There’s something in a lot of us that is fascinated by all things dark and sinister — the things that go bump in the night, movement out of the corner of your eye, a sense that you’re not alone in the dark. We like the thrill and shiver of horrible things, the voyeurism of a horror committed against someone else. We like to watch through the safety of the TV screen, and that’s what HBO banks on with several of their true crime documentaries. From Paradise Lost’s attempting to free The West Memphis 3 to eliciting the unwitting confession of murderer Robert Durst in The Jinx, HBO’s history with the darkest and most sinister crimes is sound.
Their latest look into crime? The works of Michelle McNamara, who authored a part true crime/ part autobiography of the true crime obsessed, I’ll Be Gone In The Dark. It’s the tale of the Golden State Killer, also known as the East Area Rapist, the Original Night Stalker, and the Visalia Ransacker. The Golden State Killer (GSK) raped over 50 women and murdered 12. He went unidentified for over 30 years, and though his reign of terror is past, for many Californians he is the boogeyman who never truly left them.
According to law enforcement, his name is Joseph James DeAngelo. He has been in the navy, worked in law enforcement, and he went undetected for over 30 years. His name never appeared in any of the police work investigating the GSK. Thanks to the countless people around the globe looking for distant family members through DNA tracking ancestry sites, he’s been found. Law enforcement submitted his DNA to GEDmatch and investigated those who came back as related. Eventually, police were able to narrow their search to DeAngelo, and after obtaining a discarded DNA sample from him, confirmed him as the GSK.
McNamara’s story is all of our story. She was the armchair detective, talking theories over the internet late at night. She chased her hunches. She shared that fascination with the things that go bump in the night — or the person lurking outside the window. Where MacNamara differed from the rest of the reddit detectives and forum warriors was her blog, True Crime Diary. She wrote about crime in a way that connected with the murder obsessed. She interviewed victims in a way that made them comfortable and willing to talk.
She got close with detectives on the case, including Paul Holes, the man who stood at the front of the investigation for so many years. Holes referred to McNamara as his partner. She was the woman who decided that visibility for the case was paramount, and would never happen while he was called EAR/ONS. She dubbed him the Golden State Killer, unifying his crimes. When law enforcement arrested him, they too called him the Golden State Killer. Her signature, her perseverance, was all over the case, even though she passed away before he was caught.
McNamara died in 2016 at 46. She had an undiagnosed heart condition that reacted poorly with sleep medication. She was on sleep medication because she had anxiety and nightmares. She had nightmares about the Golden State Killer. At the time of her death, McNamara was writing a book on the GSK, which her husband, actor and comedian Patton Oswalt, and her research assistants finished for her. The book brought about an upswing in interest in the case, which spawned a CNN special, public pressure on the police, and, to some, the arrest itself. For fans of McNamara’s, she was undoubtedly part of the reason why DeAngelo was caught. For Oswalt, it was closure. He believes his wife can rest now.
In the end, McNamara’s book, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, is two stories. It is the tale of a monster, a man who stalked and tortured his victims, who went from burglar, to rapist, to serial killer. It is also the story of McNamara, and, effectively, all of us who wonder why some people are driven to murder. She talks of late nights scouring the internet for leads on his identity or his movements. She spent time digging through pawn shops for stolen mementos on behalf of victims and their families. She never lost track of the human element of his crimes. She writes poignantly about the obsessive nature of true crime fixation.
For anyone who has fallen down a Wikipedia hole after seeing something horrifying in the news (or watching a documentary about a murder), her story is a personal one. We obsess to the point of sleeplessness. We see shadowy figures standing in the doorway when we finally shut off the lights. We worry about strangers in the grocery store and how well we really know our neighbors. And now, thanks to the GSK, we wonder about our sketchy cousins and if the key to solving a crime lurks in our DNA.
As HBO moves forward with their documentary, hopefully a lot of questions will get answered. The big ones revolve around DeAngelo. As his trial grows closer (he pleaded not guilty), will we all finally get the information that fills in the blanks on who this monster is, and why he did the things he did? Will HBO make McNamara as much the focus of the story as her book did?
The docuseries is helmed by Liz Garbus, who is no stranger to unanswered questions. Her HBO produced documentary There’s Something Wrong With Aunt Diane, looked at the 2009 Taconic Parkway crash that left eight people dead. It’s heartbreaking and wrought with unanswered questions. It is also a staple of the true crime documentary collection. McNamara’s story — should the docuseries remain her story — is in good hands.
What will we learn from the HBO series? Will it talk about the importance of DNA, from the importance of testing the backlog of rapekits, which proved fundamental to getting a DNA profile of DeAngelo, to the privacy concerns surrounding DNA ancestry sites? Will we learn why the GSK preferred raping his victims while the husbands were home, tied up and helpless? Will we learn why he escalated to murder? Will we learn why he hung out in the victims’ homes, ate their food, stole trinkets, and confessed, sobbing, that he hated a woman named Bonnie? Will we find out if he continued to commit crimes after the heyday of EAR/ONS? Will we find out why he stopped? Are there ever satisfactory answers to any of these questions?
Will we find out more of McNamara’s story, and, in turn, our own? Will we ever know why we’re so drawn to the things that disturb us? Or, like DeAngelo, will the drive behind our obsessive nature remain tight-lipped, disturbing, and full of nightmares?