A newly released account from Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho outlines how a specific piece of circumstantial evidence helped investigators connect multiple unsolved cases to Joseph James DeAngelo Jr., who later admitted to a series of high-profile crimes across California, as reported by Page Six.
The information appears in Ho’s book, “The People vs. the Golden State Killer,” which discusses the investigative steps taken before DeAngelo’s 2018 arrest.
Case 53: The Golden State Killer Part VI
1. DeAngelo’s mug shot (Source: ABC News)
2. DeAngelo’s home after his arrest (Source: ABC News)
3. Joseph James DeAngelo in August 2020 (Source: NBC News) pic.twitter.com/BREJoGuo1F— Casefile: True Crime Podcast (@case_file) December 13, 2020
DeAngelo had already been under suspicion in several violent crimes when detectives began reevaluating older, still-unsolved attacks attributed at the time to the “East Area Rapist.”
According to Ho’s book, victims in cases linked to DeAngelo and victims in the unsolved cases had provided similar descriptions of the assailant, including a specific physical detail.
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At the time, no DNA linked DeAngelo to the East Area Rapist cases, prompting investigators to rely on other forms of corroboration.
Ho writes, “I needed circumstantial evidence corroborating his identity as the EAR. I needed to confirm the extreme smallness of his penis.”
‘Golden State Killer’ may have only been caught because of his micropenis: ‘There’s nothing there!’ https://t.co/KhKkNLNZnw
— ConservativeLibrarian (@ConserLibrarian) November 17, 2025
Investigators assigned officers and a photographer to document DeAngelo while he was in custody. According to the book, the photographer “kneeled down to do so, but he grew frustrated after several failed attempts.”
Ho writes that an officer became visibly exasperated during the process and stated, “There’s nothing there.”
Ho recounts that investigators eventually reported their observations directly to him, telling the district attorney:
“It’s smaller than the circumference of a dime and its length is equal to the tip of your pinky.”
The book states that these observations provided detectives with the circumstantial detail needed to support earlier victim testimony and connect DeAngelo to the previously unsolved series of attacks.
The investigative account follows other recent discussions of historical figures linked to alleged physical traits through research or documents, though Ho’s book focuses solely on the steps taken during the California investigations and how specific case details aligned between victims.
In 2020, DeAngelo pleaded guilty to 26 crimes, including attacks attributed to the East Area Rapist. His plea resolved cases spanning multiple jurisdictions across California.
He was sentenced to multiple consecutive life sentences with no possibility of parole, closing one of the state’s most extensive and long-running criminal investigations.
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