I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
It is mentioned that Michelle often read The Zodiac
Zodiac: The Shocking True Story of the Hunt for the Nation’s Most Elusive Serial Killer
A cold case long abandoned by California police, was never forgotten about by journalist Michelle McNamara or her fellow sleuths that she met via the internet. This group of researchers would reignite the flame and and the story of Golden State Killer and bring the case back to the forefront of the national news.
Michelle’s long chase of the killer was an exhausting endeavor, she was fascinated with the cases almost to a morbid level. Her infatuation with true crime had started at high school age, when a woman was murdered just blocks from her childhood home. She would go on to create a blog True Crime Diary which would give her and outlet and create the start of her career as a true crime writer.
Her first delve into the Golden State Killer case came when she read a self-published book by one of the few remaining detectives in the case. From there she would go online and find a community that was as devoted to the case as she was.
It was in 2011, that DNA linked the attacks and murders throughout the California region to one individual, and it was Michelle who created the name of The Golden State Killer. Again this helped to bring the case back into the spotlight of the media and police.
On April 21, 2016 Michelle McNamara passed, it was her hard work that really started some progress in the case. After her passing, her book which was half written at the time, was continued by her husband Patton Oswalt as well as her friend and co investigative journalist Billy Jensen as they went through years of files containing her own personal investigating and research.
The year after Michelle died, the California authorities started a task force that would be devoted solely to finding The Golden State Killer, they were counting on tips from the public and any DNA evidence they could find.
It was the DNA evidence that would take The Golden State Killer down, in 2018, just months after Michelle’s death Joseph DeAngelo was brought into custody.
Episode 115
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