Patton Oswalt has been singing the praises of his late wife Michelle McNamara after police arrested Joseph James DeAngelo, the suspect in the Golden State Killer case investigated McNamara’s book “I’ll Be Gone In the Dark.”
But when police said during a press conference Wednesday that McNamara’s work did not help lead to DeAngelo’s arrest, Oswalt was quick to disagree.
“The cops will NEVER and HAVE NEVER credited a writer or journalist for helping them to solve a case,” Oswalt tweeted. “But every time they said #GoldenStateKiller they credited the work of #MichelleMcNamara and #IllBeGoneInTheDark.”
Oswalt also said that McNamara wouldn’t have been interested in the credit, but in seeing the killer brought to justice.
“She cared about the #GoldenStateKiller being behind bars and the victims getting some relief,” he tweeted. “She was Marge Gunderson in ‘Fargo,’ not Chilton in ‘Silence of the Lambs.’”
Oswalt also retweeted Twitter users who pointed out striking similarities between the book’s ending, and the way police described how McNamara was apprehended. He added that if they’ve truly captured the Golden State Killer, he hopes he can visit him in prison and ask questions as laid out in the book.
DeAngelo, 72, was arrested early Wednesday morning on two counts of murder, according to the Sacramento Bee and Fox40 Sacramento. The Golden State Killer was linked by DNA and method to 12 murders, 45 sexual assaults and more than 120 burglaries from Sacramento to Orange County between 1976 and 1986.
“I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” is a true-crime book written by McNamara, but she died before the book was published. It was finished by co-writer Billy Jensen, researcher Paul Haynes and Oswalt.