I'll be gone in the dark
By Michelle McNamara
Rating 3/5
Genres: crime, non fiction,true story
Only a part of the book is written by Michelle - which has cohernce and a logical layout. The rest of the book is compiled by her associates after her sudden death, using the humongous amount of material she gathered - it feels patched as they try to drill through her notes and use them to deduce what she might have if she was not stopped mid track. I did not read this book to completion and my following review applies to the part of the book written by Michelle herself.
It is very gripping and intriguing. The author has been able to balance both gorical nature of the cases and the human side of the victims masterfully. She has given a monstrous face to the ski masked killer /rapist while also uncovering and giving a human side to his victims making us sympathise for them and defend their cause against the man. She takes us on an interesting ride of her investigation to identify the killer.
The golden state killer or the intially labeled EAR(East State Rapist) who has started off as a serial rapist and escalated to murdering his victims is a guy who has evaded the justice system for a long time. He had first surfaced in 1976 and wrecked havoc for many years(over two decades) in multiple cities(Sacramento, Modesto/Davies, Bay Area and Southern California) of California. His victims included single women (teenagers, divorcees ) and also married women - with or without kids - hurt and assailed with their husbands.
There was ample evidence left behind in the form of semen and blood - in some cases - but they were surprisingly not able to identify the culprit. The legal usage of DNA fingerprinting has only come into force in the early to late nineties. They used this fingerprinting of DNA to tie several unrelated cases from the past to the EAR. Multiple detectives and amateur sleuths have looked into the disjoint and seemingly unrelated cases over the years and some have become - like the author - obsessed with the killer and in unraveling the mystery. From my google search, I found out that the killer is nailed only in 2018 through the usage of some advanced technology in genetic mapping and DNA fingerprinting. He had over 60 instances of rape and atleast 10 murder cases to his name. He is awarded jail time on all counts he has accepted to and for 26 lifetimes in prison.
Unanswered questions - for me as a reader too - at the time of the author's death are : why did the killer do what he did? How did he select his victims? How did he do his neighborhood prowling without being seen? What was his motive in stealing small trinkets leaving behind more expensive objects? Who is he and how to nail him down?
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