Author: The Trial of Joseph DeAngelo

The Sun-Gazette is reporting that the Visalia Police Department has handed the Claude Snelling murder case to the Tulare County District Attorney’s office, and that the DA is trying to determine whether to prosecute Joseph DeAngelo for the crime.

Claude Snelling was murdered by the Visalia Ransacker / Golden State Killer on September 11th, 1975. Details about the case can be found here: http://visaliaransacker.com/snelling.php.

The article also includes information about the Jennifer Armour murder, mentioning that DeAngelo is now one of five suspects in the case.

This morning (Friday, June 8th, 2018), a statement from Joseph DeAngelo’s wife was released. The statement reads as follows:

“My thoughts and prayers are for the victims and their families. The press has relentlessly pursued interviews of me. I will not be giving any interviews for the foreseeable future. I ask the press to please respect my privacy and that of my children.”

Click here to view and/or download the unsealed documents.

Update: Portions of the affidavits will be released. As near as we can tell, they’ve lobbed off most everything but the Southern California and murder-related entries from the arrest/search warrants and will release it that way — nothing from the East Area Rapist phase. A likely reason is that those victims are publicly known. Nothing related to the findings in his home will be released at this point. We’ll let you know when the docs are available to the public.

Ali Wolf at Fox40 says that the media lawyer consider this a victory. CBS13 is reporting that the next court date in Sac is July 12th.

We’ve heard that the bulk of what will be released involves probable cause statements. We’ve viewed various PC statements that were drafted in various other phases of the investigation, and they typically include a comprehensive rundown of evidence in a case — the public will most likely find them informative and they may provide a solid template for news outlets.

Today at 1:30 PM PST, Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Michael Sweet will begin to hear closing arguments regarding how much of the arrest warrant / search warrant affidavits to release. Also included in the discussion may be the search warrant returns, which would explain what was found in Joseph DeAngelo’s house when it was searched by Law Enforcement in the days following his arrest on April 24th, 2018.

This motion first came before the court on May 14th, 2018. At that time, the defense informed the judge that they hadn’t had time to review the documents. A continuance was granted.

It again came before the court on Tuesday, May 30th. DeAngelo himself was present, and after about an hour of hearing arguments from the media coalition who filed the motion and from the defense (argued by public defender David Lynch in this instance), Judge Sweet decided to review the documents in detail behind closed doors. He issues a continuance for Thursday, May 31st, at which time more arguments would be heard.

In a lengthy session on Thursday afternoon, at which DeAngelo was not in attendance, more arguments were heard on how much to redact from the search/arrest warrants before public release. Anything related to victims/potential witnesses has already been taken out, we’ve been told, and there were some agreements reached on what could be left in. We’ve also been told that the arrest warrant itself has been the most heavily redacted so far, but with sessions resuming today, anything could change.

Judge Sweet will hear final arguments on the matter today, and has indicated that a decision regarding the release (and how much to put out) will be reached today. Whether the documents themselves will be released today, or whether it will take time to ensure that the redactions are carried out properly and the documents will be released later on, is unknown at this point. With arguments continuing, there’s still the possibility that nothing will be released at all, particularly if the redactions are so heavy that they become “unintelligible,” as the judge put it.

We’ll keep you updated on anything that breaks.

On Thursday, May 31st at 1:35 PM, a closed-door hearing was held in regards to the redaction and release of the arrest/search warrants. The issue was last discussed at a public hearing on Tuesday, May 29th and since then, Judge Michael Sweet has spent time going over the documents and considering the arguments.

The motion to unseal the arrest/search warrants is spearheaded by a media coalition that includes the LA Times, the SF Chronicle, Hearst, and the Associated Press.

Thursday’s hearing was not open to the media or to the public — it’s assumed that during the closed-door session, various granular details of the warrants were discussed. The defendant, Joseph DeAngelo, was not in attendance.

At the end of the session, a continuance was granted and a new court date was set for Friday, June 1st, at 1:30 PM.

The only indication of what has been redacted so far has been that all parties have agreed to a removal of any personal information regarding potential witnesses.

The 9:00 AM May 30th, 2018 arraignment of Joseph DeAngelo that was to take place in Orange County has been cancelled. It has not yet been rescheduled.

DeAngelo was to be arraigned on four counts of murder with several special circumstances, including multiple murders, rape, burglary, lying in wait, and sodomy.

We’ll let you know when the hearing is rescheduled.

Update: A continuance has been granted until Thursday, May 31st, 2018.

Joseph DeAngelo appeared before Judge Michael Sweet in the Sacramento Superior Court today to fight a motion to unseal his arrest and search warrants.

The hearing, which started around 9:00 AM and lasted about an hour, was the first one since April to have news cameras allowed inside.

DeAngelo entered the courtroom and spent the entirety of the hearing on his feet inside a caged-in area on the right side of the courtroom. He stared straight ahead throughout the hearing, only conferring briefly with one of his attorneys after court had been adjourned.

The People argued for the release of the search and arrest warrants, citing the public’s right of access under the constitution and under statutory rights, as well as the right of a public trial.

Defense highlighted the sweeping scale of the case — over 100 articles and 16,000 internet articles published since DeAngelo’s arrest. Defense argued that releasing the documents in their full form could do more than influence potential jurors — he claimed that witness memories could be tainted by the information and noted that the investigation was still proceeding in private.

Judge Sweet clarified that the issue both sides were arguing was not the complete withholding of the documents, but rather how much to redact. The court discussed the redaction of personal information (witnesses, investigators, victims, and the defendant) in particular.

Judge Sweet also discussed the differentiation between the arrest/search affidavits themselves and the returns/results from those affidavits. An issue that he brought forth was the issue of sensitivity toward information in the warrants that pertained to crimes committed outside of Sacramento county, and asked if releasing evidence of crimes outside of the Maggiore murders could be prejudicial.

The People argued that the public’s right of access isn’t limited to what might be admitted at trial. Judge Sweet and the People both cited cases that established precedent, with Judge Sweet using precedent to explain that generally, the rights of the press are not greater than the rights of an individual. The People argued that the precedent that Judge Sweet cited would’ve been decided differently today because press access to court proceedings was still in its infancy in the mid 1970s when the case that he referred to was decided.

Judge Sweet explained that he did not want to make a hasty ruling on this matter, and that he wanted to examine the documents and entertain the proposed redactions in a granular way. The review would take place this morning.

He recessed court until around 12:00 noon. As it got closer to noon, word came down that court would start at 1:30 PM, and then it was pushed back to 2:15 PM. Around that time, it was announced that a continuance was granted on the issue until Thursday, May 31st, 2018.

 

Joesph DeAngelo appeared before Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael Sweet today, May 14th, at 8:30 PST. For the first time in a court appearance, DeAngelo was out of his wheelchair — clad in his jail-issue orange jumpsuit and appearing without handcuffs, he walked into a caged-in area of the courtroom on his own. He made an effort not to look in the direction of the full gallery during the hearing.

Due to a full docket and the early hour of the appearance, Sweet banned cameras from the courtroom.

The hearing was brief — the defense informed the judge that they had only just now received the list of items taken during the search of DeAngelo’s house last month during the execution of the search warrant. There had not been enough time for them to to review them and construct arguments to fight the motion filed by media companies to unseal the documents.

DeAngelo conferred with his public defender, Diane Howard, for a moment in whispered tones.

Judge Sweet granted a continuance to allow the defense time to prepare arguments against the unsealing of the affidavits, and then the hearing was adjourned.

Other than the continuance, no action was taken.

The next hearing is set for May 29th. At that time, a decision may be made on whether the arrest warrant or the search warrant will be unsealed, and the judge may decide on a motion made by the defense to block the media from covering the hearings.

At a press conference today, Santa Barbara District Attorney Joyce Dudley announced that she’s charging Joseph DeAngelo with first-degree murder counts in the deaths of Robert Offerman, Debra Manning, Cheri Domingo, and Gregory Sanchez. Special circumstances are also included (intent or commission of rape, burglary, and use of a firearm). The full complaint against DeAngelo can be read here.

Offerman and Manning were killed on during in the early morning hours of December 30th, 1979 by a home-invader who wielded a firearm (more information here: http://coldcase-earons.com/ons2.php). Identical shoe prints and ligatures found at the scene tied this crime to an attempted home-invasion rape that had taken place nearby on October 1st, 1979 (more info: http://coldcase-earons.com/ons1.php). That particular crime had several M.O. characteristics in common with the East Area Rapist crimes that occurred in Northern California. Three of the EAR crimes were connected by DNA to murders that occurred in Southern California, but the Offerman/Manning murder was not one of them — no DNA was found at the scene and investigators do not believe that Manning was raped. The charges still carry a special circumstance because based on the killer’s behavior at other scenes, it’s proposed that he intended to rape Manning. Both victims were shot to death.

Greg Sanchez and Cheri Domingo were killed on July 27th, 1981 during a home invasion (more info: http://www.coldcase-earons.com/ons6.php). Sanchez was shot and suffered a non-fatal wound, apparently while attempting to confront the intruder. Domingo was then bound, and both victims were bludgeoned to death. At some point the offender ejaculated at the crime scene, though it’s not believed that Domingo was raped. This physical evidence left behind on the bedspread wasn’t discovered until 2011, when advanced DNA technology determined that it was a match for other Golden State Killer murders that had occurred elsewhere in Southern California.

Due to the lack of DNA in the Offerman/Manning case, that one may be quite a bit more difficult to secure a conviction on than the Domingo/Sanchez case, which does have that DNA link.

The rumors that evidence in the Offerman/Manning case was tossed are incorrect. The evidence from that case still exists.

In court this morning, Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Michael Sweet denied the defense’s motion from May 2nd and confirmed that the District Attorney’s office will be granted permission to take additional DNA from DeAngelo, as well as force him to pose nude for photographs.

The DA’s office requested to take photos of DeAngelo’s genitals in order to determine if a “physical abnormality,” often described by victims is present.

The “physical abnormality” is speculated to be the below-average size of the genitals described in East Area Rapist reports.