
After decades, former police officer confesses he is the Golden State Killer - MilnerRoute
https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Joseph-DeAngelo-earons-guilty-plea-hearing-15372192.php
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mrlala
>Decades after the last case went cold, investigators announced in 2018 that
DNA led them to a break in the case. Detectives submitted the killer's DNA to
an open-source genealogy website called GEDmatch, where it found a hit with a
DeAngelo relative who used the service. Detectives were then able to narrow
their list of suspects, eventually arresting DeAngelo after a covertly
obtained sample from his trash matched the DNA that linked so many crime
scenes.

>Left alone in the interrogation room, Sacramento County Deputy District
Attorney Thienvu Ho said DeAngelo began to talk to himself.

>"I did all that," he allegedly said.

Annoying article headline makes it sound like he just turned himself in and
confessed.. at least that's how I read it. But it was really a DNA match that
they brought him in and THEN he confessed.

Crazy to get that match 30 years later!

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shadowgovt
Yep. And the genealogy work-up wasn't, to my knowledge, submitted directly as
evidence. It was, rather, enough circumstantial evidence to support allocating
police resources to a direct DNA-harvesting operation, where they found a
1-to-1 match between him and the evidence of the killer.

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NotSammyHagar
This story needs an indepth article that explores why the cops couldn't trace
him. Was he ever a suspect, was he going so far outside his home area that no
one saw him as a suspect. Why didn't his absences from his family connect him?
Why did he do it - even for angry people, this kind of acting out and attacks
is far far outside normal behavior of course.

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dang
If curious see also

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=comments%3E1%20%22golden%20state%20killer%22&sort=byDate&type=story)

