SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ Tulare County officials plan to file charges against Golden State Killer suspect Joseph James DeAngelo in a 1975 slaying in Visalia, according to a source.
Officials will discuss the developments in the case at a news conference Monday.
DeAngelo, who is in custody in the Sacramento County Main Jail and faces 12 murder counts in Sacramento, Orange, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, is now suspected of also being the "Visalia Ransacker" who burglarized dozens of homes in the area in the 1970s and is believed to have killed 45-year-old Claude Snelling in December 1975.
Snelling, a journalism professor at nearby College of the Sequoias, was shot to death by a man who was trying to abduct his 16-year-old daughter from their home in the middle of the night.
The suspect was wearing a ski mask and escaped, leaving the daughter behind.
DeAngelo was a police officer in nearby Exeter at the time of those crimes. He was arrested in April at his Citrus Heights home by Sacramento sheriff's officials after investigators linked his DNA to murder scenes in Southern California.
Tulare County District Attorney Tim Ward and a Visalia police spokesman said in May following DeAngelo's arrest that the Snelling case was the only active Visalia Ransacker crime under review for possible charges, and Tulare County investigators have met with Sacramento investigators several times since DeAngelo's arrest.
