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You are now listening to true murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history true Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Good evening, Endgame of the Most Dangerous Game Golden State Killer takes you through the journey of trying to find a serial killer, serial cat burglar, a serial rapist, and a serial killer. After a lifetime of tracing and tracking, waiting and watching, one of the most dangerous serial killers in the state of California has ever seen. And Penn takes us through the chapters, including the guilty Please of Joseph James DiAngelo June twenty ninth, twenty twenty. Endgame. At Last,
the criminal will spend his final days in prison. This is the place he has belonged for decades. Endgame was how it was supposed to be. The book that were featuring. This evening is Endgame of the Most Dangerous Game, Golden State Killer, with my special guest journalist and author and Penn. Welcome back to the program, and thank you so much for this interview. And Penn, thank you, Yeah.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate it.
Thank you so much. Congratulations on being able to write a suitable ending to this incredible series of books that you've written, and this investigation undertaken for virtually most of your life, as we will find out, Let's talk about these series of events. Just before you had heard about the arrest, tell us who you were communicating with and what you knew about the possibility of genealogy, genetic genealogy being involved with this case, and then tell us about the arrest.
Right well. Prior to the arrest, I had been, of course talking to Larry Crompton for quite some time. I had spoken to volunteers who worked on the case in Sacramento, briefly because Larry put me in touch with them based on some of the things I was telling him I
thought the guy was. And what was interesting about that was they had been investigating someone at that very moment that had been exactly what I was talking to Larry about, without having any idea that they had been looking into this guy that was from my neck.
Of the woods.
So it was interesting to get some perspective on what they had been doing voluntarily for quite some time, bringing persons of interest forward for a real close look and see if the DNA profile matched and So that was a brief time frame during twenty sixteen, and I met with them in Sacramento as well as lots of different phone conversations with I spoke to Paul Belly down there. I spoke to different jurisdictions, you know. I tried getting in contact with Ventura Homicide to see if there was
a cold case unit, and of course there wasn't. I've spoken to the FBI, I spoke to different people just to try to figure out what, you know, the connections were and how we could figure this out. To Paul Holes several times on the phone and gave him some information and we sort of chatted back and forth about possible connections between Sacramento and Bentura and.
Things like that.
So there were a lot of different phone conversations prior to the arrest with quite a few different people.
Now there was the arrest, and I've interviewed you after this arrest and also Larry Crompton, Richard Shelby after this arrest, and so what did you and others that were looking for answers, what did you find out in the interim between the arrest and then this sentencing Just recently in twenty twenty here just very very recently.
Well, actually, as you can tell, there was a lot since a couple of the books were five hundred pages. But there's just so much information. Of course, there's so many murders that have been committed in the state of California, and trying to track a serial killer after you know who he is was an interesting task. But there are so many murders that have a signature to them. A
lot of people are like, well, what's his signature. Basically, one of the signatures he had was his ability to attack and move on, and that's what worked for him across jurisdictional lines. And I am certain that the Angelo knew where the county lines were and what jurisdiction he went from place to place, So that's one of the things that kept him free. He just would attack somewhere and move on. He would attack and go home.
Whatever he did.
He always went from one county to the other to do what he wanted to do, to commit crimes, and then go home or go somewhere else. So that was one of the things that we kind of knew he did. Paul and I talked about it, and he talked about it in interviews where he said that the Angelo would drive down the freeway and then a few hours later he'd hit someplace else, and that's absolutely true.
So now you talk about all the research that you did and all the investigating you did throughout this entire series and up until the arrest and then following the rest, and now this book and game tell us about the June twenty ninth appearance this year. What was that for and what was gained in your mind from watching this?
Well, what was.
Very painful about it and what was interesting about it was watching him admit guilt and the way that he did. It was really pretty awful to say, I admit and guilty and that's all he was.
Just the whole thing was really.
Very difficult to watch for everyone and the people involved that were there. It had to be horrendous to sit there for eight hours and listen to this one attack after the other, and most all of them were pretty much the same, just over and over and over. You have to take a break from it once in a while.
I had to push pause and walk away. It was just so horrendous what he did to these people.
How detailed were the descriptions of the murders and rapes and crimes.
Themselves extremely detailed, which is why it was so horrendous to listen to. And I hope to never have to hear or experience anything like that. Just like these ladies and these victims who were there, I mean, it's just I can't even fathom how they must have felt sitting there. So, yeah, it was eight hours of just exhausting, emotionally draining, horrendous detail about everything, and for him to sit there like he was trying to pretend he was weak while he admitted was just awful.
So let's talk about that before we talk about what must have been the most difficult was to hear details, intimate details of the murder of your relatives, Lyman Smith and Charlene. But tell us about what was said in court or proven in court in terms of his in terms of his health. You have a dramatic photo in the book two photos after his arrest and then two years later, and it's a dramatic difference. But tell us what some things that were revealed in court to dispute his appearance at court.
Well, he basically really was in pretty good shape. I mean, he acted like he was younger up until his arrest and then he immediately began to lose weight, and everybody kept thinking that he was going to die before he ever made it to or to court. And you know, what I had heard through the prosecutor's office was that he was exercising and lifting weights and basically the food's not that great in jail, so I knew he was strong. That he just looked like he was playing a part
like many people thought. And of course recently we saw on television that he was moving about his cell. He was very agile, he could reach, and he was very controlled in his movements. He was strong, so it was just all an act, and he was called out on that he was trying to I'm sure, get some ability to go to a place where he could be in a maybe an old people's prison, I don't know, but the point is he was trying to be housed in a safe place, and I don't think that.
Flew very well.
Right.
Yeah, now, I know it's difficult, but what did you learn in this horrible recitation reciting of the murders of Lymon Smith and his wife Charlene?
Actually know it's there was nothing that I hadn't heard before personally. When I was told about the murders by my family. It was such a horrendous u I heard all the details really that he might have been peeping watching them prior to coming in, that he had prowled prior to that in the neighborhood that he had. You know, Charlene was feeling like someone was watching her or being you know, stalked. So there was really nothing new that I had heard she you know, they they complied, They
did everything that was asked of them. And like every other murder or even if we talk about the Zodiac for example, the thing that that di'angelo did and the Golden State killer always did was trying to get his victims to feel like, you know, well see if you do this, I won't kill you. But he threatened to kill them always right and many times the East Very rapist he didn't kill them as the East Area rapist, you know, but but what he did was try to tell him, hey, you know, you need to tie him
up and so on. And the thing that he did, which was consistent throughout when he killed couples was the way that he tied them. He tied them, you know, the same way, over and over again.
And what he did, what he said was the.
Same over and over, which is why I thought, and I think that the persona that he had as Zodiac, especially at Lake bary Essa, was very similar. Actually it was identical what he said and what he did. The only difference was he used a knife, right.
You right in this And I guess we can go on this little detour for a moment, because I found this very interesting that you felt that he was you believe he's a zodiac one and the same, but also that regardless, D'Angelo was influenced by certain movies. I thought this very interesting. Tell us briefly about this, what's your thoughts?
Well, you know, it all sounds really far fetched, I'm sure, but the reality for Joseph di'angelo is this.
He is a dramatic. He likes drama.
He likes to do a show, which is what he really did as the Eastern Ey rapist. He communicated with law enforcement briefly and the media. He also did the same thing over and over. He loved to read about
himself in the newspaper. So he was very dramatic and so that was an influence that he probably gained as a kid watching television from the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, there were shows on TV and there's a few movies that I'm sure were classic movies he probably saw, and one of them had to do with Charlie chan at
the Treasure Island of all Things. And of course a lot of people who talk about Zodiac know about that, but the reality is there was a character in there with a disguise, and when I found interesting, and that really the only thing that I found connected in my mind to.
What the influence might have.
Been from that movie was the fact that his costume as a Zodiac at Lake Uryssa that day was deceiving in that he could have been any height, any weight, any you know. That was the thing that stood out to me from that movie was that many different people put on that costume and you couldn't tell who was in there. And so that's what I gained from that, And that really was his drama. That he controlled the narrative,
control the media, control law enforcement. He wanted to control everybody and everything, and so that's what I gathered from his drama.
It's the show.
What about the influence of the Most Dangerous Game.
The influence of that book. You know, when you talk about in that movie too. I guess really what you talk about is there's a couple of different ones that I mentioned in there, but he really one of them is about the movie The Dangerous Game and basically what's going on as people are hunting people, and that's really what he was doing. He was hunting people, and he was a killing machine, and he killed every way he
could in every type of situation. And he was not married to and not connected to one way of killing. He didn't care how he killed.
He just killed.
Now back to this June twenty ninth, who were in attendance and again just try to what was the atmosphere that you saw at this hearing with the Angelo and these victims.
Well, the victims, rape victims, murder victims' families were there. Obviously it doesn't show real well on YouTube who exactly is there with masks on during COVID, But basically I know that quite a few people were in attendance that had been personally affected by him, and rape victims and people who originally could not have claimed anything because a statute of limitations had run out on some of the rapes that he did in fact admit to and I
was really glad to see that they did that. I'm certain that the victims of those crimes were glad to see that, and they felt maybe they had had justice.
But so that was a good thing.
But it was pretty serious and pretty daunting and pretty awful.
So what was the statement that he made when he had the opportunity, Well.
At the end during the sentencing, of course, I didn't expect that. I actually I'm not surprised usually anymore by anything that happens or what anybody does, but that surprised me. I didn't know that. When they were going to read statements from his family, it seemed really almost inappropriate in a way. I understand why they do it, but it seemed they're reading those right in front of the victims of this man, about how wonderful he was as a father and so on, and it just seemed, my word
today is awful. But when he stood up, of course, he stood up without any problem, and he spoke in his own voice finally, and I just sat there saying, oh my god. I couldn't believe that he was going to actually talk. And so I'm sure there were quite a few people that probably felt that way. But his statement. I thought, why in the heck did he do that? What did he possibly have to gain from that? And there were two things that came to my mind, and
one was he was apologizing to his family. He wasn't apologizing to his victims. He has probably taken the opportunity to say he was sorry to his own family. And also, why not take advantage of the last moments that he could speak and once again had the stage and be dramatic and know that that's what would be printed in the news media, and that's what would be shown pictures of and so of course he couldn't resist, and so that's why I.
Think he did it.
I read in your book was a surprise was that there was something written by his brother in law. Tell us a little bit about that.
Oh, just I don't know what he wrote, really, I didn't read it. I didn't buy it. I know that he was trying to promote it by saying that he was going to shed some light on Joseph DiAngelo's behaviors. What he missed possibly and maybe should have seen as kind of odd. But I haven't read it personally, so I don't really know. I can't really speak.
To what's in it.
I do know that one of the things that was interesting was just one photograph, and that was from the video he had posted to promote his book of he and James Huttle and D'Angelo on the boat out in the bay down by Pittsburgh, California, which is near Antioch in Contracosta County. And so what it did was make me think, hmm, what happened down there in that area? And so I looked on newspapers and looked around, and
there were lots of murders. And you know, just because people talk about him stopping in nineteen eighty six, of course most of us know he didn't. And so there are murders in the eighties and the nineties and so on that you can look at to determine if it's him.
Now, in this book, you talk about other murders, and you know his signature, I believe better than anyone, or as well as anyone.
I appreciate that.
You talk about other murders and other rapes that could be attributed to him. What have you done in the pursuit of those, especially the ones you felt were more certain that it fit the bill for DiAngelo? What have you done in terms of reaching out to other counties and there the people at those jurisdictions about your assertions.
Well, prior to this sentencing, and I'll vis admitting basically, I had talked to quite a few different jurisdictions about different murders. There are some in particular that you I mean, if it's not him, my god, you know, you can just blow me over, because the fact is that one of the things that he liked to do was taunt the police. And some of the things that he did was to leave bodies not far from the police station or not. You know, he left it in canals and
so on a lot of the time. And so there are certain murders and certain things that he did where you read about it. These are just newspaper articles. I don't have the police files. But when you look at them, there's one in particular in Auburn, and he really did quite a few things in that neck of the woods and that geographical location. But one in particular was where he left a body about a block and a half.
Away from the police station.
And this happened decade after after decade, and so when you look at that and you go, okay, here's here's murders that I think we can pretty much say that he is a suspect or should be a suspect, and
I'm going to bring him to that jurisdiction. Well, what happened was the DA investigator that I talked to in Sacramento said, you know what, my biggest concern is making sure that nothing flows down the trial of D'Angel And I said, I had the same concern, and so I have no problem laying low and not talking about anything.
And so I did that. I pretty much just waited and.
Talk to different people along the way. But the fact is is that there's going to be always questions about how many murders he did, to what extent he damaged many more women. You know, we may never know and we probably will never know how much he really did do, and I don't know that they'll pursue it. There are murders in them by Celia the Jennifer ar Moore, and of course people talk about Donna Richmond and the fact
that Oscar Clifton was set up. There's just so many murders still and abductions of girls, people being chased like I was at fourteen in Sacramento. You know, other people betting abducted in the seventies. He was there, he was in our geographical space, he was all over that town, he was all over wherever he went. He was very active, and so for him to have stopped, for anybody to believe from nineteen seventy three to eighty six that was all he did, that.
Would be naive.
You also talk about the use of genetic genealogy in this course to make this incredible, unprecedented arrest of DeAngelo and conviction. But you say that there has been some other successes with this same technology. Tell us about that, and also tell us what you believe is ongoing with the Zodiac investigation.
Well, that's quite a long question. There there have been I think it was ninety three other cases cold cases solved in the last couple of years since d'angelo's arrest. From genetic genealogy. It's a perfect tool to use to find these people that you know, all we have to do is go in there and retest evidence, and if people have stored it and kept it well, then we can convict people who have committed crimes forty years ago,
thirty years ago. So it's been wonderful to watch the last two years, one person after the other be found, and then also the other wonderful thing is finding out who Jane and John does are are these people who who didn't have answers for their loved ones. It's just really been phenomenal, and I think that if people opt in to use this on jed match and other places. I think jed match was sold recently too. But there is just so much we can do with it, and
hopefully it prevents more crimes like these, right. Yeah, Now regarding the Zodiac.
What was your question exactly about the Zodiac?
Well, what are they doing in terms of you have this promising technology? What are they doing with this, you know, one of the most confounding and the biggest cases in US history. What's going on with that? Do you think?
Yeah, well, you.
Know, this is obviously opinion, But I did talk to San Francisco the Zodiac cold case detective and his other detective that works on it. But what I was told, and of course what the public was told in twenty eighteen. In May twenty eighteen, they said, we're going to double check the DNA profile and we're.
Going to check it out.
And this was an article in Balleo in different places, and they were going to tell us what they found, and then there was nothing. There was silence for a couple of years almost, and I was watching scary people about the zodiac, and the criminalists on there said that they really didn't have any usable DNA from the stamps, etc. All they could gain from it was a partial DNA profile.
And so I didn't pursue it much after that because we were waiting to hear what happened with DeAngelo's trial or sentencing or whatever the resolve was on that.
So we kind of all just sat here and waited.
And so I'm wondering now, of course, after it's all said and done, what will they do with the zodiac and what will they say and will.
They talk about it because.
There's you know, we still need answers to who killed those people. There's five murders from that.
So how accepting other than taking your information our law enforcement about your book, What if about the idea that di'angelo and the Zodiac are one and the same and the evidence to provide for that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well what they what they said was when I called, Like I said, I talked to several different jurisdictions and what they said was the first guy I talked to down in San Francisco said well, you're not the first person I ever thought of that, and I said, of course not if you're from the state of California and you know the geography. That was one of the first things I looked at in about twenty fourteen was, Gee, this geography is way too close. Is
it the same serial killer? Is the Zodiac really the East Terry rapist, original Night Starker and so on? And so I looked at that, and then somebody I was talking to from Sacramento had me thinking that he was the wrong age to be the same guy. So I kind of went, well, I'll leave that alone for right now and I'll follow the Easter A rapist trail, and so that's what I did.
I was always in.
The back of my mind from twenty eighteen on, as we learned more and more about d Angela, I kept thinking, God, any minute, they're going to announce that he's either he is the Zodiac, we've ruled him in as the guy, or have ruled him out.
And there was nothing. There was no word.
So I got tired of waiting, which is why I thought I'm going to track and trace these murders, which is what I was doing. It's sort of like, did what else did he do? And so I was looking at what else did the Golden State Killer, Original Knight
Soccer do? And I was really deep into that. And then eventually, in researching and talking to other people and trading information back and forth, I said to one of the people I was working with, I said, you know, what we need to do is connect one of the Zodiac victims to DiAngelo.
And first we looked at Cecilia Shepherd.
And then we went from there and there are a lot of military, a lot of people, a lot of connections to you know, everybody had military brothers, sisters, everybody. So we're looking at all these different things. Because we know DiAngelo had military backgrounds, we know probably Zodiac did too, so we're looking at that. And then I had not ever still read any of the Zodiac books that are out there, so I have no idea what they had
to say about it. But the boots that he wore a Zodiac, the you know, different things aspects of that persona were you know, planted towards military. So anyway, long story short, they said to me, well, you're not the only one who thought that, and I said no. And then the next thing you said was well, you have to have evidence, and I said yep. I said, you got a minute, So I told him on the phone. For about forty five minutes, I talked to him, and I could.
Hear him sit down, and I could hear him.
Start taking notes. He said, are you taking notes? And he said yep. And then he had me send him emails and then he said he bought my kindle.
Version of my book to check it out.
And after that I did speak to his partner several times. So it was sort of like, huh, you know, I don't know. It's just one of those things where there's just so many coincidences and so many connections to what he said and what he did and where he was and when he was available. And since then I looked into you know, of course, I keep looking at everything kind of piece it all together. But the fact is that at the Zodiac attacked on holidays, Christmas vacation in
nineteen sixty eight July nineteen sixty nine. During from school, Dangelo went to school and at Sierra College in nineteen sixty eight, he began his journey there in nineteen sixty eight. In December, we have the attack and the murders in Lake Kerman, and then we have the ones in sixty nine. We have all these different attacks that were on a
Saturday or on a holiday from school. This is my thought, and that's just what he did, and it was easy and all he had to do was drive back home after he did it, which is what I think he did. He hopped, he stopped at a phone booze and called the cops down the street from their pop station. But then he hops on the freeway, a highway eighty and he goes home. And that's what he did. That was
his signature to just leave the area. And everybody else is standing around going hmm, I wonder what happened?
Where did you know? Who did this?
So yeah, I really do get Tim. The geography. It's I put maps in my books because I want people to google map it and see for yourself at Auburn, Sacramento, the Bay area.
It's all so close.
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Eighteen plus.
And we're back, and we're talking about your rationale for thinking that the Angelo and the Zodiac are one and the same. You've brought that information to investigators and they've asked for that information, you've given it to them. Let's go back to the impetus for this entire series of books, starting off with Murder on His Mind, serial Killer. Let's talk about the murders of Lyman Smith and Charlene and especially what it did to your family at that time.
You said you didn't read the news, but you did hear all the details, the graphic details, horrible details. But tell us also how it influenced your family, That the rumor mill, and that the accusation, the murder allegation against his business partner, how all of that affected you your entire life and affected your reasons for writing this book and writing and being involved in writing at all.
Well, I always wanted to write, but I had been writing a book actually on verbal abuse and women's issues prior to ever having the thought that I should.
Write about this serial killer. My long held.
Belief systems and concerns have to do with rape, why it was never treated as a real crime, and then also verbal abuse, domestic abuse, different issues for women, and so that's always where my concerns have been. Also unequal treatment and so on. So all that occurred really was I got tired of waiting to hear, like many many other victims, families and victims, what was going on in the case. So I figured out that I would sit down and figure, you know, let me find out what's going on.
So I did, and.
I read Larry Crompton's book Sudden Terror, and I was still pretty afraid in twenty twelve, but when I heard about the murders, Originally I was a young lady and I was very terrified. It was about a year and a half after the Easter A Rapist series had happened in Sacramento.
For three years. We were terrified prior to that.
A year and a half prior to that, I'd been chased down my own street by two men in a.
Truck and almost subducted. So I was already afraid. When the Easter A Rapist showed up, I was already afraid.
And then, of course the murders happened a year and a half after that, so I was pretty terrified in general, and I had some hyper vigilant things I was doing. I was afraid to be seen in my own yard. I started to investigate serial killers in nineteen eighty right after the murders, because I thought this is random, this doesn't make any sense. It can't be a business partner or anyone.
He knew.
That doesn't make sense to me. And so I started investigating serial killers. I wanted to know and understand how something like this happens, and why somebody like this existed, and how they operated, how I could keep myself safe, how it can keep other women safe, you know, just by talking.
About what occurred. And that really kind of was the motivation.
It was like I needed to find my own voice and get rid of the fear that was still left in my mind in my body. And so I wrote Murder on His Mind for three reasons. One was to address my fear and to try to move through it. Another was to honor the victims of this criminal and to make sure nobody forgot them, especially the murder victims, because in every other book I'd seen, there were two pages and all it did was talk about how.
They were murder victims.
So I tried to make them people and make them real and to remember them. And the other was to try to help women. And so that's how this started, right.
So, yeah, tell us about Larry Crompton's influence and some of the things he did in terms of even advising you as to what put in to put in your book and Win tell us a little bit about his influence.
Well, like I said, he told me to be really careful when I first put out the first edition of Murder on his mind. He had actually had all of my personal connections in there, and I took them all out, which is why it was a little bit disheveled when it came out. And then people were like, well, who the hell are you and why did we care what you have to say? And so I thought okay, and then people were doubting any connection. So I thought, okay, fine, I will put back in my connections.
And I did that.
But when I did that, I was still afraid because I knew he was still in Sacramento. I knew he could still find me. I was afraid of him and anybody else that he knew that might be mean. So I was terrified. But Larry would say to me all the time. Every time we spoke, he'd say, be careful, and I was like, what am I being careful of?
You know, do you really think someone's gonna come?
And He's like, no, not really. So eventually my husband and I went and bought a shotgun in a nine millimeter.
And took it out and practiced.
But the fact is is that I got hang up calls once I released the first edition or the second edition, excuse me, and they were left on my machine. They were breathing phone calls and so on, and of course that's designed to scare you. And I thought, gee, was this somebody that doesn't like me that's harassing me or trying to scare me? Or is it really DeAngelo? Because he likes to read about himself, I thought, geez, did
he read my book? And I knew he was not too far away from where I lived, so I was terrified, but I would stand it down anyway. In the dark, coming home by the mailbox, I would say, am I nuts put this book out? And then I went, you know what, through him, I'm done with this. I'm done with the fear. And you know, I've thought, hopefully we'll catch him with this DNA genetic genealogy. And that was a long time coming, and we waited a long time. I five years went by and I was still going, well,
what's taking so long? So I'm very grateful they did it, but I was in a hurry to get him hot because my time was running out, and he's.
Older than I had hoped.
Actually, if he'd been sixty two instead of seventy two, he could be punished longer.
Yeah, you did make the prediction, unlike many other people that you believed that he was in the same he was in Sacramento. Other people didn't believe that. But you believe that. Why did you believe that? And what did it feel like when you realized and discovered that was true.
There are a lot of things that I said and murder on his mind that turned out.
To be true. I predicted a lot of exactly what he turned out to be and where he was. What was interesting to me is, see.
I'm from Sacramento, and I really literally was. I covered all the same areas he did because of my work, because of the fact that I like to go places on weekends. I was, you know, in Auburn, I was everywhere he was. It seemed like Grass Valley where his in laws were. I had relatives and just on and on.
So it was interesting to.
Know when I went to Citrus Heights, for example, and I grew up going to Folsom Lake. I little girl, I was out there all the time with my family.
We went on our boat, we did you know, all.
This different stuff, which is right down the street from Granite Bay where there have been some other murders that haven't been solved, and just different places. I was always out and about, and I knew the geography like the back of my hand. So it was interesting to know when I went to Citrus Heights, for example, that I could almost feel him.
Literally.
My son lived down there at the time, and I walked out there by myself one day and he lived right across the street from a school, right at the end of the street, and I just I thought, if I had the addresses of the places attack there, I absolutely know he's been on the street. I could feel it, and so I just, you know, because of the geography of it, because of the arrogance. It was mainly the
arrogance of D'Angelo. I thought, this man is still there, he is sitting there, and he's watching all this go on around him, and.
He thinks that we will never figure it out.
And the reason I thought he thought that way, I thought he thinks that if he tells his family never ever put your DNA into a genealogy sider never send it into ancestry whatever. He thinks that they'll never find him, and so he sat there and apparently didn't have a plan B to escape. We'll never know, but he just sat there, and so I knew his arrogance was going to get him caught because he just sat there.
Do you think he was aware of this advance in DNA technology, this genetic genealogy, and he was aware.
Of it, Yeah, I think so.
I just think that he was not even enough or didn't research it enough. I don't know what his thinking was, but I think that he really thought that if his immediate family did not supply any DNA, that he would be scott free, or that they would find him after he was already dead. I think he thought that it
would take a while for him to be traced. I think that possibly he really didn't know about the ability to go back generation after generation after generation to find him, you know, just follow the family trees down was a three hundred years and he really didn't realize that because if he had, maybe he would have had a plan.
Be Yeah, very interesting. He didn't have much of any options once he was arrested, mind you, with California's death penalty, and is there still a moratorium on it right now? I know they don't execute him anybody, so what's the difference. He certainly wouldn't be able to through the appeals process that we're entitled to him. This was the best thing that could ever happen, this team murders that he pled to and then a bunch of.
Nobody. I was just gonna say, nobody's been executed in California in about fourteen years, so by the time he got through appealing, et cetera, he would be dead. So yeah, it's basically a death penalty. But the reality is is that if he's seventy four now and he lives ten years, all he really had to serve was ten years of what's a life sentence, So really all he's getting is about ten years unless he lives another fifteen and it certainly doesn't fit the crimes so well.
I mean, I guess you'll never be totally satisfied that he was running a muck and for all those years and been able to evade justice for all those years. But it is an incredible achievement that he was caught, oh absolutely.
And yeah, and everybody's grateful and I'm grateful.
That he was caught.
Also, my gosh, I'm glad to have answers. I'm sure everyone's glad to have answers and justice, and we're grateful to the criminal justice system for doing what they did. I mean, they worked really hard on it, and I'm not trying to discount that at all. But what I'm saying is is wouldn't have been nice if he had been younger, or if this had happened sooner, because when
justice is delayed. The judge himself said that sometimes when justice is delayed this long, it's like justice being denied, or what I call it is weak justice only because he's not going to get to serve fifty years in prison, He's not going to get you know, executed. He's going to sit there for a short period of time. In reality, compared to what he did for forty some odd years, fifty years whatever he you know, when he was committing crimes.
I mean, that's a huge difference between a huge disparity between fifty years of attacking and hurting people and ten fifteen years.
In prison for it. You see the thing that I'm thinking.
Well, the thing is, at the same time, I have to think of almost every other scenario when you know, the law enforcement finally catches up with a perpetrator and
because of their age, they're giving their given concessions. Because of the age of the case, they have to make some negotiations in terms of a plea agreements, some bargaining negotiations are seem to be So what I'm saying is, with such a conclusive form of evidence, and you know, almost every type of evidence is under attack or supposedly is not so credible anymore that this one thing, this
one technology, this one again. Law enforcement doesn't have too many happy endings to their stories, especially when it comes to murder. So this is about as good as it gets in terms of hope. And like you say, all these other ninety three cases were closed after that, serious cases were closed. So it does it seems to be again DNA. Thank God for DNA in the first place, and then now this further development seems to be again a bright spot in something in an area that doesn't have any kind spots.
That's true from that perspective, yes, But from the perspective of the victims, he's suffered, all the women that he raped and harmed, all the men that were there, everything he did. The perspective of waiting forty five years for justice is, you know, you have to think about them that way. You know, a lot of things came out, you know, but it was such a long, long, long way.
It is testament too when I talk to you, because I mean, you're the perfect person to talk to that you're not, you know, jumping up for joy right now. And when I spoke to you a couple of years ago, not so much either. Even when I spoke to Larry Crompton, Richard Shelby, it's more relief. It's more relief. And then at the same time, with all your research, you realize that all the missteps, all the it's not even missteps.
You talk about that for years, these types of crimes, these types of victims were not a priority and based on funding, based on again priority in terms of the you know, the high murder rates that existed not so long ago, that that these types of rapes and then murders were discounted, are disregarded or downplayed for years, leading to some of the things where you say, a peeping tom turns into a burglar, turns into a rapist, turns in to a killer as right exemplified by in this case.
Right.
And one of the things in the book is an article about the fact that they need to do more studies on categorizing different types of burglars because they're actually what they call sexual burglars. They like BTK, he was excited at the idea of breaking into someone's home. It's called breaking and entering. Does that sound like something somebody
does at rapes? But the fact is that they know they can classify now if they study it, and if they look into it further excuse me, they can figure out the high risk type of burglar when it comes to sexual attacks and sexual homicides. And so these are the kinds of things that I study and that I look into because the reality moving forward in solving crimes, besides DNA, is actually being able to pay attention to what kind of a person, what kind of a attacker
is this, what kind of a burglar is he? What are the risk factors involved about what he's going to do next? And they can tell if they actually put a little bit of time into this, and they began to look at this in the nineteen nineties, but it really is something that we can use moving forward, because the reality is most burglaries are not cleared. They don't solve them. Most burglar happened when people are at home
at night. At home at night, if somebody is a burglar, they decide to do something else while they're there at a crime of opportunity.
But there are also burglars like BTK where he came in.
He loves going into someone's house when.
They weren't home.
That was his first step before he became a killer. The same with t'angelo. He was a burglar, he was a peeper, a doctor. He knew that that was what his progression was going to be. He knew what he wanted to do. So did BTK. They had fantasized about it for years and years. In so people who come into your home at night in order to quote unquote burglarize you and take things. They don't take things of value. They want to take you. They want to harm you.
They want to take everything from you, your safety, your person. They just want to hurt you. And so that's what they need to study, is what type of burglar are you and what harm do you do? How long should we put you away for this crime?
Because you're this kind of a burglar. There are fetish burglars.
You know. He used to come in and steal women's underwear, you know, that's all he did. And there's many other reports of those kinds of burglars, those kinds of freaky people that do that. And they can tell by looking at what they can categorize them, and they can keep us safer from these kinds of people if they really pay attention.
In the criminal justice system.
We talk about motive here and in your book you just discussed briefly the mention DiAngelo witnessed at ten years of age, his younger sister at seven years of age, I believe, being raped by two men, and the effect this had on DiAngelo in terms of this psycho sexual development at that time. Tell us a little bit about that and did that Was that an issue at all in this plea agreement, in the legal proceedings at all.
No, they didn't talk about what harm he had. Well, they did talk about how he had been basically beaten or ignored, harmed from his family, from his parents, and that he was in charge of taking care of his siblings and so on, so there was neglect and there was harm. Yes, they did talk about that, but they didn't talk about this issue with the rape of his sister. That's something that nobody can prove at this point.
It's just what was told by his sister.
I believe that that happened, and I also know that when that connection was made for a ten year old boy watching something so horrific and then being told not to ever speak of it, that it took a toll on the entire family, I'm sure. But you know, it speaks to connecting something that he didn't understand maybe with you know, what he saw, what what sex meant, or
what rape meant. So you know, there's a lot of traumas that happened to people who serial kill and whose serial rape, but a lot of traumas that happened to people don't turn them into serial killers. So, you know, I think he came the way he was from, you know, from the get go, I think he was already hardwired to have an addictive personality and this was his addiction.
How about the idea of humiliation, because he was very interested in humiliating the women, but especially the couples, and so his behavior when he did this, when he attacked these couples was to definitely he enjoyed the humiliation. When I talk about humiliation, I just because of all the serial killers that at least claim that that was the issue that triggered them wanting to humiliate others and degrade others.
How about the idea of his sexual inadequacies. Again, I'm not looking for any kinds of excuses, because there is no excuse for this. But is there anything in your mind to some of his background and some of his inadequacies that and you know, because you talk about you know him, tell us a little bit about what you think about what I've just mentioned.
Well, obviously I'm not up close enough to know exactly what his original Well, I think that his original trauma really, or his original trigger when he put it that way, was his mom and his dad when they got divorced he was I think that's when he decided to kill probably for the first times. That was way back in
the supties. So I think that his original trigger was his parents and just the whole family dynamic when he was treated so poorly and then his mom ended up with somebody else, and his dad left and he didn't see him really anymore, and just a lot of that stuff, and so he killed them. He killed Ultimately, he killed the whole couple. I mean, he killed man and the woman. So I think that was his initial trigger. But I also think that, you know, the sex thing was really
not about sex. It was about power and control and and like you said, humiliation to have the man there know that his wife was being raped had to be the ultimate humiliation for the man and for the woman. So I think that probably eventually, when he met Bonnie, she was not his original trigger. I think she probably it sort of set him off at that point when she rejected him. Maybe you know, went through a rage
over that. I'm pretty sure that's what happened. But his original trigger, I think was his parents and his need for power and control. The reality is is my bottom line for him is this. He wanted power and control over everything and everyone, but ultimately he had no power and no control over himself. His addiction was this to kill and kill and kill and harm people everywhere he could, So he couldn't control his own addiction to this behavior, and so he had no power and control over himself.
And that's my bottom line for him.
When it comes to Lymon Smith and Charlene Charlene, what did you discover that? I mean, the thing is it was particularly savage attacks on these two people. You examined and explored the possible connections. How was it that this person was about to be a judge, about to be appointed a judge? Tell us what the possible connection would be? Where would he have met why? I know these questions were eating a way at you. What did you find? Well?
I still haven't figured out the connection. I've looked at a million different things. Of course, he had people that Limon Smith's had people that he knew in Sacramento.
His dad lived there.
He lived there too, back in foothel Farms. So I tried to figure out is there a Sacramento connection? Even how Hal Barker, who was a sheriff also was his friend, you know, law enforcement connections cases that Mimon may have tried that that got him in the public eye. I mean, I really don't know. Obviously, I don't know that part of the investigations in detail. That's not part of what I've been shared or been privy to. When an open murder investigation is going on, they don't tell you anything,
so I can't really speak to that. But what I can speak to is what I've tried to figure out personally. Was there a connection had he had they been seen in Sacramento? And you know, because he stocked people from place to place literally from maybe Chico. Some victims had lived in San Francisco and moved elsewhere, and he could have run across him as Fresno and killed like the majories in Sacramento. She went to Presno State, so did
Sharon Huddle. What are the connections? There are so many, And he was an excellent stalker, and he had access to information and he could find where you were and where you went. And so that's what I think he did. And he used colleges and different places like that to stalk women like that's snelling and what he did at the College of the Sequoias in order to figure out who was who and what was what? You know, It's like he was an excellent stalker. So how did he
find Charlene and Lyman? Maybe he did see them in Sacramento?
Who knows? If he was a.
Zodiac and was in Tahoe and it's still geographically not that far away, don Alas.
Was killed or disappeared up here, never to be seen again.
So there's so many things that he could have done that are connected by and I'm sure he kept really good notes.
Of who he knew, because he could call somebody ten years after he had harmed them.
He knew the call, he knew how to get in touch with them. He was one of the most meticulous. He has to have OCD on top of everything else, because I know that there are notebooks somewhere that spell out everything he did. Who he knew, what their phone numbers were, how to get in touch with them. He was a law enforcement person. There's real estate connections in his family. He just had access to information, and so
he followed this. One poor guy who was a teacher who was murdered in Sacramento area, was beaten disast legend with the log same as Charlene and Lyman, mister.
Burrow you o r uk.
He also had moved from somewhere else.
He was a teacher.
There are many teachers that Diangelos seemed to the medical people. People talked about that in the beginning, nurses, medical people. There's many There's several murders of nurses and cremento from the seventies, So I mean it goes on and on, which is why there are four books. There's a lot of information, but the reality too for me, just so you know, is the murders that I list.
Of course some of them.
Were committed by somebody else, there's no doubt about it. But the point is is that these murders are unsolved. So whether di'angelo did it or somebody else did it, they need to be looked at. The DNA needs to be looked at, The information needs to be looked at so that we can give people answers for the nineteen
seventies murders, for the nineteen eighties murders. This in the state of California alone, the murder statistics are ridiculous, of unsolved crimes, unsolved murders against women and girls.
And that's why I do this.
Yes, absolutely so, Yeah, there are staggering numbers, staggering numbers of missing, staggering numbers of rapes on tested rape kits. Like you said, things have to change, and this is a call for dramatic change, yes, isn't it.
I think so it's time. I mean, statistically, one of the things that shocked me again the rape statistics stabilized in the eighties, but just in the last two years, from twenty sixteen forward, the statistics on murder against women has gone up again.
Same with men.
It's not as huge, but it's discouraging because it's going up again. And of course I'm I'm sure they're including mass murders and all this other stuff that's been going on. But the reality is is thattistics against murders on women have also gone up again in the state of California.
Yeah, you say that victims of homicide in the US grew by twenty one percent in twenty sixteen compared to twenty fifteen, which was the highest recorded level since two thousand and seven.
Correct.
It increased among males, but not anywhere near maybe a third of that, So very very disturbing for those that are listening to you have your first book is about this series about the East Area rapists, Original night Stalker, Golden State Killer, Murder On His Mind, serial Killer, and there's two editions, The Creep among Us and The What If Zodiac and now Endgame. I'll wanna thank you very much and for coming on and talking about endgame. End
game of the most dangerous game Golden State Killer. For those that might want to take a look at your other work. Is there a Facebook page website? Can you tell us about that well?
And pen at WordPress the WordPress site.
And then also I have an ndpen Facebook page, but you have to message me or send me a friend request, so that's the most direct way to get hold of me, or and Pen thirteen Gmail if you want to ask any questions.
And just the last question, when is this book released? Is it available now?
It is on Amazon right now. I am going to add something to it eventually, and anytime I've done that, I say in the back of the book.
Always check the back of the book.
You can email me for any additional information or chapters. I do have one thing from Larry Crompton. I'm going to add it in today. His granddaughter was born or great granddaughter was born. So we got interrupted at the very end of adding this into the book, so that'll be added in. Congratulations Larry on your great granddaughter. And so it's been a hectic a couple of weeks. He actually went to Sacramento to was at the sentencing, got to talk to Larry Pool and a bunch of other
people that he had worked with years ago. So he ran down to Sacramento and then he ran back home and his grand great granddaughter was born.
So absolutely great, well, congratulations and end game of the most dangerous game. Golden State Killer has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much.
I appreciate it you too, Thank you, thank you, good night.