I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer

A brilliant true crime story by Michelle McNamara, the talented journalist who unfortunately her away while looking into the case, about the Golden State Killer, the elusive serial rapist turned killer who terrorised California for more than ten years.

"You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark."

A ruthless and enigmatic predator who preyed on women for almost a decade first attacked fifty women in Northern California before relocating to the south and committing 10 brutal murders. Then he vanished, evading the attention of many law enforcement agencies and some of the top investigators in the region.

Thirty years later, true crime writer Michelle McNamara was on a mission to track down the violent psychopath she dubbed "the Golden State Killer." She was the brains behind the well-known website TrueCrimeDiary.com. Michelle immersed herself in the online groups of people who shared her obsession with the case, interviewed victims, and combed through police files.

The Golden State Killer was Caucasian, physically fit, and able to leap high fences at the time of the killings. He was between the ages of eighteen and thirty. He wore masks all the time. After selecting a victim (he preferred suburban couples), he would often get into their house at night to go at family photos and become proficient with the arrangement. He attacked when they were asleep, waking them and blinding them with a torch. His victims remembered his voice, a guttural mutter through clinched teeth, abrupt and menacing, even if they were unable to identify him.

The masterwork McNamara was working on at the time of her untimely death, I'll Be Gone in the Dark, is a harrowing tale of a criminal genius and the damage he left behind, as well as an evocative portrait of a period in American history. It also portrays the passion and unwavering search for the truth of a woman. Gillian Flynn wrote the preface, her husband Patton Oswalt wrote the afterword, and Michelle, her primary researcher and close collaborator, finished the book. It is certain to become a true crime classic because it is so captivating and unique, and it could finally reveal the identity of the Golden State Killer.