For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area.
Three decades later, Michelle McNamara, a true crime journalist who created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called "the Golden State Killer." Michelle pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was.
"I'll Be Gone in the Dark"--the masterpiece McNamara was writing at the time of her sudden death--offers an atmospheric snapshot of a moment in American history and a chilling account of a criminal mastermind and the wreckage he left behind. It is also a portrait of a woman's obsession and her unflagging pursuit of the truth. Utterly original and compelling, it has been hailed as a modern true crime classic--one which fulfilled Michelle's dream: helping unmask the Golden State Killer.
After McNamara’s death, “Oswalt sat down with McNamara's researcher Paul Haynes and crime journalist Billy Jensen, and the three finished the book as a team. Jensen explained in his own book (Chase Darkness with Me: How One True-Crime Writer Started Solving Murders) that while McNamara had completed numerous chapters for the book, they weren't in any particular order. Jensen, Haynes, and Oswalt sequenced her material and filled in the gaps that weren't already addressed in her book.” (Marie Claire)