Episode 11 - The investigation into the Golden State Killer with Paige

In this week's episode, Joanna and Joe talk to SEHIA's vice president Paige Kneeland about her role in the investigation of the East Area Rapist, more famously known at the Golden State Killer. Paige discusses how she first got involved with the investigation and the strategy the task force took to ultimately solve these cases. She gets candid with us about some of the challenges they faced and lessons they learned.

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This podcast is intended for educational and discussion purposes only. Case studies and investigative topics are presented from the personal perspective of the guest and are not intended to represent official findings, agency positions, legal conclusions, or the Southeastern Homicide Investigators Association.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Welcome to Talk Murder to Me, the official podcast of the Southeastern Homicide Investigators Association. TIE's mission is simple but vital to train, support, and connect homicide investigators across the Southeast and beyond. On this show, we will dig deep into the world of homicide investigations, from case studies and investigative strategies to interviews with experts who have walked through the toughest crime state. Whether you're a seasonal detective, a new investigator, or simply someone who wants to understand the craft behind solving the most serious crimes, you'll find value here. This is more than a podcast, it's a community of professionals dedicated to pursuing the truth, finding justice, and never stopping until the gates are closed. You're listening to Talk Murder To Me, the Tahia podcast. Let's get to work. Welcome back to the show, Joanna. Good to have you.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Thank you. I'm glad to be back.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

It's good to have my teammate back. Uh you know, we did that one show without you, and I felt lost. And then we uh you know recorded last week, and it was super good to have you back, and I'm glad to have my partner back. So thank you for joining me from the Eastern Time Zone. We have a very special guest, our vice president, Ms. Page. Hello, ma'am. How are you?

SPEAKER_03 1:38

I'm well. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Glad to have you again. Your your podcast that you that you started off with when we were back in uh in Reno was very popular, and so you've got a whole lot of knowledge. We actually talked about you on my li on the last podcast.

SPEAKER_03 1:52

Oh, did you?

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Yeah, on our last interview.

SPEAKER_03 1:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Because I've called you a bunch about offline searches and you're like the one who knows it all.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know about that, but but you have called several times.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

She's my resource as well, so I also think she knows it all. And in fact, if she doesn't, she normally gets me an answer. So I can do that. Literally.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

That's what I really appreciate. Yeah. From east to west, you know it all.

SPEAKER_03 2:18

Uh well, some. I know some.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

We're we're glad to have you as a resource.

SPEAKER_03 2:23

Oh glad to be here.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Yeah. You guys got anything good going on at work? Either one of you, case white case-wise. Anything interesting?

SPEAKER_03 2:30

Not right now. No, no.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Daily grind.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Same old saying, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Yeah, some days that's good though.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Yeah. Spring breaks coming, so that could that could start up some things.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 2:42

So maybe I don't have the time to take off, but that's okay.

unknown 2:45

Oh my.

SPEAKER_03 2:46

I'll live vicariously through others.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

That's good. That's good. Until you decide to leave the law enforcement thing, right? I'm I'm working on that. I uh don't tell anybody, but I'm just trying so hard.

SPEAKER_03 2:57

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Let's get out.

SPEAKER_03 2:59

It's our secret. Here's the one.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Let's just go run together and just go into the way. Let's be pilots or something cool.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Yes, let's do it.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Here they make a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Pilots would be very beneficial to Sahia would save us a lot on uh right.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

That's what we could do. So Joanna's gonna be our travel agent, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

Um me and you can be pilots, Paige.

SPEAKER_03 3:19

Okay. That sounds like a lot of work, but okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

No, we got this, we got this, and then we'll have some some uh some stewardists and uh and then we're we're gonna be awesome.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

We won't name names, but yeah, we know we can uh designate them on the board, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

All right, so we have a really cool case that may be super popular to a lot of folks, but not one that I'm super familiar with. Um I think the the the guy he has a whole bunch of different names, um, but the one I think that's most popular, at least on this side of the the world, is the Golden Estate Killer. And so you told me through some conversation that he had a couple different names, um, East Area Killer.

SPEAKER_03 3:58

So well, let me back up a little bit if I can.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:02

Um, so just to kind of give you a bird's eye view of his series. Uh, between 1974 and 75, um, he was in Tularie County, which is down in Southern California, and he committed upwards of 120 uh home residence burglaries. And so in that area, he was called the Vicelli ransacker because he would go in and just completely thrash these homes, um, pull stuff out of drawers, go through the kitchen, eat food. I mean, you name it, he was doing it. So then, fast forward 1976 to 1978, he was in Northern California in the Sacramento area, and he committed approximately 35-ish sexual assaults in Sacramento. There was also two homicides in Sacramento in 1978, a uh husband and wife that were murdered while they were out walking their dogs. And then he moved to kind of the Bay Area-ish. Um, so towards San Francisco, but in the the counties in between Sacramento and San Francisco, and he committed additional sexual assaults. So in Northern California, we called him the East Area Rapist. And the genesis of that is because his initial rapes, when they were first being connected by EMO, were occurring in the east area of Sacramento County.

SPEAKER_04 5:33

So right?

SPEAKER_03 5:34

It stands to reason. East area rapist. Um, and at the time when those sexual assaults started, the detectives, you know, back in the 70s had a theory that this was the vicellier ransacker that had come north to Sacramento. There were some little details that kind of stuck out between the ransacker cases and the Sacramento cases. But there was this old dogma that, you know, if you're a burglar, you're a burglar, right? If you're a rapist, you're rapist, and you never two shops, right? Right?

SPEAKER_00 6:11

You don't you don't evolve like the sticky bandits in Home Alone.

SPEAKER_03 6:15

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

So they became the wet bandits.

SPEAKER_03 6:18

Yeah, yeah. Um, and so it everybody kind of poo-pooed the Sacramento detectives theory. They were like, no, no, different guy, you know. And so they kind of, I mean, obviously that theory stuck through the years, but the Sacramento detectives obviously had to move on, work in a vacuum in their cases, along with the Bay Area agencies. Then in 1979, he ends up going down to Southern California, and there's an initial um attempted rape, uh, home invasion uh ransacker kind of case, and it had all the hallmarks of the ransacker cases and the sacramento sex assault cases. Um, he would enter the home during the middle of the night while the victims were asleep, um, and just kind of general MO, shine a flashlight in their face, go and blind them, tie out the female victim. If there was a male present, he would force the female to tie the male, bind hands behind his back, um, ankles, and then the offender would bind the female's wrist and ankles, and then he would retie the male. So he kind of had this ping-pong back and forth, constantly threatening to kill them, telling the husband or the male in the house that um, you know, if he did anything or tried to get away or anything at all, lay there still, um, he's gonna kill the female and then kill him. So there was this constant, you know, threat over their heads. Um, sometimes there were children in the homes. Um, so so obviously this was a very uh challenging case to work. Um and very scary because if you talk to um, and I'll get into this later, but I didn't grow up in the Sacramento area, so so I didn't know anything about this case. But when I started working it and talking to my friends, they all had a story. Like all of them had some story in that my mom and dad used to sleep with a shotgun next to their bed.

SPEAKER_00 8:33

Um because he was rampant and had been caught.

SPEAKER_03 8:36

Yep. Scary time in that area, yeah. Very, very scary. Yeah, in the newspaper almost every day.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

And it was just kind of um so so where you grew up, did had you heard of this case at all? Or was it only when you moved out west that you it was only when I started working with the sheriff's department? Interesting.

SPEAKER_03 8:56

Okay, yeah, but I'll I'll hit on that in a minute because it's kind of a funny story.

unknown 8:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:00

Um, so then he so then he has this attempt homicide or um attempt rape down in Southern California, and then he proceeds to have an additional umicide cases spread out over multiple years. Um, the last one being in '86. Um many of them were couples. There were there were a few single females, but again, they kind of had those same hallmarks of like this ransacking situation. He would um he would stage the scenes sometimes just to look like a burglary combat kind of thing. Um, stack it together. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and so all that stuff kind of kind of was there. And the detectives had this thought, you know, Sacramento thought this is definitely Vicelia that's come here. And then when the Southern California homicide started to occur, Sacramento went down to Southern California and said, Hey, we think this could be our guy. And they were sent packing, you know, go home. Um because just because two people are killed in their home doesn't mean that it's the same guy.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Was that because of like arrogance and law enforcement?

SPEAKER_03 10:15

I think I don't really know what it was because the MO was so striking in all of these cases. Um, but this is pre-DNA, right? So we don't have any of this. And certainly there's been other cases where victims have been bound and killed in their homes. So, you know, there was no true way to uh no biometric way to connect these cases.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

You know, it was just kind of the you uh you have such knowledge in VICAP at this point, you know, like this day and age, hopefully these trends would be caught with VICAP, right? But that didn't exist back then, correct?

SPEAKER_03 10:52

Right, exactly. You had um, you know, you had the old school teletypes, you know, phone calls, things like that. You know, email wasn't even really a thing, obviously, you know, that doesn't come around. So communication was really tough to share this information. Um, a lot of times through those teletypes and then calling and saying, hey, we've had a similar case. Um, so down in Southern California, he was called the original night stalker, not to be confused with Richard Ramirez, which was the the night stalker who came along after the fact.

SPEAKER_04 11:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 11:27

So 1986, his last case. And to our knowledge, never struck again.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

Do we ever find out why he stopped?

SPEAKER_03 11:39

I mean, he never said why, yeah, but um I I have a feeling it had everything to do with just his personal life because by 1986 he had um two daughters. I can't remember if his third daughter had been born yet, but um, you know, life life changes you. So crazy to think about. I know, right?

SPEAKER_00 12:03

So he was married with children. He was married in 1986 when he offended last.

SPEAKER_03 12:08

Yes. Yeah.

unknown 12:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

I can't wait to hear what she said.

SPEAKER_03 12:13

Right. Um so he's got all these different monikers, and it's never really there's always this theory that it's the same individual, but never actually put together, right? Yeah, and that doesn't come along until 1997, 1998, when the DNA from the Southern California cases gets compared, and then all of a sudden, you know, there's kind of this pachinko machine going on, they're like ding ding ding ding ding. All right, this case and this case and this case are all linked together. We we now we know this is the same offender, but we still couldn't link it to Northern California. So there's still this theory, this question of whether it's the same individual. And that didn't come along until 2001. And then in 2001, DNA gets happy accident found from one of the Bay Area agencies, and that gets put into CODIS and it hits. And I say happy accident because policy, right? These sexual assaults, the statute of limitations had run out. And so agencies typically, when that happens and it's been 20, 30 years, they're gonna dispose of evidence. So they just happen to find evidence that somebody didn't do their job, right? Like they were supposed to throw it out and didn't.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Do you think that there was there was cases that that had been disposed of that he was subject to have committed?

SPEAKER_03 13:46

It's possible. Um and there's but the thing about his cases was his um he had a un unique signature, which law enforcement has been lucky enough, at least to my knowledge, kind of kept that under wraps. So I'm not gonna disclose that specific detail. Yeah. Um, but that signature was pervasive. And in every case that he when he committed the sexual acts, um that signature was there.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

You knew it was him because of that.

SPEAKER_03 14:21

Yep, 100%. And so that's how we were kind of able to take any other sexual assault and be like, no, no, not him. And and kind of put those to the side. Um so then, you know, in 2001, now it's a big deal. Now it's holy crap, like this this is the same guy that's been committing all these crimes. Um so that's how those all got put together.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

So when when did you move to California?

SPEAKER_03 14:54

So I moved to California in 1999 and I started grad school. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

So you knew about some of this that was going on. Did you know that there was like leads in the case that was happening while you were in school? Like had you has it had it been talked about on the news or was it kept pretty hush-hush?

SPEAKER_03 15:12

So I'm gonna be honest with you. In my early days, even though I was a forensic science grad student, um, I didn't watch the news a lot.

SPEAKER_04 15:21

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_03 15:22

I was studying, you know, doing my thing. I had a full-time job. Yeah. Um, so I didn't really pay too much attention, but when it did hit and it hit the news, I did see it. And I kind of clocked it, but I wasn't working for law enforcement at the time. So in a vacuum, it didn't really mean anything to me, right? Yeah, it's just another news story. So I joined the sheriff's department in 2003 and kind of, you know, starting off doing my thing, and then eventually I'm in the homicide bureau and I'm the um, you know, the new kid, right? So I get to grunt work initially.

unknown 16:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:03

Hey, I need you to organize these case files. Sure, I can do that, Sergeant.

SPEAKER_04 16:07

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 16:07

So I go in, I go in and there's a box sitting up on a shelf, and it just says E period, A period, R period. And I'm like, Oh, E-A-R? And my sergeant, um, can I cuss? Is it okay? Oh, yeah, we got a disclaimer on this one, you can have you been living under a fucking rock. Like, wait, what? I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

Ignorance is blessed sometimes.

SPEAKER_03 16:33

Yeah, exactly. So he starts telling me, he goes, That's the Easter rapist case. It's the most prolific rapist in the you know world and blah blah blah. And he used to cut off the ears of kids, and I was like, wait, what? I feel like I feel like that would be something I would have paid attention to.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Yeah, okay. So can I push pause here for a second? Because I actually wrote this down to ask you. So there were children victims too.

SPEAKER_03 16:55

Yeah. Well, no, there were children present, but he did not uh sexually saw the young children. Now some of our ears off? No, that didn't wear the ears off. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

No, that was just Sergeant being a sergeant.

SPEAKER_03 17:09

There was so much like misinformation and disinformation that was out there and rumors and stuff like that. Okay. He did he did threaten to cut somebody's ear off, but it it never actually happened.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

Okay, but somewhere in California, there's a fella cutting people's ears off because Sarg wouldn't have said it on bike if they didn't have a case.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

I don't I don't know where my sergeant got that information.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

All right, we're having him on the show next week for sure. Sorge gotta tell us about these ears.

SPEAKER_03 17:36

Yeah, no, right.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Where are the so no children victims, but there were children present, they just weren't sexually assaulted or or murdered.

SPEAKER_03 17:44

Correct. And and I say no children, there were some of the the I think our youngest victim, sexual assault victim was 14. So technically, yes, juveniles. But um when I say children, I mean like one of the victims, her three-year-old son, um, was was present. So so in that respect, there were very young children in the room. Mercy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

Okay. Sorry, I didn't interrupt you. So Sarge says, Have you been under a rock? And you know, you're like East Area rapist. All right.

SPEAKER_03 18:13

I'm like, what the what the hell is this?

SPEAKER_00 18:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:15

So so at that point, I'm a very, I don't know if we talked about this the last time I was on, but I'm an ad I'm a very nosy person. And so I was like, oh, kidding at candy store. Come on, yes, yeah, gimme. And so I start going through this, through this box. It was a single box.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

The biggest case.

SPEAKER_03 18:35

Biggest case, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:36

Tiny little box.

SPEAKER_03 18:38

I didn't understand the gravity of the case and the you know how many cases were involved. And so I'm reading, I start going through these cases that are that are in this box. And I'm not reading them in chronological order. I'm just kind of as I have time checking them out in between, you know, my other duties and things I'm supposed to be doing. Um, and so so I didn't really have a good picture, right? I read this case from 1978, I read this case from 77, I read another 79 case, I read a 76 case, and so so it didn't really like align for me very well. And and again, I wasn't dedicated full time to that. So sure it it took a long time to develop this picture. So fast forward to 2010, and this is kind of the genesis of the the task force that that was developed. So around this time, myself and and my new sergeant at the time, we got to talking about how you know, I I would field a phone call from the public saying, Hey, I have a suspect in the East Air rapist, and they would give me their spiel, right? Their person or whatever, and I'd look into it. And then I would call, you know, a different agency, uh, one of the Southern California agencies or a Bay Area agency and say, Hey, I got a call from this lady or this person, and they have a tip and they think this person's the East Air rapist, and I looked into this guy, and apparently he lives in your area. So let's let's compare notes, let's talk.

SPEAKER_04 20:15

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 20:16

Well, a lot of times what I'd get is we've already looked into that guy. We've eliminated him, or vice versa. Another agency would call me and I'd say, nah, I've already eliminated that guy.

SPEAKER_01 20:27

Not showing the information at this point, right?

SPEAKER_03 20:30

And and so did you always trust that? Um I I'm a trust but verify person.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 20:38

So okay, you you eliminated him. How?

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Send me that. Let me look at it. Send me that. Let me ask.

SPEAKER_03 20:43

Send me the DNA report, send me whatever, like just you know, prove it, right? Um and so what was happening is people would agency shop. So they would they would call me.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

They didn't feel like their voice was being heard.

SPEAKER_03 20:58

Yep. Yeah, hey, my brother's the Easter rapist. He's this, this, this, and blah blah blah, and you know, just the worst of the worst. No, your your brother was 16 in 1976 and living 300 miles away. I'm pretty sure he wasn't driving up, you know, after math class and committing rapes and then driving back home, right? So, like, we're gonna eliminate that guy. Well, then they would turn around and call Contra Costa Sheriff's Office and and change the tip just a little bit, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:27

Was there a reward to be had?

SPEAKER_03 21:29

Is that not at this time, no?

SPEAKER_00 21:31

Interesting. Why why do you think people were doing that? That's that's odd.

SPEAKER_03 21:34

I think because it was it, it was honestly constant. Tips were were pretty constant coming in uh just all the time. Um and so at the time my sergeant and I are like, This is ridiculous. The communication is non-existent, yeah, and we really need to to do something about it. So we get in a room with the Captain of our division at the time, and we're pitching this idea. We're like, hey, we want to start a task force, and we want to get all the affected agencies on board. We want the state, you know, DOJ involved, the state DNA lab. We need the FBI, like, we need all these entities to get on board and do this. And it's gonna mean in-person meetings. Because this was, you know, 2010, 2011. Teams wasn't around. Zoom did not exist. Yeah. So we're like, we're gonna have to do that.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

Some logistics that need to be, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:32

So we're gonna have to travel. So we're gonna need some money. And at the time, the captain was like, Yeah, let's do it. Oh, but don't call it a task force because nobody's dedicating 100%. So we're gonna call it a working group.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:45

All right, working group. I'm down. I'll call it. Whatever that perception is. You gotta get it.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

Sounds good. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 22:51

So we have this initial like I'll call to all the different affected agencies and say, Hey, you know, please send a representative from your agency to this meeting. Um, we had the first meeting in Santa Barbara, which did not suck because Santa Barbara is amazing. Um, and we just invited everybody.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

Is it everybody that was affected by the DNA hit or everybody that kind of fit this like common MO? How how did you decide like who was important to this meeting?

SPEAKER_03 23:21

Pretty much any agency that had a a case that we felt was related to it. Yeah, yeah. Um, so 14 local sheriff and police departments.

SPEAKER_04 23:33

That's a good stuff.

SPEAKER_03 23:34

Um, and then we also brought in the Department of Justice, California Department of Justice. We also brought in the FBI, we had the the um behavioral analysis unit involved, um, we had the BICAP unit involved. Um we we brought in the military, we brought in Air Force OSI, Army CID, like I mean we didn't care. If we thought you could help, you were invited.

SPEAKER_04 23:57

I like it.

SPEAKER_03 23:58

Pretty much how it went down.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

What was that initial participation like? Did you get good responses from those agencies?

SPEAKER_03 24:05

It was great. Oh, good. Every every agency sent somebody. Um, a lot of them sent like a a higher up lieutenant or captain, but they they sent somebody. So that was great. We get everybody in a room, and the first day was just presentations. It was here's this is what our series looked like, this is what our homicide looked like, and just we went chronologically through the cases. And then the next day was all right, what how do we even begin? Like, where do we start? Um, and so at the at that meeting, it was decided that we needed a single point of contact where that person would kind of be the the intake. So any suspect name, any whatever would be given to this person and just put on it on a log sheet. We started I started an Excel spreadsheet. I love Excel. Um, and we just wanted to keep track of tips and leads.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

So you did you become that person?

SPEAKER_03 25:12

I did, and not because I raised my hand, but because everybody else took a step back.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

And you knew it had to be different. Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

Yeah, that seems like an overwhelming for one person. Yeah, it was a lot.

SPEAKER_00 25:25

And and so just or just to r uh reiterate what you said, 86 was the last time he offended, and we're talking about 2003-ish.

SPEAKER_03 25:34

This was this was about 2011 when he had this first meeting. So a lot had gone on.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

That's insane. So technology is is is moving too. So are are you are you considering like rerunning uh DNA in CODIS to see if there had been any confirmed hits, or like are y'all trying to do any no any new lab techniques at this point in 2011, or are you just trying to build all of the connections?

SPEAKER_03 26:01

So it at this point, it it's it's all of that. Everything you just said.

SPEAKER_04 26:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 26:06

Um, it was pretty much just a circus, if you will. I mean, there was multiple rings, multiple things going on in each ring and trying to trying to hit every avenue. And one of the things that uh my sergeant at the time said was we need to do everything we possibly can and more so that when we put this case back on the shelf, we can say we did it all.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

Yeah. And and feel good at the current times. We've checked every box we can. We need to wait until something more can come forward. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

Were were people giving up?

SPEAKER_03 26:43

Um other certainly. Yeah. People were. I mean, it's hard to work a case for 40 years.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

Right. And people come and go because he's no longer offending since 86. At some point you have to think these resources, you know, like he's fallen off the face of the earth, as far as you guys are probably thinking. So, you know, at some point, how many resources do you put into someone who's no longer offending? Like, obviously, people deserve answers in these cases, but they're 40-year-old cases at that point. The odd that your suspect is dead is passed across your mind.

SPEAKER_03 27:19

And and that was definitely a concern for the higher-ups, you know, the people watching the budget is how much money are we gonna spend on a dead guy? We've got cases that are happening right now.

SPEAKER_04 27:29

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 27:30

You know, do we have the resources to dedicate to to this, this cold case that's 40 years old versus you know, the the six homicides we had last month? You know, um, so it kind of became a balancing act. Um but so I became the the the the point of contact, the hey, if you've got leads, you know, whatever, just just send the name and date of birth to page, you'll put it on a spreadsheet, and then when and if you eliminate them, we'll we'll we'll knock them off, right? As eliminated. But so we were looking at the DNA side of things. Is there more we can do? Um, you know, can we get in in California? We can do familial searches at the state level.

SPEAKER_04 28:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 28:16

And so we were hoping to see if maybe maybe this guy had a brother that uh, you know, got arrested for a felony offense and got his DNA in CODIS, and maybe we can find the brother and lead to our offender.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

So tell me what that tell me what that looks like. In 2011, you can do familiars familial searches. Well, I mean, had what what is that entail? That's not just running it through CODIS, right? You're just looking at a part of the DNA.

SPEAKER_03 28:44

So you essentially, but it's so familial searches aren't done at the national level, they can only be done at state level. The FBI does not allow familial searches, so it's a state-by-state.

SPEAKER_04 28:54

Local to state okay yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_03 28:56

So at the state level, you can take your forensic unknown, right? Your bad guy DNA that you don't know who it is, and they do a special search that's way above my, you know, bandwidth. Um they'll come back and say, okay, these a hundred, you know, whatever offenders, known offenders in the system, share a certain percentage, which would indicate a potential sibling relationship or father-son relationship.

SPEAKER_04 29:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 29:29

That yielded nothing.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

We never got it has to be that close, right? Parent-child, sibling.

SPEAKER_03 29:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:35

Yeah. Yeah. And is that an automatic thing that they do when code is you have to request it, right? Yep. You have to do that. That's how it is in the state of Florida. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:43

We we have a very strict um uh policy and a procedure you have to go through. You have to apply. There's a lot of paperwork to go through to do it. Um, this one obviously passed with flying colors to be done. So um, so we did it in California. We did it, we requested the other states that allow familiar searching. We asked if they would do it. Some of them did, some didn't, just based off of their state policy. You know, it's their state law. So we obviously had to respect whatever they had going. Um, so there was that. Parabon was coming, you know, into the game at this point.

SPEAKER_04 30:23

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 30:23

Um, we had that done. Um, we had the the uh phenotype done where they produced, you know, a predicted face of what your offender could look like.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

It's funny Mike talked about that last week with his case that they did the phenotypic report for it.

SPEAKER_03 30:38

Yeah, and you know what? I I'm a huge supporter of Parabon and you know that phenotype process. Um, I think in our case, the and keep in mind Parabon was was in its kind of in its infancy at the time when we did it. Clearly, I can't speak to how they operate now. Um, but in the early days, uh my personal opinion is you either had case if the person had some very unique features, um, it usually came through and the phenotype was spot on. But if you had just kind of an average everyman look, which is kind of what ours was.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

I was saying if you if you look at the two pictures, is there anything, is there any similarities between the two?

SPEAKER_03 31:25

You know, looking back at it now, if you were to put the parabon picture next to one of his younger pictures, you could go, yeah, I can see that. Yeah, okay. But in a in a body association exists, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

Nothing definitive that you could be like, this is our guy, we gotta find him.

SPEAKER_03 31:40

Right, exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

You know, we talked about this in in in your in your podcast, your first podcast, and you were talking about like like you get so many things, you're like, oh, this is gonna be the one Parabond's gonna come through, and we're gonna get a picture of the guy, it's gonna be great, and then you get it and you're like that's like every white dude, like every white dude that ever existed. So this is not gonna help us any.

unknown 32:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

I mean, just a just a kick in the butt every single time, it seems like.

SPEAKER_03 32:05

Yeah. So I mean, but it's a roller coaster and you just gotta hang on for the ride, I think. Yeah, don't know if you don't if you're gonna stay, if you're gonna stay in this game, you just gotta be be willing to do that.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

Let me ask you this. Is this the case? Or did this case help you with your motivation to work unresolved cases?

SPEAKER_03 32:25

Yeah. Okay. I will say I learned more from working this series than any other any other case. And because the things I learned from working the series, I applied to other cases.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

I love that. And just kind of just 14 agencies, federal agencies, state agencies. I mean, it's just the wealth of knowledge that you have in that room from just in general how people work, what services are offered, what you know, that's a really a room with a wealth of knowledge. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:58

Oh, yeah. It was kind of awe-inspiring, you know, sure like to be around all of these. And some of the detectives in that room, that first meeting of mine, these these are OGs that have been working homicides for 20, 30 years, and they've got so much, you know, knowledge that they bring with them. And to learn from them was just kind of cool. And to hear them say, you know, hey, we tried this on a case a couple years ago, it didn't work, but maybe why don't we try it now? Yeah, let's do it. Might as well. That's cool. We were we were trying anything. Um fingerprints. You know, obviously in these burglaries and in these rapes, there were fingerprints left at the scene. But the the issue is when we uploaded the fingerprint, when um next generation identification came along, the FBI's NGI system, we were like, oh, new fingerprint database. Let's get these prints in, it's more robust. Let's see if we can get some hits. Well, we got hits, we got a lot of hits.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

Really?

SPEAKER_03 33:56

It was never him because officers. Hindsight, he he worked in an agency where he worked in the fingerprint unit, so he knew all about fingerprints.

SPEAKER_04 34:07

Oh no.

SPEAKER_03 34:08

So he didn't leave fingerprints. So these hits would come in, speaking of roller coaster, and I'd get a fingerprint hit, and then my fingerprint analyst would send it to me, and she'd be excited, and I'd get excited, and we're screaming on the phone, and then I look into it and I'm like, Well shit, that's the neighbor that came and untied the victim when he heard her screaming. Oh no man. So it was just kind of like every time, like, damn, nope, nope, not it.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

Did he tie up with tape or with uh like like uh rope?

SPEAKER_03 34:38

Shoelaces.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

Oh dang. So you couldn't get any colour?

SPEAKER_01 34:42

Like he would use the victim's shoelaces, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:45

And but what was even more what complicated it even more is he would use shoelaces from prior assaults or prior burglaries.

SPEAKER_01 34:55

Oh man.

SPEAKER_03 34:56

So he'd burglarize and break into this house and steal the shoelaces, and then he would leapfrog and use those.

SPEAKER_00 35:03

Well, that I mean that seems kind of stupid. That connects the cases a little bit better. I mean, that's not good.

SPEAKER_03 35:09

I mean, from a suspect standpoint, but I mean that's I would think, but we can I mean, how could we connect it even then?

SPEAKER_00 35:14

We tried to No, you're right, yeah, for how many years? Right.

SPEAKER_01 35:17

So how hindsight you're like, what a fool, but gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 35:22

Just kidding.

SPEAKER_03 35:23

So here's another funny thing that happened. We were trying to collate everything and get all the evidence and all the reports and everything, you know, together in one place, and we're going through a bunch of uh like poster board things that had been in a closet for God knows how long and moved around to every building we'd moved into. And we we go to get it and we find it, you know, we're sifting through these cardboard poster board things and one and I and I you know, I could just cringe every time I think about it. Back in 70, I don't know, 77, 78, somebody in their infinite wisdom decided to take all these shoelaces and tape them to a poster board. Do you know what happens to tape after 30, 40 years in a hot, stinky closet?

SPEAKER_00 36:16

Melts, gets gross, turns to dust. Oh so she likes it just on the ground now.

SPEAKER_03 36:23

We pick up this poster board and they just they just like a pachinko machine, they just fall. And we were like, and they were all labeled like what case they came from, and we were like, son of a bitch. Rutro.

SPEAKER_04 36:37

Rutro.

SPEAKER_00 36:38

Oh no.

SPEAKER_03 36:39

So yeah, so that happened, and it was just you know roadblock after roadblock, comedy of errors just kept occurring, but anyway, the other thing at this meeting that we kind of hammered out was okay, how are we going to eliminate suspects? Like, what's gonna be our triage and how are we gonna approach this? And there were a couple ways. So DNA, right? 100%. If we confirm that their DNA was in CODIS, and that was the other thing, we had to physically confirm their DNA and CODIS. We had to call our state lab and confirm that the offender's DNA was profiled and in the system. Because one thing I learned is occasionally what would happen is if somebody's arrested at a jail, booked, and it's a felony offense, or in California, certain misdemeanor offenses, and they get their DNA collected, and that DNA goes to the state lab, the state lab would, upon receipt, put the flag that DNA was on file, even though it hadn't been profiled and it hadn't been uploaded yet. They've since changed the way they do that. They don't put the flag on it until it's actually been profiled and uploaded, but this was kind of a a kink in the system, if you will. And so, so if we saw DNA on file on somebody's criminal history, we called the lab and confirmed that it's that it's actually there. So that was one way if we could confirm that. If they were in custody, if we looked at their criminal history or anything, and we could see that they were in custody for a certain amount of time that covered um and we we were really careful about it because if they were only in custody during one of the sex assaults or something, that's not an automatic elimination because we wanted to keep in mind potential copycats. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_04 38:41

Right.

SPEAKER_03 38:41

Oh now if yeah. How many now if they were go ahead, no, go ahead. If they were in custody during a whole swath of cases or a DNA case, something like that, then we felt confident to eliminate them.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 38:55

But yeah, we didn't everything was in the paper.

SPEAKER_00 38:58

Yeah, did you have any copycats?

SPEAKER_03 39:00

I think we I think we did. There were several cases that were on at first glance, when you'd read them, you'd go, ah, this could be. But then there was usually something like the signature wasn't there or something that kind of threw it off that we could kind of put it aside, but but at the same time not completely dismiss it.

SPEAKER_01 39:18

You know, we wanted to kind of keep keep it on our radar, but so when you're looking at these people to eliminate them, how many cases are you looking at? Like how many cases have you now tied together to say definitively we know this is our guy? So who we're looking at or kind of judging on these four amount of cases? Like how many did you have with that DNA match?

SPEAKER_03 39:42

So we had in the in the Southern California, it was all of uh eight of the 10 homicides had DNA. Um, in the first two homicides, he didn't actually complete the sex assault act. He um he ended up firing his uh weapon and he fled the scene because at that point it's noisy, right? And he was worried that somebody's gonna call the cops and get there. So there's there's no DNA in that one, but the MO and everything is just spot on. Um, and so we had those DNA cases. We had three cases from the Bay Area, one of the Bay Area agencies that had DNA. All the other Northern California cases were MO based. There were fifty, there were 50 of them, but they were all when I started reading them in chronological order. I'd read a case and summarize it and then go to the next one. And it it was really eerie because I was like, oh, I literally only have to change the victim's name, age, and the address that occurred because it was just boom, boom, boom, like it was scripted exactly the same. So it it was creepy how similar all of these cases were. So DNA custody blood type was a big one, believe it or not. Um, we knew our offender had a positive blood from one of the crime scenes.

SPEAKER_04 41:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 41:16

And so back in the old serology days, they used to do blood type a lot. And so we knew our offender's blood type, and so a lot of cases, if somebody was in the military, we would get military records and get their blood type from the military records, and then we could we would eliminate them off of that because we were confident in that information. And then the last thing would be military service, is if they were stationed out of country or in a different state or whatever during those crimes. So those were the four ways that we were eliminating people, and that was it. If we couldn't eliminate you from that, guess what? You were probably gonna get a knock on your door and ask for your DNA.

SPEAKER_00 41:57

Wow. So you're compiling all this information. Are you going out in the field and doing any of the work too? Or are you the oh my gosh. So you're the repository for all the information, period. But then you're also doing the legwork as well as I assume the other agencies, because they may be in their inside their jurisdiction and so on and so forth. So how often are y'all meeting as a group?

SPEAKER_03 42:22

So we only met like all of us, the the working group, um, which funnily enough, later a a different lieutenant comes along and I I said something in a meeting. I go, Oh no, we can't call it a task force. Um, Captain So and so said, No task force, it's a it's a working group. He said, Screw that. He goes, You can call it a fucking tea party. He's like, This is what this is a task force.

SPEAKER_00 42:47

It's a task force, that's what we're gonna call it.

SPEAKER_03 42:49

He's like, we're gonna call it a task force. I'm like, okay, so as far as like coordinated the entire task force getting together, we met four times over the course of three years, I believe. But we kept in contact via email, like I would constantly send a mass email out to the entire group saying, hey, um, I've eliminated or these suspects have been eliminated via DNA. Um the you know, DNA reports are attached or things like that. And so um I tried to be on a weekly basis emailing the group, trying to keep communication up, like, hey, these are the suspects we're looking into. If anybody's eliminated them, please let me know so that we don't waste time.

SPEAKER_04 43:32

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 43:33

Um, and we've eliminated these people. So um it was a lot. And then if you were lucky enough to make it to the list where we couldn't eliminate you, um, we just would um one of my my FBI partner, we would pick two or three that were kind of in the same geographic area and we'd go out for the day and we'd go knock on doors and say, Hey, guess what, brother? Your name came up. Well give us your DNA.

SPEAKER_00 44:03

It it may be different in California. But uh when you have multi multi-jurisdictions, it's likely that either the feds are gonna take hold of it or the state investigative agency is gonna take hold of it. At this point, is it still localized to each agency and the task force is just working independently until we get a a positive suspect, or has one or the other picked up and said, We're very interested in this case and we're gonna work on it? I heard you say FBI. So tell me about that.

SPEAKER_03 44:29

So I I we're kind of a unicorn in our relationship with the FBI, the Sacramento Sheriff's Department, police department. We I had an amazing working relationship with our FBI partners in the Sacramento FBI field office. And um, the agent that was with our task force and assisting us, his he never once said, Me, me, FBI, this is our case, my case, blah, blah, blah. It was, you know, he would show up and be like, what do you need? What can I do? What can I do to help?

SPEAKER_00 45:02

Um, you don't get that often out of the three-letter agencies, state and federal, by the way.

SPEAKER_03 45:09

Yeah. And as far as like DOJ, um, the Department of Justice, I don't, I'm trying to remember if any DOJ agents got involved. I don't think the DOJ was part of it. It was mainly just the lab, the DNA lab.

SPEAKER_04 45:22

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 45:23

Um, but no, we didn't have that problem. Um, at least in Northern California. I believe in Southern California there might have been some some issues with one of the FBI field offices down there, but story for another time.

SPEAKER_00 45:37

We'll talk about that at Sahia next year.

SPEAKER_03 45:38

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, so yeah, it just kind of and tracking everything. And like I mentioned earlier, I had a a spreadsheet where I started putting one of our thought processes was was okay, well, what if this guy is just some neighbor and he shows up at like two or three of the scenes, you know, in the report somehow, or he inserts himself as they tend to do. So let's start a list. And boy, I love my list. So as I started reading these cases, every single name I came across went on the list. Yeah, it didn't matter what role you played. It's victim, neighbor, suspect, children, like whatever. If there was a name and an identifying information, you went on the list. Um the problem came later when okay, hey, Contra Costa, can you share your reports? And here, here's our reports. And then you start going through their reports and you start looking at their suspect list. Well, their suspect lists contain the suspects Sacramento sent them. Okay. Now you move to Alameda County and say, Hey, can I get your reports? And Alameda sends you their reports. Well, now their reports have suspect lists that include Sacramento, Contra Costa, and theirs. So the names start showing up. So there was one poor guy, I think he showed up like 50 times on the spreadsheet I had.

SPEAKER_00 47:06

Because oops.

SPEAKER_03 47:08

You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:09

So he's just a male guy just trying to do his job.

SPEAKER_03 47:12

No big deal.

SPEAKER_00 47:13

But he's a suspect in this like huge case.

SPEAKER_03 47:17

Um did he give his DNA? Uh, we eliminated him via some other things. He he uh he he was not a good boy, and so his DNA was on file. Yeah, so we were able to do that. Yeah, um, knocking on doors.

SPEAKER_00 47:31

I steal cars for sure, but I did not kill and rape some girls, I promise you.

SPEAKER_01 47:36

All the things I've been convicted of.

SPEAKER_03 47:38

Yep, yeah, but not that. I would never do that. Um so so yeah, it just kind of became this like daily slog of reading reports and putting names in a spreadsheet and going over everything and you know, running down leads and tips and going out and interviewing people, and um one of the one of this my the my FBI partner tells the story better. Um, it's funny as hell. We're we go off one day, we've got three guys we're gonna target that day to to try to get DNA. And we're driving to the first house, and he says, you know, if we open the door and the guy's standing there with no pants, we're gonna know it's our guy because that's how the Easter Arapas would work is he'd come in, he'd shine the flashlight, but he wouldn't have pants on. Like he he had already like taken his pants off.

SPEAKER_01 48:31

Oh no, he was ready.

SPEAKER_03 48:32

I know this is yes, oh yeah, oh yeah, we're not gonna waste any time here. So so my partner says if they open the door and they don't have any pants on, it's our guy. Well, I'll just get my cuffs out and we'll we'll take him in. And I'm like, okay, cool.

SPEAKER_00 48:44

Please tell me the first guy you knock on the door, he didn't have bridges on.

SPEAKER_03 48:47

I am not kidding, no. We we show up at this apartment, knock on the door, and we're waiting, waiting. And it takes a little bit longer than it should have, and we keep long enough to get pants on, right? No, no, we don't even bother with pants.

SPEAKER_00 49:06

Long enough for a normal person to get pants on.

SPEAKER_03 49:08

This guy opens the door, and he's wearing a white t-shirt that looks like it hadn't been washed in a minute. Oh, yeah. And some white briefs that are no longer white.

SPEAKER_00 49:22

Some yellow skivvies. That ain't what you want, let me tell you.

SPEAKER_03 49:26

Yeah, and no pants. And my and you turn to your partner. I turned to my partner, and like I said, he says it better. He goes, the look on your face was holy shit.

SPEAKER_04 49:41

We got him.

SPEAKER_03 49:42

This is it, we got him. He he said, I've never seen somebody's eyes get so big. So he invites us in, no shame. Just invites us in the apartment, and we're talking to him, and he he's like, Yeah, I'll give you my DNA. And you know, he tells us the spiel about how he used to be in a band, and he was such a ladies' man, and I was like, Yeah, I can see that. Oh god. Um, we're gonna go now. Thank you for the DNA.

SPEAKER_01 50:05

And we leave you burning these clothes that have been sitting in your house with you.

SPEAKER_00 50:09

You start itching when you get back to the cruiser.

SPEAKER_03 50:11

So it gets worse.

SPEAKER_00 50:13

Oh no.

SPEAKER_03 50:14

So we go to the next apartment. Oh gosh, and we're laughing the whole way because we're like, what are the odds, right? This guy, the the wife opens the door and she's like, Well, what's this all about? And you know, we want to talk to your husband, and she's like, Well, what's this about? You know, is he in trouble? And we're like, nah, he's not in trouble. No, she's like, Well, probably didn't kill 40 women. And so we tell we we were very transparent with people. We're like, hey, we're working a cold case. It's the Easter rapist. Have you ever heard of them? Well, he hear he hears us from the back of the apartment and comes running out of the bathroom where he was taking a shower. And the only thing he managed to grab is the um like the floor mat.

SPEAKER_00 50:54

Oh yes. Hey, bud, you gotta have that before you get in the shower because you know you're gonna get out to the floor.

SPEAKER_03 51:07

I think he's just so excited.

SPEAKER_00 51:09

Hey, Joanne, you know what I what I what I'm hearing is that Californians live totally different than the Southern store.

SPEAKER_01 51:15

My bathroom appears very different, it seems. Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_03 51:20

So, I mean, what are the odds that you're gonna show up at two individuals' homes on the same day and they're both gonna answer the door with no pants on? I love it. And completely shameless. And give they gave us their sample. It was awesome.

SPEAKER_00 51:34

Hey, I mean, that was I I'm assuming that was two eliminated subjects.

SPEAKER_03 51:39

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 51:40

All right, thank god.

SPEAKER_03 51:42

So when? I mean, my eyes were bleeding, but when?

SPEAKER_01 51:48

Golly, what was it really a win?

SPEAKER_03 51:51

Uh well, yeah. I don't know. I'm gonna take it though.

unknown 51:55

Oh, jeez.

SPEAKER_01 51:56

So at least you had some fun.

SPEAKER_00 51:58

At least you got out of the office a little bit. Yeah, that's nice.

SPEAKER_01 52:00

There was fun. Yeah, at this point, is this your full-time what you do day to day when you're going to the office? Pretty much.

SPEAKER_03 52:08

I I would say it probably took up about 80% of my time. And that other 20 was it's probably the wrong term to use, but sometimes I needed a palate cleanser. Sure. And I needed to just like a break. You just needed a break from it. Yeah. So I needed to work a different homicide.

SPEAKER_00 52:30

To go with Joanna, how how long, how long had you been in this case at this point in your story?

SPEAKER_03 52:37

So in 2011, so I had started like kind of reviewing the cases here and there in 2005 when I was in the homicide bureau.

unknown 52:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:48

Um, and then in 2011 or 2010, when the task force starts up in earnest, like that it was 80% every week the whole time, yeah, since 2011. And then 2016, we decided to do a major media push.

SPEAKER_00 53:05

Ease.

SPEAKER_03 53:06

Because that's the 40th anniversary of the first sex assault in Sacramento.

SPEAKER_01 53:12

So five years in.

SPEAKER_03 53:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:15

So we do no wonder you needed a palate cleanser. I cannot imagine five straight years focusing on this one case. It was exhausting.

SPEAKER_00 53:23

Give me a domestic so I can work it quickly because I do not want to deal with this anymore.

SPEAKER_03 53:29

So we do this major media push, and and this is kind of where the lessons learned kind of come into play because we before the the media push, we were designing what we wanted to put out and how we wanted to approach it and the date we wanted to do it, but we needed to let the victims know. Um you know, it's only fair because this is this is a wound that they've been dealing with for decades and had no idea and they're blindsided by their own trauma.

SPEAKER_01 53:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:00

Yeah. So we wanted them to hear about it from us. So we drafted a letter, we sent it to all the the sex assault victims that we could find addresses for. Um, unfortunately, uh several of them were already deceased, um, just to kind of let them know like what was happening. We asked the Southern California agencies to send letters to the surviving family members of the homicide victims down there because they have a dog in this fight too, obviously. Um, and I think some balls got dropped. Um, the sex assault victims all got notified because I personally sent those letters. But I think some of the Southern California family members did not get notified. And then all of a sudden they see this thing on the news and they were kind of blindsided. Yeah. So that was something that needed to be coordinated better and understood by all the agencies. Like, you have to do this, you have to let them know.

SPEAKER_00 54:58

So, lessons learned, what would you do differently now if this were to happen? How would you ensure that didn't happen again?

SPEAKER_03 55:06

Uh probably be a little bit more heavy heavy-handed on, hey, you have to write these letters.

SPEAKER_04 55:11

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 55:11

Um, you know, there's no excuse for not doing it. The letter was basically drafted already. You just had to change the name and the address.

unknown 55:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:19

You know. Um, so that would be one thing that I would have been a little bit more stern about. Yeah. Is you know, you owe this to these victims to let them know.

SPEAKER_00 55:30

Yeah, it's tough.

SPEAKER_03 55:31

Um, so that was one of the first things. Um, some of the victims were appreciative. They called, they wanted to know, like, because one of the things we wanted to warn them is like, hey, you might receive calls from the media. And the question was, well, how are they gonna get my information? Are you giving it out?

SPEAKER_04 55:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:49

Hell hell no, I'm not giving your information out. But in this day and age, with computers and searching and your stuff's online, yeah, public.

SPEAKER_04 55:58

They may find you.

SPEAKER_03 55:59

Yeah, yep. So just be aware. If anybody calls you and questions you about this case, feel free to tell them to pound sand. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 56:07

Don't kick rod or let us know.

SPEAKER_03 56:09

Um, so so that was a big thing um that I really wish had been handled differently. The other thing, moving forward, once he was identified and his arrest hit the news before we could get ahead of it. And so it got out on like Reddit and on the internet, and we had no mechanism in place to notify the victims.

SPEAKER_00 56:37

Oh no.

SPEAKER_03 56:39

And so that morning we were scrambling, trying to call the victims and let them know what was going on. And again, some of the victims didn't get notified. And so their first understanding of what happened is on the five o'clock news.

SPEAKER_04 56:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:55

Um, and that that to me was probably the most disappointing thing, is because none of these victims deserved to find out that way. They should have heard from us first.

SPEAKER_00 57:06

Absolutely. Yeah, um, I learned that lesson hard in a singular homicide case, and I got tunnel vision and I I focused on a suspect, found a suspect, worked him, got a confession, made an arrest late at night, didn't notify my victims. Family, my victim's family. Woke up the next morning and I had very angry victims. And I'm like, I I just I'm so sorry. Like I just it wasn't because I didn't uh want to tell you, I just I forgot. I just got so busy. And I learned that that was the moment that I was like, I will never do this again. And I can't imagine with you know, I'm gonna I'm just gonna say 40 plus victims, right? I think that's an appropriate number. 40 plus victims scale at which geez, I can't I I I can't even imagine. And so did you did you guys start receiving phone calls, emails? I mean, how how how did y'all I mean, and you're the face of it, I'm sure. I'm sure it's like, oh, well, Paige will take care of it, don't worry. Send it to Paige's desk.

SPEAKER_03 58:09

It it kind of it came up, right? Yeah, exactly. Hey, there was one of those two. Um no doubt. It can't it came up that morning. One of the detectives came up to me and she goes, We haven't notified the victims yet. And I was like, You're right, we got to do that. And so we pretty much took the the list of our victims that had phone numbers that we knew about at the time, tore it in half. I'm like, you go call these, I'll start calling these. Yeah, and we just started going down the line. But I'm you know, by the time I get to my third phone call, my phone starts ringing from another victim saying, I just saw on the news, and so it it was all day long phone calls and trying to explain to them why we didn't notify them earlier that this was coming down the pike. Um, so yeah, a lot of angry people.

SPEAKER_00 58:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:56

That was tough.

SPEAKER_00 58:57

So, and we'll get into how you identify the subject and how you made an arrest and all the things, but what would you do now to eliminate that? Like how how how would you I mean, and I know you can't you can't get ahead of the media because once the media gets a sniff of it, it's done. Especially in 2026 now with social media and all the things.

SPEAKER_03 59:18

I mean, well, and in our case it was it was pillow talk. Somebody in the in the division when we arrested him that night, went home and told his spouse.

SPEAKER_00 59:30

They wanted to be the first ones, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:32

Yeah, and then and then the telephone starts going.

SPEAKER_00 59:35

Gross.

SPEAKER_03 59:35

And so um, yeah, and you know stuff spreads so fast.

SPEAKER_00 59:39

And you can't really eliminate all of that.

SPEAKER_03 59:42

No.

SPEAKER_00 59:42

You know, and I think that's I think that's the problem with law enforcement too, is like that's why we don't communicate with each other because we don't want the information to get out prematurely. But at the same time, that's damning it to an investigation, especially to this scale. And I'm sure a lot of that existed, like, hey, we don't really want to talk about this because we have a serial burglary burglar, you know, back when it very first started. Like, we don't really want to talk about this because we want to make sure we capture him and we don't want copycats or we don't want XYZ, whatever. So all this probably existed, these these issues that we're talking about right now back when it first started.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:15

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:17

We are our own worst enemy when it comes to tunnels. We are.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:19

I mean, yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:20

And and and it's hard.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:23

And and you get and but you're right. You when you say you get tunnel vision, because I mean, the excitement of finally nailing this guy, right? Like we identified this guy. Not only did we identify this guy, but he's alive. Oh, yeah, and we can go pick his ass up, right? Like, yeah, that excitement kind of overwhelms a lot of your senses and a lot of your reasoning when you're like, oh shit, we should notify the victims, you know. So I can see how that gets high.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:53

It doesn't take away from they need to be notified and they, you know, have the right to get this resolution. But here you are 80% of your day focusing on this for five years. So of course that tunnel vision exists because you're human and you're excited to know that there's a resolution, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:11

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I take responsibility for it, but I feel like, you know, that would be my like moving forward lesson learned. Like, have a plan. And and I think for a long time we were hopeful, but at the same time, like, we're never gonna find this guy, you know, because it had gotten to that point with so many disappointments and so many, this is the guy, it's not the guy. Um, you know, I think we were all kind of reserved, like, we're never gonna get in, but we're gonna play the game anyway. Yeah, and then when it did happen, we weren't prepared. We were not prepared at all.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:48

Well, because you won the Super Bowl.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:51

Like felt like it.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:53

You had worked so hard, didn't really expect to win. You know, you show up at the game and then boom, you win. It's like the underdog. What do we do now?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:03

We just look at each other like, okay, but now what?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:06

Yeah. Um, you know, have have a plan to contact your victims and how that's gonna work, especially on a scale like this when you have that many victims.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:16

Um, the other thing, um get your shit together while you are in it in the trench. Because now that he's arrested, guess what the next step is? Discovery.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:30

Oh my gosh. Hope your reports were done.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:34

Trying to collate everything, trying to put everything together, and trying to scan it, you know, to send the DA the electronic version, and it just we we were not prepared for that. So and we should have been.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:46

Let me ask this question before we get into how we arrested him and how we identified him. At the point where you have identified him and you realize this is the guy since the early 70s, like, did the state finally pick up and say, We're gonna be the prosecuting agent? Or did we have individual jurisdiction uh uh judicial districts charging him?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:10

Yes. So it started off where each county DA wanted to take a piece.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:16

Well, of course. I mean, this is a sexy case, everybody wants to be involved, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:20

Yeah, so they're you know, they're all jockeying to take their turn to to throw their punch and and and make a charge, but ultimately what happened is everything ended up falling under Sacramento County. So Sacramento County took all of these other cases under their umbrella.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:36

Nice.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:36

Um, and so uh, so he's arrested in 2018. So so we'll go back to his identification. So I want to be very clear, uh, because I've been accused of this before, is I did not work the genetic genealogy angle. I wasn't part of that group.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:54

Um, so I wasn't the one that identified him, right? Like I wasn't the one that said Joseph D'Angelo is our guy.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:00

Um so having said that, um I honestly think that this case would have never been solved without it because he he wasn't offending anymore. He wasn't gonna get his DNA in the system. He was just living under the radar, living his best life, right? Which happened to be about seven miles from my house.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:25

What um yeah. Holy crap.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:28

In a neighboring, yeah, in a neighboring uh area of the county. Um that hell, I probably passed him in a grocery store somewhere, you know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:38

Yeah. So you worked this you worked this case for uh upwards of more than five years, and then the dude lives in your right down the road. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:50

Yeah. Um gross. So yeah, it was a little terrifying, but um so he gets identified and like I said, I I don't think it would have happened without the genetic genealogy. Yeah, it just he was gonna live his life and you know, die at whatever age, and no one would would know. Um the family had no suspicions. Once the wife found out, she it was kind of it seemed I didn't interview her, I I watched parts of it, but it seemed like for her, she had there was some weirdness.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:33

Sure. Like he'd been living a lie and like she knew that something was up.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:38

Women know that she thought he was just having an affair.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:41

I was like, did she think it was something this big?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:44

No, yeah, she didn't think it was this big, but she she kind of assumed he was having an affair.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:50

Wow, he was murdered like affairs plural. Like I I'm sure she wished that was it. Right, yeah. Oh

SPEAKER_03 1:06:00

Day, she would have preferred that over anything. Um, jeez, so yeah, so I don't think anybody was gonna see that parabond thing and be like, Oh, yeah, that's my neighbor, Joe D'Angelo, that's him. And nobody was gonna take the behavioral stuff that we were trying to put out in the media and be like, Oh, yeah, that sounds like Joe that lives down the street. Like, we we weren't gonna get those tips ever. He never showed up on any tip or anything prior to the DNA match.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:27

I mean, he he did a good job, or he was respected enough in his community where nobody expected Joe D'Angelo to be the guy.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:36

I think he just did a good job. I think it was a lot of happy accident kind of things. He knew about fingerprints, so he always wore gloves. He never left a print.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:46

How did he see how did he know about fingerprints?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:48

What was his background? Oh, because he was working for the Roseville Police Department at the time. Yep, that's him.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:54

So I just looked him up on the Googles, and uh he's in a police uniform.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:00

Yeah, he was a police officer. You're he okay, yeah. So quick timeline on this guy. During the Visalia ransacker cases down in Tularie County, okay, he was an exeter police officer, which is a neighboring county to where all of the, or not a neighboring county, I'm sorry, a neighboring city from where all of the ransacker cases were happening. He was on a burglary task force telling officers how to work burglaries, setting tips for how to commit burglaries.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:33

And he was 100% likely pointing them in the wrong direction to get the attention off of him. Do you think he offended while he was on duty?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:42

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:43

I know that's a speculatory question, but it's like the how how long was the God, I got so many questions. I I did not I did not expect the case to go this way. I did not do my homework on this. Let me just go ahead. I was not prepared for him to be a cop. Holy crap. I mean, I've been okay. I've been listening a little bit. What? So yeah. How long was the cop?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:06

Oh gosh, how long was he with Exeter PD?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:09

Just a couple years. Okay. You know, not not that long.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:12

But enough to get some inside knowledge of how it goes.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:15

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. What? So he understood response time. He understood like crime scene, uh, you know, how they were gonna approach the crime scene, how they were gonna do do things. He understood all that stuff. Um, then when it got you know hot down there and he was they were on his on his heels basically, he he bowls and he comes to Northern California and he gets a job with the Roseville Police Department, and he's working in their fingerprint section. So now he's getting all this knowledge about fingerprints and how they lift them and how they, you know, do all the comparisons and all this stuff. So he wore gloves at every crime scene.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:53

Had he offended at the time he was working in the fingerprint unit?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:59

Oh, yeah. Okay, so yeah, there were cases happening.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:02

Do you think that he had destroyed any evidence because of his position?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:09

Okay, I don't think so because he was working for a different agency that wasn't involved. There were no cases that occurred in that that jurisdiction. So no, I don't think so.

unknown 1:09:20

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:21

But um, yeah, and and obviously DNA doesn't exist, so he doesn't know to wear a condom or you know anything like that. So he's leaving that everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:30

Jeez, okay. All right, so all right, so FGG found him. Um how okay, so uh uh I got so many questions. Uh you said it earlier pre-show. You said something about like um the wheel wasn't just invented. So FGG was this thing that was talked about in investigations, and we didn't really know its capabilities in 2015. This is, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:09:59

Uh 17. Yes and no. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:02

So we didn't really know its full capabilities, but one agency that was part of this task force decided, hey, we're gonna just try this. Was that a was that a local thing, or did they use one of the companies now that that does it?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:16

It was local. Our our uh the Sacramento DA's office partnered with um the Los Angeles FBI field office. And so they worked the they built the trees.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:28

Did we know this was happening as part of the test?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:31

We did. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:32

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we did. Interesting. Um much weight was put into that, like when people were talking about it. Was this another like something we can try, or were people excited about it?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:44

I I think it was both. Interesting. Okay. So when I said like, you know, like the invention of the wheel, it doesn't happen in one single space and time. Um, JedMatch, which most people have heard about the genealogy, you know, website, that website had been around for about 10 years. So people were already doing genetic genealogy on like adoptions, um, misattributed parentage cases, things like that. So, so it was already being done. Yeah, it wasn't being done on a criminal side of things, right? So the first case that I'm aware of where in a criminal case that it was used was on the Bearbrook murders, which is that's a whole nother story. You'll have to do a podcast on that one.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:32

Um, a little girl was abandoned in Southern California, and they, you know, CPS comes in and takes gives her. Um, she says, Oh yeah, that was my dad. He he basically abandoned her. And they do genetic genealogy on her to figure out who she is, right? Um, and so that is kind of where we heard about it being done in a criminal-esque case, um, a child abandonment case that turned into a whole mess with four murders back east in New Hampshire, a murder in Contra Costa County in California, yeah, all related to this guy named uh Terry Rasmussen. So again, another story. So we had heard whispers about this genetic genealogy being done in a criminal situation. And so one of the investigators with one of the other agencies was like, hey, let's try it.

unknown 1:12:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:32

And for me, I was like, yeah, let's do it. Like, thanks for letting me know again, because I'm the person everybody tells. So I made note of it and I was like, okay, that's your that's your baby. You're gonna take that and run with it. And so he ended up getting evidence from one of the Southern California agencies and got that submitted to Parabon initially um to do the phenotype. Um, that ended up not helping us as much as we had hoped. And then we ended up sending the DNA to another private lab to do the SNP um analysis so that we could upload it to Jedmatch and start doing the tree building. And so then our the Sacramento DA's office and the LA Field office worked on that and started building trees. Next thing I know, I get a spreadsheet, again, loving my spreadsheets, that had 25 names on it. And they said, This is what we got. These are the like the cousins, second cousins to our target, our offender. And so we all kind of start going through the the list, and there's two brothers on it, um, Joseph D'Angelo and and his brother. I can't remember the first name, but um, the brother lived in Tulary County, which is where all the bicellular ransacre cases were occurring, and Joseph lived in Sacramento, and so we start looking at them and kind of knock out the other people that were on the list, and then we just start targeting. We decided to target Joseph because of where he lived. And we went, we actually went to the Department of California Department of Justice Command Center to get his uh criminal history and everything, and we start looking into the cases and we find an old case where he had been um he stole I think it was a hammer and some dog repellent from like a hardware store.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:32

What is dog repellent?

SPEAKER_03 1:14:34

Like, well, come to find out he hated dogs. Oh no, yeah. So I don't know. Yeah, because there were a couple of that's the worst, there were a couple of dogs at some of the scenes where he would he had kicked one, he shoved one in a closet or in a bathroom and locked it in the bathroom. And so, so anyway, not a fan of dogs, but it all the dominoes just started falling, and we're like, This is the guy, this is the guy, you know. Um, but then at that point you have to confirm it, right? So we had to get DNA from him, um, which took some time, obviously, following him around for a while to try to get a good sample that we could use. And then once that got to the lab and they confirmed it, like you said, went in the Super Bowl.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:20

Dude, that's crazy. So was Sacramento part of the arrest team, or were they the arrest team?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:27

They were the arrest team.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:29

Did you get to do that?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:30

I did not get to do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:32

Dang it, all this work, and you didn't even get crap. That sucks.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:36

Nah, it's fine. I okay, I get it. They they didn't want me to be anywhere around any of their surveillance or anything like that because, and this is something to keep in mind, because I had been public, I had done interviews and been on TV, so my face was out of there. He couldn't.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:54

If he was paying attention, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:56

Yeah, so do you think he was?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:59

Do you think he was following this as close as like he was? America's following it now.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:04

I don't think he cared but there was still that possibility, right, that he could recognize me and then the gig would be up.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:11

So right. So okay, so you get it, all right. You guys get him in custody. Does he give an interview? No, he doesn't talk. Has he talked to me?

SPEAKER_03 1:16:25

Still to this day, hasn't talked.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:27

Dang it. So we talked to Mike in the last show. And he said that uh based on the case that he had or he had made an arrest on, I asked him, I said, Well, have you talked to the guy? I'm like, You ought to go talk to the guy because he hadn't. Has anybody tried to reach out to Joseph D'Angelo?

SPEAKER_03 1:16:46

I I don't know if anybody has.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:48

Man, I would love to hear and not to give him any credit by any means, but I'd I'd love to know like his mindset, like what he was doing, why why he did what he did, and furthermore, what did he do that we don't know about?

SPEAKER_03 1:17:03

That's what I want to know, is if there are other victims that we don't know about.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:06

Well, you there there has to be there has to be. We don't get it right 100%. No way, no offense.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:11

No, no way you caught every case that's his. Well, and also if you look at a map where he was offending down south and Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Orange County, Los Angeles County is right in between those. So could there be cases in LA? And LA is just, I mean, you talk about you know, between LAPD and LASO, there's probably 1200 homicides a year. So, how do you find that needle in a haystack?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:40

Right, right, unless you have DNA, which, you know, maybe they haven't that time frame, they would have to have gone back through evidence and work it for DNA, you know, thousands of cases.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:54

It it would take one singular person or a team of people to go back and look at all the cases that fit that crime description to be able to plug those back into the I mean the not that it's not worth it, that's not what I mean, but the amount of resources that it would take would be unimaginable.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:13

It would be a Herculean effort for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:15

Gee. So I mean there there's there's likely more cases that he's responsible for.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:21

There's possi yeah, it's possible. Dang it. Yeah.

unknown 1:18:25

Man. Look at this.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:27

So that's what I would want to know. What's his actual sentence? Yeah. Like what is what goes on in charges?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:35

So he got he actually pled and that was the agreement was that because initially they were gonna go for the death penalty. And the agreement was we'll we'll take the death penalty off if you will admit to all of these cases. And so at the hearing, they read they read the charges for each case, um and he he would say one word, he would just say admit and for every case. So all the cases that we knew about, so all 50, well, I don't think all 50 were um so here's the thing. Remember, I said earlier the statute of limitations had had run out. So technically there were only a handful of cases that they could find things that they could charge on. So it was kidnapped kidnapping with intent to rape, and it's an old statute that's still on the books that we could use. Um so there were only a handful of cases. Yep. So there was a handful of cases that they could technically charge. But the the DA um, and actually, uh, I will give a plug. There are a lot of books have been written about the series. I haven't read them all, but I did read one that was written by um the current district attorney, um Tan Ho. And I read that book, and I will say he he did a pretty good job of explaining the charges and why they decided to take the death penalty off. And um the agreement was that you'll admit to every case, not just the charged cases. Um, and so he admitted to all the sex assaults, the attempted sex assaults, all the homicides. Um, and so he's got multiple life sentences. He's he's never getting out.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:33

I mean, it the Rabbi Google says that he's 80 years old currently. Um November 8th, 1945. So, I mean, dude, dude's ancient, so he's gonna die. He he will absolutely without a doubt die in the Department of Corrections.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:49

Yes, he will die in prison.

unknown 1:20:51

Jeez.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:53

And he's you know, a lot of people saw like because they televised the hearing and the sentences, and he he came in all feebled, looking infirmed and you know, old.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:03

A hundred percent. Well, I mean, like, like I saw this picture, uh, I'm assuming his his case was in 2020, and he he looked horrible, but then you look at his picture, the picture just prior, uh, and he looks like he could be a little bit of a gangster.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:23

And and I again I'm not trying to gangster. Yeah, I'm not trying to glorify by any means because he's a he's a foul human being, but like like this picture, he's walking into court totally cool. He's wearing like court clothes. I mean, court clothes, yeah. He's wearing jail clothes, and then he's here and he looks like he's got that dementia mouth. And you know what I'm talking about without being it is yeah, it was all in act.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:47

Yeah, because we had video of him in his jail cell doing burpees of the same days that he was going to court. That's crazy, yeah. Yeah, and then uh it was all in act.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:00

Yeah, what a jerk, what a douche.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:02

So, interestingly enough, because this was during so he's arrested in 2018, yeah. Right, and all the lead up to the actual the trial and everything. Um, and when the charges were read, the court, so they were very insistent on the victims being present, yeah, and the victims' families. And with so many cases, you're talking a lot of people, hundreds, and then you add then you add the investigation, you know, the investigators and all the other people involved. So no courtroom in Sacramento could facilitate this. And with the COVID restrictions, it made it even worse.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:41

Yeah, and especially in California, you guys were a whole lot heavier on those restrictions than we were out here.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:47

So, what they ended up doing is getting the ballroom at Sacramento State University, and they spread out chairs. There were chairs set up six feet apart all over the place. I can't even remember how many chairs there were, but um, everybody had to wear the mask. And then the DA actually said, This is bullshit that he gets to wear a mask and hide his face. So he went and bought that that clear shield and said he said, I want the victims to be able to look him in the eye and see his face. Um so that's why he's wearing the shield, as opposed to like the COVID mask.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:22

That isn't I'm sure that the the victims and the families of the victims and the homicides appreciated that ounce of acknowledgement their way. Oh, yeah. Let something go their way finally with that.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:36

Did did the victims ever describe like his appearance? I obviously he didn't have his pants on because he blinded him and he was ready to go. But like, did they talk about like him having a mask on or a ski mask?

SPEAKER_03 1:23:48

Oh yeah, he always wore a mask and it a different mask every time. Like sometimes it would just be the eye holes, sometimes it would be eye and mouth, sometimes it would be like the whole, you know, front of the base.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:59

Did we ever find any physical evidence of that? No, through search warrants? So, okay, so um identify the guy through FGG, arrest the guy. Do we start doing search warrants on his residence?

SPEAKER_03 1:24:11

Oh, yeah. They were there for days.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:14

Yeah, sure. Comb it through every fiber. Everything.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:17

I mean, everyone cutting the floor.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:20

I love it. Did uh man, did they find anything usable that would pin him back to this outside of the DNA?

SPEAKER_03 1:24:27

Not to my knowledge.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:30

That's crazy. I wonder what he did with that stuff, especially because before we got on, you were talking a little bit. He had a family. Not only is he married, but he had kids.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:39

Well, and he took souvenirs. He would take wedding rings, he would take earrings, he would take he would take jewelry. Where's all that? We never found it.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:47

God, we gotta talk to you.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:52

Yeah, no joke. Like I mean, I know it's I know it's not reasonable for a Middle Tennessee and Central Florida gal to go talk to someone.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:01

Come on out, let's try it.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:03

I mean, that's why that's why I told Mike, I said, just go try it, see what he says. Like, oh man. So many unanswered questions.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:12

I'd go, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:14

Do you think the DA would frown upon that?

SPEAKER_03 1:25:17

Like if I did it personally or if anybody did it.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:20

Uh go with both. I mean, like, if somebody was like, Yeah, let's let's tag Paige in.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:25

Um, I I don't I at this point, because there's no appeals, right? He waived all of his appeals, so so it's done. Um, I don't really think they would care either way, but they certainly wouldn't invite me.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:37

He has nothing to lose. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:40

He has nothing to lose. Why why I don't know. And I would love to hear that. Have they done any documentaries on the case? Like I mean, there's a bunch of books. Like, I'm just doing some quick little Google searches, and I see like a bunch of different books that are out there.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:55

Um there's a ton of books. Um, not not all of them are great. And and my issue with the books, some some of the books, the parts that I read is they they're just all about the salacious details, right? And that's not what it should be about. And I I personally don't agree with that. Yeah, because you know, they're they're just trying to make money and sell books, and the the way you do that off of yes, you dig into the the the sexy stuff, right? It's not sexy to talk about a spreadsheet where you had 6,000 names on it and you, you know, nobody gives a shit about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:33

Nobody cares about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:36

Thank you. No joke. So so I think that I think that the people that are listening to this, the majority of them are gonna listen and think that right there is important because I I can relate to that. I don't really care what the scene looks like. I don't really care there was women tied up or semen found or all the gross details that we have to live with every single day. It's a thing that what is it that solved the case? That's what's important. And the majority of the people in the um, I don't want to say civilian world, but non-law enforcement world, that that's not really important to them. That's important to us. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:11

And so I appreciate a reality of our career path is to want to kind of better our knowledge base so that we can take stuff through our own cases and get resolutions. But in the general public, they just want to know all the gory details they got hidden from them for 40 years.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:27

Yep, you know, yeah, that morbid curiosity that that's how we got into the house, what he said, and what he did, and uh you know morbid curiosity.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:36

That's that is absolutely the truth.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:38

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:40

Man.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:41

But I like I said, I learned a lot. I learned a lot about fingerprints, I learned a lot about DNA. I mean, and I was able to take all of that stuff and apply it to other cases. And you know, some some stuff worked and some doesn't, but if you know, if you guess what? If you don't try, it never works.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:59

Yeah. So I think it's a great message of you know acknowledging that and we do this a lot with Sahih, right? Like we put together the conference so that there can be this essentially working group for a week of people in a room and can talk about cases. But it's that idea of, you know, if you work in a vacuum, you're only as good as the information you have. Whereas if you put together a task force, a working group, whatever you want to call it, a tea party, you guys can discuss cases and discuss what's been done in the past or what might work or what doesn't work. And that's what's important about acknowledging that we can't know everything in this job. And so to reach out and have those connections, have those conversations, because otherwise you're doing yourself a disservice and your victims a disservice.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:45

Oh yeah.

unknown 1:28:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:46

And sometimes just, you know, sometimes I've been in situations where, you know, you're swapping war stories and all the stuff about cases, and then somebody will say, Oh, have you tried X, Y, and Z? And it's it's something I'm familiar with, I know about. I just didn't think about it because there's so there's so much volume of information. And I'm like, Oh, you know what? I didn't even think to apply that to this case, but now I'm gonna.

unknown 1:29:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:11

You know, because now that it's been brought to the forefront of my brain, um, now I can work with that. So I mean, I love talking to people about cases and just seeing, like, hey, what are your thoughts? What would you do? What have you had a case like this or anything?

SPEAKER_00 1:29:26

We joked with Monty when we recorded last that it would be great to get the Sahia group together and solve our case.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:33

But hell yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:34

I would love it. But we could be somehow somehow I became a victim because I'm a slow runner.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:40

Yeah, I'm not sure how we got to that point, but yeah, it was that Joe was gonna die.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:44

Yeah, so I don't love that too much. Yeah, thanks. No, thank you, Paige.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:49

I don't I don't enjoy that at all.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:51

Joanna did not support me in that regard.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:53

Okay, you had the idea. I'm just saying, if you want this to work, someone has to make a sacrifice.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:00

But it would be cool. It would be cool because uh we all have different experiences, we're all from different parts of the country, uh, but different experience levels too. I mean, yeah, you started working in 2011 in the homicide bureau. Is that what you said? Did I hear that? In 05. In 05, I was in high school. Don't do this. Yeah, no, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. In 05, I was in high school. In 2011, I was a rookie patrolman. I mean, 2010, I think, is when I started patrol, police academy, all the things. I didn't I didn't know what a I was learning what a traffic stop was. Yeah, and here you are solving cases. Well, so trying.

unknown 1:30:40

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:42

So that's awesome, you know, and that that's funny because people will say, like, oh, uh, cold cases must be great, and you get to solve a lot of cases. I'm like, you know what? They're cold for a reason.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:53

You know, and 10 detectives have worked this case that are, you know, no better or worse than me, but they couldn't solve it. I don't know what makes me think I can do it. But what I have now is I have more robust fingerprint databases, I have a DNA database, I have I have new technology that I can apply to old evidence that that the 1970 detective didn't have.

unknown 1:31:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:16

When you had said it earlier on that, you know, like the original goal was to get this case up to current standards, current technology, and then put it back on a shelf. You know, the expectation, obviously, you want to solve it, but the reality was that you're taking this case that hasn't been touched or has this evidence and this applying new technology. And if that doesn't get you anywhere, then you put it back on the shelf until you can revisit again with new technology. I think that's what's important to look at is that it's constantly evolving. You only know what you know in 1980. So you can't fault them for not working it to whatever degree you can now work it, but you can fault yourself if you don't bother to try to get it up to current standards. It might not get you a resolution, or in my case, I do the UHR stuff, so it might not get me an ID, but at least I can say that all of my cases are work to the standard that's current right now.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:09

Right.

unknown 1:32:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:10

Yep. And and if something changes next week, we do that next week. Exactly. No, yeah. You just keep keep evolving with it.

unknown 1:32:18

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:18

That's awesome. That's cool. And it's neat that there's cases that are happening right now that somebody 20 years from now is gonna look at and they're gonna be able to figure out way better because of the technology and all the things. And we hope that there's a a page that puts together that spreadsheet day after day, day after day, and go on interviews and do all the things. And so how cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:45

How long did it take that Excel spreadsheet file to open on your computer?

SPEAKER_00 1:32:50

Well, she was operating on Windows 95, let's be real.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:53

Pretty much pretty much in Windows 2. Um, I uh I definitely could not email it because it was, you know, 6,000 rows, and I went out probably 30 columns. Oh, it was deep.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:08

Yeah, I have one for my UHR cases, and they're that's not nearly not even close to being that robust. And it takes a good like 45 seconds to open right now. Oh, yeah. So all I can imagine was how long you'd have to be like, all right, let me open it now and go make my coffee at 20 minutes. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:25

Oh, geez. That's awesome. Well, Paige, I think we kind of wrap up all of our cases with like or all of our interviews here recently. Like, what is it that um you want to talk to the the listener that's dealing with a case that's similar to this? Like you talked about some of the lessons that you learned, but but what advice do you have for somebody that may be dealing with something like this, or or do you have any?

SPEAKER_03 1:33:48

Oh gosh, that's always a tough question.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:51

Um other than just keep on. I mean, you you said that in your first interview that we did with you a couple months ago. You're like, just just just go at it, just keep on piece by piece.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:00

I mean, that's it. And it and it's it's hard sometimes to not kind of take it personal, you know, and and just just get depressed and down and like I'm never gonna solve this case. Um you know, I kind of took every case I had and be like, okay, not today. Yeah, I didn't solve it today. But I'm gonna I'm gonna put this here and I'm gonna, you know, do do this case now or whatever. And and it was always I have a hard time focusing sometimes. I probably have, you know, ADD a little bit, but um, you know, I'll I'll be reading a case and something happened, you know, like it's a 1980 case and I'm looking at it and the detectives did something that was kind of unusual or out of the box thinking. And I'm like, oh, that's pretty badass. I'm gonna write that down and I'm gonna keep that in mind. Yeah, and you know, now I'm gonna go back to that 1970 case that I'd you know kind of hit a wall on. I'm gonna see if I can apply that. Yeah. And you know, sometimes it's just about moving the ball a couple yards.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:07

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:07

You know, you know, you're not you're not always gonna get the field goal.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:11

Or the touchdown, like I hate to use like football. And that's what Joanne said. That's basically it.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:16

Um she reiterated the reason that you started this case was to get it up to the 21st century and then put it back on the shelf and let it sit there. Yep. And then all of a sudden it's like boom, we won the Super Bowl.

unknown 1:35:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:28

One thing I mean, if I can if I can take a case and move it two yards, I that's that's a win for me.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:34

Yeah, come on.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:34

I mean, and I get excited. And we we talked about it the last podcast. Like, for me, every day was Christmas when I'd find something for me that was stupid exciting. But you know, my lieutenant and Catherine are like, what the hell is your problem?

SPEAKER_01 1:35:46

Yeah, but if you don't have that mindset, especially in cold cases or in general in law enforcement, investigation, whatever, if you don't have that mindset, you need to quit though, because you're just burning and you don't have to have it 24-7, trust me. I get it. Right. But at the end of the day, you have to acknowledge that progress is progress. It might not look how you wanted it to be when you sat out, when you started out, but you know, you have to look at that positive because otherwise you're gonna get beat down too quick and you're gonna get burnout.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:19

Oh, yeah. 100%. And that's what I used to tell my um like my homicide victims family members when I would talk to them. The first thing I I would say to them is, Hey, I need you to really understand that justice might look different for you. Right. You I may not find the guy, we may not end up in court, you may not get to hear the gavel, you know, fall. Um, you know, the guilty. You may not see that. In fact, you're probably not gonna see that. And I need you to accept that. And once you can accept that, now we can have a better exchange of information and they're a lot more understanding of what I what I can tell them, right? What I can disclose to them. Um, there's more understanding of what I can and can't do.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:04

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:04

Um, so that was that was that was really important for me on all my cold cases when I talk to my families, is to just be transparent about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:12

And what they're meeting those expectations. Yep, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:15

From from jump.

unknown 1:37:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:17

Yep. One one thing I learned from you is that uh I've almost completely removed the terminology cold case. And I have changed to say unresolved case. Unresolved because of how negative the connotation is between uh between cold case versus saying unresolved case. And so that that's something I've learned from you, and I and I just I appreciate that. That's really that's a really awesome way to look at things and a good perspective. And so thank you for that.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:44

Yeah, one at a time, one person at a time. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:48

Well, Paige from East to West, if you have a question on well, anything unresolved. Let me just say that. Anything unresolved, you can reach out to Paige through her email that's on our website. Um, but thank you, my goodness, thank you so much for sitting with us and talking with us about this. I appreciate that. I think Paige has been fun.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:09

It's been absolutely yeah, it's been long, longer than the others, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:12

Yeah, this one's good. Yeah, and okay. So uh I'm just gonna go ahead and put you on the books for like, you know, the next one. Because so start thinking about the next homicide that you are, because this has been good.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:23

Okay, we'll do.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:24

Thank you so much. I appreciate you.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:25

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:26

I hope you have a good night.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:27

Yeah, you too. See ya.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:30

And that wraps up this episode of Talk Murder to Me, the Sahia podcast. If you found value in today's conversation, be sure to subscribe, share this episode with a friend or a fellow investigator, and be sure to leave us a review. It really helps us reach out even more to the Hamasai community. For training opportunities, upcoming events, or to connect with Sahia, visit us at sahia.org. That's ea.org. And follow us on all of our social media accounts. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, and X. And until next time. This podcast is intended for educational and purposes only. Case studies and investigative topics are presented from the personal perspective of the guest and are not intended to represent official findings, agency positions, legal conclusions, or the Southeastern Homicide Investigative Association.