I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
Author:
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Book Type: Hardcover
Author:
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Book Type: Hardcover
Writer Michelle McNamara, was obsessed with cold-crime cases. In her blog, she pondered those unsolved, perhaps unsolvable cases in which violent offenders apparently eluded justice. And with no case was she more obsessed than that of the Golden State Killer. Over a 10-year period, one man (ultimately connected via after-the-fact DNA evidence) was tied to 50 sexual assaults and 10 murders in central and southern California.
It was a quest which consumed her until her sudden death in 2016, and one for which no satisfying conclusion was ever reached in her lifetime. McNamara left hundreds of thousands of pages of police reports, newspaper clippings, emails, lists, database results, recorded interviews â and the partially-completed manuscript which became âI'll Be Gone in the Darkâ, completed by colleagues, researchers, and editors.
As such, it's an intriguing but patchy tale which lacks the ultimate punchline. No perpetrator is ever arrested, no prime suspect is singled out with any degree of certainty. The reader is left wondering â as McNamara herself was left wondering â what happened to the Golden State Killer and whether his identity is still buried somewhere in the margins of a crime scene report or a misdemeanor arrest dismissed as irrelevant. Unless the reader makes it a habit to follow crime reporting, one is apt to remain unaware of the 2018 arrest of a suspect whose name never surfaced in her research, but who was in fact ultimately identified by the forensic DNA technology in which she placed so much hope.
The known details of the crimes are horrific reminders of the violence inherent in some twisted minds. It's an unsettling read, but also a fascinating one as the emerging technologies of the 21st century irrevocably changed the ground rules of criminal investigation.
It was a quest which consumed her until her sudden death in 2016, and one for which no satisfying conclusion was ever reached in her lifetime. McNamara left hundreds of thousands of pages of police reports, newspaper clippings, emails, lists, database results, recorded interviews â and the partially-completed manuscript which became âI'll Be Gone in the Darkâ, completed by colleagues, researchers, and editors.
As such, it's an intriguing but patchy tale which lacks the ultimate punchline. No perpetrator is ever arrested, no prime suspect is singled out with any degree of certainty. The reader is left wondering â as McNamara herself was left wondering â what happened to the Golden State Killer and whether his identity is still buried somewhere in the margins of a crime scene report or a misdemeanor arrest dismissed as irrelevant. Unless the reader makes it a habit to follow crime reporting, one is apt to remain unaware of the 2018 arrest of a suspect whose name never surfaced in her research, but who was in fact ultimately identified by the forensic DNA technology in which she placed so much hope.
The known details of the crimes are horrific reminders of the violence inherent in some twisted minds. It's an unsettling read, but also a fascinating one as the emerging technologies of the 21st century irrevocably changed the ground rules of criminal investigation.
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