Man accused of being Golden State Killer charged with murdering man who was protecting 16-year-old daughter

VISALIA, California -- Visalia Police and the Tulare County District Attorney announced that the man accused of being the Golden State Killer will be charged for the 1975 murder of Claude Snelling in Visalia.

Joseph James DeAngelo is charged with first-degree murder.

Authorities claim DeAngelo killed Snelling after DeAngelo attempted to abduct Snelling's 16-year-old daughter. Action News spoke with the woman, Elizabeth Hupp, 40 years later, who recalled that night saying she was awakened by a man in a ski mask saying he was going to abduct her.

Hupp says after he took her out of the house, her father, Claude Snelling, walked into the kitchen and looked out the window.

"He couldn't believe what he was seeing and he just charged out the back door and the man pushed me down," she said. "And he shot my dad twice and then took off running."

Snelling was a journalism professor at the College of Sequoias.

DeAngelo is in a Sacramento County jail accused of several other rapes and murders in Northern and Southern California in the late 1970's and 1980's.