By Kelly Moran
SACRAMENTO – It’s been a long week for victims of the “monstrous” mass killer and mass rapist Joseph James DeAngelo, who had the chance to talk about how the serial killer and rapist, and former cop, terrorized them and their families.
Since his first attack in the mid-1970s, the Golden State Killer, also known as the East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker, has haunted both law enforcement and victims alike.
He left a trail of broken, traumatized families across California, and sparked a fear in his victims that they would live with forever: the possibility of his returning.
Seeing his face again was something many of the Golden State Killer’s victims thought would never happen, but on April 24 of 2018, Joseph James DeAngelo was arrested in his Sacramento home in connection with the EAR/ONS cases, and in August of 2020, they came face to face with their perpetrator in court.
In a week-long hearing which started on Tuesday, August 18, Sacramento Superior Court saw DeAngelo’s victims read impact statements that detailed the horrific experiences that they suffered through all those years ago.
Almost forgotten is that DeAngelo is a former police officer who worked for several police departments, including the Auburn Police Dept. Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert referenced that on Friday, noting that maybe his “law enforcement mind” figured he’d never get caught.
Earlier in June, DeAngelo’s defense team offered a plea deal that would have DeAngelo confess to everything in order to avoid the death penalty. DeAngelo pled guilty to 13 counts of murder in the first degree and around 50 rapes. Additionally, DeAngelo confessed to several more crimes that had passed their statute of limitations.
Several of DeAngelo’s rape victims took to the podium to confront him, and to inspire Judge Michael Bowman to stick to a harsher punishment. Bowman Friday officially sentenced DeAngelo to 11 consecutive life terms without any possibility of parole, plus one life term with the possibility of parole and eight years for other enhancements.
Bowman Friday noted, “This is the absolutely maximum sentence the court can impose under law. The survivors spoke clearly, the defendant deserves no mercy.”
While calling the crimes “monstrous,” the judge suggested DeAngelo deserved the death penalty. But part of the deal cut by the killer’s lawyers was to allow older victims a chance to confront DeAngelo. A death penalty trial would have been a much longer process.
Gay Hardwick, one half of the Stockton couple who was assaulted by DeAngelo on March 18, 1978, visibly struggled to hold back tears as she started to read her statement out loud. Her husband Bob quickly went up to stand with her, wrapping a supportive arm around her.
“He ate from my refrigerator and drank two beers while I lay bound and blindfolded, unclothed and freezing on the hardwood floor in front of an open door on the cold March night,” Gay began.
“The aftermath of this attack has been with me for 42 years,” Gay shared with the court, “that’s a very long life sentence for somebody who had done nothing to deserve such hatred, and violence, and desecration of my body.”
Gay held up three pieces of plain white paper to demonstrate how DeAngelo’s actions had stolen so much potential from those who he had raped and murdered.
Prior to her attack, Gay, who was 24 years old at the time, worked as a marketing director and a broker for a real estate developer firm, and she described her future on March 17 as “limitless.”
After that night, with “the hours of terror, [and] the understanding that during those hours there was a purely evil presence in our home, a diabolical, depraved, mumbling, and weeping being in human form,” Gay revealed how the entire course of her life was changed forever.
“My life was now full of creases and wrinkles, and no matter how hard I tried to iron them all away, and press them, and smooth the lines, my life would never be the same again,” she said.
The Hardwicks dealt not only with PTSD after the attack, but also “victim-blaming attitudes, and the perpetration of rape myths.”
Gay described a disturbing experience she had two decades later, when she thought she had recovered.
She returned from her family’s vacation early to attend a class, and was looking forward to relaxing with a movie and take out when she saw a roll of duct tape out of the corner of her eye. Immediately, she thought that someone was in the house ready to bind her with it, and so she fled in her pajamas to her parent’s house, leaving her food forgotten on the table.
“I could never get over the fear that my attacker is still living among us, enjoying his life, scot-free, while I tried to make the most of my damaged life,” Gay said. “These things don’t ever really go away.”
Bob Hardwick also spoke, sharing with the judge what he called his “fantasy sentence.”
“I know the court can’t grant this wish,” Hardwick began, “but this is my fantasy sentence, that Mr. DeAngelo be incarcerated in the toughest prison in the state with the worst of inmates…and he not be under 24 hour protection.”
Hardwick continued by suggesting that masked inmates could “magically” appear in DeAngelo’s cell three to four nights every week, waking him up with a bright light, and would inflict the same 
physical and emotional pain on him that he inflicted on his victims.
“Mr. DeAngelo would be bound, blindfolded, stripped, and forced to lie on a cold cell floor for a period of two to three hours. His attackers would repeatedly rape him like these women were raped, and in between the attacks, these rapists would sit there, have a cold drink, maybe a Dr. Pepper, and their favorite Subway sandwich.”
Hardwick’s vision grew more intense as he continued to describe each sexual act that DeAngelo would be forced to perform against his will, like his victims were.
Both Bob and Gay acknowledged the moratorium placed on the death penalty in California, and so emphasized the importance of keeping DeAngelo locked up and as far away from his living victims as possible.
“He deserves the fullest, longest sentencing that this court can muster,” Gay said, and “my wish is that he serve his death in prison sentence within the walls of Pelican Bay. If there was anyone more deserving of death, I can’t imagine who.”
It’s not yet known where DeAngelo will be sent in the state prison system.
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