Decades before he killed at least 12 people and sexually assaulted 51 others in a prolific crime spree that terrorized the state of California, the
suspected Golden State Killer watched two men rape his younger sister on an Air Force base in Germany, family members said.
Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, who was
identified last month as the serial rapist and killer who terrorized California in the 1970s and 1980s, was playing with his sister Constance in an abandoned warehouse on the base when two airmen walked in and raped her in front of him, Jesse Ryland, one of Constance's sons, told BuzzFeed News this week.
DeAngelo was about 9 or 10 at the time. His sister was 7 years old.
"That's pretty crazy for a kid to see his sister be violated," said Ryland, 35, who learned about the incident from his mother just before she died from cancer last year. "Maybe that was the start of Joe going wacko."
The incident may have sparked a fantasy with rape for DeAngelo, a former police officer and mechanic who served in the US Navy during the Vietnam War, according to an expert who has examined serial killers' backgrounds for the FBI.
Ann Wolbert Burgess, a psychiatric nursing professor at Boston College who studied the personalities of 36 convicted serial killers in the late 1970s and early 1980s with FBI agents in the Behavioral Science Unit, said serial criminals commonly develop a preoccupation with their crime at an early age.