UPDATED 2:55 p.m.
District attorneys from six California counties announced on Tuesday that the trial of Golden State Killer/East Area Rapist suspect Joseph James DeAngelo will be held in Sacramento.
Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert and five other DA’s made this announcement in Orange County. Schubert said she has filed an amended complaint of 13 murder charges against DeAngelo in Sacramento Superior Court. DeAngelo is expected to be arraigned in Sacramento Thursday.
The murder allegations also include 18 rape and burglary special circumstances allegations.In addition, DeAngelo will face 13 charges of kidnapping to commit robbery. Nine of those charges stem from crimes committed in Sacramento County.
Schubert says the new charges provide prosecutors a way to seek justice in some of the East Area Rapist cases even though the statute of limitations for rape have expired. There was no such statute for kidnapping to commit robbery.
"We have always said that these are sexually motivated crimes as well. That they are rapes," Schubert said. "The fact that we cannot charge some because of that statute of limitations does not mean that we will not seek to introduce that evidence at trial."
Contra Costa DA Diana Becton said at the news conference that two of the cases have DNA evidence. Schubert said none of the cases in Sacramento have such evidence, but there is “mark evidence” that links them.
Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said he's confident the DNA evidence in the murder cases will hold up, even though it's decades old.
"I think that the storage was certainly fine in the sense that once we got the DNA from evidence it was in good condition to analyze, so I think we're going to be good with that," Rackauckas said.
No decision has been made as to whether DeAngelo would face the death penalty.
The 72-year-old DeAngelo is suspected of being the serial rapist and killer who terrorized California in the 1970s and 1980s, including in the Sacramento region as the East Area Rapist.
He's also connected with a series of crimes in Tulare County attributed to the Visalia Ransacker. Those cases included 120 burglaries, several sexual assaults, and the murder of a college professor.
Authorities arrested DeAngelo at his Citrus Heights home in April after loading his DNA to a genealogical website, which provided a match to a relative of DeAngelo.
This is a developing story and will be updated throughout the day.
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