A former California police officer, best known as the infamous Golden State killer, said he was "truly sorry" before he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole on Friday.
Joseph DeAngelo, 74, who admitted 13 murders and dozens of rapes, terrorized victims in the 1970s and '80s.
Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael Bowman said, "When a person commits demonic acts they should be stopped, where they cannot harm another innocent person."
Before being sentenced, DeAngelo, in an orange gel scrub and a white shirt, got up from his wheelchair and removed a white face mask. He told relatives of his victims, many sitting in the spacious room: "I have heard all of your statements, each of them and I hurt everyone."
Last June, DeAngelo pleaded guilty to raping more than 50 women and killing 13 people. As part of a plea, he also confessed to crimes he has not been charged with.
Bowman imposed 11 additional life without parole sentences, plus an additional life sentence and another eight years. The judge said the court statements were given by the victims and their families "will always be with me."
Bowman told the defense, "I lack his courage, his grace, his strength - all qualities."
The judge said, "This is the absolute maximum punishment the court can enforce under the law." "And while the court has no power to determine where the defendant has been imprisoned, the survivors have spoken: the defendant deserves no mercy."
The victims and family members played applause and shortly afterward, the masked defendants were kicked out of the large university ballroom, where the social distinction was allowed for punishment.
Prosecutors called for the maximum penalty as they recalled DeAngelo's "soundless" victims and their "unspeakable" suffering. He referred to the murderer as the boogieman, devil, maniac, and beast, who would not walk the streets again.
Defense lawyers read letters from defense friends and family members, in which they described DeAngelo's father as a hardened military man and womanist who abused the defendant as a child. A niece wrote that DeAngelo saved her life after she was physically abused by her father.
"Their horrific crimes are inexcusable and forever change the lives of our victims," Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton said in a statement after the sentencing. "I want to underline the strength and courage displayed to my victims and their families over the years, to share in the open court with all that they have endured over the years."
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer told the victims - whether in heaven or here on earth - are now "free from the quarrels that forced them and their loved ones to endure because of their path to Satan Were joined together. "
On Thursday, DeAngelo's' ex-wife broke her silence in a statement presented in court but did not expect to read aloud. Sacramento lawyer Sharon Huddle, who married DeAngelo in 1973, said her actions had a "devastating and widespread" impact on her life.
"I will never be the same person," she wrote. "Now I live every day with the knowledge of how he attacked and severely damaged the lives of hundreds of innocent people and murdered 13 innocent people who were loved and now 40 years old or so. Has been remembered for more than that. "
Huddle never refers to her by name and calls her a "defendant" through it all.
"I've lost the ability to trust people," she said. "I was confident that when he told me he had to work, or was going for partridge hunting, or going to meet his parents for miles away. When I wasn't around, I trusted him to do the same. Has been doing what he told me he was doing. "
A serial rapist known by many names
During the expansion of his crime spanning California, Joseph James DeAngelo is known as the Golden State Killer, East Area Rapist, Original Night Stalker, and Visalia Ransacker.
One by one, the victims and family members took the stand, in which they described the horrific detail by the former police officer.
A woman, who was just 7 years old and sleeping when her mother was bound and raped by DeAngelo, threatened her with her mother not to wake her.
"He threatened to bite my ear and bring it to him," he said. When he woke up, "I could understand evil, all hell broke loose."
He compared the fictional cannibal serial killer Hannibal Lecter, saying that DeAngelo was "proof demons were real. I met Boogeyman."
Others told of numbness in their hands that lasted for months because their wrists were tied too tightly in attacks.
More than 40 years after the attacks, most of the victims spoke of the lifelong scars. Many were not allowed to find their way to happiness despite not being defined by their events and the indelible damage left by DeAngelo.
Anger boiled over throughout the statement. "He can rot in hell," Karen Veilleux said on behalf of her sister, Phyllis. Another woman made her statement calling DeAngelo"inhumane" and aggressively showing her his middle finger.
DeAngelo pleaded to avoid capital punishment, although the state is prohibited from hanging. One person speaking on behalf of his mother said that the effort was fruitless.
He said, "Many people may want to bear the death penalty themselves, but you can't see? The punishment has already been given. You have been robbed all your life, yet you are too stupid to notice Are ".
Six counties accuse him
In one of the six charges, the victims admitted the charges against them, who voted unanimously to accept their guilty pleas.
"Today's arguments will never bring loved ones back or restore a sense of security, but today, after 40 years of uncertainty, dozens of victims and a nation heard that the person responsible for this reign of terror finally acknowledged that he - and only he - is responsible, "Spitzer said at the time of the petition.
Victims and their families waited for decades to get justice and exposed the man, who singled out to attack couples alone or with their children and then in their homes.
His crimes spanned the 1970s and 1980s. A free genealogy database eventually gave authorities the necessary break to arrest DeAngelo in 2018.
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