I'll Be Gone in the Dark(91)
Michelle purchased two high-volume digital scanners, and they began scanning the materials. Much of this material had not been seen by active investigators like Paul Holes, Ken Clark, and Erika Hutchcraft. Scanning would not only allow the files to become easily accessible and make the text searchable, but it would allow Michelle to reciprocate the generous spirit of these investigators by providing them an invaluable service.
This was the single most exciting break since the investigation began. This was a major pivot, a game changer. Michelle believed that the probability of the offender’s name being somewhere in those boxes was about 80 percent.
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AFTER THE LOS ANGELES MAGAZINE ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED, Michelle wrote a blog post about the letters she was getting from armchair detectives who had read the story and became obsessed— even for just a few hours—with cracking the case.
In the last week, I’ve received dozens of responses from readers about my article “In the Footsteps of a Killer.” Many emails contained insights about the evidence and fresh ideas for how best to catch the Golden State Killer, the elusive serial violent offender that from 1976 to 1986 preyed on victims up and down California.
The map drew the most ideas, with many readers contributing theories based on their professional or academic backgrounds. One reader, a general contractor with experience with “golf planned communities,” felt the map looked like many of the communities he’d worked on. The hand-drawn paths, he said, resembled golf cart paths.
Another had a chilling insight into the detailed property lines. They’re indicating fence lines, the tipster wrote, because the mapmaker is showing barriers he would encounter while moving around in the dark.
One reader felt there was a clue in the “Mad is the word that reminds me of 6th grade” journal entry. The “6” in “6th” grade looked more like a “G,” she pointed out, adding that the writer clearly went back and inserted the word “the” before the “6,” as if changing what he was originally going to write, which in her opinion was probably the name of the town he grew up in. A town, she surmised, which begins with “G.”
The “Mad is the word” evidence details the writer’s anger toward his male sixth-grade teacher. More than one reader pointed out that male sixth-grade teachers were relatively unusual in the 1960s, when the writer presumably was in elementary school.
Another reader noted that Visalia, where the Golden State Killer may have started out as a younger offender, was home to many pilots from nearby Lemoore Naval Air Station. The killer may have been the son of a pilot, the tipster theorized, as several other locations in the crime series are close to military air bases.
Some of these clues might help form the picture of the killer. And some might have absolutely nothing to do with him, like a jigsaw puzzle you buy at a garage sale that’s been mixed up with pieces from twenty other jigsaw puzzles.
Michelle was determined, to the end, to investigate each and every piece to see if it fit.
One of the last documents modified on her hard drive—dated April 18, 2016, three days before her death—was titled “StillToDo.”
Find out from Debbi D about flashlight; would they have brought flashlight from other house. To her knowledge did Greg visit Toltec?
[One of the detectives] needed psychiatric leave after O/M [Offerman/Manning], and Ray said worst crime scene he ever saw (this was in email to Irwin.) Why worse than Domingo/Sanchez?
For Erika: Since my training isn’t in reading crime scenes, what do you think happened at Cruz?
For Ken Clark: Was there a public/press link to Maggiore at the time of the homicide? Is it true FBI ran familial and expected 200 to 400 hits for names and got zero?
Find out from Ken exactly what he meant about the husband or the guy in the clown suit walking down the street.
The questions go on for pages and pages. On Michelle’s blog, True Crime Diary, we will begin to try to get the answers to the questions she had left open. The discussions of the case are ongoing, and we invite readers to join in and follow the numerous message boards that light up day and night with new clues and different theories about the killer. Michelle always said she didn’t care who solved this case, just as long as it got solved.
There’s no question as to Michelle’s impact on the case. In
the words of Ken Clark, she “brought attention to one of the least known, yet most prolific serial offenders ever to operate in the United States. If I hadn’t read the reports for myself during my years of investigation on this case, the story would be almost unbelievable. Her professional research, attention to detail, and sincere desire to identify the suspect allowed her to strike a balance between the privacy of those who suffered while exposing the suspect in a way that someone may recognize.”
“It is not easy to gain the trust of so many detectives across so many jurisdictions,” Erika Hutchcraft told us, “but she managed to do so and you knew it was by her reputation, her perseverance, and the fact that she cared about the case.”
Paul Holes concurred, going so far as to say that he considered Michelle to be his detective partner on the case. “We were constantly in communication. I would get excited about something and would send it to her and she would also get excited. She would dig and find a name and send it to me to look into. This case is the ultimate emotional roller coaster—the highs are amazing when you think you have found the guy, and then you crash when you eliminate the promising suspect through DNA. Michelle and I shared in those ups and downs. I had my good suspects and she had hers; we would send e-mails back and forth in a growing crescendo of excitement only to experience the finality of an elimination.