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After decades, former police officer confesses he is the Golden State Killer

• mrlala 6y ago
  >Decades after the last case went cold, investigators announced in 2018 that DNA led them to a break in the case. Detectives submitted the killer's DNA to an open-source genealogy website called GEDmatch, where it found a hit with a DeAngelo relative who used the service. Detectives were then able to narrow their list of suspects, eventually arresting DeAngelo after a covertly obtained sample from his trash matched the DNA that linked so many crime scenes. >Left alone in the interrogation room, Sacramento County Deputy District Attorney Thienvu Ho said DeAngelo began to talk to himself. >"I did all that," he allegedly said. Annoying article headline makes it sound like he just turned himself in and confessed.. at least that's how I read it. But it was really a DNA match that they brought him in and THEN he confessed. Crazy to get that match 30 years later!
  • shadowgovt 6y ago
    Yep. And the genealogy work-up wasn't, to my knowledge, submitted directly as evidence. It was, rather, enough circumstantial evidence to support allocating police resources to a direct DNA-harvesting operation, where they found a 1-to-1 match between him and the evidence of the killer.
• dang 6y ago
  If curious see also https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=comments%3E1%20%22golden%20state%20killer%22&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
• NotSammyHagar 6y ago
  This story needs an indepth article that explores why the cops couldn't trace him. Was he ever a suspect, was he going so far outside his home area that no one saw him as a suspect. Why didn't his absences from his family connect him? Why did he do it - even for angry people, this kind of acting out and attacks is far far outside normal behavior of course.