Joseph James DeAngelo, who pleaded guilty in June to more than a dozen murders, is to serve multiple life sentences, the Associated Press reports.
DeAngelo was arrested in 2018 when a genetic genealogy approach tied him to a series of rapes and murders committed in California in the 1970s and 1980s by who was then known as the Golden State Killer. His arrest touched off a number of similar arrests in cold cases in which genetic genealogy was used to home in on suspects, including a 1987 rape and murder case and the Ramsey Street Rapist case.
But using the approach in this way has raised privacy and other concerns, and DeAngelo's trial was to be the first time genetic genealogy as a law enforcement was tested in court.
However, with his guilty plea in June, a trial was averted. In particular, DeAngelo pleaded guilty to 13 murder charges and admitted to other crimes, including numerous rapes, for which the statute of limitations had passed, as the Los Angeles Times then reported. It noted that prosecutors initially rejected DeAngelo's plea offer, but later accepted in face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the AP now reports, DeAngelo, a former police officer, is to serve multiple, consecutive life sentences and, as he is 74 years old, is expected to die in prison.