The Role The Golden State Killer’s Ex Played In His Hatred Of Women
Joseph DeAngelo, a former police officer in California from 1976 to 1979, was arrested in 2018. He’s now known as the infamous “Golden State Killer.”
He terrorized his victims during the 1970s and 1980s, later confessing to assaulting dozens of women and murdering 13 people. But what helped investigators finally track him down was a more curious fact about his past: an ex-fiancée.
Joseph reportedly called out, “I hate you, Bonnie,” while assaulting one of his victims. This clue helped authorities identify him as the Golden State Killer, as well as determine a possible motive for his heinous acts.
According to Paul Holes, a retired Contra Costa County investigator, Joseph is what’s known as an “anger retaliatory” attacker.
“Instead of directing his anger at what’s making him angry, he’s directing it sideways onto someone else to be able to satisfy that anger,” Holes explained.
“I do believe that’s what happened here. I don’t know what made him that way, but you’ve got to think Bonnie dumped him; he’s not happy about that; he still had feelings for her; who knows? But something along those lines must have happened.”
Bonnie Ueltzen began dating Joseph when she was just 18 years old and in college. Then, she ended things at the age of 19 after realizing she was in an abusive relationship, and Joseph kept “pushing” her “into fear and discomfort over and over again.”
“And that wasn’t how I wanted my future to be. The apex came when he asked me to help cheat on the exam. And that was a boundary he couldn’t push me over. And so, I ended our relationship then,” Bonnie recalled during a 2020 interview.
She had no idea that Joseph was a criminal when they were seeing each other. And in hindsight, she doesn’t believe that he assaulted women while they were together.
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“We spent an awful lot of time together, and we were together on campus often. But I parted with him,” she said.
As for why they ultimately broke up, Bonnie stated that Joseph held a gun to her head and demanded that she marry him one evening.
“I said no. Of course, I was [afraid]. But now I know he was capable of using [a gun]. I’ll never understand, knowing how capable he was of breaking into homes, why he wasn’t standing beside my bed with a gun,” she detailed.
“Why was he outside the window? My entire family, except an older brother away at college, my entire family was asleep in the farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. And here he was with a gun.”
Bonnie never saw Joseph again following that night. However, as a result of the investigation into his crimes, Bonnie has “heard implications” from authorities that Joseph always stalked her, keeping tabs on where she worked and lived.
He was finally arrested in 2018 after the DNA from numerous crime scenes was tested and helped link cases throughout California.
Then, since the DNA didn’t match any individuals from the criminal database, investigators used a genealogical database to narrow down the suspect pool to several hundred people.
Afterward, the list dwindled further. The police specifically searched for a man who stood between five-foot-eight and five-foot-ten. The man also needed to have someone named Bonnie in their past and to have lived in the areas of the crimes.
In June 2020, Joseph pleaded guilty to murdering 13 people and assaulting over 50 women. He also admitted to crimes he hadn’t been charged with as part of a plea deal.
During the second day of his sentencing hearing in August 2020, Bonnie attended and stood up in the courtroom. Jane Carson-Sandler, a survivor, introduced her.
“She [Bonnie] bears none of that responsibility of your violent choices, and we consider her one of us. The sister survivors of your malicious attacks,” Jane stated.
Bonnie had written an impact statement that she’d planned to share in court but wasn’t aware she had no legal standing to deliver such a statement. She also agrees with Jane’s sentiment that she’s not to blame for Joseph’s horrific crimes.
“I think he is trying to throw the responsibility elsewhere, and it lands squarely on him. He is a crazy man. Apparently, he’s been crazy for many, many years. And I don’t carry the responsibility of his crimes,” she explained.
“Those are his choices and his actions. And fortunately for me, the women who were his victims feel the same way.”
With Bonnie present in the courtroom, Joseph reportedly wouldn’t look her way. She admitted that she “wouldn’t wish the death penalty on him.” Nonetheless, she has no issue with him spending the rest of his life behind bars.
Joseph was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael Bowman imposed 11 consecutive life sentences without parole, in addition to another life sentence and eight years.
“When a person commits monstrous acts, they need to be locked away where they could never harm another innocent person,” Bowman said.
Questions still remain for Bonnie, though, particularly regarding how Joseph was able to get away with his crimes while married to his wife, Sharon Huddle. The pair tied the knot in 1973, and while they had been estranged since 1996, they reportedly lived together during the height of Joseph’s attacks.
“I think all of us would like to understand how he was able to do this with a wife at home and with children at home. How was he able to put people under surveillance to understand their schedules? To know when people would come and go?” she asked.
“How was he able to do that without extensive hours of watching these people’s homes? And if so, where did his family think he was? Where had he been all of that time?”
In 2021, The Sun-Gazette reported that Joseph was transferred to Corcoran State Prison, where he will serve out the remainder of his life without parole.
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