The Golden State Killer: The Best Podcasts, Books and Audiobooks on the Case

Few cases have shaped modern true crime as much as the Golden State Killer. For decades it was a series of attacks across California in the 1970s and 1980s, with no name for the person behind them. Then a writer gave him one. Then, after she died, a DNA technique that had barely existed when the crimes began finally found him.

That arc is why the case now has a small library of books and podcasts around it. The difficulty is not finding something to listen to but knowing which one to start with. This guide gives a sensible order, explains what each adds, and is open about where our own picks stop. The case involved serious violence against victims and families; we cover it factually and in the minimum detail needed.

The case in brief

The attacks were originally treated as separate series by different names, before investigators connected them. The writer Michelle McNamara coined the name Golden State Killer in a 2013 magazine article and spent years on a book about the case. She died in 2016 before finishing it.

In April 2018, police arrested Joseph James DeAngelo in Sacramento County. Investigators had used investigative genetic genealogy: they compared DNA from a crime scene with public family-tree databases and built a family tree until it led to one man. He pleaded guilty in 2020 and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

If you want the full case file, see our Golden State Killer case page. If you want to understand how the DNA technique works, and why it changed cold case investigation, our guide to genetic genealogy and cold cases explains it.

Step one: pick the format that matches what you want

There are three things people typically want from this case, and each has a natural starting point.

The investigation as a story

I'll Be Gone in the Dark — Michelle McNamara

McNamara's book is the reason most people know the case. It is her investigation into the unidentified offender she named, completed after her death and published in 2018, shortly before the arrest. It is part case file, part personal obsession, and it is as much about what it takes to keep looking as about the offender.

It is also a good audiobook, because it is written as a story that moves forward. Podcast listeners tend to find it familiar territory: the same investigative pull, with more room. We have confirmed an audiobook edition on Amazon UK, linked beneath.

The case told through the victims

Man in the Window: The Golden State Killer

This is the best dedicated podcast on the case. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Paige St. John tells it from the victims' perspective, across 11 episodes of roughly 35 to 50 minutes. We give it a binge factor of 8, and our verdict is that it is good if you want the case told through the victims rather than the manhunt alone.

The distinction matters. Many accounts of this case centre the offender or the people hunting him, and this series deliberately turns the focus back to the people he harmed. Read McNamara for the search, and listen to this for the people. You can find it on its podcast page.

The investigators' perspective

Unmasked — Paul Holes

Holes was a cold case investigator who worked on the Golden State Killer case for years, and Unmasked is his memoir of his career, including his work on that case. It is less about the offender than about the work, and the personal cost of it. It is a good companion to McNamara, because he appears in her book and tells his own side in his.

We have confirmed an audiobook edition of Unmasked on Amazon UK, which is linked beneath the book.

The BG Files and The Murder Squad

Holes also appears in two podcasts on the site. The BG Files applies forensic methodology to cold cases and we rate it Worth a listen, with a binge factor of 7. Jensen & Holes: The Murder Squad pairs Holes with Billy Jensen, an investigative journalist who helped complete McNamara's book, and we rate it a Must listen. It is an hour-long, ongoing show with hundreds of episodes since 2019, and is aimed at listeners who want to feel like active participants rather than a passive audience.

Both are better as follow-ups than starting points: they assume you know the case, and they are about cold case work more broadly.

Why the case took so long to solve

It is worth understanding why this case lasted decades, because it changes how you read the books and hear the podcasts. The attacks took place across many California communities and jurisdictions, and for a long time they were handled by separate agencies as separate series of crimes, with no one body able to see the whole pattern. The offender was also not in the criminal DNA databases that investigators normally search, so even though a profile existed from crime scenes, there was nothing for it to match.

What changed was the technique. By building family trees from public genealogy data, investigators could identify relatives of the unknown offender and work back to him, a method that was not available when the crimes were committed. That is the story our guide to genetic genealogy and cold cases tells in more detail, and it is why Holes and Jensen, who appear throughout the works above, have become so closely associated with cold case work.

It is also a reminder that the case was solved by method and persistence, not by a flash of insight, which is a good thing to keep in mind when a podcast makes a breakthrough sound easy.

A suggested order

If you have no strong preference, this order works well.

1. Man in the Window (11 episodes). It is short, serialised and gives you the shape of the case quickly.
2. I'll Be Gone in the Dark. Now you know the case, the book reads as the investigator's story rather than a briefing.
3. Unmasked. The investigator's own account, which shows how the work looked from the inside.
4. The Murder Squad or The BG Files, if you want more from the same people.

If you want to go further into cold case podcasts, see our best cold case podcasts and the cold case category.

An honest note on what we have not done

We have not rated these books, and we cannot tell you how well the audiobooks are narrated. What we can say is that the connections between them are real: Holes and Jensen both feature in more than one of the works above, and the podcasts we recommend cover the same case from different angles.

If you are new to true crime and want somewhere gentler to begin, our guide to the best true crime podcasts for beginners is a better first step. For the audio side of the books above, see best true crime audiobooks on Audible, and for the wider picture of the genre, the best true crime podcasts page.