“The story of the victims — it has to be told,” says Michelle McNamara in a new trailer for “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark.” The HBO docuseries is based on the late author’s 2018 best-selling true crime book of the same name and tells the story of McNamara’s obsessive search for the serial rapist and murderer known as the Golden State Killer.
McNamara first started investigating the cold case in a blog. Her husband, Patton Oswalt, explains that she looked at the case like a puzzle and was “trying to make sense of violence.” McNamara pored over geographic connections, DNA profiles, and genealogy websites.
“I don’t know how Michelle lived the horror of that day after day,” one character observes. “She was writing a book and she was trying to solve a case.”
We also hear from those who crossed paths with the Golden State Killer and about how victim-blaming played a role in the case. “When these crimes began in the ’70s, women didn’t talk about sexual assault because they were often blamed,” an interviewee explains. Another adds, “Somehow it always came back to being the woman’s fault.”
McNamara died in 2016. Her work proved instrumental in the 2018 arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo, the alleged Golden State Killer.
“I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” premieres June 28 on HBO. Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning helmer Liz Garbus (“What Happened, Miss Simone?”) directed the six-part docuseries.
