Attorneys for the man accused of being the Golden State Killer said Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. would be willing to plead guilty if prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty, according to new court papers.
The statement from the public defenders representing DeAngelo appears as a footnote in a 41-page dismissal motion filed in Sacramento County Circuit Court late Monday and obtained by the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday.
“Mr. DeAngelo is 74 years old. He has offered to plead to the charges with a lifetime sentence,” the statement reads.
Assistant public defender Joe Cress did not respond to a request to clarify the statement. Nor did Sacramento County prosecutor Anne Marie Schubert respond to a request for comment. But victims in the case told the Los Angeles Times they had received a letter from the public defender asking them to tell an independent mediator what they think about resolving the case without trial.
“I would be OK with that,” said Kris Pedretti, who was 15 when she was raped in 1976. “But in exchange we want answers. Where he was. What he was doing. ... He owes us answers ... real answers.”
A second victim voiced a similar opinion. Victor Hayes, who was held captive and threatened with death while his girlfriend was raped, said he is more interested in knowing details of how the crimes would have been committed by DeAngelo, a patrol duty police officer for the small northern California town of Auburn.
Charges Joseph DeAngelo faces
DeAngelo, a U.S. Navy veteran and former police officer, faces charges for 13 murders and 13 rape-related kidnappings in six counties.
Beyond that, he is accused of some 50 rapes and scores of ransackings attributed to a serial predator who attacked women, men and children across a large swath of California in the 1970s and 1980s.
As the attacker eluded capture, he continued his crime spree in different cities across the state.
Before the cases were connected, the news media came up with various names to describe what seemed to be multiple suspects committing crimes in different areas of the state. First there was the Visalia Ransacker in the Central Valley, then came the East Area Rapist in Sacramento. Next, police were hot on the trail of the Original Nightstalker in Santa Barbara and Orange counties. All the cases were eventually linked through DNA evidence to one person, and that suspect was dubbed the Golden State Killer.
DeAngelo was then arrested in April 2018 based on genetic DNA tracing through his relatives on popular genealogy websites.
Prosecutors allege that DNA retrieved from DeAngelo the day of his arrest matches that from eight of the crime scenes, but they have so far been stymied in collecting additional DNA samples from DeAngelo so that crime labs in those counties can run their own tests.
Arrested in 1996
Reports said authorities briefly had the suspect in custody in 1996 but let him go without being aware of his true identity.
In April 1996 at age 50, DeAngelo was arrested in a sting operation in which law enforcement officials in Placer County targeted people with outstanding warrants by notifying them that they had won free Super Bowl tickets, according to the Sacramento Bee. The targets were told they could pick up the tickets at a Sacramento office.
DeAngelo was one of the people who responded to the ruse, the Sacramento Bee said. He was previously arrested for theft after leaving a gas station without paying. He was jailed and released, and the charge against him was later dismissed, court records showed.
The only prior arrest police knew of involving DeAngelo was a 1979 shoplifting incident that led to DeAngelo losing his job with the Auburn Police Department.
— ArLuther Lee of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution contributed to this report.
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