[8] In 2001, the combined acronym EARONS came into use after DNA testing indicated that the East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker were the same person.

[4][11] On June 15, 2016, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and local law enforcement agencies held a news conference to announce a renewed nationwide effort, offering a $50,000 reward for the Golden State Killer's capture.

[21] As part of a plea bargain that spared him the death penalty, DeAngelo also admitted to numerous crimes with which he had not been formally charged, including rapes.

[28] A relative reported that when DeAngelo was a young child, he witnessed the rape of Connie by two airmen in a warehouse in West Germany, where the family was stationed at the time.

[35] Beginning in August 1968, DeAngelo attended Sierra College in Rocklin, California; he graduated with an associate degree in police science, with honors.

[31] He then served in Auburn from August 1976 to July 1979, when he was arrested for shoplifting a hammer and dog repellent; he was sentenced to six months of probation and fired that October.

[38] In May 1970, DeAngelo became engaged to nursing student Bonnie Jean Colwell, a classmate at Sierra College, but she ended the relationship in 1971 after he became manipulative and abusive,[40] culminating in his demand that she help him cheat on an abnormal psychology test.

He also committed more than 50 known rapes in the California counties of Sacramento, Contra Costa, Stanislaus, San Joaquin, Alameda, Santa Clara, and Yolo; and he was linked to hundreds of incidents of thefts, burglaries, vandalism, peeping, stalking, and prowling.

Snelling, a journalism professor at the College of the Sequoias, had previously chased a prowler discovered under his 16-year-old daughter's bedroom window around 10:00 p.m. on February 5, 1975.

[76] Upon leaving his bedroom, Snelling ran through the open back door and confronted a ski-masked intruder in his carport attempting to kidnap his daughter, who had been subdued with threats of being stabbed or shot.

[citation needed] Around 8:30 p.m. on December 12, 1975,[80] a masked man entered the back yard of a house at 1505 W. Kaweah Avenue, near where the Ransacker had been reported to frequent.

[83] Items collected as evidence included the flashlight, tennis shoe tracks, and dropped loot, namely Blue Chip Stamps and a sock full of coins.

At 6:00 pm, as she played the piano, DeAngelo, wearing a ski mask, put a knife to her throat and said to her, "Do what I say or I'll kill you and be gone in the dark," the phrase that would later serve as the title of Michelle McNamara's book on the case.

Pedretti described the renewed humiliation that she felt when police asked her intimate questions that she was not equipped to answer as a 15-year-old, and again when a rape kit was administered.

[85] DeAngelo's initial modus operandi was to stalk middle-class neighborhoods at night in search of women who were alone in one-story homes, usually near a school, creek, trail or other open space that would provide a quick escape.

[94] DeAngelo sometimes spent hours in the home ransacking closets and drawers,[95] eating food in the kitchen, drinking beer, raping the woman again, or making additional threats.

[137] Shortly after the rape committed on July 5, 1979, DeAngelo moved to Southern California and began killing his victims, first striking in Santa Barbara County in October.

[8] A neighbor (an FBI agent) responded to the noise and pursued the perpetrator, who abandoned the bicycle and a knife and escaped on foot through local backyards.

There was also evidence the killer had broken into the vacant adjoining condo and stolen a bicycle, later found abandoned on a street north of the scene, from a third residence in the complex.

[160][161][162][163][164][165] Victoria Police ruled out a link between DeAngelo, who docked in Australia during his Navy service, and the Melbourne serial child rapist and murderer known as "Mr Cruel".

On December 11, a masked man eluded pursuit by law-enforcement personnel after alerting authorities by telephone that he would strike on Watt Avenue that night:[167] Excitement's CraveAll those mortal's surviving birth Upon facing maturity, Take inventory of their worth To prevailing society.

[168] Investigators were unable to identify the area depicted in the map, although the artist clearly had knowledge of architectural layout and landscape design.

In 2001, several rapes in Contra Costa County believed to have been committed by the East Area Rapist were linked by DNA to the Smith, Harrington, Witthuhn, and Cruz murders.

A decade later, DNA evidence indicated that the Domingo–Sanchez murders were also committed by the East Area Rapist (also identified as the Golden State Killer).

"[16] Identification of DeAngelo began in December 2017 when officials, led by detective Paul Holes and FBI lawyer Steve Kramer, uploaded the killer's DNA profile from a Ventura County rape kit to the personal genomics website GEDmatch.

[179] The website identified 10 to 20 people who had the same great-great-great-grandparents as the Golden State Killer; a team of five investigators working with genealogist Barbara Rae-Venter used this list to construct a large family tree.

[195] DeAngelo made a confession of sorts after his arrest that cryptically referred to an inner personality named "Jerry", who had forced him to commit the wave of crimes that ended abruptly in 1986.

[citation needed] According to Sacramento County prosecutor Thien Ho, DeAngelo said the following to himself while alone in a police interrogation room after his arrest in April 2018: "I didn't have the strength to push him out.

"[196] Detectives ignored DeAngelo's initial requests to speak to an attorney, later citing a legal theory that this potential Miranda violation would be justified, with the understanding that prosecutors could not use the interview against the defendant in court.

[198] At an April 10, 2019, court proceeding, prosecutors announced that they would seek the death penalty, and the judge ruled that cameras could be allowed inside the courtroom during the trial.