When the Golden State Killer Was Arrested Outside His Home, He Yelled Out 'I Have a Roast in the Oven' By Christine Pelisek

For more than four decades, authorities searched for a serial killer they believed was responsible for a spate of killings and rapes that terrorized Californians in the 1970s and 1980s.  

Golden State Killer Joseph DeAngelo was finally identified in 2018 after authorities used genetic genealogy to track him down. It turned out the then-72-year-old former police officer and mechanic — who was also known as the Visalia Ransacker, the East Bay Rapist and the Original Night Stalker — lived in the Sacramento suburb of Citrus Heights.

A Sheriff’s Fugitive Apprehension Team nicknamed the “Body Snatchers” was tasked with taking the man — who was accused of multiple murders and as many as 40 rapes — into custody on April 24, 2018.

That day, the team watched nearby as DeAngelo suddenly walked out of his well-manicured home.

“He comes out of the house,” Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho, author of the newly released book, The People vs. the Golden State Killer, tells PEOPLE. “I think he was getting ready to work on his yard, open up his garage, do all those things.”

The team quickly started debating how to approach the elusive killer, says Ho, adding that the team’s leader Sgt. Steve Girdlestone ultimately made the decision. “He just says, ‘…to hell with it’ and gets out of his truck. He starts walking over there when everybody is debating and just took over the situation and took him down in that way.”

Ho writes in his book that Girdlestone quickly approached DeAngelo and pretended to ask for directions. Before DeAngelo could respond, he was on the ground.

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During the takedown, DeAngelo yelled out, “I have a roast in the oven,” Ho says. “He did not see it coming. He thought he got away with it.”

When they entered DeAngelo’s home, it was neat, he recalls. “It was orderly. Everything had its place,” Ho says.

He also stocked up on the soft drink Dr. Pepper, according to the district attorney.

“During some of the crime scenes of the East Area Rapist, the rapist would drink Dr. Pepper, and lo and behold, he had cases of Dr. Pepper in his house,” says Ho. “I don’t think Dr. Pepper wants to hire him as a spokesperson, but he loved Dr. Pepper.”

In June 2020, DeAngelo pleaded guilty to 13 counts of first-degree murder and other crimes in order to avoid the death penalty. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole two months later.

Today, DeAngelo is housed in the Protective Housing Unit at a prison in central California.

“Law enforcement has come and tried to talk to him [about other crimes] and he won’t talk to anybody,” Ho says. “I think he’s good for more than what we have discovered. The question is how many, where and who else did he attack?”

Ho points to a three-year period in the late 1980s when DeAngelo was in Southern California.

“His whereabouts and what he was doing exactly was really ambiguous for us. And he was already evolving as a serial killer. He was killing all his witnesses. Instead of leaving them, he was bludgeoning them to death and he would take the ligatures, the bindings with him,” he says.

Ho thinks DeAngelo eventually stopped because he wasn’t physically able to commit the crimes anymore and had more responsibilities as a father with three daughters.

“But what I can tell you is that the sexual depravity didn’t end because at the age of 73, he’s in custody,” says Ho. “I videoed him in his cell watching a young, blonde female worker delivering food in the pod area of the jail. And he’s standing there masturbating to her and watching her.”