‘This man made a child grow up in fear’ — DA’s book recounts terror of East Area Rapist
Broomsticks placed in sliding doors. Dowels inserted into bedroom windows. Handguns near the nightstand. Large dogs suddenly introduced to homes.
Decades after Joseph James DeAngelo began his serial murder and rape spree in Sacramento as the East Area Rapist, hundreds of area residents are recalling the terror they felt as he haunted the city’s eastern suburbs, slipping into homes in the night to assault victims, then disappear seemingly without a trace.
Their recollections — from residents, people who were children at the time, and potential victims — are collected in an extraordinary 226-page online book assembled by Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, whose own childhood was affected by the crime spree.
“I was 12 years old living in the Arden area with my parents and six siblings when the East Area Rapist started his reign of terror in 1976,” Schubert writes in a foreword to the book, “Sacramento, A Community Forever Changed.”
“In my family, my older sister was 16 and afraid to babysit for fear the ‘boogeyman’ was coming. My mother slept with an ice pick under her pillow. Years later, I learned my father bought a gun.”
Schubert’s memories match those of many of the hundreds of people who responded to the DA’s request for area residents to write in with stories of how DeAngelo affected their lives.
“The response was overwhelming,” Schubert’s office wrote Tuesday in releasing the collection. “Hundreds of individuals responded, recounting their experience and memories during that terrifying time.”
The release of the book, which is dedicated to survivors and victims of DeAngelo, comes six months after DeAngelo pleaded guilty in Sacramento to 13 murders, 13 counts of kidnap for robbery and admitted separately to 62 rapes as the monster whose crimes spawned nicknames ranging from Visalia Ransacker to East Area Rapist to Diamond Knot Killer to Golden State Killer.
DeAngelo, 75, is now incarcerated at North Kern State Prison, near Delano, serving life without the possibility of parole.
Although many people believed the serial rapist/murderer would never be found — his crimes suddenly ended following the May 1986 slaying of Janelle Cruz in Irvine — Schubert and other officials doggedly kept pursuing a suspect, finally using DNA from old crime scenes to track the former Auburn police officer down at his Citrus Heights home.
Even after days of victims and survivors confronting DeAngelo earlier this year to deliver victim-impact statements, the magnitude of the terror he inflicted is difficult to comprehend without reminders from the people who lived through it at the time.
“Locked doors and windows, boards, sticks, deadbolts and closet checks,” one resident identified as N.W., wrote into Schubert’s office. “Sleepless nights ... listening, watching shadows out those windows.
“I was paralyzed by those words ... that was my life. That was my family’s life.”
Others recall their parents suddenly buying a gun. One cul-de-sac armed residents with shotguns who took turns standing guard at the entrance of the court at night. Gun shops ran short of firearms to sell.
People wrote in recounting how they were startled by a man looking in a bedroom window, or by adult footprints found outside.
“This man made a child grow up in fear,” wrote one resident who was 7 and living in Citrus Heights and Rancho Cordova during the crime spree. “My dad taught me how to shoot a shotgun so that I could shoot him if he ever came into our home.
“My dad had guns hidden all around the house so that he or I would be able to protect ourselves/my mom/our house if he ever broke in.”
Some recalled find things inside their homes oddly out of place or missing, a hallmark of the psychological torture DeAngelo would inflict on his victims and potential victims.
One wrote in recalling the Feb. 17, 1977, incident in College Greens where a prowler was confronted and chased by 18-year-old Rodney Richard Miller, who managed to grab hold of the man until the intruder shot him.
Miller survived and recalled the incident for The Sacramento Bee four decades later. DeAngelo was never charged in that case, which was beyond the statute of limitations by the time of his capture.
DeAngelo’s agreement to plead guilty allowed him to escape a death penalty trial — and saved the state and victims and witnesses years of time in court.
Many who wrote into Schubert expressed gratitude for the fact that he was caught and imprisoned, but some wanted more than the life sentences he received.
“I am glad he is caught,” M.B. wrote. “I am sad for all those impacted as it brings up such deep wounds. I pray for their healing.
“If it were my decision he should be put to a slow and painful death, he does not deserve to live another minute, let alone at the expense of taxpayers.”
This story was originally published December 29, 2020 at 11:54 AM with the headline "‘This man made a child grow up in fear’ — DA’s book recounts terror of East Area Rapist."