SUDDEN TERROR-Larry Crompton

as the Original Nightstalker. A serial rapist turned serial murder, he held California in a grip of fear for far too long. Larry Crompton tells us of the attacks that began in northern California in nineteen seventy six that continued on until nineteen eighty six that we know of. Prior to Sacramento attacks, there was a serial prowler called the Viselia Ransacker, with over one hundred and twenty five break

in prowlings under his belt. Detective Crompton had a feeling all of the attacks were connected and tried to tell jurisdictions across the state. Retired from Contra Costa County Department, Larry has never quit searching for this serial predator. Now, at long last, Joseph James DeAngelo is the face of the man behind the mask. Presumed innocent until proven guilty, The case appears to have been solved by a one hundred percent DNA match. His name had become the Golden

State Killer. Now what we look for our answers. Hopefully there are not more victims of this serial predator. This book, originally released on paperback in twenty ten, was the first book out on a case that no one was talking about. Retired Lieutenant Crompton was compelled to write the story so we would not forget Justice is on the way. At last.

The book they were featuring this evening is Sudden Terror, The true story of California's most infamous serial predator, Golden State Killer, Original night Stalker, a ka East Are Rapist, with my special guest, author and retired Lieutenant Larry Crompton. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview. Larry Crompton.

just for background, did you know before this? But on the day April twenty fourth, twenty eighteen, how did you get the news? Who gave you the news? And tell us your reaction?

about fifteen minutes later and said it is true. He was arrested tonight and he is in custody, and yes, And I couldn't sleep that night, I couldn't close my eyes. It was just it was so awesome that, after all these years that had happened.

out as much as I could. But I was in contact with Sergeant Ken Clark in Sacramento, and he told me that they had been watching him for a week and the DNA, the familial DNA, had connected several and they narrowed it down to and said that then they narrowed it down to one, and that one obviously was Joseph, And they said they followed him for a week and they watched them and then they got some more DNA

off of him and that mashed up even more. And then they videotaped them and then they waited for him until he come out of the house, and then they arrested him as he come out, and like I said at that time, that was the best way to do it, because what he wanted to do was to go back

in the house and obviously get a gun. When I was working the case, I had talked to psychiatrists and other people that were dealing with rapists, and what they told me was that if you come across him before he commits a crime, you're never going to put it together. Is going to be so good that you'll never know. If you come across him after he commits a crime, he will kill you or he will kill himself, but

he won't be taken. And I lived with that thought all those years, and then when I saw how they did it and the way they did it, I thought, yep, psychiatrists were right on course, they knew what he was, so it was exciting to know how they did it. And then I saw him when saw him when he went into court the first time and in the wheelchair, and then once he found out what they knew, about him. Things have changed, and I still don't know when he's

going to ever say anything. And hopefully we'll learn from him what we need to be looking for when we come across somebody like him.

but or the reassurances. Other than Jane Carson, and I mentioned Lori, Anne and Penn Aka, how many of the victims did you interact with and for how long? Tell us a little bit more about that contact with those people and what that was like.

Frozen in Fear, and it is fantastic. And then I was also able to be in contact with Michelle Cruz, she's sister of Janelle Cruz, the young lady that was murdered, and Debbie Domingo, the daughter of Sherry Domingo, and we've stayed in contact, and there really are the only victims

and families that I've stayed in contact with continually. And others I have dealt with, but not the same way that I have with these, and seeing what they went through and how they dealt with it, and it just made it so that I had to stay with it because I saw what they went through and what they needed.

This is about the victims and their families. So that's what I would talk to them about, about how they were dealing with it and how strong they were, and that those that were involved and were working on it were doing everything they could and that I just couldn't give it up and told him that I had to stay with it and anything that I could do for them, I would, And any time I heard anything, I made sure that it was given to Sacramento or to Larry

Pool down in Orange County to follow up on. And then I got involved with three civilians down in Sacramento that were also involved in the case cases, and they were involved because they were in the area when he was hitting and then they saw me on TV and saw my book and got it. So I was in con with them, and I knew that they had such a close contact with Sacramento Sheriff's Office, with the detectives there, So anything that I had, I made sure that I got to them and they could work on it and

get information back to me. And those three kept the case going and would not give up on it. And Melanie Barbo and Kay Gilbraith, Robert Neville, they just were so involved in this that they were the ones that kept the case going. They just wouldn't let it go and they made sure that Sacramento was on top of everything that they come up with. So what I've said all along, law enforcement is not going to be solving crimes by themselves. They need the civilians to be involved.

And that's what happened here and it was because of that that it was finally solved. And have to give credit to those people that stayed with it. And Richard Shelby, the retired detective from Sacramento, couldn't give up on it. He put his book out and just Paul Hol's criminalists from Sacramento or from Contra Costa. He stayed with it, and Larry Poole couldn't give up on it. Ken Clark, Paul Belly from Sacramento, they stayed with it. So it was that that finally solved this case.

talking about, and so he ran it by me. So I called Santa Barbara and I got the same thing back, that, no, we don't know what you're talking about. We have nothing like that. So it just so happened that the sheriff sent me down to a class down in San Diego at the university, and there happened to be a Santa Barbara officer in the class, and I got talking to him and he said, oh, yeah, we did. We had a double homicide and he said, Robert Offerman and Deborah Manning.

And he said, and just before that, we had an attempted rape where the people got away. And I said what and he said yeah. And I said, well, gosh, we knew nothing about that. So I got those reports and Jim Bevans and I went over them and we in our minds, yes, their murder, their attempted rapist was our rapist, but nobody would believe us, and nobody wanted to get involved his apartment. My department said, no, he's left our area, he's no longer ours, and no, it's

not the same person. So what happened was in two thousand it was. Paul Hols called me and said that he heard that I had been on the East Area Rapist Task Force, and he said, I'm a DNA expert here at the lab, and he said, if you can give me some names, I'll do the DNA because back then we didn't have DNA when all this was going on, and we only knew that it was the same person committing the rapes because of the way that he did it,

and there was no doubt in our minds that. But I gave him three names and he called me back a while later and said, yeah, I joined two of them. And then he called me back another month later and said, yeah, all three of them have the same DNA. So I said, okay, Paul, I know that down in southern California, I know of five homicides, and I said, I can't get any cooperation, but if you can get a criminalist down there that will work with you, I know they have evidence, and

I know that their murderer is our rapist. And I said, if you can get them to cooperate with you, I know it's there. So he called me back about seven months later and he said, no, they didn't have five homicides, said they had ten and we just joined six of them, so that was exciting. And he said that Orange County wanted me to fly down there and talk to them. So I contacted Orange County and the sheriff wanted me to come down and I told him, I said, I

have all the reports of Northern California attacks. And I said, if you want, you can send your detective up here. I have the contact up here. We can go to the sheriff's department and get copies of them. And he said, no, we want you down here. He said, we'll pay to have you and all the reports. So I flew down there with them and met with their task force and stayed there for a couple of weeks going over everything.

And that opened up the investigation because they didn't know who they were looking for or what type of a person they were looking for. But after looking at the reports from Northern California, it gave him a better idea. And I didn't know at the time, but they had already done DNA on some of theirs down there prior to that, and so that part was already there and it was just a matter of connecting it. And then

trying to find out who that would connect too. But that got the investigation going and opened it up north and south, and that really helped.

for everyone. When you were doing other things like A and E reached out to you Bill Curtis and Cold Case Files and then later some other television programs and then so tell us a little bit about that outreach and what the purpose of that was and why you were wanted to be involved with that, and before we talk about other things like reaching out to Kim Rosmo, geographical profiler.

that UH stayed in my mind. And like I said, UH, I kept thinking that Uh I was supposed to cl was that case. I was supposed to catch him, and I failed, and I failed, And then it finally dawned on me that it wasn't about me. It was about the victims and their families. So anything and everything that

I could do, I stayed with it. And I was very, very fortunate to be able to work with Larry Poole and Ken Clark and Paul Belly, and with those three working the case at the same time, I knew that there was a good chance that it would eventually be solved.

in Sacramento. What is it interesting to see what Kim Rosmo had deduced so long ago? In two thousand and.

I couldn't get out out of my mind that he was in Sacramento, but couldn't come up with any any proof or anything else. But with what Kim decided him, what he showed and what he gave me, everything just fit. And thought that because of that we'd be able to find out something. But because of the way that some things go, we couldn't get names or anything else from

different phone calls and things like that. But it still still helped, and it narrowed it down to areas and he felt the same way I did that that d' angelo, even though we didn't know who D'Angelo was, that he was in Sacramento and worked out that way.

surprising was it for you? I mean in the book you talk about that it looks like you've narrowed it down that he has military training, and you give the evidence for that, and that's been discussed, But how surprised were you that he was a police officer? And just what was your response when you found that out? Would you think?

He had to have some kind of a background. And I was in internal affairs for several years, and unfortunately I was involved in several deputies being fired for misconduct or other things. So you know that no matter what the profession is, there's a chance that they're bad ones. And doesn't matter whether it's teachers or ministers, it doesn't matter. It can happen anywheres. And the fact that it happened to be somebody that had been in law enforcement, even

though it was for a short time. The only thing that I got out of it, and the ones that I talked to got out of it, was they were just happy that he was caught, and the fact that he was law enforcement did not affect us that way. We were just glad that he was caught.

areas at that time. And what we find out now, Joseph Giangelo was in those areas at that time, and it was very obvious that he was in those areas areas, and as law enforcement, I think that he probably in his patrol car, did prowl areas to know where he was going to go. But nobody ever seemed to have even noticed a patrol car. And in most people's minds, when they see a patrol car and it goes by, it doesn't stay in their mind. So he had every

opportunity to do what he did. And when I learned about the rapes that happened in Sacramento and went through the reports, and I thought, there's no way that somebody could have started out with that kind of a plan. He had to have something prior to that, and I thought maybe he had been arrested for rape and went to prison and got a better system to work on.

So I got all parolees from a six month period prior to the first Sacramento attack, and I had between seven and nine thousand all together, and my partners and I would go up to Sacramento and go through all the paroles and eliminate them for different reasons that they were in prison during some of the rapes, or different sizes and stuff like that, and we narrowed it down to about forty five. And those forty five I couldn't contact, never found their parole officers, didn't know where they were,

and a couple of them really looked good. And that was one thing that when D'Angelo was arrested, that was one thing that unfortunately was in my mind. I'm glad he wasn't one of my parolees because if he was, yeah, then I would have missed it. And and that's not the way that I should have looked at it. Again, I was thinking of me and that uh oh, I fouled up I didn't. I didn't and had to get

it in my mind that that's not it was about. Uh. It was we eliminated thousands of names over the years, and some of them really look good andy, but some of them we had to work on and and UH worked on him for months before we could eliminate him. And but those are things that you do, and uh, it just stays with you. And and that's what uh, like I said, for years, I would wake up in the middle of the night, what did I miss? What

they do wrong? And just just comes to you finally that no, it finally did happen, and it happened for the right reason. It happened so that the victims and their families could finally find closure. And yes, it probably will be another year or more before he goes to court, and so it's going to take a lot. But I really would like to know what was in his head and what did we miss and what could we have done better? And I don't know if he'd tell us or not, but I'd like to like to be one

of the ones talking to him. But unfortunately I'm retired, so that won't happen. But that's what it's all about.

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That's Ring dot com slash murder. We talked about Arry, about all of the things that you were doing, the networking that you were doing, the people that recognized and realized that you were an asset and a valuable asset in moving this investigation to the next level to try to find closure for the victims. As you said, you realize that when you got caught up in that it was about you at all, then you realize that it

really was about the victims and closure for them. When you wrote this book in twenty ten, was again after you were retired. What was the goal of the book, What was the purpose of the book at that time.

the reports, then I put the book together. And I only wrote that book for that one reason, to get it out there, so that somebody would come up with a name, they would see where these acts were taking place and how violent they were. And during the time that this was going on, Joseph DiAngelo was not the most active rapist in California. He was the most violent, and in every one of his attacks, the people, the

victims knew that they were going to die. In their mind, he was going to kill him, and he made sure that they knew that on every one of those attacks. It wasn't until the sixteenth attack that there was a man in the house. After the fifteenth attack, the newspaper come out and said that there'd never been a man in the house. So obviously he read the newspaper and the next one there was a man in the house.

And then he started putting dishes on the man's back and telling them if I hear these rattle, I'll kill your wife, I'll kill you, cut off the ears of your child, bring him to you. That type of thing, his whole thing. And I went and with a doctor at the Vacaville Medical Center and I gave her some reports and she worked with the rapists that were in custody and asked her to go over the reports. And then I went back a week later to talk to her and she said, yeah, I've met with my rapist.

You had better catch him. He wants to kill and he's going to kill And I asked her, and I said, well, why hasn't he. I didn't tell her about the two that were murdered in Sacramento, and I just asked her, why hasn't she And she said, he hasn't found the justification yet. Once he finds the justification, he's going to kill. And she said, my rapist in here said that he's given them a bad name. And I said, given them a bad name, and she said, well, you got to

understand they don't think that they hurt anybody. They're doing it for sex. This person is not doing it for sex. He's doing it for the terror that he could put in their minds. And he's doing it because he wants to kill him. And what we found out was after the last attack in my area that people got away.

The reason they got away is because all these attacks now were in the newspaper, so they knew what was going to happen, and they worked out a plan that if they were attacked, there was an escape route and

if they could get that escape route, then they'd get away. Well, very very fortunate the way that it happened that time, the man woke up when the rapist was just putting his ski mask over his face, so he didn't have a gun in his hand, and the man woke up yelling and shouting at him, screaming at him, and it

got the rapist confused. It gave the wife an opportunity to hit the escape route and to get away, and once the husband realized that she was free, that he did the same thing, and then the rapist got away. Then when he hit down in Santa Barbara the first time down there, again the people got away. That was his justification. No one was going to get away again. And that's when he started murdering each and every one of them. And going through the reports, you could tell

that sex was not his number one priority. It was the terror that you put in their minds. And just about all of the women said that he never never had a full erection. They could hear him lubricating himself all that, so that's not what it was. And again the doctor at the Vaculo Medical Center, she was right. Once he found that justification, that was it. No one was going to get away from him again.

these husbands after attack? What did you tell these people.

you did every You did everything you could write. And I know it was difficult for many of them. Many of them ended up in divorce. And because I couldn't deal with the fact that they did not take care of their wife, and I tried to get that in their mind that you did the right thing by dealing with it the way that you did, and now just try and work together and deal with it that way.

And I know it was very hard, and but I saw in talking to them, I knew what was in their mind, and I knew the fear that uh that was there, and I knew that their number one priority in their mind was to save their loved one, and in most cases, uh, in their mind, they didn't do it. And it was hard to get them to uh to understand that. And and uh it would be hard for me to understand it if it had happened to me.

So uh, very very difficult. But uh, I spent as much time as I could with them, talking to them. And like I said, when I finally met with Jane Carson and got to go through her life and what she went through and uh, how she dealt with it, and then I got it into my mind that yes, it can happen, they can get through it. And her book is one that, like I said, victims need to read and know that they can survive and can deal with things.

through and what they do. And I found that she was so involved in trying to get this out for people to look at, to let them know what a family does go through and how important it is to deal with it. Now important it was to find closure

and very very very dedicated young lady. And it was it was good in reading her book to find out what went through the mind of those family members like that, and it proves to all of us in law enforcement how important it is to solve these crimes and get that final closure.

in the book and tell them why you needed. They needed, everyone needed to have that in the book to move this forward to maybe jar someone's mind to again details that could help. This is all from the commitment from everyone involved. You as one of the early, the earliest people pushing this investigation forward. Why is some of the book fictionalized? Tell us what the purposes of some of the book fictionalized?

So there's no way I would do that. And the only thing that that I put in there was that I got from the reports themselves, the initial reports that were written, and and also in talking to Sergeant Jim Bevans with Sacramento, and that's where I got the information from. And once it was out there, and a lot of the things that I put in the book also was articles from the newspapers. When they finally did start putting

it into the newspaper. The first several attacks, they didn't want it out there, uh, to let the rapists know that they were looking for him, so uh, they didn't want it in the news. And then once it got in the news, and obviously that uh, that increased it. But other than that, the only thing that U the only thing I did differently, I tried to put a little humor in the book to break it up a little bit and also to show how police officers do work at times and what they go through and how

they deal with it. And what we found out during all this was that very very few UH departments did cooperate and did work together, and that was that was the bad thing back then. What you did yourself stayed there. And when when I finally was on the task force and started working, I went down to the Berkeley to talk to a detective down there that was working the Stinky Rapist and we knew about the Stinky Rapist and

we knew he was hitting in that area. And while I was talking to him, he told me that San Jose had been hit twice by a rapist and we knew nothing about that. And I get talked to him and I said, well, how come we didn't know about it? And he said, well, you got to understand, he said, with San Jose, if the rape victim does not know who the rapist is, they don't investigate it. It's just

put off to the side. And I couldn't believe that any department would work that way because I had worked several rapes in my career, and prior to doing this, I was involved in him, and I thought, how can any department worked that way? UH. It's important UH for those victims and uh but he said, well, they're so busy down there, they just don't have the time. And that's the way that it was. But like I said, uh before I said, uh, D'Angelo was not the most

active rapist. He was the most violent. But uh we had at that time in California. He had the wooly rapist, the early morning rapist, uh, pillowcase rapist, uh stinky like I said, the car Key rapist, San Diego PD East San Diego rapist, and uh some of those were never caught. Uh some of 'em were caught uh uh and sent to prison. One was uh rested, sent to prison, got out and went back east and was arrested back there

for rape. So it's uh, it's I it's something that you look back on and you think what was going on and the fact that we weren't cooperating with each other. Like I said, I was very very very fortunate to be able to work with Jim Evans with Sacramento and Larry Pool with Orange County, and we did work together and we did not keep anything from each other. But uh that was different than uh most agencies and uh uh even in my U I in my County. Uh. When he hit in Walnut Creek, they told me they

didn't need my help. The first one that they hit in Wallet Creek was a seventeen year old that was babysitting, and I went and talked to her and found out that she had not baby sat there for two months, so he could not have known. And so I said, that's not who he was after. He's after somebody else in your neighborhood. And they said, we don't need your out. And a week later they did hit, and he hit a thirteen year old, and that's the one he was

after the first time. So it's that lack of cooperation that really hurt us back then, and I'm hoping that today it's different. And like I said, we knew nothing about the rapes and Sacramento and even in Davis, which was only a few miles from us, we did not know anything about him because if you didn't live in the town or get that newspaper, you didn't hear about it. Today, if a dog is bitten back in New York, it's

in the paper the next day out here. So it's different now, but back then it was very difficult.

about prior to this the last year. We'll say, it seemed to me in dealing with Ann Penn that the FBI was doing to me, it seemed an unpreceded, unprecedented in my mind, outreach to the public. It seemed like they were very very confident as well that there would be an arrest without giving away what they were doing, but everybody still has seen progress with DNA technology. Did

you sense a renewed interest that something was afoot? What did you feel in that, say, in the last year or previous to this, in the last while, did you see any change? Did you anticipate anything? What was that? Did you see anything or was it all my mind?

that's what was going on then. But once the FBI got involved and did have their meetings and did put it out there, I thought, this is going to open it up, and now maybe we can get something. And again with the FBI, it doesn't matter what county or what state even they do have that cooperation and we weren't having that cooperation among departments. So I thought this was going to open it up and going to help.

And the big thing was that because Paul Hole stayed with it because of the DNA, that's what kept it going and he kept trying to connect. And then when we got into the familial DNA. Now, since this has happened, I've heard of fifteen cold cases that have been closed now because of DNA. So we're going in the right direction. My feeling all along, I've said this many times that when a baby's born, if you put that DNA in

the system, is going to protect that child. If it's a body that's found later, you're going to be able to identify it and if it's kidnapped or killed or whatever, and it may even help cut back on crime. But if it's out there, if it's in there, like fingerprints, I got fingerprints off a lamp one time and couldn't

get it matched anywheres. And then when I got working with Larry Poole gave him that fingerprint, he did get it matched and the person was dead and he went back and exhumed the body and got the DNA and proved that it was not our rapist. But things like that can work, and if you can do it with fingerprints, DNA is even more important. But too many people think that's a yeah, that's a private thing.

kind of trials, it's pretty hard to dispute. It's going to be impossible for him to dispute this at trial with so it's more slam Dunk would say in that, in that DNA and that privacy that you mentioned, I agree with you that for the good of again law enforcement, really the only thing and the best thing that has happened in the judicial system is the advent of DNA.

So the idea that they couldn't go into a private genealogy site to be able to search for that, I think that you given these kinds of results, privacy has to be I hate to say that, but I can't be fixed on the idea of privacy always under any circumstances. So I do agree with you it could be a very very good tool. Then again, we'd get into the subject of the effectiveness efficacy of some of these databases and compliance to put material into the database. Right.

chew on some gauze and we eliminated them. But uh, it would have been so much easier if we had known anything about DNA at the time, and UH was able to do that. But uh, there are there are ways that you work at and you work on it and uh, like I said, Uh, we eliminated thousands of names, and there were different ways of doing it, and uh

we uh did what we could. And UH, I'm just so so glad now for the victims and their families and know that hopefully within the next year they're going to find full closure and see what happens.

mythical and glamorous in prison after these convictions. I think it's in everybody's the way he's been depicted, in the nature of his crimes that and I think just the and maybe I won't even mention it just out of respect for the audience, but that just about the description of him and his behavior crying, and there is nothing. It would seem only the insane would think that this guy was admirable in any way, the kind of person you would contact and the kind of person that would

gain some kind of following. Don't you think this is well like, not the candidate for turning this into a sexy criminal post trial at all.

in there would like to kill him. And for that reason, and so it's going to be very dangerous for him and it's going to have to be taken care of that way. But we know that because as in California, there's no death penalty that's going to work there. So he will be in prison for the rest of his life, and it's going to be a rough time for him in prison.

essential for him to do that. Not to give credit where credit was due, but it was essential that he read this and understand these cases and understand what you had to UH contribute to this case, wasn't it?

very fortunate. And then when he was able to uh deal with Southern California with Orange County and joined the DNA, and then he stayed with it after that, and UH that's what uh what finalized this. Uh you had to have uh those to stay with it. And like I said, even though uh Larry Poole retired, he couldn't let it go. He had to stay with it. And right to the

very end he was involved. And what people don't understand is that in law enforcement there's many times that these crimes get into your mind and you can't let it go. I had won in the crime lab a little fourteen year old that was kidnapped, raped and murdered, and I went out and processed the scene and then I had to go to the morgue and take the photograph of

them working on her. And I was up on the ladder with my camera looking down and Cindy Waxman was her name at the time, and I couldn't deal with it. I told my partner, you got to take this one. I'll take the next five, but I can't deal with it. And we thought we knew who it was, but they could never prove it. And then after I retired and moved away, I get a Sabena to go to court. They arrested him and the DNA did work. So that is good.

So again, congratulations and congratulations on this book, Sudden Terror, now available on Kindle. So thank you very much Larry Crompton for coming on and talking about Sudden Terror, the true story of California's most infamous serial predator, Golden State Killer onsaka East Area Rapist. Thank you very much Larry Crompton for coming on doing this interview it's been a pleasure.