An investigator has revealed that a serial killer and rapist in the US was caught all thanks to his micropenis.
In a true lesson to never ignore evidence, no matter how small, detectives were reportedly able to catch the Golden State Killer thanks to his microscopic manhood.
It's been a big week for small sausages, after historians suggested that none other than Adolf Hitler may have also had one, after DNA research confirmed that he very likely had a condition called Kallmann syndrome, which causes delayed or absent puberty.
And while there's probably plenty of people with petite penises out there who aren't psychopaths, it does seem to be an alarming connection in this case, as detectives initially struggled to identify a man who committed 13 murders, as well as numerous rapes and burglaries across California between 1974 and 1986.
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As Sherlock Holmes once said: "It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important."
And the particularly small detail proved to be vital in solving the case of the Golden State Killer after detectives connected multiple sets of crimes to the same perpetrator, Joseph James DeAngelo Jr.
Sacramento district attorney Thien Ho revealed in his new book, The People vs. the Golden State Killer, that police were able to connect him to the crimes thanks to his tiny todger.
He wrote: “I needed circumstantial evidence corroborating his identity as the EAR. I needed to confirm the extreme smallness of his penis.”
DeAngelo Jr was already in custody after being arrested on suspicion of several brutal crimes around California, but there was no DNA evidence to link him to the murders.
Police and photographers were tasked with taking pictures of his genitalia while in custody, but it proved to be a far harder task than first thought.
“[One of the cops] threw up his hands in the air in exasperation and barked … 'There’s nothing there',” Ho writes.
The police reported to Ho: "It’s smaller than the circumference of a dime and its length is equal to the tip of your pinky."
“We had the circumstantial evidence we needed in order to corroborate the testimonies of DeAngelo’s victims,” Ho adds.
However, DAngelo's last known murder occurred in 1986, and he was only arrested again in 2018 after the case had gone cold.
This was thanks to the power of genetic genealogy, a new technique that takes the DNA of an unknown suspect left behind at a crime scene and then identifies them by tracing a family tree, which is aided by the voluntary submission of DNA from other family members.
In 2020, police finally got their man after he pleaded guilty to 26 crimes, receiving a life without parole sentence, which will see him die in prison.
Topics: True Crime
James Moorhouse