Some of the men and women whose lives were forever changed by the actions of the serial rapist and murderer known as the Golden State Killer got to confront the man in Sacramento County Superior Court this week, including friends and family members of two Goleta couples who were killed 40 years ago.
Joseph DeAngelo, 74, pleaded guilty in June to 13 homicides and dozens of sexual assaults and burglaries committed by a prolific serial killer and rapist who became known as the Golden State Killer.
The plea bargain took the death penalty off the table, in exchange for DeAngelo confessing to committing 64 other rape and abduction crimes that were unchargeable, since the statute of limitations has passed. The long list of crimes stretched from the mid-1970s to 1986 and across eight California counties.
DeAngelo was arrested in 2018 after being connected to the crimes using DNA evidence, according to authorities, and has been held in custody since.
Among DeAngelo’s victims were two Goleta couples who were brutally killed in their homes.
Dr. Robert Offerman, 44, and Debra Alexandria Manning, 35, were found shot to death in Offerman’s condo on Avenida Pequena on Dec. 30, 1979.
DeAngelo also murdered 35-year-old Cheri Domingo and her longtime boyfriend, Gregory Sanchez, 27, on July 27, 1981, in a residence on Toltec Way. The victims were found in a bedroom — both had been severely beaten, and Sanchez had been shot.
Three months before the Offerman and Manning murders, a couple on nearby Queen Ann Lane were accosted, tied up and terrorized by a man, presumably also DeAngelo, but they managed to flee the home and were not killed. No charges were filed in that case.
Friends and family members of the victims traveled to Sacramento County Superior Court to face DeAngelo this week and to talk about the decades-long impacts of his violent crimes.
Three full days were set aside for people to give victim impact statements, and Santa Barbara County cases were addressed on Thursday.
The sentencing hearing is scheduled for Friday morning.
Debra ‘Ali’ Manning
Santa Barbara District Attorney Joyce Dudley and Chief Deputy District Attorney Kelly Duncan appeared in court Thursday, and Duncan read a letter to the judge on behalf of Natasha Holiday and Rosanne Howard, two of Manning’s best friends.
“Her future was stolen. We regularly miss her friendship in our lives, and her presence around our children and grandchildren,” they wrote.
They met Manning, who was known as Ali, at the Veterans Affairs hospital and children’s hospital in Boston where she was finishing a neuropsychology internship.
“She had a gift of intuition that served patients well,” they wrote. “She brought joy and healing energy wherever she went.”
They remember Manning saying, just before the attacks at Offerman’s home, that she felt like she was being followed. Two days before her death, while at lunch with her lawyer, Manning wrote out a will on her napkin, her friends wrote.
“We often wondered whether Ali would be alive today if only we’d insisted that she call police to report a stalker,” they said. “Instead, her vibrant life lay wasted by the obsessive madness of Joseph James DeAngelo, a man we find hard to forgive.”
Greg Sanchez
“Pain for our family goes well beyond the words I’m able to share with you,” said Brian Sanchez, Greg Sanchez’s nephew. “Our memories of Greg will not be tarnished by the acts of the virus sitting in court today but by the love we have for him in our hearts.
“Greg was in the prime of his life at 27 with all his dreams ahead of him. He will always be remembered for having a big presence and a big smile.”
Brian Sanchez said his own son asks him how these crimes could happen for so long, and be unsolved, and all he can say is that it was a different time, with different technology.
“That being said, there were two double homicides in the same neighborhood with the same MO, and this followed an attempted double homicide in the same neighborhood,” he said of the Goleta-area murders. “Let’s be clear: Cooperation between communities would have undoubtedly stopped the DeAngelo virus from spreading.”
He briefly addressed DeAngelo directly.
“I sincerely hope Greg hurt you bad that night, and brought you some deserved pain and fear that made you stop for the next five years,” Brian Sanchez said, referencing the fact that the next murder tied to DeAngelo occurred in Irvine in 1986.
“To say our family’s in grief is an understatement. Calling this true justice is probably an overstatement,” he told the court.
Cheri Domingo
Debbi Domingo McMullan, Cheri Domingo’s daughter, was 15 years old when her world turned upside down.
“Mom was only 35 when she died but she was energetic and stylish, and strangers often took us for sisters. Greg was even younger, just 27 with a quick wit, stunning good looks and a charming smile,” McMullan said.
“He was always doing something productive and fun,” she said, like playing softball with his brothers, fixing up his 1957 Chevy and mixing recordings of popular dance music.
When McMullan arrived to the house after spending the night at a friend’s, it was covered in yellow tape and crowded with police.
“I was not permitted back into the house, ever, not to look for my cat, not to pack my bedroom, not to verify for myself that what the police had said happened was really true,” she said.
She was too stunned to cry, she recalled, as she realized she had “watched them dance carefree across the living room for the last time.”
She helped plan a local memorial for her mother, and then moved to Southern California to live with her father. She remembers not getting a chance to go to Sanchez’s memorial or say goodbye to his parents and brothers.
“There has always been an emptiness in my heart from that lingering loss, not just of Greg but of his beautiful family,” she said.
For the decades that followed, McMullan said she struggled with distressing dreams, depression and drug use, and she gave up on getting answers in the murder case.
In her early 30s, when she turned a corner in her personal life, she learned that the murders might be part of a series, and the connection was being investigated.
For about 20 years, she has worked to publicize and solve that mystery, she said.
While it was therapeutic in some ways, “playing my small part in the hunt,” learning more about the crime scene made her have vivid nightmares.
“I became a voice and an advocate for the many, many victims in this series of crimes,” she said. “I don’t know if DeAngelo was ever aware of my efforts to find him out, but if he didn’t know my name before, he’ll know it now.
“I am not that lost teenager anymore. Today, I am in the room with the pathetic excuse of a man who will finally be found accountable for his actions. If I had my way, he would be shivering, blindfolded, naked and exposed every moment from now on. I’ll settle for caged, shackled, humiliated. Oh, and nervous as hell, because everyone around him in prison will know exactly who he is and what deplorable things he has done. Today, the devil loses and justice wins. Today, I am not just a broken survivor of a cold case murder. Today, I am a victor in the battle of good versus evil.”
David Domingo, Cheri Domingo’s son who was 14 at the time of the murders, said he was somewhat sheltered from some effects of the crimes since he was living with his father in San Diego County at the time.
No one in that community knew about the murders, or his connection to them, unless he talked about it, and that was too difficult for him and the people he told, he said.
“I stopped talking about it then when it would have done the most good, and hardly talked about it anytime since,” he said.
Cheri Domingo, a newly single mom, was encouraging and consoling when he needed it, he said.
“She had impeccable style and bought me great clothes that I was not embarrassed to wear,” he said.
She would organize get-togethers with Sanchez’s family, “trips to cool places” along the coast, and take them to the movies and out to eat.
David Domingo thanked the court for allowing survivors to speak before sentencing, and “make sure the last words DeAngelo hears outside of prison are damning and memorable.”
Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Michael Bowman is scheduled to sentence DeAngelo in a Friday morning hearing, to terms in the plea bargain.
DeAngelo will be sentenced to multiple life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole, according to prosecutors.
— Noozhawk managing editor Giana Magnoli can be reached at gmagnoli@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.