SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ The Citrus Heights home of the suspected Golden State Killer and East Area Rapist was sold last month for $320,000, a price near the bottom of the market for three-bedroom homes in that area.
The purchase occurred privately without a public listing, according to an industry sales report, possibly to avoid visitors in what is called dark tourism. The seller is listed as Zasia DeAngelo, the granddaughter of Joseph DeAngelo. The Sacramento Bee could not reach the buyers, who were listed as a Sacramento-area couple who intend to live there.
DeAngelo, 74, is suspected of being the notorious criminal responsible for a series of brutal rapes and two murders in the Sacramento region in the 1970s and a string of rapes and murders in Southern California in the 1980s.
DeAngelo, who once was a police officer, lived in the house for several decades and worked as a night mechanic in a Roseville supermarket distribution center. He was listed in a sales document as the current borrower on a mortgage at the home at the time of the sale.
A team of federal and local law agents arrested DeAngelo in front of his house in April 2018. Investigators said they had found him via crime scene DNA matches after a relative submitted DNA to an online ancestry company. That matched DNA detectives later picked up while following DeAngelo. Neighbors described DeAngelo as an at-times volatile neighbor who lived at the house with a daughter and granddaughter.
He currently is in Sacramento County jail, awaiting trial on 13 murder counts and 13 counts tied to sexual assaults in six counties: Sacramento, Contra Costa, Orange, Santa Barbara, Tulare and Ventura.
The house is a 1,500-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bath ranch home on a quiet suburban street. It was built in 1979. The house was initially treated as a crime scene. Federal, state and local law enforcement searched for clues, including probing the ground in the backyard. They took bags of undisclosed evidence away.
The sales price is low, but still within the general market price for a home of that type in the area.
"This house definitely came in at the low end of the market," residential real estate appraiser Ryan Lundquist said. "Fourteen hundred- to 1,600-square-foot homes in the neighborhood tend to sell anywhere from $315,000 to $400,000 besides a few outliers above $425,000."
Real estate experts said it is likely the buyers were informed of who had lived there. State regulations require sellers to tell buyers about anything that could affect the value or desirability of a home. Those regulations spell out the requirement to tell people if the home is in an airport area, or a flood, extreme fire or earthquake zone, as well as if the house has lead-based paint or contaminated soil.
The law doesn't explicitly say a seller has to mention that an infamous person lived there. At the time of DeAngelo's arrest, Fair Oaks-based real estate broker Barbara Lebrecht said the rule is: If you wonder whether something should be disclosed, disclose it.
