Trial Sentencing and Ethical Controversies

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Give it a try at midmobile dot com slash switch Upront payment forty five dollars for three months ninety dollars for six mons or one hundred ninetyllars forelveth, reired fifteen dollars for month equival to taxess extra. initial term only greater than fif gigytes from slow netork busy t Hey, I'm Amara, host of Black Girl G on a trrue crrime podcast. Forver four years and more than two hundred episodes, I've been telling the stories of missing and murdered black women and girls. stories that are too often ignored. These are real lives, real families, and real cases that deserve the spotlight. If you're looking for true crime with heart, purpose, and a mission for justice This is it. Listen to Black Girl G on on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Their stories matter, and I won't stop telling them Hello everyone. Wlcome to another episode of Cashrimlas, As always, I'm your host Simy'm here one of my writers, Kevin, in this case, Hello Kevin. has writtenized me a script in the format of the show if you news. I've never read it before. We're going to explore it together although this case. The Golden Stake killer is a bit well known. This is what of bu And if I'm wrong on this, I'm ninety nine percent sure I'm right, this is the one in the end where it's gets busted through like ancestry, DNA or something like that, isn't it Very recently, I think I know a little bit about this because I might have made a video about this previously and on this channel. On another channel that I run called biographics where we biographies of people and I think we did this guy and that's why I know a little bit about this. Obviously this is a much lengthier exploration because that's what we do on the casual Dreams. We love to go into depth This is a podcast, it's a YouTube channel, it's all of that good stuff. but most importantly, it's something with very little preamble where we get into things quickly. I'm not so sure about that People tend to enjoy their privacy. In fact, this video brought to you by a number of privacy sponsors. In fact, most Americans believe they have a constitutional right to privacy But do? The Constitution doesn't give any explicit right to privacy, and though the Supreme Court has made several rulings based on an implied right to privacy, it isn't necessarily guaranteed. Hell, in most of the countries, someone can legally record and share what you believe to be a private conversation without your knowledge or consent, which is not cool like is I mean, whether it's illegal or just not cool, I think in this case it's obviously just not cool. It'd be like, bry Matt No Is it illegal? No. I think in the UK it might be illegal I don't think you can record conversations without telling people. And also at least when I studied law back in the day, and it does increasingly feel like back in the day because law's change. One of the big debates going on was between the right to privacy, which is like a human right, I think it's in the ECHR, the European Convention of Human Rights, I'm not sure about that. There is some right to privacy And then also right of a free press. And so there was this conflict conflicts between how much can journalists dig into people's private lives before they start violating their rights to privacy? And it was super interesting. And there were a lot of cases in like the UK's press is not that free. The famous example that was going on the time was Tiger Woods. and UK newspapers couldn't report on Tiger Woods and his affairs and all of that stuff because was there was an injunction against them. like they said it violates his right to privacy. Of course you can just go on to cNN. com and read all about it, but the BBC and staff could publish about this And it's like, oh, interesting. L because obviously the right to free press is important and all of that. freedom of speech, but also people's rights to privacy is important. So interesteresting. I know Americans tend to lean more in the like free speech direction because it's like part of that F Amendment and all that. But I think other countries are more like, yeah, but don't invade people's privacy too much. L let people have a little bit you, peace and quiet, which I quite like, to be honest. I said I wasn't going to ramble too much, but here we go. Society has long grappled with a conundrum of how much privacy or freedom people are willing to give up in favour of security. A totalitarian surveillance state would likely do a good job of keeping its citizens safe from each other, but it's not a world that most people want to live in We all may be more than happy to share endless details about our daily lives on social media, but that's because we've made the decision to do so. What happens when someone else gets to make that decision for you? What happens when a criminal does almost everything right to evade capture for decades only to be done in by a seemingly random person they hadn't even met, making a decision to share their personal information Well This is a hugely complicated thing, as we all soon see, because it's like you know Yeah God, it's just so complicated. There's so much to get into. We'll probably leave the debate and talking about it as we go through this episode because we're three paragraphs in and this is a very lengthsly script. So let's go The Azaleia ranssacker. Officially it all began on march nineteenth, nineteen seventy four in the city of Azaleia, though it is actually suspected to have begun as early as May of nineteen seventy three. On that night, in March, a man broke into a house and stole fifty dollars from a piggy bank. This was the first of over one hundred twenty confirmed burglaries that would be perpetrated by the Vzaleia ransacker, though additional unconfmed reports put number potentially above one hundred and fifty. Well, it's a very gentle entry into crime. if that was the first entry. whyy would you do to stety dollars for a piggybag? I guess breaking into someone's house is a bit more intense. If youre got to stety dollars, why do not just still like subbs from a store where you don't have to like break in Although I guess that's a bit more risky because there's like security guards and stuff. I don't know, but burglary feels more like is a more serious crime than like shoplifting L Sft Right?ese burglaries took place over a twenty month span of time. Being able to consistently burgle a different house in the same city every five days for over a year and a half without getting caught, is pretty impressive. However, these incidents were not spread out nearly so evenly. It was common for Vilier ransacker to break into multiple homes on the same night. His highest single night crime spree was twelve houses On the night of november thirtieth, nineteen seventy four, this guy robs houses like startar YouTube channels, holy sh This was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, so he had likely been able to target houses where he knew residents were all out of town for the weekend visiting family. I have to say, so far this guy is being a pretty smart criminal Burglary is an incredibly common crime in the United States. It averages down to one burglary roughly every thirty seconds. Oh my Godd, that's a lot. I don't think I've ever. I don't have any wood because this table is made of cheap plastic. but Touch word. I have never been burgled. I lived in a house in the middle of nowhere when I was a kid. And like we'd go on holiday,'d on holiday with my parents and we'd come back. And it was almost routine that should have been stolen. someone broke into the house and stole. It would just be how it was. I think like It was either two or three of these like u Oh go. why cant I think of the word? Rride on lawnmows, you know the big lawnows that you sit on U like every year, like we go on holiday and someone would nick that It was like locked in a garage. I remember my dad eventually had like a chain installed. so it was like drilled into the cement and then a big chain was attached to this to this lawnmower, so people couldn't steal it It' like that's what happens when you live in the was still your And then since then I, you know, as an adult, I've lived in cities and I've never been burgled. It's never happened. No I' ever broken into house and sold my, which is nice honest with you right now, I don't even have insurance I mean to be realonest I don't have that much expensive so I'm not really worried, but it's like' I've never needed it. Everyone in the comace is going to be like, off a fx sake I'm again Surance, you sound like my dad. Perpetrators are generally the disorganized or opportunistic criminals, either they happen to see an empty house with an open window or they're making haphazards smash and grab attempt to find things that they cansellves as The Pasalia ransacker was rather different, he was so different that there was no doubt that all of his crimes were linked, even if they had no idea who Normally a person who is breaking into a house wants to get the loot and get out as fast as possible But the but the VR. Oh, Vaselia Ransacker. Okay. I'm immediately thinking of virtual reality because I have one of those Oculus Qest Ios and like honestly, when I'm recording these videos between them, I've really gone into this table tennis game. I play a lot of little table tennis that aroundsy table tennis in between recordings, so In fact, this is really long. so in between at some point in this video, I' probably takaking a little break to play some virtual reality table tennis. Anyway, that's not relevant. This is Vaselia Ransacker. He had a very distinguished modus operand eye and part of that was making himself completely at home. Chills out someone else's house. That's more creepy. It's like if a guy steals like what fifty bucks off me? I'll be's a bummer If he like chills out on my couch and watches my Netflix, I'll be like, what Why is this show I never watched him by Netflix C? What's going on? But the first order of business was to make sure that nobody was going to catch him. The VR would enter a house while the family was either out of town or out for the evening. He normally entered the house through either an open or unlocked window, though in rare instances he would enter through force, such as prying open a sliding door. Once inside, he would immediately begin making alternate exit points for himself He would open additional windows and remove the screens. This is some solid criminaling so far. While researching a recent brain blow script, which is another YouTube channel I do if you want to check it out, I learned that window screens are almost entirely American thing, so if Simon and our international listers are not aware these are screens that attach to the outside of the windows so that we can open windows without bugs getting into the house, Yeah I' seen en ies It's like, I imagine some woman just comes out onto a porch, She opens the door, the inside door opens outwards and then she opens the screen or shouts through the screen Get back here, Ricky That, you know Every American movie, right? I can't imagine why these wouldn't be common in Europe as well, but you do you. I just don't think, I don't know, there's not that many bugs. I have a little house in the country and I have to say, there's quite a lot bugs inside, so maybe that wouldd be quite a good idea actually to get some of those. Screens. Oh I think one of the rooms did actually have a screen at some point. when I moved in, I didn't know what it was so I threw it away. I just realised what that was. I don't know if I threw it away, it's definitely not there anymore. Anyway, once the VR had established multiple possible points of egress, it was time to make sure that he had time to use them. Cs, cups, and other random items would be placed in front of doors. This way if someone came home while he was still ransacking the place, he would be alerted faster and would have more time to make an escape unseen. He would often lock the chains on doors or wedge chair under the knob of the front door to further slow down someone trying to get inside. With the logistics taken care of, it was time to ransack the place. You might be thinking that this care and attention to detail is surely the work of a professional, someone that wants to make sure that they have time to locate and escape with the most valuable item But it turns out the VR wasn't it for the money? Sure, he would steal things, but most of what he took was small and pointless. Despite having stolen fifty dollars from a piggy bank and his first confirmed burglary, he would actually ignore cash that was left right out in the open. If a person had left a couple of twenty dollars bills on their dresser before a home invasion from the VR, they would almost certainly still be there when the person returns Wait, so he just enjoys going and like smashing people's homes up. It sounds like He wants to do all those, you know, those rooms where you go and you can break He's like doing this, but on a different level. The items that he are usually stole fell mostly into either of two categories, either they were something sentimental to the victim or something he could make use of in everyday life. For sentimental items, he would steal things like class rings, wedd rings, stamp or coin collections, or any jewelry that were somehow personalized or engraved. mate Now you' getting into stupid criminal territory When they find your stash If they find your stash, they're going to be able to tie you to all of these burglaries because it's not like you stole money which you spent. It's like you stole something that could be directly traced back to your crime ere. He wasn't focused on the most expensive things, just the things that meant the most to the victims, which is also weird. L that speaks to like something being wrong with your brain. What do I want to stll not something that's valuable to me? I just like taking people I literally like taking things away from other people. I don't even like having things myself. I just like taking it away that other people care about. You psycho. Even in the case of a wedd ring, something thatd often be quite expensive, the VR had absolutely no intention of selling them The stolen items were often found discarded near the house Why are you up to? What is wrong with you One of his specific calling cards was to steal an earring from each house that he ransacked, notot a pair of earrings, just one. Instead of discarding these nearby, he'd often leave the earring in the next home that he invaded. It was weird But the fact that he didn't even take most of the stuff he stole home with him shows that it wasn't about the money, it was just about the criminality. He was a bad man that wanted to do bad things, and he did them solely because he enjoyed doing them I don't know if this makes you a bad person, I think it just makes you a broken person. Obviously it's bad to break into someone's house, but it's not like his motivation is just like a broken brain. It's just like, you know people who don't need to steal but like stealing because it's exciting. It's like O. As for the more utilitarian items he stole, these were also generally low value items. He might steal a can of soup or a sealed three pack of white shirts. He commonly took blue chip stamps, a rival to SNH green stamps. Thanks that makes it much clearer, Evid. because I definitely know what SNH green stamps are. I don't, by the way. Which were this old timey customer loyalty thing for anyone too young to have heard of these stamps? Yes. Think something like stealing Amazon points from your credit card. Wait, people have Amazon points? Amazon points, and how do you have them on your credit card The other items that were of potential use to the VR that he would steal were weapons. Guns, ammo, knives, a hammer, and in one instance, even a billy club were all stolen from houses that he robbed. Even though these were nonviolent crimes taking place at empty homes, this trend was worrying to the police. It showed that he was interested in violence, and he may have just been working up to it. Al if he' stealing guns from every house he goes he's good massive, untraceable arsenal. But if he was barely stealing anything, what was the Vard doing the whole time while he was in these houses? Well he was referred to as the Vesalia ransacker, not the Vesalia burglar and a big part of the definition of ransacking is making a mess and causing damage. He would rummage through every drawer, especially in bedrooms. every piece of female underwear he could find would be removed and arranged in some manner They may place all of the panties in a pile on a pillow while lining the bras up in some sort of pattern. This guy's a broken brain Bookshelves were often knocked over, wine was poured onto carpets and shaving cream was sprayed all over the furniture. He would usually move around family pictures, placing specific ones to be visible from the couch. All of this ranzaging was exhausting, so while he was there or would help himself to a snack. In short, he was just sort of a bit of a prick, really. Imagine the horror you would feel if you came home to discover that someone had been in your house eating your food sitting on your couch and using your hand lotion to masturbate pictures of your wife and daughter. I'm living the country. I'm going to New Mexico. Oh my. Okay, he was up to that as well That makes it like from like this guy's like being a bit weird and broken brains to be in Amies a bit They have a sexual weird, Iith have a predator because's that's weird Despite all of the care that Villar took, he was occasionally seen. In the early days of his crimes, he hadn't attempted to cover his face, and so there were sketches of the suspect. However, he was rarely seen. ch He would easily vault over fences and was described as having strong arms in a strong grip, probably jerking off. Oh Kevin no. He had excellent grip strength The VR's speed and agility seemed to run counter to the initial police description of the suspect in which they may as well have labelled him fatty McFat fat. He was described as having large hips, large rump, large legs, fat thighs, fat calfs, sick. Oh yeah calf, cals like a small cow when they mean calves. and fat short feet. It also mentioned he was five, ten had light hair and a short military haircut as well as a cleft chin They describeed him as like large, this, large, that, large, this fat, this, fat, that. whyy not just say he's a fat man? He's a large man is weighty. heavy set he's obese. Isn't that a little politically incorrect? Yeah. Unfortunately, there are two things that I'm sure you already know. The first is that practice makes perfect and the second is that criminals love to read about themselves in the newspaper. If the VR I feel like good criminals don't. Good criminals are like cool. I stole what I like I stole this art and I got away with it and it's not written about. That is the exact result that a good criminal wants Criminals that want to get caught like reading about themselves or criminals that are going to get caught. If the VR couldn't find suitable family photos in a house, I'm sure he could have just opened up the paper to an article about himself to use his inspiration while he plopped down on the couch and used some of that hand lotion This was going to make him harder to catch because after police sketches were created, he finally had the good sense to start wearing a ski mask during his crimes. He also altered his beers based on what the reports about him said. Initial police reports described him as fat so he rapidly dropped forty pounds. It's a strong motivation. how are you lose so much weight? Cit a crime and go on the run? That's my weight loss plan ight watchers a red notice is going to make me lose the weight. They said he had light skin and short hair, so he got himself as tan as possible and started growing out his hair. Witnesses pegged him as being in his late teens, though there's not much he could do about that. Ben again didn't need to. police and witnesses scoured high school yearbooks looking at pictures of everyone that would be roughly eighteen or nineteen were taking place It wouldn't be until around forty years later that they realized they weren't even looking at yearbooks from the right decadade. Oh wow, see mistresses look super young Authorities were looking for teenagers completely unaware that six months into the VR's crime spree, he would celebrate his thirtieth birthday. Honestly, it surprises me that this possibility never crossed their minds. I'll probably be forty by the time this episode releases, but I'm routinely mistaken for being in my twenties. The idea that no one involved in the investigation has ever met a person that looked really young for their age is crazy to me like so many things we see in Tuerime hindsight is twenty twenty. The ransackings continued, and there were reports of prowlings taking place as well. Many of these are also believed to have been the work. R staking out locations, but they are unconfirmed. One such prowling took place on february fifteenth, nineteen sevty five outside the Snelling residence. Claude Snelling was a jouralism professor at a nearby college. He arrived late that evening at around ten PM and saw a prowler outside his daughter's window That's like popped up. They're like,, Hey! Get out of here And then you'd be like, now we have to move house or purchase a gun It's America Clae chased after the man, but he quickly disappeared into the darkness. The only description he could give was that it was a white man roughly five ten to six foot tall with collar length hair and a dark plaid long sleeve shirt. The police found shoot prrints outside the girl's window that matched those found at the houses that had been broken into by the VR. With authorities now looking for a man with collar length hair, it was time for VR back. his short haircut. For roughly six months, things were quiet for the Snellings. In late August, someone was again seen prowling the Snellinghouse and breaking into Claude's car. In early September, several prowling incidents were reported on Whitney Lane where the Snellings lived and on nearby streets. On september tenth, Elizabeth Snelling, a sixteen year old cheerleader, heard something outside her window. She got up to look but it was too dark to see anything VR. M mere feet away from her The next night The entire family was asleep when Elizabeth suddenly woke up with the feeling of being crushed and suffocated. Someone was lying on top of her, covering her mouth and nose with its hand. It's a weird and uncomfortable way to wake up, but she wasn't concerned yet because her brother had done this before as a joke. Hilarious. It wasn't until Elizabeth saw the angry eyes only inches from her face that she realized that this wasn't her brother. She began struggling to move his hand so she could breathe, but he was too strong The struggle caused her bed to snap and the man growled at her, Don't scream or I'll stab you She didn't see a knife, but she had He removed his hand, so that she could breathe and he told her You're coming with me. It was at this point that he reached into his pocket his left hand pulled out a gun The man got out of the bed and pulled Elizabeth up by the arm, leading her out to of the bedroom and into the dining room. I think this is going to be she's going survive, right? Tell me she survives because this is feels like it's told from her perspective So I got a good feeling that she's going to be okay He led her out of the bedroom and into the dining room. She was crying and asking why he was doing this and where he was taking her From the dining room, she noticed that the back door was open. The arm must have entered through that door and left it open so that his hands would be free to carry out as abductee. He was still holding the gun with his left hand and dragging Elizabeth right. She was terrified that he was going to shoot her, but once she had seen that the back door was left open, she realized there was something that scared her even more being shot Walking out that door This man. She resisted as hard as she could, doing everything she could to pull at him and slow the man down. Years of solitary practice have made his grip too strong for her to escape. Dude. Not the appropriate type for a joke like that, mate So she instead dug her heels into the floor as hard as she could. Elizabeth knew that if she kept digging in, the sound it made as she dragged across the floor would be loud enough to wake up her family and she was right. As PR finally dragged to the back door, he warned her not to scream or he would shoot her Th then he finally pulled her outside where she saw the back gate had also been left open. He dragged her another twelve feet or so before they were interrupted by Claude's voice. Hy What's going on? What are you doing? Where are you going with my daughter? Claude and Elizabeth briefly locked eyes before she hit the ground. She had never stopped resisting, so when VR released her from his grip, she wound up flinging herself into the ground. she was physically unharmed. The arer just stood there waiting for Claud to leave the house and approach him Clort continued asking what this man was trying to do to his daughter V are, raised his gun, but this didn't stop Claude from continuing to close the distance between himself and the intruder with rage in his eyes legend. Elizabeth's quick thinking saved her life, and I'd love to be able to tell you the Cord completely hulked out and tore Var's head clean off his body with his bare hands thirty pages left in theript so obviously that didn't happen. Yes, this is extremely long Kevin. I know this is a big one, but Jesus, you keep me here all day man, instead. Not that I'm not enjoying it. I'm loving it. I'm having a great time I appreciate that this is what I do. for a living. We just this and enjoy it. Instead VR pulled the trigger, hitting Glaude in the shoulder and spinning him around He pulled the trigger again, and the wounded clorde stumbled back towards the house where he collapsed and his wife called for an ambulance. VR then looked down and pointed the gun at Elizabeths face She turned to head away from him sobbing, but As her head turned, she could see him lowering the gun out of the corner of her eye. He kicked her in the face a few times before jogging away she ran back inside. Police arrived within minutes and an ambulance almost immediately afterwards, but Claude dead on arrival at the hospital That's really sad. I was hoping he would survive, obviously. But Legend also saved his daughter's life, basically, last act. here I respect, Claude. Finally There was the murder weapon. The weapon was a thirty eight caliber Mioki revolver. I'm not sure if they actually found the revolver orber but it doesn't matter. The gun belonged to someone VR had robbed two weeks earlier. He had come forward about the stolen gun and took police to where it had been used for target practice. Ballistics were able to match the bullets the owner had fired with those used in the murder confirmation that VR was using stolen weapons rather than anything traced back to him personally. Yeah, you'd be insane to use a weapon that's traceable to you when you've been stealing guns, right? So far, his crimes are like I could see why it was difficult to catch Be he's not stupid clearly. Elizabeth was interviewed by the police five times trying to get a more detailed description of her assailant, the last time being well under hypnosis. Unfortunately, she had little information that wasn't already known. As the only person to have heard Var's voice, the only new description she could offer was that he had a low raspy voice that sounded more like a growl and what she described as masculine. She may be the only person to have used that word. describe his voice. The VR proven to be methodical Elizabeth mentioned that he seemed calm as if he had planned every step of what would happen already. You might think that someone so meticulous would lay low after committing a murder, but you'd be wrong Instead, VR decided that it was time escalate things. He didn't even move Acc to a new area, ransackings continued and reports of prowling and peeping increased. potential future victims began receiving threatening phone calls, taunting them It was little more than a month after this murder that VR would go on his spree of twelve houses in one night. Following the murder, police started staking out areas where VR was known to prowl people and ransack. Unfortunately, this neither resulted in him being caught nor in him slowing down then Everything came to a head On july twenty fourth, nineteen seventy five, a nineteen year old woman came home interrupting VR. wearing his ski mask so she couldn't identify him, and he pushed her out of the way as he ran out of the door escaped. He'd already ransacked the apartment and was only interrupted while he was about to make his escape anyway, so this should have been the end of it for the young women. Unfortunately, VR was a special kind of sadistic and evil doucheck. Don't tell me he's going to come back, don't say that. A few months later, she believed that someone had been peeping into her bedroom and bathroom windows. She contacted the police and they told her to notify them as soon as she found shoe prrints outside the windows. On december ninth, shoeeprints appeared and the woman contacted the police. The next night, officers were in place to stake out the location. One was hiding inside the woman's garage with another hiding in the garage next door another house that had been ransacked by the arm The officers took their positions at six PM and waited for about two and a half hours before a shadowy figure emerged. He peered inside the garage of the young woman's house, but failed to see offfficer McGowan hiding inside. After V left the garage, McGowan silently followed him towards the back gate all S fiddl trying to open. ill remained unseen, McGowan turned on his flashlight and aimed it directly at the intruder's head. VR kept shrieking, Oh my God. In a high pitch, feminine voice, he spun around to face the officer, but he wasn't wearing his ski mask yet. It was rolled up on top of his head, leaving his face fully exposed. VR pulled the mask off his head and shoved it into his pocket as a distraction before turning to run a few steps towards the gate and use his momentum to vault over it. McGowan followed him over the fence, where he found VR running in a zigzag pattern, still shrieking like a frightened child. McGowant fired two warning shots into the ground as VR continued running in circles, crying, Oh my go, please don't hurt me, Oh my go It was all a ploy. Thear may have been genuinely startled by the police officer and he really did have the voice of a twelve year old girl, but he wasn't running around and crying like some frightened coward He was calculating VR suddenly ran and scampered over the fence, separating the yard from the adjacent house. McGowan didn't climb the fence, but there were large spaces between the slats so he could still see the suspect clearly. He kept shining his large flashlight while yelling at VR to put his hands up shoot. The all stopped running and he lined himself up just a few feet from a g again. He was facing to the side, with only his right side visible to the officer, his hand high in the air My hands are up, he cried, as his left hand reached into his pocket out of McGowan's view. Before there was any time to react, VR pulled out his gun with his left hand, and he fired around directly at McGowan. Believing he had just broken the single most important rule of being a criminal, never kill a fking cop, VR did the only thing a wanted murderer could do in that situation. He turned around casually walked away. Of course, he was in some random guy's backyard and that random guy heard the gunshot. The homeowner came outside, running after VR, who turned, briefly paused as he saw the man chasing him and then made the sensible decision to actually run away he was able to escape successfully. So he's been just been seen by two people They're really on to him, he's gott to leave town, right? As for again, the intense light of the flashlight would have made it difficult for the squinting ViR to aim properly, especially while trying to fire off around so quickly. Bizarrely, the bullet went straight into the lens of the flashlight. The inner workings of the device managed to slow the bullet down, with it ultimately being stopped completely by the batteries at the butt end of the flashlight. That's actually incredible Soough McGowan would appear on TV wearing an eye patch shortly following this event, he was actually fine. some debris had gotten really close to his eye, but he suffered no permanent injuries. Ecellent. A police officer had now seen VR's face, and he was able to give a much more accurate description than what had existed previously. However, that night marked the end of the As C crime spree. He had dropped his flashlight and a bag of items that had stolen from the house earlier that night and then disappeared into the darkness For Vasalia ransacker was gone, and the citizens of Aasalia were free from his wave of crime That makes sense. I mean, at that point, you've got to be like, games up, G got to do gotta go. I got to hang around for like a month, two months, and then I gott to leave town That's that You got to do it. In just twenty months, VR had racked up a total of one hundred and twenty ransackings, one count of attempted kidnapping, one count of murder, and one count of attempted murder. The crimes escalated over that period of time and the escalation was far from over. I said before that practice makes perfect and Vaselia was just his training ground. With all of this practice under his belt, it was time to move somewhere that he could commit the crimes he truly wanted to commit. After all, he had much greater ambitions than just masturbating on It was time for VR to find a new stomping ground, a new signature crime, a new nickname Yeah, I said he gott to leave town. It's time. This guy is not stupid likeike So far onene of the Like of all the criminals we've covered on here, they all seem to make stupid mistakes, this guy so far not so much. Even though multiple people had seen his face and deered a very distinct MO, a connection between VR and his future crimes be made for decad. This was back in the day when law enforcement agencies, especially small local ones didn't communicate with each other. There wouldn't have been anything to find in a state or federal database anyway, as he had not left a single fingerprint at any of the crime scenes. As far as anyone knew, there was about to be a new and completely unrelated serial offender with crimes much worse stealing low value items. people's houses. The East area rapist It began weeks, if not months before the first reported crime. A woman living in Rancho Cordoa, a suburb east of Sacramento felt like she was being watched She had noticed the same dark car drive by our house multiple times, and one night she believed there have been a prowler on her property. She also received a number of phone calls in which the person calling immediately hung On june the eighteenth, nineteen seventy six, six months after VR had vanished from existence, the twenty three year old rancho called over womoman was woken up by a flashlight, shining directly in her face. She saw a man wearing a skiask, brandishing a knife and not wearing any pants. If you make one move, or sound, I'll stick this nife. This man had brought rope with him, but decided to tie the woman up with a sash from a closet instead Over the course of that night, he proceeded to rape her repeatedly. In between attacks she could hear him rummaging through her house. He was continuing the trend he had begun in Vesalia, ranscking the house, looking for low value items, making himself at home and eating her food. When the man finally left, his victim got up knocked her phone onto the floor Her hands had been bound so tightly they were numb from lack of circulation. They were tied behind her back, but she managed to dull zero for operator and cool for This was the first attack by the man who had come to be known as the East area rapist EARs and the word like, you know, yeah It would be a month before the man struck again, then another attack the next month. This is like a major escalation from burglary And I guess the thing is like I went going through the beginning of this now it was just like he's a bit of a burglar and he goes in and he rummages through people's And then as soon as he had the like masturbation angle, it's like, okay, so he's a bit of a weirdo. And I feel like that is a can lead to this And this is way worse I mean, it obviously murdered that guy But I feel like that was not premeditated. He wasn't intending to go killing, whereas he definitely intended to go raping. In all of the attacks, the victim would receive a small cut from Ear's knife, possibly above the eyebrow or on the arm. He would sometimes stab the bed beside them as well. Similar to how VR's theft of weapons suggested that he might be building up to violence, so too did these acts suggest that Ear was working his way up Yes, he had already killed one person and tried to kill another, but those were acts of self preservation to avoid capture. He had yet to actively seek out a murder victim exactly. He didn't intend it. s of what mean It was part it was Its defensive whichich sounds insane because that's obviously not offense. in this case you murdered people. There would be four more rapes in October, including two on the same day. He was picking up the pace, and it was clear that this was a different type of criminal. Authorities could tell immediately that the attacks had been perpetrated by the same person, but the four attacks in October highlighted how unusual these cases were. Similar to burglars, serial rapists also normally disorganized criminals. If if someone is committing a single targeted rape, they are more likely to be organized and methodical because they are fixated and obsessed with their targets. Serial rapists, however, normally act on impulse, they tend to be driven by uncontrollable urges and will attack recklessly when they see a perceived opportunity. But Iar was different. He was careful almost exclusively targeting women who lived alone. The locations were extensively staked out beforehand and were always single story houses that were near a creek or a trail that would provide an easy means of escaping undetected. He would spend days, weeks, or months calling the victim beforehand to learn their schedule and when they were home Those calls could result in him either hanging up immediately, breathing heavily into the phone, or making threatening comments. Prior to the actual break in and rape, Ear would also commit practice break ins to prepare. He would unlock windows to give himself easier points of entry, remove ammunition for any firearms and even hide items inside the house that he would use for his assault so that he wouldn't need to carry them with him. Sometimes he would stay in the house after having broken in, spending hours waiting in a closet until his intended victim finally came home. He also liked to steal shoelaces that would later be used to tie up his victims. Ear seemed to have realized during his first rape, that if he left a woman tied up with the rope that he bght with him, that would be evidence. By using the victim's own shoelaces, it couldn't be traced back to him. Unlike typical rapists he would never remove his gloves, not even during the act itself or while making himself a sandwich to eat afterwards de This is some psycho Or worse than. Police tried to keep the existence of the serial rapist under wraps, asking news outlets not to report on the crimes Why Wh He surely you'd want people to be vigilant. Like, I know it's like, we don't want to scare people. And it's like, yeah, but people should be scared, y. There's like a rapist rapist around. Get people to sleep with guns under their pillows. That's okay. The attacks were taking place in small areas that they were already staking out. so they didn't want any hints of their investigation to be known. A okay. So its it's happening in such a small enough area where they think they can patrol around and catch him I don't think they catch him for many decades, so that doesn't really work out for them. However, resents held a town haall star meeting at a local school on the topic of crime prevention, a meeting that had an unprecedented five hundred attendees They go into to that media, they'd People are gonna fight now, aren't they? Beuse normally pe like four people show up and they're concerned about a missing dog, or like someone spray painting a wall somewhere And in this case, it's like everyone showed up because there's been rapes people breaking into the houses and leaving around. and it's like, I had a gun and it had bullets in it. now it doesn't have bullets in it. If that happens to you, be like, Did I I think I had bullets in there Questions of the rapes kept coming up and the police finally had to share details with the public. It was shortly after this that he would receive the East Area rapist name. Despite the best efforts, police seemed powerless to stop here. gun sales skyrocketed as people tried anything they could to protect themselves unaware that he was breaking into homes to disarm their weapons beforehand. The rapes continued, and Eir followed the news closely just as he had acting as VR. He would attempt to change his physical appearance based on the news reports. He would also lie to his victims to try and throw them off his trail. Before raping a woman, he might order her not to tell anyone about his van outside. in Havavan and was still using stolen bicycles as his preferred means of transportation He would also use things about the victim's life to give false leads. If he saw a boat parked in the driveway, he may tell her that he saw her on the lake. Whenever possible, he would refer to the victim by name to give the false impression that they knew one This guy, again, it's like this is some pretty smart criminaling to be honest. I kind of see why this guy didn't get caught for a really long time. However, there was only so much Vir could disguise. He was a creature of pure evil, but he was also a pathetic. broken mad Victims would frequently say that they heard him crying or sobbing between attacks. During at least one attack, the victim believed she heard him repeatedly say I hate you b. Although police believed she may have misheard the word mumy as bonnie, assuming he suffered from your typical childhood trauma associated with serial offenders. It wasn't just these od behaviouroral distinctions either. Ear could cut his hair, get a tan, or even gain or lose weight based on what was being reported and witnesses couldn't really agree on his height age or weight. But one thing he could not escape physically was the fact that Lato would never be writing songs about him. And know don't get that reference, Simon. O I do remember he as a very small PP. I remember that from the video that I made previously. That was a distinctive feature of him He was not well inowbed micropis maybe. But what I'm saying is that everyone of here's victims agreed that he had an absolutely tiny penis. It was described as so small that police began asking doctors about any patients that may suffer from the medical condition of micropenis, an affliction that affects only zero point zero one five percent of males born in the United States and that can potentially be treated if it's identified During nineteen seventy six, Eir claimed a total of ten victims. His fifth victim would describe the incident in interviews later. It was early in the morning, sometime after six AM. H husband had left for work and their young son had come into bed to cuddle with her. Less than two minutes after her husband left, she heard running through the hallway and saw a light from a flashlight The man suddenly came into a room and said that he was there. to rob them. She told him to take whatever he wanted, not attempting to resist as he tied her arms and legs than the arms and legs of her son. He blindfolded them both and then carried the son to another room. He may have been a monster, but at least he wasn't that kind of monster, I guess. Yeah, there's definitely degrees of monsters And yeah, that's definitely less monstery. The woman was terrified, especially once her son was taken away from her. She said that she didn't know what the intruder was planning to do to them and feared for her child's life. It wasn't until Eir returned and began removing the ligatures from her ankles that she realized What he hadd come for After his reported assaults against the woman, he retrieved her son and placed him on the bed next to her. Once she was sure he was gone, she took her son to their neighbour's house C for help Both the woman and her neighbour had been victims of strange ransackingings in the previous weeks. Her neighbour's house was robbed of low value items and ten rings were stolen had been placed in the house of the rape victim. In both the burglary and the rape, Ea had entered through the son's bedroom window. She said she would have taken more precautions had she known there was a serial rapist, but this was during the early months when the police were keeping the media quiet about it. Yeah, this is another thing like peopleeople are going to be better prepared. They're going to lock their doors in their windows if they know that there's a rapist out there. As I mentioned, Ear was obsessed with following media reports about himself both to alter his physical appearance and for the sake of his own ego. Originally he was targeting middle class homes, but he moved on to upper class neighborhoods. Butud it was obviously not his goal, so police believed he made the change because he wasn't getting the amount of media attention he felt he deserved I know what the next line' going be it's like. Media report on more crimes when they're done to rich people because it's true After all, crime is only important when it happens to rich people exactly. An article ran in the newspaper, The Sacramento Be that gave advice on how women could protect themselves from earar. One of the things the article noted was that he would never attack a woman if there was a man in the house. He read the article and thought to himself We'll see about that, won't we. Almost immediately after the article, he began exclusively targeting homes where men were present. First was a thirteen year old girl who was up late watching TV in the living room while where her father and older sister were asleep. Here came into the house, raped her in the living room before leaving thirteen thirteen years old Unlike his previous endeavourors, where he would take his time in the house during and after the assaults, this time he was only in the house for about forty five minutes. In a rather bizarre statement to the press, a police lieutenant said that the man came in, bounded the girl, and raped her, but he didn't bother anyone else in the residence. It's true that the others were asleep and didn't know what was happening, but something about the officer's choice of words robotic lack of emotion with which they were delivered makes me really uncomfortable. wait wait, wait wit, wait Is Kevin dropping hints here? I don't remember this. He's not He's not that He can't be that guy, cann he? sureurely know, he's not. he wasn't a policeman, wasas he I feel like I defitely remember Right Though heere was now exclusively targeting homes where men were present, this was the only time where the man was unaware of the crimes being committed. He committed eleven rapes in a row that targeted couples, and his MO was the same each time break into the house and the couple would wake up to see a man standing over them with a flashlight in their eyes. The man would then produce ligatures made of shoelaces belonging to the couple. He would force the woman to tie up her partner, instructing her on how to do so. Then he would tie her up himself. He would always tie them so tightly that it bruised their wrists, and he would then proceed to ret tie the men to enure they were tied tightly enough. All this makes me think is that I never set the alarm Like when I go to bed, I c an alarm when I leave places But not when I sleep and now I'm like, why not? why not just set the alarms light ifone opens the door or one of the windows. It goes off for the night. and then it's like, cool, prepared. U I think I'm going to start doing that because I don't know O God do the true crrime forz guys M so scared. Once the couple were bound, they would be brought to separate rooms. E would have the man lie either on his stomach or get on all fours and he would then stack plates and teac cups on his back. He would instruct the man that if he heard the China ratt or crash, he would immediately kill them both. He would then return to the adjacent room where he would repeatedly violate bak rummage through the house, making himself something to eat or having some beer. It was already speculated that Iar had been a member of the military, and this only further cemented that in the minds of law enforcement. Witnesses said that he had the demeanour of a military man and the districk was something commonly used in Vietnam. There were also four military bases in the area where rapes were occurring, and it wasved here was local to the area On march eighteenth, the Sacramenta County Sheriff's Office received three phone calls between four fifteen and five PM. In the first two calls, the caller said he was E and laughed before hanging up. In the third call he said, I am the Eastside rapist they said East arerea Rapers. Do you not know your own nickname? And I have my next victim already stalked out and you guys can't catch me. It'd be staked out. I don't think this guy is stupid. think Either he's throwing them off by using the wrong words here Um U It's a fakeool, a prankool. He was right and at ten forty five that night he claimed his next victim. O, so I think he's throwing them off by pretending to be more stupid than he is. seventy although you can get words wrong and be smart, he might just not be educated. So he's intelligent I think we can all agree on that and maybe he's not educated That could be it In nineteen seventy seven, E had already struck thirteen times by May, despite everyone's best efforts to prevent it. Police surveillance cameras were placed in tre topops and floodlights were installed in neighborhoods where he had struck or where it was believed he may strike next. Residents trimmed their bushes so there would be few places to hide, and they organized neighborhood watches. Police surveillance and stakeouts had drained their entire overtime budget for the year by April On may seventeenth, Ear committed his first attack that seemed to be personal in nature. Police spotted a man on the side of the road with shoelaces hanging from his wrist. They immediately recogned him as a named Frank. someone who had been at the toown haall meeting six monthsrior. Frank had made a bit of a spectacle of himself, calling into question the existence of air and loudly proclaiming that no woman could be raped if there was a man in the house. Frank, you are making a target of yourself. We've proven it's been shown that Um, yeah, takes Bit, and you are just laying yourself out as Bait in front of him So I mean, it's not your fault, but you certainly brought this on It's not yourault Prank. Sorry. I't want a victim blame you know maybe this wouldn't have happened to you if you hadn't made such a spectacle of yourself. Not only did people believe that Frank's wife had been raped so that Ear could prove a point, it proved something far more terrifying to them The rapist had been one of the five hundred people at that meeting. Oh my Godd, I didn't even figure that out I didn't even think of that as that holy Of course he was because they're probably they're not it's back in the day. there's no video. They could have had meeting minute meetings, I suppose. Yeahah, W wouldn't there be minute meeting min meeting minutes? What do you call it? where someone keeps notes of what's going on And that could have been made available in like some town book or something. What did they use before the interternet? Where there were like minutes of meetings? So I' definitely look at who looked at the minutes meetings if there's a record of that And I'd also make a big list of everyone who was at that meeting. There was one more rape that month, then something happened, or rather nothing happened. The months of June, July and August saw no more attacks from Ear, leading many to speculate that he was a teacher or had some kind of other profession that involved him taking somemmer vacations off. The following year would be similar, though it was instead July, August and September that saw the large break in action The attacks resumed in October as normal. On december second, Iir again called the police station. Unlike the calls back in May, this time his call was recorded. He told them You're never going to catch me, East arerea rapist, you dumb. I'm going to talk again tonight, be careful. As with the previous call, he struck again that night. A week later, Iir called up a previous victim to tell them, Merry Christmas, it's me again The next night, Sacramento pololice received two phone calls, both saying that he would be attacking again that night and even telling them on what street he would attack. The calls were recorded and compared to the december second phone call. It was determined that the calls came from the same person, so they increased their patrols, focusing on the street that the attacker had told them. Now you're probably thinking the clops of playing right into his hand by increasing their surveillance of the street that he named, thus allowing him to move his attack to somewhere on the opposite side of town. No, no, no. I disagree. I'm not thinking that I'm thinking he's such a narcissist that he thinks he can get away with it and he's going to rape someone there and possibly get away with it I really think that's what's going to happen. That's certainly the most logical assumption, not what I'm saying, the opposite that it's a decoy. but it fails to take into account what a massive ego E had. Plus, it's like a test. If they didn't take the threat seriously, it would mean he could taunt them by telling him the exact times and locations heit attack, knowing they would patrol elsewhere. That night at around two thirty AM The man was seen wearing a ski mask and riding a stolen bicycle across a bridge on the street that the phone call had named. Police gave chase, but he was able to elude them. The man was seen again at around four thirty AM, but this time he abandoned the bike and fled on foot, yet he was still able to evade capture. Now he knew that not only would police show up if he told them where it'd strike, but that they wouldn't give up if they thought they'd already chased him away for the night Okay So Something in between. It's a bit of a test, really, wasn't it? And why would they? Ear had already shown he had disturbing levels of patience. Not only could he hide in a house for hours waiting for his victim to arrive home, but he would remain in the house for hours afterwards, just standing there waiting. When he had finished assaulting his victims, he would tell them not to move kill them In one such instance, a woman was raped and then her daughter was returned to bed. After hours had passed and the woman was sure the intruder had finally left. She asked her daughter if she was okay, the daughter replied Sh ear stepped out of the shadows Chevy Is he had never scary This sort of torture was common in his attacks, letting his victims regain a false sense of security before revealing that he was still lurking in the shadows. That same month, the mayayor's office, the Sacramento B and local television station KBIE all received the same letter claiming to be from Ear. The letter was a poem entitled Excitement's Cave It's arrogant, self aggrandising bullshit that didn't offer any clues beyond making it painfully clear what a narcissist the author was. Since nothing relevant to the investigation came from his, I'm going to ignore the text entirely rather than allowing him to believe his stupid poetry was of any value Excellent choice, Kevin. The rapist went quiet for about a month but on january second, nineteen seventy eight He began making calls to his first rape victim from the previous May. He made two calls to her that day, both of which were recorded. The first sounded like an ordinary case of someone recording the wrong number. a man asked for someone named Ray who didn't live there and then he hung up. Later that night, the woman received another phone call in which Ear said, Gonna kill you. G kill you, G kill you few days later He made what would be his last phone call while operating his ear. He called the Contact counseling serervice and identified himself as the East Area rapist. He told the operator I have a problem I need help because I don't want to do this anymore. They talked briefly before he said that he thought they were tracing the call and Was the call genuine, or was it an attempt to sow the seeds of an insanity defence? I honestly couldn't tell you what his motivation was here, but trying to lay the groundwork for a defence feels unlikely since he didn't seem to believe that he was in any danger of getting caught. Yeah, even if you're not in any danger of getting caught, it does make sense to have a plan. Like this is a very meticulous individual. Even if he doesn't think he's going to get caught, it's like, okay, but if I do get caught, A leads to B leads to C. This sort of person would have this I entirely reably However, this fear of being traced is likely what caused him to stop making phone calls. Despite his crimes being brazen and even taunting the police, Ear didn't want to get caught. His planning was meticulous and he left no evidence. Back in the day, tracing a phone call was a long and complicated procedure. Nothing was digital yet, and tracing a call required an operator at the phone company running between large cabinets and looking at switches to figure out the number from which the phone originated before the caller hung up, causing an arbitrary amount of switches to flip back. The phone number would then have to be searched for in a telephone book But Technology improves and the original patterent for Cer ID was only four years away. Finding the exact timeline for when upgrades were made, specifically in Sacramento that made tracing calls faster or easier is a bit difficult, but suffice to say, continuing to make phone calls in which Ear identified himself as such was becoming too risky. Caller ID is a weird thing Right? Becauseuse to me, it's that thing like Have I got this right from American moovies and stuff? If you're getting a phone call, it'll tell you on your phone who the phone call is from even if you don't have that number in your phone book, because that's something that we've never had Didn't have that growing up. Don't have that now. It's like if you get a phone call, it just says the number Like it doesn't say like you know Od shop or a business or a person It just says the number unless you save that number whichich I'd love it to say who it was. L because I get phone calls and it's like, okay, who is this? And if that number was registered as I don't know, DHL delivery, I'll be like, greatreat, okay, I know who it is DHL delivery. let's go And so now I save it. And if there's a different DHL delivery driver, it's like I save them in my phone. its DHL one, DHL two, there's many DHLs It's like having a cooler ID system would be great, but maybe I've got their wrong, mayaybe that's not actually how it works because I've just seen it in movies. Let me know in the comments He may have been a massive piece of, but he was too smart and too careful to let himself be caught by something so simple. He continued calling potential victims to taunt them and learn their schedules, but he was done calling police or anyone he thought could trace him quickly. E's next rape took place in late January. But then there was another two month break before his next home invasion. This was likely the result of an event which was originally thought to be unrelated to the rapist. a young couple, Brian and Katie, were out walking their dog at around nine PM that night. Brian was stationed at nearby Matha Air Force Base and he had just received a promotion. The couple thought that they'd be having a great night. Instead, they came across a prowler wearing a schie mask and dark clothing. A witness described Well they hadd seen from the window of the house. Brian who was clearly the prrowler's athletic superior, as well as being several inches taller than him, immediately gave chase. He ran after the man into a nearby backyard and was gaining on him. Suddenly, the prowler turned around. and shot him He then ran back around the house and chased after Katie who was now fleeing before shooting her as well. Helaimed his second and third murder victims, but once again, he was acting on self preservation. He may not have been seeking out people to kill But he was getting a taste for it The threats I made during his rapes only escalated from there. He would give his victims messages to give to the police and tell them that if he didn't see the words printed in the newspaper the next day that he'd come back and kill them Although those murders weren't originally tied to the rapers, police eventually found ligatures made from shoelaces near the scene. Some had already suspected that it was the same person all along given the close proximity of the murders to the area where Iar was known to target its victims. Also, how many murders are there going on in your town to be like, nah, that's a separate double murder. It' separate to all these other crimes that are going on by a violent person Although I guess they didn't know he was a murder at that point, did they? becausecause they hadn't tied the crimes of him in his previous. Wait, where did he murder the girl? Was that in his old location? That wasn in the old location, right? So I guess they haven't figured out he was a murerer yet. They just thought he was a rapist. So it's understandable that they could think it was something different, right Aside from the three month summer break, the attacks continued as they had throughout the remainder of the year. Iar had been operating almost entirely in Sacramento County, though he had spent more time branching out other neighbourhood neighbouring counties following his return that October On december ninth, nineteen sevty eight, following the investigation of another rape, police found three hundred pages at the location where people had noticed a suspiciously parked car. It was believed that the pages were dropped by accident and that is extremely unlikely. The notes were referred to as the homework pages. Though Ear and VR enjoyed dealing low value items with personal significance to the owner, there had never been a report of stolen home. It was believed that these pages had been written by Ear himself, which is almost certainly true, but the idea that they were left by accident was a bold conclusion to draw. I again realizeed I'm working with the advantage of hindsight, but the idea that this was an accident is extremely unbelievable. Ear wouldn't even bring his own rope to tie up the victims. Why would he be carrying around his sixth grade homework? Yet, he is meticulous and intelligent. This isn't the sort of thing you would do He also never took his car out during his crimes or reconnaissance, instead relying on stolen bicycles. It seems impossible to believe that this was anything other than more fake evidence to throw the police off, like his comments to victims about the van. The first of the Homework pages was an essay about General George Armstrong Custer. The second page is often titled after the first line, Mad is the Word. In it, the author talks about how much he hated his sixth grade teacher, likely trying to create some false backstory for himself to send police down an investigatory rabbit hole. The page handwritten on both sides is a long rant How much his teacher disappointed him and how mad he was for being punished by having to write the same sentence fifty, one hundred, or even one hundred and fifty times. Personally, I think the most notable thing about this is how it's clear it's a red herring. Someone who was so intelligent and meticulous in their crimes, especially someone with such an inflated sense of self worth, was unlikely to be the sort of terrible student that would frequently be punished ared his teacher. The page was also filled with spelling and grammatical mistakes, really juvenile mistakes too. the kind even a sixth grader of average or probably below average intelligence wouldn't even make. For this to have any weight as evidence, we'd be expected to believe that the Dalard that penned this angry rance was the same one that only a year prior was mailing his poetry to the police and the newspapers to show off his brilliance, that just doesn't track. Besides, if the turning point in his life from which all this hatred stemmed was his experience with his male teacher, why was he raping women? instead of exacting violence. Yeah, it seems like a red herring and it seems even like a dumb red herring. Like I'd expect him to come up with a better red herring, to be honest. So he's smart It's not that smart. Despite my dismissal of this, police obviously had to investigate. Yes, for sure, no, like good for them. Fortunately it doesn't sound like it would have taken up too much of their time. It seems like male teachers were shockingly rare in the nineteen fifties and sixties, so there weren't going to be a lot of students in Sacramento that had a male sixth grade teacher. The third page found is referred to as the P punishment matter On one side of the paper is the word punishment, scrawllled in barely legible writing, On the other side is a hand drawn map of a neighbourhood. It was clear that the artist had an understanding of architectural layout and landscape design, which led to more incorrect assumptions about Ear's' potential career. This may have been anintended consequence as the drawing was likely intended to just waste detective' time neighborh drawn did not exist. I guess this is the thing. Even if it's a shitty red herring, the police still have to investigate it so it does waste detectives' time. It just feels like can't you come up with a better red herring or something? Ear again took a three month break, not resuming his crimes until march of nineteen seventy nine. He committed one rape in March, another in April, and three more in June. But on july fifth, nineteen seventy nine, things would be different. In Vasalia, he committed over one hundred twenty burglaries and one murder before his close call police in Sacramento had committed forty seven rapes and two Jesus Christ. This is a lot of crime. And two murders with nothing he could consider a close call yet. He was toying with his victims and with the police alike and felt like he was invincible In military terms, he was suffering from what is known as Victory disease, a condition which can oftentimes prove fatal I've never heard of Victory disease. It sounds a Victory disease, I have to say is a great name for a YouTube video. Like whatever this is, I'm probably going to make a YouTube video about it. Of course, in this case, you know it won't actually be fatal, even if you don't know how this story was going to end before starting this episode, I'm willing to bet that Simon mentioned it about an hour ago during the introduction Kevin, you know me so well. Just can't help myself from spoiling shit, can I? On july fifth, Iar tried something he hadn't done before. Part of his Mmo was to attack single story houses, but this time he was going to attack a couple in their upstairs bedroom. Maybe he wanted a new challenge, or maybe he wanted to again break from his established pattern to throw authorities off the scent. His rationle is unclear, but it's largely levant He entered the house and began rummaging through drawers in the bedroom. As he completed his pre assault ritual, something must have happened. Maybe he bumped into a drawer or kicked aiece furniture by accident, whatever it was. somethingomething woke up the sleeping husband, just as Ear was pulling his mask down over his face, shoelaces dangling from his hands. when offfficer McGowan had encountered VR in his last attempted ransacking, VR had not yet pulled his mask down. It seems that the criminal had not learned his lesson, even though this was a fact that the police investigating Iar were completely unaware of. Many of his victims said that Ear seemed rehearsed. He was threatening them, but it felt like he was reading lines off of a script. What he hadn't accounted for was that he wasn't the only one rehearsing. His targets were well aware of the string of burglaries and rapes in the area. Everyone was, and the couple that had been selected for the assault that night had a plan for this event. A big part of me was that their plan had involved shooting the intruder in the face, so his story would end right here. The other part of me is paid by the word. Oh, Kevin that is so bag on The husband shot out of bed screaming at the intruder at the top of his lungs who the Wh do you think you are? What the fuck are you doing here? He approached Iar, who simply took a step back. I mentioned that Eir didn't act on impulse like a typical rapist, so he was able to remain calm and try and assess the situation, but the husband had now backed him into a literal corner, giving his now very much awake wife plenty of time to escape the room and run out of the house screaming for help Why doesn't your plan involve a gun? You're in America. It's like, come on guys I live in a country where guns are illgal and if there was a string of light, if this was in the neighborhood where I lived I would definitely have acquired a gun and I would be prepared for this situation, mostly by putting bigger locks and alarms on my doors because it's the twenty first century But still, you're Americans, Where's your gun at? Come on I actuallyually don't know if I get a gun. I think the problem with this is it's always like statistically it's unlikely to happen to you. And aren't the statistics pretty clear that guns like kill more people by accident than they kill people who are breakingen into your house? And it's like I always think about that episode of Stargate where you find out that Jack O'Neill's kid because he shot himself with Jack O'Nill's gun By accident And you're like, that is so f intense. And he lives with this and you can see it in him in the series because it's so well acted you just like, Oh That is so intense. For a moment the two men sized each other up, the husband would describe the intruder as five p, p, one hundred and sixty pounds. He was six two and two hundred and twenty pounds and pumping full of the adrenaline surge one might get while protecting their family from a known rapist and murderer. But it was also a known murderere and while the husband didn' see a weapon, that didn't mean he didn't have one Go for it, mate, just beat the sh. You have for sixty pounds on him. Isn't that like thirty kilos? That would be like me versus someone And a much larger person. I'm like, well, I'm a little bit above five, ten, but like Hey, Sira, what's one hundred and sixty pounds and kilograms? Okay, this's almost my exact weight seventym o, I'm almost exactly one hundred and sixty pounds a little bit shy. Uh Siri, what's two hundred and twenty pounds in kilograms? That's a hundred kilograms. There's no way that I could take someone who has thirty kilograms on me and two inches on me. There's no fking way. Bose men weighed their options. I mean, I'm not trained in any sort of special martial arts if anyone's wondering, O of course I'm not. We don't actually know whether or not he did either. It is known that in some of the rapes he committed in that neighborhood, he had not brought a gun with him Even if he had a gun, he would have to consider whether or not to use it. There was already a screaming woman outside, so surely the neighbourors would hear a gunshot. He was also in the middle of a condo complex without his normal creeks or hidden paths with which to make a quick and secret escape. And of course, having a weapon doesn't matter if you can't use it, and it wasn't already in his hands. He was staring down a much bigger man There's no guarantee that he could pull out a gun and fire without being disarmed and possibly shot himself. In the end, Husband decided not to risk his life, and Ear chose to prioritize evading capture over anything else. Husband told him, If you leave now, you can leave ran out of the room to join his screaming wife outside A neighbour had come outside to investigate the commotion, but no one saw Eir escape police dogs were brought in to track his scents, but by that time he was long gone those in the condo complex, it was as if It vanished at a thin air. Admittedly, the couple's plan wasn't perfect to get them alive, which was obviously priority number one. Yeah, it's like, no, that is a perfect plan. They both survived. I'm like, okay, but you did catch here and it's like you, I'm not the police. Guess who survived B This is a fine plan Yes, that's selfish, but I'm alive. What about his next victim? Couldn't they have had a more violent plan that would ensure that there were no future victims? like I said, the gun thing. May, but this was still a close call for Ear, too close for his liking. If he in fact wasn't armed, this could easily have been his final crime. Even if he was armed, there's still no guarantee that he would win that fight Worst of all, it's bloody unlikely he'd win that fight. Worst of all, he's got thirty kilograms on him in two inches? Worst of all, the husband may have seen his face. It's not like it would be the first time that anyone saw his face, but the fewer people that did the better. It was too close of a call Days passed, following the botched assault with no more reports of rape or prowling by ear. The days turned into weeks It was his standard summer break anyway, but the months turned into more months and then years. And as far as the residents of Sacramento County in the neighboring counties knew, this was the end of the stere a rapist. It would be over twenty years before they discovered he had merely moved towns over and let the media change his name again The original Might Stalker After his traditional summer break, Ear was ready to continue his crime spree. However, it was time to make some changes. First his crimes were now going to be taking place in and around Santa Barbara County in southern California, nearly four hundred miles from where Ear had been active. I like how neighboring county in the US is four hundred miles away. The US is so big. This is just a California, right Dam. Much like his move from Vesalia, it was far enough that authorities weren't going to make the connection despite a similar MO Second, it was time for a new type of crime. VR had started with burglary, then Ear added rape alongside it. He had murdered people while operating under both of those names, but they were murders that he deemed to be of necessity for self preservation. This time, his break ins were going to include premeditated murder. It also meant his pace would have to slow down again. In Vesalia, he averaged six burglaries a month in Sacramento, it averaged out to a little over one rape per month He would now slow down to only two attempts per year, which is still a lot But I guess it could' have been worse The final change was the name would be given by the media. As far as anyone knew back then, this was a third unrelated serial offender. At first he was given the name the Nightstalker, however when Richard Ramirez hit the scene in nineteen eighty four he was given the name the Nightstalker This meant our killer was renamed the original Night Stalker or ONS as he was active first. I of course take serious exception to that name because we all know that the original Nightstalker was Kolchack back in nineteen seventy four, who's Kolchack I don't know this refverennce. October first, nineteen seventy nine marked the first attack in Santa Barbara County in the city of Galita. It was ONS's first attempt at premeditated murder and it was an unqualified. dis At around two AM, he yelded his expected victims to wake up and then ordered them to lie on their stomachs so he would kill them. As normal, he had the wife tie up her husband before tying her up himself. He then reded the knots on the husband's ligatures to ensure that they were tight enough before he demanded their money. The woman said that her purse was in the kitchen. OS went through the same patented ransacking that he had been doing for five years now, then came back and insisted that he couldn't find her purse. Exactly where it was in the kitchen, but he untied her at the ankles and told her to come with him. Once in the living room he ordered her to lie down, and he tied her ankles again before telling her to roll over. She had been sleeping naked and he was now using the flashlight to look her body up and down She couldn't see him, but she could hear that he was now lubricating himself. He knelt down beside her, put a pair of shorts over her head as a blindfold before going back to the kitchen. As he walked through the house then we't can hear muttering or' kill him kill him to himself. He had already told her he was going to slice her throat. so once she heard his muttering reached the end of the hallway she was able to get to her feet. Still bound and blindfolded. She hopped in the direction of the front door, tripping and falling into a wall. The good thing about colliding with the wall is that it's not a floor, so she was able to quickly regain her balance and continue hopping to the door. As she reached the area by the door, the bindings around her ankles came loose. She managed to get the door open and she ran out screaming. Unfortunately, she still couldn't see and she wound up charging out of the door and running head first directly into the side of her own house. Upon hearing his wife's scream, her husband thought that she was being murdered, so he heroically flung himself out of bed and immediately hopped to the sliding glass door, making his way outside and bravely placing his safety. B. I know he couldn't really have done anything to Alber anyway, but there's not a lot of room for light sarcasm this episode, so I'll take it where I can get it. I don't know if it's appropriate for sarcasm even now I don't think this is the room for light sarcasm, Kevin. When the woman collided with her house, ONS came up behind her and threw her to the ground, covering her mouth. pressing a knife to her throat, reminding her to be quiet. He brought her back inside again and tied her ankles, but it was at this point that he heard a loud noise. His husband had hopped his way across the yard and flung himself with all his might into the fence to break his way into his neighbour's yard. This didn'tatur work and the sound that ONS heard was the husband bouncing off the fence and collapsing to the ground. Luckily, he landed in the shadows behind some bushes, so when ONS came out to investigate with his flashlight he couldn't find victim. Having heard the attempt to destroy his fence, the neighbour had turned on his lights and come outside to yell and find out what all the malarchy was. While ONS was distracted, the wife was again able to free her ankles. She ran through the hallway, and this time the blindfold started to fall off so she was able to at least partially see. She ran straight out of the front door, and in front of a passing car screaming for help still fully naked. As luck would have it, an off duty FBI agent happened to see a man wearing a ski mask flee the scene on a bicycle that had coincidentally been stolen from a parole officer This is a comedy of errors. An FBI agent. How many FBI agents are there? What are the odds of this? The agent gave chase but finally lost him when the suspect ditched the bike and started vaolting over fences before escaping across the schoollyard. This is like his closest call yet, right? I mean mayaybe when that police officer was chasing him he put his hands up and then shot the dude For ONS it was a complete disaster. He had easily raped dozens of people in the past, but for some reason they had all suddenly decided to fight back somehow. Maybe his last outing his earir was a fluke. The husband woke up too early and caught him off guard before he had gotten into position. this time was different. Perhaps his bloodlust was too apparent. Single women or couples would follow his instructions if they believed it would mean they'd both survive. but this wasn't his plan anymore. There was no longer any if you don't obey me, I'll kill you. He had knelt down right next to his last victim, blindfolded her with a pair of shorts and told her, Now I'm going to kill you. ONS had underestimated how people would react to this change in demeanor This seems like a tacked kalera Like if you tell people you're going to kill them They're going to fight back real hard. What was it? that the planes on nine hundred and eleven. When the people on flight ninety three heard that the planes are crashed into buildings, they were like, Well u We're going fight back real hard because we know what you guys are up to. People will fight Hot. It turns out when doing nothing means certain death, people will almost invariably do something, anything, even running headfirst into a wall or fence. In this instance, an unquestionably life saving display of ap At the end of December, ONS was ready to strike again and he wasn't going to make the same mistakes as last time. This time he would strike a condo complex near his previous attack. However, instead of large blocks of condos, the buildings were built in pairs. There were two condos next to each other, then large wooded areas in between. Each pair of condos was reasonably isolated, and the one next to his targets vacant. He broke into the vacant building and waited. God only knows Once the lights went out in the building next door, it was time for him to break in. The manner in which the sliding patio door had been pried open indicates that ONS was acting more in emotion than he had before. There was nothing clean or meticulous about his breaking in, it seemed feverish, almost desperate. This may have been frustration as he had failed to pry open multiple windows of the condo But more likely this was not the same carefully scripted act with which she had maintained such composure in the past. Inside the bedroom slept doctor Robert Offerman and doctor Debah Manning. Something woke them up. But it wasn't ONS standing over them with a flashlight, as was the case in his ear at As. Deborah's jewelry was found stuffed behind the bed, indicating that she woke up in time to hide it Perhaps the intruder had bumped a piece of furniture. Maybe the force with which he had pried open the door had caused the couple to wake up, and they remained in bed, hoping that the thief would steal what he wanted and leave them alone. When ONS entered the bedroom, he proceeded with his standard Mo. He began by having Deborah tie Robert's wrists and then tireself up. Instead of shoelaces, ONS had brought twine with him as he had in the previous attack in October. Law enforcement agencies didn't communicate much back then, but the shoelaces would be too much of a coincidence to ignore. Their use had been publicly reported, so surely someone would have made the connection. After Deborah was tied, ONS went to tie Robert's ankles. However, it seemed that Robert broke free of the binding Deborah had tied, and he lunged at the attacker. He was immediately shot in the chest, causing him to spin around. Three more shots were fired rapidly into his back and Robert clapped the floor He then shot Deborah in the back of the head Execution sty Neighbors had heard the five gunshots. wereere they guns shots it was three AM the day before New Years Eve, Maybe it was just some stupid kid setting off some fireworks. None of those that heard the shots bothered to call the police. It wasn't until later when the couple went answering their phone that the police were called to investigate Given what was known to them, the police made some pretty reasonable conclusions on these murders. They determined that the crime was linked to ONS's previous attack based on the use of twine and similar shoeeprints found outside. However, they believed that the first attack was a botched robbery, not a botched murder. That couple had heard as the intruder ranscked their belongings and kept demanding to know where the money was The day before the actual murders, there had been a string of five robberies, all with the same MO a sliding door being pried open. As far as the sheriff was concerned, Robert and Deborah were the victims of a burglary gone wrong. Seeing as the sheriff was unaware of ONS's hundreds of previous crimes, I can't really fault him for drawing this conclusion. Besides, it's not like it was dismissed as just a rand burglary They were looking for a repeat offender that was capable of murder. That's not the sort of thing the police take lightly. The next attack occurred on march thirteenth, in nineteen eighty in Ventura, nearly forty miles away. The victims were Lyman and Charlene Smith. They were found three or four days after their deaths by Lyman's son. Charlene had been raped and the couple had been bludgoned to death, the heads bashed him with a log pile of firewood on the side of the house. His MO has just changed so dramatically. Is he doing this on purpose to like because There's no way the police would connect this. It's like they're not all in the same place. It's a totally different style of thing. It's like It's weird to see someone change up their MO so much. It's so rare to say this I mean this guy was a real jerk. Police made no connection to the attacks in Golita at first. Yeah, off course they didn't. Why would they? The now signature twine had not been used. They were instead tied using drapery cord from the house. Most notably the knot tied was an elaborate diamond knot that is generally only used by sailors or an interior decorating, Charline's profession. This led to the killer briefly being known the Diamond kn killer before being connected with ONS. With the exception of the man who spoke out at the town hall meeting in Vesalia, ONS, regardless of what name he was operating under, chose his victims at random. The great part about this for a criminal is that not only can you not be tied to the victim by motive, but there may be plenty of other people who had motive to want the person dead. Lyman was an established attorney and was on a shortlist to be appointed to a vacancy on the California Supreme Court. Who, he's a big time lawyer then Charlinee was his former secretary and now his second wife, but he was her third husband. She began cheating on him almost immediately after their marriage, starting with a deputy sheriff who was unaware that she was married. It may have been a coincidence as Ear had in fact used the diamond knot on at least one occasion, but police couldn't overlook the perceived symbol A rare and complex knot used in interior decorating, was tied with a drapery cord and used on an interior decorator. How could that not come off as being personal? When neighbours first heard the news of the murders before the details of the gruesome bludgeoning were revealed it mostly assumed that Lyman and Charlene killed each other Is it not Would you not think that maybe someone forced them to do it? Like she tied those knots, but she did it under duress. Wouldn't there be something that pops into the police's minds. I don't know. Maybe it's just I've been so loaded with fact so about how he operates that that's what I would assume, but maybe not. Five months later, ONS struck again. This time it was in a gated community in Orange Cy. Keith and Patrress Harrington had only been married three months. The home they were staying at belonged to their friend, Roger, and they were living in the guestroom for a few months until Keith finished college in December. It was Roger that would find the couple days after they'd been killed. J like ONS's previous murders Patrice was raped and both were bludgeoned to death. In both instances, the man was delivered a single lethal blow to the head where the woman was beaten excessively. Beyond this however, the Mo had changed. ONS was no longer ranansacking houses. There was evidence that the couple had been bound, but neither the murder weapon nor the ligatures were found. The killer had murdered the couple, cut off their bindings and then neatly made the bed them inside of it for someone to find. We can't be sure since there are no living witnesses, but there's a good chance that he went back to his previous script as well, using much softer language than the explicit Now I'm going to kill you. The two double murders in nineteen eighty didn't show any signs of struggle, so the victims likely believed they'd survive if they obeyed their attacker. As for the abrupt change in MO, we already know that ONS carefully followed the news about himself There was word that a detective from Sacramento was suspicious of a connection between Ear and the original tack in Galita, so he had to distance himself from his prior behaviour as much as possible to evade suspicion. However, there was one part of his Mmo that remained unchanged. and no one realized it at the time that ONS was still stealing a single earring and placing it at the next victim's house was where it was left behind. Rather than standing out in the open to conduct his prowling, ONS was instead doing so from on top of the roofs of houses. He would jump from one roof to the next to conduct his surveillance. Residents may have heard the noise but just assumed it was an animal. These were safe neighbourhoods. whyy or would they suspect there was a criminal their roof. It wouldn't be until much later that people began finding discarded earrings while cleaning their gutters. On february sixth, nineteen eighty one, police arrived at the home of Manuela and David Whitton. David had been unable to reach his wife by phone, so he called Manuela's mother. chehecking on her She found her daughter murdered that contacted the police When the police arrived, they immediately noticed that the living room TV was in the backyard placed up against the fence. Combined with the fact that there were other small items missing, they were able to easily conclude that it was a deliberate murder, very poorly staged, looked like a robbery gone wrong. Manuela was in her bed, raped pludgeons. Again, there were signs of her having been bound, but no ligatures or weapon was found on the scene. Although this was in Orange County like the previous murders, it was in a different city. As a result, it was thought to be an unrelated crime. With the exception of the crimes in Galleita, most of ONS's murders wouldn't be linked together until years later. In fact, for years, the leading theory The by police regarding Manuela was that David was the killer. His airtight alibi of being in the hospital with a severe viral infection at the time was inconsequential. He was finally cleared of suspicion many years later die shortly thereafter How can him being in the hospital not be a good enough alibi You check into hospitals. They have records, extensive records. It's a hospital, it's what they do. Speaking of Galetta, it hadd been nearly a year and a half since that suspected burglary gone wrong had claimed the lives of Charlene and Lyman Smith. With the other crimes not having been linked, people weren't afraid anymore. Unfortunately, OS loved to preay on the same areas repeatedly, so he returned only a few blocks from where his first premeditation had taken place. It was the home of Sherry Domingo, at least sort of. The home belonged to a recently deceased relative and Sherry was house sitting. With nothing in the house worth stealing, and with Gregory Sanchez staying there with her, she felt there was nothing to be worried about was wrong Owener entered the house through a small bedroom window that was unlocked. Part of changing his MO was forced entry, so he would rely on whatever unsecured point of ingress he could find. It is believed that Gregory saw the intruder and believed it to be the same person who had committed the previous murder, so he lunged forward trying to tackle him. It said he was shot through the cheek. The gunshot wasn't fatal, but it sent him to the ground where he was repeatedly bludgeoned death garden tool. Sherry was then hogted R dudgeoned as well Cculator must be pretty interesting place because again, neighbours heard the gunshot, but again obody called the police to report it. ONS again took the murder weapon with him and removed the bindings, but he dropped a piece of twine by mistake on his way out. The bodies were discovered at around noon the next day, when the real estate agent came by to reppare an open house at the resid. Maybe ONS saw the newspapers report his mistake in dropping the twine and decided that he needed to lay low, orr maybe he was just sick of being confronted by men that were bigger and stronger than he was and he didn't want to keep gambling that he wouldn't be able to draw his weapon in time. But whatever the case, he seemed to disappear. Sherry and Gregory were murdered on july twenty seventh, nineteen eighty one Over the next five years, he'd remain inactive. It seemed that he'd disappeared entirely until may fourth, nineteen eighty six, or maybe he just went and did Mo somewhere else, completely different MO somewhere else in another part of the country That's kind of scary Like that's five years missing from the record. Maybe we just haven't found her yet. How do we know I know we catch him later, but did he confess to everything? Janelle Cruz was an eighteen year old girl living in Orange County. She was home with a friend on the fourth as her family was on vacation in Mexico at the time. Her friend left at little before eleven PM She also left the house for some reason. Her neighbour had a car returned at eleven fifteen, so she probably just ran to seven hundred eleven some junk food or something. Unfortunately She had a terrible habit forgetting to lock the door to her house. When Janelle returned home, ONS was waiting for her in the kitchen He struck her in the head Her blood splattering across the cabinets and the floor. He then carried her to the bedroom Because she was already injured and probably concussed, he didn't bother tying her up too tightly. She was still bound, but it was the one time that his ligatures hadn't been so tight as to cause bruising. He proceeded to rape her and then he bludgeoned her to death. The bindings and weapon were never found, but it was determined that the weapon was almost certainly a pipe wrench and that was kept in the backyard Chanel's body was found next day at about five PM by real estate agents, as this was another house that was up for sale After one hundred and twenty one confirmed burglaries, fifty one confirmed rapes and thirteen confirmed murders. The killer suddenly vanish from existence. He was a violent and insatiable criminal, one that reveveled in bringing terror to his victims. He prowled not only to stake out victims, but for his presence to be known. He didn't want to be caught, but he wanted them to know They had been watched. Pain Suffffering and fear a nourishment for this deranged individual And then it stopped So how can that be possible? One of the most common theories is that it's dobbed because nineteen eighty six was the year his first daughter was born. It's believed that this was somehow a turning point for I don't believe that for a second. First of all, in both nineteen ninety one and two thousand one, he made phone calls to previous victims of earar to torment them. In two thousand one, he asked the woman, rememember when we played? But on the nineteen ninety one phone call, his victim heard a woman and children in the background a rapist a family, but clearly his urges hadn't gone away, they were just being largely controlled. Second, and most importantly, he may have had a daughter born in nineteen eighty six, but his first daughter was born in nineteen eighty two. Yeah, this is where it's like, I know I spoiled at the beginning by saying that we caught him, but it's obviously we know now because these details. I believe there is a much more plausible reason that the murdder stopped Having a family wasn't going to deter him. The only deterrent for this monster was fear of getting caught. Back of Aalia, when he was only committing non violent crimes, he didn't hesitate to commit murder out of self preservation. There was nothing he wouldn't do to avoid capture, even turning his back on his criminal desires entirely. In May of nineteen eighty six, ONS killed Janelle Cruz. In August of nineteen eighty six, seventeen year old Richard Nbor, England was charged with the rape and murder of two girls. The trial made the news across the globe as it was the first case in which brand new DNA fingerprinting technology had been used in court. For Richard, this technology was a godsend. The evidence showed that both girls had been assaulted and murdered by the same person But it wasn't him. Froow an ass nology could be a death sentence. Probably not literally as California is sadly not a yeha state. But the death penalty was technically a possibility. It raped fifty one women and young girls and he wasn't wearing condoms while doing so, and even if he wanted to, they probably didn't make them small There was no way the police wouldn't have had something from which they could pull DNA evidence. But they didn't know who that DNA belonged to. so he couldn't risk anything could see him in police custody where they could take a DNA sample. I found this far more likely than yeah this is like it's because he had a daughter. No, Or it's like heard about DNA testing. it was like, oh shit. If I ever get DNA tested, I'm screwed. And then when heard about those ancestry episodes, it was probably like. I find this more likely than any other reason for the end of his wave of You might think that this sort of fear of reprisal could only work for so long, and that may have been true had he not been constantly reminded that they were hunting him. In nineteen ninety seven, all of the murders in southern California previously thought to be mostly unrelated were tied to ONS thanks to DNA analysis. In two thousand one, these were linked to his crimes by further DNA testing. At this point, he became known by the combined acc of Eerons. It wasn't until twenty sixteen that a connection was also made to the Visalia ransacker. At this point they could have started referring to him as Viserons, but that sounds too much like a Dungeons and Dragons character. Besides he already had a In twenty thirteen True crime author MichellecMamara coins the name The Golden State Killer in a series of articles published in Los Angeles magazine She also wrote these articles while obsessively researching her book on the crimes titled I'll Be Gone in the Dark, One womoman's Obsessive seearch for the Golden State killer Unfortunately, she wouldn't live to see the book published. She died of an accidental overdose on prescription medications, including fentanyl in twenty sixteen. The book would be finished by a husband Paton Oswald, true crime writer, Paul Hayes, and investigative journalist Bill Jensen. I think it is that Paton Oswald, right I've heard of him. The book released in twenty eighteen two months before the arrest of the Golden State killer. But how did they catch him He stopped committing crimes and he never slipped up Other than becoming a cranky and unlikeable old man, he'd did little to draw a suspicion on himself It all came down to the DNA evidence and genealogy websites truth is more complicated people generally realize, o, how exciting I thought it was quite simple. they like some of his relatives were in there and they tracked him down that way Someone's in the kitchen with DNA We're not so different. You and I, you me, Jesus and Hitler have over ninety nine point nine percent identical DNA. Human DNA is made up of roughly three billion nucleotides, the ACGT bases that you probably learnnt about in biology class. Of those, only about three million are different from person to person. That's still a lot of data points, and quite frankly, it was far too much data for Laurn If you want to build a bridge, you don't throw a massive slab of granite connecting points A and B, that's costly and inefficient. The goal is to use as little material as safely possible. This was true when building CodS. The FBI's combined DNA index system, storing three million pieces of information for every single soble would take a lot of time and space and storing large amounts of data was a lot more expensive in nineteen ninety codes was created than it is now. So how many data points were enough, you ask? thirteen, though that's since been upgraded to twenty. There are certain points on your DNA where groups of nucleotides repeat an arbitrary number of times. At one of these points, you can have ACGT repeat five, seven, or thirteen times in a row. Counting how many times they repeated at just twenty such locations was enough to create a DNA fingerprint. That sounds crazy It is the sort of wacky stuff that happens with exponents, like how no two randomly shuffled poker deecks have ever been in the same configuration. Yeah it's wild, no two shuffled deck of cards have ever been the same. This blows my mind. Throughout history, like it has never been and it will never happen. J it's infinitesimally unlikely. These twenty data points have seventy trillion times as many possible variations as there are people that have ever lived throughout all of time. So for matching two samples, it's pretty accurate. But that's about it. Law enforcement databases can identify if two DNA samples came from the same person But there's not enough data to identify any familiar link beyond perhaps a parent, child or sibling, even an aunt would be too far removed to make an accurate connection with so little information Then in two thousand five, something changed. ancestry. com had already existed for years, but it relied on users building family trees based on newspaper clippings or government documents. In two thousand five, genealogy sites began offering genetic testing services that were far more detailed than what law enforcement used. Instead of tracking these twenty data points, these DNA tests track over seven hundred thousand individual nucleotides. Ignoring the two point seven billion that are the same for everyone, this means that these sites track twenty five percent of your full genetic information. It can be used to find some pretty distant relatives And police Ss These websites descriribe the companies storing people's data. Wrants are also required to be pretty specific. If at least asked a judge to sign a warrant giving them access to the complete genetic profiles of twenty three M me's twelve million users on the basis of maybe we'll find something, but we aren't even sure. they'd obviously be told to get the hell out. which is like I mean This is such an interesting debate, right? because you have on one side of things, you're like, yo, We would catch a lot of criminals. And then on the other side you've got, yeah, but how far down that rabbit hornes do you want to go Like, and the argument should be well all the way down because they're all criminals Imagine how many rapists would be caught. It would be insane or like murderers, or like unsolved murders. All of this stuff But on the other hand, to these It's really hard to argue the other side I feel But it's also like, holy people need some privacy, yo Like that is like some because obviously this is really hard. I haven't thought about this too much, obviously. But I feel the same argument could be like a similar argument could be Let's put cameras in everybody's eyes and we'll record what they're doing all the time. Isn't there some sci fi book where they do this? And it's like We're only looking, you know, we're not going be like, o, if you pirated that movie, we're not going to come after you. you know, It's going be like, yo, if you go out murdering, then we're going to come after you. There's going to be some like base level. And then that just feels like And this feels like this enormous invasion of privacy. even though We'd get a lot of really bad people off the streets. For years, the answer felt just out of reach. Law enforcement was sure they must be a second cousin or something of the Golden State killer on one of those websites, but they couldn't look at them. There was also the matter of the evidence. They tested samples of DNA to confirm that the crimes were all related. But DNA samples found at a crime scene are usually tiny and degradeding They don't have a lot of material to work with. This was problematic since building a full genetic profile would require a new sample to test, something that was further complicated by the fact that most of the evidence had been thrown out. That sounds horrible, but it seems to be fairly standard procedure for crimes that are decades past the statute of limitations. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. in a way it's like okay well it's past the st we can't do anything with it anyway Be apparently there's statutes of limitations for murder. But you can't keep stuff indefinitely mean, That's a lot of storage Obviously there were ex Oh, there was no expirion date on the murder charges, o, But the statute of limitations for felony rape in California is only three years, California I don't know what the difference between felony rape and regular rape is, but felony rape sounds worse. Like someone was like you've done felony piracy, you'd be like, Oh no, that's much worse than A what's it state level piracy? Oh no I three years U as the states of limitations on rape is insane. And this is California. California is like All progressive and, aren't they? What's it like in in Texas? They're like The statute of limitations in Texas is six days. You gott a call with six days or that shit gets thrown right out In Alabama lay gof I'm just kidding. I love you, Alabama Alabama. I always want to say Alabama because it's like that's how I speak. like you know, I have softer arays, like Alabama but obviously it's incorrect because it's Alabama. I love you, Alabama As far as I can tell, the limit is the same, even for his attack on thirteen year old girls. Three years, California. He raped a thirteen year old Christ It'd be like a fifteen the sixteen year old goes into a police station thought I was raped when I was thirteen. Well, it's three years and one day Get lost Maybe see a counselor. The big break came from a rape that is insane. I can't get over how crazy that is. It should be like a decade It should have, there shouldt be. Neither should be. I genuinely think that the statute of limitations is a good idea It just shouldn't be three years though. we're not going to figure this out today Obviously. And even if we did, it doesn't make a difference because I don't make the law Anywhere D disappointing me. I was going say I don't make the law in California, but I don't make the law anywhere. That's not my job That's all Be kind of fun though. The big break came for a rape kit to had been used on Sherry Domingo during a murder investigation in nineteen eighty one and was still being stored. All of the crimes took place before DNA evidence, but the collection methods weren't sophisticated. Similar to the Golden Stakler's first murders in Galleita, it was believed that Sherry hadn't actually been raped. His first attack involved five gunshots and then quickly fleeing the scene Given that Sherry's friend Gregory had been shot, they assumed this was a similar situation. however, in twenty eleven, they were able to take a sample of the attacker's DNA from the rape kit. This confirmed what they already knew that it was the same killer, but it also gave them a sample with which to build a full genetic profile. Then in twenty eighteen, investigators found J The site has existed since twenty ten, but it wasn't near as well known. It was a free website where people could upload their information from other genealogy sites. Those sites are all paid membership, so it's not in their interests to work together, but Jed was different. It was a free public service created so that users from one ancestry site could find their genetic matches from other ancestry sites. It only had a little more than a million users far more important than a robust user base. It had publicly uploaded information. So people upload in there They're like genetic profiles to that website It must have a big warning being like yo This could be accessed. People are going to look at this Other genealogy websites refused to cooperate with law enforcement, but with Jed. Well they didn't even need to ask permission. If you upload information about yourself to a public website, that is now in public information that anyone can access. Investigators uploaded GSK's genetic profile and they found a match. and then another. In total, they found between ten and twenty matches. Now that sounds great at first until you consider that the closest match cousin, someone who shared one percent of their DNA with the killer. Luckily though, it was enough. A team consisting of only a handful of people worked tirelessly over the next few months, and they were able to accomplish what forty four years of police work had been unable to. They took the matches they had found and utilized public records to trace back their lineage to find a common ancestor Theituaries, birth certificates, tombstones, anything they could find they used. This would be so interesting to do. I don't know. I had one of these websites, My Heritage sponsor me. I think they do still sponsor me on some channels. and I got super, I was like looking back. I got back to like the eighteen fifties. It was great This isn't a paid sponsor read. It's just The coolest thing about that sponsorship was getting free access to my heritage. I spent so much time in there. I, I've do some work, and it's like, But I found my great great uncle. It's surprisingly compelling it really is. Finally they found where the family trees converged great, great, great grandparents back in the mid eighteen hundreds. GSK had to be a descendant of this couple. They built the tree backwards. now all they had to do was build it forward to find all possible relatives. That's a large group of people. Here we again encounter the joy that is exponential Back in the eighteen hundreds, people were popping out babies like it was nobody's business. Someone could have a dozen kids, each of whom had a dozen kids. When the family tree was completed, they had over a thousand people they needed to rule out. They had a physical description and knew at least the state the killer lived in. so that did a lot to eliminate possible suspects. They hadarrowed it to the final five, and then two. Once one of the last two was ruled out, it only left one suspect. He was put under twenty four hour surveillance so that they could try to discretely procure a DNA sample. At one point, the detective contemplated just knocking on the man's door and asking if he could swab his cheek to root him out as a suspect. Yeah, but at that point he's going be like, no Go get yourself a warrant with your flimsy evidence and good luck with that. And meanwhile to Mexico mam' way. He hadd already spent years chasing down over a thousand dead leads and fully expected this to be no different. Wait, I thought they narrowed down those leads with like saying, oh he's not in you this state, he's not in that state. They just got it down to like a few people orry I must have been confused. Fortunately, I understood the DNA tests take time, and if it really was GSK, then it'd be long gone by the time they came to arrest him. to Mexico every movie T the Border Ruffians. They followed the suspect to the parking lot of a nearby hobby loby where they got his prints off the door handle. notot terribly useful since GSK always wore gloves, but they hoped they might have gotten some DNA from the handle as well. And then they had paid it. While they were surveilling the house, the suspect blew his nose and threw it into a trash barrel that was on the curb. They tested the sample and it came back as a match It had taken forty four years of investigation, five different nicknames, but they finally had identified the Golden state killer by his real name. Shitbag McFuck what? Or as his parents calleden? Joseph James de'Agelo Jr. Joseph and his baby Dick were promptly taken into custody. So who exactly was Joseph and how had he evaded c ure for so long. Hiden in plain size. Joseph was born on november eighth, nineteen forty five to Joseph Sr. and Kathleen. He had two younger sisters and a younger brother. Joseph Sr. was an airman in the US Army back before the Air Force, was a separate branch of the military so the family would move around a lot to wherever Joseph Sr. was stationed. And now it's time for the obligatory childhood trauma of course it is and the obligatory message Don't f your kids. Joseph Sr. was to nobody's surprise, physically abusive. He would beat Kathleen so frequently and with such force that she routinely wore multiple layers of clothing, including multiple pairs of pants to provide some cushioning against the blows. This was a habit that the children would pick up as well as she in turn took out her anger at the situation by physically abusing the children. This seemed to be the extent of Joseph's abuse, but it still isn't great and there's obviously psychological trauma that comes along with it. Unfortunately there was one other thing that happened. something In nineteen fifty three, the family was living in West Germany, where Joseph Ciner was stationed. Nine year old Joseph was playing with his seven year old sister in an abandoned warehouse. Then two airmen came into the warehouse and raped his sister front of him Just again Seven years old A few years later, the family wound up in California, Joseph attended junior High in Rancho Cordova, the town where he would commit his first rape years later, and he attended high school in Falssam. He was already a disturbed child and had been caught committing burglaries on multiple occasions. There were also reports that he enjoyed torturing and killing animals because well of course there were, Yes again, if you see your child torturing animals, killing animals or you hear about it. get them post haste to a Psychiatrist, alrighty? It'll be worth the money. After earning his GD, Joseph enisted in the US Navy and served for twenty two months in Vietnam, where he undoubtedly learned both the plate trick and how to tie diamond knots. Yeah from the crimes earlier on. After his deployment, Joseph returned to California, where he earned his associate's degree in political science, graduating with honours and then earned his bachelor's degree in criminal justustice But something happened while he was earning his associates degree at Sierra College. He he met a woman that he would grow to hate Bonnie Cowell Borney was a nursing student at Sierra College and the two fell quickly in love. In may nineteen seventy, they became engaged. However, things started to take a turn. Joseph was manipulative and abusive, and she felt his appetite was set for sex was insatiable, with intercourse lasting ours That's great if both people are into it, not so much of any one of them is. think a word for that Bonnie was already having doubts, but she broke off in nineteen seventy one when Joseph went too far. He asked her to help him cheat on the abnormal psychology test that he needed to pass in order to graduate. This would be far too much for the daughter of an educator to tolerate, and she was appalled that he would even propose something so unsavourory she gave him back his ring But Joseph wasn't going to take no for an answer. About a week later, she awoke to the sound of Joseph tapping on her bedroomindow, he pulled out a gun told her to get dressed quickly so they could get married in Reno. U I don't think that's how weddings work. If you're like, and now we're married it's like, hey, Like two weeks later, you just go to court or go to the police is's like, Yeah That guy, he got a gun. And he told me to marry him. And so I got married to him. And then they're going to be like, well, that's not valid, is it? Becauseuse you can't like You can't do a contract under the RS. ot how it works, othertherwise everyft would just be like forcing people to sign shit under duress way more often. We've already established that California is not a Yha state. U With that three years statute of limitations on rape, Kevin, I'm not sure we've established California is dick. But that is not how shotgun weddings work, dude. A shotgun wedding is when a girl gets pregnant and her father uses his shotgun to gently encourage the man to do the right thing and marry her Oh I didn't know that's where that phrase came from. So there you go. You don't pull a gun on the potential bride. Bonnie alerted her father who told her to lock herself in the bathroom and went out to deal with Joseph got him to leave, but she was so terrified that she dropped out of school for the rest of the semester and changed her major just to avoid him, even though he'd already graduated. In nineteen seventy one, Jason went to Sacramento State University to earn his bachelor's degree in criminal justice. He then took postgraduate courses at the University of the Sequoas in Vesalia, the same college where Claude Snelling was a professor complete a thirty two week internship before getting a job with the Eer Police Dpartment about ten miles away in Vesalia. Of course you got a job with the police department They don't have a psychological test you have to take when you join. Maybe that would be a good idea, police. Maybe you should have something that makes sure like people are not you know, Totally nuts. okay? That would be good. Do we do that today? That should be a thing Please tell me that's a thing, someone in the comments. It's well established that cops and criminals have a lot of the same personality traits. However, most criminals aren't able to become police officers. I'm sure half the YouTube audience is now writing airy comments about police conduct, but what I mean is that prior convictions disqualify someone from a career in law enforcement. people were like the Golden State Killer, normally would have been picked up for and arrested for something before they ever got a chance to become And as I mentioned he was. The thing is Joseph was arrested for burglaries as a juvenile, which meant that those records were sealed. How about there should be some sort of special unsealing? It's like yo Yeah, I agree. Juvenile records should be sealed. L for the most part, that should not be a thing that affects your future. Children make mistakes. but maybe if you want to be a police officer or something or in the military or something like that, you know, a career where it's like You know, you're given a gun. Basically' what I'm getting at. Most criminals like this would have been caught re offending, but he was able to avoid that. He had managed to secure a job with the Era police, and of course it was in the burglary unit. Six months later, he would marry Sharon Huddle, whom he began dating only weeks after Bonnie had left him. The entire time he was committing his crimes, he was married And they eventually had three kids together. Six months after his wedding is when his crimes in Vesalia began. He wouldn't have been investigating his own crime since he worked in Exeter, but he would have had a police radio that would land to listen in on the Vesalia police. Since he worked to the burglary unit, he was well aware of how the police would be running their investigations and how to elude capture while working in Exeter He was seen as the black sheep of the department. Joseph was an amphibious He was an ambibious nothing. I'm sorry, that's obviously ambitious my dad. Ambitious loner, who was described as being far too intelligent to work for their small department. Wait, someone actually described him as that? This feels like a thing he would describe himself as Who's like N's way too smart for us, Bright What's that dude doing here? He's a big brain. This is the burglary department in Exeter. He needs to be like run in the country Did that really happen It was this ambition that led him to join the Orban pololice Department in the Sacramento area, where he worked from august nineteen seventy six to july nineteen seventy nine. This ambition, combined with the desire to flee the area, after having just shot a cop Had law enforcement shared information, they may have noticed that the Vesalia ransacker appeared a year after Joseph started working in the area and disappeared a few months before he left.ikew It made the similar connection that the steria rapers became active about a month before he started his job in Auburn and disappeared the same month that he was fired and moved to southern California. Allegedly, one detective from Vesalia did notice something. They may not have connected Joseph to the crimes, but they saw that theyR and ERars crimes were linked. He claims to have repeatedly tried to get Sacramento County police to listen to him, but they dismissed him as being from some b dunk department that was trying to capitalise on the high profile of the case , get your head out of your ar, and you know just just make a little effort. Come on. If true, that is a weird reason to dismiss the collaboration. I don't think theias's Board of Tourism was trying to link themselves to a dangerous rapist who is still at large. It is indeed absurd. A Anyway, the air became a huge deal. Oh Joseph wor There was such a major investigation that the police were called in from neighborouring departments to help. Unlike in Vesalia, this means that he actually would have been tasked with investigating his own crimes, so talk about to get out of jail free card. He was able to keep everything going for a few years until he was arrested in nineteen seventy nine for shoplifting a hammer and some dog repellent. Given that there was a serial rapist on the loose, this probably should have been seen as suspicious, especially since he could have easily afforded to just buy those things. He was sentenced to six months of probation after which he was fired while being fired He threatened to murder the chief of police Dude No Don't be threatening to murder the chief of police. That's not something you should be doing, especially if it's not like, oh yeah, I was shoplifting and I go to courught. It's like, bro. if they think you're a psycho and they look into you a little bit more and they're like, that to Angela guy is a bit weird. Maybe should just make a do a little bit more. just let's have a low look. he threated to kill me. He's the chief of police and'll be like, yo, yo, lowly, Sergeant, or whatever. Go look into this stuff. Andge B S Y sir And then you're going to get in big trouble Don't do that Also suspicious, indeed. Then he moved to southern California and the rapers suddenly vanished. At this point, I'd like to mention that at no time before twenty eighteen had Joseph's name ever come up as a possible suspect. Sacramento, what are you doing Yes. hundred percent agree, Kevin. Sounds like Sacramento needs to get it There's not a lot of information about what he was up to during the nineteen eighties other than murdering all of those people, but it's reported that he worked as a cashier and a computer engineer. In nineteen eighty two, his wife, Sharon became a divorce attorney. Ironically, the couple would separate in nineteen ninety one, but wouldn't ever get around to officially filing for divorce until a few months after he was arrested. In nineteen ninety he began working as a truck mechanic at the supermarket's distribution center remain there until he retired in twenty seventeen and lived a mostly Life It is weird that people separate but don't get divorced.'d be like, why not?omet I just never got around to. I guess if you don't have assets to split up, Oh they do have children, or if you just reach an amicable agreement, I guess it doesn't come How often does it come up I don't think it comes off in my life that often. likeike whether I'm married or not. It's not like, unless I'm buying something jointly with my wife or something like that I don't think it comes up very often. And obviously it makes a big difference like when I die or if there was issues with the kids or stuff like that. But if you're amicable I guess it doesn't really matter H interest ever thought about that, really Arest and trawl Much like I've been today, everyone who knew him became a genius in hindsight following Joseph's arrest. His brother in law said he would bring up the stere rapist in casual conversation around the anniversaries of various attacks. His neighbours also said that he was a loud, cranky asshole they had nicknamed Crazy Joe. He would frequently have loud outbursts involving lots of swearing and even threats of killing the person. but he was almost always talking to himself during these He would even apologise to neighbours of Garity following these outbursts. However, there was one incident that was a little harsher to explain away. He called up a neighbour and threatened to deliver a load of death to them, a message that he left on their voicemail. shit. I am going deliver a load of death to you a load of death. It's like, what do you mean? likeike by truck Whaty are you talking about craz? Crazy Joe? The explanation he gave was that their dog was being too loud. I'm not really a fan of dogs, but I think that's a tad over the line. It depends on his temper. Like I definitely have a temper. Like I'll lose my sh I'll be like, oh my god, wans. I was making an omelette. I'm not proud of this And I was like, I was making omelet and put it was like we didn't have enough food. I was improvising dinner for the kids. And I was like frowing up some rice. And I was like, yeah, I put some eggs in there. I made a weird rice omelet sort of thing. And then I put too much rice in and my mom was not flipping either. And it would just be one of those these days The kids are going like mental. There's this draw that they've broken. and I'm like, a and I'm like, I smash the spatula down on the surface. it breaks and my wife's like Dude, not in front of the kids and I'm like, I know But I definitely have a temper. I got especially like around kids, I gotta, I've got to be better. Oh, but I'm not phoning someone up and' being like, I'm gonna deliver a load of death. Because that would be psycho Oh I'm sorry, we went on an omelette story, let me get back to it. While everyone was surprised to learn of Joseph's arrest, it doesn't seem that anyone found his guilt to be particularly unbelievable. The only ones who truly never saw her coming were his family, obbviously he and his wife were not on the best of terms since the twenty seven years separation, but at no point had she ever considered he was guilty of all those crimes He was a police officer in the burglary unit, so if he told her that he had to work at night, there was no reason for her to find that suspicious or really think anything of it. Family members would say that he was the complete opposite of everything that was reported, but most vocal was his eldest daughter. She and her daughter, Joseph's granddaughter, were living with him at the time of his arrest. At his trial, she reotad a five page statement that she had prepared in which she described him He's loving and selfless, saying heere's the best father I could have had. And maybe he was. Two things can be true. at the same time, he can be the absolute greatest father and grandfather in the world and also a piece of murdering rapist. Yes, those things are not mutually exclusive. It does seem unlikely, but stranger things have happened. One of the things that will keep Joseph off everyone's radar was his age. He committed crimes in Versalia when he was twenty nine to thirty one years old, but police thought they were looking for an eighteen to nineteen year old He always looked much younger than he really was, and that never really changed. When he was under surveillance from investigators trying to get his DNA, they saw that the seventy year old man had the strength, agility and energy of someone twenty years younger. He exercised daily, rode his motorcycle, and did anything an able body person Then the trial began, and Joseph's lawyer pushed him into the courtroom in a wheelchair. He seemed to have aged twenty if not thirty years overnight, out of nowhere, the active man had become crippled and old and seemed to be portraying someone who was borderline suffering from dementia. Luckily, the judge didn't buy this bull act for a second. After the first day they ditched the wheelchair, but Joseph kept his blank emotionless stare as if he was unable to comprehend what was going on around him. Oh good news, you don't need to compredit, you needs to compredit the jury. Yes California, no death penalty though. Alas Between this and his wheelchair stunt, it was painfully clear that he was trying to manipulate the system. Fortunately for him, but unfortunately for my desire for brutal vengeance, his lawyers had the good sense to convince him to get a plea deal. At first, the prosecution rejected the idea, but they were concerned that the trial would cost millions of dollars and run for at least ten years penalty many of his victims may not have survived another ten years, and it was important that they lived to see him convicted. Although the prosecution agreed to accept his plea, the deal was regarded as highly unusual. He would be spared the death penalty if he pled guilty to everything. They didn't care that the statute of limitations had expired on most of his crimes, they wanted to see him sit there in court and admit guilt to every single thing that he'd done, whether he could be prosecuted for it or not. In the end Dosis Angelo admitted to one hundred and sixty one crimes. At a sentencing hearing, the victims and their families made their statements. In turn, his family then made their statements, including his daughter's passionate letter. In the end he was given the opportunity to make an extremely weak and emotionless apology. All that was left to do was for the judge to hand down a verdict. The hearing was broadcast live nation had the opportunity to see what the judge had decided. Joseph was given the maximum possible sentence for his crimes. He was sentenced to eleven life sentences to be served consecutively. Following these, he was to serve another life sentence, and after all that was done, he would serve eight more years. I understand why it was broken down in that way when it was announced, but the American justice system is certainly a bit weird He began serving his sentence in november twenty at Northcirn State Prison, a medium security prison that basically acts as a hub where the newly incarcerated are evaluated before it is determined what prison to send them to for the rest of their sentence. Three months later, he was transferred to California State Prison, Cor Corn where he is held in protective custody. As much as I wish he could have been sentenced to death, I can at least take a little solace in the fact that The convicted murderer and attempted child rapist had to spend a few months in Gen Pop Wrap up. I think it's fair to say that very few people were to see the golden stakeiller fininery arrested and brought at least some semblance of justice. However, how he was found remains extremely controversial. Yeah you're definitely going to get some people who are like He should have been set free. They shouldn' have looked to the evidence that was publicly uploaded to the website The information in the box is way too small S shit Alex Jones would say, you know. Jed has gone through several changes to their terms of service and privacy policy since the attention they received following his arrest. Following a controversy in which they violated their own privacy policy by volunteering assistance to the police and a case that was outside the scope of their stated policy, some major changes were made. Users now have to opt in for their uploaded data to be searchable by law enforcement and law enforcement officials cannot sign up as regular users. They have to go through a special process order ad a genetic profile that is being used as part of a case. Of course That's just their official policy, while other genealogy websites will do everything they legally can to fight warrants and prevvent from sharing users information, Jed does not. In twenty nineteen, they were served with a warrant by a Florida court to give police access to all of their DNA profiles, including the over ninety percent who had chosen not to opt in to aiding law enforcement They complied without fighting the warrant. Yeah, this is the thing there it's a free thing, right? They probably don't have a legal department Or if they do, it's not going to be that well funded because it's free. It's a very morally complex situation, but it's one society is really going to need to examine in the near future. On the one hand, I'm glad they caught the Golden State killer, and that isn't even close to the only case that could be sold in this way. I mean a few paragraphs ago was practically begging to flip the switch on the chair myself. But then on the other hand, it's weird But it's creepy and I don't like it. I've never seriously considered a life of crime and even if I would have considered it, the mere existence of DNA evidence would have be enough to stop me without these databases existing. It's like yeah, yeah. At no point in my life should I either stand to lose anything by authorities having access to these and I understand how they're beneficial, yet it still feels wrong somehow. Kevin has just articulated exactly what I was trying to say earlier in a more articulate way. Maybe it's the complete lack of autonomy. The universe system is entirely on an opt in basis, no individual really has any control over their information. If a distant relative with a single shared ancestor nearly two hundred years ago opted in, now they can find that person regardless of their choice. This is a true crime sh. We're not going to solve complex ethical dilemmas like this, but we do need to be prepared to find a better solution or a compromise in the near future. It's easy to say that you shouldn't be opposed to it if you have nothing to hide, but you can have nothing to hide while also not wanting to feel like you're under constant surveillance or living in Gatica. Great movie, Kevin That is like. It's like a nineties movie. I didn't even realize it was that big of a movie. That's a great movie. It will be very interesting to see which direction society as a whole Yeah, I think it'll be super It's going to be super interesting to see how this plays out legally. Anyway, this has been episode of the Casual Criminals. Thank you for being here really appreciate it, listening, watching, however you consume the show. Look, if you're listening to this show, do me a favour. Leave me a review. That would be wonderful. It really helps get this show in front of more people And I'll see you next time