Speaker 1: You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast.
Speaker 2: My name is Bill Thomas. I'm a writer, consulting, producer,
and now podcaster. I am now trying to use my
experience as the brother of a murder victim to help
other victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book
on the unsolved Colonial Parkway murders, and I'm the co
administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 3: My name is Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 4: I'm a writer, a researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate,
as well as the social media manager and co administrator
for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner
in crime, Bill Thomas.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Mind Ever Murder.
Speaker 5: I'm Kristin Dilly and I'm Bill Thomas.
Speaker 3: We're joined today by Tinhoe, the Sacramento District attorney and
author of The People Versus the Golden State Killer. Tin
thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 6: It's truly an order to be on your podcast and
to really take this opportunity to speak with you about
my new book, The People Versus the Goldi State Killer.
Speaker 3: This book is absolutely amazing and we want to make
sure that we get into the circumstances behind it and
your connection to it. So start by telling our listeners
what your connection is to the Golden State Killer case.
Speaker 6: Currently, I'm the elected District Attorney of Sacramento County, which
is the capitol in California. We have about one hundred
and ninety prosecutors nearly five hundred employees. Were the second
largest DA's office in northern California. But the fact of
the matter is when we identified, arrested, and prosecuted Joseph DeAngelo,
the Golden State Culler, the original Knights Socker, the East
Air rapist, the Viceitia Ransacker, it was here in Sacramento
and I was the lead prosecutor, working with an amazing
team from six other different DA's offices. And now, after
five years, I've decided to write a true crime memoir
of the People Versus the Goldis State Killer, to talk
about the investigation, the capture, and the prosecution of the
go to State killer.
Speaker 2: For the longest time, you weren't able to say much
publicly beyond the press conferences and those sorts of things.
Do you feel like, now that several years have gone by,
DeAngelo's prosecuted. He's in jail, He's not going anywhere. Does
that free you up to speak more frankly about the
case and the backstory?
Speaker 6: Absolutely? And he is now serving time multiple life without
the possibility terms in prison, he'll never see the light
of day. I get updates on him quite a bit,
and I've really decided to sit down and talk to
some of the survivors and to really shift the focus
of the true crime genre away from the criminal and
the crimes and focus it on the generation of law
enforcement that never gave up the pursuit of justice in
finding him, and the prosecutors who prosecuted him, but most
of all, really centering at the heart and soul the
survivors and the victims, providing them a voice to turn
tragedy into tryum, pain into power.
Speaker 3: And we are highly supportive of that because we believe
that is the heart of the true crime space. It's
the people who have survived and thrived and then telling
the stories of the victims who no longer have the
ability to speak for themselves. So we applaud you for that.
You've done a marvelous job with this book.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
Speaker 3: When did you first learn about Joseph DiAngelo's crimes. As
you said a minute ago, He's known by many names
of Isilia, Ransacker, the East Area rapist, the original nightstalker.
Were you familiar with these cases before you heard, Hey,
we've got Joe DiAngelo in custody.
Speaker 6: Oh. I described it in the book. In the early
part of the book. I was a young prosecutor assigned
to the homicide unit here at the Sacramento Dage Office,
and I was proscuting my very first homicide. It was
the case of Rajit Singh, who was found half naked
behind a brick wall in the drizzling rain on a
New Year's Day. And it was back in twenty twelve.
I'm going out to the crime scene with the detective
and another prosecutor in my office who grew up in
Ranchel Krodova. And along the way we saw I saw
all these businesses, all these homes with bars on the
window and the door, and I'm like, what's going on here?
And that's when they started talking about the ear. And
I said the ear, who's the ear? And then they
said that's the East Area rapist. So they told me
about the gruesome nature of his crimes, how he separated
the husband and wife and placed bed sheets on the
husband and then engage in committee these sadistic crimes over
and over again, and I had never heard of them.
It was then six years before we caught him. I
said to both the detective and the other prosecutor, he's
a friend of mine. I said, Look, I've never asked
for a case in my life. I just take whatever
case is dropped off on my desk. But if they
ever catch this guy, I'm going to make an exception
and I'm going to ask for the case. And fast
forward six years later, we found them through the use
of genetic genealogy, and the rest is history. And I
talked about how I ended up asking for the case,
getting assigned for the case, and most of all, meeting
all the survivors.
Speaker 2: The work that you do as a prosecutor is something
that a lot of us we see on television, but
I'm sure we get to a streamlined and simplified version
of what really goes on. When you say you asked
for the case, Who are you asking and who decides
assigning an important case like this to a particular prosecutor.
How does that work in our office?
Speaker 6: What happens is you have a supervisor of the homicide team,
and essentially they review all the cases that come in
that are homicides, they make the charging decision, and they
assigned it out. And so my supervisor at the time
was named Rod. But a case of this magnitude, of
this scope, of this importance, it's the decision on who
to sign that case is going to be up to
the elected DA And at the time I was a
homicide prosecutor. I waited about a week or so, nobody
had been assigned the case. I simply walked into my
supervisor's office and I said, look, Rod, if you're on
Sealed Team six and they told you they found Osama
bin Laden in Pakistan, you know what you say? And
he looked at me and he had this big grin
on his face and he said what. I leaned in
and I tapped on the folder, the file folder, and
I said, you asked to be on that helicopter ride
into Pakistan, Roder, I'm asking to be on the helicopter
ride on this case. And I walked out, didn't say
another word. Two hours later, I was assigned to prosecute
the biggest case of my career. And it's been an
honor to be assigned that case. We had three million
pages of documents, and that doesn't even include, for example,
all the other videotape forensic evidence from all the other counties,
and so it was such a ginormous scope in terms
of prosecuting it. It was a lot to take in.
And the first thing I did was I read Michelle
mcnamary's book, I'll be Gotten in the Dark.
Speaker 2: Yes, she was a friend of ours and we're very
sorry about her not being there at the end of
this long, incredible, multi year journey. And she actually is
the person that coined this expression, the Golden State Killer.
Speaker 6: I had so much wish after so I read that
book because I wanted to get a full glimpse, sixty
thousand foot level of the cases. And I got to
tell you, when I read her book, I couldn't sleep
for several nights. It invaded my dreams and my nightmares.
But I also sense Michelle's passion for the case. And
then I got to know Paul Holmes, who wrote his
book as well on the Golden State Killer case. We
bonded over a cocktail or two and Santa Barbara talking
about his part in it. But when he wrote his book,
it's about the investigation and how we zeroed in on him.
And so I look at my book as the third
in the trilogy, right, that covers the investigation, the capture,
and the prosecution. But it really highlights some of the
great things that Michelle brought to the forefront, that Paul
carried on and that I'm trying to bring together.
Speaker 3: I think that's fantastic. It's a great way to look
at it. At what point in the process did you
actually start meeting with the survivors of the Golden Stake killer, So,
like Jane Carson Sandler, Debbie Domingo, anyone who ultimately lived,
when did you start meeting with them and what were
those meetings like for you?
Speaker 6: Well, the way we divided the cases up, he committed
his crimes in Sacramento, in the Bay Area, at Contracosta
vy Salia, Irvine. In terms of Orange County Venturist Santa Barbara,
and so the Orange County prosecutors were responsible for their cases.
We in Sacramento prosecuted the Contra Costa and the Santa
Barbara cases. The very first time I met any of
the survivors was in court I was making an argument
in court to be able to go in and take
some DNA sample from his mouth, to be able to
take photographs of his genitalia, et cetera. And so that
was the very first time that I had met several
of the victims. And I'll never forget it. We walked
into the courtroom and we got to go in there
ahead of time. The victims were staged in another courtroom
and the advocates, the victim advocates, brought them over before
we opened the door to the public. Now, remember, a short,
gray haired woman and these thick round glasses came up
to me. And I had read her police report. I
had seen the photographs of when she was twenty three
years old and assaulted in Sacramento. It was Phyllis Zika,
who was the very first sexual assault victim in Sacramento,
and so I had this image of her. But here
she was standing in front of me. She reached out
to says, Hi, my name is Phyllis, I'm victim number one. Hi,
my name is Chris PEEDRETTI I'm victim number ten. And
the impact the numbers kept going up, and it just
it hit me right there and then. But standing there
holding Phyllis's hand. It was as if I was reaching
out across time in space. Here was a twenty three
year old woman that I had seen on paper and photographs,
and here I was holding her hand forty something years later,
responsible for giving her and helping her find justice. And
I never promised results, never, But somehow in that case,
something overcame me and I said, Phyllis, I don't know
how we're going to do it, but we're going to
make sure that you have a voice in this case.
We're going to make sure that you get justice. If
you read the book, you find out Phyllis's journey, our
journey together. I always think of Phillis quite often, and
that's why a part of the proceeds of this book
goes to a nonprofit in Phyllis's name.
Speaker 2: Is that something that you've developed over time, Tim is
the idea that you'd never promise family survivors a result,
because you know that lots of things can happen in
a courtroom.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, think about it for a moment. You have a
jury of twelve people and I have to convince them
to do something monumental. Imagine getting twelve people and convincing
all twelve of them to have the same thing for
breakfast at the same time. But now I got to
do that beyond a reasonable doubt, to convict somebody of murder,
of rape and maybe even sentenced them to death. It
is very difficult, more difficult than people can imagine, and
so I never make any promises because you never know
what's going to happen. All I tell them is I'm
going to work hard, and you're never going to find
another person that is going to work harder than me
to find you justice. But for some reason, in that moment,
looking in Phyllis's eyes and how long she had waited
for justice, it just overcame me. Something overcame me, and
I just I said, we're going to make sure that
you get justice. I don't know what it was, and
true to our word, when you read the book, you'll
find out how we went about doing it.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I particularly was impacted by
it is the fact that you made sure that all
of the victims, including the ones that were uncharged, the
ones whose statutes of limitations were up already, You made
sure that those victims got justice as well. And I
really just cannot applaud you enough for that. Can you
talk a little bit about why there were sixty five
different victims who ultimately their cases could not be brought
into court. Talk to anybody who doesn't know about the
statute of limitations issue within the GSK case.
Speaker 6: So, the statute of limitation is the period of time
that a prosecutor is allowed to charge a case. Right,
so for certain crimes that are life crimes, like murder,
you can be sentenced to life in prison, and so
there's no statue limitations. There's no amount of time that
can go by before I can file cases. But in
the nineteen seventies, rape had a three year statue limitation,
which means from the time that the crime occurred is
the time that we find out that this person committed
this rate, I only have three years to charge that person.
And if those three years came in god, I was
precluded from filing charges and giving justice to that victim.
It's changed somewhat since then, but it was a real
hurdle in the case. And so we had all these
rape cases in Sacramento, in Contra Costa, in Santislaw, in
the Bay Area where we could not file charges on it.
The fact of the matters. A lot of those cases,
when the statue ran, the police threw away the forensic evidence,
the DNA evidence, and now I'm losing my mind trying
to figure out how we're going to solve this case.
So we ended up finding a way to charge some
of those cases, but the vast majority, like Phyllis, we
could not charge your case. And if you can't charge
the case, they don't get to stand up in court
and speak. They don't get to hear the defendant admit
that he committed that crime. And so when we ended
up near the end of the case, Phillis and Chris
and all those victims such as Jane, they were at
the forefront of our minds. And it wasn't just me,
it was the other prosecutors on the case. So we
were determined to find a way to get them justice
and give them a voice. And at one point in
the case, and I talk about it, after court, one day,
a number of the victims asked to meet with us,
and we were in this room at the Sacramento Ya's office,
and here they were, all these victims, those that were
charging Uncharge, sitting there, and they spoke up and they
found their voice. They wanted to make sure that we,
as the prosecutors, would not forget them, and I told
them that we wouldn't. We held true to our word,
and I talk about that in the book.
Speaker 2: How does it work ten when you have so many
different areas of jurisdiction? Justin DeAngelo committed horrific crimes almost
all up and down the entire California coast.
Speaker 5: So you end up with all of these different.
Speaker 2: Localities and all of these different prosecutors. How does that
work it logistically? It sounds incredibly complicated to charge someone
for crimes that are committed in all these multiple jurisdictions.
Speaker 6: I'll talk first about the legality of it, and then
I'll talk about the practicality of it. In terms of
the politics. The legality of it is a number. There
was a case number of years ago, people versus al Kala.
This was the dating game serial killer who was on
the dating game and he killed multiple people, including little girls,
in Orange County in LA. Eventually, they tried all those
cases in one county in Orange County, and that case
got challenged up all the way to the California Supreme Corporate.
There's a statute in California. That allows us to take
cases from different jurisdictions and combine them in one little case,
especially when you're dealing with a serial killer. That's the
legality of it. The practicality of it is this, he
committed his crimes in eleven different counties. We Sacramento had
his body in our county jail. And so now you
get into the political side of it. Back then, I
was aligned deputy. I was a runt, a soldier on
the front lines in the trend right, and I would
look up at the elected das, who, at the end
of the day are also elected officials and politicians with
their own issues right, and their own jurisdictions and their
own constituents. And so there was a fight that I
detail in the case about what jurisdiction would ultimately try
the case. Would it be Sacramento, would it be Santa
Barbara vintur would it be Orange County? Who would try
the case? And all the machinations, the Machavelian the political
moves that came with that, because you have different elected
officials that may want this high profile case tried in
their county, then they get more control over and they
get more publicity that's just the reality of it. If
we dealt with that mean I detail that in the book,
but I will say that the line deputies, the soldiers,
like myself and the other prosecutors from the sixth County,
we got along marvelously. We worked together cohesively. But there
was conflict, there was drama, there was the politics of
it at the upper echelon. I used to look at
that and I never want wanted to be a part
of that. Well, and behold, seven years later, I am
the elected DA of Sacramento and I've had to navigate
that on a greater scale. So it's interesting how life
comes full circle.
Speaker 3: Take a couple of minutes and talk to us about
victims impact statements and their importance in the criminal justice system,
because I think for some victims it is the only
way to be heard is giving that victims impact statements.
Talk to us about what that ultimately looks like. And
then what's the process of it. Do you have to
approve the statements before they're read in court? Do the
survivors just have free reign to talk about what they
want to talk about?
Speaker 6: First of all, in my opinion, other than the conviction
and the sentencing, of a defendant. The next most important
thing is sometimes even more important, are the impact statements
to the victims. It is their opportunity to be able
to seize back the control and the power. You're a
victim of a vitent crime. You've had the very fabric
and the tapestry of your life ripped apart, and here's
the opportunity to regain that strength and power. And I
remember I had two little girls who were sexually assaulted.
They were six years old and eight years old. They
were sisters by their biological father. And I remember them testifying,
and I remember the impact statement they read. It will
always resonate with me, and I think the same way
of victims, and I always want to make sure that
they have that time and that space to be able
to come into court before the person that did this
to them or to their loved one and stand them
and look them in the eye, and to be able
to force that person to hear the impact that it
had on them, their family, and their lives and on society.
To me, it is one of the most beautiful and
powerful moments in our criminal justice system. Now, how it
works is we'll work with the victims ahead of time,
and give them certain guidelines. Obviously there are certain rules.
Judges don't allow people to go in there and curse
and make threats, And we provide some guidance along with
our advocates for them to write it, and oftentimes after
they write it, as a prosecutor, I'll review it to
make sure that it doesn't violate that. If it does
for some reason, I'll have a very respectful conversation with
them in regards to But sometimes the emotion takes over
in the moment. In this particular case, you can imagine
the number of impact statements that are read from all
different counties. Yeah, but we planned them precisely, and this
happened in the middle of COVID.
Speaker 5: I remember this.
Speaker 7: Yeah, oh yeah, I remember that. I know, Kristen, And
I mean it's five years ago. Five years has passed
since COVID since what is it? A one hundred year
worldwide pandemic. And I talk about that in the book.
Speaker 6: You had to get your temperature measured when you walk
into it. Do you remember that?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And I remember how far apart everybody was seated.
We watched it online, but I remember I was so
shocked how much distance physical distance there was required because
they were trying not to spread COVID anymore than it
was already impacting the community.
Speaker 6: Do you remember the first time either of you ever
heard the words social distancing?
Speaker 5: I had something to do with that, Well.
Speaker 6: What is social distancing? And I immediately looked it up
online like six feet apart? And so we're thinking, how
are you going to find a courtroom that can fit
two hundred people six feet apart? Right, So we went
through that whole process and so on the GSK case
go and stay killed. We had to plan out the
impact statements. This day is going to be the Sacramento crimes,
This day is going to be all the other sexual
sought crimes, This day is Orange County and toilarry this.
So we mapped it out as a crescendo leading up
from Monday all the way through Friday, which was when
he was going to receive his sentence in this massive barroom,
and the setup on that and how that was going
to set up. And I had beforehand a little bit
of inkling that he was going to say something, that
D'Angelo was going to get up and say something. We
also had to deal with the security issues with that
what he was going to do and just the logistics
of that. But to me, the most powerful part and
I talk about and I read, write or restate some
of the impacts game is from Jane from Chris from
Gay because it was so powerful.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll be right back
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mindover Murder.
Speaker 3: I know that we want people to read the book,
but I really would love it if you could tell
me about how you forced the issue on making him
wear a clear faith shield, because that, to me, I
loved you for that when you said here's why I
want him to wear a clear face shield. That's one
of the things that made me cry in the book.
Speaker 6: So it's now June of twenty twenty two and a
half months after COVID started. In terms of the shutdown, right,
he can't even go to the park, you can't go up.
Businesses are shutting down, Schools in many parts of the
country were shutting down, or we were on zoom. Right,
the whole world was turned upside down. And here I
am trying to think of how to go to court
and do this the way I looked at it and
I was having a dream one night thinking of about it,
and my nightmare was when Joseph D'Angelo committed his crimes,
he wore a mask. Yes, the badge in the uniform
was nothing but a mask. When his family, his kids,
his wife, they were nothing but a mask. His life
as a retired mechanic after he got fired was nothing
but a mask. And when he came to court he
was laid out in his wheelchair looking back, mouthed a gate,
pretending to be an invalid. That was a mask. So
I wanted to make sure that when he came to
court and the victims finally saw him, that he wouldn't
be able to hide behind a mask. So I decided
to go on Amazon and buy one of those clear
face shields, and then I set it up in court,
you know, in a discussion with the judge, to get
the judge and the defense attorney to buy into forcing
to wear this face shield. And I talked about that
in the book. The key part was, if you've ever
been in court, usually the audience is sitting here, and
then in front of that you have the defendant with
his back to the jury and to the audio, back
to the audience and the judge up here, and I
didn't want D'Angelo to have his profile to the victims,
the survivor and the audience, and then to have his
attorney sit there and block so we can't even see him.
And so I got early to the courtroom at the
sax State Ballroom and I set up the table in
a way where he had to face the audience with
his face shield on. And I had to set that up.
But we ran into a little problem along the way,
and in the book I talk about how we overcame
that problem. You go back and you watch the video,
you'll find out that we did, in fact overcome that problem.
That he did have to sit there, that he did
have to wear the face shield that was clear, and
that he did have to look at his victims and
survivors in the face. But I go and I talk
about that in the book, and to me, it was
one of my proudest moments as an attorney.
Speaker 2: Do that I'm flashing back to those moments. What was
going on with DiAngelo and him flopping around like some
sort of invalid It was ludicrous from what we'd read,
and if I'm talking to Paul Holes and others, he
was supposedly writing his motorcycle days before his arrest, and
was a perfectly healthy, physically active man. And then he
shows up in the courtroom in a wheelchair looking like
he's on death's door. What was going on there?
Speaker 6: So first thing, sometimes people may not have heard this,
but if you go back and you look at his
booking photo right that, you see he's got red on
the top of his head. That's blood because when they
put him into the booking cell, he ran put his
head down and he ran it into the wall, Okay,
and that's why you see the red up on the
top there. And so they put a camera inside his cell.
They put him in one of three cells at the
Sacramento jol that had a camera inside, so I would
get videos of in his cell doing things. And what
I would say is this. Remember I said that when
he committed his crimes, he wore a mask. He was
the master manipulator. His act in the courtroom was nothing
more than a mask to hide his true cell, true
monster behind it. Because I have videos of him literally
walking to his cell with a king like in the
usual suspect walking in with his cane. The moment the
door closes, the king goes down and he's walking in
his circles, he's doing jumping jacks, he's climbing up and down.
He's perfectly acting normal. And in fact, I have a
video of him. And people talk about people getting old
and they lose that sense of depravity. I have a
video of him at the age of seventy three and
he's in his jail cell looking out and there's a
young female worker in the central pot area and he
begins to masturbate to her. And so you can see
that he has not lost his depravity even at the
age of seventy three. And everything that we saw in
court and in public was nothing but a mask of
a master manipulator.
Speaker 2: So all of that stuff that he was pulling where
he couldn't talk and his voice is barely a whisper
and he's flopped over to the side, was he getting
coached by his attorneys, and he just decided he was
going to try to look like this diminished old man
instead of the horrible rapist and murderer that he was.
Speaker 6: No his attorneys. I've worked with those public defenders, one
of them is a judge now, and I can tell
you that they didn't coach him. This was all him,
This was him being the master manipulator, This was him
having the mask to hide the monster. Right. This is
classic Joseph di'angelo, classic Golden State killer and everything that
he's done throughout those entire time spree.
Speaker 3: One of the many things that I love about Jane
is that Jade never fails to bring a little something
extra to the conversation, to the table. And at her
victim's impact statement, she actually brought in Joe DiAngelo's ex
wife Bonnie. What was it like when DiAngelo saw his
ex wife Bonnie in that courtroom?
Speaker 6: So just a point of clarification, So Bonnie was the
ex fiance.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm sorry, okay, Xpansa.
Speaker 6: But Bonnie was the ex fiance and she called off
the engagement because she saw how manipulative he was. And
I see her as a victim of the Angelo as well.
Out and with Jane, Jane always brings something extra, right,
She's fire and brimstone. She is like this dynamite, this
force of nature. And so she had her impact statement
and she had stunt it to us and I read
it and it had nothing at all in there about Bonnie.
Speaker 5: Nothing, But I.
Speaker 6: Always knew that with Jane. There was something a little extra,
and that's what I love about Jane. So I'm sitting
there and all of a sudden, she says, and I
brought somebody with me. I brought Bonnie. She wanted to
get a reaction from him, right and the moment she
brought Bonnie up there and the moment she said her name.
I am staring intently, not more than six feet away
from Joseph di'angelo, and he's got his mask on, but
I could see his chests, I could see his throat.
He took a big gulp, his breathing got shallow, and
it was going faster. So I knew that it had
an impact on him, that she brought it. And he
just looked straight ahead, no eye contact, no movement, nothing,
but I could tell that he was feeling it. And
that moment that he saw her for the first time
to the day that forty plus years ago that she
got rid of him and kicked him to the curb,
and rightfully to hear she was. Bonnie was there and
he wouldn't look, but I could tell that he had
an affected And after court that day, I was walking
back to the office and I happened to see Jane
and Bonnie outside. He came over. We stopped and we
chat and I told him that story about that reaction
that I saw, And I love Jane and I love
the work that you know, Bonnie does with Phyllis's Garden
as well. Two amazing ladies that have truly found their
voices and continue to do so.
Speaker 2: Isn't there a strange story in one of those incidents
where de Angelos was in another room and he's whimpering
and crying and mumbling to himself, And wasn't he saying
Bonnie's name at one point?
Speaker 6: Yes, So it was a sexual assault that happened in Davis, California.
And in that particular incident, after the sexual assault, he's
nearby and he's crying and whimpering to himself and he
talks about And that's why when we found Joseph DiAngelo,
we did genetic gealogy, built this massive family tree. The
investigators in our office, in collaboration with Paul Hose, we
had to narrow down the list of suspects and we
narrowed it down to about three people. And part of
the sort of analysis of D'Angelo was we found that
he was at one point engaged to a Bonnie, and
so that was just another piece in the puzzle. And
over the years, some people have speculated that he committed
his crimes because of Bonnie, and I want to disavow
and disprove of that that was not the case. The
crimes of Joseph DiAngelo and the Golden State career are
his crimes and his choices alone, and they should never
be put at the feet of anybody, especially somebody like Bonnie, who,
in my opinion, is a survivor herself of Joseph DiAngelo.
And so I've said that in the book, I've said
it before and I'll continue to say that. But there
was that little nugget there as we were retracing and
really developing the timeline of Joseph Diangel's.
Speaker 2: Life, talk to us about the investigative genetic genealogy, because
this is one of the first and certainly at that point,
the highest profile case using this new technology. How was
it introduced, What did you think? How did that process unfold?
Speaker 6: So Paul Holes came up with the idea based upon
briefing that he received on another case where there was
a young child that had been abandoned by her perpetrator.
Her molester, who claimed to be her father but in
fact was not her father, had basically killed her mother
and kidnapped her. And so we used genetic genealogy in
that case to find her identity. So when Paul heard
about that case, he came up with the idea, let's
see what we can do here about using genetic genealogy,
And so genetic genealogy is what we do on twenty
three and meters ancestry dot com. You take a BUCO swab,
you send it to the company, They take your DNA,
they converted into what we call a SNIP profile or
single nucleotide polymorphism profile that measures a million areas in
your chromosome. And the more areas of that c that
you haven't commo some of the als, the more closely
related you are. So in this case, we needed some
DNA to be able to create the SNIP profile uploaded
to a database, and we ended up getting and I
talk about that in the book how you Know. There
was a lot of struggles in terms of getting it,
but we were able to get a sample from a
second rate kit. In Charlene Smith's rape and murder out
of Ventura, County, all homes came to her office, did
the presentation. We had help from the FBI, from Barbara
ray Ventnor, but then from two different people in our office,
an investigator and an investigative assistant, Kirk Campbell Monica Jakowski.
So we created this family tree that we had a
distant relative connected to D'Angel. But then you have to
build this family tree. Okay, who were their parents, who
are their assumings, the grandparents, the uncles and aunties, go
up to the common ancestor and build it down. So
we had a thousand plus names on this and then
you had to narrow it down. Who was white, who
was male, Who was a police officer, who was the military,
who lived in this area. We narrowed it down to
three people or so. And then we ended up collecting
their trash that they put out, and the last item
we tested because we dumped it in aligned garbage truck.
The last item was a tissue, and that last item
tested positive to all the great victims in SoCal and
the one in Coco.
Speaker 3: Unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Were there people in the office so on the team
that said this is insane and will never work, or
was everybody committed to it, saying it's worth a shot.
Speaker 6: I can tell you that from the Sacramento team, the
genealogy team that had the Sacramento investigators and Monica and Kirk,
and then with Paul Barbaray Vettner and the FBI, they
were confident that this was going to solve it. They
were confident. There may have been other people in other
offices weren't as confident, but we were confident that this
was going to solve it. And then it was this
good old detective work, right, gumshoe detective work in terms
of narrowing it down and then following him around for days.
And Paul falk about it in his book where he
drove up to Deandrew's house and sat actor and debated
what he was going to do. I'm glad he didn't
go in, but.
Speaker 5: He thought about it.
Speaker 6: All thought about it. Paul thought about it, but the
inspiration was Paul. He came up with the idea, and
then a bunch of us then put in the work
and solve the case. And then after he was caught,
we then had to go through the process of prosecuting him.
And that is something that has never been talked about before.
Speaker 3: I'm curious. Part of my other job, my day job,
is I teach writing to teenagers, and so I'm always
curious about your research and writing process so that I
can prove to kids the books are not born right
out of somebody's head. There's a process. So can you
tell us a little bit about your research and writing process,
especially because this is a huge book, it covers so much,
talk to us a little bit about your research and
writing process.
Speaker 6: I have to tell you that today, when I opened
the boxing and held in my hand the book for
the first time, I got a little bit of emotional
because I was an immigrant and a refugee my parents
and I talk about in the book escaped on a
fishing boat, and when I came to this country, I
couldn't speak and understand a single word of English. I
learned how to speak English by watching Bugs Bunny cartoons.
Twenty years later, graduated right Bugs Bunny from law school,
and I got to say that I never thought that
I would be a lawyer, never thought i'd be a prosecutor,
never thought i'd be the elected DA and I certainly
never envisioned becoming a published author of a book. And
I've never written a book before. So the process here
with Third State Books and Third State Books is an
independent publishing company and they're providing Asian Americans a voice
in the publishing world. What I did was I wrote
a very detail outline about thirty pages of the chapters
of the book, and then every day I'd wake up
at five o'clock in the morning and spend two hours
writing it. And then I'd send you know what I
had when I had about half a chapter, a chapter
to my editor in New York, Charles Kim. He would
review it, he would edit it for grammar structure, sent
it to me, and that process will go on, and
then we kept building it up and I wrote the
book in about seven months.
Speaker 5: That's actually remarkably fa wow, Holy.
Speaker 6: How Dovin Munson doing it. The way I structure the
book is there's oftentimes the A, the B and the
C story. So if you look at the Titanic, right,
and I study movies and I study like other books,
and I'm constantly telling stories in the courtroom. In the Titanic,
you have the A story, which is the search for
the rose diamond. The B story is the love story
between Leo and Kate, and the C story is the
sinking of the Titanic. So in this sense, the A
story is the investigation, the capture, and the prosecution of GSK.
The B stories my story, and the C story is
the stories of the survivors and how they found their voices.
And the struggle that I had was his crimes were
committed forty years ago, so I had to talk about
something that happened forty years ago and then jump forward
in time and then go back, and then the timelines
begin to merge. So that was an aspect of the
book that was challenging to cover something with such a
big scope.
Speaker 3: It works beautifully, it says we said off air, I
read a lot of this stuff. Our listeners know that
I spend most of my time delving into true crime.
This is I would dare to say. It is masterfully
put together. I didn't have a single problem following it.
It is so thoughtfully threaded and braided together. It's beautiful.
For a first work, this is a worthy effort. It's
really fantastic, and I think it's just one of the
best things that I have read recently inside the true
crime space. Kudos to you. This is amazing.
Speaker 6: Oh thank you thank those are very kind words. I'm
very appreciative of that.
Speaker 3: How do you feel like you managed to balance writing
in your legal career? Because two hours of writing in
the morning and then the rest of the day you're
off doing what you do as a DA that had
to have been difficult.
Speaker 6: It was challenging. I have a great team here, So
we have, like I said, almost one hundred and ninety lawyers,
five hundred employees, the second largest office in northern California.
We run our crime lab, which is unique. We're only
one of four in the state of California. But I
have a great executive team. I have a great number
two that runs the day to day operation. So last
year I probably attended about four hundred community events in
a year, and so oftentimes it's me being out there
in the community. But I carved aside two hours every
morning to really nail down and ride it and just
keep that process going, and then you build this momentum.
It's just that process of doing it. You have a
good outline and then you just stick to it. I mean,
I encourage anybody who's thinking about being an Austin jump
both feed in and do it. Don't think about oh
I want to try. No, you either do it or
you don't do it. So jump in and maybe it
works for you, maybe it doesn't. You got to jump
two feet in all the way in and swim across
the ocean. I love it. I love it.
Speaker 3: That is absolutely fantastic. So tell our listeners where they
can find.
Speaker 6: Your book, The People versus the Golden State Killer. It's
going to be released on November eleventh. Right now, they
can go on nho dot org. That's tea hi e
n ho dot org. When they go on there, they'll
be able to be connected to a local bookstore. So
rather than buying it on from a big retailer or Amazon,
let's support our small local bookstores and our small businesses.
So if you go on Tinho t Hi n ho
dot org, you'll be able to pre order the book
now comes out on November the eleven, But if you
order it now, what will happen is you'll probably get
your book about a week before that. I'm going on
book tours in Houston, in Saint Louis and Seattle, in
La Irvine and Orange County, in Santa Barbara, in San Francisco,
and of course Sacramento. We have a book signing in
Sacramento at the main Library in November twelfth. I think
we have about two hundred and seventy people already RSVP,
and we're about a month out and love to see
people on the book tour, but please pre order to
support our local bookstores.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we love the local bookstore angle because it's very
important to both of us that we support local bookstores
and local businesses. And we've ordered plenty of books online,
both of us, but my strong preference is to buy local,
and I think it's really important for people around the
country to buy this book, read it, and enjoy it.
Speaker 6: We have the.
Speaker 2: Uncorrected proof advanced reader copies, which are pretty impressive. I
can't wait to see the actual book. And November eleventh
is my birthday. On top of everything.
Speaker 6: Else, even better, even better, And the other thing I
want to mention and happy birthday to you there, Bill.
But the other thing is a portion of the proceeds
is going to go to fund Phyllis's Garden, which is
a nonprofit started by several of the survivors. So I'm
a big supporter of theirs, and we want to be
able to support survivors.
Speaker 2: All in all, do you feel that justice was done
for the GSK victims and survivors.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, to bring this case to its completion in the
middle of COVID and allow all the survivors and all
the victims' families to have an impact statement and avoid
to make sure that they hear that he is admitting
to these crimes. I think it's hugely important, and I
think we were able to obtain a measure of justice
and a measure of closure for all the victims. And
I think you will get that sense when you talk
to the survivors and when you read the book, because
at the end of the day, it's all about them.
Speaker 3: The book is The People Versus the Golden State Killer
by Tinhoe, the District Attorney of Sacramento. Tin thank you
for joining us today. We have really appreciated talking to you.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: That is going to do it for this episode of
Mind Over Murder. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 6: We'll see you next time.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Another Dog Productions.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.
Speaker 1: Our logo art is by i'm La Arnoir.
Speaker 2: Our theme music is by Kevin McCloud.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with crawl Space Media.
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Speaker 1: You can also follow our page on the Colonial Parkway
Murders on Facebook.
Speaker 2: And finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at
Bill Thomas. Five six.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to mind over Murder.