HBO acquires rights to Michelle McNamara’s true crime book, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark


Murderinos, rejoice: There's another true crime series coming your way.
HBO Documentary Films will make Michelle McNamara's bestselling book I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer into a documentary series. In the book, the late McNamara investigates the identity of a rapist and murderer who terrorized California in the 1970s and '80s.
Nancy Abraham and Lisa Heller, the executive vice presidents of HBO Documentary and Family Programming, made the announcement in a press release Monday. "HBO taking on this story will advance the passionate pursuit that Michelle shared with dozens of men and women in law enforcement — to solve the mystery of one of California's most notorious serial killers," said comedian Patton Oswalt, whom McNamara was married to when she died suddenly in 2016.
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The book was finished by McNamara's colleagues, Paul Haynes and Billy Jenkins, after her death and published posthumously in February. It reached No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list upon its release.
"McNamara described herself as a true crime obsessive, a quality she traces back to a brutal murder near her home in Chicago when she was 14," writes The Week's Jeva Lange about McNamara's book. Read more about McNamara's painstaking efforts to solve the case of the Golden State Killer here.
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Mary Catalfamo is a web intern at The Week. She's a junior at Syracuse University, where she studies journalism and English textual studies. Direct book recommendations and jokes about her hometown of Buffalo, New York to her Twitter.
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