Along the way, the meticulous masked assailant was given a number of nicknames: the East Area Rapist, the Original Nightstalker, the Golden State Killer...
DeAngelo appears to have spent most of his life in and around Sacramento, the California state capital, apart from a stint in the US Navy during the Vietnam War.
He went to high school in Sacramento and obtained a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from Sacramento State after serving in the navy, according to the Sacramento Bee newspaper.
DeAngelo served as a policeman from 1973 to 1976 in the town of Exeter, south of Sacramento.
Exeter is near the town of Visalia, and DeAngelo is suspected of being the "Visalia Ransacker" who was burglarizing homes in the area.
From 1976 to 1979, DeAngelo worked for the police department in Auburn, California, until he was fired for shoplifting a hammer and a can of dog repellent.
According to the Sacramento Bee, DeAngelo retired last year after working since 1989 as a truck mechanic at a warehouse for a grocery store chain.
For more than 20 years, DeAngelo lived in Citrus Heights, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northwest of Sacramento.
According to the Bee, DeAngelo was married in 1973 and has adult children.
Investigators caught him by comparing DNA from crime scenes to profiles available on genealogical websites.
Investigators were able to find DNA matches with "third, fourth and fifth cousins and more distant than that," forensic criminologist Paul Holes told the Los Angeles Times.
They were even able to track the suspect's lineage back to "great-great-great-grandparents in the early 1800s," said Holes, who spent years investigating the case.
The next task, which began at the start of 2018, was to work down the family tree searching for suspect.
DeAngelo was not initially the main suspect, and came under the investigator's attention around six weeks ago, Holes told the newspaper.