Cold Cases · Spotify Studios

Finding the Golden State Killer

·46 min·3 clips

Linda Odell wakes to a flashlight, a ski mask, and a man who says he has a gun.

1. Cold Cases covers the decades-long hunt for the Golden State Killer in California. 2. Carter Roy hosts the episode, and Paul Holes and Larry Poole matter because they lead the DNA work that connects the cases. 3. The episode asks how investigators finally identified a man tied to nearly 50 rapes and 13 murders. 4. The story starts with Linda Odell waking to a flashlight, a ski mask, and a gun threat in her bedroom. 5. Larry Poole in Orange County is reviewing four cold homicide files from Keith and Patrice Harrington, Manuela Whithun, and Janelle Cruz. 6. A Ventura County case number leads Larry to Charlene and Lyman Smith, whose semen sample matches the Orange County DNA profile. 7. Larry then finds similar double homicides in Santa Barbara County involving Deborah Manning, Alexander Offerman, Sherry Domingo, and Greg Sanchez. 8. The episode explains STR DNA, Alec Jeffreys, and how repeat sequences can identify a person from a sample. 9. Paul Holes in Contra Costa County has been tracking the East Area Rapist files since 1994. 10. The East Area Rapist case includes the dish-on-the-back tactic, late-night entries, and the statute-of-limitations problem for 1970s rape charges. 11. The match between the East Area Rapist and the original Night Stalker links about 10 homicides and around 50 rapes. 12. Michelle McNamara enters as a writer and investigator through True Crime Diary and her Los Angeles Magazine work. 13. She coins the name Golden State Killer and shares files, interviews, and theories with Paul Holes. 14. Michelle McNamara dies in April 2016, and Paul keeps using her ancestry-site idea after her death. 15. Paul uploads an STR profile to WhySearch.org in 2017 and briefly finds a relative in an Oregon nursing home. 16. The team then switches to SNP profiling, Family Tree DNA, MyHeritage, and GEDmatch to chase distant relatives. 17. Barbara Rae Venter helps build reverse family trees from census records, birth records, and social media. 18. The suspect pool narrows to six names, and Joseph James D'Angelo, Jr. matches the blue-eye clue and the Sacramento-area background. 19. The episode has a procedural, investigative tone with detailed explanations of DNA technology, genealogy, and surveillance work. 20. People interested in cold-case investigation and forensic genealogy would like this episode; listeners wanting a light or non-violent story probably would not.

As heard by us

A forensic breakthrough that opens onto a vast unsolved case.

An investigation-driven episode traces a nighttime home invasion and the later link between the East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker.

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Why you'd press play

Press play for the moment a profile match links the East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker.

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