The ex-wife of accused Golden State Killer Joseph DeAngelo spoke publicly for the first time this week, the New York Daily News reports.
Sharon Huddle, DeAngelo’s former wife, expressed sympathy for the victims in the case.
“My thoughts and prayers are for the victims and their families,” Huddle said in a brief statement released by the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office on Friday.
Huddle, 65, further said that she would not be granting interviews anytime soon and she asked the news media to give her and her family privacy.
“The press has relentlessly pursued interviews of me. I will not be giving any interviews for the foreseeable future,” Huddle said. “I ask the press to please respect my privacy and that of my children.”
Police arrested DeAngelo in April after matching his DNA to that of the victims. Investigators obtained his DNA from a car door handle and tissue from a garbage can, recently unsealed public records show.
Authorities zeroed in on DeAngelo after using a genealogy website to identify familial matches with DNA recovered from a crime scene.
DeAngelo and Huddle were married in 1973, according to a wedding announcement in the Sacramento Bee.
Investigators had called DeAngelo, a former police officer, the East Area Rapist and the Visalia Ransacker. Writer Michelle McNamara later labeled him the Golden State Killer.
After DeAngelo killed Janelle Cruz, his last known victim, in 1986, he got a mechanic job with the grocery store Save Mart, where he was known as “Joe,” a company spokeswoman said.
“None of his actions in the workplace would have led us to suspect any connection to crimes being attributed to him,” the spokeswoman said. “We are working with the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office on their investigation.”
DeAngelo retired last year.
Since he began work for Save Mart, DeAngelo lived in a home in Citrus Heights, a Sacramento suburb, according to public records.
In more recent years, he shared the home with an adult daughter and granddaughter.
