Michelle McNamara (1970–2016)

This book is the result of the years of obsessive research by true crime writer McNamara, who died before being able to complete her writing and before seeing Joseph DeAngelo, the man she had re-named "The Golden State Killer", caught and tried for his ten years of horrific crimes. The reader of 2020 knows how the story ends, but we are also aware of McNamara's incredible tenacity and how she is owed so much credit for bringing DeAngelo's crime spree to the attention of the public and show more renewed interest in catching him. She wasn't the only one who had remained fixated on this case, as she worked along with several detectives, retired detectives, and an online community to trade clues and information, but this book brought this hard work to the public.
The spree of murders and rapes that this one man perpetrated in California from about 1976 to 1986 (the crimes that could be linked to him with certainty) are hard to believe. McNamara introduces the reader to his many victims and their families, to the mindset in that more trusting, and sometimes naive, time, and to the comparatively primitive ways of policing.
In August, DeAngelo was sentenced to 11 consecutive life sentences, 15 concurrent life sentences and more time for weapons charges. He'll die in prison. show less

"You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark."

“If you commit murder and then vanish, what you leave behind isn’t just pain but absence, a supreme blankness that triumphs over everything else. The unidentified murderer is always twisting a doorknob behind a door that never opens. “

For over a decade, starting in the mid-1970s, a young man terrorized California, committing fifty sexual assaults and then moving onto murder, killing at least ten people. He was never show more caught.
About thirty years later, Michelle McNamara, a true crime blogger and journalist, stumbles upon the case and immediately became obsessed with finding the psychopathic rapist, who she coins the Golden State Killer.
After years of researching and compiling profiles and police reports, she decided to put this all into a book. Sadly, she died before finishing the manuscript, but her outlines and notes were painstakingly documented, so her key researchers, completed the project. Good thing too, because this is an excellent true crime tale. Her prose is strong and deft, as she draws the reader into this dark, terrifying world of a relentless monster.

Gillian Flynn, introduces the book and she is the perfect choice, (Dark Places, definitely comes to mind) and the epilogue was written by her husband, the comedian and actor, Patton Oswalt, who has also been touring and promoting his late wife's masterful book. show less

The Golden State Killer is an uncaught man responsible for over fifty rapes and/or murders across California. Until recently, law enforcement were not even aware that the unknown rapist known as the East Area Rapist was the same person as the serial killer working further south, who was known as the Original Night Stalker. Author Michelle McNamara became fascinated by unsolved crimes after a young woman was killed in her community when McNamara was fourteen. She would eventually start a blog show more and become a well-known amateur sleuth who used the internet to find clues and to look over the original police work, becoming knowledgeable enough to be accepted by the detectives and forensic scientists who had worked or are still working on finding the criminal. I'll Be Gone in the Dark is the result of years and years of work.

There's a lot of hype and publicity surrounding this book. The author died before the book was finished, but her husband and fellow researchers worked to put together a finished book from what she's already written as well as drafts of magazine articles and her notes. The result should be a mess, but instead makes for fascinating reading. McNamara takes a series of crimes in which the perpetrator varied little in his approach and methods, and crafted a well-paced and insightful book. Her writing combines accounts from survivors, family members, and law enforcement with the story of her pursuit of the killer and how it affected her, as well as how advances in forensics have allowed clues and evidence to be found that was unavailable when he was committing his first crimes. McNamara's writing shines and stands in startling contrast to the plodding prose of the final chapters put together by others. show less

I don’t read a lot of true crime but I’m pretty sure this is a great example. McNamara’s writing is tense without going for shock value, sympathetic to the victims and the cops, lovely in a journalistic way, and honest. I also liked the structure, which moved back and forth between recountings of specific crimes, the police work done at the time, and the cold case and amateur work done since. The way the book was finished, from excerpts of McNamara’s other writing, her notes, and show more transcripts fit nicely within it, too.

Of course, like a lot of people I read this after they caught the guy, so a lot of the speculation in the book about where he might be from, what work he did, and what spurred him on was diminished. I still found it intriguing and compelling, that there was so much unknown and still kind of is, so many potential clues that it was hard to separate out the useful stuff—and crimes that might or might not have been connected, too. It felt a lot more realistic as a mystery than the cut-and-dried fictional mysteries I’m used to, which I appreciated. McNamara really draws you into the feel of trying to solve this.

She’s also good at painting a portrait of the affected communities, capturing both the sunny Brady Bunch California vibe and the fear and paranoia that followed the Golden State Killer. There’s a bit about a rail bed and a bit about people frantically fortifying their houses that … yipes.

The only thing that really bugged me was the repetition. Because the story isn’t told chronologically and uses other sources to fill in blanks, names and crimes show up a few times, often with reminders or repeated explanations. Sometimes I appreciated having the reminder, but other times, it felt unnecessary. (To be fair to the book, this is almost certainly a me-problem. My memory scares people.)

This was definitely a compelling and unnerving book, though it required a certain fortitude to deal with the levels of eeriness and violence. Well-told, very well-researched, and a great insight into the mind of the Golden State killer, the police work required to catch him, and the people, victims or otherwise, his crimes have affected. Recommended, but definitely not to everyone.

8/10 show less