How Was the Golden State Killer Finally Caught? A New Book by the Prosecutor Responsible Takes Us Inside (Exclusive) By Lizz Schumer

Like a dance, a police interrogation requires finesse, timing and a precise, choreographed set of steps and moves. A skilled interrogator needs to have the right  feel and intuition for the moment. It helps if you have a partner who is willing to talk. As a common law-enforcement tactic, perpetrators are placed in an interrogation room and made to sit and wait a long time before anyone speaks to them. This allows them to wallow in their predicament, their minds running wild with fear and anxiety. They may fidget, talk to themselves or to us, or get up and pace about the room to break the monotony. Sometimes, suspects fall asleep at the table before being  awakened by the loud clanging of the metal door opening and detectives walking in.  

Joseph James DeAngelo, the “Golden State Killer,” was unusual, and so was his interrogation. At 5:20 p.m. on April 24, 2018, an hour after the Fugitive  Apprehension Team, known as “the Bodysnatchers,” arrested him, investigators placed him in a small interrogation room at the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department headquarters. DeAngelo, wearing a T-shirt, cargo shorts and tube socks, sat down in a plastic chair at the table in the middle of the room. He was left to sit  alone until 6:52 p.m. For an entire hour and a half, he sat motionless, his mouth agape, periodically taking in loud gulps of air but otherwise never moving an inch or even looking around.  

DeAngelo did not appear particularly menacing. He was thirsty, licking his lips constantly and making smacking sounds with his mouth. Upon reentering the interrogation room after the prolonged wait, Detective Sergeant Kenny Clark asked the suspect, “Do you want some Dr. Pepper?” (Officers had found Dr. Pepper at several of the Golden State Killer’s crime scenes, and since none of the victims drank  Dr. Pepper, police believed he had brought it with him. After DeAngelo’s arrest, the  Sheriff’s Department and the FBI conducted a search of his home and found several  cases of the soft drink.) No reply, no movement, no acknowledgment. “Joe, do you want some Dr. Pepper?” Clark asked again. Still nothing.  

The beginning of an interrogation represents the most vulnerable and disorienting moment for a suspect. Questions run through their minds: How did I get here? What charges am I facing? What evidence do they have against me? Being offered Dr. Pepper repeatedly fed into DeAngelo’s paranoia that law enforcement wanted to collect his DNA from the can. What he didn’t know was that we had already collected it from his trash.  

Clark began the interrogation by advising DeAngelo of his Miranda rights. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. Do you understand?” The suspect remained motionless and mute. Clark repeated the warning. Still nothing. A few hours before, DeAngelo had been cooking a roast in the oven; now he found himself being interrogated. Knowing that curiosity is an itch suspects can’t resist scratching, detectives will encourage suspects to start  asking questions or talk. Clark asked, “Would you like to know why you are here? I would be happy to share that with you. I’ll give you a few minutes to think about it.”  

You don’t want to press too hard at the beginning of an interview as the suspect might shut down the conversation. The worst-case scenario for any detective is when a suspect invokes their right to remain silent or asks for an attorney. But this situation represented a close second. DeAngelo didn’t want to dance. Walking back to his office, where other detectives were watching a television monitor with a live feed, Clark could only mutter to himself, “F—!” He had toiled all these years to catch and  interview the Golden State Killer, and now DeAngelo wouldn’t say a word. Clark told his partners, “Inside, he’s dying to find out what we know. Let’s give him a few minutes to stew on it.”  

Every minute seemed like an eternity, the clock on the wall moving in slow motion. At 7 p.m., Clark walked back into the interrogation room and asked DeAngelo, “Would you like to know what’s going on?”  

“What have I done?” For the first time in almost two hours, DeAngelo spoke. Here perhaps was the opening, the crack everyone was waiting for.  

“I will tell you, alright?” Clark replied. “I’m going to read you your rights. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be used against you in court. You have the right to talk to an attorney and have one present with you before and  while being questioned. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you, free of charge, before any questioning if you want.” DeAngelo crawled back into his shell and stared at the wall.  

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Undeterred, Clark began talking about the Golden State Killer case nonstop for the next 25 minutes. Although DeAngelo sat there in silence, it was clear the wheels were turning in his head: They found me. They know. How do I get out of this? He  had been caught and cornered before, but this time, he was strapped to a chair,  having lost all control.  

A short while later, alone in the room, DeAngelo began talking to himself. “I’ve  done nothing, I’ve done nothing. I’ve dreamed about him [unintelligible mumbling] … I was strong.” Back in the monitoring room, Clark wondered aloud, “Who the hell is ‘him?’ ” He sensed something was about to happen. He went back into the interrogation room. 

Seizing the moment, Clark pressed aggressively. Sitting down across from DeAngelo, he lobbed the first grenade: “Brian and Katie Maggiore, who were murdered in 1979 in Rancho Cordova. They were gunned down and executed. We have DNA evidence tying you to their murders.” 

DeAngelo snapped out of his silence. “I don’t remember anything you’ve said. I don’t remember any of that … I’ve done nothing. Please let me go home. I don’t remember any of that. I’ve done nothing.” The panic in his voice was unmistakable.  

Clark laid it on thick. “These are pictures of Brian and Katie. They were young. They had their whole lives ahead of them. They were walking their dog that night  when you killed them.”  

Barely looking at the photos, DeAngelo said, “I don’t remember any of those  people. Or any of that. I want to talk to my wife.”  

“We might be able to make that happen. But not right now.”  

DeAngelo continued, “My wife’s an attorney. I need to talk to her if I’m in  trouble. I need to talk to my wife. I’m in trouble, yeah. Please.” Clark’s heart sank when he heard the dreaded A word: “attorney.” The request contained some ambiguity, however. Was he specifically invoking his right to an attorney? Or was he simply asking for his wife, who happened to be an attorney?  

Knowing his window to obtain a statement was closing, Clark pressed on. “Well, let me go see if I can, if we even know where she’s at. But I’ll see if I can find somebody. See if your wife’s available.” He then left DeAngelo alone again.  

Alone in the room, DeAngelo began murmuring to himself as detectives in the monitoring room leaned in and strained to hear every word. Through clenched teeth, he whispered, “I had no choice. I got stronger, stronger, stronger … He tried to  [unintelligible].” His voice trailed off.  

The detectives decided to change things up and offer DeAngelo another dance partner, Sergeant Michelle Hendricks. She was a 20-year veteran of the Sheriff’s  Department, a no-nonsense cop who had deep empathy for victims of sexual assault and worked relentlessly to obtain justice for her victims. As soon as she entered the  interrogation room, Hendricks tried to gain DeAngelo’s trust by appearing helpful. She told him she would try to get a hold of his wife and needed her number.  DeAngelo stated that the number could be found in the phone the police had confiscated. When she asked for the passcode to get the number, DeAngelo, still  playing games, claimed he didn’t know the password to his own phone. DeAngelo  then said, “All these things that they say I, I did a long, a long time ago. I, I need an  attorney, right? An attorney?”  

“Are you asking me a question? That’s up to you, okay?” she responded. 

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“I need an attorney, I guess.” If DeAngelo explicitly asked for a lawyer, the interview would end, and Hendricks would lose her chance to get anything useful out  of him. She headed back to the monitoring room. We had one more tactic we wanted  to try. 

DeAngelo, his mouth agape and his eyes staring off into space, barely moved as Sergeant Clark and Investigator Steve Rhods walked into the interrogation room together. The night before DeAngelo was taken into police custody, we’d informed our colleagues at the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office of the impending arrest. Ventura County was the only DA’s office with which we shared the news  because it had provided key DNA evidence to help us solve the case. They sent  Investigator Rhods to Sacramento the moment DeAngelo was in our hands. Rhods’s style was loud and aggressive, direct and to the point. We hoped he’d be the perfect  foil in our “good cop, bad cop” routine.  

Clark said, “I was told that you had mentioned a lawyer. That’s a decision for you to make. It’s not something that I can do for you. By the way, this is Investigator Steve Rhods, who drove up from Ventura to speak with you. Other detectives from throughout California are on their way and would like to speak to you. But the bottom  line is, if you want to talk to them, that’s something that we can make happen. If you’d  like to talk to this detective, it’s up to you what you want to do here. Any thoughts?”  

Again, no response. Rhods, who had driven eight hours straight for a chance to interview DeAngelo, jumped right in. “Do you remember being in Ventura?”  DeAngelo shook his head. Rhods began to rattle off details of the murders of  Charlene and Lyman Smith. 

DeAngelo remained defiant. “I don’t, I, I didn’t do any of this stuff.”

Without skipping a beat, Rhods leaned in close to the killer. “Well, the DNA says differently. Your DNA is inside of Charlene. Your semen is inside of her. You  had sex with that woman.”  

“Where?” DeAngelo asked meekly, trying to regain his composure. 

“In Ventura. March 13, 1980.” In a scolding tone, Rhods continued, “We spoke to your wife, Sharon. We told her that you wanted to see her, and she said she  didn’t want to see you.” It was a lie, part of a psychological ploy to make DeAngelo  feel isolated. After confronting DeAngelo for several minutes more, Rhods and Clark  left the room.  

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Within minutes, DeAngelo began talking to himself, and over the next three  hours, he made puzzling statements about his struggle against an unidentified “him.”  

“I pushed him off. I got stronger, stronger. And now I am. And I pushed him off and that was the happiest day of my life. I see now, what he did to me. I  took control of myself. I really controlled myself, and not him. He used to  control me. I’m in control. My children all suffering so bad [unintelligible] so  good [unintelligible]. They’re all suffering, aren’t they, but he’s evil  [unintelligible] self. It’s so shameful [unintelligible]. I did all that. All these  years, I was too weak. I was too weak to stand up to him. I don’t remember any  of it.”  

Startlingly, DeAngelo admitted aloud that he had committed the crimes. “I did  all that … I didn’t have the strength to push him out. He made me. He went with me.  It was like, in my head, I mean, he’s a part of me. I didn’t want to do those things. I  pushed Jerry out and had a happy life. I did all those things. I’ve destroyed all their lives … I raped. So now, I gotta pay the price.” DeAngelo was claiming that an alter ego named Jerry had made him hurt, rape and kill his victims. Was he crazy, or was he just pretending to be?

Excerpted from THE PEOPLE VS THE GOLDEN STATE KILLER copyright © 2025 by Thien Ho. Used by permission of Third State Books Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

The People vs the Golden State Killer will hit shelves on Dec. 25 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.