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Reign of terror - His crimes spanned from the Sacramento area in northern California to Orange County in southern California.

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Timeline - The following slides go into the details of the murders as well as the sinister techniques used by the Golden State Killer.

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1976 - After a string of burglaries beginning in 1974, his crimes took on a new dimension. The killer committed his first crimes by prying open a window or door while his victims were sleeping.

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1976 - He committed at least 10 crimes in 1976, ranging from rape and assault to carjacking and kidnapping, according to KTLA.

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Trophies - The man often took personal items of value from his victims, such as engraved wedding bands, driver’s licenses, and souvenir coins.

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1977 -

He continued with the same pattern into the new year, committing 19 crimes all involving rape and/or assault.

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1977: Summer break - He committed crimes every month of that year except for a short hiatus during the summer. Attacks resumed in early September in Stockton, San Joaquin County, and constituted his first attacks outside of the Sacramento area.

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Methods -

After breaking into the homes of his victims, the Golden State Killer would allegedly bind the hands and feet of the boyfriend or husband and pile dishes on his back. He would proceed to rape the woman and threaten to kill both of them if the dishes tumbled.

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Nickname - Before writer Michelle McNamara coined the nickname Golden State Killer, police called the man by the acronyms EARS and ONS, which stood for East Area Rapist and Original Night Stalker.

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Voice recording - The killer would also call his victims to terrorize them before breaking in to their homes and raping and murdering them. In late 1977, an unknown man called 911 in the Sacramento area claiming he was the East Area Rapist, as he was known at the time.

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Voice recording - Following the 911 call, police tapped the phone of a victim who had received a menacing call in January 1978. Police were able to tap a later call in which a man was recorded breathing deeply before repeatedly whispering, "Gonna kill you."

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1978: He turns to murder - On February 2, 1978, the crimes escalated into full-on murder when the Golden State Killer killed U.S. Air Force Sgt. Brian Maggiore and his wife Katie while they were walking their dog in Rancho Cordova, Sacramento County. Many decades later, this crime would ultimately be his undoing: he was charged with two counts of murder for the deaths of the Maggiores, after new DNA evidence was found linking him to the crime.

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1978 - After the murders, the killer apparently moved on from Sacramento and continued his crime spree in the East Bay area of Northern California. That year, he committed at least 15 crimes, according to KTLA.

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Premeditation - The killer would often break into his victims’ homes before the actual crime to get a sense of the layout. He would study photographs and learn the victims’ family members’ names to frighten them as he attacked.

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1979: Second murder - Between February 1978 and December 20, 1979, the Golden State Killer raped 20 victims before killing again.

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December 30, 1979 - The man broke into the Goleta home of orthopedic surgeon Robert Offerman, 44, who was accompanied by his girlfriend, Debra Alexandra Manning, 35. A friend found the couple shot dead in the bedroom the following day.

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DNA link - Police were able to collect DNA evidence from two scenes—the first on December 8, 1978, after a rape in Contra Costa County, and the second on June 11, 1979, following another rape committed in the same area.

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1980 - Both attacks resulted in the murder of four people.

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March 13, 1980 - Lawyer Lyman Smith, 43, and his second wife Charlene, 33, were found dead in their Ventura home the following day by Smith's 12-year-old son. Charlene Smith had been raped before both were beaten to death.

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August 19, 1980 - Newlyweds Patrice Briscoe Harrington, 27, and Keith Eli Harrington, 24, were bound and bludgeoned to death in their home in Dana Point, Orange County. Patrice Harrington was raped before being murdered.

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1981: Similar pattern - He went on to commit two attacks, resulting in three deaths.

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February 6, 1981 - Mortgage broker and 28-year-old Manuela Witthuhn was raped and bludgeoned to death in her Irvine home. She was found in her bedroom in a sleeping bag and had ligature marks on her wrists and right ankle. The killer took a lamp and a crystal object from her home.

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July 27, 1981 - Cheri Domingo, 35, and Gregory Sanchez, 27, became the Golden State Killer’s 10th and 11th victims when they were shot to death in Domingo's aunt's house in Goleta while house-sitting.

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July 27, 1981 - The killer allegedly visited the previous day to get a look at the house. The real estate agent hadn’t been expecting him, but let him take a quick look around. He reportedly removed the screen to the bathroom window from the outside in preparation for entry later that night.

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July 27, 1981 - The couple was found the next day when a real estate agent visited with prospective buyers. The buyers’ three-year-old child saw the dead bodies through the window and reportedly didn’t speak for a year due to the trauma.

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Apparent break - The Domingo and Sanchez murders were the Golden State Killer's last known attack until several years later.

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May 4, 1986 -

Janelle Cruz was an 18-year-old cashier at Bullwinkle's pizzeria in Irvine, who was home alone while her parents were vacationing in Mexico. She was raped and bludgeoned to death “beyond recognition," according to Oxygen. Cruz was the Golden State Killer’s last known victim

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Youngest victim - In 2011, a woman wanting to be known only as Mary told the The Mercury News that she was raped by the Golden State Killer on June 25, 1979, when she was 13 years old.

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Mary: Youngest victim -

Mary claimed that a masked man entered her bedroom at around four in the morning when she and her family were sleeping. She told the newspaper that her attacker held a knife to her throat and told her, "you better be good," before tying her up and raping her. She is suspected to be the killer’s youngest victim.

See also: Killer shows from the murderer's perspective

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