What we know about suspected killer-turned suburban grandpa Published on April 26, 2018 at 11:32PM by Avi Selk, The Washington Post If Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. is the Golden State Killer, as police allege, then he spent his 30s in a nearly nonstop frenzy of sadistic violence - breaking into a house every few weeks in the late 1970s, raping dozens of women, and escalating to serial killings before the crime spree suddenly ended in 1986. And if DeAngelo is the killer - police say his DNA proves that he is - then he fit these 45 suspected rapes and 12 suspected murders into an astonishing double life. He was a Vietnam veteran before the spree, a police officer during the spree, and then a husband, father and grandfather who lived quietly among the same communities that the Golden State Killer had terrorized.