The Golden State Killer: When Evil Wore a Badge
10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories
Joe Kuner
4.8 • 614 Ratings
🗓️ 31 July 2025
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We all have that one neighbor who seems a little off, right? Maybe they're too quiet, maybe they mow their lawn at weird hours, maybe they wave just a little too enthusiastically. Well, Joseph James DeAngelo was that neighbor for decades, except his secret wasn't hoarding cats or playing music too loud. For forty years, this guy managed to hide the fact that he was one of California's most prolific serial killers while living completely under the radar as a grandfather in suburban Sacramento.
Here's what gets me about this case: DeAngelo wasn't some drifter operating in the shadows. He was a police officer. He worked in the burglary unit while actively committing burglaries. He investigated the exact crimes he was committing on his days off. The man was literally getting paid to learn how to be a better criminal, and nobody noticed.
We're talking about someone who terrorized California for over a decade, committing more than 50 sexual assaults and 13 murders across 11 counties. He had a system, a method, and the professional knowledge to stay ahead of every investigation. Until DNA technology caught up with him in 2018 and his whole carefully constructed life fell apart.
This story goes way beyond the typical "bad guy gets caught" narrative. It's about how childhood trauma can spiral into unimaginable violence, how institutions can fail us, and how survivors can find the strength to seek justice even decades later. It's also about the absolutely wild way genealogy websites helped solve one of America's most notorious cold cases.
So grab your coffee, settle in, and let's talk about Joseph James DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer, and how evil can hide behind a badge for forty years.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What if I told you that for decades, one of California's most wanted serial killers was hiding in plain sight as a suburban grandfather. |
| 0:09.0 | Joseph James DiAngelo spent his career as a cop investigating burglaries while committing them himself. |
| 0:15.8 | He fooled his family, his colleagues, and entire communities for 40 years. |
| 0:21.0 | Then, in 2018, a genealogy website changed everything. |
| 0:26.0 | This is the story of how evil wore a badge, |
| 0:29.0 | and how DNA finally brought it all crashing down. |
| 0:31.7 | Music I'm going to tell you all about Joseph James D'Angelo, and this story is going to tell you all about Joseph James DeAngelo, and this story is going to feel like |
| 0:59.0 | watching someone fall down a very long, very dark staircase. Born in 1945 in Bath, New York, |
| 1:07.5 | right as World War II was ending, DeAngelo came into this world during a time when the |
| 1:11.8 | country was trying to figure out what normal looked like again. His dad was a career military man, |
| 1:18.2 | a sergeant in the U.S. Army, and he ran their household like a boot camp. Now, military families move |
| 1:24.3 | around a lot. I can tell you that from personal experience. And the |
| 1:28.3 | DeAngelo's were no exception. They bounced around from base to base, never really settling |
| 1:33.3 | anywhere long enough for Joseph to put down any roots. Here's where things get complicated. |
| 1:38.3 | De Angelo's older sisters would later say that their father's idea of discipline crossed some pretty serious lines. |
| 1:45.6 | When Joseph broke the rules, and apparently he did that often, the punishments weren't your |
| 1:50.2 | typical, go-to-your-room situation. We're talking about abuse that left lasting marks, both physical |
| 1:56.8 | and psychological. But there's another piece to this puzzle that's absolutely crucial to |
| 2:02.6 | understand. When the family was stationed in Germany, Joseph's older sister Constance was assaulted |
| 2:08.6 | by two airmen. This wasn't some minor incident. This was a violent attack that fundamentally |
| 2:14.6 | changed how this family functioned. And for Joseph, watching his sister go through that trauma appears to have planted something dark in his developing mind. |
| 2:23.3 | By the time Joseph hit his teenage years, he was already showing some seriously troubling behavior. |
... |
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