Michelle McNamara
/Born: April 14, 1970
Died: April 21, 2016
Like most true crime fanatics, Michelle McNamara's obsession started with a local murder. Michelle was 14 when a local woman's body was found in an alley near her childhood home. When Michelle picked up the shards of Kathleen Lombardo's Walkman it was the beginning of a lifelong journey to document crimes. But not even she could imagined the effect she would have had on one of the most notorious crime sprees in California history.
Michelle McNamara was born on April 14th, 1970 to Irish American Catholic parents, Thomas W. McNamara, a trial lawyer, and Rita McNamara, a stay-at-home mother. She was the youngest of six children, 5 girls and 1 boy. Michelle spent her childhood in Oak Park, IL, a village adjacent of West Chicago. Michelle was a gifted writer and acted as editor-in-chief for her high school's newspaper during her senior year of high school. She graduated from University of Notre Dame with a bachelor's degree in English in 1992, and later received an MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota.
She moved to California to start a career writing for TV and film. There she met comedian and actor Patton Oswalt and the two married in 2005. In 2006, Michelle started her blog TrueCrimeDiary.com. She credits her husband with the idea of starting the website and her interest in unsolved crimes fueled the content.
"It's the ones that really don't get that much attention that interest me because I think what's interesting about them is there's more stuff to be unearthed that hasn't been in the public yet and you can do it." -Michelle McNamara
In 2010, she began investigating a criminal that had terrorized California in the 70's and 80's. After DNA evidence revealed links between the "East Area Rapist" (EAR) and the "Original Night Stalker" (ONS), McNamra advocated that EAR and ONS were related to the "Visalia Ransacker" and possibly the work of the same person. She coined a new nickname for the person: the "Golden State Killer". Michelle gained the trust of the victims and their families and cooperation from the participating police force. The resulting interviews were used for articles published in the LA Times in 2013 and 2014, and she was offered a book deal with HarperCollins.
On April 21, 2016, Patton Oswalt found his wife dead in the bedroom of their LA home. It was two years before crime writers Paul Haynes, Billy Jensen, Patton Oswalt were recruited to finish Michelle's only work. “This book had to be finished,” Patton said in an interview with the New York Times. “Knowing how horrible this guy was, there was this feeling of, you’re not going to silence another victim. Michelle died, but her testimony is going to get out there.”
Released posthumously almost two years after her death, I'll Be Gone in the Dark reached number 2 onThe New York Times Best Seller list for non-fiction and number 1 of combined print and e-book, nonfiction. HBO announced in 2018 that they bought the rights for I'll Be Gone in the Dark and started filming the documentary in April of that year.
On April 25th 2018, Joseph James DeAngelo was arrested as the alleged Golden State Killer. After DeAngelo's DNA ultimately broke the case, the serial rapist and murderer is charged with 13 counts of murder and 13 counts of kidnapping. The more than 50 rapes and 100 burglaries fall outside the statute of limitations.
Although Kathleen Lombardo's murderer was never found, Michelle never stopped seeking justice for the victims of violent crimes. Her tenacity and courage without a doubt, contributed to the capture and imprisonment of the Golden State Killer.