The "real version of it Hannibal Lecter, As the prosecutor called him, was known on the other side of the Atlantic as the Golden State Killer.
A name that has been causing panic in American society for at least 20 years. And then he stopped. As suddenly as he appeared in the frame of the serial killers.
You may have heard something, since the end of his horrific course took place recently. THE Joseph James DiAngelo pleaded guilty in June 2020 to escaping the death penalty, ending the titles in a case that dragged on for decades.
Decades of fruitless research and terror, alas. The Golden State Killer terrorized California in the 70s and 80s, becoming synonymous with the untold Hell.
He was caught in 2018 and everyone was wondering if the old former police officer, a person beyond suspicion, was indeed the infamous serial killer. It was.
DiAngelo was convicted of 13 premeditated murder cases on June 29 and most recently on August 21. the people also learned their punishment: 11 times for life, plus another life sentence and 8 additional years.
That was his punishment for the murders. Because he has done, you see, some 50 arias of rapes, for which he will never be convicted. Both state laws and federal regulations no longer allow him to be prosecuted, crimes have long been statute-barred.
Of course, it does not matter for the 74-year-old DiAngelo, who is not going to see the light of day again. His story is somewhat like this, told from the end to the beginning…
Even the coronavirus he was to play his part at the end of a long story. The trial was scheduled to take place in May, but the Sacramento prosecutor was forced to adjourn it "because of the risk of bringing elderly or vulnerable groups to court."
After all, many of the victims, eyewitnesses and those involved are in their ninth and tenth decades of life. On June 29, however, it became clear that the blood-stained DiAngelo would not escape further from his fate.
Now he looked even more fragile since his arrest in 2018. Old, sick and deranged, he did not look at all like his old evil self when he jumped walls to find himself in the homes of unsuspecting women.
At the June hearing, he finally admitted his guilt. And he did it just to escape death. This is how California punishes 13 premeditated homicides, with the end of the sentences.
Η prosecutor Amy Holliday even announced the compromise she offered to the serial killer in front of his victims. And their families. And not everyone was exactly happy with the tricks of justice.
With the agreement, however, the prosecutor managed to extract his guilt in a long series of rape cases. Fifty, specifically. Cases for which he would never be convicted.
In all, DiAngelo managed to kill 87 people in 57 different incidents in 11 California counties.
In August, it was their turn victims to remember again what creepily lived in his hands. Before the announcement of his sentence, they had the opportunity to recall what caused them. And most remembered them in vivid detail.
In their own testimonies, they called him "inhuman" and "monster". A woman who was a 7-year-old girl when DiAngelo raped her mom in front of her eyes recalled: "He threatened to cut off my ear and give it to her."
Such frightening things were heard in the room. "May he rot in Hell," shouted another woman, whose sister was killed by the serial killer.
The statement of Carol Daly, one of the first police officers to take over his case, who read a statement by a victim (Cathy Rogers), may have stood out: "The nightmare is over. He is the one who will be left alone in the dark forever "…
There were people, victims and relatives, waiting for her arrest of killing for more than 40 years. Starting in the 1970s, in 1973 he probably acted uncontrollably all over California and acted just like he smoked.
Did he want to kill? He was killing. Did he want to rape? He was in a hurry. Did he want to steal? He stole. His lengthy indictment has more than 120 burglaries across the state. In every corner of California he was known by another name, depending on the motive of his action and the ingenuity of the daily press.
Elsewhere he was called "dragon", elsewhere "predator", elsewhere "rapist", elsewhere "serial killer" and so on. But they were all one person, the face of evil. As the Golden State Killer he would eventually be known for the -at least- 13 murders he committed, probably until 1986. And we say probably because no one can be sure.
"The fear that instilled in the community was something I had never seen before," said Carol Daly, an inspector at the Sacramento Sheriff's Office and the only female police officer who ever looked for traces. "People were going everywhere in fear."
And suddenly everything stopped in 1986. Of course we do not know if everything really stopped, but the waves with which he expressed his criminal rage stopped. Dragging with them their hysteria Californians.
One thing did not seem willing to stop. The "toys" and threats to both the victims and the police. This continued sporadically into the 1990s, with prank phone calls to California police departments and creepy calls to its victims.
Despite the fact that he had disappeared criminally, he was giving signs of life even in 2001, when he terrorized one of his victims by picking up the phone to ask if he remembered him, "since the time we played", as he told her creepily.
That same year, in a DNA triumph, some of the people who terrorized California were linked to a single person. Even so, no significant progress has been made in the case itself.
It was just this case that gave birth to the database DNA of California, a decisive move that was to solve many unsolved crimes!
The most important contribution to the case of the serial killer came in 2013 from scratch. It was a true crime book author, Michelle McNamara, who took the mystery seriously and made such progress that she persuaded the police to deal with it again.
McNamara sadly passed away in 2016, before completing her book on the serial killer. But he did much more to capture it than any individual contribution. She even thought of the term "Golden State Killer", putting many pieces of the unsolved puzzle in the right place.
Her efforts were thwarted at some point by the relentless struggle of an unsolved case investigator. Clicking on her data, Paul Holes closed many holes in history and in 2018, shortly before retiring from active action, he even reached out of DiAngelo's house. She had found him!
Shortly before that, in 2016 specifically, the FBI came out and stated that he was reopening the case and now offered a $ 50.000 reward for his arrest. He had in his hands all the elements of McNamara and Holes.
And on April 24, 2018, the federal authorities did what Holmes could not do: they knocked on DiAngelo's door. The 72-year-old retiree was accused of 8 premeditated homicide cases.
Although he would have survived the rapes of the 1970s, the indictment was growing. It was even linked to kidnapping attempts, as new DNA data suggested.
This June, DiAngelo finally "sang", even confessing to crimes (and rapes) with which he had never been associated.
His conviction does not provide for the possibility of suspending the sentence. What we never learned, and it is doubtful whether we will know, is why he suddenly stopped killing and committing other crimes.
Golden State Killer quit crime when DiAngelo was chased away by police (caught stealing a hammer from a hardware store) and took a job at a grocery store Sacramento. Now living a quiet life in the countryside with his wife and three daughters.
The only creepy thing now was the fact that he kept moving around the world. He might even pass by one of his victims, who knows?
Gay Hardwick, for example, who was raped in 1978 with her husband Bob tied to her side, was passing outside the grocery store where the former police officer worked every day.