Editing Joseph James DeAngelo (section)

==Early life==
Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. was born on November 8, 1945, in Bath, New York, to Joseph James DeAngelo Sr., a sergeant in the United States Army, and Kathleen Louise DeGroat. He has two younger sisters and a younger brother. A relative reported that when DeAngelo was a young child, he witnessed his seven-year-old sister's rape by two airmen in a warehouse in West Germany, where the family was stationed at the time. Following his conviction, one of DeAngelo's sisters claimed that he was [[Child Abuse|abused]] by their father while he was growing up.

Between 1959 and 1960, DeAngelo attended Mills Junior High School in Rancho Cordova, California. Beginning in 1961, he attended Folsom High School, from which he received a GED certificate in 1964. He played on the school's junior varsity baseball team. Prosecutors reported that DeAngelo committed burglaries and [[torture]]d and killed animals during his teenaged years.

DeAngelo joined the United States Navy in September 1964 and served for 22 months during the [[Vietnam War]] as a damage controlman on the cruiser USS ''Canberra'' and the destroyer tender USS ''Piedmont''. Beginning in August 1968, DeAngelo attended Sierra College in Rocklin, California; he graduated with an associate degree in police science, with honors. He attended Sacramento State University in 1971, where he earned a bachelor's degree in criminal justice. DeAngelo later took post-graduate courses and further police training at the College of the Sequoias in Visalia, then completed a 32-week police internship at the Roseville Police Department.

From May 1973 to August 1976, he was a burglary unit police officer in Exeter (a town of about 5,000 people, near Visalia), having relocated from Citrus Heights. He then served in Auburn from August 1976 to July 1979, when he was arrested for shoplifting a hammer and dog repellent; he was sentenced to six months probation and fired that October. During the process of being fired from the City, DeAngelo threatened to kill the Chief of Police and allegedly stalked the Chief's house.

In May 1970, DeAngelo became engaged to Bonnie Jean Colwell, a classmate at Sierra College, but she broke off the relationship after DeAngelo threatened her with a gun in order to force her to marry him. In November 1973, he married Sharon Marie Huddle in Placer (now known as Loomis). In 1980, they purchased the house in Citrus Heights, where he was eventually arrested. Huddle became an attorney in 1982, and they had three daughters — two were born in Sacramento, and one was born in Los Angeles before the couple separated in 1991. In July 2018, Huddle filed for a divorce. They were divorced in 2019.

DeAngelo's employment history in the 1980s is unknown. From 1990 until his retirement in 2017, he worked as a truck mechanic at a Save Mart Supermarkets distribution center in Roseville. He was arrested in 1996 over an incident at a gas station, but the charge was dismissed.

His brother-in-law said that DeAngelo casually brought up the East Area Rapist in conversation around the time of the original crimes. Neighbors reported that DeAngelo frequently engaged in loud, profane outbursts. One neighbor reported that his family received a phone message from DeAngelo threatening to "deliver a load of death" because of their barking dog. He was living with a daughter and granddaughter at the time of his arrest.