The man suspected in the Golden State Killer crimes has been charged with four more murders, as authorities across California continue to piece together clues in a string of killings and rapes that terrorized the state four decades ago.
Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, is facing four counts of first-degree murder in the separate killings of two couples in Santa Barbara County in 1979 and 1981, bringing the total number of slayings in which he has been charged to 12. DeAngelo, a former police officer and retired mechanic, also is suspected in more than 50 rapes.
Santa Barbara County District Attorney Joyce Dudley said authorities never gave up hope that they would solve the killings of Robert Offerman and Debra Alexandria Manning, and Greg Sanchez and Cheri Domingo, when she announced the charges on Thursday.
“Violent cold cases never grow cold for victims or their loved ones,” Dudley said. “Most of them spend their lives feverishly seeking answers and desperately hoping for justice.”
Authorities arrested DeAngelo last month, after using a combination of DNA, genealogy and exhaustive detective work to conclude that the man quietly living out his golden years in a Sacramento suburb could be one of the nation’s most notorious serial predators. It was a dramatic turn for a case that had long ago gone cold.
DeAngelo is being held in a Sacramento jail and has not entered a plea in any of the cases.