richmond case is now an exact match on this memorandum. I don't have any explanation. All I have are questions, and none of them appear to be

in any way comfortable questions for Bob Bird. I would very much like the State of California to get him under subpoena, get his testimony before he dies, and answer that very question, what did you know, when did you know it? And why did you destroy this evidence, because it appears as if now you were covering either for your colleague, for your neighbor, or for the person that you knew had fled to Sacramento at the exact time this series picks up in Sacramento.

the last episode about eight months ago. I cover a lot of things in the podcast that are out that are not in this book, so there's definitely some benefit to listening to those that are. Forty Go to forty two episodes if you really like hearing my voice and so far, Dan, I really like hearing a lot more in these other episodes, and I go into, for instance, I go into the DNA testing that supposedly excluded the Angelo and why the tilliary DA's office are absolutely mistaken

in their interpretation of that evidence. There's a whole two episodes about the flaws in that analysis and how I've had that examined by external forensic scientists who confirmed my join beings.