Prosecutors said Wednesday they will seek the death penalty for the man accused of being the Golden State Killer, The Los Angeles Times reports. Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. is suspected of raping some 50 women and holding entire families hostage during a reign of terror in Sacramento and the Bay Area in the late 1970s, then progressing to murder. The killer was given various names in each region before becoming known as the Golden State Killer. DeAngelo was arrested at his home in the Sacramento suburbs on April 24, 2018, just days after DNA samples surreptitiously gathered from him by law enforcement linked him to some of the crimes.
District attorneys met in a Sacramento office Wednesday to vote on whether to seek the death penalty if DeAngelo is convicted in any of the 13 serial murders he is charged with. The decision in favor was unanimous, said Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer, in whose county DeAngelo is accused of killing four people in the early 1980s. The capital punishment decision is strategic as much as anything. The letter prosecutors sent Wednesday to DeAngelo’s public defender notes that they would reconsider a lesser punishment if the defense provides sufficient reason. Spitzer declined to comment on what prosecutors would consider sufficient, but in death-penalty cases that typically includes a confession, especially to crimes not yet charged.