Beginning in the mid-1970s and continuing through the 1980s, a predator operating across California committed an extraordinary series of crimes that would remain unsolved for over four decades. He was known by multiple names as his crimes evolved — the Visalia Ransacker, the East Area Rapist, the Original Night Stalker — before the cases were linked and he was collectively dubbed the Golden State Killer. He committed at least 13 murders, more than 50 sexual assaults, and over 100 residential burglaries across dozens of California communities. Investigators were long baffled by the perpetrator's intelligence and discipline. He would surveil neighborhoods for weeks before striking, disabling porch lights, unlocking windows, and memorizing the layouts of homes. During assaults, he often called victims on the phone before or after attacks, taunting them. He left minimal physical evidence, and although a DNA profile was developed from crime scenes, it matched no one in existing databases for decades. Victims, investigators, and true crime researchers spent years piecing together the case with little progress. The breakthrough came in 2018 through genetic genealogy — investigators uploaded the killer's DNA to the public ancestry website GEDmatch and traced distant relatives, eventually narrowing to Joseph James DeAngelo, a 72-year-old former police officer living in suburban Sacramento. DNA recovered from a discarded item confirmed the match. DeAngelo was arrested in April 2018. In 2020, he pleaded guilty to 13 counts of first-degree murder and admitted to the other crimes in exchange for life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Golden State Killer case transformed law enforcement's approach to cold cases, sparking widespread adoption of investigative genetic genealogy as a tool. It also sparked significant ethical and legal debates about privacy and the use of consumer DNA databases by law enforcement — debates that continue today. Author Michelle McNamara, who coined the name "Golden State Killer" and spent years investigating the case, died in 2016, two years before his capture; her posthumous book 'I'll Be Gone in the Dark' became a bestseller and critically acclaimed HBO documentary.
An unidentified serial killer who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Claimed responsibility for 37 murders, though only 5 are confirmed. Known for sending cryptic letters and ciphers to police and newspapers.
In August 1969, members of the Manson Family cult carried out a series of murders in Los Angeles under the direction of Charles Manson. The most notable victims were actress Sharon Tate and four others at her home on Cielo Drive.
Ted Bundy was one of the most notorious and charismatic serial killers in American history, using his intelligence, charm, and good looks to gain the trust of victims before attacking them. During the 1970s he kidnapped, raped, and murdered numerous young women across multiple states, confessing shortly before his execution to 30 homicides committed in seven states between 1974 and 1978. Investigators believe the true number may be considerably higher. Bundy's crimes spanned the country from the Pacific Northwest through Utah, Colorado, and Florida. He escaped from custody twice — once from a courthouse law library in Aspen and once from a county jail in Glenwood Springs — and was at large for a combined period that allowed him to commit additional murders. His second escape culminated in the January 1978 Chi Omega sorority house attack in Tallahassee, Florida, in which he bludgeoned four women and killed two, and the subsequent abduction and murder of twelve-year-old Kimberly Leach. Bundy was convicted in Florida of the sorority house murders and the Leach murder in two separate trials, both of which he attended as his own attorney — a decision widely seen as an exercise in narcissistic control. He was sentenced to death three times. On death row he gave extensive interviews to investigators and journalists, and began confessing to murders as his execution date approached — confessions many believe were deliberately incomplete to extend negotiations. He was executed in Florida's electric chair on January 24, 1989. His execution attracted a crowd of supporters and protesters outside the prison. Bundy's case had a lasting influence on American criminal justice, contributing directly to the development of the FBI's behavioral science unit and the concept of the organized serial killer. He remains a subject of intense cultural fascination, having inspired dozens of books, films, and documentaries.
Richard Ramirez, known as the "Night Stalker," committed a series of break-ins, murders, and sexual assaults across Los Angeles and San Francisco in 1984 and 1985. He was convicted of 13 murders and died on death row in 2013.