Golden State Killer DeAngelo gets surprise visit in court: His former fiancee, Bonnie

After one day of listening to his victims castigate him for his crimes, confessed Golden State Killer/East Area Rapist Joseph James DeAngelo got a surprise visit Wednesday.

His former fiancée, a Sacramento woman named Bonnie Ueltzen, appeared as a guest of Citrus Heights rape survivor Jane Carson-Sandler, who tore into DeAngelo as he sat motionless in his wheelchair in Sacramento Superior Court.

Carson-Sandler, an outspoken victim who describes herself as a “survivor-thriver,” demanded that he look at her, then began her deconstruction of him as a “despicable” man who bound and raped her and terrorized her in October 1976 after also tying up her 3-year-old son.

“DeAngelo, I want you to look at me,” she demanded. “I want you to look at me, DeAngelo, and I want you to remember what I have to say.”

Carson-Sandler described the difficulty she had trying to recover from her trauma, how she turned to alcohol at one point, then found religion, earned a nursing degree and spent 30 years in the Air Force, retiring as a colonel.

“You didn’t destroy my life in your cowardly, cruel and sick behavior,” she said, adding that, as a Christian, one quarter of her wanted mercy for his soul.

“But then there’s three-quarters of me that wants to say to you, buddy, just rot in hell.”

And then she brought the heat, saying she had brought a friend along, Bonnie, the woman whose name DeAngelo cried out during one of his assaults.

Bonnie stood up in the front row, smiling and staring at the man she left decades before.

He never acknowledged the presence of either, staring silently ahead at a courtroom wall as he had for much of Tuesday’s hearing.

Wednesday marked a second straight day to allow survivors of his rapes to confront him face to face, one of the final steps before he is sent off to prison for the rest of his life, and was devoted to hearing from survivors of DeAngelo’s rapes in Yolo, San Joaquin, Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties.

‘I would want him to suffer the rest of his life’

One San Joaquin County couple, Robert and Gay Hardwick, recalled the night in 1978 that DeAngelo broke into their home and the lasting pain it caused.

“What a gut punch it was that I had been brutally raped by a full-time police officer,” Gay Hardwick said. “To learn that DeAngelo, who was sworn to serve and protect, used his skill set to terrorize and rape. Yes, that was staggering.”

She called him a “seeming puny coward before us today,” and said she could not understand what would drive someone to such depths of depravity.

“I’ve heard that he may have been abused as a child, that he experienced sad things in his life, that he had to move around a lot, that his fiancee jilted him,” she said. “But a lot of people go through bad times, and they don’t become serial rapists and murderers.”

Her husband described his “fantasy sentence” for DeAngelo, one that would send him “to the toughest prison in the state,” where three or four nights a week masked inmates carrying flashlights and shanks would have access to him.

“I would not want him to die,” Hardwick said. “I would want him to suffer the rest of his life like the victims, the rape victims have suffered for the past 42 years.”

Some victims had their statements read by prosecutors, including one whose statement said coming to court “would be a waste of my time”

Others complained that they had not been kept apprised of developments or court dates, that they learned of the arrest on the news.

And some took pity on DeAngelo’s ex-wife, his daughters and granddaughter.

“They don’t deserve to live a life full of shame due to your despicable actions,” Carson-Sandler said.

DeAngelo breaks his gaze

Throughout most of the two-hour hearing, DeAngelo maintained his apparent resolve to stare straight ahead or lock eyes with a reporter in the jury box opposite him.

But that dissolved when one of his youngest victims, Mary Berwert, who was 13 when she was raped inside her Contra Costa County home in 1979, took to the lectern and described the childlike decorations that adorned her bedroom back then.

“He raped me,” said Berwert, now 54. “He stole my innocence. I was 13 years old.”

As she described the aftermath of the attack, when she used her hands tied behind her back to open her bedroom door and go tell her father, “Daddy, I’ve been raped,” DeAngelo’s gaze fell to the table in front of him, and remained there for most of the rest of the hearing.

“He called the police and I was taken to the hospital,” she said. “No 13-year-old should have to find out what a rape kit is.

“And then it turned out I’d been ovulating, so steps were taken to prevent pregnancy.”

When that summer ended, she was set to start in the eighth grade, she said, and when she walked outside to go to school “a neon sign lit up my forehead and it said, ‘Raped,’ and I couldn’t turn it off, so I had to be brighter than that sign.”

Like many other victims, she talked of having to sleep with the lights on, with checking and rechecking and rechecking to make certain her doors are locked, of wondering if she would run into him.

“In my 20s I worked in retail, and always wondered if I would run into him and not know it,” she said.

Another Contra Costa victim recounted his attack when she was 23, and recalled how she had once been an avid water skier, a skill she had learned at 3 from her father.

“That night you attacked me you mentioned seeing me at the lake, and that I looked good,” she said. “I’ve never water skied again.”

Some survivors forgave him

Wednesday’s hearing follows an anguishing and emotional four-hour session Tuesday during which victims of his Sacramento-area rape spree — the one that earned him the nickname as the East Area Rapist, an attacker who terrorized the region in the 1970s — denounced, belittled and ridiculed him as he sat silently, refusing to make eye contact or even look in their direction.

So far, he has been cursed at, called a “monster,” “pathetic,” “subhuman” and “evil” by the women he raped and family members whose loved ones say their lives were torn apart by him.

At least two survivors told him Tuesday that they forgave him, and another, Victor Hayes, bitterly complaining that enough was not done to stop DeAngelo earlier, when he was an Auburn police officer.

Hayes, who was bound and whose girlfriend was attacked in 1977 before the incident was interrupted by friends who came to his door, said he believes DeAngelo was on duty as an officer that day and that DeAngelo may also have stalked his parents, striking at a home not far from his parents’ house later.

Hayes said he believes Auburn police and DeAngelo’s then-wife, attorney Sharon Huddle, could have done more to stop DeAngelo earlier.

“I believe that both of them could have put this to rest a long, long time before,” Hayes said.

“He’s just a straight-up coward,” Hayes added. “I mean, to sneak around in the middle of the night, he’s just a coward.

Hayes was the last speaker at Tuesday’s hearing, and ended his remarks by recalling that when DeAngelo was surprised and arrested outside his Citrus Heights in April 2018 he told deputies he had something cooking in his kitchen.

“They’re making me go, Joe,” Hayes called out loudly as he turned to leave. “I’ve got a roast in the oven I’ve got to get to.”

What’s next before sentencing?

DeAngelo is scheduled to return to court Thursday for what is expected to be a particularly painful day, as family members of the 13 people he murdered will be given their chance to describe the impact he has had on their lives, a series of killings that began during the Visalia Ransacker crimes in the 1970s and ended in Southern California in 1986, after which he became known as the Golden State Killer.

DeAngelo pleaded guilty in June to 13 murders, 13 counts of kidnap for robbery related to his rapes and admitted responsibility for 53 attacks involving 87 different victims in 11 counties.

His plea deal allowed him to escape the death penalty, and he is set to be formally sentenced to life without possibility of parole in a hearing Friday that will be moved to a meeting room at Sacramento State to accommodate survivors, media and prosecutors.

This story was originally published August 19, 2020 at 9:50 AM.