Stream It Or Skip It: ‘I’ll Be Gone In The Dark’ Returns To HBO With A Special Episode On The Golden State Killer’s Sentencing

About a year after the last episode of I’ll Be Gone In The Dark aired on HBO, executive producer Liz Garbus and director Elizabeth Wolff have returned with a special, entitled “Show Us Your Face.” One of the purposes of the special is to show the sentencing of Joe DeAngelo, also known as The Golden State Killer, East Area Rapist and Original Night Stalker, whose crimes stretched from Sacramento to Santa Barbara over the course of about 17 years. But the other purpose is to show the case that first got a young Michelle McNamara, the late author who wrote the book on which this docuseries is based, interested in true crime.

I’LL BE GONE IN THE DARK SPECIAL EPISODE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The sentencing of DeAngelo, which took place in August of 2020, was held in a massive auditorium because he had so many victims that wanted to attend, combined with COVID social distancing. During the sentencing hearing, dozens of victims, including Kris Pedretti and Gay and Bob Hardwick. There are new interviews with the three victims, who were prominently featured in the series last year.

But McNamara is also represented, via audio interviews with her and readings by Amy Ryan. What Garbus and Wolff explore is the part of the book where McNamara talks about the first case that sparked her interest in true crime. It happened in 1984, when she was 14, in her hometown of Oak Park, Illinois. A 24-year-old woman named Kathy Lombardo was attacked and killed a few blocks from McNamara’s childhood home in the tony Chicago suburb, and a few people who found her after she was attacked are interviewed, as is Lombardo’s brother.

At some point in 2013, McNamara traveled back home to see if she could get any further in the long-dormant case. In the process, she finds Grace Puccetti, who was attacked in the winter of 1982, not far from where Lombardo was attacked. She survived, but she tells a tale of how she was told to keep the attack quiet, and we learn that law enforcement in Oak Park didn’t investigate Lombardo’s case very well. In both cases, rapes and murders were kept quiet to keep the “progressive privilege” image of Oak Park intact. In fact, to this day the Oak Park PD’s lack of willingness to help with the investigation is in stark contrast to the access McNamara got to the records on the Golden State Killer case.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of?: The special certainly fits in well with the rest of the I’ll Be Gone In The Dark series… well, half of it does, anyway. More on that in a bit.

Performance Worth Watching: Pedretti continues to be a fountain of strength, considering she was attacked by DeAngelo when she was just 15. She now knows how much the attack affected her, but she refuses to let that define her life.

Memorable Dialogue: During her witness statement, Gay Hardwick crumples a piece of paper and tries to smooth it out, demonstrating that no matter how much she tries, she’ll never be able to smooth down all the wrinkles that DeAngelo created.

Our Take: Seeing the sentencing and the passionate statements from DeAngelo’s victims, and then hearing the seemingly feeble DeAngelo admit to all the crimes — part of his plea deal, even though the statute of limitations has run out for most of his EAR-ONS-era crimes — was a powerful thing to watch, as was hearing updates from Pedrett and the Hardwicks. We would have wanted to hear some more interviews from the other victims that Garbus and Wolff talked to in the original series, but at least the talks with the three of them were satisfying.

What puzzled us was that there was a bit of insight into how much of a sociopath DeAngelo was, with the odd, ritualistic movements of this seemingly enfeebled man while he was in his cell, but the special didn’t want to spend a lot of time going further into the whys and hows and analyzing his psyche. What Garbus and Wolff decided to spend that time on was the Lombardo case in Oak Park, despite the fact that even now, there hasn’t been any resolution to that case.

We understand the temptation, because it ties McNamara back into the special. That was something that the last episode of the series had problems doing, because it was mostly about Patton Oswalt, Paul Haynes, Paul Holes and Billy Jensen’s reactions to DeAngelo’s capture, interviews with members of DeAngelo’s family, and the reactions of the victims. Despite the fact that McNamara’s dogged investigation helped lead authorities to DeAngelo, there isn’t much to connect her to the sentencing phase, which took place over 4 years after her death.

But to what purpose was this case examined? Was there hope that the Oak Park PD would be shamed into releasing evidence to Puccetti and Lombardo’s brother? Was it there to show that there was more to McNamara’s true crime obsession than the Golden State Killer case? It’s hard to say. But what would have been a good opportunity into seeing just what made DeAngelo tick was spent documenting a case that has no conclusion as yet.

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you’re looking to see some catharsis from the victims of The Golden State Killer, then this special episode of I’ll Be Gone In The Dark will be satisfying. But if you’re looking for additional information about the case, you’ll likely be left disappointed.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

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