Victims, families face DeAngelo in Golden State Killer/East Area Rapist case
And then it was their turn.
Victims and surviving family members of confessed Golden State Killer/East Area Rapist Joseph James DeAngelo got their chance Tuesday in Sacramento Superior Court to confront the man who once terrorized the region as a serial rapist and killer.
In a series of hearings set to run through Thursday in the courthouse downtown, victims of the 74-year-old former police officer stared him down, belittled him as “pathetic” and a “monster” and delivered their victim impact statements in a carefully choreographed procession before he is formally sentenced on Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“He raped me repeatedly, moving me in and out of our house each time,” said Kris Pedretti, who was 15 when DeAngelo broke into her family’s Fair Oaks home a week before Christmas in 1976 and attacked her. “He tormented me and he told me over and over again he would kill me, and I believed him.
“At different times that night, I thought I was going to die. I sang ‘Jesus Loves Me’ in my head as I waited, waited to die.”
DeAngelo never looked at her, or any of the others whose lives he changed forever during his crime spree as the serial attacker who became known as the East Area Rapist.
Instead, he sat stone-faced in a wheelchair, dressed in an orange Sacramento County Main Jail jumpsuit and white face mask, staring straight ahead at the wall behind the jury box where reporters sat scribbling notes and two cameras broadcast the spectacle.
That didn’t stop survivors and family members from trying to get his attention. One sang a song and flipped him off. The son of another brought a gift-wrapped box with a black ribbon that was empty but signified the prison cell where DeAngelo will reside until he dies.
Some, like Pedretti, tried speaking directly to him.
“Do you finally feel humiliated?” Pedretti asked. “The world — and I mean the entire world — knows what you did and you will forever be known as a repulsive human being.
“You are finally getting what you deserved all along. If I had my way, DeAngelo would only be provided our victim impact statements as his reading material for the rest of his days.”
Later, Pedretti told reporters she was pleased to have the chance to address her attacker.
“It did feel good that he was the listener and I was the speaker,” she said. “He has to listen to each and every one of us and its about time that he gets to hear it. ... I feel really good, very empowered and happy that I was in the courtroom to hear the others.”
Asked if she expected a reaction from DeAngelo, Pedretti was direct.
“No. But it didn’t matter. We’ve had years of (seeing) his soulless face,” she said. “This wasn’t for him. This was for me. I wanted to say it and I said it.”
Tuesday’s hearing before Judge Michael Bowman was devoted to statements from victims of DeAngelo’s time as the East Area Rapist starting in 1976, when he began a series of terrifying night-time break-ins in Sacramento’s eastern suburbs that authorities say eventually led to more than 50 rapes.
Survivors of his attacks have described being confronted in their homes in the middle of the night by a man armed with a gun or knife and pre-tied shoelaces to bind them.
His bizarre attacks, during which he took breaks to eat from victim’s refrigerators, stole trinkets and placed dishes on victims so he could hear if they were trying to move, included violent threats.
“If I hear these move, I’ll slit her throat,” DeAngelo told the husband of a Citrus Heights rape victim in 1977 after placing dishes on his back. “I’ll cut off her ear, and I’ll bring it to you.”
Emotions run high from the start
The first victim impact statement read Tuesday — by Karen Veilleux, the sister of Jane Doe 14 who was a victim of a June 18, 1976, attack — immediately drew emotional tears from the victim’s sister, who said her sister refers to him as the “devil incarnate.”
“Life as I knew it changed irreversibly that day,” Veilleux read, adding, “May he rot in hell.”
Peggy Rex, the second victim of the East Area Rapist, approached the podium and recalled how she was 15 when DeAngelo broke into her family home and raped her repeatedly while her sister was tied up in another room.
“My, God, we were just high school kids living a normal life,” she said, adding that the attack left her dealing with years of therapy and fear she still feels at night.
“After 42 years, I still always look over my shoulder when someone approached from behind,” she said, adding that she keeps two phones by her bedside.
Her sister followed her, recalling she was 16 at the time her sister was attacked and she was tied up and that she is still haunted by the memory of the incident more than four decades later.
“It comes back like clockwork every night when my head hits the pillow,” she said. “Are all the windows shut and locked?
“I think so, but maybe I should check again to be sure. Are the doors bolted? Did I set the alarm?”
‘He truly is a monster with no soul’
DeAngelo, seated about 15 feet away in a wheelchair that prosecutors say he does not really need, never looked at any of them, staring instead straight ahead.
That didn’t stop the victims from trying to get his attention, with two deliberately reminding him that the most notable clue investigators had as they sought him was that numerous victims recalled he had a tiny penis.
“He truly is a monster with no soul,” said Patricia Cosper, whose mother was raped by DeAngelo on Sept. 4, 1976, when Cosper was 7. “Did his little penis drive him to be so angry all the time?
“Did he study criminology so he could carry out his evil deeds without getting caught?”
Cosper asked he judge to ensure DeAngelo is sent to “the worst prison in existence today,” then sang a song and flipped off DeAngelo, calling him “the subhuman.”
The judge has made clear to the victims that they can speak as long as they want and gave them great latitude.
“Remember, you’ve waited a long time for this,” Bowman said. “No need to hurry. Take as long as you want.”
‘Your suffering, sir, has just begun’
Prosecutors Thienvu Ho and Amy Holliday, who insisted that DeAngelo acknowledge during a June court hearing his guilt to each of the crimes he committed, somberly shepherded the victims and family members to a lectern, where a box of tissues and hand sanitizer awaited.
DeAngelo’s public defenders — Diane Howard, Joe Cress and Alice Michel — sat quietly with their client as two Sacramento County Sheriff’s deputies sat directly behind the former police officer who became a serial rapist and killer.
Pete Schultze, whose mother Wini was raped by DeAngelo in October 1976 at their Carmichael home, recalled how DeAngelo tied the then-11-year-old boy’s hands to the bedposts, locked his 5-year-old sister in another room and then proceeded to assault his mother.
Her head was covered the entire time and she did not see his face, Schultze said, “but she was certain he had a very inadequate penis.”
“DeAngelo may have stolen our mother’s wedding ring, her jewelry and $250 I had collected for the American Cancer Society,” he said. “But he did not steal our hopes, dreams or the spirit of our family.
“While we have all suffered for 44 years, your suffering, sir, has just begun.”
Schultze said his mother was too ill to make the trip to court Tuesday, but said her family had come to represent her.
“I’m here to represent her and her feelings — the excitement she feels now that the bogeyman is gone,” he told reporters outside the courthouse Tuesday, with his daughters Kendyl and Madison at his side. “She can sleep at night. She is safe.”
His daughters didn’t learn of what happened that night 44 years ago until last year, Kendyl said.
Families rally around survivors
Today, Kendyl calls her grandmother a survivor and something more.
“My grandma is my superhero,” she said, surrounded by reporters. “To deal with what she did....”
The family spoke little of her attack after it happened, Schultze said Tuesday.
“It wasn’t something we talked about — it wasn’t until much further along and then it was less about what happened than our family unity.”
But DeAngelo haunted the family for years. They moved to Contra Costa County, but DeAngelo’s violent spree moved with them.
One of his Contra Costa victims lived little more than a block from their new home, he said.
But Tuesday, finally, was different.
“For my mom, I feel a closing. This helps bring closure to that fear,” Schultze said. “We will go on living our life and he will pay for what he’s done.”
Other victims, including Rex and Susan Peterson said they consider themselves lucky. The women are are longtime friends and both survivors of DeAngelo’s attacks.
“Lucky? Grace of God? There are no answers for that. First of all, we’re lucky to be alive,” Rex told reporters outside the courthouse. “I’ve had a husband who’s been amazingly supportive - I’ve had nightmares for 31 years.
“And, we’re lucky,” Rex continued, looking over at Peterson, now of Seattle.
Their journey to this moment to confront DeAngelo “allowed us to be a little closer,” Rex said.
“We came out the other side and survived,” Peterson said.
Prosecutors say the feeble image DeAngelo has projected in court since his April 2018 arrest — appearing dazed, unable to speak and in a wheelchair — is an act, and they tried unsuccessfully to win permission to play jail cell video of him moving about with great agility.
Bowman denied their request, saying it was not relevant to his sentencing of DeAngelo.
D.A., Sheriff’s: DeAngelo faking frailty
But prosecutors made clear in court filings and during Monday’s hearing that video evidence show he is physically fit and that at one point was able to maneuver inside his cell to fix a lighting problem. Law enforcement sources have said he has been seen exercising, and a year ago video captured images of DeAngelo “performing a sex act” while watching someone outside his cell, Ho said Monday.
“With his slow gait, the distorted twist of his hands, and his head turned and cocked to the side as he haltingly answered the judge’s questions, Joseph DeAngelo presented an appearance of feebleness at his plea on June 29, 2020,” prosecutors wrote. “However, DeAngelo’s agile movement and behavior in his jail cell indicate an individual who is healthy and physically active.”
In a plea deal to spare him the possibility of the death penalty, DeAngelo pleaded guilty at that hearing to 13 counts of murder and 13 counts of kidnap for robbery, charges that were filed instead of rape to avoid problems with statute of limitations issues.
Prosecutors also insisted that DeAngelo admit responsibility for dozens of other uncharged crimes.
“Including both the charged and uncharged incidents, defendant DeAngelo admitted committing crimes of violence against a total of 87 different victims on 53 separate occasions in 11 counties,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum filed last week outlining his still-unexplained crime spree that ran at least from 1975 though 1986 along the length of California.
Who will speak next?
His victims are scheduled to confront him in three separate sessions, with rape victims from Yolo, San Joaquin and Contra Costa expected to speak Wednesday.
Family members of his 13 murder victims — who were killed in Tulare, Sacramento, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Orange counties — will deliver their remarks on Thursday.
Then, he faces formal sentencing Friday in a ballroom at Sacramento State — the same place he pleaded guilty — that has been converted to a makeshift courtroom to accommodate families, victims and media seeking to witness the end of the historic case.
But the focus Tuesday was on DeAngelo’s Sacramento rape victims, and the incalculable damage he inflicted on so many families.
Sandy James, the sister of rape victim Debbie Strouse, who died of cancer in 2016, two years before DeAngelo was arrested, said her sister “went to her grave still haunted by the evil monster that invaded her life.”
“This affected our whole family in horrible ways,” James said. “I always found myself looking into the faces of men over the years and wondering, ‘Could that be him? Does that look like him?’ ”
James said she expects that when DeAngelo dies he will be escorted to hell by an angel with beautiful wings that is her sister, and she held up a photo of her sister trying to get DeAngelo to look at it.
“This is her, look at her face,” James said as her voice rose and she stared at the immobile defendant. “Be a man for once in your life, be a man. Look at her.”
DeAngelo didn’t move.
“It’s okay,” James said. “You’ll see her with her wings soon.”
This story was originally published August 18, 2020 at 9:15 AM.
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