imaginima/iStockBy EMILY SHAPIRO, ABC News
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Survivors of rapes committed by Joseph DeAngelo, the man now known as the “Golden State Killer,” are making their voices heard in victim impact statements in court.
“I want you to look at me, DeAngelo … I want you to remember what I have to say,” Jane Carson-Sandler loudly said in court Wednesday as DeAngelo sat silently in a white face mask.
In October 1976, Carson-Sandler was home with her 3-year-old son when a knife-wielding DeAngelo broke in. DeAngelo bound her, blindfolded her and gagged her, and did the same to her son.
“Then you repeatedly threatened to kill us,” Carson-Sandler said. “The fear escalated when you started tearing sheets and clothes. I had no idea what you were planning to do with all that cloth. Strangle us, maybe?”
“Yes, I was frozen in fear beyond description,” she continued. “My attention was not on the rape, but fully on where did you put my son when you removed him from the bed? Where did you put him and what were you going to do to him?”
“If it wasn’t for the trauma I endured, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. And I am proud of what I have accomplished. I am blessed beyond words,” she said, pausing her prepared marks to say to DeAngelo, “I see your eyes are closing.”
Carson-Sandler said that now, decades later, scars from her attack remain. Seeing a ski mask or hearing someone yell “shut up” will “forever cause me anxiety,” she said.
“My comfort at those times is remembering that you are finally going to prison and will remain there until you die,” she said.
In June, DeAngelo, 74, pleaded guilty to 13 counts of first-degree murder as part of a plea deal, which also required him to admit to multiple uncharged acts, including rapes.
The death penalty was taken off the table in exchange for the guilty pleas.
Three days of victim and family impact statements began Tuesday. DeAngelo, who was a police officer from 1973 to 1979, will be formally sentenced on Friday to life without parole.
DeAngelo committed 13 murders and multiple rapes and burglaries in the 1970s and 80s, terrorizing families from Northern to Southern California.
The crimes went unsolved until April 2018, when DeAngelo was arrested in Sacramento County.
DeAngelo was the first public arrest obtained through genetic genealogy, a new technique that takes the DNA of an unknown suspect left behind at a crime scene and identifies him or her by tracing a family tree through his or her family members, who voluntarily submit their DNA to public genealogy databases.
To identify DeAngelo, investigators narrowed the family tree search based on age, location and other characteristics. Authorities conducted surveillance on DeAngelo and collected his DNA from a tissue left in a trash. Investigators plugged his discarded DNA back into the genealogy database and found a match, linking DeAngelo’s DNA to the DNA found at multiple crime scenes, prosecutors said.
Since DeAngelo’s arrest, over 150 other crime suspects have been identified through genetic genealogy.
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