The hunt for one of the country’s most notorious serial killers led investigators to a Hobby Lobby parking lot in a California suburb.
Joseph DeAngelo, 72, drove to the craft store in Rosedale on April 18, then parked his car and walked inside. That gave law enforcement officials a chance to confirm the identity of a suspected killer who had evaded capture for decades.
Investigators swabbed the handle of D’Angelo’s driver-side door and sent it for testing.
The scene is just one of the many described in a search warrant and affidavit that was unsealed Friday by a California judge in response to a motion filed by The Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.
Investigators didn’t stop with one DNA sample. Just a few days after swabbing his car door, they also removed items from a trash can outside DeAngelo’s Citrus Heights home. They sent a tissue from DeAngelo’s garbage to a crime lab and isolated a DNA sample that matched DNA from semen collected after the 1980 rape and murder of Charlene Smith, an interior decorator in Ventura County.
Detectives were able to link the DNA sample from Charlene Smith’s homicide to other killings attributed to the Golden State Killer, according to the documents.
He was arrested on April 24 and charged in the slayings of eight people. Prosecutors have since charged DeAngelo, a former police officer, in the deaths of four other people, bringing the total to 12. He’s accused of taunting victims after brazen rapes, burglaries and attacks that police describe as “sexually motivated.”
Shortly after DeAngelo was arrested, investigator Paul Holes explained to The Washington Post how he was able to trace the attacker’s DNA to DeAngelo:
“Criminal DNA databases produced no hits, sweeps of crime scenes no fingerprints and hefty rewards no definitive tips,” according to the Post report. “But Paul Holes, an investigator and DNA expert, had a hunch he could create a road map to the killer through his genetics. Holes used DNA recovered from a crime scene to find the killer’s great-great-great grandparents, who lived in the early 1800s,” the report continued. “Branch by painstaking branch, he and a team created about 25 family trees containing thousands of relatives down to the present day. One fork led to a 72-year-old retiree who was quietly living out his golden years in the Sacramento suburb of Citrus Heights.”
DeAngelo was in attendance Friday as the judge unsealed the affidavits for his search warrant.
Copy the Story LinkSend questions/comments to the editors.
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Hi, to comment on stories you must . This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.
Already have a commenting profile? .
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.