74-year-old Joseph James DeAngelo, Jr., best known as the accused “Golden State Killer” is pleading guilty on Monday to a number of first degree murder charges during a decade-long run as one of California’s most notorious-yet-unknown criminals.
Early in the proceedings on Monday morning, DeAngelo pleaded guilty to the Visalia-based murder of Claude Snelling, a journalism professor at the College of the Sequoias, which occurred in 1975.
Snelling was murdered attempting to protect his daughter from an intruder attempting to kidnap his daughter from their Visalia home.
DeAngelo’s hearing, occuring in a large ballroom at California State University, Sacramento rather than in Sacramento Superior Court, will include guilty pleas other uncharged counts during his 10-year span of alleged murders, rapes, and burglaries between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s.
The infamous killer struck a deal with prosecutors to enter his plea. The key condition of the agreement is that DeAngelo will not be sentenced to the death penalty.
California has not executed a felon convicted of a capital offense since Clarence Ray Allen in 2006.
This stoy will be updated.
