I'll Be Gone in the Dark

McNamara meets for lunch with Richard Shelby, the detective originally investigating the East Area Rapist cases. McNamara questions Shelby about the police canvassing reports that occurred after the rapes, when the police questioned neighbors, searching for relevant information. McNamara notes that many of the individuals questioned had observed suspicious behavior, such as hearing screams or seeing a prowler in the neighbor’s yard. However, none of these neighbors thought to call the police, which may have prevented the assaults. Shelby replies that such a reticence to call the police was simply “one failure in a case plagued with them” (179). Shelby believes the rapist’s ability to elude capture was as much as due to the rapist’s supposed intelligence as it was to a series of mistakes made by the police, including Shelby.

McNamara also describes receiving a flash drive containing numerous Sacramento police reports about the rapist. McNamara trades a DVD containing a police interview with a fellow amateur criminalist for the flash drive. McNamara returns to her hotel to read through the police reports. Though the reports’ information “swarm[s] into an indistinguishable mass,” McNamara is able to pick-out some important details about the GSK (181). She notes that the GSK would often travel through Sacramento’s sewers, gathering information about a neighborhood and its inhabitants in the process. McNamara also notices that the GSK seemed to take pleasure in linking his crimes to one another, often leaving items stolen from one victim at a later victim’s house.

McNamara meets with Larry Pool, the cold-case investigator in the Orange County police department. Pool has continued to work on the case for more than a decade. During that time, Pool helped advocate for the formation of a state-wide California DNA database. McNamara is hesitant to meet with Pool, as she fears he’ll be gruff with her. However, McNamara finds him to be pleasant and friendly underneath his “stoic exterior” (188). McNamara gives Pool the cufflinks she had ordered, which she believes matches the cufflinks stolen from one of the GSK’s victims. Pool contacts the victims, who say that the cufflinks are not a match.

McNamara describes Thanksgiving at her home in 2012. She is under pressure to turn in an article to her editor several days later. On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, McNamara’s husband takes her child out, so that McNamara can get some work done at home. As McNamara is working, she notices a pair of teenagers ringing the doorbells of her home and her neighbors’ homes. While McNamara is briefly suspicious, she quickly becomes paranoid that she’s having an “overreaction” and chooses not to call the police (192). The next day, McNamara’s neighbor reports that he was robbed. McNamara realizes that the teenagers were casing homes to see which were empty. McNamara and her neighbor both promise to better watch out for each other and share reports of any suspicious activity. 

McNamara meets with Paul Holes, the chief criminalist for the Contra Costa County Sherriff’s office. Holes is investigating a series of rapes that the GSK committed in the East Bay area, several months after his yearlong series of assaults in the Sacramento area. Holes agrees to take McNamara on a tour of Contra Costa county, showing her the various sites where the GSK’s crimes took place. The GSK’s first burglaries and assaults targeted two sleeping couples in the town of Concord in October 1978. Holes notes that the geographic pattern of the GSK’s assaults changed when he moved from Sacramento to the East Bay area. Most of the crimes in the East Bay area take place along Interstate 680, suggesting that the GSK may have been commuting along the highway for work. Holes notes that both of the assaults in Concord take place along two major roads to a construction site, suggesting that the GSK may have been working in construction. As McNamara and Holes talk, Holes notes that the GSK’s burglaries displayed a great deal of skill: they were always carefully planned. However, Holes does not believe that the GSK’s skill is of a level suggesting “specialized training” (204). During the second assault in Concord, the GSK told the victim that he was robbing her house to obtain food for him and his girlfriend. Holes believes that the GSK may have had an accomplice in some of the burglaries. 

Holes takes McNamara to San Ramon, the city the GSK struck after Concord. In October 1978, the GSK assaulted a couple, Kathy and David, who had been in the process of moving out. After the rape, Kathy dialed 911, only to discover the 911 emergency number wasn’t working in San Ramon. McNamara and Holes debate whether the GSK’s crimes were committed spontaneously, or carefully planned out over a long period of time.

Years after the attack, Kathy visited the Contra Costa County Sherriff’s department, upset at her portrayal in a book written by Detective Larry Crompton. Kathy spoke with Holes about her rape, telling him that her husband had thought the GSK’s voice sounded familiar, though “he couldn’t quite place it” (216). Holes believes the GSK may have been living in San Ramon at the time of the assault, and attacked the couple as personal revenge on the husband. 

Following their visit to San Ramon, Holes and McNamara travel to Danville. After the GSK’s San Ramon assault, he disappeared from Contra Costa County for upwards of six weeks, causing residents to believe that they were safe from the his attacks. However, on December 8, 1978, the GSK broke into the house of Esther McDonald and raped her. Following the crime, police use bloodhounds to sniff out the GSK’s scent, tracking his escape route through the abandoned train tracks that run behind McDonald’s house. Holes leads McNamara alongside the escape route, describing several pieces of evidence that were found there. One such piece of evidence was a drawn map of the community, with the word “PUNISHMENT” angrily written on the back, which suggests the GSK is driven to kill by “violent fantasies” (231).

Holes and McNamara’s tour of Contra Costa County leads them to Walnut Creek, where the GSK struck twice in spring 1979. Both the attacks occurred in Rancho San Miguel, a housing development planned by architect Joseph Eichler, whose home designs include large glass windows that make residents highly visible to the outside. On June 2, 1979, the GSK raped a seventeen-year-old babysitter. The babysitter had been receiving anonymous calls for weeks, both at her home and at her babysitting jobs, suggesting that she was being watched. Three weeks later, the GSK rapes a thirteen-year-old girl “just a hundred feet” from his first victim (238). 

This section takes the form of a transcript, recording the conversation between McNamara and Holes as they drive around Davis. In Davis, the GSK committed a series of rapes during the summer of 1978, occurring in-between his assaults in Sacramento and the East Bay area. Holes tells McNamara how the GSK committed an assault in Modesto, over a hundred miles south of Davis, before committing a second assault the following day in Davis. In Modesto, a taxi driver recalls driving a “strange man” from the airport, while in Davis, a series of footprints led from the victim’s house to the local airport (243). Holes deduces that the GSK may have had access to an airplane, and flew from Modesto to Davis. Further, Holes tells McNamara that he suspects the GSK was working in real estate development, as all of the Davis assaults occur in Village Homes, a famous housing development. The GSK may have been visiting Village Homes for work as a developer in order to observe and learn from the planned community.