1972 Gregory J. Sanchez (27)

[Mary Susan Taylor]

1972 Gregory J. Sanchez (27)

 

Cedar Street Times, Pacific Grove, CA April 27, 2018

PGHS Alum Victim: Killer is Caught 37 Years On

Relief and Closure as Arrest Makes National Headlines

By Marge Ann Jameson

Grove High School yearbook, Gregory J. Sanchez had written, “Even lucky men die.” Nine years later, on July 27, 1981, his luck ran out when he became the victim of the killer known variously as “The Original Nightstalker” or “The Golden State Killer” among other epithets. Sanchez was living in Goleta, CA at the time. And now, on April 25, 2018, the news across the nation, from the Washington Post to the New York Times, is that the killer has been caught, identified by DNA he left at the scene of Sanchez's murder where he also raped and killed Sanchez's girlfriend, Cheri Domingo.  According to published reports in the Sacramento Bee and other newspapers, Joseph James DeAngelo, now 72, stands suspected of killing 12 people and raping 45 between 1976 and 1986, and of burglarizing 120 homes. In 1981, in the early morning hours, the killer entered the house where Domingo and Sanchez were house-sitting and, armed with a flashlight, a gun and some sort of garden tool, attacked the couple. Evidence suggests that Sanchez put up quite a fight against the much smaller attacker, who shot him once in the face. The bullet likely subdued Sanchez long enough for the killer to tie Domingo tightly with her hands and feet behind her back and to bludgeon her to death with the garden tool with one horrendous blow. He then used the tool to kill Sanchez, hitting him in the head many times. Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones called the discovery of DeAngelo finding “a needle in a haystack.” There had been years of “dogged determination” on the part of detectives to identify him. His department had DeAngelo under surveillance for six days at his Citrus Heights home before they moved in to arrest him. DeAngelo covered his fingerprints at crime scenes and changed his MO (method of operation/modus operendi) when details from crime scenes would appear in the media. He apparently didn't take DNA evidence into account, evidence he left behind when he raped victims, including Cheri Domingo. Jones says there are a lot of gaps in his personal history. Headlines are playing up the fact that he was an officer in the police departments of Exeter and Auburn during the 1970s, a fact to which investigators point when observing how he changed his MO. Navy vet DeAngelo was fired from the Auburn job when he was caught shoplifting a hammer and dog repellent from a store, and it was DNA from that booking that aided in identifying him these years later. An article in the Monterey Herald on August 4, 1981 says that Gregory Sanchez was 27 when he was killed, born in 1953 in Carmel. After graduating from Pacific Grove High School, he moved to Santa Barbara where he attended Santa Barbara City College for two years. He was employed as an electronic technician for six years. He was active in sports and coached Pop Warner football and Little League baseball. While there is a sense of relief among survivors statewide, there are also memories for Pacific Grove people who knew Sanchez. Cold cases like this bring closure for some and sad memories of a life cut short for others.

 

Monterey Herald, CA April 28, 2018 (scanned)

GOLDEN STATE KILLER

Local victim recalled

PG’s Greg Sanchez murdered in 1981

By Tommy Wright

PACIFICGROVE» Tuesday’s arrest of Joseph DeAngelo in connection to 12 murders and dozens of rapes in California from 1976 to 1986 provided a sense of relief for some of those who knew Monterey Peninsula native Gregory Sanchez, one of the people whose deaths have been linked to the Golden State Killer, and caused them to reflect on his life. According to a small article on the obituary page from The Herald Aug. 4, 1981, Sanchez was born in Carmel Oct. 19, 1953. He graduated from Pacific Grove High School in 1972. Sanchez was 27 and employed as an electronic technician when he was murdered at a home in Santa Barbara County July 27, 1981. He was survived by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Pete V. Sanchez, and brothers, Michael and Ronald. Debra Asher, who went by her maiden name Debra Sweet at the time, attended Pacific Grove High with Sanchez and asked him out to her senior prom in 1970. Asher had just moved to the area from South Florida. She said they became friends quickly. Asher described Sanchez as funny, smart and outgoing, adding he liked to keep people entertained. “He was really popular with everybody at school,” she said. “He was just that kind of person.” Asher, who now lives in Florida, continued to hang out with Sanchez after she graduated in 1970, but she said they didn’t keep in touch after she moved away from the area in 1971. “I wished I had,” Asher said. It wasn’t until four or five years ago when Asher realized Sanchez had been murdered. “Yeah it took me back a little bit,” she said. “I had to sit down and think about it because it broke my heart.” Like many others with connections to victims of the Golden State Killer, who has also been known as the Original Night Stalker and the East Area Rapist among other nicknames, Asher started researching the serial killer. The attack According to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office, the attack that killed Sanchez was the final of three by the Golden State Killer in the Goleta area between 1979 and 1981. In October 1979, a couple was attacked while they slept in their home near Goleta. The victims escaped and the suspect fled the scene on a stolen bicycle. Dec. 30, 1979, 44-year-old orthopedic surgeon Robert Offerman and 35-year-old psychologist Alexandria Manning were murdered in their condo near Goleta. Two years later, Sanchez and 35-year-old Cheri Domingo were found brutally murdered in a home near Goleta. Debbi Domingo, Cheri’s daughter who was 15 at the time of her mother’s death, said she knew Sanchez. “I was so close to Greg,” Domingo said in a phone interview Thursday. “He and my mom dated for close to four years and we were so close. He was so wonderful to my mom, and to me and my brother.” Domingo said she also knew the Sanchez family, which moved to Santa Barbara County from the Monterey Peninsula in the early 1970s. “His brothers and his parents, they were just really, really sweet people,” she said. After her mother was murdered, Domingo said she moved away to live with her father and lost contact with the Sanchez family. “Still to this day, I haven’t been able to reconnect those relationships and that’s been my biggest heartbreak,” she said. “That killer didn’t just take my mom and Greg from me, he took all of Greg’s family from me as well.” Researching the murder In 2001, Domingo started looking into the murder case of her mother and Sanchez. “I spent really the first 20 years just kind of hopeless and believing we would really never know what happened,” she said. “It seemed so random and there were no leads.” Investigators first made the DNA link in 2001 that the Southern California murders by a suspect known as the Original Night Stalker were committed by the same person known as the East Area Rapist, responsible for dozens of rape cases during a three-year period in the 1970s between the East San Francisco Bay Area and the Sacramento area. Domingo gained interest in the cases and started her research. She also gained hope that her mother’s murderer would one day be found. Back in 2001, there were no viable DNA samples from the murder of Sanchez and Cheri Domingo. But in 2011, detective work by Gary Kitzmann and Jeff Klapakis, along with advancements in technology and DNA profiling methods, led to DNA evidence linking the double homicide of Sanchez and Cheri Domingo to other crimes committed by the East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker. “In 2011, I was contacted by Santa Barbara County and they said they had brought back retired detectives to have them look specifically at cold cases and they chose ours to start with because they felt like ours was solvable,” Domingo said. “And they went back into the old evidence boxes and they extracted very degraded, but definitely usable, DNA samples from the bedding from the bedroom. Over a period of a few months, they were able to conclusively come back with a match between our case and the Original Night Stalker.” Domingo, who now lives in Texas, called it a “member- of-the-club moment” for her when the murders were officially connected to the serial killer. “If it’s not connected, then you’re all alone and you’re the only family that cares about it,” she said. “But if you’re connected, then instantly you’ve got the other families who are invested in a solution as well.” While Domingo hasn’t been able to reconnect with the Sanchez family, she said she hopes they have been able to work through the case details like she has with some of the other victims and families. “It’s so therapeutic to be part of the solution,” Domingo said. “I hope that they’re able to take some little bit of joy and get some little bit of peace from having him identified and in custody. I just pray that their hearts can heal.” In the wrong place at wrong time According to Domingo, Sanchez and her mom had an on-again, off-again type of relationship over the years and they were not seeing each other at the time of their deaths. “As far as I’ve been able to figure out, Greg’s presence in the home that night was kind of a fluke,” she said. “I don’t think it was planned, it was just kind of spur of the moment. … Unfortunately they were both in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Domingo said she could have easily been in the wrong place at the wrong time as well. While it has been reported by various media outlets and by the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office that Domingo was housesittingthe home in which she and Sanchez were killed, the Domingos had been living in the home temporarily. Domingo said the house belonged to a relative whose husband had died and the relative didn’t want to live in the home alone, so she put it on the market and asked Cheri Domingo if she could move in with her family while real estate agents showed the property. They moved all of their belongings into the house and had lived there for six to 10 weeks when the murder took place. At the time of her mother’s murder, Domingo had been rebelling against her mom and was staying at a friend’s house. “If things had been the way they should have been, I would have been home,” Domingo said. “And I wouldn’t be alive today, I know that now.” For the first year or so after her mother’s death, Domingo said she would wake up in the middle of the night after dreaming she was at home as her mother was being attacked. “I heard the intruder and I heard my mom scream and I picked up the phone and called the police and saved the day and everyone lived happily ever after,” she said of her dream. “The guilt from that not being the way things worked out, that really took its toll on me over the years. But I understand the reality now that I wouldn’t have stopped anybody or saved anybody.” After taking time to reflect, Domingo described her mother as a generous, good-hearted, vibrant person. “She was just a very together kind of a lady,” she said. News of the arrestWhen Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert announced the news of DeAngelo’s arrest Wednesday, she talked about an email she received from Domingo a week prior explaining she had faith her mother’s murderer would be found. “We all knew, as part of this team, that we were looking for a needle in a haystack,” Schubert said later in the news conference. “But we also all knew that the needle was there. … We found the needle in the haystack, and it was right here in Sacramento.” Law enforcement officials arrested DeAngelo, a former police officer, at his home in the Sacramento County city of Citrus Heights Tuesday afternoon. Domingo said she first heard of DeAngelo’s arrest close to midnight Tuesday night. “I was in shock, I was almost afraid to hope that it could be real because I’ve spent two-thirds of my life just thinking, ‘Oh man. I don’t know if we’ll ever know.’ But it was direct from an official source and that kind of gave me permission to believe that it was real,” said Domingo, 52. “Honestly I’m just floored. We’ve waited so long for this to happen and I really just feel like it’s a miracle.” Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said the arrest exemplifies how a case is truly never closed until justice is served. He thanked the investigators who for years never stopped following leads, the public for never stopping providing leads for the case and the media for keeping the case in the public eye. “This case is a great example as to how fortunate we are to have DNA technology advancements, which can help solve crimes even as long as 40 years later,” Brown said in a prepared statement. “Justice may have been delayed in this case, but it will ultimately be served.” DeAngelo, 72, made his first court appearance Friday. He has been charged with eight counts of murder and did not enter a plea at his arraignment on two of those counts in Sacramento County Superior Court. Both Domingo and Asher said they hope the arrest Tuesday can start the healing process for the victims and their families. “It put my heart at peace and hopefully everybody involved can slowly start to heal from all this,” Asher said.