Amateur Sleuth Identifies Golden State Killer—and Now He's Behind Bars

I'll Be Gone in the Dark

Oswalt, Jensen, and Haynes spent the years after her death writing and investigating, piecing together the work that would become McNamara's legacy. I'll Be Gone in the Dark was published posthumously in February 2018. One section, however, stood out against the rest...

One Crazy Idea

McNamara posed the question: What if someone used a genetic database—such as 23andMe, which McNamara herself had tried out for fun—to catch the killer? She assumed that somebody related to the Golden State Killer had to have submitted their DNA for testing...