SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ He never looked at any of them.
As family members and friends of the 13 people Joseph James DeAngelo killed made their way into a Sacramento courtroom Thursday, the confessed Golden State Killer sat the same way he has for three days now: silently staring at a wall.
But that doesn't mean he didn't hear them as they revealed the anguish he had caused so many different families, or the sheer disgust they feel for him.
"What sickens me most is that DeAngelo was able to live a normal life with his family for all those years," said Elizabeth Hupp, whose father, Claude Snelling, was DeAngelo's first known murder victim.
Hupp was the first relative to speak Thursday in Sacramento Superior Court at a hearing for DeAngelo's murder victims, a session that follows two intense days of the confessed Golden State Killer's sexual assault victims castigating him and describing how his depraved actions affected their lives.
DeAngelo, who was also known as the East Area Rapist, will be sentenced Friday morning, likely the last time he will appear in public.
Snelling, a journalism professor at the College of the Sequoias in Visalia, was shot to death Sept. 11, 1975, as he tried to interrupt the abduction of his then-16-year-old daughter, Beth, from the family home.
DeAngelo was a police officer in nearby Exeter at the time, a period during which homes in the area had been subjected to mysterious break-ins eventually attributed to the Visalia Ransacker, the first nickname given to DeAngelo.
Beth, who had seen a man peeking into her window about a month before, awoke at 2:20 a.m. to a man in bedroom who told her, "You're coming with me." As he tried to lead her out a rear door, Snelling confronted him and began running toward the pair when DeAngelo shot him twice from about 10 feet away, killing him.
He pointed his gun at Beth, then kicked her in the face and ran away.
"For many years, I felt guilt for what happened that night," she said Thursday as a photo of her father's smiling face was projected onto courtroom screens. "I thought maybe there was something I could have said or done to keep him from coming out that night.
"My dad was such a gentle soul and loving, kind-hearted man who loved his family more than anything. My dad saved my life that night, and he's my hero."
One by one, family members of his victims took to a lectern or had prosecutors read their written statements detailing the havoc DeAngelo brought into so many lives.
After Hupp spoke, the daughter of former Visalia police Detective William McGowen, who nearly captured DeAngelo months after the Snelling murder, described how that near miss affected her family for so many years.
DeAngelo remained in the area after killing Snelling until December, when McGowen, who was hidden in a garage on a stakeout for the Ransacker, confronted a man who opened fire on him, striking his flashlight and running away.
"By the grace of God, dad was only slightly injured," Lori Mendonca said of her father, who died 15 years ago and was always convinced the Ransacker and Sacramento's East Area Rapist were the same man.
"My father felt a personal responsibility to solve the case for the Snelling family," she said. "My father never stopped looking for the Ransacker. Every person who resembled the composite he would check out.
"It never ended."
After DeAngelo's close brush with getting caught he moved away and joined the Auburn Police Department, and soon after a series of sexual assaults began in Sacramento's eastern suburbs, earning him the nickname East Area Rapist.
In less than two years, DeAngelo would return to killing, shooting a young couple, Brian and Katie Maggiore, to death while they were walking their dog in Rancho Cordova on Feb. 2, 1978.
Brian Maggiore, 22, was an airman at nearby Mather Air Force Base and the couple were walking their dog about 9 p.m. on La Alegria Drive when a man in a ski mask with a gun began chasing them, shooting Brian Maggiore as he ran into a backyard where a storm had knocked down a fence.
Katie Maggiore, 20, ran along the side of the home screaming, Help me, help me!" until DeAngelo caught up with her and shot her to death.
Ken Smith, Katie's brother, recalled that his sister had turned 20 just four days before "DeAngelo chased her down and shot her in cold blood."
"Katie and Brian were special, and we all loved them so much," Smith said as wedding photos of the couple flashed on projection screens in Judge Michael Bowman's court. "DeAngelo, you hurt our families and other families so much. But now that's over.
"You lurked in the dark so you could prey on innocent victims. Now you are the prey, DeAngelo. You're not important. We will remember Brian and Katie for the rest of our lives. But after you are sentenced you are nothing."
As he has done since the victim impact statement phase of his case began Tuesday, DeAngelo sat motionless in a wheelchair. He has not looked over at anyone in the courtroom, not even when one victim brought his former fiancee into court to stare him down.
He also has offered no explanation for his crime spree.
After the Maggiore killings, the sexual assaults moved away from the area for a time, with DeAngelo attacking victims in Stanislaus, San Joaquin and Yolo counties.
But he was not done killing.
On Dec. 30, 1979, DeAngelo climbed over the back fence of a condominium in Goleta in Santa Barbara County, pried open a glass slider and attacked Debra Manning and Robert Offernan, who had been asleep.
He bound both of them with nylon cord, then raped Manning and shot her in the back of her head.
Offernan managed to free himself from the bindings and stand up, but DeAngelo shot him three times, then went through their refrigerator and helped himself to some leftover Christmas turkey.
Three months later, he struck again, this time in Ventura, where he slipped into a home some time between March 13 and March 16, 1980, and tied up Lyman and Charlene Smith with drapery cord and raped Charlene. DeAngelo bludgeoned both victims to death with a piece of firewood from the home.
Lyman Smith's 12-year-old son, Gary, found the bodies when he went to the home to do some chores.
Jennifer Carole, Lyman Smith's daughter and 18 at the time, recalled how she had bonded with Charlene, her stepmother, and speculated on how far her father, a criminal defense lawyer and former prosecutor who was expecting to be appointed to a judgeship, may have gone in life.
"My dad, a Democrat with political ambitions, would have likely been appointed to the bench, and then later he would have run for office," she said. I have no doubt that he would have won.
"As a political junkie, I likely would have participated in his campaign, and who knows where that might have taken me."
Instead, she said, she has lived with the murders her entire adult life, and now regrets that the case is ending with a plea deal before even a preliminary hearing is held.
"Predictably, Joe decided to forego his manhood and take the easy way out," she said. "Interestingly, manhood is defined as having courage, strength and, ironically, sexual potency.
"It's not surprising that, once again, Joe's lack of manhood is the spectacle."
She also denounced a system that allowed DeAngelo's Citrus Heights home to be sold by his family after his arrest, and the fact that he did not have to spend money on his defense.
"Joe took what he wanted at every turn," she said. "In collusion with his wife, he liquidated and transferred his assets. He's using a public defender.
"He gamed the system so he could sit here with remarkable legal representation at taxpayer expense. These are the hallmarks of white privilege."
And she nearly brought the judge to tears when she thanked him effusively for the extraordinary patience he has shown the victims, urging each of them take all the time they needed to express their thoughts.
Five months after the Smiths were killed, DeAngelo made his way to Dana Point in Orange County, where he went into a home some time between Aug. 10 and Aug. 11, 1980, that was occupied by Keith and Patrice Harrington. He tied up the young couple, then raped Patrice and bludgeoned both of them to death.
Bruce and Ron Harrington, Keith's brothers who led the fight to pass Proposition 69 to require DNA evidence from felons, appeared before the judge together.
"Have you thought about the many lives that have been affected?" Ron Harrington asked, looking toward DeAngelo. "Have you thought about how many lives were changed because of that?
"Remember some of the rape victims were just 13 and 15 years old. The Golden State Killer truly is the worst of the worst, 13 murders, 50 rapes. He is the most prolific murder rapist ever. His crimes were so brutal, so heinous, so sadistic. He is just a violent sexual predator. Pure evil."
DeAngelo killed again in Orange County on Feb. 6, 1981, when he broke into the home of Manuela Witthuhn, whose husband was in the hospital with a stomach virus.
Like the others, DeAngelo had tied her up, then raped her and bludgeoned her to death.
Her brother-in-law, Drew Witthuhn, calmly addressed the court Thursday by referring to DeAngelo as "this convict" or "it," and likened DeAngelo's guilty plea in June to a war crimes tribunal for the amount of "casualties" he inflicted.
He noted that he was a police officer for more than two decades, adding, "And for this convict's edification, a real one."
"Your honor, this thing was no cop," he said, adding, "Manuela was nothing more to this convict than one more kill, one more trophy, one more body."
After he killed Witthuhn, DeAngelo returned to Goleta on July 26, 1981, and reached in through the bathroom of a home and unlocked a door that led to the backyard.
He went inside and slipped into the master bedroom, where he found Cheri Domingo and Greg Sanchez in bed.
DeAngelo fired a handgun once, hitting Sanchez in the cheek, then bludgeoned him 24 times, causing brain damage that killed him. He dumped a pile of clothing over Sanchez, tied Domingo up and raped her.
Then, he bludgeoned her to death.
Debbi Domingo McMullan, Cheri's 15-year-old daughter at the time of the murders, took to the lectern Thursday morning wearing a shirt embroidered with the words "DeDevil Loses" and fixed her stare on the man who killed her mother.
"Did she beg for her life?" McMullan asked as she described the questions she has wondered about for decades. "Did the monster say anything to her? Did he reveal his face before smashing hers?"
At one point, she stopped to take off her glasses and wipe her face with a tissue. "I'm sorry, I can't see through my tears," she said, recalling her mother and Sanchez as a happy couple who loved to dance in the living room.
McMullan described the difficulty she had living without her mother's guidance, how she fell into drugs for a time, lost her children to Child Protective Services, then became a Christian and forged a successful new life ministering to inmates in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
She also said she does not blame DeAngelo for her own missteps, but takes some solace from knowing what DeAngelo's future looks like, that he must be "nervous as hell because everyone in prison will know exactly who he is and what deplorable things he has done."
"Tonight, DeAngelo will toss and turn on that cold, steel bunk in his cell knowing that trauma he caused to hundreds, including his own family," she said. "He will spend eternity alone wishing he had lived his life differently.
"Tonight, I will sleep soundly and in my dreams see my mom and Greg smiling, still dancing."
After those killings, the murders apparently stopped for about five years, until May 5, 1986, when DeAngelo broke into an Irvine home and confronted 18-year-old Janelle Cruz, who he tied up, raped, then bludgeoned to death.
Her sister, Michelle Cruz, described him Thursday as a "cruel, pathetic piece of scum" and lamented the fact that DeAngelo was able to live a full life while her sister's was lost.
"He basically had a good, full life," she said "On the other hand, I will never be an aunt, my kids will never have cousins, my mom will never see her daughter go to college or get married."
She added that DeAngelo beat her sister so brutally the family had to have a closed casket funeral.
"No normal person can do what he did to Janelle, and I feel sorry for his soul," she said.
On Friday, DeAngelo will be transported to the campus of Sacramento State, where a crowd will be allowed in to a ballroom _ at proper physical distance _ to see him sentenced to life in prison without parole.
This is the same space where DeAngelo admitted his guilt during a daylong hearing on June 29, where he had to utter the word "guilty" 26 times and say "I admit" dozens of other times to confess to crime that were not formally charged.
Since his first court appearance in April 2018, that day marked the most words he has ever uttered in public.
