Sacramento DA looking at more cases tied to Golden State Killer/East Area Rapist suspect
Prosecutors in Sacramento are continuing to investigate Golden State Killer/East Area Rapist suspect Joseph James DeAngelo for a series of rapes in seven California counties and are seeking five fresh DNA samples from him as part of their efforts to convict him in their ongoing case, according to new court filings.
The disclosure comes at the same time that DeAngelo’s public defenders are asking that most of the 26 murder and rape charges he faces be tossed out on the grounds that state law does not allow Sacramento prosecutors to pursue charges for crimes committed outside their own jurisdiction.
DeAngelo faces 13 murder counts and 13 kidnap for robbery counts linked to sexual assaults the length of the state between 1975 and 1986, but only two of the murders and nine of the sexual assaults occurred in Sacramento County.
“There is no jurisdiction to charge Mr. DeAngelo in Sacramento County with any of the counts from the other counties,” public defenders Joseph Cress and Alice Michel argued in filings in Sacramento Superior Court asking Judge Steve White to dismiss the other counts.
The competing filings come in advance of a March 12 hearing in the case, which is scheduled to be the last court session before DeAngelo’s preliminary hearing commences on May 12.
That session is expected to be a marathon lasting eight to 10 weeks and featuring 150 witnesses, a move designed to ensure that older witnesses and victims are able to get their testimony on the record in the event some die or are too frail to come to court whenever a trial eventually begins.
‘62 crime scenes ... 13 counties’
Both sides have been feuding over the prosecution’s request for permission from the judge to obtain five fresh DNA swabs from DeAngelo, who is being held without bail at the Sacramento County Jail.
The latest filing from prosecutors discloses for the first time since DeAngelo’s April 2018 arrest at his Citrus Heights home that investigators are continuing to look into charging him with additional criminal counts.
“Sacramento County is continuing to investigate crimes committed by the defendant in Contra Costa, Santa Barbara, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Yolo, Santa Clara, and Alameda Counties; and is now poised to conduct additional DNA testing on evidence, including possible re-testing (which may not occur in the same laboratory that originally tested that evidence) depending on availability,” prosecutors wrote in their motion.
The motion describes in graphic detail the breadth of the crimes investigators believe DeAngelo committed, including the slaying of journalism Professor Claude Snelling in Tulare County 45 years ago.
“Beginning with the murder of Claude Snelling on September 11, 1975, and proceeding chronologically, there are 62 crime scenes across 13 counties tied by DNA or other means to the defendant,” they wrote. “Some scenes involved multiple victims, including young children; and in total they comprise well over 100 criminal acts of burglary, assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury, rape, sodomy, forcible oral copulation, forcible digital penetration, kidnapping, robbery ,false imprisonment, attempted murder, and/or murder, along with numerous other associated and/or lesser included offenses.”
Prosecutors, who are seeking the death penalty, added that while they plan to try DeAngelo on 26 counts they plan to present evidence from some other crimes.
They also describe the difficulty they had in obtaining their first DNA samples from DeAngelo following his arrest.
DeAngelo’s DNA originally had been obtained by investigators performing surveillance on him after they pinpointed him as a suspect and recovered a used tissue from his trash that they say provided evidence tying him to eight of the crime scenes.
“The defendant was arrested on April 24, 2018, and, pursuant to a warrant issued at that time, a single buccal swab for confirmation was collected the next day by Sacramento Sheriff’s Office Lt. Paul Belli,” prosecutors wrote. “At the time of the collection, Lt. Belli explained the collection method to the defendant and asked him to take the buccal swab collection stick and place it in his mouth to facilitate collection of the sample.
“The defendant did not respond, verbally or otherwise, to this request. Lt. Belli then had to, himself, put the buccal swab collection stick into the defendant’s mouth and collect the sample pursuant to the instructions for the kit. The defendant’s post-arrest buccal swab was analyzed by the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Crime Laboratory, and it matched the DNA profile from the tissue he had previously discarded, confirming his identity as the source of the unknown profile.”
More swabs needed, prosecutors say
Now, prosecutors say they want additional DNA samples to provide to crime labs in other counties to help “streamline” the prosecution effort.
“The defendant’s identity as a rapist, murderer, kidnapper, and robber has been established, in significant part, by the matching DNA profiles generated in this case by multiple laboratories encompassing multiple jurisdictions,” prosecutors wrote. “While the responsibility of conducting DNA analyses on crime scene evidence originally fell to the laboratories in the counties when and where the crimes occurred, the Sacramento County Crime Laboratory has become the jurisdictional and investigative epicenter for all of the defendant’s known crimes (some charged, some uncharged), and first obtained and analyzed the defendant’s reference buccal swab and compared his profile to the crime scene profiles.
“Additional buccal swabs are now necessary so that each laboratory involved in this case can independently generate the defendant’s DNA profile from a buccal swab and compare it to the DNA profiles generated from crime scene evidence using its own validated protocols and procedures.”
The 2018 DNA match led to an unprecedented agreement among prosecutors from Sacramento, Contra Costa, Orange, Santa Barbara, Tulare and Venture counties to try DeAngelo in a joint prosecution in Sacramento Superior Court, a murder trial that officials say will be the biggest in California history.
But DeAngelo’s public defenders, who have complained they have few resources for such a trial and have discussed resolving the case through some sort of plea deal, contend the joint prosecution agreement is illegal, calling it an “ill-defined alliance” of six counties that resulted in “an amalgam of charges from the various counties.”
“The District Attorney may not unilaterally join out-of-county crimes in a Sacramento complaint without judicial approval and a hearing,” DeAngelo’s lawyers wrote. “The District Attorney’s Offices have skipped this important step. The prosecution must present evidence at a hearing before a judge that the murders are ‘connected together in their commission.’”
Defense: No evidence of ‘trophies’
The defense also argues that prosecutors cannot rely on state law that allows charges for a crime partially committed in one jurisdiction and continuing in another — such as knowingly receiving stolen property from another county — because no such evidence exists.
Investigators have long believed the suspect, especially in the East Area Rapist cases that terrorized Sacramento in the 1970s and 1980s, took “trophies” from the homes of his victims and held onto them.
But the defense say there is no evidence of any property being found from crime scenes outside Sacramento.
“In this case, the prosecution has provided absolutely no evidence that any property stolen in any offense was taken from one county to another,” they wrote. “No specific property is mentioned in any complaint which would provide the defense with any notice of such an allegation.
“The discovery provided to date offers no evidence of any stolen property being brought into Sacramento County.”
The motion DeAngelo’s lawyers filed seeks the dismissal of the Snelling murder count from Tulare County; the Dec. 30, 1979, slayings of Debra Alexandria Manning and Robert Offerman in Santa Barbara County; the July 21, 1981, slayings of Cheri Domingo and Greg Sanchez in Santa Barbara County; the March 1980 slayings of Charlene and Lyman Smith in Ventura County; the Aug. 21, 1980, slayings of Patrice and Keith Harrington in Orange County; the Feb. 6, 1981, slaying of Manuela Witthun in Orange County; and the May 5, 1986, killing of Janelle Cruz in Orange County.
The motion also seeks the dismissal of four kidnap for robbery counts tied to four sexual assaults in Contra Costa County in 1978 and 1979.
This story was originally published March 3, 2020 at 4:20 PM.