SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A former California police officer dubbed the Golden State Killer told victims Friday hew was “truly sorry” before he was sentenced to multiple life prison sentences for a decade-long string of rapes and murders that terrorized a wide swath of the state.
Joseph James DeAngelo, 74, pleaded guilty in June to 13 murders and 13 rape-related charges under a plea deal that avoided a possible death sentence.
The punishment imposed by Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Michael Bowman means DeAngelo will die in prison for the crimes committed between 1975 and 1986.
Before sentencing, DeAngelo rose from a wheelchair, took off his mask and said to the court: “I listened to all your statements, each one of them, and I’m truly sorry for everyone I’ve hurt.”
DeAngelo also publicly admitted dozens more sexual assaults for which the statute of limitations had expired. Prosecutors called the scale of the violence “simply staggering,” encompassing 87 victims at 53 crime scenes spanning 11 California counties.
So many were his victims that Bowman sentenced DeAngelo in a university ballroom large enough to hold the survivors and their families, after an extraordinary three days of hearings in which they told in often heart-rending detail how he had upended their lives.
He eluded capture for four decades until investigators used a new form of DNA tracking to unmask and arrest him in 2018.
DeAngelo sat silently through those hearings, expressionless in a wheelchair that prosecutors contended is a prop to hide his still vigorous health.
The hearing began with the first rape DeAngelo has admitted, that of Phyllis Henneman.
With Henneman unable to attend because she is ill with cancer, her statement was read by her sister, Karen Veilleux. “I went to bed … not knowing my life would change,” Veilleux read, halting for a moment to choke back sobs.
She described Henneman’s years of anxiety and fear that followed her June 1976 rape. “The roles have now been reversed,” Veilleux concluded. “He deserves to spend the rest of his miserable life in prison. I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.”
Kris Pedretti was 15 when DeAngelo raped her in December 1976. “He tormented me. And he told me over and over again he would kill me, and I believed him,” she said.
“At three different times that night, I thought I was going to die. I sang ‘Jesus Loves Me’ in my head as I waited to die. The next morning, Dec. 19, I woke up knowing I would never be a child again and, although I was truly grateful to be alive, I also felt that I had died.”
Prosecutors initially sought the death penalty, but settled for a life term given California’s moratorium on executions, the coronavirus pandemic, and the advancing age of DeAngelo, his victims, and witnesses they needed to make their case.
Bowman sentenced DeAngelo under a plea deal that called for him to be sentenced to 11 consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole, plus 15 life terms with the possibility of parole and eight years for other enhancements.
