Golden State Killer suspect Joseph DeAngelo is former police officer

A former California police officer has been arrested and charged with several counts of murder after a breakthrough in the decades-long Golden State Killer investigation.

Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, was arrested outside his home after investigators matched a DNA sample taken from his home to evidence collected at the scene of the murders of Brian and Kate Maggiore in 1978 and Lyman and Charlene Smith in 1980.

DeAngelo was a police officer in the 1970s, until he was fired in 1979 after he was “accused of shoplifting a hammer and dog repellent” says the Los Angeles Times. He is “suspected of committing some crimes while he was still on the force”.

The Golden State Killer, who was also known at various times as the East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker, has been blamed for 12 murders, 45 rapes and at least 120 burglaries between 1976 and 1986, when the case went cold.

The New York Times says he was a “predator with quirks”, who would sometimes place “a teacup and saucer on the bodies of some of his victims” and threaten to murder them if he heard the china rattle.

Recent interest in the case was ignited by the release of Michelle McNamara’s book, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, which was completed with the help of her husband, the actor and comedian Patton Oswald, when McNamara died in 2016.