The People vs. the Golden State Killer

In this satisfactory true crime memoir, Sacramento District Attorney Ho recalls the search for and trial of serial killer Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. Between 1974 and 1986, DeAngelo killed at least 13 people and committed a handful of rapes and burglaries across California. Ho recounts well-known details of DeAngelo's crimes and covers the decades-long assumption they were committed by multiple suspects, but his account foregrounds the legal proceedings, explaining the DNA technology that helped Ho and his colleagues catch DeAngelo (using samples from a 1986 rape that investigators neglected to throw out) and the logistical challenges of holding the trial during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Most affecting are Ho's interviews with DeAngelo's surviving victims, who starkly recount their kidnappings and assaults. The autobiographical sections in which Ho discusses his path from Vietnamese war refugee to Northern California prosecutor are inspiring, but they don't always braid together neatly with the main narrative--though his firsthand memories of '70s and '80s California help anchor his journalistic accounts of DeAngelo's crimes and law enforcement's fruitless searches for the culprit. It's a worthwhile account of a well-covered case. (Nov.)

A first-person account of the long quest to bring a serial rapist and murderer to justice. As district attorney of Sacramento County, California, Ho spearheaded a complex prosecution against Joseph DeAngelo, dubbed the Golden State Killer for his 13 proven murders in the 1970s and '80s. As Ho reveals, his quarry's crimes took an unsettling trajectory. As a teenager, DeAngelo thrived on bullying and petty crimes. He graduated to animal abuse, killing a dog with fireworks, and then turned his attention to humans. At first it was burglary in the small city of Visalia, 120 break-ins in a single year, 11 in a single night. He graduated to kidnapping, rape, and murder--some of his crimes committed while serving as a police officer; he was so prolific that he would be pegged the "East Area Rapist." In the late 1980s DeAngelo's decades-long pattern of crime quieted in Northern California, though only because he moved on to other California locations. He was finally apprehended more than 30 years after the fact through DNA and other identification technologies along with sheer logic. There Ho's difficulties multiplied. For one, there was the question of where DeAngelo would be tried, since his crimes crossed many jurisdictions; as Ho recounts, one source of aggravation in particular was Orange County, its prosecutors jockeying for position in an election year. ("It ain't gonna fucking happen!" Ho responded.) There were evidentiary issues, since many police departments had discarded relevant crime-scene materials decades earlier. Finally, there were legal concerns, some of which, as Ho lays them out, were complex technicalities. But in the end, as Ho's careful, well-written account chronicles, DeAngelo was brought to justice, with one rape survivor saying at trial, succinctly, "Some people are wired wrong, and DeAngelo is one of them." A disturbing real-world procedural about "the bogeyman who couldn't be found--until we found him." Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.