I have become a true crime podcast junkie, for reasons that will remain unsubjected* to scrutiny (at least by me). I tend to avoid the ones about missing persons, however: I want an ending, which they don’t provide. (I realize this sounds glib, and I feel like a complete rotter for writing it. I think at some level the events described are often so horrible that my mind transmutes them into fiction.)
Podcasts about unsolved murders also leave me unfulfilled… so you can imagine my uber unfulfillment when I listened to one about a man who committed more than 50 sexual assaults and 12 murders in California in the 1970s and 1980s. It boggles my mind to think that somebody got away with that. It boggled many people’s minds for many years, including Michelle McNamara’s, who wrote a book about the case titled, I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer. During the interval between reserving the book at the library in March and reading it in July, the man alleged to be the Golden State Killer was arrested. I think my reading experience was much different because of that. Unfortunately, Michelle died in 2016, taking her obsession with her to the grave (the book was published posthumously).
*Forgive me if I have offended anyone’s editorial sensibilities here; I’m not sure “unsubjected” is correct. And I’m not sure if using a semi-colon after “here” is correct either. Maybe I should produce a true crimes against grammar podcast.
Wow. That's so sad to die just before the mystery was (allegedly) solved. I'm a bit like you too - I like resolutions.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'm sure I commit many crimes against grammar. Especially on my Monday posts on A Separate Life, when I'm trying to keep to the rule of eight sentences, and use dashes and semi-colons copiously.
It sounds like they got their man: there was a
DeleteDNA match. (Although the method by which they narrowed down the list of suspects was not through a direct DNA match. They submitted DNA extracted from some of the crime samples to a consumer DNA testing site--there was no match in the criminal databases--and got hits for distant relatives (along the lines of third cousins). They traced all those back to the first common ancestor, and then reconstructed a detailed family tree from that point forward. They then narrowed it down to two men who lived in California at the time of the crimes and fit other criteria (age, etc.). Then they got their guy by retrieving a coffee cup he threw away (or something like that) and testing DNA from that. I'm assuming they had a warrant to do so.
Don't need a warrant to test DNA off a coffee cup. (A good reason never to use disposable coffee cups! lol) Or so I've learned from watching US TV dramas. #uselessinformation
DeleteMaybe search warrant is the wrong term, but can the police do a DNA test on any person's disposable coffee cup? I need to watch more police procedural shows, obviously.
DeleteYes they can, Helen. It's public property once you throw it away.
DeleteSomeone out there would listen to your podcast.
ReplyDeleteI can't do true crime. I just can't. I get all spooked.
I have a suggestible (?) unconscious mind, so true crime, like horror, leads to extremely bad nightmares. Of course, given the current state of my country, I'm already barely sleeping!
ReplyDeleteDitto.
DeleteHere's my daughter's small review of "I'll be Gone in the Dark" on her bookstore website: https://www.browsersolympia.com/book/9780062319784
ReplyDeleteNote that she's annoyed with me for doing DNA tests for genealogy.
Just make sure you don't commit any murders. Although I've thought of a way to use these sites to get away with murder. Not that I'm plotting to murder anyone... at least, not yet.
DeleteYour daughter owns a bookstore? Tell her I love her.
That looks like such a nice bookstore, Dona. Probably a cool town too.
DeleteI listen to way too many true-crime podcasts, though lately I find myself more interested in a few I'm following about the Trump administration or the Mueller investigation.
ReplyDeleteI've heard they might be close to identifying the Zodiac killer using the same familial DNA technology.