NOT JUST ANOTHER CRIME DOC
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark a brilliant look at how genre pulls us in — and pulls us down
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark Debuts Sunday, Crave/hbo
What you already know about California’s notorious Golden State Killer and his prolific string of rapes and murders in the 1970s and ’80s might depend entirely on how plugged in you are to the world of true crime. There is no succinct way to describe our culture’s surge in true-crime stories, not just for entertainment value, but as a sort of rock to cling to in a stormy era of fears that are often as specific as they are abstract. How much is too much? Some fans, like the late Michelle Mcnamara, who is both the subject and spirit of Liz Garbus’s intricate and absorbing sixpart documentary series I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, take their truecrime fixations online and with a higher purpose. As bloggers and ad hoc investigators, they are drawn to cold cases. Some of the biggest crimesolving news of the past decade comes courtesy of these citizen investigators.
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, which was also the title of Mcnamara’s posthumous bestseller in 2018, is a complex and thoughtful attempt to comprehend mutual fixations — not only as it pertains to the psychopathy of a serial rapist and killer, but also the allure that such a string of crimes can have on the professional detectives and determined amateurs trying to identify him.
Here, “identify” takes on multiple meanings. To identify the suspect, to process the deepest darkness, one must try to identify with the suspect. Mcnamara compared it to the old lagoon creature of horror-film lore, footage from which becomes a haunting motif in Garbus’s series. It’s a monster that reaches up to pull you down.
When done right, multi-chapter, true-crime docuseries can be an enthralling experience of discovery and context; when overplayed, they can be frustrating. Garbus, a filmmaker with an instinct for handling complicated and emotionally difficult material, doesn’t waste a minute. The series works as a near-perfect example of how to manage several concurrent themes, tangents and narratives, while always captivating the viewer.
In his earliest break-ins, circa 1974, the prime suspect was called the Visalia Ransacker. When his breaking and entering evolved into rape attacks, leading to more than 50 sexual assaults in the Sacramento area between 1976 and 1979, they called him the East Area Rapist. His re-emergence, this time as the Original Night Stalker, came a few hundred miles south near Ventura and included several murders between 1979 and 1986.
The story of how he committed his crimes and how police used DNA to arrest a suspect in 2018 — a former police officer named Joseph James Deangelo, who is now 74 and awaiting trial (or a plea deal) on 88 murder, rape and other charges — would stand on its own as chilling material.
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark is as much about Mcnamara, who, as a true-crime blogger and general lookie-loo, came late to the story.
A new mom who was married to comedian and actor Patton Oswalt, she took that fascination further — befriending retired detectives, getting to know women who had survived the attacks, and redubbing the elusive assailant the Golden State Killer.
Eventually, Mcnamara produced a long, meaty Los Angeles magazine article, renewing interest in the cold cases and becoming something of a celebrity in the true-crime world. She signed a big book contract and continued her search for new evidence, gaining the trust of state and local investigators.
This is where I’ll Be Gone in the Dark turns its attention to how the case consumed Mcnamara, who struggled with stress and insomnia and showed signs of depression. Like so many people in this docuseries, she carried hurts from the past, including the experience of being sexually harassed. She self-medicated with painkillers, sleep aids, anti-anxiety drugs and amphetamines.
An autopsy attributed her death, at age 46 in 2016, to an accidental overdose. Her hope was that DNA might provide the break in the case and the Golden State Killer would hear a fateful knock on his door.
Mcnamara never got to see it. As some of the citizen investigators, survivors and others affiliated with Mcnamara’s work gather to promote her book, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark travels to the annual Crimecon gathering, where a camera pans across an audience and reveals a demographic similarity in gender, age and race — an auditorium full of Michelle Mcnamaras. I’ve yet to see a true-crime project that also takes time to eloquently and empathetically relate to why so many people (so many women), find their place here.
Fear might have been the initial draw but the real payoff occurs in their courage.