The Golden State Killer's house

This is the former home of the Golden State Killer, Joseph James DeAngelo.

It is located at 8316 Canyon Oak Drive in Citrus Heights, California.

DeAngelo is a serial killer who murdered at least 13 people between 1975 and 1986. The former police officer also committed dozens of rapes and more than 120 burglaries.

DeAngelo and his wife, Sharon Marie Huddle, purchased this property on April 11, 1980. However, they did not move to Citrus Heights until January 1983.

The couple raised three children before separating in 1991.

Over the years, he used various excuses to spend time away from home. His ex-wife said that he often claimed he was pheasant hunting, working, or visiting his parents.

At the time of his arrest, DeAngelo was living at the address with his daughter and granddaughter. Like many serial killers, he hid in plain sight, residing in this unremarkable suburban home for nearly four decades.

He remained unidentified until 2018, when the authorities finally zeroed in on him using genetic genealogy. By that stage, he had been lying dormant for more than three decades.

DeAngelo had multiple nicknames. However, it wasn't initially known that the same person was responsible for all of the crimes.

Visalia Ransacker

DeAngelo started out as the Visalia Ransacker, a serial burglar and emerging sexual predator who targeted homes in the San Joaquin Valley between 1974 and 1976.

It is estimated that he carried out 120 burglaries during this period.

In September 1975, he shot and killed a man named Claude Snelling, who had caught him trying to kidnap his 16-year-old daughter from their home in Visalia, California.

At the time of the Visalia Ransacker crimes, DeAngelo was a police officer in the burglary unit of the Exeter Police Department in Tulare County.

East Area Rapist

His crimes escalated in 1976, after he moved back to Sacramento and started working for the Auburn Police Department. Subsequently, he became known as the East Area Rapist.

His modus operandi involved breaking into homes and holding his victims at gunpoint. After tying them up with shoelaces and blindfolding them, he would separate the victims. If a couple were involved, he forced the woman to tie up her partner before raping her.

In many cases, he would remain inside his victims' homes for hours.

After each attack, he fled the scene on foot. It is believed that he purposely chose houses next to yards, parks, and creek beds. By doing so, he could avoid using the street and thereby reduce the likelihood of being seen.

Between 1976 and 1979, the East Area Rapist committed at least 50 rapes in counties such as Sacramento, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Yolo, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, and Alameda.

DeAngelo was fired from the Auburn Police Department in 1979 after he was arrested for shoplifting a hammer and a can of dog repellent, tools that likely helped him during his break-ins.

Original Night Stalker

His third and final crime spree began that same year, when he started targeting victims in Southern California.

It is unclear where he was living or working at the time, as he had no official record of steady employment between 1979 and 1982. Investigators believe he may have been living off savings or working odd jobs. Given the locations of the attacks, it is likely that he was living in Southern California or moving back and forth.

During this period, DeAngelo changed his modus operandi yet again. Instead of allowing his victims to survive, he began bludgeoning them to death.

Between 1979 and 1986, he murdered at least 10 people in six separate attacks. At the time, authorities attributed these killings to an unidentified offender known as the Original Night Stalker.

DeAngelo's last known murder occurred in 1986, after a five-year hiatus. His final victim was 18-year-old Janelle Lisa Cruz, whom he raped and bludgeoned to death at her home in Irvine.

Following the crime, the attacks suddenly stopped, and the Original Night Stalker murders eventually became a cold case.

EARONS

In 2001, DNA tests proved that the East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker were the same individual.

Consequently, the killer became known as EARONS, an acronym that combines the two nicknames.

In 2013, the offender was given a fourth nickname after true crime author Michelle McNamara began calling him the Golden State Killer.

Identification

As the decades passed, it appeared as though the identity of EARONS was destined to remain a mystery.

However, everything changed at the end of 2017 when the authorities uploaded the killer's DNA to a genetic genealogy research website called GEDMatch. After identifying some of his distant relatives, they immediately got to work on building his family tree.

Using this tree, investigators eventually zeroed in on DeAngelo as a possible suspect. His identity was confirmed after they compared trace evidence from the Original Night Stalker case against DNA samples that were secretly taken from his car door handle and garbage can.

DeAngelo was arrested outside this house on April 24, 2018, more than 42 years after he committed his first known murder.

In June 2020, he agreed to plead guilty to 13 murders to avoid the death penalty. Two months later, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.