Original subtitles

WOMAN: This treasure trove of files was going

to be handed to Michelle.

♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYS) ♪

MICHELLE MCNAMARA: In Visalia, there was this ransacker

who totally mirrors the East Area Rapist.

WOMAN 2: That type of behavior, I do think,

could have led to his real fantasy,

which was rape.

It's like he got to the emotional center

of people's lives. And just wanted to destroy that.

PATTON OSWALT: She was still very much a mom,

and a wife, and a friend. But it was clear

that she had a real shot at solving this.

That can really pull you into some depths

that you can't get out of.

MARY RITA SKRINE: I'll never forget, I was driving home,

and I remember Patton calling me.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

I think it was right when it happened.

Because he was just in a scream slash cry.

"She's dead. She's dead. She's dead."

And I'm not-- I'm like,

"What are-- What are you talking about?"

It's like, "Michelle, she didn't wake up.

She's not-- she's dead."

You know, and I still wasn't clear what was going on.

And I said, "Patton, can you tell me what happened?"

You know, "What's going on? Is she sick?"

Or she-- you know, I mean, it still wasn't processing.

So, you just went through the morning.

And he said, "I went into the room.

I put down the coffee.

She was breathing.

After doing work and emails, came back.

And she wasn't."

(SIRENS WAILING)

"And then paramedics were there

and said she was gone."

PRINCE: (SINGING) ♪ Underneath the purple rain ♪

MALE NEWS ANCHOR: World-renowned pop artist Prince

found dead in his estate...

KATHLEEN CONROY: I was actually up in Minneapolis for work,

watching the Prince story unfold.

JAKE TAPPER: ...the cause of death is not yet known.

We do know that the last few weeks of his life

were a bit mysterious.

And Mary Rita called when I was in the hotel room.

And...

yeah, I just... was stunned.

(PHONE RINGING)

MAUREEN STRATTON: My sister Mary Rita called me at work.

And, um... Yeah, it was horrible.

I mean, she just kept saying, "It's bad. It's really bad."

But she-- it took her a while to tell me what had happened,

and it was just such a...

out-of-the-blue, you know, um...

I mean, you never expected that,

your baby sister to pass before you

or anyone else in the family.

KATHLEEN: I can remember thinking

something happened that involved the case

or, like, that it was foul play or whatever.

'Cause I could not wrap my head around the fact

that she could just die in her sleep.

♪ ("AVALANCHE" BY AIMEE MANN PLAYING) ♪

♪ Well, I stepped Into an avalanche ♪

♪ It covered up my soul ♪

♪ When I am not this hunchback That you see ♪

♪ I sleep Beneath the golden hill ♪

♪ You who wish to conquer pain ♪

♪ You must learn Learn to serve me well ♪

♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪

(DOOR CREAKS)

PATTON OSWALT: I can't...

completely trust my memories from that time.

I remember all of the McNamaras being there.

Uh, I rem-- I remember being very, very frightened,

and very, very-- like, pathologically

trying to bring any kind of normalcy

to any minute of my life.

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

MAUREEN: It's a bit of a blur, those couple weeks.

I mean, I-- I don't-- I remember Alice wanted to go to school,

um, that Monday.

I remember on the weekend after she died,

there-- we had a pool party.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

MARY RITA: When you have a child involved,

you gotta make sure she's okay moving forward,

and that she sees that we're gonna be there for her.

And I remember that at night,

Alice and Michelle would always talk

about what's your rose and your thorn for the day.

You know, the good and bad.

And that night she said, you know,

"I know what my rose is and what my thorn is.

My rose is that you all are here.

My thorn is that my mom's gone."

♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

I just-- it was terrify-- I just--

I remember I...

I did that thing where I, like, closed my eyes

and I tried to will this--

as a nightmare, like--

and then-- and then it just wasn't.

FEMALE NEWS ANCHOR: Michelle McNamara, the wife of popular comedian

and actor Patton Oswalt,

has died at the age of 46.

A spokesman says she, a crime writer,

died in her sleep and that her passing

came as a complete surprise to the family.

KAREN KILGARIFF: Michelle was such a brilliant woman.

She was such a talented writer.

She was so into everything that we're all into,

and she made such great contents.

It's just a... incomprehensible tragedy.

In the true crime community, her death was--

It was-- It-- For a long time, it was just unbelievable.

You just-- you didn't-- of course, no one expected it,

but you really don't expect it

when someone is in the midst of something like that.

Like, she was on this journey, this very public journey,

and this very important one

that was getting all this kinda steam behind it.

And then just a sudden loss,

like-- like-- like a shocking stop.

♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

You know, one of the first things I thought was,

"That-- that book has to get finished."

And I actually, uh, texted Patton

just to say, "Whatever I can do."

And Patton answered and was like, "We're already on it."

(SIGHS)

PAUL HAYNES: When I learned that she died,

it was so painful.

I felt like I was damaging my body.

And then, I was contacted by one of Michelle's friends

with respect to the boxes.

"What do we do with them?"

I was like, "Well, give them to me,"

you know, "I'll take them."

My dining area became a cold case storage locker

for the better part of that year.

My commitment was to ensuring that the many hours

that she'd spent working on this case

weren't futile.

You know, that we could resume where she left off.

I wanted to take care of this person

for her whole life.

And Michelle's book was always such a dream for her.

So, it almost felt like it was my last opportunity

to take care of something for her.

DANIEL GREENBERG: Once Patton had kind of given us

the signal, "Let's do it,"

there was the process of

Jennifer going through all of her emails and files

and saying, "Okay, I have 150 manuscript pages.

But what else is there?"

That's when I started to get in touch with Paul Haynes

because someone had to go into her computer.

And then, we brought Billy Jensen in

because he was a friend,

and he was a true crime writer himself.

BILLY JENSEN: Every month, Michelle and I would meet

and she would talk to me about her case

and I would talk about my cases.

I mean, this was a relationship

that was entirely based on crime.

So, the only thing I thought that I could do to help

was to help finish this book.

Paul sends me her entire hard drive,

and I'm looking and I'm going, "All right, well,

what do we have to work with here?"

And I start reading it, and it's so good.

MICHELLE MCNAMARA: (READS)

Every obsession needs a room of its own.

HAYNES: There were a lot of pieces of writing,

a lot of notes, a lot of Word documents

with fragments of things.

MICHELLE: "The act of bludgeoning was arousal..."

HAYNES: Like email correspondences...

MICHELLE: "The ratio of investigating to writing

is out of whack for me..."

HAYNES: ...and her chapter outlines,

referencing sections that she never got around to writing.

For instance, a section about her experience

in Northern Ireland.

MICHELLE: "...I let him press against me..."

BILLY: We just, like, kind of, like, pulling things

from here and there

and-- and plugging them in.

And then I see this one Microsoft Word document,

and I read it, and I was like,

"This is the ending of the book."

MICHELLE: One day soon you'll hear a car pull up,

you'll hear footsteps coming up your front walk...

Take one of your hyper gulping breaths...

(READS)

(DOORBELL RINGS)

(ENGINE STARTS)

PAUL HOLES: When she died...

the emotional blow

was like the loss of a family member.

There's no question about that.

I-- I was hit, and hit hard.

Um... (CLEARS THROAT)

And then there was the case,

and I just lost my investigative partner.

I was able to get down, uh, to Southern California

for Michelle's memorial.

WOMAN: Just like one of her beloved lighthouses,

Michelle's light will shine on, and we will remain drawn to it.

(APPLAUSE)

HOLES: And there's a guy standing in front of me,

and he's got a badge on his lapel.

And I just say, "Hey, you law enforcement?"

And he was like, "Yeah," and we introduce ourselves.

And it was Greg Stearns from LAPD robbery-homicide.

He ends up getting up on stage

and gave a very nice speech.

GREG STEARNS: Homicide cops are impatient.

We're egotistical to an extent,

we're very territorial,

and we certainly don't like to be second-guessed

or have anyone make suggestions.

(LAUGHTER)

And so, Michelle was able to do what--

what very few people could do.

And I have every belief that through her work

that this will be solved.

Michelle always was and always will be one of us.

(APPLAUSE)

HOLES: I mean, my world was spinning around me.

You know, one of the goofy things that I would do

is I would say, "Okay, Michelle, you now know who

the Golden State Killer is.

Just kinda channel something through me.

You know, point me in the right direction."

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

MICHELLE: Are you familiar with a company called 23andMe?

-LARRY POOLE: Yeah. -MICHELLE: My husband and I did it.

You turn in your own DNA, so you swab yourself.

And it-- it gives you genetic, uh, your genetic history

for everything from diseases.

But they're starting to do ancestry and stuff like that.

And to me, it just seems like, gosh, is there any way

that you guys could--

could put it into a system like that?

'Cause I feel like he's gotta be related to someone.

HOLES: Michelle most certainly was somebody

who was a big proponent of using

the latest, greatest DNA technology

to solve this case.

She was saying, "Let's just go ahead

and create an undercover account

to search for his relatives."

She was even offering to pay to do some of this work.

MICHELLE: Now, like, if a private person had asked

if they could do that, has that ever happened?

-LARRY: No. -MICHELLE: Okay.

HOLES: The big hurdle from a technical standpoint

is that these genealogy websites required us to mail in

the Golden State Killer's saliva or spit,

which we didn't have.

MICHELLE: I think that within the next six months,

the technology is gonna get even better,

and-- and we're gonna be able to put it together.

HOLES: Since that time, a website called GEDmatch

became a powerful tool.

Instead of sending GEDmatch the Golden State Killer's spit,

we could upload a new type of digital DNA profile.

But in order to generate this profile,

I have to first have an adequate amount

of Golden State Killer DNA.

Unfortunately, the DNA that I had generated

from the three Contra Costa County cases

I had completely consumed.

So now it's, okay, we have to start

reaching out to the other jurisdictions

to figure out is there enough DNA remaining

for us to be able to do

this new genealogy type of DNA test.

I end up getting a call from the Ventura DA investigator

saying, "You won't believe this.

We've got a ton of Golden State Killer DNA.

How much do you want?"

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

KRIS PEDRETTI: I did a great job for 42 years

of trying to be as normal as possible.

I am your perfect overachiever.

You know, I don't just garden. I garden.

I don't just have a job,

you know, I'm working 12 hours a day.

I think keeping busy, um...

keeps your focus on the outside... elements

and-- and you don't really look inward too deep.

I mean, you've got to remember,

the '70s were definitely a time that you didn't share.

My parents didn't tell their own family.

So I really slipped into more of a denial.

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

And then, in 2018,

a newspaper article came out.

And my husband said,

"Kris, there's something you might want to see."

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

I never thought I would see a picture

of a victim of the East Area Rapist.

I just felt like it was supposed to be a secret.

I was so blown away that I wrote to the editor

and asked if he could please give her my phone number.

And she called me the next day. And...

(CHUCKLES) Now, I'm actually talking to another victim.

And that was-- I just-- I don't know how to explain

what that feeling was like.

And then, uh, she introduced me to Carol Daly.

Carol came over,

and she brought me a copy of the police report.

My husband took off work, and my sister,

and my mind was just going, like,

"How do we make this right?"

And that's when I just said,

"Do you want me to read this to you?"

And they said, "If you're okay."

And I said, "You know what? Let's do it.

Let's-- let's start fresh.

Let's everybody know everything."

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

"So, at approximately 7:15,

the victim placed a pizza in the oven.

She then went into the front living room to play her piano.

As she started playing the piano,

she heard a noise next to her on her left side,

and she started to turn around.

As she did so, she saw subject standing next to her

and suspect then put a knife against her throat.

The suspect told the victim, 'Get moving.

If you say anything or flinch,

I'll push the knife all the way in

and I'll be gone in the dark of the night.'"

Both of my parents have passed away.

I don't feel I would be sitting here today

if they were alive

because I think it would be very disturbing to them.

And then I said, "Six-foot tall,

regular build,

possible small penis."

Um... "Victim's hymen still intact."

Reading the report to my family,

I think that was a real moment for me,

um, in kind of owning my own story and sharing it.

But I could've dealt with that so much earlier.

I, you know, I wonder...

who would I be now, you know?

You know, what could've been different?

What would my-- what would my past have entailed?

(ALICE COOING)

MICHELLE: Alice, hi.

(ALICE COOS)

MICHELLE: Hi.

I'm so emotional right now, you wouldn't believe.

Alice.

Painkillers equal joy.

Can you smile?

Can you smile?

"Postpartum depression," my husband explained to friends.

But it wasn't new mom blues.

It was old mom blues.

During my wedding, my mother and I

had our biggest blowout yet.

We never spoke of it.

But she wrote me a long letter

detailing all the things about me

that made her proud.

We slowly rebuilt our relationship after that.

(READS)

(PHONE RINGS)

(READS)

"What?"

"Oh, Michelle...

Mom died."

I wish now I'd been kinder to her.

She could be undermining and cutting in her remarks,

but the older me sees that as a mark

of a deeply sensitive person.

She endured alcoholic parents and the death of an infant son.

She was raising six kids with no help.

Holding my newborn daughter, I got it.

I got the love that guts you.

(ALICE COOS)

MICHELLE: Can you do the dance?

The sense of responsibility that narrows the world

to a pair of needy eyes.

Hi, Tickles!

Ooh!

Writing this now,

I'm struck by two incompatible truths that pain me.

(READS)

But I probably wouldn't have felt the freedom to write it

until she was gone.

♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

PATTON: Second worst day of my life

was the day that my wife passed away.

The worst day of my life was the day after,

when I had to tell our daughter.

My wife passed away while she was at school.

So, I talked to the school, and I told them what happened.

And the principal talked to me.

She was amazing and said,

"She can't come home from school,

and then you tell her, and then she has to go to bed."

She said, "Tell her in the sunshine."

So...

I had to look at this little girl

that was everything to me, and take everything from her.

I-- I-- I mean, I-- I shut down for a long time.

I wasn't even-- At first it was about,

"Okay, I gotta get through the day-to-day,"

get Alice up, you know,

get her to sleep at night while she's crying,

deal with her nightmares, deal with my nightmares.

I'm just gonna walk forward into the dark,

just windmilling my arms around,

just flailing my arms around everywhere.

Now I'm, you know,

it's six months and twelve days on.

And, man, uh, grief is...

It-- It-- If you don't talk about it,

then grief really gets to

set up and fortify its positions inside of you

and begin to immobilize you.

But the more you talk,

the more you expose it to the air and to the light,

then, you know,

grief doesn't get a chance to organize itself.

And then you can maybe move on a little easier.

It's a way to make the darkness feel uncomfortable with itself

for a little bit.

(APPLAUSE)

Just over a year ago, um,

I became a widower.

And, uh, I have-- I'm moving along as best I can.

It is, you know, I'm-- I can get up

and I can do my job. I can be a dad.

But, uh, it's not--

You know, it-- it's still-- The wound is there.

It is healing. It's not shut yet.

And, uh... ooh, by the way,

if one more person wishes me "strength"

-on my "healing journey"... -(LAUGHTER)

...I'm gonna throw a balloon full of piss

into every candle store on the planet because...

-(APPLAUSE) -It...

It is not a healing journey.

-ARI SHAPIRO: She died in April. -PATTON: April 21st.

ARI: And so, we are almost at the point

where it will no longer be the first...

-Christmas without her... -PATTON: I know. I know.

ARI: ...the first Mother's Day without her,

the first birthday without her.

PATTON: Oh, God, that's--

Yes, that's exactly the conundrum.

That's the conundrum.

Overall, 2017 is awful because at least in 2016,

I had three months and 21 days of Michelle being in there.

And now, this is a year where there's no Michelle.

Like, that's it.

So, when January 1st dawned,

it felt like a cell door slamming behind me.

Like, you are now in this awful world

where there-- you don't even have a memory of her

being a part of this year.

You know, I-- You can say you're through with grief

all you want.

But grief will let you know when it's done.

HAYNES: We didn't know for months what killed Michelle.

And it was really eating away at me

because I-- I had just seen her mere days before her death.

And I was replaying the conversation in my mind

for anything that may have indicated

that this was imminent.

There was nothing, there was nothing there.

FEMALE REPORTER: New details now in the investigation

into the death of music icon Prince.

MALE REPORTER: Investigators confirm today

that Prince died of an overdose of the painkiller fentanyl.

REPORTER: The Drug Enforcement Administration reports

an alarming spike in fentanyl-related overdose death.

HAYNES: And then, Star tabloid

got ahold of the actual medical examiner's report.

The way it was contextualized made me sick.

But, you know, I couldn't not look at it.

MELANIE BARBEAU: I ordered the full autopsy report

in order to try to understand what happened.

You know, right on the top of the autopsy,

it says, "From the, uh, anatomic findings

and pertinent history, I ascribe to the death

as... A, effects of multiple drugs."

And then under D down below, it says,

"Other conditions contributing but not related

to the immediate cause of death"

is the heart issue,

the cardiovascular disease.

So really that was not gonna kill her.

That could not have been a cause of death.

When I was younger, I had a surgery

and got addicted to opiate prescription pills.

I had to seek recovery from that.

So I wish I could've recognized that happening

because I feel like, uh, you know,

my own experience would, uh, make me a good person

to have communicated with her and maybe tried to help her.

She had Adderall,

opiates, fentanyl,

uh, Xanax.

No doctor prescribed

that amount of pills to her like this.

Oftentimes, you have to turn to drugs

that are being sold under the table,

and you don't know exactly what's in the drug.

And that's where we're seeing a lot of the counterfeit drugs

that are cut with fentanyl.

Fentanyl's 100 times stronger than morphine.

A little tiny bit of fentanyl

would kill the average person if they just took it.

That's one of the reasons we're seeing a spike

in prescription drug overdoses.

Many of these individuals live in a, uh,

a silo of their own

and, um, are able to hide it

until it comes to problems like this.

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

PATTON: I couldn't process it.

If she had gotten more sleep,

would she have been more cognizant

of what she was doing? I don't know.

Because, I mean, when she would share with me, it was like,

"I'm just taking some Adderall to focus in the morning,

I'm taking some Vicodin at night to--"

Like, she said it in such a...

"Eh, don't worry about it," you know?

And-- and the way that she said it so casually

and so, like, on top of it, like, "I'm just doing that,"

I'm, like, "Oh, okay." Well, you know.

Fuck do I know?

I didn't realize that...

it piles up the way that it does,

and it-- I-- I-- I just--

I didn't-- that's something

that I get to carry with me forever,

is just not knowing.

I don't know.

-♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪ -(SIGHS)

Uh-- Uh, it's-- it's still inexplicable to me

and I don't really understand it.

But our family is aware

that there are addiction issues

on both sides of my parents' family.

My dad, he was very high functioning,

but he decided to go ahead and go into rehab,

and he never drank again.

And I don't know if that was Michelle's issue.

I really have no idea.

MARY RITA: It was definitely an internal struggle.

I mean, she knew if she was in a dark place or not,

and she did what she had to do on her own.

It wasn't like she drew everyone in

and we saw a lot of it,

because we didn't.

BOB MCNAMARA: I don't remember her

expressing... concern,

but I would, you know,

I think generally in our family, there is some depression.

I know my mother had-- was on anti-depressants.

So, I-- I-- I-- in some respect, it may be a genetic thing.

KERA BOLONIK: If you're depressed,

it's always there.

It just comes in and out of remission.

We talked about it as early as high school.

I first met Michelle when we were on the Trapeze,

our high school paper at Oak Park.

Oh, the biggest feat known to man,

pick Michelle McNamara up. (GROANS)

KERA: When I first met her, I just thought she was,

you know, one of these, like, popular girls.

(CROWD CHEERING)

And she right away surprised me.

The wheels of her mind were constantly rolling.

I often thought she was a better friend to me

than I was to her.

Like, I-- I wished, uh,

I had listened more.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

The last time I saw her,

she brought over a bottle of Scotch

and we just, like, talked for hours.

♪ (JAZZ MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

(TIRES SCREECHING)

I was like, "Man,

she is really in the thick of things."

And I didn't know that there were whole, like,

groups of days where she wasn't even leaving the house.

When you're writing a book, all you think about

is whatever you're writing about.

But then she-- how to, like, shut off all that darkness.

I honestly don't know how she lived the horror of that

day after day after day.

♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪

MICHELLE: "How often do you think of him?"

What can I say?

-The truth is, all the time. -(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS)

When I climb the stairs to my bedroom.

When I'm folding laundry.

-(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS) -The truth? Too much.

♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪

So this morning, the FBI, has launched a campaign

to help the working group

generate new tips from the public.

The FBI is offering a reward of up to 50,000 dollars

for information leading to the identification,

arrest, and conviction of the Golden State Killer.

HOLES: You could directly attribute

going public with it at that point

with the public attention that Michelle was able to bring

to the case.

Because now, there was enough people across the nation

who would be paying attention. "Golden State Killer?

I know about that case."

So there was sort of momentum within Agency's recognizing,

"We need to get this done," you know, sooner than later.

And then, in that first quarter of 2018,

I received the Golden State Killer's

digital DNA profile.

Things snowballed from there.

I reached out to this genetic genealogist,

Barbara Rae-Venter.

BARBARA RAE-VENTER: When I worked on a forty-year-old cold case,

it was written up in Forensic Magazine.

And Paul Holes saw that article.

And so he called me,

and he just asked if I would be willing to work

on one of his cold cases with him.

And, uh, so I said,

yes, I would be, you know, pleased to do that.

HOLES: A DNA profile is nothing but a series of numbers.

And so it's something that can be put

into a relational database and searched

to see if you can find individuals

that share DNA with each other.

What you're looking for, then, is three people,

your unknown person and the other two people,

who are matching on that same segment of DNA.

And if they do,

then you know they all have the same ancestry.

We've got over a thousand matches.

But the biggest match was, at best,

a third-cousin match.

It's probably more like a fourth-cousin match.

So you're talking about distant, distant cousins.

So we were no-- nowhere in a good zone here.

HOLES: Our top hits,

well, if they're a third cousin of the Golden State Killer,

that means their common ancestor

is on the order of a great-great grandparent,

people who were born in the 1840s.

So I have to build their family trees back in time,

identify each of their parents, their grandparents,

their great-grandparents, their great-great grandparents,

and see if they intersect.

And if they do, theoretically,

my Golden State Killer is a descendant

of that common ancestor.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

BARBARA: You then start doing

what's called "reverse tree-building"

because you're now coming forward in time

trying to find all of the descendants

of whoever the common ancestor is.

HOLES: It took months of building family trees,

but we eventually identified all descendants that would fit

within the criteria of the case.

Which individuals had the physical characteristics,

you know, 5'8" to 5'10", 160, 180 pounds,

back in the 1970s?

Which individuals have the geographic connections

that we know that the Golden State Killer had?

BARBARA: And so we managed to come up with nine men

who were in California,

who were approximately the right age.

HOLES: And then, there was one individual

who-- who's living in Colorado of all places,

who I got very excited about.

He was somebody that was in the construction industry.

He had two uncles living in Cordova Meadows

at the time those attacks were occurring there.

And when one of those uncles moves down to Stockton,

now you have the East Area Rapist

attacking in Stockton. And that uncle bought a house

from where Gay Hardwick worked.

And I'm just thinking, "Holy smokes,

what is the coincidence of something like that?"

MICHELLE: You still think maybe the building

or construction stuff?

HOLES: I think that's a-- a possibility, yeah.

We ended up asking his sister,

"Are you willing to give a DNA sample?"

And she absolutely was.

Turns out, this guy living in Colorado is not the guy.

And I was going, "Oh, my God, I've got all this stuff

that's adding up that he's the guy."

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

And that was this constant roller-coaster ride

of putting the time and effort, getting in that obsessive state,

just to be crushed because the DNA didn't come back

the way that you thought it was going to be.

And I thought, "Oh, this is the guy."

And then getting back in the saddle and doing it

over and over again.

It's just crushing

because I just go, "What have I just done

for the last two years of my life?"

MICHELLE: There's this analogy where most people, I guess,

who get lost in the forest die

because they won't change direction.

I understand that,

because I've now committed myself

-so much to this guy... -(FEMALE INTERVIEWER CHUCKLING)

...that, goddammit, it can't be that I don't find him.

-Like... -FEMALE INTERVIEWER: Right.

MICHELLE: He's taken over my life.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

MELANIE: I've lived my life often not taking

excellent care of myself in many ways.

And I think sometimes maybe living vicariously

through other situations or dealing with this case,

that it's helped me avoid my own traumas.

Michelle knew about my experiences.

MELANIE:

-MICHELLE: Oh my god. -MELANIE:

MICHELLE:

I never addressed it. I did not tell my parents.

I did not, um, file a police report.

And when I was much older, I actually called his residence

to hear his voice. I was going to confront him.

And I changed my mind.

But that anger still resides.

And I think that that gave me the strength and the ambition

to solve this case.

And Michelle, uh, had that same common ground.

MICHELLE: I worked in Northern Ireland for a year

after college, and I-- my boss basically-- same thing happened.

MELANIE: She didn't go into great detail.

And I look at Michelle as maybe somebody who...

it was easier for her to be looking at this investigation

than dealing with whatever her issues were

in her personal life,

but that it may have overtook her.

And when you're in fight-or-flight

or freeze-or-fold in trauma,

a very easy way to escape that feeling

is to self-medicate and not feel.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

MICHELLE: (READS)

It's darkness that covers everything I see, do, or touch

with moments of light and happiness.

I try to stay with those moments as much as possible.

(READS)

I probably do have a chemical-based depression.

But I can't spend my life battling this darkness,

this obsession with lies and dishonesty

and injustice and ugliness and cruelty.

It's like everything is pressing against my back,

forcing me down.

(READS)

The surprising thing is

I feel like I've known this for a long time,

since I was a little kid,

that I had this sense of loss,

this heightened attentiveness to pain and depression.

(READS)

I'm sorry.

I've always been sorry,

even if I haven't shown it well enough.

(READS)

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

KAREN: Her death was a terrible accident.

I think it points toward how self-medicated

our whole culture has become,

whether it's with food or with drugs or with drinking

or with any kind of escapism.

There's a lot to escape.

You know what I mean? This is clearly a psychopath, right,

somebody that just simply does-- is not connected

and does not care about other human beings in any way.

HOLES: No, he doesn't. He's out there for his own...

And I would say true crime is probably on the,

uh, lighter end of the spectrum.

As a severe blackout alcoholic,

I know that I've done things I--

that I wish I had True Crime Podcast to listen to,

to avoid my problems when I was in my 20s.

I think this one's disturbing 'cause it's like a bit,

it's an entire family that's dead, you know, for some people.

A lot of people kind of recoil

at the whole trend of true crime.

At first you-- it feels morbid.

You feel like you're rubbernecking

on someone else's tragedy.

But underneath that, there is this sense of...

everybody is doing their best, working overtime,

sitting at their desk until the middle of the night

trying to find justice

for people who can't do it for themselves anymore.

JENNIFER BARTH: I think maybe it was, like, four to six months

that we were all working on the book.

Sending it back and forth and agreeing to cuts.

By the time we got to publication week,

we knew interest in the book was building.

DANIEL: It hit on a Tuesday, and...

it debuted at number one on the New York Times list.

And I have not had reviews like that

for any book in my career.

I mean, it just went bananas.

KAREN: It's such an exciting thing

that this book exists right now.

MICHELLE: Really, I'm very excited about it.

I've always wanted to write a book,

but it always seemed like one of those unattainable things

that wouldn't actually happen.

So, I want this book to have an impact.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

KAREN: The level of writing is so incredibly impressive.

But also, there's something very alive about this book,

-you know what I mean? Like... -PATTON: No, no, I get it, yeah.

I would read a couple of pages and I would lose my shit

because her voice was right there.

She was right there.

It was a very, very hard, difficult process.

And there's also-- it was very bittersweet for me

because I knew that I wouldn't be able to live

and go on with life

if this was left undone.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

But not having the book done

meant that part of her was still around.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

You know, so I'm happy for her and for her memory,

but it's another form of saying goodbye.

(APPLAUSE)

I'm very aware that when you engage with true crime,

you are picking around and becoming a consumer

-of other people's tragedy. -Yes. Yeah.

And so, I remember very early on,

finding True Crime Blog and thinking, like,

"Okay, I've found my person."

Right.

GILLIAN FLYNN: And the fact that Michelle

was willing to get out there and do the actual detective work,

I sit in amazement of.

So, I'm curious, can you tell me,

are you all still looking for him?

-PATTON: Yeah. -BILLY: Oh, absolutely, yeah.

HAYNES: A DNA profile is as concrete

a piece of information as you can have,

aside from his name.

So, it feels to me like it's only a matter of time.

PATTON: Hand up right there, yeah.

MAN: I'm a father of a nine-year-old girl,

and I'm curious what your daughter's notion

of your late wife's body of work is.

Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm-- I'm--

-My daughter is also nine. -MAN: Mm-hmm.

-So, my condolences. Um... -(LAUGHTER)

You know, when she's older,

absolutely I hope she reads her book.

I also just had-- I found a collection

of different, um, poems, and short stories,

and, um, essays that Michelle had written

all through high school and college,

and I went to a professional bookbinder,

and I had those all bound up

so that when she gets to high school and college,

I'm like, "If you want to see how your mom was at your age,"

I have them so that I can parcel those out for her.

And I've saved, like, every photograph

and bit of video of her.

MICHELLE: Yeah, I mean, I have a theory that there's...

a serial killer operating in the Northwest

who is killing couples.

CAMERON CLOUTIER: How did you become interested in this case?

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)

(PHONE RINGS)

-PATTON: Oh, what's going on? -MARY RITA: Alice.

PATTON: But, you know, five days after Michelle died,

I remember Alice said, "When your mom dies,

you're the best memory of her.

Everything you do is a memory of her."

Hang on, I wanna find somebody, okay?

So I'm also gonna always remind her

that she's here right now

because of how you are and how you're acting.

What are you doing? Oh my god, you're a nut.

We will talk soon. I'll call you tomorrow

when I'm in New York, okay, baby?

Bye-bye.

-Bye. -ALICE: Bye.

HAYNES: After the book event that night,

I was ready to just go back to my room and collapse.

(PHONE VIBRATING)

Then I get back up to my room and I get a text.

(MESSAGE PINGS)

(MESSAGE PINGS)

(MESSAGE PINGS)

HOLES: After we eliminated the guy in Colorado,

we only had a handful of males that were--

we ended up having to kind of look at.

BARBARA: I was also doing a lot of stuff with newspapers.

And one of-- one of the news articles

that turned up was the arrest of a police officer

shoplifting dog repellant and a hammer in Citrus Heights.

I remember looking at it and thinking,

"This guy looks awfully good."

And so I immediately sent off an email to Paul Holes,

saying, "Has this guy been ruled out?"

And he hadn't.

He was in our hotlist of six people

that was left at the end.

(MESSAGE PINGS)

(MESSAGE PINGS)

HAYNES: I immediately opened my master list.

I didn't have anybody that met those characteristics.

(MESSAGE PINGS)

You know, I've heard this before,

so I kinda took it with a grain of salt.

But now, I'm, like, waiting for updates.

HOLES: I wanted to look at this guy closer.

And so I drove and parked on the curb

opposite from his house and sat there.

And I started thinking about, "What do we know about him?"

And I started thinking about the ex-fiancée

with first name of Bonnie.

He had also purchased a gun

down in a town right outside of Visalia.

And then in 1985, '86,

he had a daughter born down in Los Angeles County.

And so his geographic connections

were looking pretty good.

BARBARA: I'd also run the profile

through another site called Promethease,

and I determined that the person that we were looking for

had blue eyes.

And it also said he would be prematurely bald.

So at that point, law enforcement then pulls

the California driver's license records

for the six people on our list.

Only one man has blue eyes,

Joseph DeAngelo.

(MESSAGE PINGS)

(MESSAGE PINGS)

BILLY: I wake up, and I see a message.

(MESSAGES PING)

He's in custody.

So, I'm like, "Oh, shit. Okay. He's in custody."

(PHONE VIBRATES)

I remember wandering through the room like a zombie,

just like, "Is he caught?" What just happened?"

(MESSAGE PINGS)

HOLES: It's crazy.

After four decades of searching for this guy,

it came down to testing a piece of tissue

from his trashcan outside.

It was a 100% match to the Golden State Killer's DNA.

-BILLY: All right, Patton. -Hmm?

BILLY: I just texted you. You heard the news.

-Yes. -BILLY: What are you thinking?

I'm thinking way too much stuff right now.

Um...

I just, you know, I-- I-- I would--

I wish you were pointing that camera

at Michelle right now, and not me.

I hope they got him. I hope she got him.

♪ (MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

MAN: Joseph DeAngelo has been called a lot of things

by law enforcement.

Today, it's our pleasure to call him defendant.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS) ♪

WOMAN: I love that people can get wheeled out of their house

for something they did in 1957 because of the internet,

because of DNA.

That is so amazing to me.

WOMAN 2: What in his life created that monster?

WOMAN 3: And he's living the comfy suburban life

that he wrecked?!

WOMAN 4: Now he can't hide behind his mask.

WOMAN 5: I hope justice was given.

(AUDIENCE CHEERS)

For the very first time, I'm becoming myself again.

I am not gonna give him one more ounce of me.

♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪