Joseph James DeAngelo Jr., widely known as the Golden State Killer, was sentenced on Aug. 21 to 11 consecutive life sentences for committing 13 murders, plus an additional life sentence for 13 kidnappings, without the possibility of parole. Among his 13 felony counts of first-degree murder, four were committed in Santa Barbara County.
DeAngelo also admitted to committing dozens more crimes against 87 individuals, though only crimes against 26 individuals could be charged due to statute of limitations or insufficient evidence.
Santa Barbara County District Attorney Joyce Dudley told the Sun about what it was like to bear witness to the historic moment of DeAngelo’s sentencing.
“I was just feet away from DeAngelo, maybe 2 1/2 feet, and then equally close to Debbi when she was speaking,” Dudley said. “So I was literally between her and the defendant.”
Debbi Domingo’s mother, Cheri Domingo, was one of the Santa Barbara County murder victims. Greg Sanchez was also murdered at the same crime scene as Cheri on July 27, 1981. Debbi spoke at the hearing on Aug. 20.
“I am speaking here today, not directly to DeAngelo, or for his benefit,” she said, with Dudley standing close beside her. “I am here today to have on the record the repercussions that his actions have had on my life. … Mom and Greg were two remarkable, young, vibrant people who were denied the opportunity to even be breathing today.”
DeAngelo received a life-in-prison sentence, rather than the death penalty, through a plea deal. Dudley explained why this outcome is best for the victims and their families.
“Some of the percipient witnesses and survivors were getting very old, and I feared they’d have no sense of closure if this case continued and continued and continued,” Dudley said. “We knew that if we took the death penalty off the table, and he pled to life, that they would have some form of closure.”
It wasn’t an easy decision for prosecutors to make, Dudley added. Because DeAngelo’s crimes are so heinous, not opting for the death penalty in his case could set a precendent for future, similar crimes under the Equal Protection Clause.
“This was the worst crime many of us had ever heard of, and I’ve been doing this for 30 years,” Dudley said. “Last year, California decided that they wanted to keep the death penalty. So if we didn’t do it in this case, then wouldn’t it really be the end of the death penalty? Which is not what the people of California wanted.”
However, Dudley said that she is “never going to make a decision on a particular case based upon what can happen in the future.”
“I think it is unjust. I have to give each case what I think is right. In this case, under these circumstances, I felt that was right,” she said.
One of DeAngelo’s murder victims, Debra Alexandria Manning, was a Santa Maria-based psychologist, though she was murdered in Goleta.
While Dudley said she’s never met any of Manning’s relatives, she did hear from one of her Santa Maria patients when DeAngelo was first apprehended in 2018.
“When this whole thing first broke, I got an email from a patient of hers who said that they had been suffering over this since it happened, 40-plus years ago,” Dudley said. “The fact that we found the killer and brought him to justice gave this patient a tremendous sense of relief. I certainly always think about the victims, their families, their loved ones, their friends. But in this case we had a doctor with patients, and all those patients also had to feel the pain of this.”
This article appears in Aug 27 – Sep 3, 2020.
