‘Golden State Killer’ sentenced to life in prison
‘Golden State Killer’ Joseph James DeAngelo was sentenced to life in prison for a string of murders and rapes.
Former police officer and “Golden State Killer” Joseph DeAngelo was sentenced to life in prison Friday in a historic conclusion to a decades-old case of a serial murderer and rapist whose identity was not known until just years ago.
DeAngelo, 74, will die in prison after he pleaded guilty in June to 13 murders and 13 rape-related charges stemming from crimes in the 1970s and '80s under a plea deal that spares him the death penalty. He also publicly admitted to dozens more sexual assaults for which the statute of limitations had expired.
On Friday, Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Michael Bowman handed down multiple consecutive life prison sentences under the plea deal.
Before he was sentenced, DeAngelo rose from a wheelchair, took off his mask and spoke to the court.
Joseph James DeAngelo, sitting in a wheelchair, is brought out of the courtroom for a break on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2020, in Sacramento, Calif. (Santiago Mejia/San Francisco Chronicle via AP, Pool)
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“I listened to all your statements, each one of them, and I’m truly sorry for everyone I’ve hurt," he said.
Prosecutors called his more-than-decade-long spate of crimes “simply staggering,” encompassing 87 victims at 53 separate crime scenes spanning 11 California counties.
In the days leading up to his sentencing, dozens of victims or people whose loved ones suffered at the hands of DeAngelo provided witness statements to the court.
Even DeAngelo’s ex-wife, Sacramento attorney Sharon Huddle, said in a court filing Thursday that she was fooled, though many victims have questioned how she could not have known of her then-husband’s double life.
Bonnie Ueltzen looks at Joseph James DeAngelo, her former fiancee, during the second day of victim impact statements at the Gordon D. Schaber Sacramento County Courthouse on August 19, 2020, in Sacramento, Calif. (SANTIAGO MEJIA/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Although DeAngelo's ex-fiancee, Bonnie Ueltzen, was not permitted to personally deliver her own statement, according to the Los Angeles Times, victim Jane Carson-Sandler shared some words on Ueltzen’s behalf on Wednesday.
“If Bonnie were able to speak, Joe, she would want you to know that as just a teenager 50 years ago, she broke her engagement to you when she realized you had become manipulative and abusive,” Carson-Sandler said, as Ueltzen stood nearby and stared at DeAngelo. "When you thought you could kidnap her and force her to marry you, even a gun pointed at her face could not make her choose you.”
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Carson-Sandler was the fifth person to have been raped by DeAngelo, who was at the time known as the East Area Rapist, the LA Times reported.
After a later attack – No. 37, in 1978 – a victim told police DeAngelo repeatedly uttered the phrase: ‘I hate you, Bonnie,’” according to multiple reports. Ueltzen’s identity was later revealed during an in-depth interview for HBO docu-series “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark.”
During the interview for the show, Ueltzen detailed how DeAngelo showed up at her bedroom with a gun one night after she had broken off the engagement.
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“I can see that ‘I hate you, Bonnie’ was a result of your frustration because you lost control over her, but she bears none, none of that responsibility for your violent choices,” Carson-Sandler told DeAngelo on Wednesday.
“When you are wheeled away to begin your sentence,” she concluded, “you’ll return in Bonnie’s life to that forgotten and insignificant place – gone from her life forever.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
