The Golden State Killer is found! Should you read Michelle McNamara’s “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark”? I’d argue yes. Regardless, some thoughts:
-This book caused me to start using the deadbolt in my Park Slope home. I actually read it while in California, not Sacramento--thank goodness!--but Palm Springs. The house where I was staying had several massive glass walls that looked out on a quiet, sprawling property, and I felt certain that every agitated palm tree was my rapist/killer, hunting me down. That’s the treat you’re in for--when you pick up “Gone in the Dark”!
-The rapes and killings are a bit repetitive. McNamara will give you a thumbnail sketch of the victim-to-be. Then the assailant will appear. He goes after couples, over and over. He puts some kind of plate on the man’s chest and says, if I hear this plate shatter, you’re dead. (So the man has to stay paralyzed.) He has the woman jerk him off for a while--witness after witness will describe the “small penis”--and then there seems to be penetration. Then the assailant goes off into a corner and whimpers, and seems to say some things about his mother. Sometimes, the assailant goes silent for long, long stretches, such that you think you are safe, you think your house is empty again. Then, like Candyman, the assailant pops out of a closet and announces that, in fact, he’s still present. (McNamara comments on the assailant’s discipline, self-control. Many people wondered if he’d had some kind of military training, given his ability to stand still for so long. Also, he would research his houses before he committed his attacks. There would be reports of prowling--and then, days later, the assault would happen.)
-People assume that a serial killer will just keep killing until he is caught or he commits suicide. But in fact that’s not always true. In at least a few cases, something as banal as a marriage occurs. And the killer goes silent for years and years and years. In the case of the Golden State Killer, the assailant was fully inactive for around a decade, until, in 2001, or thereabouts, he called a former victim, and said, “Do you remember the fun we had?” She instantly recognized this guy’s voice. (McNamara repeatedly calls it a “guttural whisper,” and that, alone, could make you into a serial killer, I guess. If your only way of communicating was via “a guttural whisper”? It seems exhausting and potentially maddening.)
-The hypnotic final sections of the book detail the crime-solving efforts that happened after McNamara’s death. (Stephen King calls this book a “genre-buster,” and that’s clearly true, though it wasn’t McNamara’s intention to bust genres, I feel. She just died before the book was done.) Anyway, McNamara takes an inadvisable combination of pills--and dies--and her husband, the comic Patton Oswalt (so delightful in “Young Adult”!), steps in. He hires some investigators to finish up the writing. They go on and on, in a bizarrely mesmerizing way, about their efforts to pinpoint where the Golden State Killer lives. They have some technique that allows them to do triangulation, using the locations of various rapes/murders. (I wonder if this actual killer--a Sacramento character, as it happens!--lived in the place where he was thought to live.) There’s also a crazed, passionate interlude about Ancestry.com. The problem was that the investigators had the killer’s DNA--they actually had it, in their possession, though I can’t recall how--but they couldn’t use Ancestry.com because of various civil rights issues. If Ancestry.com would have cooperated, then the DNA would almost certainly have produced a quick link to a brother, or cousin, of the killer, and then the mystery would have solved itself in brisk fashion. Reading this--after having spent hundreds of pages at the gravesides of victims--is really like ramming your head, over and over, into and into and into a concrete wall.
-My favorite parts of the book are Michelle McNamara’s wacky self-portrait. I bought the book not for the descriptions of killings--though I like a true crime saga just as much as, and perhaps a bit more than, the next guy--but for the idea of “twinned obsessions.” McNamara draws a parallel between the Golden State Killer’s compulsive behaviors and her own lunatic and unceasing quest to find justice. It’s Valjean and Javert! (With the killer as Javert, of course. I don’t mean to suggest that the killer is Jean Valjean.) I knew I had to meet this woman, at least on the page. McNamara describes her early writing days, in childhood. She would sign her journal entries “Michelle, the Writer.” At her very own wedding, she overheard her mother in dialogue. A friend said, “Michelle is the best writer I know.” And the mother said--and this is priceless--“Yes, but don’t you think it’s too late for her?” (Imagine carrying that around on your wedding day.) McNamara is unsparing in her evisceration of her own shortcomings. She would describe going to movie premieres with her actor husband, and, e.g., Charlize Theron would want to shake her hand but she (Michelle) would be on some unhinged phone call about a pair of pawned-off 1950s cufflinks that maybe but do not actually belong to the Golden State Killer. (As the absent-minded husband of a semi-public figure, I can relate to this.) Michelle suggests, over and over, that Patton Oswalt was/is basically an ideal man: For her birthday, he would hire local artisans to design extremely-detailed Michelle McNamara action figures. He also insisted that she write this book on the Golden State Killer. He would not allow her to *not* be a writer. Meanwhile, on at least one occasion, she admits that she simply forgot his birthday.
-McNamara was sui generis because, though she really did write well, she was also sincerely interested in solving crimes. She was not interested in the “Serial” case; “Syed did it,” she said, with breathtaking self-assurance. She wanted to dig up cases where someone wasn’t in jail who needed to be in jail. The Golden State Killer--called, bizarrely, for years, “EAR/ONS” (East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker, because two people were really one, and also no one could be bothered to differentiate this man, in a semi-poetic way, from the *other* and *non*-original Night Stalker)--was Ms. McNamara’s white whale. I finished the book believing, despite Ms. McNamara’s protestations, that this guy would never be caught. And now: here we are. Read the book! It has stayed with me--some of the most (weird) fun I had over my spring break this year.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/books/michelle-mcnamara-patton-oswalt.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
-This book caused me to start using the deadbolt in my Park Slope home. I actually read it while in California, not Sacramento--thank goodness!--but Palm Springs. The house where I was staying had several massive glass walls that looked out on a quiet, sprawling property, and I felt certain that every agitated palm tree was my rapist/killer, hunting me down. That’s the treat you’re in for--when you pick up “Gone in the Dark”!
-The rapes and killings are a bit repetitive. McNamara will give you a thumbnail sketch of the victim-to-be. Then the assailant will appear. He goes after couples, over and over. He puts some kind of plate on the man’s chest and says, if I hear this plate shatter, you’re dead. (So the man has to stay paralyzed.) He has the woman jerk him off for a while--witness after witness will describe the “small penis”--and then there seems to be penetration. Then the assailant goes off into a corner and whimpers, and seems to say some things about his mother. Sometimes, the assailant goes silent for long, long stretches, such that you think you are safe, you think your house is empty again. Then, like Candyman, the assailant pops out of a closet and announces that, in fact, he’s still present. (McNamara comments on the assailant’s discipline, self-control. Many people wondered if he’d had some kind of military training, given his ability to stand still for so long. Also, he would research his houses before he committed his attacks. There would be reports of prowling--and then, days later, the assault would happen.)
-People assume that a serial killer will just keep killing until he is caught or he commits suicide. But in fact that’s not always true. In at least a few cases, something as banal as a marriage occurs. And the killer goes silent for years and years and years. In the case of the Golden State Killer, the assailant was fully inactive for around a decade, until, in 2001, or thereabouts, he called a former victim, and said, “Do you remember the fun we had?” She instantly recognized this guy’s voice. (McNamara repeatedly calls it a “guttural whisper,” and that, alone, could make you into a serial killer, I guess. If your only way of communicating was via “a guttural whisper”? It seems exhausting and potentially maddening.)
-The hypnotic final sections of the book detail the crime-solving efforts that happened after McNamara’s death. (Stephen King calls this book a “genre-buster,” and that’s clearly true, though it wasn’t McNamara’s intention to bust genres, I feel. She just died before the book was done.) Anyway, McNamara takes an inadvisable combination of pills--and dies--and her husband, the comic Patton Oswalt (so delightful in “Young Adult”!), steps in. He hires some investigators to finish up the writing. They go on and on, in a bizarrely mesmerizing way, about their efforts to pinpoint where the Golden State Killer lives. They have some technique that allows them to do triangulation, using the locations of various rapes/murders. (I wonder if this actual killer--a Sacramento character, as it happens!--lived in the place where he was thought to live.) There’s also a crazed, passionate interlude about Ancestry.com. The problem was that the investigators had the killer’s DNA--they actually had it, in their possession, though I can’t recall how--but they couldn’t use Ancestry.com because of various civil rights issues. If Ancestry.com would have cooperated, then the DNA would almost certainly have produced a quick link to a brother, or cousin, of the killer, and then the mystery would have solved itself in brisk fashion. Reading this--after having spent hundreds of pages at the gravesides of victims--is really like ramming your head, over and over, into and into and into a concrete wall.
-My favorite parts of the book are Michelle McNamara’s wacky self-portrait. I bought the book not for the descriptions of killings--though I like a true crime saga just as much as, and perhaps a bit more than, the next guy--but for the idea of “twinned obsessions.” McNamara draws a parallel between the Golden State Killer’s compulsive behaviors and her own lunatic and unceasing quest to find justice. It’s Valjean and Javert! (With the killer as Javert, of course. I don’t mean to suggest that the killer is Jean Valjean.) I knew I had to meet this woman, at least on the page. McNamara describes her early writing days, in childhood. She would sign her journal entries “Michelle, the Writer.” At her very own wedding, she overheard her mother in dialogue. A friend said, “Michelle is the best writer I know.” And the mother said--and this is priceless--“Yes, but don’t you think it’s too late for her?” (Imagine carrying that around on your wedding day.) McNamara is unsparing in her evisceration of her own shortcomings. She would describe going to movie premieres with her actor husband, and, e.g., Charlize Theron would want to shake her hand but she (Michelle) would be on some unhinged phone call about a pair of pawned-off 1950s cufflinks that maybe but do not actually belong to the Golden State Killer. (As the absent-minded husband of a semi-public figure, I can relate to this.) Michelle suggests, over and over, that Patton Oswalt was/is basically an ideal man: For her birthday, he would hire local artisans to design extremely-detailed Michelle McNamara action figures. He also insisted that she write this book on the Golden State Killer. He would not allow her to *not* be a writer. Meanwhile, on at least one occasion, she admits that she simply forgot his birthday.
-McNamara was sui generis because, though she really did write well, she was also sincerely interested in solving crimes. She was not interested in the “Serial” case; “Syed did it,” she said, with breathtaking self-assurance. She wanted to dig up cases where someone wasn’t in jail who needed to be in jail. The Golden State Killer--called, bizarrely, for years, “EAR/ONS” (East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker, because two people were really one, and also no one could be bothered to differentiate this man, in a semi-poetic way, from the *other* and *non*-original Night Stalker)--was Ms. McNamara’s white whale. I finished the book believing, despite Ms. McNamara’s protestations, that this guy would never be caught. And now: here we are. Read the book! It has stayed with me--some of the most (weird) fun I had over my spring break this year.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/books/michelle-mcnamara-patton-oswalt.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
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