(Photos courtesy AP)
A former police officer who terrorized California as a serial burglar and rapist and killed more than a dozen people has pleaded guilty to murders attributed to the Golden State Killer.
Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. had remained almost silent in court since his 2018 arrest until he repeatedly uttered the word “guilty” Monday.
The 74-year-old acknowledged he would plead guilty to 13 murders and admit to dozens of rapes.
The plea agreement spares him the death penalty for a life sentence with no chance of parole.
Prosecutors say DeAngelo muttered to himself after being arrested about an inner personality that had forced him to commit the crimes.
He was arrested in 2018 after authorities used DNA to track him through a popular genealogy website.
The plea deal will spare Joseph DeAngelo any chance of the death penalty, but in partial return survivors of the assaults that spanned the 1970s and 1980s expect him to admit to dozens of rapes that could not be criminally charged because too much time has elapsed.
That’s on top of 13 murders and 13 kidnapping-related charges spanning six counties.
A prosecutor said DeAngelo made incriminating statements after his arrest and indicated he was driven by an internal force he couldn’t control.
Sacramento County prosecutor Thien Ho said Monday that DeAngelo was alone in a police interrogation room in April 2018 when he began speaking to himself.
"I did all that," DeAngelo said, according to Ho. "I didn't have the strength to push him out. He made me. He went with me. It was like in my head, I mean, he's a part of me. I didn't want to do those things. I pushed Jerry out and had a happy life. I did all those things. I destroyed all their lives. So now I've got to pay the price."
Ho said the day had come for DeAngelo to pay that price.
The accused killer's monikers — the "Visalia Ransacker," "East Area Rapist," "the Original Night Stalker" and "Golden State Killer" — reflect the "sweeping geographical impact of his crimes," Ho said.
On April 24, 2018, the suspected East Area Rapist was taken into custody by Sacramento law enforcement after a decades-long search. DeAngelo, a Sacramento State graduate with a degree in criminal justice and a former police officer who served Exeter and Auburn, was found living in Citrus Heights.
(CBS, AP contributed to this report.)
