I'll Be Gone in the DarkI'll Be Gone in the Dark

For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then, in 1986, he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area. Three decades later, the author, a true crime journalist, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called "the Golden State Killer." The author pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was. At the time of the crimes, the Golden State Killer was between the ages of eighteen and thirty, Caucasian, and athletic - even capable of vaulting tall fences. He always wore a mask. After choosing a victim - he favored suburban couples - he often entered their home when no one was there, studying family pictures, mastering the layout. He attacked while they slept, using a flashlight to awaken and blind them. Though they could not recognize him, his victims recalled his voice : a guttural whisper through clenched teeth, abrupt and threatening. This book - a book that the author was writing at the time of her sudden death - offers a snapshot of a moment in American history and an account of a criminal mastermind and the wreckage he left behind.