After more than four decades spent searching for the serial rapist and murderer known as the Golden State Killer, at a press conference this morning, authorities in Sacramento announced that they'd (finally) arrested a suspect: Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, an ex-cop who is believed to have committed 12 murders, at least 50 rapes, and more than 120 home burglaries across California from 1976 to 1986.

I think most Californians (like me!) are probably familiar with at least one of his many aliases: the East Area Rapist, the Original Night Stalker (not Richard Ramirez), the Visalia Ransacker, and most recently, the Golden State Killer—a nickname dubbed by true crime writer Michelle McNamara, who researched the case tirelessly for years until her death in 2016. McNamara's #1 New York Times Best Seller I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer was published posthumously earlier this year, after her husband, comedian Patton Oswalt, enlisted journalist Billy Jensen and researcher Paul Haynes to help complete the book.

I finished reading I'll Be Gone in the Dark on Monday, before the mystery was solved. I was struck not only by the brutality of the Golden State Killer's crimes, but the scope; he terrorized communities in several different areas of California, from his apparent home in Sacramento all the way down to Orange County. But like McNamara, I was more struck by the fact that he was never caught. Today it was revealed that DeAngelo was a police officer in the towns of Exeter (just southeast of Visalia) and Auburn (northeast of Sacramento) between 1973 and 1979, but was fired by Auburn's department after shoplifting a hammer and dog repellant from a drugstore. (If that isn't the biggest, reddest flag in the history of big red flags, then I don't know what is.)

Since the rapes began in Sacramento in 1976, it seems to me like there's a pretty good chance he was employed to protect public safety while single-handedly imperiling it. (A note from the Mercury's former Senior Editor Megan Burbank: "It's always cops.") Perhaps his status as a law enforcement agent even helped him evade capture for so long. The rapes and murders were also committed before the advent of DNA profiling, which prevented investigators from confirming that it was the same man acting in both the Northern Californian rapes and the Southern Californian ransackings, rapes, and murders until 2001.

McNamara's coining of the Golden State Killer moniker is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to her legacy. And honestly, I'll Be Gone in the Dark isn't really about him—it's made great by her resilience when leads didn't pan out, her honesty about her obsession, her empathy for victims, and her ruthless pursuit of the truth. The whole book resonated with me, but there's one particular sentence she wrote that's still rattling around in my head: "Seeking is the lever that tips our dopamine gush." She sought justice, and though authorities at today's press conference downplayed (and even flat-out denied) that her book had any influence on DeAngelo's arrest, personally, I find the timing to be a little too coincidental. (It took them more than four decades to find this guy, and her book came out two months ago.) If nothing else, by dragging the cold case back into the light, McNamara's dogged pursuit of the Golden State Killer put renewed pressure on law enforcement to find him. And now he's been found.

It's weird being a woman who likes true crime documentaries/podcasts/books, because the victims depicted are often women whose experiences are mishandled, sensationalized, or exploited for voyeuristic entertainment. I'm not even sure why I'm drawn to the genre; I guess I'm just constantly enraged that so many people—especially women—suffer violence at the hands of perpetrators who are never brought to justice, and are then left to cope with the emotional and/or physical aftermath for the rest of their lives. Sharing these stories in a respectful way—as McNamara does with I'll Be Gone in the Dark—feels like it frames personal trauma as a political issue.