Michelle McNamara

Tonight I watched an episode of "Rawhide" instead of a movie, so alas I have no review to share. I did begin another book, however, a page-turner True Crime story to go with the other two I am already reading, Bearden's "Energy From The Vacuum" and "Regular Polytopes" by Coxeter. Those are not page turners due to the technical and mathematical language, but they are fascinating anyway. I can only read about ten pages of either one at a time, and then I have to let the information sink in, but it has the result of making me think in new ways. It would be similar to going to the gym and doing exercises that developed muscles you had never worked, or hadn't worked for a long time. "Polytopes" is the more difficult of the two because it is assumed by the author that the reader has a background in trigonometry, which I do not. But as I've said before, just by the act of reading something, you are going to absorb information. The more interest you have in the subject, and the more you focus and persevere through passages that are hard to understand, the more you will absorb, and in the end if you read a difficult book you may find that you got a start on learning a new subject and learning the language of that subject.

However.....sometimes you've just gotta have a book you can pound.

And so I started Michelle McNamara's bestseller "I'll Be Gone In The Dark" two days ago. I had ordered it from the Libe back in April or May, when the cops announced the arrest of the suspect in the Golden State Killer case. Though in my 20s and 30s I was something of an expert on serial killers (having read all the books) and could have conversed on the cases of many of them, I had never heard of the Golden State Killer, nor of McNamara, who unfortunately died before she could finish her book. The story is as much about her pursuit of him, as a talented amateur crime sleuth, as it is about the killer, who terrorised the Sacramento area in the late 70s and early 80s before moving down to Santa Barbara and Orange County a few years later. I don't remember ever hearing of this guy, maybe because he didn't operate in the Los Angeles area. Now, however, he is big news, having been finally captured a few months ago after over 40 years of eluding police. He is an old man now, and McNamara, the woman who spent a good many years trying to identify him, is dead. In a sad and dark way, she could be said to be his final victim.

She was married to the actor/comedian Patton Oswalt, who I am not too familiar with either.

McNamara was a very good writer with a mind for observation and an eye for detail. She spent most of her adult life studying and trying to help solve cold case murders. Her interest began when she was fourteen and a young woman in her neighborhood was killed while jogging one night. The murderer was never caught, and it spurred Michelle McNamara toward what became her life's work.

Reading about her doggedness, I was inspired myself (and alternately wanted to kick myself) to try and run down information on my own abduction by my neighbor Jared Rappaport. He exhibited most of the manic, psychotic and aggressively violent behavior patterns that I am reading about in this book,

I am unaware that Jared Rappaport ever killed anyone, but I can tell you that he could have.

He almost killed me, and in my experience in his presence, he was just like a psycho like Golden State.

Jared Rappaport was exactly like that guy, except - for me - without the murder.

So I can relate to Michelle McNamara, and her pursuit of these people.

It took the cops 40 years to catch Golden State.

Jared Rappaport still walks free, because he - and me, and Lillian and all of us - were part of a situation in September 1989, in Northridge and Reseda, California that involved Federal Agents and the military.
Because there was a bigger secret to protect, the people who committed violent crimes during the course of the two week situation were ultimately given a pass. They could not be brought to trial because to do so would be to acknowledge that the situation had taken place, and that could not be allowed because it was a National Security situation (for what reason I don't know, but Lillian possibly does).

I have thought to myself that the violent criminals like Jared Rappaport and Howard Schaller (now deceased) were treated better than I was, and I was the victim. They were allowed to go free and resume their lives because of the larger secret. As for me, I had my memory taken away of the entire two week period, and when I remembered parts of what happened, five years later in 1994, it was too late to do anything about it, though I tried.

I have been trying for over twenty years, and no one has ever helped me.

Not a single person, even many who call themselves my friends and who know good and well what happened in 1989. They pretend they don't know, but they do.

Lillian, who is married now but who once professed to love me, has acted in the past 25 years as if she never met me. She and I were together for almost ten years, but even when my parents died, she never responded to my emails.

She had banked on making me look like a mental case, because I was on drugs when my memory came back, and she must have thought she could use that fact to discredit me.

Well anyway, as I always say, God Bless Her, even though she has been doing the wrong thing for 25 years, by keeping silent and pretending that the whole thing never happened.

Every day she wakes up and says nothing, she is doing the wrong thing. Every single day.

I can see what drove Michelle McNamara, and she wasn't even a victim herself. She only wanted to see justice for victims, and to give their souls some rest.

I wish I had her nerve, to contact police departments, to call people repeatedly and press for answers. In my case, I know who kidnapped and attacked me, and he was exactly the same kind of psychopath as the Golden State Killer. The only difference is that he didn't kill me, though he came very close to it.

And he is still walking around, la-dee-dah. He taught at CSUN for 20 years afterwards, just like Jerry Sandusky at Penn State.

Fuck guys like him, and people who keep silent and help cover up their deeds.

I was the victim in 1989, but I got treated worse than the criminals. They walked free, and I got a life sentence, psychologically speaking.

So I have great respect for Michelle McNamara, who gave her whole life to try and catch these horrible people.

To those of you who know all about 1989 and what happened, but pretend you know nothing, what do you have to say?

One day you will have to say something, for sure.