Michelle McNamara

Michelle McNamara (1970–2016) was an American crime writer, journalist, and true crime blogger whose posthumously published book I'll Be Gone in the Dark (2018) became one of the most celebrated and commercially successful true crime books of the decade. McNamara was the founder of the website True Crime Diary, where she wrote extensively about unsolved cases, and was married to comedian and actor Patton Oswalt. I'll Be Gone in the Dark chronicles McNamara's obsessive investigation into the identity of the Golden State Killer, a serial rapist and murderer responsible for at least thirteen murders and more than fifty rapes in California between 1974 and 1986. McNamara died in April 2016 at age forty-six before completing the book; it was finished by her researcher Paul Haynes and journalist Billy Jensen, with Patton Oswalt writing the foreword. The book was published in February 2018 to widespread acclaim. I'll Be Gone in the Dark won the Goodreads Choice Award for Nonfiction in 2018 and was adapted into an HBO documentary series. In April 2018, DNA evidence led to the arrest and conviction of Joseph James DeAngelo as the Golden State Killer—a development McNamara had predicted might be achieved through genealogical DNA analysis. The book has since been credited with helping to inspire the use of that technique in cold case investigation.