Some of the details from documents released Friday on Joseph DeAngelo, the suspected Golden State Killer.

• He may have stalked his victims through drainage ditches.

The Golden State Killer was one of the most prolific predators in U.S. history, sometimes invading different houses on consecutive nights, sometimes returning to the same neighborhood so often that the people who lived there slept in shifts. He terrorized the suburbs of Sacramento, and, later in his spree, near Los Angeles, hundreds of miles to the south.

Again and again, the police affidavit mentions homes that back onto drainage channels, or back onto river levees, suggesting the killer may have used the terrain to remain invisible – until he was ready for his victims to see him

• To meet him was invariably terrifying.

One victim woke in the middle of the night to the sound of wind chimes, police wrote. She looked out her bedroom window, and saw a man trying to pry off the screen.

One woman was lying in bed with her 3-year-old son when she heard the hallway light switch on. Another woke at 2 a.m. to a bright light shining straight into her face.

Sometimes, the Golden State Killer came silently, but often he seemed unconcerned with the clatter of his approach. And for too many victims, knowing that he was coming was not enough for them to escape.

One woman, alerted to a suspicious vehicle in the neighborhood, “walked through her house, checking the doors,” police wrote. “When she turned around the suspect was standing there with a gun pointed at her.”

Another – the same woman who had waked to a man trying to pull off her window screen – woke up her daughters and ran to her phone to call for help. Before she could dial, she heard a curtain rod fall to the floor, then looked up to see a man’s silhouette standing in front of her.

• When he attacked, he showed no fear.

Though most of the attacks described in the affidavit are heavily redacted, what’s left reads like a compendium of horror stories.

Take the second known attack, at a house near Sacramento on the early morning of July 16, 1976.

The man who lived there woke before dawn to go to work. He heard footsteps outside, in the back, by the pool.

“He heard another noise a few minutes later, but didn’t investigate,” the affidavit reads.

It was still dark outside at 5 a.m. when the man walked into his garage and hit the button to open the door.

As the door began to open, he heard footsteps again.

In the gap between the floor of the garage and slowly-yawning door, a pair of hiking boots appeared. The man noticed the soles of the boots looked unusually thick.

And then the man in boots was ducking under the garage door, coming straight at him. He wore a ski mask and gloves, and carried some sort of makeshift club.

The homeowner tried to get into his car, but there wasn’t time before blows came crashing down on his head and his body. He crawled under the vehicle to escape them.

The intruder tried to yank him out, pulling the man’s pants halfway off in the struggle. Then he left, taking nothing but the man’s wallet before he disappeared.

The man had been relatively fortunate. His daughter had moved out a few weeks before the attack, police wrote.

But the Golden State Killer returned to the neighborhood the very next night – to a house few blocks away, where he found two teenage sisters asleep in their beds.

– The Washington Post