In Michelle McNamara’s book about the Golden State Killer, titled I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, she writes, “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.”
McNamara is referring to a man allegedly responsible for more than 50 rapes and 12 murders – a criminal who she became obsessed with unmasking.
“The unidentified murderer is always twisting a doorknob behind a door that never opens,” she continues.
“But his power evaporates the moment we know him. We learn his banal secrets. We watch as he’s led, shackled and sweaty, into a brightly lit courtroom as someone seated several feet higher peers down unsmiling, raps a gavel, and speaks, at long last, every syllable of his birth name.”
After a 42-year investigation that spanned continents, US authorities have this week announced they believe they may have solved one of the countries most disturbing cold cases.
LISTEN: The year that was true crime. Post continues.
But McNamara, who tragically died in 2016, will never see the day that man, Joseph James DeAngelo Jr sits in a courtroom.
During the last years of McNamara’s life, the true crime writer would tuck her daughter into bed, say goodnight to her husband – the prominent stand-up comedian and actor Patton Oswald – and sit at her 15 inch computer hour after hour, investigating the case of the Golden State Killer, also known as the East Area Rapist.
