LIZ GARBUS: In the true crime community,
Michelle's death was unbelievable.
One of the first things I thought was,
"That book has to get finished."
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
I wanted to take care of this person,
for her whole life.
This book, was my last opportunity
to take care of something for her.
And then, there was the case.
There was momentum within agencies recognizing,
"We need to get this done."
I reached out to this genetic genealogist.
GENEALOGIST: We got over a thousand matches.
MAN: Things snowballed from there.
GENEALOGIST: I remember thinking, this guy looks awfully good.
MAN: After four decades of searching for this guy,
we got a one hundred percent match,
to the Golden State Killer's DNA.
(SOUND OF TEXTS BEING SENT)
I wish you were pointing that camera
at Michelle right now.
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
BONNIE COLWELL: I was 18.
The good girl, the rule follower.
Straight-A student.
I started dating this guy.
He was studying law enforcement
and I was in nursing.
He was very gregarious, uh, outgoing to all my friends.
We'd been together close to a year.
He gave me a high solitaire engagement ring.
And he told me that we're gonna be married.
The rules were never for him.
-He took me hunting... -(GUNSHOT)
...without a license.
Illegal spear fishing.
We crossed into "no trespassing" territory at night.
So many of the things that we did together,
he pushed me toward fear.
(ENGINE REVVING)
One time, I'm on the back of his motorcycle
doing this steep hill climb,
I'm just thinking this is-- this is suicide.
He let a German shepherd chase us on the bike...
(DOG BARKING)
...and he kicked the dog underneath the chin
and he broke its neck. It just dropped dead.
The critical point for us was in college.
He told me that I was going to help him
to cheat on the exam.
I told him, "I won't let you cheat from my paper."
And that began the escalation of, "But you have to.
We're engaged. You have to, you have to.
You owe me this."
As he continued to put on pressure,
I gave him back the engagement ring.
Two weeks later,
probably two or three o'clock in the morning,
there was a tapping on the glass of my window.
(KNOCKS ON WINDOW)
I pulled the curtain back, and he was pointing a gun at me
and said, "Get dressed, we're going to Reno tonight.
We're gonna be married."
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
At that time,
I still lived in my parents' home,
and I ran to go wake up my father to ask him to help me.
He put me in the bathroom and said,
"Don't you come out until I come and get you."
And it was about two hours of time.
My father came back and just told me to go to bed.
No indication of what was said
or what had happened in the porch,
and-- and I never knew.
I never got the story from my father.
And I never saw Joe again.
♪ ("AVALANCHE" BY AIMEE MANN PLAYING) ♪
♪ Well, I stepped Into an avalanche ♪
♪ It covered up my soul ♪
♪ When I am not this hunchback That you see ♪
♪ I sleep beneath The golden hill ♪
♪ You who wish to conquer pain ♪
♪ You must learn Learn to serve me well ♪
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
PATTON OSWALT: Where do we go? I'll follow you.
One minute.
Um, can we get this to stream, or...
-We'll find it somewhere. -PATTON: Here we go.
Turn the volume up all the way.
-BILLY JENSEN: Yeah, I will. -PATTON: Yeah, yeah.
ANNE MARIE SCHUBERT: Good morning, everybody.
For those of you that don't know,
my name is Anne Marie Schubert, I'm the District Attorney
of Sacramento County.
Over these years, hundreds of individuals
have sought justice for these victims
and their families.
Many have dedicated their virtual entire professions
to seeking this answer.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
PROSECUTOR: Joseph James DeAngelo
has been called a lot of things by law enforcement.
He's been called the East Side Rapist,
he's been called the Visalia Ransacker,
the Original Night Stalker,
and the Golden State Killer.
Today, it's our pleasure to call him defendant.
His 12-year reign of terror lasted from 1974
through May 4th of 1986.
He started with ransacking, sexual assaults, rape.
PATTON: Wow.
He moved down the state from Sacramento County
and ending in Orange County.
They just confirmed that he's the Ransacker.
-PATTON: Wow. -PROSECUTOR: 1980 to 1986.
Oh my God.
MICHELLE MCNAMARA: There's something about these detectives,
like, I end up, like, falling a little in love
with each of them. Just there-- there's something
about the drive that they have and what they're doing,
that I just... I don't know, I get, like, almost, like, teary
when I go to all these different jurisdictions
and they're just digging through old paperwork
and they're not giving up.
I have such respect for it.
It was disbelief.
And then, um, a flood of emotions came through
that over 40 years,
I didn't realize were still there.
Uh, it's absolutely huge.
After nearly a quarter of a century
trying to find this guy, to actually see him,
after all these years of wondering who he was,
it's an amazing moment.
NEWS ANCHOR 1: "We found the needle in the haystack."
Those are the words of authorities in California
following the arrest of a former police officer.
NEWS ANCHOR 2: Joseph DeAngelo, now 72,
arrested outside his home. They surprised him.
No incident. He didn't say, "It wasn't me,"
or anything like that?
No, uh, really no-- really no conversation at all.
Uh, just the, uh, the only thing he really said was,
uh, they had arrested him.
So, I can tell you that over the last few days,
as information started to point towards this individual,
we started some surveillance.
We were able to get some discarded DNA,
and we were able to confirm
what we thought we already knew.
-What does he mean, "discarded DNA"? -We had our man.
-They went through his trash. -Oh.
I can't underscore enough the absolute human factor.
This was a true convergence of emerging technology
and dogged determination by detectives.
Yes.
OFFICER: So I want to thank not only the crime lab,
the DNA that helped us get here,
but my own detectives...
MICHELLE: The amazing thing about this DNA technology
is it's like every three months, it gets better.
Within a year I can--
we probably will have the family tree.
What I love is this intersection
of sort of technology and crime solving,
in that people can get sort of wheeled out of their house
for something they did in 1957
because of the internet, because of DNA.
SETH MEYERS: She's an incredible writer,
and a lot of people I saw on social media today
were, you know, tweeting out
this-- this last bit that she wrote
-which seems really fitting. -Oh, yeah, yeah.
"One day soon, you'll hear a car pull up to your curb,
an engine cut out.
PATTON AND MICHELLE TOGETHER: You'll hear footsteps coming up your front walk.
The doorbell rings."
MICHELLE: No side gates are left open.
You're long past leaping over a fence.
Take one of your hyper gulping breaths,
clench your teeth,
inch timidly toward the insistent bell.
(READS)
Open the door.
Show us your face.
Walk into the light.
Michelle McNamara.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
REPORTER 1: Good morning to you.
We are outside the Sacramento County Courthouse,
where later today, 72-year-old Joseph DeAngelo
will make his first court appearance.
Investigators now telling us
they used discarded DNA to help track him down...
LINDA O'DELL: Wow, is that huge.
I was living in Citrus Heights
and he was living in Citrus Heights for 30 years.
Same city.
And the fact that he was a police officer
just makes me sick.
And we're off.
Gonna have positive vibes.
It's interesting because I am getting nervous.
I mean, I'm not afraid of him now,
he's just-- he's an old man,
but, um... you know, evil's evil.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MELANIE BARBEAU: On the first day of the arraignment,
I was just like, "Can this be happening?
This cannot be happening."
The victims were all kind of gathered in the DA's office,
and Dr. Offerman's son and his wife were there.
For the longest time, when I found out
that the murders were associated with the rapes,
I really wanted to meet these women.
They were, like, the only people maybe on the planet
who got my story, who understood.
And I thought, "They know."
They know, but they know what happened to Charlene.
But they lived through it, and they got to live through it,
and they're strong.
JANE CARSON-SANDLER: Forty-two years.
Forty-two years I've waited for this.
But, hey, he's behind bars and justice is being served.
"Now we, dot, dot, dot, have the power
and the control."
Rape is all about power and control,
but, you know, now we're in charge, buddy.
We're in charge.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
REPORTER 2: Joseph DeAngelo of Citrus Heights
is now facing 13 counts of murder
and 13 counts of kidnapping.
MELANIE: Deb Domingo asked if I could sit in for her,
to be there in spirit for her mother
and her mother's boyfriend that were so brutally murdered.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
BAILIFF: All right, Your Honor, on the 130 calendar, page two,
in custody, DeAngelo.
JUDGE MICHAEL SWEET: Is, uh, Joseph James DeAngelo your true correct legal name?
(INAUDIBLE)
-JUDGE SWEET: I'm sorry? -Yes.
JUDGE SWEET: Yes. You are.
JENNIFER CAROLE: This old man?
This pathetic old man is the monster?
JUDGE SWEET: ...circumstance. Count one alleges
on or about February 2, 1978,
in the county of Sacramento,
you did willfully, unlawfully, and with malice aforethought
murder Katie Maggiore, a human being,
in violation of Penal Code section 187, subdivision A.
It is a felony. It's further alleged...
KRIS PEDRETTI: I was not happy when I heard he was caught
because I wanted him dead.
But I was happy that he was being brought to justice.
Like, all the conflicting feelings,
I was angry, scared, happy, mad.
I really experienced every emotion.
I feel that I did a great job for 42 years of...
living and trying to be as normal as possible.
You know, it was now real.
And unfortunately...
our brains hold onto a lot of memories
that now were starting to flood.
JUDGE SWEET: ...sixty-one, Mr. DeAngelo.
All right. Why don't we take a recess...
FIONA WILLIAMS: To get through that initial time,
I can't stress how...
how unsettling it is to live every minute being afraid
when you never thought that would happen to you
or could happen.
(LAUGHS) I scribbled over his face 'cause I hated it.
(LAUGHS) Maybe we shouldn't use that one.
Here's a good one. "How DNA was collected."
Feelings are very complicated in these situations.
I cannot remember after the rape
the first time that I might have broken down in tears.
I don't know that I ever did in front of any of the officers.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
FIONA: The one time I do remember crying
was two and a half months later
on August 16, 1977, when-- when Elvis Presley died.
Bye.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
FIONA: I cried for Elvis and I cried for myself
and my family and all we'd been through that year.
And strangely, after DeAngelo's arrest,
I found myself crying a lot.
And this is the thing about these emotions, you...
you-- you couldn't even, uh...
intelligently explain why you're crying.
It's-- it's just perhaps maybe all the emotional stress
of so much over so long a time.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
FIONA: And then, when they started showing his house
out in Citrus Heights, his nice...
comfy suburban three-car garage house with the toys,
I thought, "You're kidding me."
Citrus Heights? Under our nose?
And he's living the comfy suburban life
that he wrecked for so many other people?
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
NANCY MILLER: Crazy thought, but what if we actually do
catch this guy and you get the satisfaction
of knowing all the work that we did
helps land this dude?
What's gonna happen to the kid and all these people
that have spent 4,000 hours looking at this stuff?
MICHELLE: Uh, what will happen if this case gets solved?
Um, because this does seem to fulfill something
for a lot of people.
PAUL HAYNES: This house right here. There it is.
-BILLY: Seriously? -That's it.
That is it.
HAYNES: Since DeAngelo's arrest,
I spent that time trying to reconcile
Joseph James DeAngelo with the abstract image
of the East Area Rapist that I had developed.
It's like this person's a stranger all over again.
Much in the way that, you know,
I'd struggled to reconcile Michelle's substance abuse
and the things that I didn't know about her
with the person that I knew.
I've struggled to fuse those two people.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MELANIE: You know, all of my work
is interest in, uh, the human psyche.
What makes people suffer,
what makes, uh, people turn out the way they are.
I'm really interested in what made Joe DeAngelo
become the East Area Rapist.
What in his life created that monster?
Was he born like that?
I don't think so.
He may have had something missing
and it culminated in other things
that happened to him in his childhood.
I don't know, but I really want to know.
(DOOR CLOSES)
BILLY: All right.
BILLY: The first thing I wanted to do
was do a search for his name in Michelle's hard drive.
She knew more about this case than anyone...
but I didn't find it.
And I was like, "Let's build a timeline."
We need to build a timeline of where he's been.
♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
HAYNES: Joe is one of four, born in 1945
in upstate New York.
As a boy, he moves with his family
to an army base in Germany where his father's stationed.
MICHELLE: My gut has always been like it's a troubled child
of someone who had a big family connection
to the military. Yeah.
MELANIE: Then he moves to Rancho Cordova
in Sacramento County for high school.
They struggle financially and move frequently.
In 1964, his parents divorce and Joe joins the Navy,
serving as a warship repairman in Vietnam.
MICHELLE: Another part of me thinks, "Well, was it Vietnam?"
I mean, look at the timing of it.
So, you know, I'm not sure it wasn't that
or something like that.
MAN 1: Right. Wow.
HAYNES: When he returns in 1968,
Joe goes to school for criminal justice.
That's when he's engaged to Bonnie Colwell,
which ends badly.
MELANIE: After graduation, he follows his family
south to Exeter, California,
and marries twenty-year-old Sharon Huddle.
HAYNES: In 1973, he becomes a police officer,
assigned to the anti-burglary unit
one town over from Visalia,
the same year the ransackings begin.
MELANIE: Three years later, the ransacking ceases
and Joe moves with Sharon to Auburn,
where he joins the police force.
The East Area Rapist attacks begin that summer,
just 30 miles southwest in Rancho Cordova.
-MICHELLE: No, he definitely was living in Sacramento. -MAN 2: Okay.
MICHELLE: I mean, he definitely knew Sacramento very well.
But he keeps coming back to this very small--
I mean, you can walk to those crime scenes.
-MAN 2: Yeah. -MICHELLE: They're within a mile of each other.
HAYNES: The EAR terrorizes Sacramento and beyond
until 1979, when Joe was arrested
for stealing dog repellent and a hammer
and fired from the force.
NICK WILLICK: He wasn't super athletic.
He had a nickname, which was Junk Food Joey.
He would, you know, have a bag of potato chips,
a candy bar, or a soft drink in his hand all the time.
HAYNES: The Original Night Stalker murders
in Southern California start in 1979.
The murder spree stops in 1981,
the same year the first of his three daughters is born.
MELANIE: I mean, God.
No murders occur for the next five years
until his last known victim, Janelle Cruz,
is killed in 1986.
Joe's second daughter is born six months later.
HAYNES: In the early '90s, his wife moves out
with their three daughters.
Though Sharon is a divorce lawyer,
the pair never legally splits.
MICHELLE: I think he's a middle-class guy
who-- who has a respectable job that you would just be--
your jaw would drop if you found out that this was him.
HAYNES: Joe spends most of his time fishing
and working the night shift as a mechanic
at a supermarket distribution center.
In March 2018, he retires,
and the following month, he is arrested.
PAUL HOLES: Um, the inside of the house was cluttered,
but an organized clutter. Uh--
HAYNES: Do we have any sense
that he knew the book came out? Or--
HOLES: No. In fact, I was half expecting to see Michelle's book inside the house.
-(HAYNES CHUCKLES) -BILLY: Yeah.
HOLES: Uh, I did think about Michelle, thinking,
"I wish you were here to be able to see this,"
because we had so many conversations
about who this guy actually could be.
MELANIE: You know, having three daughters
and a granddaughter, um...
you know, knowing that he committed crimes
against women like that.
What must that be like in his soul
and in his conscience?
My first alliance is with all the survivors,
but I also feel compassion towards his family.
I mean, their lives are changed forever.
WES RYLAND: This is Uncle Joe. (CHUCKLES)
This is at his house, uh, in Citrus Heights.
Here's Uncle Joe again.
It's when he was younger.
And this looks like it was taken at my parents' place.
Um, yeah.
Yeah.
My mom, as she's dying,
she says, "This family...
is so full of secrets.
Everyone has a secret."
It's Becky, Joe, and Constance.
So, Constance is my mother.
She told me stories where they would be eating...
peas off of the kitchen floor
and they would be looking in cabinets
to try to find something to eat.
They were just little kids.
Yeah, they, you know, because they were always--
they were hungry, you know, and no one was home
to feed them.
Um, she said that they would be locked up in a closet.
Uh, her father would lock them in a closet
and then bring them out and line them up
and do corporal punishment on them.
And guess who got the worst of the beatings?
It was Uncle Joe.
She says, "My brother, Joe,
got the worst of all of us."
BONNIE: When we started dating each other,
he had a big muscle car.
He taught me how to drive.
And he bought me a small .22 rifle
and taught me how to clean it,
how to load it, how to shoot it
and, um, it was-- it was a power thing.
It was all about his dominance.
Joe was my first sexual partner.
When we were together intimately,
he would stop and come back
and stop and come back and stop and come back.
And I didn't really understand that I could say,
"You know, this is not fun for me.
This is practically painful for me."
And, uh...
but I j-- I went along.
I didn't-- I really didn't know any better.
I just had no reference to say, "This is--
This is going toward abusive."
After the broken engagement
with a gun at my window,
I had so put it away and buried it.
When he was arrested
and I started to tell the story again,
I was sleeping about three hours a night.
I'm waking up with a gun at my head
over and over and over again.
LISA ORTIZ: I still today have a hard time
believing that he did it.
I mean, Joe's like...
an amazing person.
He was loving and... (SNIFFLES)
nice and...
just the dad that I always wished that I had had.
I was related to Joe through marriage,
but he was just always known as Uncle Joe to me.
When I was 13,
I had two boys break into my house
through a bathroom window in my parents' room
and put my clo-- my sister in a closet,
held a knife to my neck,
and attacked me.
Well, between that and...
the abuse of my dad, I tried to harm myself...
and that's pretty much how I ended up
going to live with Joe.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
This was dated on April 30th...
and I said, "Joe...
I don't even know how to begin, other than to say..."
(CLEARS THROAT)
"I cannot believe what I am hearing and seeing.
You taught me to drive, shoot a gun,
always took me to Blockbuster to rent my favorite movies.
Some of my best memories are of you.
You were a good dad,
that is the one thing I know to be true.
I hope you did care about me...
because my heart is forever broken."
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
WES: In 1975, we lived off of Winchester Way
in Rancho Cordova.
One night, uh,
I was sleeping and I had to turn over.
And I remember opening my eyes, and I saw...
some-- a man, or some man,
or something, in a-- in a ski mask
and he was staring at me.
This is the house
that me and my family used to live in.
Um, the bedroom to the left
was me and my brother's bedroom.
That's where I saw the man in the ski mask.
I always wondered all these years,
who was that talking to me
through his teeth, who said,
uh, "Don't turn around, go back to sleep"?
I never discussed it with anybody.
I never told a soul.
I sat down with my wife after my uncle got arrested,
and I was in tears and I was telling her these things.
I said, "Wow,
I wonder if he used our house as a safe haven?"
I feel very, very bad
for all these victims
and for their families,
and all these people,
you know, that were murdered by him too and their families.
And then, you wake up one day
and you find out that you're on this side of the spectrum,
where your family member
is the one that did all these heinous crimes.
Can you imagine how we feel as well?
To think that someone who we knew all of our lives
was like this,
and we had no clue.
JEFFREY DAHMER: The only motive that there ever was,
was to completely control a person
that I found physically attractive
and keep them with me as long as possible,
even if it meant just keeping a part of them.
MAN 3: What would motivate somebody to do this?
MAN 4: What was the motive?
WOMAN 1: What's the motive?
MAN 5: What was the motive?
ALL: (OVERLAPPING) Motive? Motive? Motive?
(APPLAUSE)
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
REPORTER 3: Thousands of people flocked to Nashville, Tennessee,
earlier this month.
They were headed to the second annual CrimeCon,
a convention whose mere existence
confirms America's fascination with crime.
WOMAN 2: To me, it's almost like the Coachella
of people who love true crime.
MICHELLE: I've spent a lot of time thinking about why.
For many reasons, the fascination makes no sense.
I'm extraordinarily squeamish
about visual depictions of violence
and frequently have to leave the room
at what many would consider mild episodes
of physical roughness on TV.
No one in my family has murdered or been murdered.
I don't know. I just don't know.
♪ (MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CRIMECON ATTENDEE: So glad to meet you!
KAREN KILGARIFF: It's a fear a lot of women hold
that something's gonna happen to them,
they might get attacked, um,
you know, whatever it might be.
Uh, they might get raped.
Because in the world, they are vulnerable,
and their worst fear happened to somebody else.
And there's empathy, it's fear-driven...
and when you're transferred into these alternate worlds
through true crime,
where the worst things possible are happening,
it's both a relief,
because it takes your mind off all your darkness inside...
and at the same time, it's filling a fantasy
of your worst fears.
WOMAN 3: It was awesome.
-Thank you, guys. -Thank you.
-Appreciate it. -Can we have a picture?
-HAYNES: Sure. -I'm sorry.
Big fan.
HAYNES: Initially, I was just a little,
um, uneasy about the fact
that I had no direct relationship to the case.
It's the sort of thing that's like,
"Well, why are you doing this?"
Like, "Do you know someone who was--
who was attacked by this offender?" No.
But it was just, I don't know, why do people collect,
uh, baseball cards or model trains, you know?
It's just something that captured my interest.
This case gave me a direction and a focus.
Connecting with Michelle was validating.
I was spending ten to 15 hours a day
developing persons of interest.
Had this case not been solved,
I could have continued doing that
for the next 20 years.
Now that the person has a face and a name,
I guess I'm-- I'm-- I'm just kind of waiting for a certain,
uh, feeling to materialize.
Sort of overwhelming waves of feeling emotion.
Uh, and it never really happens.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
KAREN: Who is Joseph James DeAngelo?
REPORTER 3: The wife of the suspected East Area Rapist
returned home only briefly this afternoon,
driving off when she saw us approach.
KAREN: It would be living hell to be related to this person.
REPORTER 4: Tonight, investigators revealing new details
about what may have fueled the rage
of accused Golden State Killer Joseph DeAngelo.
One rape victim in 1978 describing
how her attacker sobbed while saying,
"I hate you, Bonnie. I hate you."
BONNIE: I had no idea
how much I would be involved.
The street in front of my home
was full of satellite trucks and reporters
just waiting for me.
I had, uh, 143 phone messages
waiting on my phone.
People calling repeatedly from NBC, ABC, CBS.
A producer from The Today Show came day after day after day
and left notes and cards,
and "We want to interview you."
My Facebook profile photograph wasn't protected,
so that's the photograph that was used all over the place.
It was total invasion of my privacy.
But I refuse to wear
the blame for a crazy man,
so I-- I don't-- I don't carry the guilt for that.
But the empathy with the women that were attacked,
and I can't-- I can't turn that off.
(APPLAUSE)
REPORTER 5: Applause broke out
in this Sacramento County courtroom
after a judge ruled to begin
Joseph DeAngelo's preliminary trial
in four months,
despite defense requests to delay another year.
LISA: I was told by the detectives
that came to interview me that he didn't kill from '82...
(SNIFFLES) And then he killed again in '86.
And so, during that period, I lived with him,
and then I got married in '86 and moved away.
So...
that's the golden question, is everybody wants to know
why he stopped.
WES: And there's my mother.
My mother was, uh...
she was raped...
in Germany when she was seven years old...
by two...
military...
officers or men...
in an airplane hangar.
Guess who was watching.
Uncle Joe.
He watched her getting raped.
The very thing...
that happened to my mother
is the very thing that my uncle went
and did to other women.
I don't understand that.
How sickening is that?
Wouldn't you want to be, like, an advocate to do good
when you see something like that happen to your own sister?
It's just sickening.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
PATTON: Honestly-- Oh-- Oh, my God.
Thank you, guys, for staying-- coming out so early,
for hanging out.
This was amazing. Thank you, Paul Haynes.
Thank you, Billy Jensen.
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
And thank you, murderinos!
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
HAYNES: Um, this is, uh, Kris.
K-R-I-S.
And, um, and I'm the social worker in the book.
-PATTON: Oh, you are. -Yeah.
Yes. But you're not named. Are you okay with that?
-She used a pseu-- -MELANIE: You know what?
-I'm perfect. -Okay. Good. Good.
Are you in the book as well?
-I'm number one. -She's number one.
-Oh, my God. -And Kris is number ten.
-PATTON: God. -MELANIE: And then...
PATTON: And you're under pseudonyms?
-PHYLLIS ZITKA: Yep. -KRIS: Yeah.
-Okay. -And Patricia showed up tonight
and just, uh, went to the manager of the store
and said she was a victim.
And this is her first interaction tonight
with even, like, meeting people that--
It's so powerful having all the women together.
Well, this-- this has made me feel
-a thousand percent better... -MELANIE: Mm-hmm.
-...getting to see you... -PHYLLIS: Us, too.
-MELANIE: Yeah. -...like, living
and moving around in the world and living your--
-KRIS: And strong. -Yeah, exactly.
And we're...
I-- I just feel like we've very unified
and we do have something in common,
but more than that, like, we just...
-PHYLLIS: Bonded. -We've bonded.
And so just, uh, if we're gonna find something good
out of the bad, we're gonna find it.
-Yeah. -KRIS: We will.
-And we are. -(SIGHS) Oh, God.
KRIS: So you did a really great job in finishing...
-MELANIE: Yeah. And we thank you. -Thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you.
I'm-- It means everything to get to meet you guys.
PHYLLIS: And us to meet you.
It does. I wish...
And I w-- you know, I...
PATTON: I wish Michelle was hugging you guys.
I every day wish Michelle was here to see this.
We-- yeah. I wish Michelle was here.
This would have been her glory.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
Pick-- Pick the Abe Lincoln setting for Billy.
(LAUGHTER)
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
PATTON: Meeting those women up in Sacramento...
to see them there and they're smiling
and-- and-- and they were like joking with me, and, um...
They had every right to become horrible monsters
like Joseph DeAngelo, and they didn't.
So, them and the way that they're living
is such a fuck-you to him.
Like, "You tried to bring the same damage to us
that forever warped you, and it didn't work.
And we-- we've proved that you could have chosen
to overcome this
and that's why you can't look at us."
Fuck you, Joseph DeAngelo.
Fuck all these fucking loser zilch assholes.
Fuck them.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(EXCITED CHATTER)
It's so good to see you.
Of course! He really thinks I don't remember them.
Are you kidding? We're like...
-Hi! Good to see you. -How are you?
-Good.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
-KRIS: Hello. How are you? -GAY HARDWICK: Hi.
GAY: I'm good.
Oh, my gosh, it's so nice to meet you.
GAY: This is my husband, Bob.
-Hi, Bob. It's nice to meet you, too. -BOB HARDWICK: Nice to meet you.
-GAY: This is Kris. -Oh, yeah.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER, LAUGHTER)
I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm Linda.
-COURTNEY: Hi. Courtney. -Hi, Courtney. Nice to meet you.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
Hi. My name's-- my name's Michelle.
Good to meet you.
And I'm number-- I'm number 39.
I'm 31.
And this is my husband, who's also 31.
BOB: Were you married then?
Mm-hmm. And I had a three-year-old son.
-Yeah. -And then how long did your marriage last after that?
-MICHELLE MARTIN: Seven months. -Oh, boy.
PHYLLIS: All parties went for death penalty.
Because I wanted him to rot in jail, you know.
But now...
WOMAN 4: I don't think he's gonna live that long anyway.
Nah, probably not.
BOB: I told Gay, I said,
"I hope he goes to prison for 30 years."
Not-- Don't kill him.
-KRIS: Yeah. -Let him suffer.
-KRIS: Yeah, absolutely. -Trust me, he will.
He's not gonna have any place to hide.
I would just like for it to be over,
and for all the convictions to be on record,
and for him to be out of the limelight
and where he should remain for the rest of his life.
Yeah.
GAY: Um, I've decided to get...
a little bit of therapy to just deal with some of the...
uh, feelings that I've developed over this past year,
uh, things that have been dredged up.
It's been almost a year now, and I'm...
I'm much better in some ways.
In some ways, I'm worse.
But... I am better in my daily life
and my ability to...
um, sleep better at night and, uh, open the window,
wake up, and not be certain that, uh...
death is in my home.
And, um...
it is hard for, I think, people to understand,
although I found people here at this gathering understand
how it doesn't go away.
LINDA: I'm not gonna change my life
and give him one more ounce of me.
And if I do, he won, and I said I'm not doing that.
I want to be positive, I want to show strength,
and I want to show it to other women.
-GAY: Yes. -And young girls.
-GAY: Yes. -If it happens to a young girl,
report it, don't be ashamed of it,
-own it, and move on. -GAY: That's right.
-If you need help, get help. -GAY: Yep.
LINDA: So, I was telling her, I said...
My younger son did not want me to be a part of these shows.
He said, "I'm in fear of something
happening to my family."
I wrote him a letter and I told him,
"I stayed quiet for over 20 years."
And I said, "Today, I'm happy,
I'm healthy, I'm strong,
I'm part of the 'Me Too,'
and I have a story to tell."
And when he got the letter, he called up and he said,
"Mom, I love you, and I'm proud of you."
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
KRIS: Okay, well, has everyone got their glass?
-WOMAN 5: Yep. -(GAY CHUCKLES)
So, it's been four decades since the East Area Rapist
invaded our lives...
and our bodies.
And with that...
he also invaded our sense of security and safety.
And for me, as much as I hate to admit it at times,
it definitely changed me.
And now, it's only been one year
since the East Area Rapist has a face.
He can't hide behind his mask anymore.
And he has a name.
And his name is Inmate DeAngelo.
And Inmate DeAngelo is behind bars
and our safety has been restored.
But something else happened...
during this year, and that is us.
When we've met, we've had no trouble sharing
what we couldn't share with other people
because it comes from here and we get it.
And we know what it means.
We're not just survivor sisters,
we are a survivor family.
-Well, said. -KRIS: And...
um, on a personal note,
I feel for the very first time
that I'm on the road to becoming myself again.
And you are all to thank for that.
So raise your glass
to our new extended survivor family.
-Cheers. -ALL: Cheers.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(INDISTINCT CHATTER, LAUGHTER)
(SNIFFLES)
WOMAN 6: Great... Great job, Kris.
-KRIS: Thank you. Thank you. -WOMAN 6: Thank you so much. Thank you.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
-KRIS: Oh, are you leaving? -GAY: We're gonna have to go.
Okay. Yeah. You've got vacation, huh?
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
BOB:
♪ ("UN REFLET DE VOUS" BY DENIS BENOLIEL & OPHELIA BARD PLAYS) ♪
GAY: The arrest of the suspect and visiting Paris
were two lifelong dreams for me.
And somehow, they occurred simultaneously.
We had this trip planned for a while.
And when he was arrested, I said...
"He's going to prison and I'm going to Paris."
And that's-- that's a good thing.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Two days later, I found myself walking through the Louvre
for the first time in my whole life,
which had been a lifelong goal.
And I was just stopped in my tracks
by this one painting.
It is a young woman who has been left to drown
with her hands bound.
And the painting shows her peacefully having...
given up...
just under the surface of the water.
It just summed up how I felt, you know,
during the event and sometimes after.
You know, this is what it feels like
to have everything taken from you.
And yet, you know, you're so close to the surface,
but you can't survive.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MICHELLE: I think the narcotic pull for me
is what I think of as the powerful absence
that haunts an unsolved crime.
Murderers lose their power the moment we know them.
But he, whomever he was, was still out there.
The hollow gap of his identity was violently powerful to me.
But if you commit a brutal crime and then vanish,
what you leave behind isn't just pain,
but absence...
a great supreme blankness
that triumphs, obscenely, it seems to me...
over everything else.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
♪ ("9 CRIMES" BY DAMIEN RICE PLAYING) ♪
♪ Leave me out with the waste ♪
♪ This is not what I do ♪
♪ It's the wrong kind of place ♪
♪ To be thinking of you ♪
♪ It's the wrong time ♪
♪ For somebody new ♪
♪ It's a small crime ♪
♪ And I've got no excuse ♪
♪ And is that all right, yeah? ♪
♪ Give my gun away When it's loaded ♪
♪ That all right, yeah? ♪
♪ If you don't shoot it How am I supposed to hold it? ♪
♪ That all right, yeah?
♪ Give my gun away When it's loaded... ♪
LIZ GARBUS: You shared so much with us,
so much of her personal writing and thoughts.
Extraordinarily generous.
Is there something that you were looking for in-- in there
that you couldn't look at yourself?
PATTON: There were parts of her that I didn't know about,
and I figured with talking to other friends of hers and...
family members and people that she worked with,
you know, even if you're married to someone,
you don't totally 100 percent know
the other person.
It's not the whole Michelle.
It's parts of her.
I try to tell Alice every single thing I can
about Michelle that I know.
But there's stuff I don't know.
♪ Is that all right, yeah?
♪ You don't shoot it How am I supposed to hold it? ♪
♪ Is that all right, yeah?
♪ If I give my gun away When it's loaded ♪
♪ Is that all right? ♪
♪ Is that all right with you? ♪
♪ That all right, yeah?
♪ If I give my gun away When it's loaded ♪
♪ Is that all right, yeah?
♪ If you don't shoot it How am I supposed to hold it? ♪
♪ Is that all right, yeah? ♪
♪ If I give my gun away When it's loaded ♪
♪ Is that all right? ♪
♪ Is that all right with you? ♪
♪ Is that all right, yeah? ♪
♪ Give my gun away When it's loaded ♪
♪ Is that all right, yeah? ♪
♪ If you don't shoot it How am I supposed to hold it? ♪
♪ Is that all right, yeah? ♪
♪ Give my gun away When it's loaded ♪
♪ Is that all right? Is that all right? ♪
♪ Is that all right with you? ♪
♪ No ♪
♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
(WAVES CRASHING)
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪