Golden State Killer Faked Multiple Personality Disorder to Establish Insanity Defense, DA Claims

Golden State Killer Joseph James DeAngelo tried to claim he has dissociative identity disorder, according to a new book by Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho.

The former cop, 80, “was claiming that an alter ego named Jerry made him hurt, rape, and kill his victims,” Ho writes in The People vs. the Golden State Killer, via People.

“I didn’t have the strength to push him out. He made me. He went with me. It was like, in my head, I mean, he’s a part of me. I didn’t want to do those things,” Ho claims DeAngelo said. “I pushed Jerry out and had a happy life. I did all those things. I’ve destroyed all their lives … I raped. So now I gotta pay the price.”

Ho believes that DeAngelo concocted the alter ego to try to help his case, he told People in a story published on Tuesday, November 25.

“He tried to establish this split personality defense, but he did it in such an amateurish way that he defeated his insanity defense because insanity in the State of California, you only get it if you don’t understand the nature of the wrongfulness of your crimes,” Ho told People.

“Obviously, he understood it,” continued Ho, “because he said, ‘Jerry made me do it. I didn’t want to do it’ so he understood the wrongfulness, but he tried to create that defense — which you don’t often see, that sort of manipulation, by a typical defendant.”

DeAngelo later confessed to 13 murders and multiple rapes in the 1970s and 1980s as part of a plea deal to avoid the death penalty. He is serving 13 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole at California State Prison, Corcoran.