Sacramento police made an arrest on April 24, 2018, of a former California police officer–Joseph James DeAngelo, who has been identified as the Golden State Killer.

Who’s the Golden State Killer?

Also known as the East Area Rapist, the Golden State Killer is a serial killer, serial rapist, and serial burglar who committed 50 rapes in Northern California during the mid-1970s and murdered 12 people in Southern California from 1979 through 1986.

Why should you care about his arrest?

Yes, he committed these horrific crimes, but what makes this case stand out from other unsolved serial crimes? Well, for the true crime community this case holds an added emotional aspect because of the true crime writer Michelle McNamara. McNamara is the one who first coined the moniker “Golden State Killer.” She was not at all involved in law enforcement, but McNamara dedicated her career to the search of who was behind these crimes. She began writing her book “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer” in her determination of tracking down the violent psychopath.

Unfortunately, McNamara died suddenly due do a mixture of medications causing blockages in her arteries before she was able to finish the book, and before the crimes of Golden State Killer could be solved. Her novel was completed with an afterword by her spouse, Patton Oswalt, and with an introduction by Gillian Flynn. The arrest of DeAngelo comes as both a celebration and a relief to McNamara’s family and the true crime community. It is a celebration of all the hard work she contributed to trying to hunt the menace down, and it is a relief that her sould can finally rest easy.

In the words of Oswalt “I think you got him, Michelle.”