I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer

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 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 show more 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 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 show more 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 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 show more 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 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 show more 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

This is some of the best true crime I have ever read. Ms. McNamara was a great writer with an ability to bring the victims of the GSK to life again. Her detailed accounts of the last days of the victims is heart-stopping and one begins to recognize the enormity of the crime. One also begins to realize, at least in one small, selfish part, the grinding cruelty of Michelle's own tragic death. Like the author, I don't care who catches the GSK, but I do care who writes the book about it. It's brutally disappointing that she was not able to finish this book, nevermind going on to live the rest of her life and perhaps write other books. The loss of even one person shakes the world in innumerable ways. This book is, on many levels, an show more investigation of the damage done when life is taken. I hope this book inspires a new generation of laptop detectives who will be as inexhaustible as the author. show less

I read many true crime novels when I was in my teens, but drifted away from the genre. This book popped up in some of my feeds and I was intrigued since I had never heard of the case before. I ended up waiting for the paperback release, specifically because it was supposed to include a new epilogue about the capture of the killer. I wasn’t sure if this was a five-star book, or a two-star after I finished it so I went down the middle. I read it in just two days, but also found it vaguely unsatisfying – and not because the author never reveals who the killer is; he was caught after publication. My issue stems from the very different writing style. It’s unlike any true crime book I have ever read before because it isn’t really a show more true crime novel.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark doesn’t describe the hunt for the GSK or the investigation; it really is about McNamara’s obsession with discovering who GSK is. I didn’t mind the switch in focus, but was frustrated that the book jumped around in time without an underlying reason to do so. It wasn’t linear, with occasional flashbacks to explain a development or to link two lines of investigation together. I *think* it jumped around based upon how and where the author learned something, or discovered new information. I never felt like I was seeing the case unfold. It was more like someone telling me about a book that they had read years ago but I never read myself. I admit that many of these problems are likely attributable to the book being only half written before her untimely death and completed by two people trying to piece the narrative together from notes and extensive case files. This is obvious in the last chapters where they go into EXCRUCIATING detail about geoprofiling that is so different from how the rest of the book is written and adds nothing to the narrative.

I did appreciate how she worked hard to keep the victims at the heart of the story, instead of glorifying the killer and how she showed readers the people behind the badges. I also enjoyed the chapters told from her first-person perspective; they helped provide a through line for the book. Her obsession isn’t so off the rails when you consider how popular true crime books, documentaries and films are. Most of us have a (perhaps morbid) curiosity about serial killers. For some that curiosity becomes obsession. The parts about the community of like-minded amateur detectives she worked with was fascinating (I could read a whole book about that).

Overall, the book has some serious flaws but was still an engrossing read. I look forward to seeing the HBO docuseries that is mentioned in the book. McNamara’s obsession was interesting, but I’d like to know about the investigation and how it was closed. show less

I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara is a very highly recommended true crime account of the serial rapist and killer who was responsible for fifty sexual assaults and at least ten murders in California during the 1970s and '80s.

Michelle McNamara was a true crime journalist who created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com. She started writing about the predator she called "The Golden State Killer" in 2011. At that time DNA testing had already linked the cases to one unknown man. The man began as a serial rapist in the 1970s before changing his M.O. and began murdering couples. McNamara was determined to sift through the thousands of pieces of evidence from over show more fifty-five crime scenes to try and unmask the identity of the violent psychopath. She poured over reports interviewed victims, and actively immersed herself in the online community of true crime enthusiasts.

I'll Be Gone in the Dark offers insights into the assaults and the alarming steps the killer took in selecting his victims and raping them in their homes in Northern California. She also points out the trigger in 1979 that caused him to move his territory to the south where he escalated to attacking and killing couples. It is also a picture of the time in which the crimes were committed, which in some ways abetted his ability to elude capture by multiple police forces. With all the current ability to cross reference details, check DNA, and work simultaneously with multiple agencies and people, this psychopath may finally be caught.

Alongside the discovery of new information (or connecting the dots of existing information) about the cold cases, McNamara includes personal autobiographical information about her life. It brings a humanity to the reporting and the facts of the cases. We can see how diligently she was working through the police reports, trying to puzzle-out the killer's identity. We know she often worked late at night, while her family slept.

Tragically, Michelle McNamara passed away in her sleep at age forty-six before she could put the finishing details on the book, but the masterful work was brought to completion by her editor, a colleague, and her lead researcher. The sections that McNamara was working on are extremely well-written and highlight her daily life alongside her research and obsession with the details of the crimes and her empathy for the victims and their families. While the flow of her investigation isn't completely seamless, the sections McNamara wrote are full of compassion and a resolve to discover the truth. Hopefully the evidence she has gathered will help uncover the identity of the killer.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers.
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