The Golden State Killer may have been motivated by the breakup with his fiancée, an investigator told NBC News.
The world reeled in shock last week when police nabbed suspected California serial killer Joseph James DeAngelo, who stands accused of committing at least 12 homicides and 45 rapes throughout the state in the 1970s and '80s, The Sacramento Bee reported.
Now as details surrounding the case emerge, investigators are trying to piece it all together, and this new revelation could help paint a clearer picture of the crimes committed.
Paul Holes, a retired Contra Costa County District Attorney's Office investigator closely linked to the investigation, told NBC News that one of the victims of the Golden State Killer said her assailant had sobbed the name Bonnie as he raped her in the late 1970s.
"The original investigator asked her, 'Are you sure he isn't saying Mommy?'" Holes said, but the victim was adamant that the man who had sexually assaulted her repeatedly said "I hate you, Bonnie."
During early investigations, officials came across a newspaper article published in the 1960s that mentioned DeAngelo's engagement to a woman named Bonnie Colwell but they never married.
"We always thought that our offender had a Bonnie that was significant in his life, either a mother, a wife, an ex-wife, a girlfriend," Holes said. "We assumed that there had been some breakup in their relationship and that possibly caused him some angst."
Holes noted that, if the assailant was uttering statements such as "I hate you Bonnie," while attacking another woman, he was considered to be an anger retaliatory rapist.
"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 said, according to The Ventura County Star.
"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 feeling for her, who knows? But something along those lines must have happened."
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