Los Angeles magazine

Los Angeles magazine was the publisher of Michelle McNamara’s feature "In the Footsteps of a Killer," an important stage in the development of her investigation into the Golden State Killer. The article was more than a preview of the later book: it brought McNamara’s reporting before a wider readership, elicited new ideas from readers, and became one of several bodies of work from which the unfinished book could be completed.

The Feature and the Book

The feature served as the basis for the book, and material covered in the book had already appeared in the magazine article. By the time McNamara’s collaborators reviewed the chapters she had completed, they could also draw on the magazine story and her blog posts to address gaps in the manuscript. Those sources offered a way to carry forward her reporting without attempting to imitate the distinctive style of her unfinished chapters.

The article also marked a point in the growth of McNamara’s investigative work. As official files began reaching her, she read them closely and built an index of people, places, and objects named in the reports. She used it to locate investigative details, distinguish among individuals who might have moved between places, and identify possible connections among victims. Her relationships with active and retired investigators developed into exchanges of information; she passed findings and her master list to active investigators.

Readers and the Case Map

After the feature appeared, McNamara received dozens of responses from readers who had become absorbed in the case, some briefly and others with sustained interest. The map attracted especially many suggestions. A general contractor familiar with planned golf communities saw a resemblance between its paths and golf-cart routes. Another reader proposed that the detailed property lines represented fences the mapmaker would have encountered while moving in darkness.

Other readers pursued different possible clues. One examined the wording and handwriting in the “Mad is the word” journal entry, suggesting that a letter might have been altered and that an earlier word could point to a town beginning with G. Readers also considered the writer’s references to a male sixth-grade teacher and the possibility that the offender’s early crimes near Visalia, California, could connect to the presence of pilots from a nearby naval air station. These were reader-generated theories, not established identifications: McNamara’s account cautioned that some clues might contribute to a picture of the offender while others might have nothing to do with him.

A Public Extension of the Investigation

The responses show how the magazine feature extended the investigation beyond McNamara’s own files and contacts. Readers brought professional and personal knowledge to particular details, especially the map, and offered interpretations that could be considered alongside the evidence. The article thus became a point of contact between investigative reporting and an informal community of case followers, while leaving uncertainty visible rather than presenting every suggestion as a discovery.

That distinction matters to the feature’s role in the book’s history. McNamara’s broader project combined painstaking attention to case materials with an awareness that patterns and apparent clues could mislead. The magazine article generated new lines of thought and contributed material to the later manuscript, but the surviving account does not establish that any particular reader theory solved the case.