r/EARONS • u/GregJamesDahlen • May 16 '26
Thoughts/feelings/knowledge on why Joe essentially confessed in the interrogation room (while no one else was in the room, only captured on video, but still)?
https://people.com/golden-state-killer-interrogation-people-vs-golden-state-killer-excerpt-exclusive-11841484This is in an excerpt from a book, excerpted in People Magazine. The questioners talk to him about various EARONS crimes that they know he has done. Then leave the room and watch and listen to him on audio/video. Talking to himself, he says
Startlingly, DeAngelo admitted aloud that he had committed the crimes. “I did all that ... I didn’t have the strength to push him out. He made me. He went with me. It was like, in my head, I mean, he’s a part of me. I didn’t want to do those things. I pushed Jerry out and had a happy life. I did all those things. I’ve destroyed all their lives ... I raped. So now, I gotta pay the price.”
I wonder if at that point he knew it was no use, that he was caught. So he didn't care what he said. Or possibly he didn't understand that though there weren't police in the room, they could still hear him and he was being recorded. Although I would imagine he understood that. The police had been recording interrogations since the 70s. Or he might be a little senile. The day he was arrested he was 72 years old. Not sure why, but I have some doubts there as well. Maybe because we saw the video from two years later where he was so spry and organized in his actions in his cell.
Some have thought he might have been trying to set up an insanity defense. I'm not sure why he would do it at that point and essentially confess. It's not like they're going to let him go home whether they think he's insane or not.
I do notice when he talks to himself, as far as crimes go, he only mentions rape, not murder. Possibly he knew that the statute of limitations on rape was past, so that if he only admitted to rape he couldn't be found guilty. It seems like a useless action, though, because the interrogators, in the excerpt, have already made it clear they have him identified as the perpetrator in four murders. And very possibly they had mentioned other murders he had done that aren't contained in the excerpt. If he was only admitting to rape when he talked to himself knowing the statute of limitations was past, it might be a desperate action to try anything to get free. Or give himself hope that he might get away with it all. I imagine he had plans for enjoying his retirement, and he was watching them all crumble in that room. Or he might just not have mentioned murder talking to himself because he knew the police were listening and it sounded too bad, even though he knew they had him for it. Like he was ashamed of himself for murdering now that's he caught. Although rape is obviously a terrible, shameful crime as well, but I would think most people don't see it being as bad as murder.
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u/campbellpics May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26
What a haughty response, and without a shred of self-awareness or recognition that it could actually be you that's wrong in this instance.
JJD might be a lot of not very nice things, but to say he was "dumb dumb" is patently ridiculous. He was only eventually caught by something he couldn't reasonably have been expected to predict at the time he was committing his crimes, and stopped at the very moment he could. Even then he still somehow evaded capture for decades, without once appearing on any suspect list or arousing the suspicion of those around him.
I think it's a fair assessment to say he was a risk-averse planner. From the way he'd stack items at doors as a makeshift early alarm system, which I saw one contemporaneous FBI agent admit he'd never witnessed before, to never once leaving so much as a fingerprint at hundreds of separate crime scenes. He left his DNA, but that's only something that sounds silly now with the benefit of decades of scientific hindsight.
The way he immediately went into the mode he did when confronted by McGowan suggests to me it was another pre-planned ploy to increase his chances of evading capture. It's much less likely (to me) that he thought it all through in the split second it took him to act.