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Joseph James DeAngelo admitted being the infamous Golden State Killer responsible for 13 murders
Joseph DeAngelo, the man known as the Golden State Killer, has been sentenced to life in prison.
His sentencing is the culmination of a crime investigation that began in the 1970s and attracted worldwide interest.
DeAngelo, 74, was arrested in 2018 after his DNA was found on a genealogy website.
In June he admitted to 13 murders in a deal with US prosecutors meant to spare him the death penalty.
He also admitted to numerous rapes, burglaries and other crimes at the time.
Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert on Friday called DeAngelo a “sociopath in action”.
After sitting silent and expressionless throughout victims’ testimony this week, DeAngelo addressed those in court on Friday, removing his mask and rising from a wheelchair to speak, shortly before Judge Michael Bowman began the sentencing.
“I’ve listened to all of your statements. Each one of them. And I’m truly sorry to everyone I’ve hurt,” DeAngelo.
The infamous killer will now likely die in prison, serving 11 consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole, with 15 concurrent life sentences and other time for weapons charges.
“When a person commits monstrous acts they need to be locked away where they could never harm another innocent person,” Judge Bowman said.
DeAngelo was a Californian police officer during his crimes in the 1970s and 80s and his crimes stretched across the state of California.
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A Sacramento police officer wipes her eyes as she listens to the impact statements of DeAngelo’s victims
The former police officer, Vietnam War veteran and auto mechanic was arrested in April 2018 after police tracked him down by matching his DNA with a genealogy website.
Investigators created a family tree dating back to the 1800s in order to identify him as a suspect. Detectives followed him and collected a piece of rubbish he had thrown away, finding the same DNA recovered from several crime scenes.
DeAngelo’s murderous reign began in 1975, while he was working as a police officer in Exeter, in northern California.
Starting with lurking, stalking and theft, his crimes quickly escalated to a 12-year spree of brutal violence, rape and murder.
‘He has no soul’
Speaking after the sentencing, Ms Schubert described DeAngelo as “a person who has no respect for the rights of human beings, no respect for the law, no compassion, no empathy, no remorse.”
“He is a person who lacks a conscious or a soul.”
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Sacramento district attorney Anne Marie Schubert announces the arrest of DeAngelo in 2018
Ms Schubert then assailed DeAngelo’s appearance at trial: an ostensibly fragile old man, escorted to the courtroom in a wheelchair.
The prosecutor played video footage of DeAngelo in his jail cell in June and July: doing exercises, hoisting himself up on to the top of a bunk bed, and taking painstaking, careful efforts to block out the light in his cell.
The videos demonstrate his “mental acuity, his dexterity, his ability to deceive, or attempt to deceive, the entire world into believing he is a feeble old man,” she said.
Prosecutors have described the scale of violence as “simply staggering”: spanning 87 victims and 53 crime scenes in 11 counties across California.
And Friday’s sentencing occurred in a university ballroom – the space needed to hold surviving victims and their families.