Michelle McNamara's Blog, Diary of a True Criminal, Traced Cold Cases and Forgotten Cases

True crime blogger and author Michelle McNamara, who followed the Golden State Killer (opens in new tab) on the HBO series I'll Be Gone in the Dark, relentlessly covered forgotten unsolved cases for years of her life, until her accidental death in 2016 Before (opens in new tab), she had devoted a lot of energy to that particular case, but her blog was much more extensive than that. She visited crime scenes, pored over social media, interviewed witnesses, and collaborated with detectives to get under the skin of cases that remained unsolved, with the goal of uncovering critically important details.

McNamara launched True Crime Diary (open in new tab) in 2006, and from there (open in new tab) "has documented hundreds of unsolved cases."

The About page clearly states: True Crime Diary, for example, is a "comprehensive, comprehensive, and comprehensive account of a suspect's online behavior and the cases that remain unsolved. trying to find angles that others have missed, such as a suspect's online behavior or similarities between cases that have not yet been made public. Additional information is gleaned from interviews with law enforcement, victims' families, friends, and concerned citizens.True Crime Diary is not interested in looking back at notorious criminals and saying wow. We are interested in looking at the case as it unfolds and asking, who?"

The Golden State Killer, as McNamara would later name it, debuted on this site in 2011 (open in new tab). In a post titled "Part 1: Part 1: Who are you?" she began, "I am obsessed. It's not healthy. I frequently see his face, or the face of someone who remembers his face."

She continued: "He has killed more people than the Zodiac, but his notoriety is only a fraction of the Zodiac's. He moved from one medium-sized California town to another for more than a decade. He did not need you to publish his letters. He was too busy trying to test the defenseless by prying open locks and shoving window screens". It was immediately clear that she felt compelled to do what had never been done before: investigate, bring justice to the bereaved family, and catch this burglar, rapist, and murderer. She gave an interview (opens in new tab) in which she discussed the case in depth, some of which was used in an HBO documentary. She says in the archival footage, "The great tragedy of this case for me is that it is not better known." Her ultimate goal was to actually see the killer's face as he was arrested and held in prison.

The blog seems to have been placed after her death as a memorial and testimony to her work. The last post on the blog (open in new tab) was from June 2015. It was the first of three, and unfinished, detailing a decades-old case that had recently had a major breakthrough. She remembers an aside about the investigation: "Controlling cops is like herding cats," the lieutenant wrote. Sometimes they find acorns like blind pigs, but most of the time they just muddy the water by tearing up the ground."

"Turbidity is, of course, the bane of cold cases," she writes, "and it thickens from all sources, not just confused, mute cops. It is not hard to see how her own interest in investigating recently solved homicides could lead to her own work.

In an earlier post (opens in new tab), dated September 2014, she apologized for her absence. She wrote, "I had little on my mind except to finish my book on the Golden State Killer." She explained that she had been looking at the online community page. 'A passing comment about an event or a job might connect with something you read elsewhere. Some things have already percolated ......."

In retrospect, it is a sobering reminder of the state of McNamara's mental health before her death and how she missed out on seeing her dream of seeing the Golden State Killer put behind bars come true. (The arrested suspect, Joseph DeAngelo, pleaded guilty at the end of June 2020 (opens in new tab))

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