Unmasking pain behind true crime
As Paul Holes recounts in the early pages of his engrossing new memoir, “Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases,” he discovered a natural affinity for the combination of scientific rigor and gut instinct required of criminal investigators almost immediately upon entering the field.
The former Contra Costa County cold case investigator, who worked with both the county sheriff ’s and district attorney’s offices and became famous in 2018 when he helped solve the decadesold Golden State Killer case — in part by using innovative DNA technology and open-source genealogy databases — was a recent UC Davis graduate and newlywed in 1990 when he started work as a drug analyst. He recalls walking into the windowless lab in Martinez where he would test urine samples for drug and DUI cases, and immediately feeling “spellbound,” he writes, with the hindsight clarity of someone remembering the moment he found his calling.
Soon after, Holes started spending time in the crime library, poring over tomes on the psychology of criminality and serial predation.
“It was like discovering gold,” he writes, comparing his total immersion in an unsolved case to “what a good drug high must feel like. The challenge of solving a (homicide) case was intoxicating.”
In Holes’ remarkably vulnerable and at times disturbing book (due to his detailed descriptions of the murders and rapes he worked to solve), Holes divulges not only the fact-gathering prowess involved in working cold cases, but also the damaging personal toll of his single-minded focus on such evil acts. He experienced panic attacks, drank excessively and was emotionally remote from his family. But he was driven by a profound sense of connectedness and responsibility to the many victims whose lives’ intimate details he
committed to memory.
Holes worked cold cases for almost 30 years, applying his forensic and behavioral expertise to help solve the murders of Laci and Conner Peterson, the kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard, and the arrest near Sacramento of Joseph DeAngelo as the Golden State Killer in 2018, his highest-profile achievement.
He is a frequent media presence now, but he has left full-time sleuthing behind since retiring four years ago. By phone from Denver, where he now lives with his family, Holes discussed his book with The Chronicle and reflected on his career.
Q: Investigating cold cases is painstaking, at times gruesome work that you discovered, early in your career, that you’re exceptionally well suited to. Why do you think that is?
A: Back in the day, I watched this TV show “Quincy” and thought, I’m going to be a forensic pathologist. I was marching down that path, intent on going to medical school and studying pathology. But I didn’t know that most forensic scientists don’t go out into the field. They’re in the morgue, not investigating cases. So I kind of made my own career, because I quickly realized I need to be out talking to people. I want to solve cases. That’s where my passion is, on the investigative side.
There’s an objective aspect to investigation, and you can never lose sight of the facts, but there is also that intuitive gut feeling. A lot of scientists are stuck in the definitive, the black and white, and I like to dabble in the gray.
Q: You write about the incredible emotional and psychological toll of trying to get inside the minds of killers in order to understand and catch them. What’s been hardest about that?
A: That toll, the (psychic) damage became fundamental to the book. When I first started writing, it was just going to be a deep dive into the (Golden State Killer) investigation. But when I started talking to my collaborator, Robin (Gaby Fisher), and telling her about my role in other cases, notably my role with Laci Peterson and then when Ray (Giacomelli, a detective and friend) was killed, I was literally breaking down crying. It became obvious
that those traumas one experiences over the course of a career doing this work are the most important thing I want readers to understand. Professionals like me who are doing this work are sacrificing themselves in order to keep the public safe.
Q: You’ve said your life changed instantly in 1994 when you found a file on the East Area Rapist, as the Golden State Killer was first known. Why do you think you became obsessed with this one case to such an extent?
A: In the beginning, I worked on it more as a hobby. But, in 2001 when I made the DNA connection, showing that the East Area Rapist was responsible for the homicides in Southern California, I knew it was a major case. But it was Orange County’s case, not mine. It was when I was promoted to chief (of forensics) and I was bored out my skull writing memos that I thought, “Let’s see what I can do.”
From that point on, it was 24/7/365 in terms of my obsession. It snowballed when I started interviewing the living victims and family members and saw the trauma that even decades after their attacks they were still suffering. … That’s when I felt motivated that I have to solve this thing. I didn’t just want to solve this puzzle; I wanted to get these victims answers.
Q: Are there any cold cases that still keep you up at night?
A: I probably will continue to work cases for the rest of my life, just not at the level I did before. I’ve got a binder of the Cosette Ellison case (a 15year-old murdered in 1970 in Moraga) literally right here. … I need to figure this out, and it’s a hard case from a physical evidence standpoint. She’s a victim I just fell in love with. It weighs on me. I’m retired, but how do I let that go?