A series of rapes in Northern California. The rapist moves down the coast, his crimes escalating to murder. Originally aired: 05/04/18 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the True Crime Vault podcast about?
Welcome to the 2020 True Crime Vault, where heart-stopping headlines come to life.
He told us with clenched teeth, shut up or I'll kill you. Sorry, it's just, you know, finding out what she went through.
Tonight on 2020, the so-called Golden State Killer, a 40-year-old cold case, back in the news tonight. The police are saying lock up tight. Sorry.
Is this my last moment alive?
He wanted fear. He wanted to see fear in me. Hands tied, legs tied. He'd say, shut up, shut up, shut up.
One of the most notorious and elusive serial killers in American history.
He's a pro.
Nobody even knows what he looks like. He was like a puff of smoke in the night. We have his DNA. We just need a name to go with this DNA.
Tonight, we have one. I think they got him. Now we're taking you inside the epic manhunt. We have a master suspect name list of 8,000 names.
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Chapter 2: Who is the Golden State Killer?
Life was very good back then, just a normal routine, getting up in the morning, taking my son to daycare, and then I would go to school, come home, fix dinner.
That month's number one song was Chicago's If You Leave Me Now. Rocky was due to hit theaters. A new president, Jimmy Carter, was on the cusp of election, and Sacramento was still an up-and-coming capital city with a small-town feel.
It was a sleepy town. Friendly, safe, people didn't lock their doors.
You could park your car in the driveway and you could leave it unlocked, you could leave the keys in it.
And you didn't worry about your safety. That was until 1976.
For Jane, her once secure home would soon become her prison.
The next thing is he gags us, blindfolds us, ties us up with shoelaces. He started ripping sheets or towels, I'm not sure. but it was very methodical and it was very slow.
That tearing sound, he's doing that purposefully because he knows the victims can hear that. He wanted to inflict absolute fear and suffering in these victims. And that was his primary goal.
His next move was to move my son. This is where the fear really took place. My heart was pounding through my chest, and I just prayed, Dear Lord, please, please let my son be safe. And he came around and he untied my ankles. I wasn't paying attention to the rape. I was paying attention to what had he done with my son.
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Chapter 3: What were the early crimes of the Golden State Killer?
I mean, it's frustrating.
The clue that would unlock the mystery of the Golden State serial killer for police was hidden inside that 1980 murder of Lyman Smith and his wife, Charlene.
I'd arrive at the scene with my little suitcase, a tube rack and dry ice and a microscope.
Pathologist Dr. Peter Speff investigated the Smith case when the use of rape kits was in its earliest stages. Speff had an unusual methodology.
I always made duplicate kits, and both kits were identical. To my knowledge, there are no other medical examiners who make duplicate rape kits.
Speth's decision to make two kits would prove prophetic.
That turned out to be a gold mine for us because that second kit had sat in the coroner's possession for 38 years untouched. And so the swabs collected from Charlene Smith's body were pristine.
For years, those pristine swabs languished in an evidence room, past rows of case files. The DNA of the man, who authorities say killed 12 people and raped 50, sat undisturbed in a freezer. For almost four decades police were sitting on a genetic fingerprint waiting for the science to catch up. Little did they know that years later a brave new world of genetic genealogy would begin to flourish.
Ancestry.com searches the world's largest online family history resource. Now everyone looking to find their family roots or a long-lost relative could spit into a test tube and compare it to millions of other samples.
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