The special episode of the HBO docuseries ‘I’ll Be Gone in the Dark’ debuts June 21 on HBO and HBO Max.
After its six-episode run last summer, the HBO true-crime docuseries I’ll Be Gone in the Dark returns with an all-new special episode completing late writer Michelle McNamara’s investigation into the identity of the Golden State Killer. ET has an exclusive preview of the special as Grace Puccetti recounts her brief interactions with McNamara before her untimely death in 2016.
Four years later, former police officer Joseph James DeAngelo was sentenced to life in prison for multiple rapes and 13 murders he committed during the 1970s and ‘80s in California. In the clip, Puccetti reveals that she didn’t initially want to talk about her traumatizing incident when McNamara was deep into her search to learn more about her attacker.
“At some point I had received an email from Michelle. She was trying to get more information about my story. But I didn’t know if I really wanted to talk about it, so I didn’t respond to it,” Puccetti recalls in the special, later admitting to herself that “without someone like this, the case would never get solved.”
The powerful special offers closure to McNamara’s investigative work in the hunt for the Golden State Killer. But it also shines a light on an another unsolved murder that the writer dedicated her life to figuring out: the 1984 rape and murder of Kathy Lombardo in McNamara’s hometown of Oak Park, Illinois.
According to HBO, “This episode brings shocking new revelations to light in the Lombardo case and features the late McNamara’s own research into the rape and murder, which led to her return to Oak Park in 2013 to investigate it on the ground, quickly finding inconsistencies in the police work.”
Through archival research and McNamara’s voice recordings as well as interviews with residents of present-day Oak Park, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark “highlights the trauma that persists when a crime goes unsolved, with McNamara’s work standing as a stark reminder of the importance of citizen sleuths who remain dogged in their search for the truth.”
The special episode of I'll Be Gone in the Dark debuts June 21 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and HBO Max.
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