Nevermore: Middleman, Dogs, George Washington, Bachelor Girl, Gone in the Dark

Reported by Ambrea 

Nevermore started their meeting off with The Middleman by Olen Steinhauer.  Special Agent Rachel Proulx works for the FBI and, during her most recent case, she’s tasked with investigating the “Massive Brigade.”  Composed primarily of people who believe change isn’t coming fast enough to America, the Massive Brigade is a mystery—are they a protest organization, a political movement, or, worse, a terrorist group?  Rachel is set to find out and what she discovers about the Massive Brigade and its charismatic leader, Martin Bishop, will shake the country to its foundations.  Our reader thought The Middleman was an odd novel.  She said it reads like an action movie:  fast paced, thrilling, full of plot twists and double agents.  It wasn’t quite her cup of tea, but she found she couldn’t stop reading it.  Although she wouldn’t call The Middleman “amazing,” she did say it was compelling enough to grab her attention and keep her coming back to find out more.

Next, Nevermore checked out What the Dog Knows:  Scent, Science, and the Amazing Ways Dogs Perceive the World by Cat Warren, a university professor, journalist, and dog owner.  In What the Dog Knows, Warren explores the lives of “working dogs [which are trained] to find missing people, detect drugs and bombs, pinpoint unmarked graves of Civil War soldiers, and even find drowning victims more than two hundred feet below the surface of a lake.”  More importantly, she offers a glimpse at the science that makes “working dogs” so capable and the incredible training they undergo.  Our reader found Warren’s book to be very interesting.  It offers a lot of different stories about different working dogs, and she makes the science interesting without being boring.  She highly recommended What the Dogs Knows to her fellow pet lovers.

Switching gears from canine cuties, Nevermore took a look at our first president with Washington:  A Life by Ron Chernow.  In Washington, Chernow delves deep into the life of America’s first president and traces his exploits from his adventurous youth in the colonies to the tumultuous first years of the fledgling republic.  Our reader, who had already explored Alexander Hamilton, was very excited to pick up Washington.  “[It’s] so easy to read and so entertaining,” she said of Chernow’s writing; however, she did notice a significant difference between the works of Hamilton and Washington.  “In Alexander Hamilton, Chernow is very generous of Hamilton’s faults.  With Washington,” she noted, “not so much.”  Despite these differences, she’s curious to see how Chernow will handle Hamilton and Washington crossings.  She highly recommended it to her fellow readers, especially those who were already enchanted with Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton.

Next, Nevermore read The Bachelor Girl by Kim van Alkemade.  Helen Winthrope is a young, struggling actress, who finds herself under the care of Colonel Jacob Ruppert, an eccentric millionaire, and Albert Kramer, Colonel Ruppert’s secretary.  They have an odd relationship, but, even so, Helen finds herself embracing her role as a “bachelor girl”—a woman working and living on her own terms.  But not all is smooth sailing for Helen, especially as dark secrets come to light about both Colonel Ruppert and Albert.  Our reader picked up van Alkemade’s novel, because she originally enjoyed reading Orphan #8; however, when she picked up The Bachelor Girl, she discovered this novel was very different from what she expected—but in a very good way!  She said The Bachelor Girl was an enjoyable novel.  “The details are compelling, not lurid...and the ending was a complete surprise,” she told nevermore, and she rated it very highly overall.

Last, but certainly not least, Nevermore took a crack at a brand-new true crime book:  I’ll Be Gone in the Dark:  One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara.  In McNamara’s book, she explores the case of the Golden State Killer.  Accused of more than fifty assaults and ten murders, the Golden State Killer of Northern California was an elusive mystery for over a decade before he simply disappeared.  Thirty years later, McNamara dug up the case and started her own search.  Our reader picked up I’ll Be Gone in the Dark after hearing rave reviews for it and he said, after reading it completely, he can highly recommend it.  Atmospheric and compelling, alternately enchanting and chilling, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark is really interesting book that’s made all the more captivating by the fact that the Golden State Killer was caught shortly after its publication.  Our reader gave it rave reviews and passed it along to the next person in line.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara

Reviewed by Christy

            The Golden State Killer wasn’t always called that. In fact, his crimes were so widespread and prolific across California that he held many monikers. It wasn’t until Michelle McNamara’s 2013 article for Los Angeles magazine “In the Footsteps of a Killer” did she publicly coin the more cohesive nickname.

            In the mid to late 1970s, Sacramento was terrorized by a man who snuck into couples’ houses late at night, tied up the men, and raped the women. Many victims told of mysterious footprints around their homes in the days leading up to the attack. Neighbors spoke of suspicious men lingering in the neighborhood who maybe didn’t seem suspicious at the time.  Sometimes the perpetrator would make comments during the attack that made the victims believe he might know them personally. At the very least, law enforcement believed he meticulously planned his attacks and monitored his victims for days before striking. From 1976 – 1979 he stalked Sacramento before slowly moving outside of his comfort zone to other cities, occasionally popping back in Sacramento.   He was known as the East Area Rapist, and he is believed to have assaulted approximately 50 women.

            In the fall of 1979 murders with very similar MOs began occurring in southern California: home invasion late at night, man tied up, woman assaulted. Police communication between districts was very poor at this time so no one made the connection. The murderer was dubbed The Original Night Stalker, and it is believed he killed at least 12 people. It wasn’t until the early 2000s with advances in DNA technology that law enforcement realized the East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker were one and the same. He then became known as EAR/ONS for short.

            McNamara knew that EAR/ONS was a rather clumsy and confusing nickname. Even among true crime readers, EAR/ONS isn’t nearly as well-known as Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer, though his depravity could certainly match both. To get the public’s attention he would need something catchier and more succinct: thus the Golden State Killer.

            In I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, McNamara’s writing is lovely and full of compassion. With so many locations and so much evidence it would be easy to pack the book densely with facts and risk becoming very dry but she avoids doing that. It’s part true crime, part memoir as she examines her obsession with true crime research and briefly touches on her familial relationships. At times it feels a little disorganized but I’m not sure I can really fault anyone for that. While in the middle of writing this book, McNamara died in her sleep from a combination of prescription medication and an undiagnosed heart condition. With encouragement from her husband Patton Oswalt (or begging, as he puts it), her colleagues finished the book as best they could with McNamara’s many, many notes.

            The book is quite sad to read at times for the content alone but also because I felt certain that the Golden State Killer would never be caught. Law enforcement (and McNamara) long thought he could possibly be a police officer or in the military. Being a policeman would explain how he always seemed to be one step ahead of them or how he could possibly track down survivors’ numbers after decades to call them and psychologically torture them once more. It would certainly help keep him above suspicion. But it had been so long. He very likely could be dead. He could go the way of the Zodiac or Jack the Ripper.  I’ve never been happier to be wrong.

            With less than a third of the book to finish, I woke up April 25^th to the unbelievable news that the Golden State Killer had been caught. His name is Joseph James DeAngelo, he’s a 72 years old Vietnam veteran, and he was at one point a police officer. He was arrested at his home in the Sacramento suburb Citrus Heights – where at least six of his crimes took place.

Like many others I had one question on my mind: what was it that led investigators to DeAngelo? Since at least five years ago lead investigator Paul Holes was using genealogy websites in hopes of getting a hit on the Golden State Killer or, more likely, a relative. While they could only use genetic markers, as opposed to genetic material, Holes and McNamara were convinced the answer lay somewhere in those sites. The possibility kept McNamara up at night. But Ancestry.com and 23andMe would not work with law enforcement in cases such as these, citing their privacy policies. But GEDMatch, per their terms of use, is an open-source genealogy site. After homing in a on a relative, law enforcement put DeAngelo under surveillance. After collecting a discarded DNA sample, they finally got a match.

It’s an ending that Michelle McNamara often imagined.  Oswalt firmly believes that her 2013 article helped renew the public’s interest which ultimately lead to his capture. A task force was brought together in 2016, and he was caught two short years later, so it’s certainly plausible. Regardless, the fact that the “Golden State Killer” has become the go-to nomenclature in regards to DeAngelo speaks to McNamara’s influence.

McNamara didn’t care who caught him, she just wanted him caught. In her book she ends with “A Letter to An Old Man” and describes how she imagines that day would go: a car pulls up in the driveway, the doorbell rings…

 “This is how it ends for you.

‘You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark,’ you threatened a victim once.

Open the door. Show us your face. Step into the light.”