Golden State Killer, Crypto Convict, Genetic Genealogy - Megyn's "True Crime" Mega-Episode

26:42hmm okay now and by the way the criminal database you know like if you get arrested for i don't know how long it's been going on in america that they they do a dna test of you if you get arrested for a felony um how long is how long do you know how long they've been doing that and by and are those results also uploaded to jedmatch they are not so law enforcement has their own database which is based on a different type of DNA marker than what we use in genealogy. So they're not comparable. They've been doing it for about, well, it depends what state and which jurisdiction. So about 25 years. Some started earlier.

27:22I've helped identify two serial killers who were put to death in Texas in 1999, and neither of them were in the law enforcement database, which seems shocking to me. But I've since learned that it was kind of hit and miss at first. You know, it took some time to get it off the ground and collect those samples from violent criminals. And so we can't be sure. Yeah, we can't. Here's what's crazy. And we're going to get to some of the cases that you've solved. But some of them are using DNA from crimes in the 70s, you know, and that's semen or blood or what have you. And it really was very forward thinking of law enforcement back then before they had any idea what we'd be able to do in 2023 to save all that stuff in, not sadly in every case, but in a lot of the cases, making crime solving 50 years later possible.

28:20Yeah, we owe them a huge debt of gratitude because they couldn't have possibly understood just how valuable that physical evidence was going to be. I've actually worked cases back to 1958 now. Whoa. Yeah, quite a bit before I was even born. And so it's just amazing what can be done in those cases where the crime scene investigators were so forward thinking. They collected things they couldn't have imagined how powerful they would be today. How long does DNA stick around? You know, like 58? I mean, I think there's probably a hierarchy on the samples, right? Like, you'd rather have semen in a rape case than, I don't know, touch DNA.

29:03You tell me, but how long does it last? Well, that's a really good question. I mean, we can analyze ancient remains, right? When they dig up some old royalty and things or accidentally run into the one under the car park, there's still DNA there. So it just depends on the environment, how something was stored, or where somebody was buried as to how long that DNA will survive. But it can survive for hundreds of years in some cases, even thousands. I mean, look, they've been able to analyze the genome from neandertals. So DNA lasts a very, very long time, but it absolutely depends on the environment.

29:48And so back to the crime fighting element of this. So now you're getting more advanced. You've got the new, the GEDmatch, which is getting bigger and more useful. And now can you just briefly describe how you do start filling in the tree, how it's become, this is the tool that now that you're using to fight crime. Yeah. Let me also mention, we have one other database that we can use with law enforcement and that's family tree DNA. The original pioneers of genetic genealogy decided that they wanted to help law enforcement as well. Now it is the smallest database, unfortunately, even though it was the first one, it's the smallest one.

30:26And so the databases we can use are the two smallest in the field. That's GEDmatch, which has about 1.5 million people in it, and Family Tree DNA that has about 1.25 million people in their autosomal DNA database. They have three different databases. How many in GEDmatch? A GEDmatch has about 1.5 million, but only about a third of those are opted into law enforcement matching. So we can only use about 500 ,000 to identify violent criminals. That's incredibly small. I mean, I'm even more impressed that you've solved all these crimes with such a small sample size. Yes. It's like stepping back into 2014 when I was first trying to solve family mysteries, adoptions, and things like that.

31:13It is very difficult. It's very challenging. So give us an actual example that's easy to understand of how you've used this to solve a crime? So we get the unknown individual's DNA from the crime scene. It might be semen, blood, saliva, even touch DNA. And we have to send that to a private lab. So none of the crime labs have the capability to create the type of DNA profile that we need. The law enforcement databases, as I mentioned, are based on a type of genetic marker called an STR, single nucleotide, I'm sorry, single tandem repeat. And we use SNPs, which is a totally different type of genetic marker, a single nucleotide polymorphism.

31:59And so we have to start from scratch. And that means there has to be DNA left from that crime scene. If they've used it all up, then we cannot do genetic genealogy. So it goes to a private lab where it is analyzed. And just like they would analyze it at, say, AncestryDNA or 23andMe, we need it to be compatible with those profiles because that's the type of profiles we're going to compare against. So it's about 700 ,000 to 800 ,000 genetic markers across the genome. And then it goes to our bioinformaticists, our scientists. Now, because these are degraded, mixed, contaminated samples, these are not like if you spit in the tube and you have this perfect DNA sample.

32:41These are non-optimal samples. And so we need something called bioinformatics, which we have an amazing scientist, Dr. Ellen Gray-Tack and Dr. Ellen Katie, sorry, Dr. Janet Katie, it's Parabon, that work with that degraded DNA to try to repair it and make it as similar to a file as if you and I were to spit in a tube and mail it in. Once we have that, we upload it to GEDmatch and or Family Tree DNA. It's compared against all the people there that are opted into law enforcement matching, and we get a list of matches. Now, those matches are typically going to be really distant relatives, And that's because these are really small databases we're working with.

33:24So the chance of a close relative of a suspect are very small. So we're lucky if we get a second cousin or a few second cousins, sometimes closer, but mostly we're working with third, fourth, fifth, sixth cousins and beyond. And we can predict what the likely relationships are based on how much DNA someone is sharing with that unknown person. Hmm. You can see the percentage. Okay. So this is fascinating. And then you draw the family tree. So if you've got a sixth cousin, you got to start drawing a family tree. And this is actually funny for me because I know who my sixth cousin is, or at least one of them.

33:59And it's somebody famous. It's somebody famous. That's the reason I know because somebody actually did the family tree and we're like, oh my God, we're related to her. It's Loretta Swit, Hot Lips Houlihan. man, you're around my age, so I know you know who that is, of MASH fame. So she and I are related. It was so fun. She did a Barnes and Noble book signing up on the Upper West Side when I lived there. And I popped in and told her we were long lost cousins. She could not have been nicer. Oh, that is so funny. But anyway, so let's say I committed a crime, but you didn't know it was me. And Loretta had uploaded her DNA to GEDmatch.

34:35So now you're looking for me. You don't know it's me, but you find Loretta Swit is the sixth cousin of this person. And you start doing these concentric circles around her, right? That you just start to do like, who are all the people she's related to and her aunts and uncles are related to, and you gotta, that's so much work to finally get to the possibles. So there's a little bit more efficient way to do it, which is I'll say, okay, who's not, I've got the list of who's sharing DNA with the suspect, but who on that list shares DNA with each other? That's really important. So it's not just who's sharing with the suspect, but who is sharing with other people on that list.

35:12So say matches one, three, and five share DNA with each other. If I can build all their family trees, I should be able to identify their common ancestor. The only reason two people would share these identical segments of DNA is if they inherited them from somebody in the past. They have to have common ancestry. And so if I can identify where that DNA comes from, which of the great-great-grandparents are further back, then that gives me one piece of my unknown person's tree. And so I create what's called genetic networks. I'll group the matches into networks of people that are sharing DNA with each other or clusters.

35:55And each of those clusters will represent one branch of the unknown person's family tree. So we start piecing it back together that way. Maybe I'll have one set of great-great-grandparents, one set of great-great-great-grandparents. Maybe if I'm lucky, I can identify great-grandparents. And then I have to find that one person or set of siblings that is related to all of those matches and descended from those sets of ancestors. So it's like reverse engineering someone's family tree and eventually their identity based on their ancestors. And then do you get to the step of, let's take the Idaho murders, where it's like, okay, I know it could be somebody in this cluster or this cluster or this cluster, but hey, there's a guy in this cluster who lives within 10 miles of the murder site.

36:48Do you use evidence like that to help narrow it down, or are you only in the genetic genealogy field? It depends how much data you have. If you have enough matches that you can connect to someone's mother's side and their father's side, maybe three or even four of their grandparents' lines, you can narrow it down to just one immediate family. But because these databases are so small, we often don't have that. So say we could only identify one set of his great-grandparents or great-great-grandparents. In that case, we would have to then do what's called reverse genealogy, identify all of their descendants and look for their descendants who are the right gender, age range, maybe live in the right area, drive a white car.

37:35And so we do look at those other things. And that's something I think a lot of people don't realize is that with investigative genetic genealogy, the DNA just gets us started. without someone's family tree. It's meaningless without trying to being able to identify the descendants of the common ancestors we identify. It's meaningless. So we're looking at location locations, huge. We look for the one branch of the tree that maybe moved closer to the crime scene. And 99 % of the time we find someone who lived right there within 10, 20 miles, sometimes within one mile. And so that's a really powerful part of it.

38:14And then we use phenotyping at Parabon where they can predict eye color, hair color, skin color, even shape face. And so we use a lot of different factors to narrow it down further when there isn't enough in the database to point us at just one person or one family. So that phenotype, that's very interesting because that's something you can do even if there's no match, right? Like if you get DNA and you run it through GEDmatch and there's just nothing, like nothing comes up, the DNA is still useful to you. That's right. So we don't have many families or individuals in GEDmatch or family tree DNA that are recent immigrants.

38:55And so it's really difficult to identify someone if they were born another country or their parents or even grandparents or great-grandparents were. And so there are some cases where it's not viable to perform genetic genealogy, but Parabon can still perform the phenotyping and still create this image of what someone might look like. Now, it's not meant to be photographic, but it's meant to give you their traits. And so it is used in quite a few cases where there just aren't enough matches, aren't enough data for genetic genealogy. But what I have found is where it's most powerful is in conjunction with each other.

39:36So maybe I narrow it down to 10 males who all descend from these common ancestors. And then I can look which ones have blue eyes, brown eyes, which ones have blonde hair, maybe red hair. And that can really help to narrow it down because we want to give as few people as possible, right? We want this to be efficient and we want to keep innocent people out of these investigations. So I work very hard to try to narrow things down using all different types of information. So I'm not sending law enforcement on a wild goose chase and sending them after innocent individuals. The moral of the story is don't leave your DNA at a crime scene.

40:13Don't leave it. Even if you're not in the system, even if nobody you know is in a system, CeCe Moore is going to get you. All right, stand by. I got to squeeze in a break. There's so much to discuss. And I want to pick up the Idaho case because they're saying that this was used to catch Brian Kohlberger. We'll talk about it next.

40:32So let's talk about Idaho. This is, of course, on everybody's minds. And they have reported, there have been reports that genetic genealogy was used in nabbing this suspected killer, Brian Kohlberger, 28 years old, 10 miles away from the murder site, pursuing his PhD in criminology at the University of Washington, the four victims from the University of Idaho. So they have only told us so far that DNA was detected on one button of the knife sheath that they tell us in the supporting affidavit for the warrant for arrest was found next to one of the victims. One button on a knife sheath. So that's kind of interesting.

41:17It's kind of surprising, I would think. I would think there'd be more DNA at this site. So what does it tell you that they're zeroing in, first of all, on just that one little button, as opposed to on the body of the four victims, on the bedpost, on the door handles, right? What does it tell you? Well, I think that he went to great lengths to not leave DNA. He likely had gloves on. He was educated about this. You would think he certainly would have made sure he wasn't leaving DNA behind, but he must have handled that knife sheath earlier when he didn't have gloves on. That's my guess. But I also want to point out that they don't have to reveal everything they have in the affidavit, and you know that, of course.

42:02And so I think it's very possible they have additional DNA. And even if they didn't, they might by now, because I'm sure they've been going through all of that physical evidence batch by batch, sending that to the Idaho Crime Lab and trying to detect any additional DNA. So I don't think we'll really know what they have until this case progresses. And hopefully they will find more DNA or already have. It might be more complex, meaning there might be mixtures of blood. Cases I've worked where there was a frenzied stabbing, almost always the knife has slipped and cut the suspect as well. But then you have a mixture and you might even have a mixture of three people in this case.

42:44Maybe you have his blood plus two of the victim's blood, for instance, and they have to do what's called deconvolution, where they extract out the victim's DNA and are left with just that suspect's DNA. And so it's possible that that could have taken more time, which is possibly why they were focusing on this knife sheath for the affidavit. I imagine that was touch DNA. They say that what was found on that button was single source male DNA. So what does that mean? It means there was just one DNA contributor. So that's a much more straightforward DNA sample than if they have a mixture otherwise, which could be why they focused on that for the affidavit because it's the most straightforward.

43:30Now, that was likely touch DNA unless he happened to leave a little bit of blood on that. But I would guess it's touch DNA. and that is just a few skin cells most likely. So that's not very much DNA and that really illustrates how far technology has come. Yeah, so what, you know, my feeling as a lawyer in discussing this case is if I'm the defense and best case scenario for Brian Kohlberger, that's all the DNA they have of his at the scene. I'm thinking I'm good because maybe Brian Kohlberger went to the store wherever they sold that knife in the sheath and he touched it, he picked it up and it was still left on there.

44:10So how long does one's touch DNA last? You know, that'll be relevant. It will be. And I agree with you. Touch DNA is not the optimal DNA sample that you would want to have in this case. Let's hope maybe it was a drop of blood instead. And I'm wrong about my supposition that it was touch DNA. But I think that the prosecution can argue that if he had handled it, then somebody else would have had to have handled it. And their DNA should also be on there. And you would see a mixture or you would see their DNA as the primary DNA. Now, they can certainly argue that maybe the next person to handle it wore gloves and they were trying to set them up.

44:50So they transported it to the crime scene and left it there. So I do think there is some room for argument there. And it's very fortunate that they have other evidence. And that's really important because DNA, as you well know, should not be the only evidence in a case. You certainly hope they will be able to support it with other types of evidence. This is, I mean, we're going to get into this on our legal panel tomorrow, but this is why all the surveillance tape of the car and so on is relevant. But I will say not a, it's not open and shut. It's definitely not open and shut. There's all sorts of things around that crime scene.

45:27There's a Walmart. There's a 24-7 grocery store. If I'm his lawyer, I'm going to say that's why he was over there. That's why you see him going by there. He's an insomniac. His own neighbor testified to that. Not testified, but said it to reporters. In any event, we'll get into that tomorrow. But wouldn't there be, if there was touch DNA on the button, Cece, wouldn't there be typically touch DNA on the rest of the knife sheath? well not if he wiped it down or i think the knife sheath was leather it's maybe less likely to retain that touch dna than the button uh it's touch dna you know it's it's transferable it's easy to wipe away you can shake someone's hand and you get their touch dna on your hand and you can then transfer it to a different item and so it is more uh you know transitory or transferable, and it's harder to detect.

46:21So I'm not sure they would find it on the leather. And also he might've wiped that down. I mean, I'm surprised he didn't wipe the whole thing down. So he might've forgotten about the button. So if they found, and we don't know what the order of events was. We don't know if they found the white Hyundai Elantra and linked it to Brian Kohlberger, or if they got onto him from this touch DNA. But if it was the latter, They have a couple of, let's say it's touch DNA, a couple skin cells that the lab tech sees miraculously and good for him or her. And they run them into their law enforcement database first, I would assume.

46:55Let's say there's no hits. As far as we know, there was some sort of, well, I don't know. Brian Kohlberg doesn't have a criminal record as far as we know. I don't know that his father or anybody else does. So then what? Where do they go from there? Well, there had to be enough DNA extracted by the Idaho Crime Lab that they were able to split that and send some of it to the private lab that would have created the genetic genealogy profile. And so there must have been, you know, enough, but even that could be a tiny amount. So they would have created their profile, their law enforcement court admissible profile at the crime lab, and then sent out what was remaining to a private lab.

47:34They would reanalyze it from scratch and create that genetic genealogy profile, which I believe was likely sent back to the FBI investigative genetic genealogy team. So I think it's very likely they did the genetic genealogy in-house. We saw how closely involved the FBI was in this case, and they've been training agents all over the country since you and I met to do this work. So for almost five years, the FBI has been training their agents to do it. I suspect strongly they kept this in-house, but they would have had to use a private lab to create that profile. Okay. So that's, and I want to ask you what you mean by create that profile.

48:13If you mean, I'm going to take a break, but if you mean create the, this is what the suspect looks like or create the, he's got relatives and here they are. We're going to pick that question up right after this break. Love going through it line by line because it's really fascinating and it's absolutely going to dominate the news cycle over the next year as we go to that preliminary hearing and then ultimately the trial. Cece Moore stays with us on this and other cases coming up. And remember, folks, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel, 111 every weekday at noon east, full video show at youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly, along with clips, audio podcast, wherever you get your podcasts for free.

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50:35So, Cece, the question we left lingering before we went to break was, if they get, let's say it's touch DNA, some skin cells from the button of that sheath, and they don't get a hit in the criminal database, then they send it most likely to a private lab and come up with a profile. And my question to you was, do you mean the kind of profile that they say, well, it looks like he has brown eyes and brown hair and is about this descent or the kind of profile that says, here's his dad? Actually, neither. It is a profile of genetic markers, somewhere between probably 500 ,000 and a million genetic markers of those SNPs, those single nucleotide polymorphisms that I mentioned earlier.

51:19And so it doesn't tell you anything on its own. It's only going to give you important information if you either compare it against others, their own genetic files, or phenotyping. Now, I have no information that they performed phenotyping in this case. I don't think they did because they didn't work with Parabon and they're really the ones doing that work. So they would have created that SNP profile that looks just like if you spit in a tube at Ancestry or 23andMe and mailed that in and got your own raw data file. All right. But if they don't have a hit in the database, in any database, private or otherwise, to connect the DNA to, then they're out of luck unless they can zero in on a particular source of DNA and do a comparison, right?

52:08Right. Right. And so you're always going to get matches in the genetic genealogy database. But if they're way too distant, if it's too small amount of shared DNA, then you're not going to be able to perform genetic genealogy on it. So everyone has matches, but maybe not close enough matches. And then you're right. If you could not use genetic genealogy to point toward that suspect, they would have to try to find him in other ways and then collect his DNA or a close relative's DNA and compare it against that original profile that was created by the crime lab. We don't know what results they had if and when they ran it through the private lab.

52:48We don't know whether somebody in Kohlberger's family had given DNA, had uploaded DNA. We just don't know the answer to that yet. We are told that they collected a sample of garbage outside of Brian Kohlberger's father's home. He went back and stayed with his mother and father from December 15th forward to the day of his arrest, December 30th, after his cross-country tour with his dad, I mean, ride home. By the way, latest reporting is that the FBI was tailing him as of that date, still denying that they were behind those two traffic stops in Indiana. But the FBI now, CBS reporting, was tailing him and was tailing him via, you know, the E-ZPass.

53:28And they said fixed wing aircraft. So it's possible there was an aircraft following him. Fixed wing would mean not a helicopter and through other means. So they were on to him by December 15th, according to this report. So they go to the dad's house and they say that they got the garbage outside of the Kohlberger house and that there was a match to the dad. In other words, they had DNA. They compared it with the DNA from the knife sheath button. And what they were able to tell was with 99.9996 accuracy, this DNA on this knife sheath belongs to the father of the killer. Do I have that right? Right.

54:15And so this is pretty common when investigative genetic genealogy has pointed law enforcement toward a certain individual or family. And they'll do what's called a trash pull. If they can't just follow that person and pick something up that they dropped, then they'll typically resort to waiting for that person to put their trash out on the curb. And most states allow this. It's considered abandoned at that point. And then they go through the trash and try to find an item that might have DNA on it. But when it's a home like this, a household where there's multiple people, they don't know exactly whose DNA they're going to get.

54:49So in this case, they found a male sample of DNA and tested it, and it wasn't the suspects. However, they were able to perform what is basically a standard paternity test comparison to the profile from the button on the sheath and determined that that individual's DNA from the trash was the father of the individual who left his DNA behind at the crime scene. hmm how certain do you think they'd be i mean they're saying 99.99 like how solid is that well it's been accepted in courts for decades to establish paternity it is extremely confident as we saw by the number 99.9998 so that means that there's basically no one else on earth that could be the father of that individual okay so the real challenge for the defense lawyers is to say, oh, not, I mean, they will try to say wrong.

55:44It wasn't him. You, you know, you messed it up. You did something wrong at the lab. Your lab procedures are faulty, but the best line of argument is probably. And we don't know how that got there. Now, by this point, that would become irrelevant because they would have collected his DNA upon arrest and done the direct comparison, the one-to-one against that court admissible genetic profile that is the one they originally compared against the law enforcement databases. Once they got the one-to-one match, the paternity match wouldn't matter anymore, or any genetic genealogy that was done previously would all become irrelevant because they'd have that one-to-one match.

56:22And that's when we hear those numbers like one in 300 trillion chance that it's anyone else in the world. And then still, my comment stands out because the defense lawyers would be faced with saying, well, that DNA, first of all, your testing stinks. They'll attack the testing. Remember OJ, they'll still attack it. Barry Sheck, all that. But then they'll also just say, even if it's correct, we don't know how that got there. Maybe Brian Kohlberger touched that knife in a store, that sheath in a store. Then the killer bought it, used gloves, never touched it. It is interesting. Like, this guy is a criminology student.

56:58He may have been wearing gloves. He may have been suspicious that somebody was tailing him and watched what he threw out in his— because now that we know the FBI was on to him and following him, I mean, they identified the car as of November 29th as his. And from that point forward, who knows? Maybe they were waiting for him to throw something away, and he wasn't. It wasn't until he got back home. And there's one report he moved the trash from his dad's house over to the neighbor's. Right. Right. Yeah. And I want to circle back around to something when we talked about whether there was any other DNA left behind.

57:29When I first learned he was a criminology student, I thought he would have suited up like Dexter, you know, to make sure he didn't leave any DNA behind. But we know from the eyewitness, the roommate DM statement, that she was able to see at least his eyebrows. And she said he had bushy eyebrows, which means he didn't cover them. And the mask that she has described is, like you said, just one we would wear for COVID. It doesn't sound like he had his whole head covered. Now, there's quotes going around that I said his head wasn't covered. I didn't say that. I just said if he didn't cover his eyebrows, maybe he didn't cover his hair.

58:04And if he didn't, you know, it's very likely he left a hair behind. Even an eyebrow hair could have been left behind. Is it likely? How likely is that? Like, are the eyebrows falling out all the time? Yeah. I mean, we lose hair all the time, all the time. And we've even seen one single hair from someone's leg be able to be traced back. And that is really because of advanced technology. It used to be that you couldn't use hair for this type of purpose. But only in the last couple of years have we been able to do so. I've actually helped identify two different killers. Does it have to have the root on it?

58:38You know, does it have to be pulled out by the root? No, thanks to the brilliant Dr. Ed Green from UC Santa Cruz, it doesn't have to have the root anymore. That's what's so exciting. And it's opened up a lot more cases for us to work. I was able to help identify the killer of a kindergartner using rootless hair and also another murder that hasn't been announced yet. And so I've been able to use just a single hair thanks to Dr. Ed Green's amazing technology. He's, you know, their lab is the one that is processing that and creating that profile for me to use. So without these brilliant scientists, we wouldn't be able to even do what I do.

59:18Have you ever seen a murder, Cece, that's this up close and violent at which there was no DNA left behind? No, and that's why I was opining early on. I just couldn't imagine him not leaving DNA behind because it's such a violent crime scene. He stabbed four people multiple times, and the chances of either the knife not slipping and cutting him or one of those victims fighting back and potentially getting his DNA under their fingernails or just dropping a single hair seems highly unlikely to me. So I guess, you know, time will tell, but I think it's something that people need to think about. If you are, you know, considering perpetrating this type of intimate violent crime, you will leave DNA behind.

1:00:02no matter how hard you try. I mean, Brian was clearly educated about this and yet he still left his DNA behind. Now I will say people are talking about how smart he was. I don't think he was the sharpest tool in the shed. It does not sound like he planned this out nearly as well as we would expect from a PhD student in criminology. But, you know, it's just virtually impossible not to leave your DNA behind in this type of frenzied, very intimate, violent attack. Hmm. You know, there's speculation online that he posted under different names commenting on this crime. And we don't know that it was him, but there is one posting under this suspected name, again, unconfirmed, in which he talks about the sheath of the knife, trying to find it here.

1:00:52It's by somebody named Inside Looking. And the post under that guy's name, it was all about the Idaho murders, this Facebook group where they were discussing it. And one of the many things he posted, this Inside Looking, was of the evidence released. Sorry, Papa Rogers. There's a couple different ones. Inside Looking was one of them. In any event, they post, of the evidence released, the murder weapon has been consistent as a large fixed blade knife. sheath. This leads me to believe they found the sheath. My God, that's just, I mean, my God, like who, that doesn't lead anyone other than the killer to believe that.

1:01:32Like who would go there? So I've been a member of that group from early days. I've been following this case from, I think the very first day it happened or the day we found out about it. I don't know what to think about that. You know, I mean, there's a lot of speculation, but that was something that really does make it seem like this person had some inside information, or it was just a really good guess. I've read both sides of the argument. Who would say they found the sheath, right? You'd say they looked at the wounds and determined that. I mean, that's a... I'm sort of on the side that it very possibly was him, but like I said, it's all speculation, but I'm...

1:02:14Well, for us, right? But law enforcement knows. They know by now whether that's him because now... Yeah, that's a good point. I'm sure they do. They have a search warrant for his home in Washington State where he was living and going to school. And now that's been sealed. They're not allowing us access to it for now, though they say in March we may get it. They've searched all of this. They're going to have record. You can't keep that stuff a secret. So they'll know, and that would be great evidence too. You mentioned the victims were likely to fight. They say there were defensive wounds on the victims.

1:02:43So they did fight. you know that's what's one of the things that's so crazy about it is then why didn't anybody hear anything where were the screams you know what why weren't they you know just they have the one roommate who lived who wasn't attacked saying i heard what sounded like crying coming from one of the rooms but crying is not exactly consistent with being brutally stabbed to death next to either your boyfriend or your friend so many questions still that be answered but those defensive wounds could prove very important on the DNA front. Right. I agree. I think when you're fighting for your life, you're conserving your energy.

1:03:21Possibly they didn't scream. You know, maybe they were just focused on trying to survive and focused on trying to fight him off without yelling or something that would have been heard by the roommates. God, so horrific to think about. So they, just on Friday, right, this crime happened in November 13th. The arrest was December 30th. Here we are, July 12th is today, January 12th. They were seen just this past Friday, the 6th, taking two bloody mattresses out of the crime scene, along with a bed frame and a box, which is strange to me. I don't know why the bloody mattresses were still there. I'm sure they've done some analysis on them prior to now.

1:04:06But in your experience of DNA analysis, like how would it be collected? Would they have done like a scraping of the mattress on, let's say, day one? And then maybe this is a more in-depth look? Or what do you make of that? Yeah, I thought it was very odd as well. And particularly since the judge had, I thought, frozen the crime scene until February 1st, I believe. So it must have been either the defense or the prosecution. Taking that away, some people were saying maybe it was the surviving roommate's bed, but I think you could clearly see that there was a blood stain on one of those mattresses.

1:04:43I think they would have swabbed it. Now, of course, there were sheets, right? They would have collected the sheets first and maybe a mattress pad. They would have swabbed it. Sometimes they'll cut things out. I don't know if they would do that on a mattress or not, but they are probably putting that mattress into storage for future testing or maybe even to use in the courtroom. So we've been very focused on finding his DNA at the crime scene. But there's another lane here, which is finding the victim's DNA on anything related to him. What do you think the odds are of that, right? Understanding, okay, he covered up, but like, I'm sorry, he's not superhuman.

1:05:24There would be blood on his clothes. There would be. We don't know what he did with the clothes. We know they're going to analyze the route he took home, which is reportedly a little odd. It's not this straight, direct line back to his apartment. I'm sure they've poured over every inch of it looking for anything that's been discarded. But they seized his car, right? They're going to be tearing that. What are the odds, Cece, in your experience of finding the victim's DNA someplace around him if he, in fact, committed this crime? I think it's extremely high. Like you've pointed out, he would have had to have been covered in their DNA.

1:05:58and then he must have gotten in that car still in those clothes. I don't think he stripped down there on that street. And so you cannot clean that completely out of a car. Even though we know he took great effort cleaning that car based on reports, there still would be DNA left behind, very likely blood, maybe hair, and maybe even transferred into his home, right? When he went into his home, he might have brought some of that with him as well. So I think there's a good chance they'll be able to tie the victims, one or more of the victims' DNA to his property, his car or his home. That's key right there.

1:06:37Even if he was meticulous, other than leaving the knife sheath behind at the crime scene, there's no, there's just four people were murdered up close by a knife. There's no way he wouldn't have their DNA on him. And now that we have our suspect, you know, most of that battle is just knowing whose car to search, whose apartment to search, whose computer to search. They figured that out thanks to the button and thanks to the surveillance of the white Hyundai Elantra. So that's very promising for law enforcement. I wanted to ask you, would this case have looked very different to you had it happened 15, 20 years ago?

1:07:18Yeah, some of the detectives I've worked with have told me that they don't need me to perform investigative genetic genealogy on many of their cases, their active cases, because they have so much technological evidence. They have cell phone data, they have computer data, they have GPS data. And so that is going to be a huge part of this case. And like, we don't know, of course, if the car was what first led them to identify him or the genetic genealogy, but also just having computerized systems where you can search cars, you know, who owns cars. When we go back to the cold cases, we often are not able to find that information.

1:08:01It just doesn't exist. It didn't make it into the digital age. And so the whole method of crime solving, of investigation, has advanced to such a degree that it's already extremely difficult to get away with a crime like this, even without the addition of investigative genetic genealogy. I grew up in the 70s like you. I remember being terrified of Son of Sam, who was in the news. That case terrified me because my Nana lived in the New York City area. It was all over the news. You never know what's seeping into your child's head, you know, just based on the news coverage. Of course, there was Ted Bundy.

1:08:39There was a Hillside Strangler. Remember Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez? He was in my area. Yes. Yes. And we haven't even covered the big ones like BTK and Zodiac. I've heard you say you don't think we can have a serial killer anymore. The odds of that happening now are next to nil. Why? Well, first of all, what we just talked about, the technological evidence. But if even that fails, we always will have investigative genetic genealogy going forward now. And so unless someone is killing people from a distance with a gun. And even then we might be able to - DC snipers. DC snipers. I've been thinking about them this whole conversation that you get nowhere.

1:09:22I mean, I'm not recommending how people commit murder, but they got nowhere near their victims. It's one of the reasons why it was so hard to detect who it was. Well, then they better wear gloves when they handle the bullets because you can pull DNA from bullet casing as well. And so it's just going to be virtually impossible to be the type of serial killer and certainly a serial rapist that is perpetrating these very intimate, up-close and personal crimes because you will leave your DNA behind. And if you do, we will identify you, even if it takes months or years. I recently worked the Faith Hedgepeth case out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

1:10:01It took us three years to identify the DNA contributor, her killer, or alleged killer, because he was born in Guatemala. And so, you know, even those cases, we will get there. It just takes additional time. And as the databases grow, it's going to get more efficient and quicker and quicker as time goes on. And we're getting better at what we're doing every day as well. And so, you know, that's why I don't think that we will have serial killers. There won't be Ted Bundy's or Golden State killers or Zodiac, who's still unidentified 50 years later because of investigative genetic genealogy. This is a good incentive for people to actually upload their DNA results if you're at all so inclined.

1:10:48I understand a lot of people aren't, but if you are inclined, do it and do it at GEDmatch too. Take your results from these other private companies and do it. Not saying you're a serial killer or you're a family member, but like there could be this, the Loretta Swit. She's not a serial killer either. You could have the sixth cousin who you have no love for or connection, real connection to, who's done something wrong. And wouldn't it be nice to have helped law enforcement nab that person? It's one of the reasons why your name came up in discussing the JonBenet Ramsey case. We had Jon Ramsey on the show not long ago.

1:11:23And he's like, I'm 78 years old. I don't have much time to see this case solved. And he said, Cece, he wants someone like you to analyze what they say is a teeny tiny bit of DNA that is left in that case. And I don't know why there's not more because apparently they have JonBenet's pajamas. They have her underwear. They have the implement used to strangle poor JonBenet and the instrument. And it's been tested repeatedly and there's been no match. And I guess what he's being told is basically there's only one more test in here. Like if we do this again and we don't get the guy, it's done. There's so little left.

1:12:12So just to update our viewers, he wants the governor of Colorado to allow him as the child's father, who's been ruled out as a suspect by the prosecutor, to take this DNA and give it to somebody like you, to take it to a private lab that is the best of the best. And this seems to make so much sense to me, but he wasn't able to get the governor, Governor Polis, to even respond to him. He told us this right before Christmas when he came on. So during that interview, he told us, this is an update for our viewers, Cece, he told us about a letter that he wrote to the Colorado governor, Jared Polis, and he had written it like two months earlier, October.

1:12:50He asked him for a face-to-face meeting because so far he'd been getting the stiff arm from the governor, from the state law enforcement. They created this sort of, oh, we're going to refer to our cold case unit. And he was like, that's a PRCYA cover. That's not real. And he wanted to tell the governor personally the different steps he wants taken in the investigation, including this new DNA testing with somebody like you. So it would cost the state nothing. He said he and his supporters would pay for it. Well, John came out and he told us the governor never even did him the courtesy of responding to him.

1:13:20I mean, how do you not respond to this grieving dad? After the interview, we promised John Ramsey that we and our viewers were going to reach out to the governor and demand answers. Why are you ignoring this man? Why are you ignoring John Ramsey and his concerns? No response for us either. We told our listeners and our viewers to do it. They did as well. reached out to the governor's office directly, demanding action on behalf of John Ramsey. Respond to the man, do something. Now, we don't know what exactly flipped that switch, but John just told us he's heard back from the governor after two months of being ignored.

1:13:54And now the governor has asked him, John Ramsey, to contact the Colorado Director of Public Safety. And he's done that. No face-to-face meeting yet. But John is telling us he now feels encouraged by the response. So yay! That's great. to all of our viewers and our listeners for helping and amping up the pressure. And now, Cece, what we need to happen is for someone like you, ideally you, to get this evidence analyzed. So how high are the risks given how little DNA there is? Just backtracking a little, I don't know if you remember, but you asked me almost five years ago what case I'd like to work.

1:14:30And I mentioned Jean Benet and I have received emails or messages on social media every single day since that time asking me to work this case. I certainly would love to have the opportunity to do so, but I doubt very much that they would let me work it. I would expect maybe the FBI will work it if anyone is allowed to do so. As far as the risks, yeah, once you use up that DNA, that's the end. So you have to make sure that it's being sent to a well-tested team, a lab that has been able to create profiles, genetic genealogy profiles from tiny amounts of degraded DNA, and that has scientists that are really highly skilled at working with that degraded DNA.

1:15:18We can assume it's degraded after all these years. With touch DNA, which I think that's what this is in this case, my understanding, Again, you just have a tiny bit of skin cells and it can be very quickly consumed. So I understand Boulder Police's hesitation to use up that last little bit because you never know what's coming around the corner. Nobody predicted investigative genetic genealogy outside of our little community. And so I always am hesitant to second guess law enforcement. I've been involved in some pretty high-profile cases where people were out there criticizing law enforcement and had no idea what was going on behind the scenes.

1:16:03And I wasn't able to - Yeah, just like Idaho. That's exactly right. Now, in that case, I didn't have inside information, but I strongly suspected they were trying investigative genetic genealogy. But there's been other cases where they've never even released that they did use that tool. and I've had to keep quiet and listen, watch all these people criticizing law enforcement for years. It happened in the Chapel Hill case and Faith Hedgepest case as well. I had to bite my tongue. And so you just don't know what they are doing behind the scenes and what their reasoning is. And so I really do hesitate to second guess, like I said, but I think it is the time to go ahead and do it.

1:16:45They can get a whole genome sequence done on that DNA if it's viable, meaning you could not just look at the 700 ,000 markers that we use for genetic genealogy, but they could look at the entire genome and then have all of that information for the future. And I think that's probably the best bet in this case. There's two different ways you can do it. One is called microarray, where you just look at those 700, 800 ,000 genetic markers that the direct-to-consumer DNA testing companies also use. Or you can do this whole genome sequence where you get every bit of the genome information that is available in that sample.

1:17:23You get that from touch, from touch DNA? Yes, absolutely. You know, about 10 % of the cases that we've helped solve or been able to create profiles for have been touch DNA. We published a paper in 2019 talking about that. And so people in this case are saying, oh, it's so new if they use touch DNA for genetic genealogy, but it's actually not. We've been doing it since 2018. teen. So it's totally doable. And I think, you know, John's getting older as he keeps pointing out and now is the time, but I do understand their hesitation. It is risky. Could you get, when you say you can get the whole genome, would that allow you to do both lanes of investigative work you were telling us about?

1:18:04Like figure out the family tree potentially and at a minimum get, this is what the person is likely to look like. This is what the hair color probably is. You could do both of those off the same tiny cells. Yes. And so that's one thing that's interesting about Parabon is they were doing this phenotyping before genetic genealogy was a thing for law enforcement. And the files that they created for that are exactly the files that we use for genetic genealogy, which is why when I joined forces with them, I had about a hundred cases right off the bat because they had already created those files. They'd already gone through the lab process.

1:18:39And all we had to do was get permission to upload those to GEDmatch. And so, yes, it absolutely has the same information in there that you would need to predict eye color, hair color, ancestry. It is a really powerful amount of information. Cece, am I crazy? This may have been a different company, but I feel like when I was at NBC, see, Andrea Canning had this done, like, on herself, you know, like, and there was a, do you guys do a sketch, you know, off of the info you get back? I distinctly remember seeing a sketch of Andrea. I think that was pretty good. That was before I was part of the company, but I think you're right.

1:19:21I do remember seeing that on their site. So, I mean, imagine it, we could potentially get a picture of the JonBenet killer pretty quickly if there's enough sells on this thing. That's how quickly things have advanced in the DNA line. And there's, I mean, that's that case captured the attention of the nation. Everybody would like to see whoever did that brought to justice. Okay. There's more because we've got to talk about this case out of Pennsylvania. This is right where my husband's from. So he was very interested in this as well. Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And wait until you hear how CeCe Moore solved this case.

1:19:55One a week. she's knocking out you guys. She stays with us for our last segment. Don't go away.

1:20:05So Cece, we've got to talk about this case in Pennsylvania. You recently solved this case as of July of 2022. Let's go back before that though, to 1975, when the murder of then 19-year-old Lindy Sue Beachler took place. She was stabbed to death 19 times in her apartment on December 5th, 1975. She was found lying on her back with a knife sticking out of her neck. Decades went by without an arrest in the gruesome crime. They had no idea. Police were not able to solve this. I understand it happened in Pennsylvania, and it was just a cold case. So you got involved in this. How did you get involved in this all these years later?

1:20:55Well, Lancaster Police had worked with Parabon before I even joined forces with them to create this investigative genetic genealogy service. So they had an established relationship with them. So when I came on board, they asked Lancaster Police if we could perform genetic genealogy first on the Christy Mirak case, which they had done a phenotype for. And so we uploaded that to GEDmatch. And on that case, right away, we had good matches for me to work with. Now, when I became really familiar with that case, I learned that Christy's brother and Lindy Su's brother had taken out billboards together asking for tips on their sisters.

1:21:36And so I was able to help law enforcement solve Christy Murek's case way back in 2018. It was one of my very first ones. But I felt like Lindy Sue's case was hanging over my head for years because I really felt that they both needed to be solved. They were sort of like sister cases to me, even though they were so many years apart. And I wanted Lindy Sue's family and brother to have those answers as well, like Christy's family finally did. But when we performed the analysis on that crime scene DNA and uploaded it to GEDmatch, there were no good matches. They were all very, very, very distant. So we recommended they upload to Family Tree DNA as well, the second database.

1:22:20Again, no good matches. And I was just so disappointed because I so desperately wanted to help law enforcement identify her killer as well. Okay, so then what'd you do? Well, because we didn't have any close matches. So the closest match we had only shared 30 centimorgans. 30 centimorgans can be a false match even. That's so distant. It could be a 10th cousin. But I was determined to try to help on this case. So just behind the scenes, without even telling the law enforcement agency I was doing it, I started building trees of these really distant matches. And instead of going back into the 1600s.

1:23:08And I didn't expect I'd find common ancestors because of the distance, but I did find that they were all converging on this small town in southern Italy. And so that was really interesting to me because it was clear that the person who left their DNA behind on Lindy Sue, so her killer, her alleged killer at this point, had all of his ancestral roots go back to this one small area in South Italy. So that's pretty specific. So I started researching the migration history of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Where did the people come from? Okay, Italy. I found that there was a club, Sons of Italy, and I started looking through their membership cards, which are digitized online, thankfully.

1:24:01And I found that most of the people, most of the Italians who came to Lancaster came from this small town called Gasparina. Well, Gasparina is the town in Italy that the trees were going back to. Aha. So that meant that Lindy's killer likely had roots in Lancaster going back. This wasn't someone who just was passing through. This is somebody whose family had been in Lancaster for probably a couple generations and had come directly from Gasparina. And he was going to be fully Italian with full ancestry from there based on the family trees as well as the ancestry predictions we were able to create.

1:24:44And so I needed to find someone who had four grandparents from Gasparina, all eight great grandparents from either there or close by in that region that had come to Lancaster and settled there. And so I went through all of those cards and then started building the family trees for each of the men. That's who was in that club, men. Each of those men who came to Lancaster, I built their trees forward to see who did they marry. And then I would build their trees backward to see if they also had ancestry exclusively from Gasparina or nearby. And so I needed to find somebody whose ancestors intermarried with people from their hometown.

1:25:30And we also had done a snapshot phenotype in that case, and he had a little bit unique traits. And I'm not sure I can go into that right now, but he had, for Southern Italian, he had sort of unusual physical traits. And so I was able to look at that as well. And it wasn't that many people who came to Lancaster from that town. I mean, there was a fair amount, but it was a very defined migration route. And it was a small percent of the overall population. So I figured if there was only, you know, a few hundred who came over, then that was doable. It was just going to take time. Anyone who intermarried with someone from a different population group, their descendants were out.

1:26:16So I just kept building these trees and seeing who would fit. And then as I was doing that, each of those descendants who would be a candidate, I started doing newspaper searches on them. and one of them turned out had the same address as Lindy. I found a, I think it was an engagement announcement in the newspaper and I was just blown away. What are the chances of doing this for months and months, years actually, of behind the scenes building these trees and it leading right to the same apartment building that Lindy was killed in. Oh my God. So then, this is chilling. So then you got to close the loop.

1:27:05Got to figure out, now you have a name. I mean, that's the big thing. Now you have a name who you think could potentially be the guy. What's the next step? There's a couple other things about him that were compelling, but because this is still an active case, I won't go into those. But I felt pretty confident. it, but I didn't have any solid evidence like I normally have. Normally I can connect my person of interest to multiple matches through common ancestors, but I couldn't connect any of these people directly to his family tree, just to that hometown of Gasparina. So it was really nerve wracking, but I still felt like it was a good enough lead to pass it on.

1:27:45And so we reached out to Lancaster police and let them know that I'd been working on this, which they weren't even aware of, and set up a meeting. And I shared his name with them. At that point, it's just a tip. It's a lead generator. No one's going to get arrested based on what I say. So they have to perform their full investigation on this individual, just like they would have had to do on Brian Kohlberger if that's how he was identified. This is not evidence that's going to be used against anyone in a court of law. So they started looking into this individual, and they eventually collected surreptitious DNA, just like they did in the Idaho case.

1:28:23And they tested that against their original court admissible genetic profile. That's the one that is used for evidence. They can't arrest somebody until they've done that or gotten a close family member, like they did with Brian's father. In this case, they got DNA directly from the suspect or the person of interest. And he became a suspect because they got that one-to-one exact match, which when they told me was huge because this was a novel technique that I had just created. And there was, it was nerve wracking, right? If I can't even connect one match to someone's family tree, I feel very hesitant to point them out to law enforcement.

1:29:07Like I said earlier, I don't want to send them after innocent people, but there was just certain things, circumstantial things about him and about his life that made it too compelling not to pass it on. So when they told me it was a match, it was just tremendous. So they, according to what I read, they found him in the airport, in the Philadelphia airport. And I think that's where they got his, February, 2022, they recovered a coffee cup he used and threw away at the Philadelphia International Airport. Labs later confirmed the DNA on his coffee cup matched the DNA from the semen on Lindy Sue's underwear.

1:29:48All these years later, again, the crime happened in 1975. They also found that DNA in blood left on her pantyhose was consistent with the semen and so on. Like they were matching it on a couple of fronts. Now, this man's name is David Sinopoli. He's been arrested. He has pleaded not guilty. But this guy did apparently live in her apartment building at the time in 1975. He would have been, I think, 18 by my calculation. He's now 68 years old. This guy went on, as far as we can tell, to lead a relatively normal life. I mean, it's kind of crazy, right? Cece, do you know anything about what he did over those next 50 years?

1:30:36Oh, yeah. I did a lot of research, as I always do, when I have identified a potential person of interest. I dig through social media, through newspaper articles, through the traditional genealogical records. I use all types of different resources to learn about someone before I turn their name over. I write a really complete report with a lot of information for law enforcement in my cases. So he got married? He had kids? He had three kids? But at the same time that Lindy was a newlywed, they both were. Oh my gosh. I mean, it's just so creepy to think that if this is true, this guy committed a heinous, brutal murder and then went on to live with the secret for 50 years, probably always wondering, especially as DNA techniques got more developed, right?

1:31:29Yeah, it definitely seems like, it seems like we're identifying a new type of criminal with investigative genetic genealogy. We see so many of these cases where this individual seems to have perpetrated one really horrible, violent crime and then gone on with their lives. And that's why they're cold cases, right? They were never arrested for another crime. They never got their DNA in the system. These are people that were never on law enforcement's radar at all. So, you know, who knows what else these individuals may have done, but it certainly appears that we've identified many of these types of individuals that did something like this once and then faded back into society and lived what appeared to be a normal life.

1:32:11They say his friends were shocked. I mean, his family's shocked. They can't believe it. But I mean, the truth is DNA doesn't lie. Well, especially when it's firm on a rape homicide victim. I do just want to make one more point, which is that the DA has actually allowed me to speak about this case. Normally, I wouldn't be doing so when it's still working its way through the court system. But the DA specifically asked me to speak at the press conference and explain my methods. And so I'm not speaking out of turn. Got it. This has been used by you to, as I mentioned in the intro, identify murder victims who, you know, Jane Doe's, John Doe's, giving closure to so many families who just had their child disappear and never knew what happened to them and just assumed the worst.

1:32:58But there's some closure in knowing this is how they died. They were the victim of this person. Certain deaths tied to this killer or that killer. I mean, it's upsetting, but I'm sure most families are relieved to be able to bury their loved one and so on. Another important lane of what you're doing. And just for the record, we went back and checked all the cases that you'd been working on when you came on and we interviewed you on NBC. There was one case involving a little girl, April Tinsley, who'd been murdered in December 2018. Again, this is after our interview. The man you helped identify sentenced to 80 years in prison.

1:33:34There was another case. By the way, that was the first conviction of somebody identified through investigative genetic genealogy. Oh, wow. Another guy, this is in, let's see, this is in connection with a 20-year-old Jay Cook and 18-year-old Tanya Van Carlenburg in 1987. Canadian high school sweethearts visited Seattle and were killed. You helped identify the accused killer, William Talbot. He had pleaded not guilty at the time we interviewed, found guilty in June of 2019. And that was the first jury trial to find someone guilty who was identified through IgG, investigative genetic genealogy. So these are all big firsts.

1:34:13Yes. It's absolutely amazing. We talked about seven, six or whatever cases, every single one, the person either pleaded guilty or was found guilty in a court of law. So your track record's really good. Yeah, we have over 40 convictions now. We have over 40 convictions in our cases. Some are lagging because of COVID. It took longer to get these, and we still have lots in the pipeline. But yeah, our track record and genetic genealogies track record, and this is really phenomenal. Pretty stellar. Where is this going, Cece? Right? Like 20 years ago, probably nobody could anticipate where we are today.

1:34:50What do you think? Like if you had to predict the future, where's this going? I mean, if you had asked me a month or two ago, I would have said we will start working more active cases. It'll start stopping criminals in their tracks, keeping serial killers from ever developing. And here we see with Idaho exactly what I would have told you would happen is what is going to happen. And one of the reasons I've been out there talking about this Idaho case, even though I was not involved in it, is because it is a fantastic example of what I've been advocating for, is using investigative genetic genealogy early in a crime, soon as they don't get that hit in the law enforcement database, because it can save lives.

1:35:28And this is where we can have the real impact on public safety. We can keep people from losing their lives and being victimized. And we can really help law enforcement be more efficient with their investigations. Instead of investigating something for years or decades and spending public funds on this and involving innocent people in these investigations, we can probably even help avoid wrongful convictions by keeping the focus off the innocent from the beginning. because one of the real powers of investigative genetic genealogy is the ability to rule people out. You know, for every one of these, we focus on the arrests, but I have ruled out dozens or hundreds of persons of interest in all of these cases when I start working them.

1:36:15Many of those have already been under suspicion for years or decades. I've heard from lots of people thanking me for finally lifting that burden off of their shoulders. And so I think that's where we're going is when they don't, you know, when they run out of avenues, they tried all the technological advances, and they still don't have this individual in their sights, they will turn to investigative genetic genealogy now. It's another reminder, by the way, that when the police process a crime scene, they ought to be dressed like in hazmat suits. Given this touch DNA, they can't go anywhere near it without suiting up from head to toe to make sure that they don't disturb anything.

1:36:55Think of it. I mean, it's like - You're right, because we have had some cases that trace back to law enforcement officers or people that were involved in the case. And so that's unfortunate when that happens. Yeah. And I'm sure that they're paying attention to latest developments and realizing how critical that is more than ever to make sure they touch nothing with their bare hands or their own DNA getting on a site, which as you point out, is so easy for people to do. You can't Can't go in with exposed eyebrows. I mean, there's a lot to think about. Cece Moore, you're a genius. You're a heroine.

1:37:26Thank you so much. Thank you so much for your support. You are so kind, and I'm so happy we got to speak again. Oh, likewise. And saying a prayer that it works out between you and the JonBenet Ramsey investigation. They need you. All the best to you. Thank you so much.

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1:39:18The sun was setting behind the ranch-style home in Citrus Heights, a suburb in Sacramento County, California. A Volvo and a fishing boat occupied the driveway. The landscaping was impeccable. A nice house in an idyllic neighborhood. And on that April 2018 day, the police were there too. They were there to finally arrest a man named Joseph James D 'Angelo Jr., now known as the Golden State Killer. After four decades and advances in DNA technology, investigators were finally able to identify the serial rapist and killer. The grandfather, who was in the middle of cooking a roast that day, was finally going to be held accountable for his heinous acts.

1:40:10Former cold case investigator Paul Holes had been waiting for this day to come for 24 years. He was integral in cracking the Golden State Killer case and documents his experience tracking down D 'Angelo in a new book just out called Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases. And he is with us here today. Paul, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me, Megan. This is such an amazing story. And we owe you such a debt of gratitude. The nation does. Because you just never gave up. Just never gave up. I know it was a team effort, for sure. It was. And that's nice and humble of you to say.

1:40:55And it was a team effort. I know that's genuine, but you were the person who just couldn't pull yourself away from this thing long after other people were like, you know, it seems to have died off. Let's move on. Your family like, hey, would love to spend more time with you. You couldn't stop. And it's to your credit, because even though when he was finally found, he was 72 years old and we think had stopped the crime spree by then. we never would have known. It's important to know. And it gives us such insights into why and how and how we can attack new cases differently and so on. So before we kick it off, I just wanted to give you my own personal thanks and express to the audience how much we should appreciate what you and your colleagues did.

1:41:40I appreciate the kind words. Thank you very much. Of course. Okay. So let's go. So wait, you look like such a young man, but you've been at this for so long. You can't be that young. Do you mind if I ask you how old you are i am i am 54 years old yes you're a baby that's very very young you know and i don't i don't know if you realize this but uh you actually had a role at the end as we were closing in on d 'angelo wait i know we covered this case on nbc and we spoke with the genealogist and then what it was like then you guys caught him a month later after we did a big show on him and we put back on the DA and so on.

1:42:20I was on the show. Yeah, I remember that. I was on the show with Jane Carson and Debbie Domingo and I moved up my retirement date in order to fly out to New York to appear on the show. And I had already sat in front of his house and later on that evening, I told these two victims, I think we're close and I'm looking at an Auburn cop. And that was after talking to you that day. Oh my gosh, that's really cool. It's cool to just know we had any sort of a role. I remember we were all so into the story and it was just so puzzling. And it's crazy as a reporter to do that. And then like a month later, he's caught.

1:42:55It's like, wait, what do you mean? After all this time, almost three decades of not being able to find him, boom, there he is. And your question's answered. So this is a long and amazing story from a law enforcement perspective, from a serial killer perspective. There's just so much to get into. And it was basically took place over a 10 year period, if I have my facts right, 76 to 86. Well, in terms of, you know, when he kind of evolved into a full blown rapist and killer, that was between those years. But in the years prior to that, he was he was a fetish burglar and had already killed a father of a 16 year old girl down in Visalia before he started as a serial rapist up in Sacramento in 1976.

1:43:43So we know that now at the time. We know that now because we know his identity, right? In part, there was always so down in Visalia, 1974, 1975, there was a burglar that hit over 100 times in the Visalia area right around, clustered around the College of Sequoias. And he was going in and going into the women's undergarment drawers, tossing the women's clothing around, pulling out women's photos out of the photo albums and stealing blue chip stamps and single earrings. And was very prolific. After about 85 attacks, he goes into a house in the middle of the night and tries to pull 16-year-old Beth Snelling out of her bed.

1:44:30She's kicking and screaming. He actually gets her outside when her father, Claude Snelling, a professor at the College of the Sequoias, tries to come to her rescue. Well, D 'Angelo drops Beth, shoots Claude Snelling three times, killing him, and then runs off. And so now at this point, he's actually killed. And six months later, he ends up basically up in Sacramento and is now breaking into houses and raping women. Hmm. So that's how it starts. The crimes escalate. So burglary to rape to murder, torture and on. I mean, is that unusual to see or is it is it more typical to see somebody with like an M.O.

1:45:16that they just carry through to the end? well you know in terms of the evolution of of the serial predator you know we often see them learning how to do the steps to get up to where they are going to be doing the the violence on people you know they they have to get comfortable being on somebody else's property breaking into the house and get good at breaking into a house when somebody's there and that's what d 'angelo was doing. And then eventually they go hands on with a victim. And with D 'Angelo, he was sexually assaulting the women and ultimately was attacking couples before he evolved to just committing homicides.

1:46:00So this is almost a textbook example of the evolution of a serial predator from a serial burglar to a serial killer. It makes sense in a way. I mean, it's tough to make sense of any murders, serial killings, but it does make some sense to see him graduating to more serious crimes as his confidence builds. And as weird as this sounds, he was very good at what he did. I mean, he was very good at covering his tracks right from the get-go. That was something he was always excellent at, no? Well, no, you know, he he was a criminal justice major. And then, of course, he was a cop down in Exeter, which is a city right next to Visalia.

1:46:46When he first starts as a Visalia ransacker, he was not very good. He struggled to get into houses. He was seen left and right by people, either victims, residents that lived where he's peeping or people in the neighborhood. But as he is developing in his law enforcement career, he ends up becoming part of a burglary task force and goes to burglary investigation school. And now he's learning how law enforcement is investigating these cases, as well as how burglars commit their crimes. So the public money that went into the law enforcement field basically paid DeAngelo's way to become a better predator.

1:47:34And so when he moved up to Sacramento, he realized all the mistakes he made. And this is what makes him somewhat more of a sophisticated and intelligent offender is he learned from his mistakes. And he incorporated methodology, strategies and tactics for now as a rapist, which up in Sacramento, he was known as the East Area Rapist. He is employing these methods, strategies and tactics and is very, very good at avoiding being seen, avoiding witnesses and breaking into houses. So he he basically evolved. Now, knowing who he who is. You know a lot about him. Is he above average intelligence? Like, how would you describe his level of smarts?

1:48:23You know, in terms of D 'Angelo, I would say, yeah, he's above average intelligence for this type of offender. You know, he as a cop talking to a sergeant down in Exeter or actually up in Auburn when he was a cop up in Auburn starting in 1976. six, his sergeant said, you know, he wasn't a good cop. He didn't employ good tactics. So, you know, I can discern, you know, in terms of what he employed during the commission of his crimes, that he's a deep thinker and he was a forward thinker. And then he utilized, you know, what he learned, you know, in his law enforcement aspects in order to be able to commit these crimes.

1:49:07But he's not very book smart. You know, in fact, his ex-fiance, Bonnie, who I have become great friends with, you know, she went to school with him at Sac State as he's studying criminal justice. And they took some classes together and he was constantly cheating off of her just to be able to pass his classes. When when was he engaged to Bonnie? In 1970-ish. I can't remember if it was at the end of 69 into 70, but circa 1970. And that's, you know, we had a case in Davis, California, that occurred in June of, actually it was beginning of July of 1978, where as he is literally raping this woman, he's sobbing and he's saying, I'm going to kill you, Bonnie.

1:49:59I'm going to kill you, Bonnie, over and over again. So we always knew there was a Bonnie in his life that was significant. We just didn't know who this Bonnie was. Was this a girlfriend? Was this a wife, et cetera? And then once we identified him through genealogy, I'm looking through his past. An analyst up at Sacramento found a newspaper article announcing the engagement of Joseph DeAngelo to Bonnie. And that was one of those check marks. Oh, he's got a Bonnie in his life. Well, that's interesting. But of course, that doesn't prove that he's the Golden State Killer. But it was one of those facts that, hey, there's something here.

1:50:41What did she say he was like? I'm curious because that was before, you know, the 10-year serious rape and murder spree that, you know, he's known for 76 to 86. How does she describe the then relatively young D 'Angelo? You know, the primary characteristic that she really emphasizes is that rules didn't apply to him. You know, he didn't demonstrate anything to her, at least through the course of the relationship until the very end, that there was anything criminal about him in terms of indicating that he was capable of violence. But he just didn't care about rules. You know, he would speed, he would go and trespass, you know, in the Folsom Lake area or on the old Rocketdyne property in Rancho Cordova.

1:51:33And then he would, you know, he was a thrill seeker. So he would have her on the motorcycle and try to scare her, you know, as she's holding on to him, as he's bombing, you know, off road, you know, and purposefully just trying to intimidate her that way. So, you know, it was an interesting but short relationship. And then when they got engaged, when she broke it off, that's when he shows up, knocks on her window at night. And when she opens up the drapes, D 'Angelo standing there with a gun pointed at her and basically tells her, you're coming with me. We're going to go get married, I think, in Reno.

1:52:14She closed the drapes, got her dad. Her dad goes out front. And this is up in Auburn, the Auburn area and confronts him. And D 'Angelo ends up leaving and Bonnie never talked to him again. Wow. She must consider herself so lucky. She does, you know, absolutely. But, you know, she was so courageous. She, you know, the victim that was on your show, Jane Carson, I introduced those to Bonnie and Jane and Jane actually had Bonnie in the courtroom when Jane gave her impact statement. and Bonnie stood up, couldn't say anything, but she was there and let D 'Angelo know I'm here. You know, so she showed tremendous courage to be able to let him know that she recognized that she really was a victim of his.

1:53:10Just fortunately, he didn't physically attack her like he did the other women in the series. Oh, that moment of her standing up while Jane was there, gave me the chills like they finally had their say and he was alive to hear it that's thanks to you you know so often it's like even the jeffrey epstein case you know he he killed himself whatever he died and his victims only gave these impact statements that he never really got to hear it was to the frustration of the victims in those circumstances is terrible and and these women managed to avoid at least that piece of the terror? They got to confront him, but it wasn't easy.

1:53:51You know, I saw, you know, one of the San Jose victims, she had a large contingent of her family in the courtroom with her. She gave her statement. I happened to be out in the lobby outside the courtroom when she walked out and she literally collapsed after giving her statement. Her family They had to hold her up. So, you know, this really underscores, you know, to this day, you know, how traumatized, you know, these families are, these victims who were personally attacked, as well as the families that lost their loved ones. He was so cruel in the way he pursued these attacks. He was clearly a sadist.

1:54:32I mean, he enjoyed the torture and harming of others, and the suffering seemed to be part of what he enjoyed the most, not just of the women he was attacking and the men who he ultimately added to the mix, but even of the children who were there in the homes that he went in. He couldn't have cared less if he bumped into a three-year-old or a seven-year-old, Paul. No. Well, he used the children against the adults. You know, he knew due to his surveillance, either prior to entering the house or while he's in the house and walking around, he knew they had children and he would threaten the parents.

1:55:10You know, do what I say or I'll kill everybody in this house. I'll kill everything in this house. That was a common phrase that he would say. But also when you start talking about the sadistic aspect of him, he wasn't a physical sadist by classic definition. He was a psychological sadist. You mentioned the fear. That's what he wanted to invoke in his victims. And so he would do things while he's got his victims bound just to get that fear response. And then he would continue after he's attacked them and left. He would call the victims. We have one victim who was attacked in 1977. And in 2001, 24 years later, he calls that victim and basically says, remember when we played?

1:56:01You know, so he was still wanting to have that victim live in fear after a quarter century. We have one example of one of his phone calls, and you can hear the torture and how scary this would have been, especially to someone who had been attacked by this guy and lived only to hear him revisit her. Take a listen. This is, again, 1978. Hello? Hello?

1:56:42I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill you. My God, it is still scary. It's right. I'm looking at my assistant, Abby. We both like just get the chills like down your spine at that. And that was the point. Yeah, well, and that's exactly what he's doing. You know, that's where he wants that victim to know he's still around and to be scared. That phone call, that victim that he called in that call was a very first victim that we know of when he was East Area Rapist, which occurred in June of 1976. six. And just let me jump in for one second, Paul. Hold on that because they call him East Area Rapist first because he started with rapes for the most part.

1:57:35I mean, we talked about the burglary, but that was sort of what they dubbed him East Area Rapist or EAR while he was primarily focused on rape. So if you may hear different names for this guy over the course of this interview, we're talking about the same guy, Golden State Killer. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, no. And I probably should clarify that he had multiple monikers over the course of his career, an East Area rapist, when he starts attacking in the East area of the Sacramento suburbs, that's when he got to that moniker. And with that first victim in June of 76, that recorded phone call came in January of 1978, 18 months later.

1:58:12So he kept on top of his victims. And that victim that he called 24 years later, she had remarried, moved all the way across town. So, you know, now she's living in a different location, different last name. Her phone number was under her husband's name. And yet D 'Angelo had that victim's phone number to call her after the Sacramento Bee published an article in the newspaper about how DNA had linked the East Area Rapist in Northern California to an unsolved series of homicides down south committed by the original Night Stalker. It turns out it's all the same guy. I cannot imagine going through that where, you know, you've been attacked, you've survived, you've dealt with it, hopefully, you know, with the help of therapists and friends and God.

1:59:05And then 24 years later, the guy resurfaces to spark the terror all over again. You know, the kids today use that term triggering. This is true triggering. Sure. And, you know, these victims, you know, they suffered a ton of trauma during their attacks. None of them at that point up until 2001 realized that their attacker would blossom into a serial killer. And in fact, the rumor on the street that many people when I was doing the investigation, when I was talking to victims or other people in town at the time of the attacks, thought, well, he he got killed when he tried to break into house. That's that was the rumor.

1:59:46They just thought he was he was gone. And then now the phone call comes in and he's with that one victim. He's now letting her know I'm still around and letting law enforcement know, too. I mean, right, because after 86, was there a question about whether this guy was still alive that the crime spree seemed to be over? Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. You know, and that was part of the struggles that I had personally with my management, if you will. is, you know, I had my boss at the DA's office was saying, Paul, he's dead. Why are you spending so much time on this case? You know, and I was pretty convinced, no, I think he's still out there.

2:00:31And turns out he was. In fact, when I was on your show, I mentioned to your audience, he could be sitting here watching the show right now. I remember that. And we were all freaked out. It is very possible that he is still alive. He's still monitoring the investigation. he's possibly even still watching the show. He could be. He could be in this audience. Oh. Well, that's chilling. So, why did you think he was still alive? Why did you believe that? Because before the phone call, you didn't really have any evidence of that. No, and that phone call was, you know, at that time, it had occurred 17 years prior.

2:01:07You know, there's always a possibility he could have died or, you know, been in custody. But in taking a look at the age range he likely was at the time he was committing these attacks, he most certainly was, you know, at an age that he easily could still be alive at the time that I've been in. made that statement. But also in assessing this offender and him stopping, you know, 1986 for that we know of, but I felt that he actually psychologically stopped in 1981 after the last Santa Barbara attack. I thought, no, this is an offender that has stopped committing these crimes and is living a normal life.

2:01:58And just like the guy that I think is most similar to D 'Angelo, Dennis Rader, BTK, you know, I felt the same thing, that he just blended back into his life. He was getting older, knew he couldn't commit to these types of attacks anymore. And, you know, the fact that after, what was that, 15 years after his last known attack, he reached out and contacted a victim. OK, this guy can go quiet for a long period of time. And that's where I kind of just put my eggs in that basket going. He's still alive. And quite frankly, he's still a threat to the public and we need to find him. It's just shocking to think that somebody this committed to this level of depravity could stop, could just turn it off one day.

2:02:50And that's something, you know, the myth out there is that, you know, serial killers, once they start, they don't stop. But we've seen as some of these notorious serial killing cases have been solved. Well, these killers do stop. You know, we go to Gary Ridgeway, Green River Killer, or as I mentioned before, Dennis Rader with BTK. And in interviews with those killers, you know, they had reasons for why they stopped. Gary Ridgeway said, well, I got married. Dennis Rader said, you know, in my last attack, there is a man inside the house that I didn't realize was going to be there. I got into a fight and I left scared.

2:03:29I thought I could have been hurt, killed or captured. And I didn't want any of that. And I was getting older. And that's part of why I thought with D 'Angelo, you know, in his last Santa Barbara attack in 1981, possibly stopped because he got into a physical fight with six foot three Gregory Sanchez. So as these cases have been solved, we're starting to see that there is the possibility that some of these offenders, not necessarily all, but some of them, after committing the most horrific crimes imaginable, have the ability to go ahead and start living a normal life that compartmentalize their past.

2:04:06They continue to fantasize about that. But they are now the family man. D 'Angelo was the goading grandfather at the time of his arrest.

2:04:20if my math is correct he would have been born in 46 40 uh 45 46 yes okay so when he was committing these crimes he was between 30 and 40 or so of the east area rapist attacks yes you know but we were pretty confident ken clark from sac homicide who was also, you know, part of the core East Area Rapist Task Force, a Golden State Killer Task Force. He's pretty sure that D 'Angelo in 1973 was the Cordova cat burglar, you know, breaking into the houses while people were inside the houses in the very same neighborhood where the East Area Rapist starts up in 1976. I'm I know actually from a high school friend that called in after D 'Angelo was arrested through my contacts with SAC DA's office.

2:05:15This friend said we used to commit burglaries as high schoolers in that very neighborhood. So D 'Angelo has been committing crimes at least as far back as being a teenager. But my point in raising the 30 to 40-year-old range, which was 76 to 86, is that you can see it. Like that's when a man would be probably at his strongest, you know, feeling his most confident. You get in your 40s, you know, things start to change a bit. And you could see, consistent with what you just told me, maybe the confidence level going down. Well, and as the East Area Rapist, and even as the original Night Stalker, DeAngelo, his crimes were very physical.

2:05:55He liked to prowl around the houses and go through backyards and then move through neighborhoods by jumping fences. If he was being pursued and there's multiple times during the series in which law enforcement actually gets into, you know, foot pursuits with East Area Rapists, you know, he is running and jumping fences and is very adept at it. But, you know, I know, you know, now that I'm, you know, 54, I've gone through from the late 20s into my 30s being very physically capable. And as I got older, well, me jumping a fence today is going to be a lot more effort than when I was in my late 20s.

2:06:35So that's part of, you know, D 'Angelo, you know, self-assessing. Can he continue to commit these crimes and get away with them? And as he's getting older, the risk elevates because he's realizing he's no longer as physically capable. So because we just we did a show on the Zodiac killer or who our guest believes is a Zodiac killer. And we did a show on the D.C. snipers, you know, those two guys. And in both of those cases, it seemed pretty clear that the person wanted to be caught. And the Zodiac wasn't actually caught, but, you know, leaving clues. and in the sniper case, you know, leaving clues, the tarot card, the notes and calling.

2:07:19Like, it just seemed like it was cat and mousy, but this case seems very different. D 'Angelo, to me, seems the opposite, did not want to be caught at all. No, absolutely the opposite. You know, and I've actually looked into Zodiac. You know, Zodiac cases were in my backyard and I would drive by. I want to talk to you about that too. Yeah, I would drive by, you know, the first Zodiac crime scene on my commute into work every day. So, you know, I'm very familiar with the Zodiac case. Now, Zodiac, you think about, you know, first the styles of attacks, you know, with the exception of Lake Berryessa and Napa.

2:08:00You know, he's he's like David Berkowitz out there in New York. He's walking up on young couples that are parked inside a car and shooting them. This is about as cowardly a type of crime that can be committed. But the communication is demonstrating sort of that narcissistic, ego driven attitude, just like BTK. BTK was communicating, you know, with law enforcement. And that's ultimately what got him caught. But D 'Angelo did not want to get caught. He probably communicated at times during the course of a series to law enforcement calling and dispatch. But he recognized that was too risky to him.

2:08:43And so when he is arrested and sitting in that interview room, he is so shocked that he got caught and so dejected. He just wanted to live out his life. He not seeking notoriety like Zodiac or Raider was. Do you think if you hadn't caught him, he would have left a note, you know, and taken credit in that or he would have gone to his grave with a secret? He would have gone to his grave. I mean, to this day, he has never said a word to us about anything related to the attacks. So only he has answers to so many questions that all of us have. And he hasn't divulged anything. I don't think he likes the idea that now he's being seen as a Golden State killer.

2:09:33And this is what's so important in terms of assessing him for potential interviews is how does he self-identify? Dennis Rader, BTK, what he's caught, he was the president of his church, was married. He was active in his son's Boy Scouts. But he goes, that's just a facade. I'm BTK. That's how he identified in this world. And I know when we caught D 'Angelo, it's like, well, does he identify as the grandfather or does he identify as Golden State Killer? And to this day, we don't know. But right now he's not like saying, hey, look at me. I'm the Golden State Killer. He just wants it to be quiet. In discussing the snipers, you know, they they said, like, I am God.

2:10:21Call me God. Things like that. And they seem to suffer from a God complex. I mean, the elder, you know, in particular, Muhammad, who was driving it, suffer from a God complex and really felt powerful in committing these murders. D 'Angelo seems to have been driven by something very different. Yeah, you know, very complicated in terms of assessing what his motive is true, you know, inner motive. Some of these killers, that God complex is very real. You know, they control if this person that they're attacking dies and when that person dies. And there's numerous examples of such as Samuel Little or even Jesperson, the smiley, happy face killer, where they would strangle these women to the point of unconsciousness and let them come back alive only to do it over and over again.

2:11:15This is what they said gave them that power. D 'Angelo, there is a true, there's a vindictiveness to him. There's also, you know, the sexual assault on these women, many of these women, was driven by sex. And that's, it's often a misnomer that it's all about power and control. Now, there's a sexual aspect to why these offenders are attacking them. They have they have sexualized violence. But the vindictiveness is where I think it gets interesting, because I truly believe that many of the couples were attacked because D 'Angelo had some sort of interaction, prior interaction with the man and decided it was a negative thing.

2:12:07And he decided, I'm going to come back and show you who I am and basically took control over that man, emasculated that man and then took his wife or girlfriend out into the other room and sexually assaulted her. And this is a vindictive act. So but until he talks, we don't know exactly why, you know, he's choosing any of these victims in this series. hmm there were some clues uh he made small statements to various victims that would pique your curiosity and so on like i i watched you or somebody he said something to one woman who was like do i know this person you know how do i like there were little clues but they weren't meant for you it was just you know slips of the tongue where he had revealed a little too much well actually this is going towards the sophistication of D 'Angelo.

2:13:00Those weren't slip of the tongue. What he was doing is verbal staging. So you think about typical, when we say a crime is staged, you know, this is where evidence has been changed at a crime scene in order to make, let's say, a homicide looked like a suicide. So the offender isn't, you know, draw the attention of the investigation. What D 'Angelo was doing was making statements to these victims, knowing that they were going to talk to law enforcement. So he was planting seeds. And anytime somebody stages a crime, whether it be the physical evidence or the verbal aspect, that is to try to push the investigation away from themselves.

2:13:49So D 'Angelo would say certain things like, you know, as an example, you better not tell the cops you saw my van parked outside. And he said van over and over and over throughout the second half of the East Area Rapist series. Guarantee he never drove a van any of these scenes. He's probably in a motorcycle, driving a motorcycle or another vehicle. Or, you know, I killed two people down in Bakersfield, you know, prior, you know, so he's trying to push, I've already killed, you know, down in Bakersfield. I'm going to do that to you. But he's also wanting the victim to relay that, you know, he is from the Bakersfield area, which he wasn't.

2:14:29And most notably, one prime example is when he's asking this victim where Her husband was at that. She said Roseville, which is just a city just north of Sacramento. He says he asks, where's Roseville? Like he doesn't know the areas from out of town. Well, D 'Angelo was a police intern for Roseville PD. So this shows how this staging was working in his mind to try to throw off the investigation. Again, I mean, absolutely cunning. That's why I asked you, what level of smarts did this guy have? Because he sounds, I don't want to say brilliant, but he sounds very intelligent. It's interesting to hear you say, not really.

2:15:10It's just he studied this particular field. He worked in this particular field, and he made himself a bit of an expert in how to misdirect. No, absolutely. You know, he's not, you know, he's not going to score off the charts on an IQ test, but I'm not saying he's dumb. You know, I would say probably to anybody, he's of average intellect based on just me kind of assessing him as a person. But as a criminal, as a predator, he is he's savvy. And I think you use the term cunning. Absolutely. And he was trained. He was a law enforcement officer, and he was smart enough to draw upon that training and those tools in order to be a better criminal, a better predator.

2:15:55Now, those investigating him did suspect law enforcement ties, right? Like there was enough proficiency at the crime scenes that I've heard some of the former investigators say, yes, we did wonder whether he could have a connection to law enforcement or possibly a military background, which he also did have, if I'm not mistaken. He was a 27-year-old Navy veteran in 1973. He served in the Navy. He served in the Navy back in the 60s. It was during the Vietnam War, but he never saw combat. He was on a ship. But over the decades, there was always suspects that came up that were law enforcement or military.

2:16:42And there was some thought, you know, could he have that type of background? I took the position that because of and this was kind of later during my investigation, once I kind of was like, aha, I know I've got a better read on who this offender is now. That the position I took was that the tactics he was employing would be tactics that a intelligent offender would naturally want to do to try to prevent themselves from being caught. I could not say, you know, that for sure anything he did demonstrated specialized military training or law enforcement training. It just was he doesn't want to get caught.

2:17:30And he's employing those those strategies. Like he wore gloves at every crime scene, right? That we didn't do very well on the fingerprints. He always wore gloves. He would take the gloves off when he's sexually assaulting the women from time to time. But we don't have any latents across any of the cases that have matched back to D 'Angelo. Of course, every house that you process have latent prints all over. So it's kind of tough to say leading into the identification of D 'Angelo whether you have the offender's print or not. But it turns out, no, he never left a print that we were able to tie back to him once he was caught.

2:18:10But he's also, you know, back in the 70s, you know, he's wearing a ski mask all the time. But even while wearing a ski mask so they couldn't see his face, he's shining a flashlight in the victim's eyes, blinding them. And he's telling them, don't look at me or I'll kill you. So he's put in multiple, you know, layers to prevent the victims from seeing his face. So that's, you know, part of my entire pursuit of him. I only knew this guy as a masked man. And then finally, once D 'Angelo was identified and he's in handcuffs walking into Sacramento homicide, it was like, well, there you go. You know, I've unmasked him and that's what he looks like.

2:18:53so that's uh you know he for the types of evidence that could identify him and the types of witness statements that could produce a composite you know for back in the day he prevented all that from happening what he didn't prevent and and didn't know about was you know he was leaving his dna all over the place oh yeah no we'll get to that we'll get the dna in just a bit but But how do we have composite sketches of him then? You know, I remember when they arrested him, the DA was standing next to three of them, which showed a younger D 'Angelo in sketch artist form. So how do we have that? Yeah, all of those composites that were produced back in the day were produced by neighbors that saw strange men walking in the neighborhood.

2:19:41I can't say that any of those composites are actually D 'Angelo today. Some of them may look close to D 'Angelo, but I have no confidence in any of those composites. I did wonder, because as you describe him jumping over the fences and racing around in people's backyards, and I remember you saying once that he liked neighborhoods that had mostly one story houses. He wasn't a big fan of the two story houses. My question was, why didn't the neighbors see him? He struck so often. It's not like one crime every five years. Like, how is he not seen spotted and had the cops called on him? Well, most certainly he targeted neighborhoods.

2:20:28Now, just to back up a little bit, you know, victim selection, you know, though we don't know how he's selecting all his victims, he's multimodal. Some victims he likely followed home. Some victims he's in a neighborhood prowling and runs across them. some victims he may have had an interaction with and decided that they fit his needs. But he did choose neighborhoods that had certain characteristics that would minimize the threat of him being seen. And that very first neighborhood that he attacks in in June of 76, in Rancho Cordova, this Cordova Meadows neighborhood, single story houses, five foot fences, which are relatively easy to get up and over, there was no streetlights in that neighborhood.

2:21:17The houses, the windows on the houses and between the houses were situated to where he could easily just walk between these houses and nobody could see them. They're like dark alleys. So this was a perfect prowling neighborhood. And I believe he chose that neighborhood because he's familiar with it, and he knew that it was tough for people to see him if he employed those types of strategies. But we have examples of neighbors outside seeing a man kind of walk past them, you know, towards a victim's house later on that night. And then they, as they're out front and they look and to see, well, where did this man go?

2:22:00He has absolutely just disappeared into the shadows. So he was very stealthy and he knew how to use lighting to his advantage. Now, I know you have three adult children of your own at this point. As while we're here, is there any sort of advice you want to offer to people? And like, where should we live? Where shouldn't we live? What like we shouldn't live in a neighborhood like that if we can avoid it. Right. I mean, just like what are your thoughts on that? The general safety aspect of that? Well, you know, it is it's tough. Comparing today to the 1970s in terms of, you know, how are these offenders going to be attacking?

2:22:43You know, most certainly with with my kids, you know, going to college, avoid, you know, the first floor, you know, where there's a first floor window or the doors right there. You know, it's just offenders today have to do different things in order to be able to attack victims. It's relatively rare to see a predator consistently breaking into houses over and over again and getting away with it for any period of time just due to technology. We all have cameras. Surveillance systems. And, yeah, you know, so there's so much that really limits the type of series that D 'Angelo is doing. But predators are now doing different things.

2:23:33You know, in the 90s in my jurisdiction, you know, they really grabbed the serial predator was gravitating towards the sex workers because now these women are voluntarily getting into their cars. But then eventually, once the stroll area started to dry up out of fear, then they go online. You know, now you have the Craigslist killer or the escort services where they call in and then they have the victim meet them someplace where they have now isolated that victim. You know, so that's part of how the predator is evolving based on how technology and security consciousness has changed. It's just terrifying.

2:24:14So back to D 'Angelo. So he committed several rapes and he, as you point out, he had studied criminal justice. He got a criminal justice degree from California State University. And it seems to me he was actually he was a cop when he was committing the rapes. And even what the first two murders, he was still an active duty police officer. Yes, he was. He was a law enforcement officer for everything that happened in Visalia. All those burglaries, including the homicide of Claude Snowing. In fact, he was a sergeant at the time that he left the police department down in Exeter. And when he's hired on by Auburn Police Department, he is now becoming the East Area Rapist.

2:25:04And for every single attack in Northern California, you know, from Sacramento down to Modesto, Sacramento down to San Jose, 50 attacks. He is an active law enforcement officer. And that's part and the two of the double homicide of Katie and Brian Maggiore up in Sacramento. He is a law enforcement officer. It isn't until after all those attacks, when he gets arrested for shoplifting and he's put on administrative leave and then ultimately terminating, does he go down south and every attack after that, he is wanting to kill or does kill his victims. So that change from, you know, having authority as a law enforcement officer going down south where that authority has been stripped, you know, now he becomes a serial killer.

2:25:58Just straight up. He's not even trying to do anything else. And we and when you say down south, we're still obviously in California, hence Golden State Killer. Never, never left California. Right. So in 1979, after he disappears up north, he turns out in October of 79, he shows up in Goleta, Santa Barbara area. Goleta is a small town next to Santa Barbara City in Santa Barbara, does a classic East Area rapist style attack from up north. But once he's got the woman out in the family room and the man bound in the bed, the woman hears him pacing back and forth. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him this time.

2:26:41I'm going to kill him. Well, D 'Angelo at this point had already been terminated as a law enforcement officer. That attack actually goes sideways because the victims end up kind of freaking out once the woman hears this. And then he ends up getting chased by an off-duty FBI special agent who hears the screams in his neighbor's house. But two months later, D 'Angelo's back just a block south of that sideways attack and kills a couple there in Santa Barbara. Then he goes down to Ventura and bludgeons Lyman and Charlene Smith to death. Then he's down in Laguna Niguel in Orange County, where he bludgeons a couple to death there.

2:27:25He goes to Irvine a couple of times, kills two women there. He goes and attacks another couple in Santa Barbara. You know, so he is now moving through Southern California and killing. And then in 1986, after his last attack on beautiful 19-year-old Janelle Cruz, he stops. You know, and that's one of the mysteries. Why does he stop? And I have my theories. But until he says, you know, why, we just don't know. Mm hmm. So what you mentioned the couple. So he started off, as we discussed, burgling and raping. But there was a point at which he graduated to going into homes to rape women where their boyfriends or their husbands were present.

2:28:09And this is, I guess, right before he crossed over to just murdering, too. And it was almost like a challenge to him after I think it was the Sacramento Bee wrote an article saying he had never done that before. He'd only attacked women sleeping by themselves in their homes at night. And just speak to that, because it almost seemed like he felt as though he'd been dared or his courage had been questioned. No, no, absolutely. You know, Sacramento Bee has that article. In essence, it says he has never attacked when a man is home.

2:28:47and to attack number 16 up there as East Area Rapist. He goes into a house with a woman and a man. And this is where he breaks in, the couple's sleeping. He wakes them up. He blinds them with a flashlight. He tells them he has a gun. He's going to spatter their brains all over the wall if they don't do what he says. And he tosses bindings to the woman and makes her tie up the man face down in the bed. And then he goes and ties the woman up once the man is somewhat secure. And then ultimately, you know, he would go out and get dishes and put dishes on the man's back as an alarm system and tell the man if he heard, if D 'Angelo heard these rattle, he would kill everything in the house would be a common phrase or cut off a piece of his wife and bring it back to him or, you know, cut off the fingers of the kids, whatever.

2:29:39And then he would take the woman out into the family room and sexually assault her. He was challenged by that Sacramento Bee article. But the interesting thing is, is that he proves in that very first attack with a man present, he could do it. But then two thirds of the attacks from that point on have men present. So this really underscores that that victimology is something that satisfied him. He really liked the idea of having that power and control over the man while he is being able to sexually assault that man's wife or girlfriend. And so this is where it gets interesting from a psychological standpoint is he didn't start doing that.

2:30:24But think about the risk he was taking to break into a house that has an entire family there, a man present. Oftentimes these men had guns nearby. And yet he's willing to take that risk in order to be able to commit to this style of crime. So I believe internally he realized I get more personally out of attacking with a man present than just just sexually assaulting a lone female. And the thing with the dishes is bizarre, too. I mean, it was his alarm system, as you point out, like if he heard the rattling, he threatened to escalate it. And as far as I understand, all the victims complied with that.

2:31:08I mean, they they took him very seriously and they tried not to rattle those dishes. And D 'Angelo is so commanding and threatening. All these males ended up saying, you know, I had no choice. You know, my fear was if the male tried to struggle against his bindings and the dishes rattled, that he would harm their wife or girlfriend. There were times when the men would get uncomfortable because it is very uncomfortable. Their hands would hurt from the tight bindings. Their ankles would hurt from the bindings. They're laying absolutely still. They don't know what's going on. And there were several times when the men would shift with this alarm system of dishes on their back, and the dishes would rattle or fall.

2:31:52And D 'Angelo was immediately in that room with the gun to the back of the man's head. He would cock the hammer and say, do that again, and I'll kill you. So these men were helpless at this point. They had no control over what was going to happen to them or their wife. The only thing that they could control was, I have to stay still. And this is part of something I've been very outspoken about is, you know, of course, all these women that were sexually assaulted, you know, extraordinarily traumatizing. But a lot of people forget about the victimization of the man. These men, I interviewed several of the men, and I had several of these men crying, either on the phone or in front of me, face to face.

2:32:42After 35 years, they were attacked. And so these men were victims, too. You think about just remove the sexual assault and the woman out of the crime and just think about a masked man breaking into a house, tying a man up, putting a gun to the back of his head and pulling the hammer back and saying, I'm going to kill you. In many states, that practically can qualify as a life sentence in terms of the type of crime. You know, so this is a serious crime in and of itself. self. You've been tortured. These men were tortured. Yes. Psychologically, emotionally tortured. D 'Angelo knew that. In fact, one man in Danville, California was a very large man relative to D 'Angelo.

2:33:31D 'Angelo could tell this man was not liking the predicament and wanting to do something. D 'Angelo tells him essentially you don't like this, do you? Well, there's nothing you can do about it. You know, so this is where D 'Angelo is expressing that he has power and control over that man. He loved that. That's what the badge gave him. And then that's what, you know, victimizing these couples gave him, because now he was basically asserting himself as being more of a man than these men who were victims. Well, it makes sense from his perspective, because otherwise he would just kill the man. I mean, I'm understanding it better listening to you because one of my questions is, why didn't he just kill the men?

2:34:16But he wanted to torture them. He enjoyed that piece of it. He didn't want to just end it for them. No, and that goes to, you know, this is where the sadistic aspect of him, you know, that getting gratification out of the suffering of others, you know, it's psychological. I mean, he wasn't beating these men. You know, he wasn't doing anything that was physically going to hurt them. But he was instilling fear as he was doing with the women. So, you know, this is where he is a complex offender from a psychological standpoint. And when he goes down south and he's starting to kill and it's really when he's bludgeoning the couples to death.

2:35:04the evolution gets to where he is in essence he's taking control of the man but then likely killing that man very early in the attack to minimize that threat and so he he changed in terms of what he needed to get out of the the the crime the fantasy of the crime once he is a full-blown killer but now wait so before we get to that we you mentioned he lost his cop job around that time before he moved down south and he lost it. It's such a weird story that he explained what he did. And like, why would he do this? You know, this this well-trained criminal who had managed to avoid capture and all these other crimes.

2:35:51What happened to him? Well, July of 1979, up in Citrus Heights, Sacramento, he's off duty, plainclothes. He goes into just a local convenience store there and shoplifts dog repellent and a hammer and is caught. And Sacramento Sheriff's response. He's arrested. And of course, that's reported back to his police department, Auburn Police Department. And he's now put on administrative leave. So as you would expect. So now they are investigating the shoplifting. And during their internal affairs investigation, they go inside D 'Angelo's house, which was up in Auburn at the time. And the police chief told me we found all sorts of stolen commercial property, like power tools still in their boxes.

2:36:50Like he had just taken them out of a store, but had never opened it up or tried to sell them. But that was never, you know, part of the case in chief. It was always the shoplifting. And it's like, why is he taking the risk of, you know, shoplifting, you know, when he's the serial killer? But this goes back to Bonnie's assessment of D 'Angelo's personality. Rules don't apply. He got a thrill out of doing these little things. Yes. And he probably was doing it all the time. It's just he got caught this one time. In no way do I mean to compare Winona Ryder to this guy. But remember when she got arrested for shoplifting and it was at the height of her fame and everyone was so confused.

2:37:36It's like, why would this very rich, very successful celebrity shoplift? She could afford anything in that store. And there were a lot of reports on why people do that. And it did relate to the thrill of it. You know, there's something there's a Jones from like doing it and getting away with it. No, absolutely. You know, and and that is really, you know, you talk about when we're not a writer case, you know, that psychology really is also kind of a foundational psychology for D 'Angelo doing that kind of thing, as well as escalating up into committing the burglaries. And then he's recognizing he's got fantasies of committing violence against people, which now takes him out well above the psychology of Winona Ryder.

2:38:23Fundamentally, it's that gratification. It's that thrill. So I read something about the police chief shortly after firing D 'Angelo. Like D 'Angelo showed up at his house. He was almost an intruder. What is that story? Well, this is where when I, you know, we were marching down on genealogy and D 'Angelo's name came up. And now I was skeptical that this full time police officer could commit all these crimes across Northern California, like the East Area Rapist did. I end up tracking down the police chief that fired D 'Angelo, Nick Willick. And Nick, you know, was telling me about, you know, Nick was the one that was D 'Angelo's sergeant when D 'Angelo first came on board up in Auburn, but also ultimately became the police chief and was chief when D 'Angelo shoplifted.

2:39:19So Nick is the one that put D 'Angelo on administrative leave and started the IA investigation. And while D 'Angelo is on admin leave, Nick told me the story that during this period of time, which would have been in that July, August 1979 timeframe, he's asleep in his house. and his daughter comes into his room and says, Dad, there's a man standing outside my window shining a flashlight into him. And Nick goes, Paul, I rabbited out of my bed and went outside and I could see shoe impressions in the dirt all around the perimeter of the back of my house. And he goes, I know for sure that was D 'Angelo.

2:40:10Now he didn't identify D 'Angelo, But he was confident that that was the answer. And when I'm talking to Nick, I'm not letting him know I'm looking at the East Area Rapist or the Golden State Killer case. And once I heard that, I mean, that was where, you know, basically the hairs on my arm stood up. And I was like, yeah, that's exactly what the Golden State Killer would do if he was being terminated by his employer is that vindictive aspect. I'll show you who I am. Yeah. That's really when I started to turn about D 'Angelo and his potential to be the Golden State Killer. It doesn't mean he was, but it was like, wow, that was D 'Angelo.

2:40:53Because he was on he was on your suspects list. Is that what you're saying? But you didn't you had a lot of people on your suspects list. Well, at this point, you know, we were working the genealogy angle and his name came up and I had just eliminated a guy in Colorado or the team had just eliminated a guy in Colorado. That's when I turned to D 'Angelo going, well, I might as well look at this former cop. And as I dug in, you know, I tried to reach out to Bonnie. I'm researching him. I'm visiting all sorts of things where he had. When I talked to that police chief, that initial phone call, I was just checking a box.

2:41:31It's so painful. It's so painful, Paul, because it's like, I'm sure this poor cop is just kicking himself for not looking into it more back then. I mean, how could he know, right? But it's like those missed opportunities. Yes. Yeah. No, you know, and that's just it. is there is no way he could have at that point in time because D 'Angelo shoplifted that he should be considered. And I know there are probably that the chief received some public criticism after D 'Angelo was arrested as the Golden State Killer. And I publicly said, absolutely not. You know, basically he did what he could do to D 'Angelo based on the facts.

2:42:10And there's just no connection between the shoplifting and the East Area Rapist attacks that that chief could have even put to it. I'm talking about the moment that he saw somebody had come outside of his house and had shined the light in at his daughter. You know, like, again, not in any way blaming the guy, but it's just like, oh God, what if he had followed up? What if he had all these moments in time he'd like to go back to and have another look at? Yeah, no, sure, absolutely. I mean, and that was part, you know, D 'Angelo was very good at what he did. And that is the prime reason why his series was as long as it was.

2:42:52But there were multiple times within the series where he just flat out got lucky. And that was one of those times. Yes, right. So now he goes south in California and he escalates to just murdering. And when he started just murdering couples, did he get rid of the sexual assault altogether? No, he still sexually assaulted the women. There's only one attack, well, two attacks down in Southern California where we don't have his DNA. And that's the first attack that went sideways, where basically he's being chased by the off-duty FBI agent in Goleta. And then the second attack, which also happened in almost that same neighborhood, in which it appears that the male slipped his bindings and got up and rushed him.

2:43:42And D 'Angelo had to shoot the male, you know, out of, if you want to call it self-defense, and then went over and shot the female in the top of the head while she laid face down on the bed and ran off. So because that attack also kind of went sideways on him, he never got to the stage of sexually assaulting. But down in Ventura, the next attack and every attack after that, he is sexually assaulting the women and also killing the women and men in the cases where men are present. So that and that's where it stood straight through to 1986. And then what happened? Just in 1986, he dropped off the face of the earth.

2:44:33You know, nobody there's no other cases that we can attribute to him. He's, you know, he's married. His at the time of the last attack, his wife was two months pregnant with their second daughter, I believe. and ultimately they are back up in up in Citrus Heights, you know, living in the house where he was arrested back in 2018. So it wasn't becoming a father necessarily because he was already a dad at the time his wife got pregnant, you know, with their second child, obviously. Right. You know, in fact, so the second to last attack in July of 1981 in Santa Barbara, Gregory Sanchez and Sherry Domingo, his wife is seven months pregnant with their first daughter.

2:45:22You know, and then he commits this attack at five years go by and we have nothing in those five years. Then we have May of 1986 in Irvine. That's when he bludgeons 19 year old Janelle Cruz to death. And his wife's pregnant again, seven months pregnant with the second daughter. But then after that, nothing. Then they have a third daughter and no idea, you know, from, you know, why is he not doing anything, you know, but as we talked earlier at 1986, he's 41 years old. So now he's getting older as an offender. His life circumstances have changed. You know, he's got two daughters moving back up to Sacramento's.

2:46:12I think, you know, this is where he is really slipping back. He's slipping into that mindset. I've got to put the serial predator part of me aside. And I'm now going to be, you know, a father, a provider. And then ultimately, you know, he's just becoming a truck mechanic and enjoying life. He's out fishing with his buddies. That's what I was going to ask. So how did he pay his bills after he got fired from the police force? Big mystery. We don't know. He hasn't told us what he was doing. We haven't found a job that he was doing during the years as the original Night Stalker. Wow. His wife was an attorney.

2:46:57And I forget exactly when she actually starts making money versus going to school. But he may have been living off of her for a period of time. Now, I believe that there's enough evidence to suggest that D 'Angelo, even as an East Area rapist, was moonlighting as a security guard on construction job sites. And now I've had a relative from down south indicate that when D 'Angelo is living in Long Beach, seeing a couple of security guard style shirts as well as a gun and a holster hanging in D 'Angelo's residence. So I think he's probably still doing security work, which would make sense psychologically for him, because now he still has sort of that, you know, that that power and authority that he had as a full blown peace officer.

2:47:53But just not quite a grocery store. And that may be something that I just don't know about. And one of the things that I did after this case was solved, I was so burnt. I literally pushed away. And I know there's been a lot of investigation into D 'Angelo since. And there may be some aspects of D 'Angelo that I have not been updated on. That's fine. I mean, you've got your man. That's the thing. I want to get into how you caught him, because that's probably I don't know if it's the most interesting, but it's one of the most interesting things of the story. But before we do that, can I just ask you a couple of psychological issues on him?

2:48:27I know in one of the attacks, he the victim survived because this is how we know this. he sat at the end of the bed and started crying and talking about his mommy, like mommy, I don't want to be bad or mom. I can't remember what it was. Do we, what do we make of that? You know, well, it actually is. It is one of these oddities. It wasn't just in one case in which victims heard him crying or sobbing, you know, after the sexual assault. And, you know, We don't know for sure. You know, was this an act? Was was he trying to just like with the verbal staging? Was he trying to portray himself differently?

2:49:09But then when he's being interviewed that night that he's arrested and he's being left alone, he's got his head hung. I'm looking at him. And at one point, I almost see him looking like he's about to cry and he's talking to himself. And then his neighbors would say that Joe, Crazy Joe, would be talking to himself. So I think it is possible that, you know, at a certain point in these attacks, some of the statements he's making to himself is what he does and the crime. From a psychological standpoint, an interesting aspect about D 'Angelo is I'm not sure he would be characterized as a true psychopath.

2:49:55Everybody assumes he's a psychopath. He doesn't experience empathy. I saw enough acts that he did to his living victims over the course of 50 attacks where I'm going, you know what, he is he is showing that he is caring about how these victims are feeling. And part of it is M.O. If they are getting uncomfortable because they're getting cold, you know, because sometimes they complain about being cold. You put a blanket on them, a pillow under their head. Is this just to keep them appeased so they don't become a problem? or is he actually truly, you know, showing a level of empathy? And if that's the case, then I question whether he's a psychopath.

2:50:34And then as time went on during the series, it almost looked like he was struggling with what he was doing. It was almost like he was compelled to do these attacks, but knew internally, I don't want to do these. And then after the attack, that's when this emotional release would happen. and the crying would happen. What about his wife and his daughters? You know, what have they said? Well, the daughters were absolutely clueless about his past life. You know, they didn't even know that he had been a cop. So obviously, D 'Angelo and their mom kept a lot of what was happening before the daughters were born secret from them.

2:51:25The wife, Sharon, you know, she they end up getting married in 1973. She becomes ultimately a divorce attorney. And, you know, she has not really engaged with the investigation to the fullest extent. And I have to be careful about how I describe this. The Sacramento DA asked me not to be too blunt about my thoughts. You know, the only thing that I will say along those lines is, you know, D 'Angelo and Sharon separated in 1991. Yet they were still technically married in 2018 when D 'Angelo was arrested. And Sharon's a divorce attorney. So it's really odd that that spousal connection, spousal privilege was kept intact.

2:52:26Oh, that's riveting information. Sharon, what accountability does she have? What did she know and when did she know it? That's awful. I mean, you got to feel for these daughters who at some point, you know, were delivered the news that their father was a prolific serial killer. I saw the middle daughter, the two younger daughters. They were at Sacramento homicide that night. And I saw them sobbing. An FBI agent had been assigned to basically tell them why their father was in custody. And they both were allowed to go in separately to talk to their dad. And he basically kicked them out. So I don't know.

2:53:12I've said, you know, they really are victims of his, you know, and it's so sad. And, you know, what's pitiful is that they've received death threats, you know, and it's like, no, they have nothing to do with what D 'Angelo did. He is solely responsible for these attacks. And now these two girls are having to figure out how their life is going to work moving forward. Boy, back to the wife, Sharon, and I'll just speculate, this isn't you, but it does make you wonder if in 1991 she found something. You know, usually these serial killers keep some sort of treasures from their crime scenes. They can't let the entire thing go because they're important to reliving the sick moments.

2:53:58And it does make you wonder whether she found something that led her to get out of there, but was smart enough not to. Well, I don't know, not smart enough. I don't mean that. I mean, most of us would run to the police to say, my God, but she had children and at some point grandchildren. And that does complicate it. Yeah. You know, and I would say 1991 is probably, you know, whatever happened in 91 that caused them to separate is probably just the tip of the iceberg in terms of D 'Angelo and Sharon's relationship. Well, did Bonnie shed any light on weird sexual predilections with, you know, anything about that?

2:54:37No, you know, outside of his ability to be able to repeatedly have sex in a very short time frame. That was really the only thing that she brought up that seemed to really stand out to her. Which is consistent with what happened during these crimes. It wasn't just one rape and he was out of there. He repeatedly assaulted the women sexually. That is right. You know, and sometimes, you know, sometimes these attacks would last over the course of hours, but sometimes he's repeatedly sexually assaulting, you know, to the point of ejaculation within a very short time frame. So there is some consistency from a physical aspect with what Bonnie's recollection of their interactions were like.

2:55:28But she does not she did not she does not remember anything that would indicate that he enjoyed violence, you know, during the course of sex. And quite frankly, D 'Angelo, when he's sexually assaulting these women, obviously it's an act of violence, but he is not the type of a rapist that is punching these women as he's having sex with them. He's only striking them when they fight him back. And there are times when it appears that he's enjoying and engaging in more of a consensual type of sexual encounter than an actual rape where he's making the woman put high heel shoes on and having her straddle him while he's up on the sofa.

2:56:16Like he's living out a fantasy of being with her versus, you know, these really assertive rapists that are using derogatory terms and striking the women or holding knives against their throats, you know, outside of having to control these, doing things to control the women. D 'Angelo wasn't like that. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tremphaya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tremphaya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks.

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2:58:34it was going to end badly. Yeah. You know, this is, and I've been asked this type of question, like I'll talk at citizens academies and the women will say, well, what do I do if I'm being attacked? And it really comes down to, you do have to fight. There's no question from the very beginning, you have to fight, you have to make noise, but recognize that there is a type of offender, that that is what he wants. And that is your sexual sadist. So a sexual sadist is somebody who gets more amped up. The more you fight, the more you scream, the more pain that offender can inflict on the woman. And so there are examples, in fact, of a 1969 victim.

2:59:23You know, she was being attacked. She was trying to fight in the front seat of a car. And she realized she was going to be dead. And she's looking out the window at nature and the sunlight, and she starts stroking the back of the guy's neck as he's raping her. And the guy literally just stopped. He didn't want that. He wanted her fear and her fight. And there is another case example out of the Pacific Northwest of a guy who's using a knife in a pickup truck on a woman. And she realizes she's dead and she just lays there and he pushes up and walks out. This is your sexual sadist. Once the woman goes limp, he's not getting what he wants.

3:00:08So my recommendation is always fight, fight, fight. But if that is not working, if this guy is too powerful and he just seems to be amping up the more you fight, just briefly, you know, do the opposite. Give it a try. See what happens. Give it a try. But if that doesn't work, then you've got to fight for your life. You just have to. Yeah. Be a difficult victim. Be a difficult victim, especially in the case of abductions. You know, do not go along. He's got a gun. Get in the car. Do not do that. Run, zigzag, serpentine, yell. Try it right there. Do not get in that car. Yeah. I tell I tell my kids if somebody grabs them and starts pulling them to a vehicle, You know, and they I don't care if they've got a gun or a knife, you know, you do everything to prevent yourself from getting to that vehicle.

3:00:58Doesn't mean being shot or stabbed there is going to be so much better than what they're going to do to you once they get you to the location they want to take. Yes. Do not comply. The it does make me wonder about. his childhood? You know, what do we know? Abuse, sexual abuse, torture. Like, what happened during his childhood? You know, I don't have a lot of information on his childhood, and I don't... I think there's a ton of information out there. What we do know was when his dad was military stationed over in Germany and D 'Angelo and his younger sister, Connie, were walking and two soldiers abduct them.

3:01:47And D 'Angelo watches these two soldiers rape his sister. He's 10 years old at the time. obviously a very traumatic event for a 10 year old boy to see but in terms of the family dynamics I have not been updated to see if there's been anything that has been discovered yeah that would explain and Bonnie's you know Bonnie's dating D 'Angelo she's younger she I think was 19 and And he's, you know, in his 20s, but she knew, you know, his his mom. And I think at this time, it's his his stepdad. And she said, I didn't see anything that was really alarming. You know, his mom was one of the sweetest persons that she had ever met.

3:02:35So it wasn't like that prototypical, you know, the you know, the overbearing mother and the drunk, alcoholic, abusive father. Bonnie didn't see that at this point in D 'Angelo's life. Hmm. Okay. So let's go forward to the end. Um, I should spend one minute on, um, Michelle McNamara. So people may remember this, this piece of the story. She was married to Patton Oswalt and she died suddenly. And he came out and talked about her and her work. And I think that got a lot of our attention. Like, what's he talking about? This is famous guy. His wife suddenly died. and he was talking about her work on this case.

3:03:17And you came to know her very well and had spent a lot of hours working with her. She was a writer. I mean, she wasn't a cop on this case. And I thought what you said about, you know, she died of a drug overdose. It looks like, you know, potentially even an inadvertent drug overdose, right? Just taking a bunch of self-medicating, I should say. And so, yeah. Yeah, I'll let you speak to it. But I know you've said you have to understand what's going on in her life to get the full picture of her death. Right. And that, you know, with Michelle, you know, she initially she was a true crime blogger. You know, she loved to write.

3:04:03She was blogging about cases. She found out about this unsolved case and eventually wrote an article for Los Angeles magazine. And in the lead up for that article, she reached out to the task force and, you know, interviewed each of us. And Michelle and I, you know, initially I just treated her as, you know, just another journalist. And I was very kind of standoffish, the Joe Friday type. But then as time went on, you know, I recognized she's very bright. She knew the facts of the case. And I really enjoyed, you know, at that time, our phone conversations and eventually divulge what I was doing investigatively to her, but off the record and was so scared about when her Los Angeles magazine article came out, you know, did she burn me in terms of what I told her?

3:04:56And she did it. And she earned my trust. And then we just developed a closer working relationship and a closer relationship where when she's contracted to write a book about the case, she asked me if I thought that was a good idea. And she reached out to some of the other investigators. But then she came up and we drove around and I drove her to crime scenes and we spent all this time together in a car chatting about the case, but chatting about our personal lives. And that's when we really, really bonded. And then at that point, I was wide open with her, what I'm doing. She was, instead of just writing a book, she now kind of got sucked into the rabbit hole and was starting to do the investigations.

3:05:37And this is where, you know, this case, it's such a roller coaster ride of emotions because, you know, you work so hard to develop a suspect and you get excited, you get high that I've got this case, I've got this guy, only to have DNA show that it's not the right guy. And Michelle started to experience that roller coaster ride, you know, which is which is tough. But also she's talking to the victims, you know, victim family members. She's recognizing the trauma. She's thinking about these cases and had access to case files. So she knew exactly what this guy was doing, you know. And so now she's experiencing the trauma, you know, that law enforcement experiences when they're working these types of cases.

3:06:23And this is where I think, and I didn't know this, but it appears now she's self-medicating. And unfortunately, it caught her. And one of the drugs in her system was fentanyl, unfortunately. It deemed an accidental overdose from a lethal mix of Adderall, Xanax, and fentanyl. No one was aware that she was self-medicating. But I know you write in the book, few people know the pressures of the woeful world of homicide. It's a dreadful place and not one to be entered lightly. No one leaves unscathed, not even the hardened professionals. Michelle was a wife and a mom by day and living among psychopaths and their victims in the dark of night.

3:07:09That's chilling. It says so much, so much, Paul. Well, and, you know, one of the last communications I had with Michelle was an email she sent me. And she is taking her young daughter to a Girl Scout camp just north of Santa Barbara. And she emailed me, you know, letting me know, hey, I'm going to be off the grid, so to speak, for a few days. But she goes, it's so surreal to be with my daughter in the car driving past the same exits that the Golden State killer would have taken for his attacks in Santa Barbara. And I could only envision Michelle with her cute little girl looking at these exits and starting to visualize the attacks, you know, and you don't want to be with your little girl and thinking about what happened to those victims, you know, and this is part of those interconnections, you know, that you make where now your family life is crossing over with your professional life.

3:08:10And it is it is tough, you know, and there's you have to you cope with it however you cope with it. And, you know, for me, I have my own coping mechanisms and Michelle had hers. Yeah. Like, how do you go out after a day? And I've spared the audience the most gruesome details of his crimes because they truly are dark marks on your soul once you've read them. And I'm sure once you've read them at your level, how do you go out and have a dinner with your family? How do you watch a sitcom and manage a laugh? Well, that, you know, like that's where you detach. That's where I detached, you know, because for me, when I was working, you know, I'm always thinking about the case.

3:08:57But you mentioned the, you know, enjoying a sitcom. You know, to this day, I can't get myself to read a book or sit down and watch a movie right now. It's where I have just completely turned away from trying to pursue things that are just entertaining. And that's where I have to get myself back, you know, to where I can start enjoying just the normal activities in life. And it is hard. You know, that's for people. It's not everybody that gets into this field. But for people who really care about the cases, care about the victims, those are the people that are the most strongly affected. Because every minute of the day that you're not working on the case, you could be working on the case.

3:09:49And working on the case is hugely important. That's just it. I've been called on that before. You know, hey, you're no longer at work. Well, you know, if your daughter was just killed or sexually assaulted and now the investigator is punching out at five o 'clock and going home, I think you'd be a little upset. You're expecting this public servant, the investigator, to do everything possible as fast as possible to find out who did this. And that's the hard part. That's the balance of working this type of work is I've got a family. I've got a personal life. But I've also got this commitment. And that commitment, when you really get attached to cases, like for me with Golden State Killer and other cases, that commitment ends up becoming overriding of everything else.

3:10:45when he stopped with the with the spree the murder spree in 86 you were uh in your late teens you were not a cop working this case that would come later that would come later where you picked up a cold case file and the next thing you knew quarter century had passed and you had devoted the vast majority of your life to this thing. That's right. In fact, 1986, I was a senior in high school. Yeah. So you got to read the book, which you can see the picture of it behind Paul now, Unmasked, to find out his early thoughts on DNA from these crime scenes and how could they be helpful and let's get him in the system just in case this guy gets arrested so there'll be a hit and stuff.

3:11:33Like you'd been working all of that from the moment you got involved in this as a law enforcement officer. But let's jump forward to, you know, close to the end when you had a different idea and then you started studying it nonstop, of course, because you're you about genealogy and what it's not working. We're not getting a hit on this guy just by having the DNA in the system. What's another way we can use the DNA to advance the case? Right. You know, I go back a little bit even further with the genealogy. I started pursuing a type of genealogy in 2012 thinking this possibly could solve the case.

3:12:11And after five years, it hadn't. And I was frustrated. Then just out of a sheer coincidence, I had another case with an unidentified little girl. She was alive, but we didn't know who she was. We're sure she had been abducted from somewhere. And I went into a conference call with a detective out of San Bernardino down south, and he had identified her. And I was like, how did you do that? And he had gone to a website called DNAadoption.com and worked with a genealogist that was doing a completely different type of genealogy process with DNA than what I had been doing the last five years. So now I reach out to that genealogist, Barbara Rae Venter, and I ask, hey, with what you're doing to identify that little girl, would it work to identify an unknown offender?

3:13:13And she was like, no, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't. And I sent her what I had, but she didn't know what case it was. But then she stopped communicating. So I was left to my own devices to try to figure out, well, how is this process working? And that's when myself and then I had a partner on this, Steve Kramer from the FBI. We're doing a deep dive. And since I had the DNA background and I'm literally watching YouTube videos and reading website information, I'm going, oh, my God, this is powerful. And I go, I got excited. This is how this case can be solved. And that's what we pursued.

3:13:50And then we just had to get DNA and I had to get DNA from an agency down south with a homicide case where they still had their evidence. and then ultimately Ventura DA's office stepped up and gave us a sample of the Golden State Killer's DNA so we could do this genealogy process. Okay, so now you've got it and you'd been working with it for a while. You'd been earlier on, and again, people should read the book, but looking at the rape kits that had been taken from his victims that were no longer prosecutable, so it was okay to test them and deal with them, but respectful of the DNA samples and all that, you'd been thinking about the DNA for quite some time.

3:14:28So now you're at the point where they give you a sample. You know, this is the killer's DNA. And what year is this, 2017 or 18? We are right at the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018 when we get our first DNA results. Okay. So what do you do with that DNA? You like what's done to it that's different than what was normally done to it? So forensic DNA testing used by law enforcement uses a DNA tool that looks at discrete areas on the DNA that's known as short tandem repeats. It's just right now they're looking at 21 different markers that are going up into the FBI's DNA database, which is called CODIS.

3:15:19the genealogy process is the process that your major genealogy websites do in the background like Ancestry and 23andMe where you send your saliva sample in and instead of just looking at 21 markers they're looking at hundreds of thousands of points across the entire genome And then once that type of profile, which is now called a SNP profile, is put up into a database and searched against others, it's able to look for other people that kind of cross over and share DNA fragments with you. And the more DNA they share with you, the more closely related they are. And the opposite is true. The less DNA they share with you, the further related they are.

3:16:16And you can get a sense on how close or how distantly related by how much DNA is shared. So you can tell, well, this is likely a first cousin. This is pretty close to me. Or this is a fourth cousin. This is very distantly related. So now with that type of information and a list of potential relatives, it's a matter of just doing traditional genealogy, building family trees back in time until you find where these potential relatives intersect. They're descendants of a common ancestor. But it required them, it required some of the Golden State Killers relatives to have gone through the 23andMe or Ancestry.com process.

3:16:58Or other websites. Yes. So these are, you know, with DiAngelo, our initial searches, the closest relatives were third cousins. So they're related at the great, great grandparent level. And for somebody of his generation, these were individuals. The common ancestor were individuals born in the 1840s. Oh boy, that's not that helpful. So then what? Well, now it's, you get this common ancestor. It's like, okay, the Golden State Killer is a descendant from this great, great grandparents. So you have to identify everybody that, you know, are offspring of these, this common ancestor. And again, it's just genealogy.

3:17:42But part of the complexity is, is people in the 1840s would have 15 kids. Some would, you know, die at birth, some wouldn't make it to, you know, where they're actually having children themselves. So this tree, as we're building, identifying all the descendants, becomes huge. But we know something about the Golden State Killer. He is a man born between the years 1940 and 1960 by best estimates. We knew his physical size and we knew his geographic footprint, you know, from Sacramento down to Southern California. So as we're building these trees, we're now identifying men who had a California connection.

3:18:28And then it's just investigation 101. Could this person, you know, match up circumstantially with the person we're looking for? And that's where we get into just a small handful of individuals that required a little bit further investigative work. And after eliminating each of these other individuals who to this day have no idea they were being eyeballed, that's when I turned to D 'Angelo. He was sort of the last one on the list. And what was that like for you before the arrest, before all that, when you're, you've got this one last name, as you say, you start to check boxes and it's like, Bonnie law enforcement, like you start checking the boxes.

3:19:13What was that feeling like? Well, I also had the pressure. I was retiring. So am I going to get this figured out before I entire. And I had been there before. I had multiple suspects. I had other men that had bonnies in their past that were eliminated with DNA that were also rapists who had geographic connections to some of the areas. So some of this circumstantial stuff that I'm using to evaluate D 'Angelo, well, I had other suspects who had been eliminated that also had that circumstantial stuff. So you kind of become I was a little bit numb to to that. It was just like, OK, there's enough here that requires me to be much more involved than just sitting behind a computer.

3:20:02And that's when I start reaching out and driving up to Sacramento and taking a look at the locations where DeAngelo is at, researching, you know, going into the Sacramento Recorder's office and looking for deeds and where he's purchased houses or what properties he's owned. and then ultimately, you know, reaching out to the Auburn police chief who fired him. And once I kind of gathered all that, I was like, oh, this guy now is very interesting circumstantially. We got on to him because of DNA. And he's now what I would classify as a prime suspect where it's now we should get DNA from him. And my bud, Steve Kramer, was in full agreement.

3:20:49But now I am I'm retiring in two days. Can't you get an extension?

3:20:57No, I couldn't. I couldn't. I made the decision, you know, six months prior and it had to do with personal financial. Isn't that like a fake deadline? Can't you just say I'm just going to do four more? I'm like I'm seeing this case through to the end. What does it even matter? Even if you retire, can you no longer work on it? Well, from a retirement standpoint, just the way the pension system works, they really encourage you to retire at age 50 from a sheer financial purpose. But I had made the decision. I had already been out to Colorado with my wife shopping for homes, and we had a schedule to go out.

3:21:36My kids were going to be transferring schools. And so everything in my personal life really was like, this is the time I need to retire, even though we were so close on Golden State Killer. But weren't you allowed to continue working on it even post-retire? Like, what would what would change from Friday of goodbye to the Monday of I no longer work here? Yeah, I wouldn't have peace officer privileges in terms of the accessing criminal databases, going out and being able to identify myself as a sworn investigator if I'm talking to people. So I'm a civilian once I retire. There's no day pass for a day.

3:22:19Well, the way it worked out, though, is that once I did retire, the genealogy team that I was working with, which was a group of six of us, they kept me on board. They kept communicating with me as if I was still active. You know, and that's why you're the expert on the case. They needed your expertise. They needed you as much as you wanted to be with them. And I yeah, I brought something to the table on the case. And then ultimately, you know, when D 'Angelo is arrested, I helped author the arrest warrant and provided information for the search warrant, you know, up at Sac Homicide. And again, I was so appreciative that Sacramento Sheriff's Office, you know, kept me involved in the case.

3:23:05So I was able to. You're the grateful ones. They're the grateful ones. All right. Wait, back up, though, because we got to get to arrest. So now something big needs to happen. you got your prime suspect but you don't have his dna i mean you may you have an old sample of it but you need a present day sample from this man you've identified as d 'angelo and um tell us what happened there because there were two passes at it so yeah so i i had driven up to his house and you know seeing his car in the driveway knew he was living there and that was last literally the last thing I did and debated if I should get a DNA sample, just knock on his door and say, hey, Joe, this is Paul Holtz and blah, blah, blah.

3:23:50Can I get a DNA sample and eliminate him? But I decided there was too much on him and drove away. I then retire the next day. But then once I'm retired, we get him under surveillance. And so Sacramento homicide and FBI start surveilling him. And at a certain point, he drives to a Hobby Lobby, and he actually had a hobby of building these remote-controlled airplanes out of wood. So he's going there, Hobby Lobby, as he's building another plane. And while he's at the Hobby Lobby, an undercover agent swabs his car door handle, and that's submitted to the Sacramento Lab. I happen to be in Colorado Springs buying a house during this time, and I'm getting updated on how the surveillance is going.

3:24:44And I'm at P.F. Chang's with my wife celebrating putting an offer on a house. And Lieutenant Kirk Campbell from SACDA's office was calling me. I figured it's another update on the case. I excuse myself. I go stand outside. It's snowing. and instead of the typical salutation, hey, Paul, how's it going? It's, Paul, you can't tell anybody this. I was like, oh, this is, here's something. And Kirk tells me, hey, I don't know exactly what it means, but we got that car door handle, the DNA results back and the lab's really excited. There's a lot of markers that are matching up with the Golden State Killer and Kirk's not a DNA guy.

3:25:29And I said, okay, Kirk, how many markers? And he said, well, they got 21 markers. Kirk, it's him. So now we finish up that conversation. I go back into the restaurant and I'm now kind of in this weird state. I've been on this case for 24 years. I now know DeAngelo's the Golden State Killer. And so I'm in this numb space emotionally. I sit back down. My wife is super excited because her fortune cookie is saying, you know, you're going to find your dream home. And we had just put, you know, an offer down on the house, the house that I'm sitting in right now, in fact. And she just happened to say, so what did Kirk want?

3:26:20And I didn't know what to say Cause I was like, I'm not going to just say, you know, it's him. Cause I don't want her blowing up in the middle of the restaurant. Right. And she is a DNA analyst. And so I just kind of look at her and, and she, I don't do anything. And she looks at me and she says, well, are the DNA results back? And I just do a single nod. And she, she was like, well, and I didn't do anything. I'm just staring at her. And she goes, no. Oh, my God. And all I did is another single dot. And then she's like practically pushing me out of the restaurant to get into our rental vehicle so she can hear what exactly is going on.

3:27:01And then as I'm letting her know and she's super excited, that's when Steve Kramer calls me because now he knows. And then it's it's game on because now it's no longer surveillance. It's it's an arrest has to be affected. Interviews need to occur. And it's a lot of work. So that's where, you know, I end up flying back to California. Wait, wait, wait. What did your fortune cookie say? I couldn't tell you. It was one of those things where, you know, I was so, because my wife was excited, open up your fortune cookie. And I was just so focused on Golden State Killer. I did it. And I just kind of dropped it on the plate.

3:27:41And that's when she starts asking what Kirk wanted, right? You know, you make your own fortune, make your own fortune. And by the way, my wife's a huge fan of yours. She listens to your stuff all the time. Oh, tell her I said my regards and I'm already a huge fan of hers. I can feel her excitement in this moment. I wouldn't have known whether to leave or to order like a double martini. You know, it's like, oh, what do I do? I'm not sure. I'm technically retired. But yeah, I think I need to go back. So but there was they did a second pass at it. Right. They decided the DA, who I also interviewed, who was running this, the woman, forgive me, I forget her name right now.

3:28:17Ann Marie Schubert. Ann Marie, thank you. Ann Marie Schubert. She was like, let's be really sure, right? And that's when there was a dumpster dive, right? Somebody took his garbage. You guys took his garbage. Right. No, and in part, you know, the car door handle, of course, multiple people, you know, touch a car door. And so even though everything, the 21 markers were shared with Golden State Killer, there was a second person in that sample, DNA. And so that's where Anne Marie, her office, were like, no, we want a better sample. So now trash day is I believe it was Tuesday or Monday. But Sacramento has a very clever way to collect trash without it being noticed.

3:29:08And I'm not going to divulge the process because they like to use that on a regular basis. But they were able to get his trash collected. And they, you know, Ken Clark, the homicide sergeant from Sacramento and Lieutenant Paul Belli, you know, I've heard the story. It says they're filtering through the trash that was collected from D 'Angelo. They're selecting items that look like the most promising to have his DNA on them. And they got 11 items. And then the last item that they looked at said, oh, there's a piece of tissue over there. We might as well grab it. What would it hurt? Well, that turned out to be the actual evidence item that came back with D 'Angelo's single source DNA profile and 100 % matched the Golden State Killer.

3:29:56Wow. You had your man. That was it. I think in your book, I'm trying to remember, there was a line, something like that. The face of evil had been identified after all these years. you knew who it was who'd been taking up your life, your life's work. And you were going to be able to provide that to the victims who had survived his attacks, whose lives he had all but ruined in so many cases and so many lives he had taken. What a huge, huge moment for law enforcement, for you, everyone involved. And I just, I can't even imagine the flow of emotions when you actually got to see him in cuffs and be at the at the DA's office that night.

3:30:39Yeah. And again, it was it was such a surreal moment because now that this this masked man that I've been chasing for 24 years, there he is unmasked and such a weird place to be. I can't even describe the emotion because in part, you know, I still had a lot of work that needed to be done that night as well as the following day. But at the same time, there was a sense of accomplishment. And it was like, okay, you know, this is a big deal. And personally, I am very gratified that I had a role in getting the Golden State Killer here in handcuffs, sitting in an interview room. Crazy. So what did he say when the cops went up to him?

3:31:36I know they decided we got to go now and they got him on his side lawn. What happened? Did he say anything? What was he like? Well, they ended up using a specialized team because he was such a threat. But if you think about who this man is, D 'Angelo, he's a law enforcement officer. He's a serial killer. He has shot at a cop in his past down in Visalia. He had more guns registered to him over the years than what the California firearms database could print out at once. Oh, wow. And, you know, we were so concerned that he would fight. He would be armed. He would take his daughter hostage, grandkids hostage.

3:32:27So, you know, the hope was is that he would be arrested away from his house. And they were going to do a very covert type of arrest, but that didn't play out. And so they had to arrest him in front of his house. But fortunately, he moved himself over to the side yard where he was a lot isolated from from doors and stuff. And then they approached him. And there was some interactions and those interactions are part of the sheriff's specialized arrest team that I'm not going to divulge. But he was quickly taken into custody by, you know, multiple individuals. Each individual had to control a limb and he's handcuffed and placed in the back of a van.

3:33:13And then that's when he makes that that famous statement. I've got a roast in the oven. Yeah. Crazy. So he winds up obviously being charged and he pleads guilty. I mean, there was no way around it. They're really realistically to talk about having him dead to rights, that there was just no way around it. He had he had to plead guilty if he wanted to spare himself the death penalty. Yes, he had to plead guilty. But the the notable aspect about his his plea deal is he had to admit to everything. So he over the course of the series, you know, some of the cases in northern California that were not homicides, he could not be prosecuted for because there were past statute of limitations.

3:34:02And we wanted all of those victims to have that sense that their case was just as important as the other cases that he could be prosecuted for. So he pled guilty to everything that he was charged with. But then he also admitted to all those other cases that he wasn't charged with. So it's a very interesting process that occurred. So he did, right? I mean, he did list the crimes. Do we believe he listed all the crimes for which he was responsible? You know, he he didn't list the crimes. The crimes were these are the crimes. And then him and his attorneys basically had him plead, plead guilty or admit to them in a court of law.

3:34:48Now, if he has other crimes out there and there are crimes that he could be prosecuted for, if there's other homicides out there, he would be stupid to have not thrown those out of the table during that plea deal, because now he can still be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, including the death penalty on those cases. So the court held a hearing, of course, and did allow victim testimony, which is so important. It's such an important piece of this. And one of those to testify, we have a short soundbite, was a woman named Mary Berward, who was only 13 years old when she was attacked by the Golden State killer.

3:35:32Here's that soundbite in part number three. On June 25th, 1979, at 4 a.m., Joseph James D 'Angelo forced his way into my home, into my life, into my room. A child's room, personally decorated with hand-painted hearts and rainbows, quotes about love and kindness. He raped me. He stole my innocence, my security. Threatened my life, threatened the lives of my family. I was 13 years old. No 13 year old should have to find out what a rape kit is. And then it turned out I had been ovulating. So steps were taken to prevent a pregnancy. Oh, my God. Talk about putting a real face on just a list of victims.

3:36:38You know, that brings it home. Not that the judge was ever going to go light on this guy, but it's somewhat cathartic. I've talked to enough victims to know it's somewhat cathartic to just have your say. Yeah, Mary, you know, I had reached out to her about 10 years prior and we chatted briefly on the phone. want to come in and have a face-to-face talk. It was just too much for her to do at that point in her life. But I always had her number in my cell phone. And so after the press conference where we announced that D 'Angelo was arrested, I'm driving to lunch to meet the genealogy team, and Mary calls me and I answer it.

3:37:25Hi, Mary. And she asks, and it's such a meek voice on the phone. Is it him? Is it really him? And I told her, yes, it's him and he will never get out. And she starts to sob.

3:37:47and after sobbing for five seconds 10 seconds she's just going I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm not upset I am so so happy and here after 30 some odd years this 13 year old girl now as an adult woman you know those 30 years of trauma were pouring out and you know to see her be so strong and confronting him was amazing. Oh my gosh, Paul. And the relief she must have felt to know he cannot hurt anyone ever again. He can put no other children, women, men through this. He did speak. He did speak two days later, August 21st, 2020. As you point out, he hasn't said much, but we have a little bit of what he did say in soundbite four.

3:38:43I've listened to all your statements, each one of them.

3:39:00And I'm truly sorry to everyone I've heard. Thank you, Your Honor.

3:39:14What do we make of that?

3:39:19Well, a little bit of backstory from those victim impact statements is not once did he look at his victims as they were talking to him. And some of them called him out saying, you're such a coward. Now, we talked earlier about DiAngelo and how vindictive he is. and he all along during the course at you know all his court appearance he's been playing this frail old man and we know he's not so here he is being called a coward and so he took that moment he easily could have just leaned forward from his wheelchair and talked in the microphone and said sorry in a wimpy little voice but he chose to stand up turn and face the part of the audience where those victims were sitting.

3:40:09This is him basically saying, I'm not a coward. And I think his apologies are hollow. He took that moment to psychologically instill fear into these victims once again, because I will tell you, when he stood up, even though he's lost a lot of wait, his physical presence resonated throughout that space, that conference room we were in. I'm sure. So this was him basically, I won't say it on your show, but sort of an F you to the victims. Yeah. And someone like that, I do believe in one's aura, whatever it is, energy, spiritual, who knows but they have an evil aura when you're in the presence of evil oftentimes you actually do know you can feel it and looking at him and knowing what he had done i'm sure they felt it that day so it is scary i mean it's it is i felt it hellacious yeah it's like the devil incarnate right there um nope so he's in prison for the rest of his life that's that's that he hasn't written a book.

3:41:21He hasn't done a big interview. Do you think we'll ever know more?

3:41:30He has been contacted, of course, by numerous individuals, outlets, you know, to come in and talk to him, and he's refused every single request. There is hope that maybe he will talk to select individuals from the investigation under certain circumstances. And that's something that we're talking about and Marie Schubert and myself as time goes on. And I hope we get that opportunity because, you know, there is knowledge to be gained by law enforcement and by the community with what he knows about the reasons for his attack and how he committed these attacks. But I don't know when when that's going to occur, if it's going to occur.

3:42:25And, you know, he's he's not getting any younger. And quite frankly, he's probably the number one target in the nation in the prison system for other inmates. So I just hope the prison system does keep him safe, even though that seems contradictory, you know, from considering the horror of the crimes that he committed. But I really do want to have a chance to talk to him or I hope somebody gets a chance to talk to him eventually. Is he in solitary? Gary? He's in down in ADSEG, administrative segregation down in Corcoran. And they have what I've been told by a CDC authority is that that's the best location for him.

3:43:11They have the most robust ADSEG component of any of the prisons in California. I mean, based on the history you just told me, I feel like the best way to get him to sit might be to say he's not man enough to do it. Well, that's, you know, what we've talked a variety of strategies on what would make him most willing to talk. And that conversation is ongoing. What about you now? You got your man, you got your house in Colorado, you got your retirement, your pension. Now what? Well, my retirement hasn't gone the way I thought it was going to go. So, you know, I obviously have gotten very involved on the media side of things, both TV as well as podcasting.

3:44:09And I'm pursuing those opportunities. And I really, in many ways, they keep me involved because I focus in on projects where I can help out on the case. I can help law enforcement, you know, consult and not just tell a story. You know, that's I that's going to be my goal moving forward is to continue to take on projects where, you know, let's see if we can get other family members answers as to what happened. I don't see you just doing golf and fishing and skiing, but it would be nice, given the way you've lived, if you could get a bit more of that into your day. I, well, I, you know, out here in Colorado, you know, I've, I've taken up mountain biking.

3:44:53I've got a Jeep where I can go out into the back country and, and what I call my dandelion brakes where I just kind of get away. But I've been so pulled in so many directions that, you know, those instances of that type of activity are few and far between. Paul, what a pleasure. Thank you so much for being here and for telling us the story. Well, thank you very much for having me. And don't forget, I want our audience to go buy your book, support you in your retirement. You've earned it. The book is called Unmasked, and it is absolutely riveting. My team read it, and I'm in the process of reading it, and you will not be sorry that you picked this one up.

3:45:31Thanks again. What an incredible journey and a testament to Paul and all the others who worked so tirelessly on this case. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tremphaya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tremphaya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Tremphaya, proper training is required. Tremphaya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis, serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur.

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3:47:09Harry, Harry, bring it on. Ray Trapani was always fascinated with money. Those who knew him as a child knew that he would someday become a millionaire, but they couldn't imagine how. In the mid-2010s, he was broke and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. But then he and a business partner set out on a mission to create a Bitcoin debit card. The company they created and the technology they promoted, however, was all a lie. And it did not take long for everything to come crashing down. Today, we bring you the story that was the focus of the Netflix documentary, BitConned, with the man at the center of it all.

3:47:51Ray Trapani is the founder and former COO of Bitcoin company Centratech. He's joined today by his high school best friend and co-host of his new podcast, creating a con, the story of BitConned. Johnny B. Goode, that's his friend.

3:48:10Guys, welcome to the show. Thanks for having us. Nice to see you. Okay, so I watched the Netflix documentary and Ray, I gotta tell you the truth. I found you completely charming in so many ways and I ended the series thinking he's definitely still a criminal. Am I wrong? Yeah, you're definitely wrong in that regard. I've changed a lot. You have. Okay. Well, like what did it? Getting convicted? Because you didn't have to serve jails. I can see how actual prison time would reform a guy. But what did it? So I was addicted to drugs since I was 12. So then basically once I got arrested this time, it was the first time being sober since for 15 years of drug use.

3:48:54So that really is what changed me. And, you know, all these crimes I did, I always did them under the influence. I really feel like, not for nothing, but we've interviewed many felons on this show. And some guys did a lot of frauds over the course of their lives in their 20s and their 30s, and then wound up using their talents for good, like helped the state. And I know you did work with the government ultimately, but like, just FYI, this could potentially be a lane for you because you're a talented guy in many ways. and you actually successfully pulled off a lot of these capers. But I just want to say that for the record before we get going, because I think you could have a great life in front of you, and I hope it's all used for good.

3:49:37Now, Johnny, you were in the documentary a bit, but not as much as Ray, who's the star, because it's his story. But you guys, what, you've been best friends since you were kids? Yeah, we've been best friends since third grade or fourth grade. And we grew up together in the same town. I always considered him like a brother to me. And we just took very different paths in life. But we always remained best friends. Despite if you wrote, if you wrote us down on paper. Did you know, like, okay, you know, Ray, yeah. You know, is he one of those guys? Like, he cheated on the test. Was there like a strain of dishonesty or potential future fraud?

3:50:15Or did he always color within the lines? What's that? No, this was, this was like, a lot of people ask me, did you like, were you shocked? It was very natural progression throughout Ray's whole life. It was like a progression of criminality. Ray's been involved in criminal activity since he's 12 years old. So this was not really a shock to me. It's interesting because it sounds like Ray, like we meet your mom and she seems totally lovely. But around you growing up, you know, one important thing, which is your dad split. So you didn't really have a father growing up. And then now you've since come out and said you actually suffered abuse too, sexual abuse as a young man.

3:51:00So explain how you think you got to the point where crossing the legal lines just kind of wasn't a thing for you. Yeah. So basically as a kid, from 8 to 12, I was being molested pretty much regularly. And my mom, my dad had left and my mom was working 12 hours a day in the ICU as a nurse. So from that, and then I also, I felt like it was happening and it was so obvious to everybody in my family that everybody always knew. So pretty much at a very young age, I was like, it's me against the world. And because of that, I also viewed my grandfather as like a, he started a union in New York City. So pretty much anybody that's connected with the unions has some sort of connection.

3:51:43So he presented as like a mobster figure. and he was also like the one that always had cash, would help my mom get the house or get me my first car. So I was just like, that's who my idol is. And I viewed it as like it was criminal activity based, right? So I was like, that's what the route I'm going to take. In the documentary, I talked about trauma for about two hours before I said I always wanted to be a criminal, but they just took the last line and made it seem like that was just like my opening thing to say. Right. That did come out of nowhere. So that makes more sense. So you, it was the first like actual step toward criminality, the use of drugs or just walk us through like that first line cross as you remember it.

3:52:26Yeah. The same person that was abusing me, uh, like had me smoking weed at 12. And then from there, I, I, I became friends with one of like the biggest drug dealers in was little brother, but the biggest drug dealers in Long Island for weed. And I just started selling weed. That was like my first step into crime. Hmm. And have you you've never said who this person was who hurt you? No, it's my stepbrother. How did it finally stop? I got bit. I grew up, you know, I started like dating. What happened was like I was always questioning my sexuality up until 12. And then I got a girlfriend and I pretty much had my first interaction with a girl sexually.

3:53:08And I was like, oh, well, I'm definitely not. I'm definitely not gay. So then that's kind of what just like I pretty much at like 13, 14. I just was always with that girl. She she had a troubled childhood also. And my mom, we had like a crazy household, but she basically moved into my house like at like 14, 15, like kind of getting away from her family as well. So that's kind of what just guided me away. Then they got a divorce pretty much like right around that same time. So he was just out of the picture completely. I also have two boys, by the way. So I have two little boys now. You know, yes, I'm sure you're very protective of them.

3:53:49Has he contacted you to say, what are you doing? Or I'm sorry, or threatened you? Like, how has he reacted to you going public with that? I have no idea. I mean, I haven't heard from him since I was 17. So I mean, he was always like, he was very different than me and my brothers were like beach bums. My brothers are big surfers. And then they were like kind of dirty fingernails, rock band type of guys. So honestly, they probably live in like the boondocks. And I really have no idea what's going on with them. Okay. So you wind up getting a little older. And then we were talking about sort of your first foray into crossing legal lines.

3:54:29And you had the family influence. You kind of thought this was what people did. So what was it? Was it drugs? At first, yeah. I mean, I was doing drugs and I started selling drugs. And then pretty much quickly that evolved into fraud because it was like drug-based fraud. So I had someone, someone stole a pad because I was doing OxyContin and then someone stole a prescription pad and just gave it to me. And I just had this kid write out the prescriptions. And I basically had like, at first like me and my girlfriend went in and the scripts worked. they filled. And at the time, OxyContin, like I was, you know, like the opiate epidemic really hit my generation hard.

3:55:11So everybody was doing OxyContin. It was like, no one was talking about the negative effects of it. And everybody was just trying it. So the pills sold very fast. And I was fully addicted by 15, 16. And then this happened about 17 years old. That was like my first fraud. And I got arrested for that case as well. What year was that? So if I was 17, I was born in 91. That was 2008. Okay. And Johnny, did you, were you there for this? Like, do you remember Ray getting involved with drugs and, you know, sort of going down this lane? I mean, like he, like he said, the opiate epidemic hit our generation pretty hard.

3:55:51So this was like, everyone was taking these pills. In the high school we went to, we didn't even know it was synthetic heroin at the time, but people used to be selling blues or oxys for two, three dollars a pop. And then all of a sudden they went to forty five dollars when everything started cracking down, which then everyone turned to heroin experts because they were addicted. All of these things were super common growing up. So, you know, we we were talking the other day about if you go through our yearbook, this we probably know more people that died from addiction than anything else. So yeah, it was kind of par for the course.

3:56:25I know you grew up in Long Island, right? But what kind of an area was it? Long Island's got all sorts of different neighborhoods. We grew up in a beautiful picturesque place called Atlantic Beach. Love it. So this is like... Sorry, go ahead. So it really is like... On the surface, everything's beautiful and perfect, but there's like a darkness that kind of lies underneath. And not just the drugs in Atlanta, I think like the culture in general. And I think that's kind of the same with a lot of these small towns. Ray, I can't believe you got away with taking, somebody swiped a doctor's prescription pad, as you point out, out of a doctor's office.

3:57:07And then you started writing prescriptions up. Like 2008 was not, you know, 1998 when we really had no clue and the opioid crisis was first start. You know, like, it's amazing to me that they wouldn't double check the doctor's signature. Like, how did you not get caught right away on that one? So there was the method. So basically, the doctor's offices close at around 6, 7 o 'clock. So you make sure you go to the pharmacy after the doctor's offices close because they always call to verify. But they'll fill the prescription without the doctor verifying if the doctor's offices close. So we would just do that.

3:57:41But the pharmacies were all in on the opiate epidemic. Walgreens got sued, I believe. That's where we always went. and if you see a bunch of skinny, crackhead-looking kids coming into your pharmacy one after the other filling prescriptions for Oxycontin, you would assume something's wrong. We didn't get caught until we went to a mom-and-pop pharmacy and that was when they were like, oh, this is definitely something wrong here and they called the cops. So everybody was in on that whole opioid epidemic. That's fascinating and frankly believable. So, okay, you get caught. You don't wind up serving jail time.

3:58:16you get kind of a slap on the wrist, right? Yeah, for that I did drug court. Pretty much like every single time I would get arrested, I would always go to rehab and then do some sort of drug outpatient type of thing always. But I always had very good lawyers, obviously. And you're a good-looking guy. Do you feel like you were able to charm these judges? I'm just wondering how that played because you're going to have a lot of people out there being like, if he was a black kid from Chicago, he would have been put behind bars. Yeah, I hear that regularly. And I don't know the correct answer. I'm a handsome white guy.

3:58:54So I mean, I don't really have the answer for what would happen if I was a black guy. Really, I don't know. Right, right. But I'm sure like it somewhat has to play into, you know, like I, I don't know, you know, I can't really give you an answer for that one. Well, we'll let the audience take a look at the YouTube and make up their own minds on it. All right, so then you wind up graduating to a car, like getting a lovely car rental service going, exotic, Miami exotic, right? That's what it was called? Correct, yes. But it was not in Miami or was it actually in Miami? Yeah, so I basically, like during that time of drug court, I started working in construction.

3:59:35My grandfather got me a union card. I started working. I was like, I hate this. This is terrible. I don't know how anybody could work a job like this. this honest job is not for me yeah i was breaking my back doing scaffolding at the new world trade center for like a couple years there and then i basically was i went and visited my friend down in miami and uh that's when i at first i i found this loophole in venmo when i first moved down there and i was able to just send money without having money in the bank account to back it and uh i just like kind of exploited that loophole to the maximum extent and you know we made like a good amount of money on it.

4:00:13I don't know the exact figure. But from there, I was like, I came back to New York. I told my girlfriend, I was like, I'm moving down to Miami. She didn't even believe me. And then I was like, you're the come with me. Oh, you're staying here. And I just, the next day, put my TV and everything in my car and drove down there and kind of continued with the Venmo thing for a little bit there, built up a few hundred thousand. And from there, we parlayed that into opening an exotic car rental business. Yeah, the Venmo scheme is actually very interesting to me too, because I read you were talking about how if the way it works is like, let's say you wanted to Venmo three grand Johnny, but you had, you know,$2 in your account on Venmo.

4:00:56There was this period where Venmo would send it, even though you didn't have the funds and they might shut down that account of yours, but they didn't come after you for it. yeah uh venmo paypal they all had the same issue i don't know how they allowed this but basically they would front the money um as long as you had one transaction done through your account they would just front the money as soon as you sent it and the other person would get it and be able to cash it out and your account would just go negative three like basically bounce against the bank account and uh you'd get a 35 like i don't know whatever the fee would be and then uh your venmo would just get banned.

4:01:37And back then, like, they didn't even bill you for it. It was just like, your Vemmo was banned. So it was like, all right, we're going to find like 100 people to do the exact same thing. And I just like created like fake Instagram accounts, like, to find like college kids that were broke that needed money quick and give them$1 ,000 out of the transaction, take the other couple thousand. And we just did that for a little bit there. I mean, I have to give you points for ingenuity. Like, who would have even thought about this? How did you discover that this could even happen? I was just sitting on the balcony.

4:02:10This is something Johnny speaks to a lot as far as how I view systems. Maybe Johnny can expand. Yeah, I mean, even going back to when we were talking about like the pharmacy thing and and the Venmo thing, Ray just has a very unique way of looking at systems and then like figuring out a way to exploit them. You mentioned earlier how like, you know, he's very intelligent in a lot of ways. And if he would have applied that somewhere else, like he could have done it. I mean, you did do some amazing things, but you could have done some kind of really world changing things. It's always fascinated me.

4:02:45And it's like, it taught me a new way to look at things in general. Ray can look at a system and like immediately figure it out and figure out where the flaws lie. It is kind of a gift and it could be used for good if you put on the white hat. You know, you spent a lot of time wearing the dark hat. But now I think you're kind of in a transition period where you're, you know, you're totally owning up to what life was like before. And it's a new start. Okay, so let's get to, you're running the exotic car company. You've got this money that you kind of stole. Well, not kind of, you did steal via Venmo.

4:03:19And that was your seed money for getting all these Lamborghinis and Ferraris and renting them out to people who wanted a beautiful rental car. And among those who came in were some celebrities. And this would later prove very important, these connections that you were forming while doing this. Who were they? We had pretty much every celebrity you can ever think of. But they're mostly like rappers. Everybody comes to Miami and just rents cars and spends all their money. As far as that business down in Miami, it's one of the best businesses. I wish I would have stayed in that business. But everybody from Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Young Ma, like all these names, but Floyd Mayweather, DJ Khaled, those other guys, every time they're down in Miami, unless they live there now, a lot of them live there now.

4:04:05But it's just pretty much what everybody does. Everybody wants a nice car. Even when I go down to Miami, I always would want to get a nice car. So you're making good money, but you're spending a ton, and this would ultimately be a problem. What were you spending all the money on? So that's one thing I always talk about. Now, at that point, I was trying to go legit with that business. And of course, I had bad spending habits. I was a degenerate gambler, drugs, going out to the club. but also my partners were not the best partners. And they were also like stealing money from me and kind of just embezzling money from the company.

4:04:46So that became a big issue as well. And then like, you know, but we were also just going out to the club every day. In Miami, you go out to the club, it's$10 ,000. It's not a cheap night ever. But anything you can imagine, we also had like a beautiful penthouse apartment in Boca that we all lived in. and our offices are, just pretty much anything you can imagine as far as like Miami scene for young kids is what we were spending our money on. So you're earning big, but you're spending big. And it turns out there was an embezzlement problem on top of all of it, which isn't a great recipe for keeping the business afloat.

4:05:24All right, so then how does this parlay into the subject of the Netflix documentary, your podcast, tons of articles? You know, this story just blew up once you guys got caught for what you did with Centra, S-C-E-N-T-R-A. Take us from Miami Exotic, the car rental thing, to the birth of this crypto company. Yeah, so basically there was a point there where I go, like, the business is about$400 ,000 in debt. and I go to Vegas and I basically said I brought my last$100 ,000 to Vegas and I just was like I played in the World Series of Poker this was my genius attempt to try to make the$400 ,000 back played in the World Series of Poker and then I basically played Baccarat with the last of it in hopes to try to make it all back or I was going to kill myself and then I lost it all and then I just took about 100 Xanax or like 50-60 Xanax and I basically just fell asleep for 24 hours and woke up.

4:06:24And then from there, I fly back and my two business partners are arguing with each other about where this money went. They're basically blaming each other because one of them, the check was cashed in one of their names for like over 100 ,000. And they were just saying this guy wrote it out and he cashed it. And I didn't know what was the truth and ended up deciding to get rid of one of my partners and go with the other one who ended up being my partner in Centratech. So after we had gotten rid of the first guy, this other guy was just like, one day I just saw him trading. I thought it was stocks.

4:06:59And he was like, oh, this is like the new thing, cryptocurrency. And I was like, whatever that means. You know what I mean? I had no clue. But then he kind of broke it down for me. And from there, he ended up losing a bunch while he was trading. And from there, he was trying to sue Coinbase for what they call a flash crash. I don't know if anybody really know what that means, but basically the price just went down from a couple hundred dollars down to zero and then right back up. So anybody that has a trade position gets liquidated right away. And so he was trying to sue. And through trying to sue, he went on Reddit and found out about these companies that are creating ICOs, which is basically a cryptocurrency version of an IPO.

4:07:42And they're like just young kids raising hundreds of millions of dollars. hmm so johnny this is one of the things that they talk about and i know you guys address is like the industry is totally unregulated i mean it remains completely unregulated for the most part but this if you were looking to start a fraud this would be a great lane to do it in yeah and ray ray kind of taught me that um people like ray and sorby when they're thinking that was his partner at the time when they're thinking of like what to do they they look for unregulated markets that's like you know it's like chumming the water for sharks pretty much um and to raise point since he's been caught things have not gotten better they've gotten it seems like worse in the crypto space um right where you know we were joking before like at least centra tried to hide hide it behind some legitimacy but a lot of the coins that are coming out today are just they're like open scams with no concept other than get rich quick.

4:08:46What's amazing to me in watching the story is the fraud was so bold. The claims you were making were so bold, false, but bold. And it took a while for anyone to figure it out. You made tens of millions of dollars before anybody was like, what the hell's happening here? Before you got an SEC letter, it's crazy how long it went on and how much money you made despite what seems to be an easily pierced veil of legitimacy. So can you just give us a couple of things that you guys did to make this company? Well, before we get to that, explain what the theory was that you were selling, because I still don't totally understand.

4:09:28It's like a credit card for crypto. But one of my big questions was, how on earth Could you ever fool anybody into thinking such a thing is legitimate? Because they'd be looking for their crypto credit card to arrive in the mail, and they'd be looking to use it, and they'd find out really fast, this doesn't work. No one accepts this. This actually isn't worth anything. Yeah, so there's a lot of things to break down there. So basically, when you create one of these companies, you create it based on a concept. And originally, when we were raising the money, we had said that we were in beta testing, right?

4:10:02So we gave them a – this is a timeline of when the cards would be ready for mass adoption, basically. So the whole time we were raising the money, people weren't expecting cards. They were just basically looking at us make videos using like what was beta tested. And from there, they were investing on the concept, not as much as like, oh, I pay now, I get a card. And basically the concept was how it really works and how it works today. What people don't realize is that we ended up actually developing it by the time we got arrested. And we had the cards working with the wallet. So how it works is essentially you have cryptocurrency in a crypto wallet.

4:10:41And then you have a debit card or a prepaid card. And the prepaid card is backed by a pool of fiat currency. So then as soon as the person swipes, it pays in fiat currency. But on our side, on the back end, we take out the cryptocurrency value of how much they spent in fiat. And so we just have a fiat pool that blocks it. Like cash, US dollar, whatever country, you know, euros, US dollar, you know, whatever country the card's being used in. So just explain. So the way it would work, the way you'd sell it is, okay, Megyn Kelly, here's a card, you buy it. And then what? How would you tell me this is all going to go down?

4:11:20So you're going to be able to swipe your card and then it's going to subtract that amount in cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, whatever crypto you're using out of your crypto wallet. and where would you say I could use this card anywhere like at the Walgreens it's a Visa card yeah you can just go to the store and use it they have them now there's other companies that were our competitors that made the same lies that now own Staples Center they said they had Visa MasterCard they own Staples Center they just settled so it works the concept works that's unbelievable okay so we've gotten there the vision actually was realized but it wasn't totally real while you were doing it and pushing it yeah yeah absolutely the um yeah go ahead no we completely lied in the very beginning that's 100 true and that's what we were arrested for people don't people like uh netflix like uh sensationalized the part about just like the crime part, right?

4:12:22We completely lied. We made up a fake CEO. We didn't have Visa MasterCard in the beginning. But once we raised a few million dollars, we actually worked. We hired 40 plus developers in-house to develop this product. And we built towards what we were trying to develop. And we got there by the time we got arrested. But that's just not talked about ever. That's the bitter irony of the whole thing.

4:12:51All right, so you're committing this fraud. You're getting people to donate based on the beta testing. Like it's going to be the next big thing. You should get in now while the getting's good. And then at some point early on, I guess, there was like a crypto guru who wrote a favorable article about Centra Tech. And my impression from the podcast, guys, is that you were like, hell yeah, great. You weren't expecting this. And it turns out this guy didn't even mean to be writing it about your company. Hold on. There's a little clip, I think, from the Netflix special about this guy. Let's play it and then you guys can explain it in stop one.

4:13:37Clearly, there was a reason why all this big money was coming in.

4:13:43People in our chat room started saying, Cliff, I wrote this article. You guys see that? And me and Sorby like jumped in there. We're like, of course we know Cliff High. Like we love Cliff High. Like, yeah, he's the man. We had no fucking idea who he was. The whole banking system is failing. But in the meantime, we're all going to be dealing with real money in the form of gold, silver and cryptos. And the cryptos are going to be the fluid part of it. And he was like a crypto guru type of guy. He's just some like old nerd. He was saying this is going to be a big thing. He put out this press release telling all his big investors to put out their money for Centrum.

4:14:25We went from having like 200 people in our Slack channel to having like 2 ,000 people within like, you know, a couple hours. Time to go to the stratosphere. This company has taken off. Unbelievable. So it was just dumb luck. so the so we had raised a few hundred thousand completely like just grinding it out going in different chat rooms pitching our idea then that article came out and within a couple hours a few million came in oh my god i kind of feel bad for cliff high do you feel bad i do too he's a super nice guy and he's actually very intelligent what he does is he uses like almost like an ai type of system that searches the internet for things and he didn't do his due diligence before he put out his press release that had us in there.

4:15:11It basically combined the name censure with a bank. And that was why that confusion happened. Oh, my Lord. You can't make this stuff up, right? It's like this poor guy. Now, since he's come out, he's like very sorry that he did all this and all that. But the damage is done. All right. So how long were things rolling around, rolling along post the cliff high mistaken article with all the money pouring in? so so how long was things going on like until the new york times reporter came sniffing around like what how long were the glory days before somebody was really kicking the tires it was really like a year period where everything was going good my timelines are terrible though from my substance abuse i really like i'm not gonna hold you to it i'm just looking for a general feel all right so we're like around about a year period and what yeah what kind of dough are you bringing in um at the height like what happened was crazy too is that everything we had raised they said we raised 32 million but that was at the same time as we raised that money crypto went up like 10x so it became a few hundred million uh pretty quickly so we were making about two million a day at some points and what people there's another part that people never really covered is uh i I figured out a way to basically control the price from like this decentralized exchange that ended up getting shut down.

4:16:36But there was like a way back then that you could essentially like artificially control the price. It's amazing. Like you've got these genius powers that were used for evil. But it's wonderful to hear you talking about them and letting us all in on the secrets in a way. Because it's like this thing is still big and it's still out there. And there are tons of people who are buying crypto as we speak. I mean, I guess we should ask that. Johnny, do you want to speak to this? Is it all a fraud? I mean, I know some people say this about Bitcoin and Ethereum. It's all fraudulent. I think there's so many things.

4:17:12People hate nuance nowadays. And there's so many things that are some things. Yeah, do your research. Some of them are legitimate. Some of them are not legitimate. it. And just because one of them is a scam or I mean, in crypto's case, a few hundred of them are a scam doesn't mean they all are a scam. You know, I would just say stick to the basics. And if there's a coin named after like an animal, probably don't buy that one. So let me just ask you, Ray, were you shocked, shocked when Sam Bankman Freed got arrested and his company imploded? no not at all um i wasn't i wasn't shocked i think in cryptocurrency pretty much like 95 percent of it is fraud uh like if it's not considered fraud it's insiders you know like the insiders are the ones always getting rich and even like the controlling the price thing now it's just done by ai bots and they call them market makers it's all the same thing all these projects are making crazy money now and their new loophole is just don't offer any product.

4:18:19Let's just tell everybody they're going to get rich off a picture of a dog. Wow. So do you own any crypto now, either one of you guys? Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, same. Well, so why? Why? Why would you trust anybody who's in the market now? So like the ability to, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, in my opinion, are great investments. I mean, not financial advice or whatever they want you to say there. But I think there's a great thing to be able to just send money to someone in China instantly without any bank involvement. I think that's the real use case, in my opinion. There's some smaller use cases, maybe if you want to like put a cryptocurrency in a game and make it something like that.

4:19:03Or there's a couple of fun use cases, I guess people can make out that are there's probably legitimate projects trying to do it. But for the most part, you just want to be able to spend, I mean, send money anywhere. Like I can send money to Johnny without having to go on the bank, or I can send money to anybody without having to go on the bank. Okay. So back to your company, Centratech. This guy writes the article, the money's pouring in. And when you say it was worth more like between two and 300 million, that you're not suggesting you had that money in the bank, What are you suggesting? How do you get that number on the company?

4:19:40The market cap of the company was$600 million. We created$100 million Centra tokens. That was worth$6 ,000 of the coin. We had sold those and we kept$32 million. That's a loan about$150 million of company-owned Centra tokens. But then we also raised$200 ,000 Ethereum, which were at a time over$1 ,000. So that's another$200 million. So at one point, our company has$350 million. If we wanted to liquidate it, we were liquidating a lot to be able to pay our employees and, you know, do whatever we wanted to do. So realistically, we had liquid. Like, it's tough because, like, you would say that's not liquid maybe because it's in cryptocurrency, but we could have sold any amount of it at any time and made it liquid instantly.

4:20:29Hmm. All right. So things are rolling and you're living the high life, enjoying the money and the Armani suits and all of the accoutrements, the fancy watch, the Rolex and so on. And then a writer from the New York Times named Nathaniel Popper gives you guys a call. And he wants to figure out a couple of things about the company, including why on your website, I guess you decided to go with just everyone went to Harvard Business School. Every single person there went to Harvard. Like you didn't, but Johnny's laughing. Why didn't you like mix it up a little? You know, like this guy went to Wharton and this guy went to, like, why did you, it seemed effortless to just say everyone's Harvard.

4:21:17Well, the funny, there's a funny story there actually, because what happened was someone had said something about us and we all, Sorby was like, everybody created LinkedIn and we all created those LinkedIn separately in different houses. And then we all put Harvard. And then right away when we noticed that, I changed mine to UCLA pretty quickly. I don't know what Farkas did. So that was just the original thing was the Harvard thing. And it's pretty funny. Like that was just all of our instantly like, oh, yeah, we all went to Harvard. Can you explain Farkas? Because we haven't talked about him.

4:21:50We talked about Sorby, your buddy who you knew from earlier. And who is this third guy? Because he becomes important. Yeah, I feel bad. I always talk so bad about him. He's a nice kid. He's just Sorby's fiance's brother. and he kind of got roped into this. In my opinion, he shouldn't have got any jail time. I even told the FBI that and they basically just said something along the lines of if someone's telling you that you're doing your fraud, you can't be like, I didn't know. But he really didn't. Even though he was involved in the conversations, I don't think he comprehended what me and Sorby were talking about.

4:22:29He's so like, oh, we're trying to build a company. He's in the documentary, and I think it's fair to say, can't stand you. Yeah, yeah. I think what they did also on Netflix is, like, they showed him a clip of me talking about him to, like, rile him up before he talked. Because there was points there, like, other edits where I think he was talking more highly of, like, I don't think he has any real issue with me. His issue is that, like, I'm talking bad about him. And I'm not trying to talk bad about him. I'm saying I don't think he was even involved in the actual crime of everything. Who was the brains of the operation between you, Sorby, and Farkas?

4:23:09Sorby was definitely the head honcho, for sure the main guy, and I was second in command. He was the original idea guy, and I was just the guy that would manage the employees, and then I found out some other loopholes throughout that time. But yeah, and the funny thing is me and Sorby both went to the same high school. Did you guys go to college at all? I think Sorby went to St. John's for a year and then he got kicked out for... So not Harvard. Okay. All right, so you set it up. The website is, you know, kind of... And as I understand it, Johnny, they stole the website from another tech company.

4:23:49Well, what do you mean? They stole the website or the idea? They just copied somebody else's website, right? It wasn't like they didn't come up. They kind of found a company that looked like it was in business. There's a lot of just copying and then changing things going around at CentroTech from the idea itself to the website to, I don't know, most facets of it. It's amazing to me that you would, again, it's a bold move to just steal somebody else's as opposed to just, like, that's another indicator, obvious, of fraud. And perhaps the most bold move of all, Ray, was to say that you had struck a partnership with Visa and MasterCard in connection with your cards, which of course would legitimize it in the eyes of a potential consumer.

4:24:31And this New York Times reporter, Nathaniel Popper, found out that was not in any way true. Here's a bit more from BitCond via Netflix of that. sought to. Um, Ray, I've been coming across other questions that have come up around Centra. The first thing is Visa has said nobody has applied to issue a Centra card. I mean, I know details about that, you know, I mean, but I mean, I can't give you direct answers on that. These guys say that they're issuing a card with Visa, They have pictures up on their website that have cards that have the Visa logo on it. One of the first things I did was call Visa.

4:25:20They said, we have no idea who these guys are, and there is no record of an application. They're going to have to take that off of their website. I can't, yeah. Okay, I mean, Visa's just saying this company, Centra, is not allowed to issue a card with Visa on it. Until we do the mass orders, they're never going to speak on them. anytime somebody tells you you know i i don't really feel comfortable answering that question or these are questions that are very very very tough for me to answer to you you know i mean like you know that there's something going on here oh god this was not a banner moment for you ray were you you were definitely drugged up during these phone calls no oh i was at that point in my life, I was taking 20 Xanax a day, like 40 milligrams of Xanax every single day the whole time I was running Sentra.

4:26:13Then besides that, I was so you didn't feel panic. I mean, on the bright side, you probably didn't panic when you got that phone call. Yeah, I was probably smiling on the phone. But yeah, I felt nothing. That was the thing. I really felt absolutely nothing that entire time. I was empty in that way. But I mean, obviously, it's an edit to make me set like they literally just highlighted just my uh as much as possible but um i definitely was high as a kite there he talks about how as he's the new york times reporter is doing his investigation he's watching the centritech website and it's removing the references to visa and mastercard taking down the linkedins that say harvard like as he calls with hey what about this what about this you guys are actively changing it which is just the worst possible thing you can do So nothing says I'm committing a fraud like that.

4:27:04So in a way, you guys are very sophisticated. And in a way, you were very keystone. Am I wrong? You're 100 % right. We were in over our heads as far as how big this thing got. We had done fraud before. But it's easy when it's small-scale stuff. But once you're in the public eye and a company gets to the point we did after we had those huge endorsements, it got tough because there were just so many eyes on you so every little thing that you had that was not true would just get called out instantly so like throughout the whole time we were taking visa down putting it back on just to keep an investor like that was the thing is that the investors were controlling our like our decisions on what to do on the website like if a guy had invested a million dollars and he was like oh where'd visa mastercard we just put it right back up.

4:27:54We're just trying to keep whatever money we had. So you mentioned the celebs. This is where DJ Khaled and Floyd Mayweather from Exotic Cars or Miami Exotic come back into the story. How did you use them to promote this fake company? Yeah, it's always pretty funny that people follow any sort of rap or boxers financial advice, but that's the cryptocurrency world for you um so yeah we just basically reached out for an endorsement through their managers which the manager was like someone we had met in the club scene more so than even the car scene um and pretty much you just pay them and you give them a script and they say whatever you want them to say you know they'll promote pretty much anything especially floyd he's crazy like i've seen him promoting lawn products bug sprays uh you just give him some money and he does it oh god even now even post this i don't know he's a crazy guy i've just seen him promote some wild stuff on there and uh i always just make jokes about like the amount of things that he's promoted but i i think if like he's selling boxing gloves you should probably buy them but i wouldn't uh take his financial advice but you know it wasn't of course johnny it wasn't just those two celebs endorsing centratech we saw in the sam bankman freed scandal it was tom brady and giselle and Larry, David, like these celebrities, if the price is right, they sell out.

4:29:23Yeah. And I and Ray has spoken on that before. First of all, like with the Centratech thing, that was kind of before the it was cool to do that, because right afterwards is when all the celebrities started kind of doing that. And a lot of them did get in trouble. But the amount that the check that like a normal commercial can offer you versus a crypto commercial is going to be like vastly different. And a lot of the celebrities, a lot of the time, I don't really think they fully understand what they're promoting. They're just like, sure, like big check. You guys are legitimate enough that you have like commercial spots on these big channels.

4:30:01Okay, I'll do it. Sure. Yeah, that's all it is, is that we just, the value proposition was just so much better in crypto because we just had, like we knew that Floyd Mayweather, we gave him a million dollars. We were going to make five million the next day. So we had the ability to do that. When you're a regular company that's promoting a product, I don't think Floyd Mayweather is going to bring you in that much money so they aren't able to give him a million dollars. So that's why all these celebrities right away, of course they'll take these big checks. To do a couple Instagram posts, it's the easiest thing I've ever heard for a million dollars.

4:30:36What's crazy is like, okay, I don't know about Floyd's situation, but you look at Tom Brady, he didn't need money. Giselle is even richer than Tom Brady is. She was for a while the highest paid supermodel in the world. Why would they take the risk? This is one of my questions. Why would you take the risk with this cryptocurrency company like they did with Sam Bankman-Fried? But you're just saying it's just the easiest money ever. Besides it just being the easiest money ever, I think with the SBF one is a little bit more detailed because the public perception was so high of who he was. and he was donating to campaigns and to every both sides, right and left.

4:31:15And he just, no one thought it was going to fall through. I mean, there was just too much. It seemed like it was too big to fail. And I think those big celebrities, he probably offered them massive money, like$5 million for just one commercial. That probably took them like a few hours out of their lives or maybe even more than that. I think the amount of money those guys probably got for those commercials was crazy. I think they're actually, SBF is helping the government as of like two days ago in regards to the celebrity endorsements. We'll continue to follow that one. So Nathaniel Popper of the New York Times is legit and was onto the scent.

4:31:54But there were other guys who write about crypto who also were questioning whether you guys were legit. and never to be daunted by somebody sniffing around, you guys wound up buying a lot of those guys off. Maybe I'm not cynical enough, but I'm amazed that somebody who's saying, hey, crypto world, watch out for Centratech, they don't seem legit, could for what, 20 grand? Just completely flip and the next week be like, actually, I was wrong, they look good. Is that what happened? maybe 50 times like not even just like a couple people every single one of the people that are promoting crypto they all are just doing it in it for greed essentially um it was the easiest thing i've ever seen like there was one guy that was hard the hardest one out of like 50 people that we just paid off either a few thousand five thousand ten thousand whatever it took to get those taken down and he after about two weeks of saying no and continuing to make videos He's like, ah, you know, my kid's a little sick.

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4:34:45One of the frauds that I think came about from Nathaniel Popper's investigation was the matter of the CEO. So do you want to take that one, Johnny? The name of the CEO and how these guys found the CEO? Michael Edwards, who, if you looked at his photo, looks strikingly like Ray's grandfather, was the fake CEO. You actually switched his photo out. So yeah, Michael Edwards was a fake CEO. People were asking a lot of questions. Who are these guys? Who is this Ray Trapani, these three guys from Long Island? Are they really experienced enough to run this crypto company? So Ray and Sorby did what anyone would do, and they Googled old white man and found the first photo, slapped it up on LinkedIn, slapped it up on the Centra website, said he went to Harvard also, and called it a day.

4:35:44They had a brand new CEO with some legitimacy. And called him a co-founder of the company too. But this House of Cards 2 would crumble fantastically, and here's a little bit of that from the Netflix film BitCont. Hello, I'm Michael Edwards, founder and CEO of CentraTech. Is that who you really are? No, that's not who I really am. I'm Dr. Andrew Huleko. I'm a professor at the University of Manitoba. On August 25th, Michael Edwards suddenly left this world. He leaves behind his French bulldog Stanley and an accomplished career as an investor and VP for Wells Fargo and Chase. He graduated with an MBA from Harvard University, which prepared him for his most recent venture as co-founder and chief executive officer of Centra Tech in Miami Beach, Florida.

4:36:43That's pretty creepy.

4:36:48well at least I had an MBA and I was well trained at Harvard I hadn't realized that they had actually gone to that extent Michael Edwards was never even a real person not at all we completely created him from scratch the photos for Michael Edwards were just taken off Google we just looked up old white guy looked at all the images and found an old white guy and just took that image and you know that was michael edwards oh my god and then you killed him off ray when the press was sniffing around with a with an obit a fake obit about his french bulldog stanley the audacity who wrote the obit I feel a touch, though.

4:37:36The French bulldog. And the crazy thing is that guy's like the sweetest man in the world. I feel terrible for that guy. And he took it really well. As far as like, I even seen him recently on Twitter promoting the documentary. Yeah. No way. Yeah. So he's a, you know, I feel sorry for him. But hopefully he's not too upset about it at this point. I was actually shocked he did that scene. because when we listened to Sorby's trial, there was like a dial-in thing during COVID. I truly felt the worst for him out of like every victim because he didn't invest anything. He's like teaching a class one day and then like the Mounties and the FBI roll up and they're like, we need to talk to you.

4:38:18And apparently he's like the sweetest guy ever. He seems pretty sweet. Who wrote the obit? Who came up with the French Bulldog Stanley? I'm just curious. That's definitely a Sorby thing. As soon as you hear French Bulldog, I think of Sorby or Bert, if anything. But I was never a French Bulldog guy. It's incredible. And now you need a new fake CEO. And this is where your grandpa comes in, your 79-year-old grandpa. So you put his picture on there and a new profile fake for him. And not surprisingly, Nathaniel was not fooled. And pretty soon unearthed the fact that this is your grandpa and not another Harvard grad.

4:39:03Yeah, no, I don't think we put him even as a Harvard grad. We used his real background and we just put his real name as the CEO. So essentially, I even asked him before I did it, which I feel bad that I even asked him, but it was a weird one because he was on his deathbed at that point. Okay, but he has no experience in this lane, So it was clearly just a figurehead that, you know, was meant to stave off further questions. It didn't work. And then just as things are looking pretty dire, like the New York Times is on to you. I think the New York Times piece had hit and it was extremely unfavorable.

4:39:44Like the tech guy who mistook you for another company and wrote this favorable article. income the South Koreans and resurrected Centratech for no good apparent reason. I don't understand at all how they sniffed around and said, sure, I want in. So explain what happened with them. Yeah, so even though the New York Times article was bad and people make it sound more dire than the situation was, no one started taking their money out. Everybody, because the price was being controlled on the back end by me, kept going up. Everybody was, they would be like, oh, the New York Times is just, this is a hit piece.

4:40:28They were just like, no matter what would happen, as long as that price was going up, everybody stayed around. Then the South Korean thing comes about. They came into the chat rooms and they're like, oh, we want to invest big money. And everybody says big money. We're like, all right, yeah, sure. And they're like, you got to come to South Korea. And we're like, yeah, sure. We're definitely not going to South Korea. But then right away, they just send$5 million. We're like, oh, shit. I guess we'll go to South Korea. But I wasn't going to go. I was not going to South Korea. And Sorby just jumps on a plane by himself and goes down there to present.

4:41:04Basically, we hadn't finished developing the app. The app was like in a prototype stage right there at that point. It wasn't finished. But we basically connected it to our bank account so that if he swiped his card, it would look as if the app worked properly. But it didn't. He goes over to South Korea, he meets with these execs, and you're supposed to have this dazzling demo of an app that will at least look like it's working, and it didn't. Yeah, the app definitely didn't work. And then Sorbi doesn't answer for about eight hours there or whatever amount of hours. So I'm like, Sorbi died. At that point, I was sure Sorbi was dead.

4:41:45Right, right. Yeah, because they had already invested$5 million, right? So it's like there's real pressure there. It's not like they can just be like, all right, whatever. So then out of nowhere, he answers whatever amount of hours later, and he's just like, the app didn't work, but they still invested. And the only take that I could get from that is that that money was also criminal proceeds. And that's like a lot of cryptocurrency is that they joined in on the fraud. Everybody, like even the YouTubers, right? They're all complicit in a way in this fraud. As much as we're the co-founders and we're the reason for this fraud, if you're going to know something's a fraud and then you're going to promote it, and then these guys see the app doesn't work and they're still going to invest and take a lot of the percentage, everybody's complicit at that point.

4:42:32That is a very good point. That actually, I hadn't even considered that until you just said it. Of course that's the reason. Why else would they give you? How much additional money did they give you after that initial five and then the failed app? Ten. Another ten. Fifteen million total. Another 10. Oh, my God. You're right. That makes perfect sense. So what leads to the downfall? How do we go from 15 million cash influx? Maybe we are going to be legitimate. We dodged the New York Times storm. We weathered it. What led to the implosion? yeah so pretty shortly after that me and sorby i went and lied on the stand for sorby in his dwi case and i got a perjury charge for trying to lie on the stand for him and uh wow after that we were like put out a press release that we were stepping down from the company sorby stayed on and basically me and sorby got in a really bad fight because i was still trying to pay back the debts that we had built for miami exotics even though we had all this money i was like all right let's take some this money and pay off these debts and he was trying to not pay it so i got like in a bad argument with him and i left the company so like people what people don't realize is i never made any money from investor funds ever throughout this whole time sorby had those wallets himself um and this is also why my sentence was what it was it's just they highlight me in the documentary because of i'm the one in it uh so i made all my money i made all my money off selling centra tokens myself after the fact.

4:44:06Okay. So, but what you lied in the DWI. Can I just ask, I know this is probably small ball after the frauds that we've been discussing, but was there any pause about lying on the stand? I don't know. I'm a former lawyer, recovering lawyer. So I just always feel like you take the oath to tell the truth, right? And then you lie like that had to be scary. Explain it. um yeah i mean sorby had this dwi from before i even linked back up with him from years ago it's like his 17th dwi and uh he was gonna lose his license he he asked me to do it we flew to new york i had never i wasn't with him the day he got it so we went to the restaurant where he had got this dwi we kind of studied the room so i would have like the correct answers his lawyer prepped me on what to say, basically, which is a crazy fact of the case.

4:44:58And I just kind of went up there and said what I was told to say, that he only had one glass of Pinot Grigio. And from there, you know, pretty much got arrested shortly after that. What was the outcome of his trial? I know it sounds like hard to do, but I was, you know, under a lot of, you know, taking all his annex. I mean, it didn't feel hard at the time. Did he get off? No, no, we both, he ended up getting charged for that. I don't know what his result, I think we both got charged with perjury. That was my, ended up being my first felony. Oh, okay. And why do you say, Johnny, this part drives you crazy?

4:45:35Because, I mean, you mentioned several times about how like, well, everything seems so brash, everything like, you know, the audacity of everything. Rays and Sorby's, like, their weight for risk reward, it needs to be recalibrated in my opinion it's like so out of there's no reason you know at this point Ray Ray is business partners with Sorby but it's not like he necessarily likes him so why why would you do that and we've talked about this a lot and the answer is oh why wouldn't I do it like I know how to talk on the stand like you know I would do it for you and I was like that it doesn't really compute.

4:46:15But Ray just has a very different, you know, weight of risk and reward. Have you ever met Jordan Belfort? No, no. But the funny thing is, Censure started shortly after that movie came out. He's spectacular. I think he's an amazing guy. He's also brilliant and uses powers for evil and now is on the straight and narrow and espousing a lot of lessons on it. You should definitely read his stuff and watch some of his podcasts because there's probably some gold for you to mine too. I definitely do. I do watch some of his podcasts for sure. Yeah. Um, anyway, that your story is kind of reminding me of his, which is why I ask.

4:46:56So, all right, you've got to step down from the company. Things between you and Surrey are not good. And then is it the SEC letter that the company gets? That's the beginning of the end. Cause finally the SEC was like, hmm maybe we need to step in yeah for sure so i had left the company and sorby was continuing on and within like two months after me leaving the sec got involved i was just in the deep end just gambling hundreds of thousands of dollars every day so when sorby called me about the sec he was like oh just go meet with this lawyer it's just the sec it's civil and i was like civil stuff i mean if it's just civil i'm fine you know like that's really not that scary And so I just met with the lawyer and they were like, well, you have a couple options here.

4:47:40You can cooperate. And I'm like, oh, what does it take to cooperate? And they tried to meet with me at that time. And I was just on way too many Xanax. They're like, well, you can't even form a sentence right now. So it's not going to be a great friendship yet. And by the way, speaking of attorneys, this is another strain of the story that's crazy. You, at some point, did hire a lawyer to help Centratech do what? Like, were you looking for somebody to help you cover up what you were doing or for somebody to help you straighten out? Yeah, so what happened with that, it's early on in the company, there was a company that had got charged by the SEC for being a security.

4:48:22And we were just trying to find out if our company was a security. so Sorby had went on I think he found this guy on Upwork and funny enough my lawyer right now, my criminal lawyer I spoke to him the other day, he said there's a guy trying to act as if it's him on Upwork that's really not him so this must be a common new scheme that people are doing but this guy basically put out his whole LinkedIn and everything that he worked as a big time lawyer for politicians and Sorby hired him paid him a couple thousand dollars and was giving you legal advice you were listening to his legal advice Yeah, he basically just told us, yeah, this is what we have to do to remain not a security.

4:49:00And we took his word for it, for sure. And tell us what happened with him. Once the SEC got involved, Sorby had said that was who we used as counsel. And because of that, he ended up getting arrested. And yeah, so he got arrested and charged. And I think he's out now. And it turned out he was a kid. yeah yeah it was just like some random young kid that was in college my god this is crazy he wasn't even a lawyer he wasn't even like he hadn't even graduated from college yeah he was uh he was like uh students for trump at the time in in college and he was doing this like on the side while he's like just playing video games and stuff my you must be a little disappointed in yourself that you didn't spot that particular con right he was kind of conning you.

4:49:51Yeah, I never spoke to him. So we did. But yeah, I definitely got us. He was you know, I think Ray's reaction to it is more like, well, that was a good one. Yeah, I don't like I don't take like I'm not like, oh, this guy got us like we got to get him back. I mean, it is what it is. We were doing, you know, scammy stuff and he did the same. Yeah. You're like going over on us. Yeah, I guess like it's not like a respect. I'm not like proud of him. But But it's again, but they're very audacious. Who pretends they're a lawyer and starts giving advice to a crypto company on whether they're a security?

4:50:28That's really bold. Again, all these guys out there who could be using these talents for good. All right. So long story short, you wind up cutting a deal with the government because it did it did turn criminal and you get time served. So did you serve any time while awaiting that final negotiated settlement? I did about five days in Florida when I first got arrested, and then they released me to rehab. I did like a 30-day rehab, and I was on house arrest for about a year. And no, besides that, that was my time served. Did the government want you to get more than time served? No, no. They didn't think I did.

4:51:08Okay, they were fine with it. Like how they break that down is what people don't realize is they really believe that I was never going to commit another crime. And I think, in my opinion, that the government is smart. I don't think that they're just like out of pocket, like, oh, he helped us so much, we should give him no time. It was that they truly believed that I wasn't going to be out there committing any more crimes. And I think that's how they gauge it. As far as with Sorby, they felt that it was definitely likely if they gave him less time that he would come back out and do more crimes.

4:51:36And I happen to agree with the government. He went away for eight years and is still in prison right now. Correct. and Farkas got one year? Yeah, he did about eight months. Am I wrong in thinking that this judge who wound up sentencing you was like a little swoony? I mean, I was hearing what she said to you. I'm like, what's the matter? She sounds like a schoolgirl who has a crush and not like a judge sentencing a felon. So that's the part is that that's not, like I helped the government, The government, I don't know why they considered me better than other cooperatives that they've dealt with in the past.

4:52:21I was very honest. And then during that time, I also got married, had kids. And I became a drug counselor for about three years leading up into my sentencing. And Sorby, on the other hand, was breaking curfew going to strip clubs. So it's like there's a pretty clear reason why, in my opinion, that I got time served. And then all the money that I made, I owe in restitution. So I pay that monthly. So it's like, I hear what you're saying as far as like, but that's just what the government's recommendation. It wasn't the judge. The judge, they cut out a small snippet of what the judge was saying to me.

4:52:57She gave me a hard time at first. And there's just basically that the cooperation was essentially better than what they typically have as a cooperator. Hmm. Okay. So what about the victims? Because, you know, we've been laughing and there's some aspects of the story. They're just so sort of extraordinary. You can only laugh. But in this case, as with Sam Bankman Freed, there are people who actually got hurt and they're going to watch this and they're going to want to know what you have to say to them. Yeah, no, absolutely. And And out of everything, that's the one thing that I truly regret the most is that people lost money.

4:53:40They also have, you know, we were charged with a$32 million fraud. They have$33.5 million to give back. The only reason that the money has been held up is because there's a class action suit to try to be able to control how the distribution works. So there's more money than we were charged with in seized assets. That's actually also like Sam Bankman-Fried. Most of his victims, maybe all, got repaid, but the allegation in court was they could have earned more on that money had it been invested in the way they thought it was being invested. I mean, is that parallel to your case, too? Yeah, exactly.

4:54:22And that was one of Sharma's main arguments as well, is that you've never seen a fraud like this where there was more money seized than actually raised. You know, so it's like a it's a weird case in that regard. And I honestly haven't even met anybody that's like lost money. I really don't I don't know. And I'm sorry to whoever did lose money. So this was all wrapped up in 2018. Yes, 2018. OK, and now what? Like, you know, you're married. Is it true you met your wife with your ankle bracelet on? Yes, I did meet my wife with my ankle bracelet on. Oh, my God. Yeah, I actually just was allowed curfew.

4:55:08Like, you know, at first I was on house arrest, full-out house arrest, and then I went out when I first got my curfew. It was a smaller ankle bracelet, so it wasn't the big one. Oh. But, yeah, I mean, I was also like driving. So, yeah, because you had to do like a year on house arrest. Yeah, I was also like, I don't know. not everybody cares that much. If you're honest about what your pass was and why you'll have that ankle brace, and it wasn't like I was trying to hide it. I was making jokes about it, right? And then I don't know. Just pretty much fell in love pretty quick there. She's a great woman.

4:55:42Johnny, is it a good match? Do you see why she overlooked Ray's past? Yeah, I totally kind of get why. Ray's very honest about who he is, And I think that's a big part of like the draw. And I think it comes across as genuine and you kind of tend to, especially when you're talking to him and like, he's, he's being so honest and, and, and open with everything. You kind of just tend to forget about that. And you're like, just talking to like a charismatic person. So I could kind of see how, how that happened. Do you think he's going to, do you think he's going to stay on us on the straight and narrow?

4:56:22Like if you had to bet. So we I we talk about this a little bit at the the end of the podcast where Ray and I were like, we went out to Atlantic Beach and we were sitting there. You know, there's a big test coming up. Ray's eventually going to get off probation and then he's not going to have these like court mandated drug tests. I actually lived with Ray the last time he got off probation and didn't have court mandated drug tests. and after three years or something of being sober, he was back on drugs within like a week or something like that. And there's always that fear there. And we could just take it day by day.

4:57:01I don't think it's gonna happen and I think he's in such a good place mentally now compared to where he was earlier in his life that I'm less worried, but it's still a worry. What are you doing for a living now, Ray? Me? I mean, I'm trying to write a book, did a podcast, and I'm trying to start a new business now. I'm afraid. What is it? Just like web development. I mean, I'll definitely never do another crime, like a web development company. So talk to me about how you know that, because in other interviews I've done with criminals, especially those who spend a life doing frauds, they talk about the adrenaline rush from doing it and how that is something that is hard in the way a drug addict wants the rush of the drug.

4:57:46It, you know, some of these criminals need the rush of the adrenaline. They like, they really like, and are addicted to living life on the edge. Yeah, for sure. But I've also was 24, 25 when I was doing these crimes and now I'm 33 and I've had a massive adrenaline dump after like this all happened. Right. And then, so like, I think when you're sober for a certain amount of time, that's one thing that I speak about this a lot is this case saved my life. Like if I wasn't arrested there, I was dead within probably the next couple months. I was spending all my money, gambling millions of dollars a month.

4:58:22I was going to be, as soon as I went broke, I would have definitely been dead. So the case saved my life. That's why I'm grateful for like how this all played out. Obviously, especially with like the no time sentence and where my life is today. Wait, I forgot the original question. Just whether you need the adrenaline of the crime and whether that's going to be a tough habit to break. No, I don't think so. I think just like off drugs, it's pretty easy to not commit crimes and do the right thing. I think as long as I stay sober, there's no worry to society. Have you gotten any therapy? I mean, I don't want to blame it all on childhood trauma, but it does seem like it's an obvious suspect for why you wound up making these choices.

4:59:12Yeah, I've done therapy. I did a ton of like drug counseling and then I became a drug counselor throughout this time and working with other people that had sexual abuse, like trauma, kind of helped me a lot. just kind of seeing, I don't know, I feel like I'm a weird person because I compartmentalize it or whatever it may be. But there's people that are like in their 50s and they're still crying about it every day. And I don't know, I couldn't find a way to like break them through it. And I feel like it doesn't hold any weight now that I've talked about it open. That's great. I think I'm in a very good place.

4:59:47Great skill. No, I completely believe in compartmentalization. if you can do it lean in so um i'm just curious so like what's your wife's name kim kimberly so when you and kim go to parties and you meet new people how how do you work this into the conversation like yeah so right how do you let people know this is part of your story um i just tell everybody pretty openly i i don't people that meet me they all are like oh he's actually a nice guy. Most people think... But when they meet you, they don't know. So then there's the big reveal. Yeah, I just kind of tell them my full story. I don't hide it at all.

5:00:29I'm like, yeah, I had a company and then I got in trouble down in Miami. And they're like, oh, what'd you do? And I'm like, I had a cryptocurrency company. We raised some money and we got in trouble. And then they just... It's the short version. He's telling them the truth. All right, I got to tell you something. My husband and I not long ago went to this dinner party and there were maybe 14 people there. And we played a game per the host where he asked all of us to write down on a piece of paper something, some interesting or fun fact about ourselves without like the host would know who, no, the host wouldn't know.

5:01:08Nobody would know who it was. So you didn't write your name on the card. Then the host takes all the folded up pieces of paper and the host reads one after the other. And he reads one and then everybody at the table votes on who at the table they think this fact or story belongs to. And the stories were crazy. Some were tame, like a woman who used to play the tuba in a marching band or something. It was like, whatever. And then some were actually bizarre, like I had two wives at the same time. You know, this is the greatest game ever for you with your friends who don't know this story and haven't watched Netflix or listened to the pod.

5:01:47Am I wrong? I mean, I think you need to do it. Yeah, I mean, I don't know who I would play it with, but it sounds fun. You got to get people like me who didn't know anything about this until my team brought your story to me. Listen, I wish you all the best. And let me give the podcast another promo. Give me the name again. What is it called again, Johnny? Creating a Con, the Story of BitConned. All right, Creating a Con, the story of Bitcoin, and it's you two together going through the gory details of all of this. I wish you all the best. I hope things go very well for you in the white hat lane.

5:02:22And Johnny, to you as well. Thanks for coming on and telling the story. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. We'll stay on this story, and we'll definitely get Ray connected with Jordan Belfort. Can't wait to see where that goes. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

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