Trail Of Death May Lead To SoCal Trial For Alleged Serial Killer

DANA POINT, CA — Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said Tuesday prosecutors from Ventura, Sacramento and Santa Barbara counties will meet in the next few days to decide where the suspected "Golden State Killer" will be tried for a dozen murders.

Rackauckas told City News Service "it's hard to say if everything will be decided at that point."

Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, is facing four counts of murder in Orange County, four in Santa Barbara County, two in Ventura County and two in Sacramento County, Rackauckas said. He is suspected of about 45 rapes and multiple residential burglaries, officials say.

Prosecutors have many issues to resolve, Rackauckas said. It's possible there could be multiple trials in every county, but "judicial economy" will be a "major" consideration, he added.

If all the charges could be handled in a single trial, "We'll need a prosecution team, probably with attorneys from each county prosecuting their own cases as opposed to a couple of attorneys prosecuting the whole thing," Rackauckas said.

"It might be an open question whether you have one or more juries," Rackauckas said.

If prosecutors want to pursue the death penalty it's possible one jury could consider the guilt phase and another could be impaneled for the penalty phase, Rackauckas said.

It's likely any legal proceeding would take months, Rackauckas said.

Prosecutors in Sacramento are working to determine if the statute of limitations has tolled on the alleged rapes, Rackauckas said. It's likely that they would be prevented from prosecuting those cases, but the evidence could still be allowed into a trial, he added.

Rackauckas sounded skeptical on speculation that DeAngelo could have had an accomplice.

"It's not very evident to me, but I'm certainly open to what that's based on," Rackauckas said.

Investigators managed to backtrack to DeAngelo thanks to clues picked up by uploading DNA evidence into a public genealogy site, Rackauckas said.

"It was a pretty substantial process to get there," he said. "They weren't able to just go to a genealogy database and figure it out."

DeAngelo is being represented currently by the Sacramento Public Defender, but Rackauckas said it's likely the presiding judge wherever the trial lands will appoint an attorney.

"I'm sure he will be well represented," Rackauckas said.

Investigators went through a lengthy process of elimination from the matches, and later authorities were able to obtain the suspect's DNA from a discarded item.

Veteran prosecutor Debora Lloyd was retired when Rackauckas called "and brought her back to work on the case" before investigators got their big break recently that led to DeAngelo's arrest. Lloyd supervised the DNA unit when it was established, Rackauckas said.

"We have turned out investigative team into a trial prep team," so Orange County prosecutors will be ready to go to trial, Rackauckas said.

"They've been doing a great deal of work on it so as a result we're fairly advanced in having everything together to go to trial," Rackauckas said.

One thing is for certain -- Rackauckas won't personally prosecute the case, he said.

An announcement on which Orange County prosecutor will quarterback the local cases will be made soon, he said.

The only prosecutor in the homicide unit with experience in death penalty cases is Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy. Rackauckas could also tap Assistant District Attorney Ebrahim Baytieh, who is in management overseeing the special prosecutions unit.

City News Service

Sacramento County Police Department photo