The Badge and the Blade - Golden State Killer Earliest Crimes

The episode details the apprehension and expansion of charges against Joseph DeAngelo, the man identified as the notorious Golden State Killer. After eluding capture for decades, the former police officer was linked to a 1975 murder in Visalia, which investigators believe was his earliest killing while he was still on the force. The sources describe his distinctive criminal patterns, such as burglarizing homes for sentimental tokens and stalking victims, which terrorized various California communities during the 1970s and 1980s. A significant breakthrough in the case occurred when law enforcement utilized genetic genealogy to build a family tree from crime scene DNA, eventually narrowing their search to DeAngelo. Following his arrest, authorities successfully matched his discarded DNA to samples from multiple cold case scenes. DeAngelo now faces prosecution for a massive catalog of crimes, including thirteen murders and dozens of rapes.This episode includes AI-generated content.