California authorities have reportedly arrested a former police officer named Joseph James DeAngelo for a long-unsolved string of rapes and murders.
In a spree stretching across years spanning the 1970s and the 1980s, a man known as the East Area Rapist was suspected to have been responsible for dozens of rapes and twelve homicides in addition to burglaries.
“For over 40 years”, Sacramento County district attorney Anne Marie Schubert said during a press conference, “countless victims have waited for justice”.
An investigative team formed two years ago was given “virtually unlimited resources and freedom”, said Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, which led to a DNA hit that identified Mr DeAngelo. The suspect now faces murder charges across multiple counties for decades-old killings.
As the list of victims and geographical area in which they were targeted expanded, with cases in at least 10 different counties, the suspect earned the additional nicknames of the Original Night Stalker and the Golden State Killer.
The lack of arrests haunted California law enforcement for decades. For people growing up in Sacramento, where the first cluster of crimes occurred, “the memories are very vivid”, Ms Schubert said.
“For many of us [in law enforcement], it was more than a professional commitment. It became personal”, Ms Schubert said.
Footage from the Sacramento suburb of Citrus Heights showed dozens of law enforcement officials, many of them with the FBI, outside a home surrounded by yellow tape.
One of the alleged rapist’s victims told the Island Packet that she was “overwhelmed with joy” after detectives contacted her this week to inform her of the arrest.
“I've been crying, sobbing”, Jane Carson-Sandler told the paper.
Authorities had redoubled their efforts to catch the suspect in recent months, with the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office last year releasing a list of items believed to have been stolen by the killer in the hopes someone would recognise them.
“We are in the hunt for a serial killer here in California”, district attorney Ms Schubert said at the time.
While the Australian reported that authorities in California and Australia had spoken to explore links between the East Area Rapist and “Mr Cruel”, who is suspected of committing a series of violent attacks in Australia in the 1980s, an Australian police spokesman told the paper that “any connection has been ruled out”.
