If you’re familiar with the case of the Golden State Killer, one of the most notorious serial criminals in recent memory, you might have heard about Michelle McNamara, the true-crime blogger who dug into the case for her hit book, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. It was published posthumously in 2018, the year perpetrator Joseph DeAngelo was apprehended.
District Attorney of Sacramento County, California, Thien Ho, the lead prosecutor in the case—which encompassed 13 known murders, 50+ rapes, and approximately 120 burglaries in the 1970s and 1980s—picks up where McNamara’s account left off, with his firsthand perspective from inside the courtroom. He spoke about his book, The People vs. the Golden State Killer (Third State Books, November), in a wide-ranging discussion with journalist CeFaan Kim at a June 29 session of the American Library Association’s 2025 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Philadelphia.
“I wanted to strip away the myth of the monster and instead highlight the voices of the intrepid investigators and law enforcement officers who, over four decades, never gave up in their pursuit of justice,” Ho said about writing the book. “I also wanted to center the victims, the survivors and thrivers, and give them a voice in this case.”
Ho shared the story of Phyllis Henneman, DeAngelo’s first known rape victim in Sacramento, in 1976. She fastidiously attended the trials and lived to see DeAngelo’s sentencing before she died of cancer in 2020. “When I think about this case now, I don’t think about Joseph DeAngelo, I think about her,” he said, noting that proceeds from the book will benefit a nonprofit set up in her name by fellow victims.
The prosecution’s success hinged largely on the emerging field of forensic genealogy, which uses crime scene DNA and public ancestry databases to zero in on a suspect. “DeAngelo was incredibly meticulous in the way he planned his crimes,” Ho said. “But what he didn’t anticipate was technology. DNA doesn’t forget.”
Ho talked about the need to balance advances in forensic technology with privacy, a concern that resonates in the library field. He also touched on McNamara’s contributions as a civilian sleuth, highlighting the opportunity for librarian enthusiasts of the genre to contribute to the work.
“Librarians are researchers by nature,” Ho said. “You connect dots, dig through details, and reconstruct puzzles. That’s exactly the kind of thinking that helps crack cold cases. Law enforcement sometimes takes notice—especially when we’ve hit a dead end. We welcome the help.”
Ho’s publisher, Third State Books, is the only AAPI-owned imprint in the US.
“When I started this career, there were very few people who looked like me,” he said, describing his family’s resettlement in California after the Vietnam War. “Third State gave me space not only to write about the case and the victims, but also about my own story, as an immigrant, a refugee, and an AAPI prosecutor. It was an incredible opportunity—to finally have a platform where people like me could be heard in spaces where we’re often invisible.”
