When Michelle McNamara died several years back, her work as a tireless amateur criminal investigator came to light, in part thanks to her husband, Patton Oswalt. McNamara had worked for years to unmask the Golden State Killer, getting very close and pursuing avenues traditional law enforcement might not have thought to take, like using genealogy sites, stray DNA samples, and global networks of similarly minded sleuths. After she died, that work was brought to bear, and 72-year-old Joseph James DeAngelo was arrested and charged with eight counts of murder and 13 related charges of kidnapping and abduction.
Much of McNamara’s work was detailed in the excellent book I’ll Be Gone In The Dark, which was finished posthumously by Oswalt, crime writer Paul Haynes, and investigative journalist Billy Jensen. Now, that book has been turned into an HBO miniseries of the same title, premiering this weekend. Directed by Liz Garbus, the six-party series acts, as The A.V. Club’s Katie Rife put it in her review, part “tribute to shoe-leather journalism,” part tribute to what DeAngelo’s many, many victims went through—both at the time, and in the agonizing years since.
The A.V. Club talked to Oswalt about his relationship to both the book and the documentary, and what he and Garbus hoped to achieve with the project.
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McNamara had worked for years to unmask the Golden State Killer, getting
very close and pursuing avenues traditional law enforcement might not
have thought to take, like using genealogy sites, stray DNA samples
How would McNamara have access to “stray DNA samples”?
Maybe the results of stray DNA samples?
She brought attention on the case to the fore, butshe had nothing to do with his capture.
And the survivors and families have VERY mixed feelings about her. Families of some of the dead women were not consulted on the chapters about their own relatives.They have said she exaggerated or was inaccurate about aspects of the women’s personal life. I like her writing but hearing it from the families’ perspectives , she may have added to their pain.
On one hand, any article on the killer was going to reveal facts the victims may NOT have wanted disclosed. On the other, the book was finished “by committee” after her death (Patton, two others, editors, etc), so attributing who exactly said what in the book will be a headache.
(I’ve had to deal with one former friend’s issues when he has been published, both by an actual publisher and self-publishing. I’d rather make sausage. and I grew up on a farm.)I just made a post here contradicting the passing comments about her thoughts on the Ownby/Hornbeck case here in StL. I shared what I knew that contradicted what was said in the documentary and supplied backing information. Both boys have gone on to private lives, now. I only mention them in passing, as my POV was from inside information from KPD.I’ve just helped another friend close (for now) her father’s murder trial. She started to make her own documentary about it as a coping mechanism, from family interviews and secretly recording the two-faced PA handling the case. That got the courthouse to ban ALL electronic devices, save for on duty officers. Even media are no longer allowed to bring in any type of recorder, outside a pen and paper.Yeah, we were NOT fucking around with that bullshit. She’s still dealing with anger issues over everything, partly because they destroyed her family and partly because she lives on the coast. So she had to deal with most of this by remote, only coming back for pressing court dates.
I watched this the other day. They admit Michelle would never get credit for “breaking the case”, but she also claimed credit for “breaking” the Ben Ownby/Shawn Hornbeck kidnap cases, because she had a suspicion that turned out to be true: the abductor lived in the area.No shit, Genius. So did your EAR-ONS aka GSK.I say the following with the proper credits: my dad had recently retired from the Kirkwood city dept that found the boys and knew the locating officers. My late ex’s parents had lived next door to and worked with then-Franklin County Sheriff Gary Toelke. (Dad and Gary knew each other, casually, because my dad was the first guy her dad rode with after he got out of the police academy. That’s how we met. My dad was NOT a T.O., I’m not familiar with how they handled new recruits at the time in early 80s, but her dad soon transferred/moved to Union, then over to FCSD. Both our dads are gone now. I have no contact with Gary now, due in part to, among other things, both of us being on opposite sides of another recent murder trial. I was included in a WaPo article for that. big whoop.)That said: Gary put out the one clue that broke the case: he drove a white truck. The FBI warned him against sharing that info, for whatever inane reason. I don’t recall the KPD officers’ names that found the boys, but he is publicly on record as stating he was serving a warrant to a NEIGHBOR of Michael Devlin, the abductor. They noticed the truck from the abduction alerts and went to make a simple inquiry, only to have Shawn open the door. Boom. Busted.Another fact that the Oswalts overlooked: Devlin worked at and managed the Imo’s Pizza place literally around the corner from Kirkwood city hall and police station. They KNEW HIM. Do you know how flabbergasted they all were to find out this “friendly, good-natured guy” feeding them all the time turned out to be a REPEAT child abductor and molester?
proof: https://www.kltv.com/story/5938305/officers-had-rapport-with-alleged-abductor/
yeah, this dude fooled EVERYBODY. Even his family had no clue. His boss claims in that article that he walked next door to KPD to talk about the matching truck and his “sick day” literally at same time the officers made initial contact, each unaware of the other.Oh, and the then-head of dept public relations was also dad’s best friend on the force. Any KPD interview that you saw that was NOT with the then-chief was with Jim. He was also front and center for the Kirkwood massacre thirteen months later, Feb 7, 2008. Bill was headed to Imo’s on break when Cookie shot him. Dad had lunch with Tommy the day before. Jim shared an office with Tom (who did public outreach and Explorers) and read me the initial draft of the funeral press release as a sounding board while I was visiting his office after the shooting. altho he changed a few things before releasing it to the press. (long side story I’m not getting into here. I also still owe Jim a punch for that.)