Holes learned about the arrest from news reports.
## The Arrest
The arrest of Joseph DeAngelo on April 24, 2018 was not a dramatic confrontation. It was a carefully planned enforcement operation designed to take a seventy-two-year-old man into custody without incident. Deputies approached him as he came out of his house, identified themselves, and took him into custody in his side yard.
DeAngelo reportedly said, upon being confronted: “I have a roast in the oven.” The statement — mundane, domestic, disconnected from what was happening — was reported in press coverage and became a detail that encapsulated the dissonance of arresting someone who had been living what appeared to be an ordinary retired life.
He was transported to a Sacramento County facility and booked. The initial charges were two counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances: the murders of Keith and Patrice Harrington in Orange County, selected as the initial charges in coordination with the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.
The arrest was announced publicly the same day, with investigators identifying the key evidence as a DNA match. The press conference was attended by investigators from multiple agencies, reflecting the multi-jurisdictional nature of the case and the collaborative investigation that had produced the arrest.
The announcement produced international news coverage. The Golden State Killer case, which had been a long-running cold case largely of interest to true-crime enthusiasts and investigators, became a major news story. The specific details of how the identification had been made — the genealogy database, the family tree research, the candidate narrowing — generated particular interest because the method was unfamiliar to most news consumers.