DOCUMENTARY MINISERIES PREMIERE: This six-part documentary is based on the book by Michelle McNamara. Like that book, which was completed after her death by a researcher and crime writer selected by her widower, comedian and actor Patton Oswalt, this miniseries by filmmaker Liz Garbus, also with Oswalt’s cooperation, continues and extends McNamara’s work. McNamara became interested in violent crimes and criminals, and survivors of those attacks, when a woman was killed near where McNamara lived as a young teenager. Eventually, McNamara established an information-gathering website, TrueCrimeDiary, in 2006 – in Internet terms, a few lifetimes ago – and in 2013, wrote an article for
Los Angeles Magazine about the unsolved cases of the serial rapist and murder she called the Golden State Killer. McNamara died suddenly of what was ruled an accidental overdose in 2016 while working on a book about that killer. That same year, DNA evidence led to an arrest in the case… and director Garbus, in addition to including evidence and sampling audio and video recordings from McNamara’s own voice, also updates the Golden State Killer story, from the points of view of the survivors as well as the investigators.
For a full review, see David Hinckley's All Along the Watchtower.