If you had a time Machine, where and when would you go?

It’s a parlor game that’s been played for ages. Ancient Rome. 1920’s Paris. Italy during the Renaissance (but with penicillin). A lot of the time, one’s answer revolves around music.  People want to be there for the birth of something.

Maybe you would choose New York in 1977, to sweat to the Ramones and Blondie at CBGB’s, then head uptown for revel in birth of disco at Studio 54. Or early 90s Seattle, for the birth of grunge, sweating in the pit for Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Mudhoney and Soundgarden.

Maybe the Bronx in 1973, for DJ Kool Herc’s block parties where Hip Hop was born.

Or London in 1966, with the Beatles and the Stones, a visit to the Bag o’Nails club to see Jimi Hendrix rock Eric Clapton’s world.

People are playing the game a lot today. Because we yearn for a time before cell phone cameras and social media. A time where you got into the club with a physical ticket, and just let the music flood over you in the moment.

And this summer, they are setting their mythical Time Machine for 1994 Manchester. The Madchester scene was still alive, but making way for a brash band from Burnage in Manchester with a front man who took the stage at the Hacienda and dared to say it was about time a “proper band” played the venue.

Oasis was raw and working class. Two brothers from a council house (public housing as we call it in America). “Is it worth the aggravation,” Noel wrote and Liam sang “to find yourself a job when there’s nothing worth working for.” 

That was something being felt by millions of young men.

Unlike the Beatles, whose crowd makeup at concerts skewed female, Oasis had a largely male following. They faced the uncertainty. Many were on the dole, receiving public assistance. They didn’t want to grow up. They wanted to rage. This was not like punk or ska, both relatively small culture sets. This seemed to be everyone. Terrace lads and bricklayers and postmen, all trying to scrape out a life after 15 years of Margaret Thatcher. And going to an Oasis show was like a going to football match where everyone was supporting the same club.

The crowds got bigger. And the music did to match. No one posting on social media. No one holding a cellphone in the air. The only thing the crowd had in their hands was a pint and a momentary touch of a beach ball.

Across the pond, the American males were reeling from the loss of Kurt Cobain and the end of grunge. Lives were about to be upended by the internet, and a presidential scandal.

The crowds were smaller in the US–arenas instead of stadiums. The band had ruined their entree into the states after a drug-addled performance in Los Angeles which broke up the band for a week when older brother Noel escaped to San Francisco only to return a week later. 

But the music and the words resonated.

It was grand.

Alas, there is no time machine. 1994 is long gone. There is no way to go back.

But you don’t have to go back. Because 2025 Manchester and London and New York and Los Angeles and Dublin will now take their place in the time machine conversation.

The shows for the 2025 reunion tour are not trying to take you back in time. This IS the time. It is something new. And it’s something possibly more important than the birth of Brit Pop.

“We need to find another word, because this ain’t just ‘nostalgia,’” co-opener Richard Ashcroft recently told Virgin Radio. “That city and that stage, Like Croke Park the other night. It was like the center of the Universe. It was the most now, happening real place you could be on the planet.”

Damn the cell phones and social media. Damn the AI and impending doom. For one night, 80,000 people gathered together to sing songs and embrace each other.

This isn’t nostalgia. Because this never happened before. Eighty thousand people never turned away from the stage, locked arms to do the Poznan together. Thousands of people never gathered outside the parks and stadiums to just listen to the songs. They are there for the music, but more to just be around each other. Because this is a communal event, and the collective effervescence created from each individual is something that cannot be replicated through a pair of earbuds.

This never happened before. Because the young men of the 90s who survived DID all get jobs, even though there seemingly was nothing worth working for.

They survived. They saw their friends die from drugs or drink. Or go to jail. And now they face the uncertainty of life in their 40s and 50s and 60s of not having a retirement plan, and their kids not earning what they did. But they are here, now, facing that uncertainty in an embrace with both perfect strangers and imperfect friends.

This never happened before. Two brothers who each represent the two sides of man–Noel, the loner poet with the acerbic wit in the vein of Oscar Wilde and Liam, the cocky, hooligan town crier–putting their past behind them in front of 70,000 people. The cynic will say it’s all for the money. But their hug at the end of the show plants a seed in everyone in the crowd: Yes, we might live forever, but life is also short. Pick up the phone and reach to that friend who you lost touch with over this or that.

This is not the birth of something new. It has never happened before. It’s for the teenagers in crowd bouncing up and down to “Some Might Say.” The twenty somethings arm in arm singing “Don’t Look Back in Anger” to each other. And those middle-aged men thirty years later with families of their own, who can look back and realize they did finally find something worth living for. All together, arm in arm in the face of a new age.

Let’s just pray that new age has guitars.

 

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**Trigger warning—#suicideawareness****

 

Still here? Ok. And if you left, that’s ok too.

 

 

I’m starting a new project that is a slight departure—but just as important—as true crime.

 

In the spring of last year, for the first time ever—or at least in a very long time—I had serious suicide ideation. I was in a really dark place. When I was 22, I was diagnosed with depression and obsessive compulsive disorder. Medication has helped since. But it just got really bad last year. Not being able to turn off thoughts. Best I can describe it is darkness. And I had some really, really dark nights. And to be honest, I’m amazed and happy I’m alive.

 

Somehow I pulled myself out of the darkness. For now. It’s a constant struggle. But one of the things that got me through it was this.

 

For 20 years, I’ve chased killers. 15,000 people die by murder in America each year.  50,000 people die by suicide. 800,000 people worldwide. Suicide claims more lives than war, murder, and natural disasters combined.

 

One person dies from suicide every 40 seconds. Someone just died by suicide as You’ve been watching this.

 

When I pulled out of that darkness back in the spring, I started doing a lot of research. There are not many books on suicide. I went to a Big bookstore chain and asked the salesperson for books on suicide. After a concerned look at me and a 5 minute search on the computer, I was handed a list of 4 books. There were more books in that store about quidditch—a fictional sport played by wizards—than something that kills 800,000 people a year.

 

So I started talking to a lot of suicidologists.

 

And they all said the same thing—talking about suicide should be done and we should be talking about how people who have had thoughts of suicide were able to survive.

 

We make movies about people who die by suicide. Particularly celebrities. But what about people who got to the very edge but were then able somehow to pull themselves back.

 

Just as much as a completed suicide can trigger other suicide attempts, a story of survival and resilience can create hope and second chances. And maybe even give other tools on how to survive and fight back.

 

You know, One of the best things I ever learned in therapy is “you are not your thoughts.”

 

If you have suicidal ideation—it’s not you. It’s an outsider. An invader. In true crime terms. It’s a  killer entering your head. Then why not tackle the subject like that? A killer who kills 800,000 people a year. If there was someone who survived that killer, you’d want to hear that story, right? Those stories are out there.

 

The last journey of the hero is to bring the boon, the reward, back home and share it with the people.

 

Be it a trophy or knowledge. And people have this knowledge. The knowledge to fight back these thoughts.

 

But virtually no one talks about how they pulled out, because of the stigma attached. There’s also issues of future employment, health insurance.

 

But we need to stop that. If someone fought off an attacker on the street, they would tell you how they did it. The same should be true for fighting off an attacker in your head.

 

This is by no means saying people who died by suicide were lesser. The killers in their heads were incredibly strong and overpowered them. And there is not a one-size-fits-all cure—everyone is different, everyone is going through different things, everyone has different brain chemistry. Everyone is different.

 

But sharing stories will help. The new world health organization guide “suggests that media counteract reports of suicide with stories of successful recovery from mental health challenges or suicidal thoughts.”

 

So today, the first real day of the new year, I’m launching a project to collect these stories — stories from people from all walks of life, from celebrities to your next door neighbor— who have had thoughts of suicide and fought them back.

 

The WHO has a goal— Reduce the suicide rate by 1/3 by 2030. Wouldn’t that be amazing to reach? Saving 250,000 lives a year?

 

Suicide rates are actually down globally—decreasing by 36% in the last 20 years.

 

But in the United States, the suicide rate has risen 17 percent.

 

Why? In the US, it’s much more complicated, and experts point to our relationship with firearms. Going on an anti gun rant here is not going to help anyone because the message will get lost, but The WHO does identify access to means and it will be part of the conversation. There are also the situations of self medication with drugs and alcohol, something that is a constant battle for myself as well. And it’s also worth noting, that more than twice as many males die due to suicide as females. And more than 65,000 US veterans have died by suicide in the last 10 years. That’s more than the number of soldiers who were killed during the Vietnam war. Depending on what state you live in, Suicide is either the second or third leading cause of death for people 15-24.

 

I know I’m throwing a lot out here. But now, I want to hear your story. How were you able to fight back against the killer in your head.

 

And share this message with people. Send it far and wide. It’s time to drag suicide out of the darkness and into the light.

 

If you don’t have a story, there is still a way to contribute. Coupled with this will be something I’m calling Project Reach Out. All I’m asking is every week or two, reach out to someone. Ask them to meet in person. Take a walk, go for coffee. Anything. People in despair often don’t reach out. But sometimes all it takes is someone reaching out to them to give them a tool to survive.

 

I talked about it on episode 100 of Murder Squad in June and it resonated. This is just the first public step in this project. We want to learn as much as we can from each other. If you have any suggestions, please don’t hesitate to send them in to bill@billyjensen.com. A book and possibly a podcast will follow. But this is the first step.

 

Suicide ideation is an ongoing struggle. Hell, it was a struggle just to write all this out. Thoughts get in your head. I had to go to a burger place and be around people just to finish it. But I really think we can all move the needle on suicide.

 

And if you are having thoughts of suicide, please call the hotline at

800-273-8255

 

And I know a lot of people don’t like to talk on the phone—so you can text a crisis line 24/7–

Text HOME to 741741 for a confidential response from a crisis counselor.

 

Thank you for listening, thank you for sharing, and thank you for reaching out.

A few weeks after Chase Darkness with Me came out, I received an email that blew me away. I just wrote a story about it for Vulture.

 

 

By design, writing a book is a solitary affair.

 

You can do your research in the city streets, conduct your interviews in crowded coffee shops, huddle with your editor in dimly lit bars. But at the end of the day, it’s you alone with your words. And maybe a bottle. And The Office streaming in the background as you try to articulate what it is you’re trying to tell the world.

 

After months and months, you finish it — well, it’s never really finished, but you ship it. Then about a year later, that snarling, insatiable beast that you have been feeding and attempting to tame is unleashed upon the world, with a whimper or a roar. The book tour, the best-seller list, the airport flu, the airport bars, the hotel bars, the bar bars. It cascades into a blur.

 

And then the letters arrive.

Keep reading here.

Order here.

 

Want to know what it’s about? Read below!

 

Have you ever wanted to solve a murder? Gather the clues the police overlooked. Put together the pieces. Identify the suspect.

 

Journalist Billy Jensen spent fifteen years investigating unsolved murders, fighting for the families of victims. Every story he wrote had one thing in common—it didn’t have an ending. The killer was still out there.

 

But after the sudden death of a friend, crime writer Michelle McNamara, Billy became fed up. Following a dark night, he came up with a plan. A plan to investigate past the point when the cops have given up. A plan to solve the murders himself.

 

In Chase Darkness with Me, you’ll ride shotgun as Billy identifies the Halloween Mask Murderer, finds a missing girl in the California Redwoods, and investigates the only other murder in New York City on 9/11. You’ll hear intimate details of the hunts for two of the most terrifying serial killers in history: his friend Michelle’s pursuit of the Golden State Killer which is chronicled in I’ll Be Gone In The Dark which Billy helped finish after Michelle’s passing, and his own quest to find the murderer of the Allenstown 4 family.

 

And Billy gives you the tools—and the rules—to help solve murders yourself.

 

Gripping, complex, unforgettable, Chase Darkness with Me is an examination of the evil forces that walk among us, illustrating a novel way to catch those killers, and a true crime narrative unlike any you’ve listened to before.

 

With a foreword by Karen Kilgariff of My Favorite Murder.

 

Chase Darkness with Me is available for preorder. You can order it here.

Michelle McNamara was a writer first. Then she became a citizen detective. Then she merged the two and we can now finally say she is the author of a true crime classic.

 

After months of going through all of her documents and chapters and notes and emails, pulling and pushing and putting it all together, and then trying our best in part 3 to follow some of the strings she left us to get out of the maze, seeing her beautiful prose and intense research in hardcover felt amazing.

 

 

Then I opened the book and saw Michelle’s photo on the inside jacket, and it was like a sledgehammer hit my chest all over again.

 

It’s the same feeling I get when I get a solve–elation, followed immediately by sadness, because no matter what, it will not bring the victim back. We should be going out for drinks and celebrating this week. This is by all accounts the true crime book event of the year. It’s already being called a “true crime classic.” But it’s still…grrrr, I’ll be drinking tonight.

 

The book jacket photo is from the same shoot as the photo to the right. The last time I felt that sledgehammer was when I walked into Michelle’s memorial at Largo and saw this pic blown up, giant-sized. Then they played David Bowie, and now I can’t hear the opening snare drum of “Five Years” without thinking of this badass woman.

 

That day Patton, Paul and I vowed to do everything we could to bring Michelle’s work into the light. Today is the day the world can see what she was working on.

 

So buy the book. It’s really good. I mean really good. Like you’ll be stopping yourself over and over saying “damn, that’s a great paragraph” good. If you don’t believe me, read this review here:

 

What we discover, beautifully, is McNamara’s interest in human beings. There’s a spooky, suspenseful magic to the way the author constructs bite-sized short stories — tales of jealous siblings, happy young couples, impulsive children and “stony” parents — and infuses them with that lurking inevitability of terrible, potentially deadly crimes.—Entertainment Weekly (David Canfield)

 

And here:

 

“This book had to be finished,” [Patton Oswalt] said in a telephone interview. “Knowing how horrible this guy was, there was this feeling of, you’re not going to silence another victim. Michelle died, but her testimony is going to get out there.”

 

Shortly after her death, Mr. Oswalt recruited Billy Jensen, an investigative journalist, and Paul Haynes, who worked closely with Ms. McNamara on the book as a researcher, to comb through her handwritten notes and the roughly 3,500 files on her computer and piece together the story she set out to tell.

 

“I’ll Be Gone in the Dark,” due out Feb. 27, is both a vivid and meticulous investigation of a twisted predator who terrorized quiet, upper middle-class communities in California for nearly a decade, and a wrenching personal account from a writer who became consumed by her subject. It’s drawn accolades from some of the country’s top crime and horror writers, including Stephen King, Michael Connelly, Megan Abbott and Gillian Flynn, who wrote an introduction to the book. —New York Times (Alexandra Alter)

 

And here:

 

​McNamara fascinatingly evokes the development of post-war Californian suburbia, “a predator’s paradise” where single-storey houses in communities planned by visionaries such as Joseph Eichler became “eerie” filmic tableaus, with their occupants displayed “like rare museum objects”.– The Independent (Alaisdar Lees)

 

And here:

 

By the time of her sudden death in 2016, McNamara had inspired an online community of sleuths who continue to research the crimes. With its exemplary mix of memoir and reportage, this remarkable book is a modern true crime classic. — Publishers Weekly

 

And here:

 

McNamara’s background in fiction demonstrated itself in a superb ability to tell a story in a nonfiction context. She had a well-developed knack for presenting a situation in a single, memorable image. These ranged from a recollection of her mother in her beige armchair in the living room of their home, circling her finger in the air to tell Michelle’s friends ringing the doorbell to go around to the unlocked back door, to her description of retired homicide investigator Larry Crompton as looking “like the kind of tall, lean, honest-faced rancher John Wayne would have trusted in one of his Westerns.” New York Journal of Books (Michael J. McCann)

 

And here:

 

We don’t review much true crime at Crime Fiction Lover – our passion is for fiction – but this book is exceptional in the way it captures a specific time and place, as well as some unforgettable, if brief, character portraits of victims and police investigators. McNamara obtained her MFA in fiction writing, and, although her accounts of the victims’ lives and stories are factual, they have all the vivid descriptive power and fluency that fiction can bring to the reader. Not only does it give voice to the victims and their families, it also does a brilliant job recreating that atmosphere of panic that gripped the state during that time.– Crime Fiction Lover (Marina Sofia)

 

And here are the Amazon reviews.

 

And the Goodreads reviews.

 

I have started some social campaigns and geo-targeted buys (targeted to people who lived in the areas of the crimes but have since moved away across the world) to try and dig up any new information, like I promised I would do.

 

The book is finally be on the shelves, but that doesn’t mean Paul, Patton and myself are going to stop. We won’t stop until this guy is identified and brought to justice, even if he’s already shuffled off his mortal coil, little prick and all (you’ll have to read the book to get that reference).

 

And when we do catch the guy, I want to meet him. I want to show him that picture of Michelle and say to him “This is the woman that helped catch you.”

 

In the meantime, ride shotgun with Michelle on her journey to find him. She may have paused her investigation down here for a spell, but I’m sure she is up there interviewing people as we speak.

 

Order “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” here. 

 

Still need convincing? Here’s Stephen King’s review:

 

What readers need to know—what makes this book so special—is that it deals with two obsessions, one light and one dark. The Golden State Killer is the dark half; Michelle McNamara’s is the light half. It’s a journey into two minds, one sick and disordered, the other intelligent and determined. I loved this book. —Stephen King

 

 

 

As a journalist that focuses on unsolved cases, I get many of requests to attempt and prove someone’s innocence, but I have never taken one on. But when I found Kimberly Long’s case, there was just too much there to keep it in the dark.

 

In July 2015, I started my first television producing/investigating and on-camera gig by digging into the story of Kimberly Long, who was convicted of the 2003 murder of her live-in boyfriend Ozzy Conde.

 

The episode kicked off the second week of Crime Watch Daily’s first season. We laid out all the evidence–or rather lack thereof–for why Kimberly’s conviction should be overturned.

 

Nine months later, it happened. Kimberly walked out of prison.

 

Today, we kicked off the second week of Crime Watch Daily’s second season with Kimberly’s first interview since her conviction was overturned.

 

 

 

Last August I got a call from the History Channel asking me to investigate the DB Cooper mystery and vet a suspect that a team of citizen sleuths had uncovered.

 

I was paired with a former FBI man, assistant director Tom Fuentes, and together we traveled up to the Pacific Northwest to interview witnesses, former and current FBI agents, scientists, and a host of other people involved with the Cooper saga. We probably conducted around 25 interviews in total, and met some real interesting folks. The four-hound special: DB Cooper: Case Closed? airs tonight on History.

 

Here is a bonus video from our interview with retired FBI special agents John Detlor and Robert Furhiman, who were on the ground at SEATAC the night of the hijacking.

 

When you have tattoos, people ask you what they mean. I have a Tonka truck bulldozer on my back, with my son’s name on it. It is driving up from my side and recreating the scar my son got from the heart surgery he had as a baby. On my right tricep is a quill pen, because no matter what job I am doing, I will always identify myself as a writer and storyteller first. On my left forearm is a magnifying glass, because I am an investigator and am forever attempting to uncover true crime mysteries. And on my lower left leg is the monorail coming out of The Contemporary Hotel at Walt Disney World.

I can explain the first three pretty easily, but the fourth is the one that raises the most eyebrows. “Why would you get a tattoo of a Disney hotel?” That story takes a little more time to tell.

 

When I was little, my Dad worked a lot. All day he painted houses (I know that since I am a true crime writer, I have to clarify that I don’t mean “painting houses” in the mob sense. I am talking about actually painting houses.) And as a painting contractor who owned his own business, he had to go out on nights and weekends to do estimates—look at rich people’s houses, and give them a price (in the thousands of dollars) for what it would cost for him to put “colored liquid on their houses,” as he once called it.

 

Because the estimates were often at the whim of the homeowners, I never knew what time they were happening. So when I would ask my Dad if we could do something—go to the toy store to get a new Star Wars figure I wanted, go to the rocket ship playground, go to the Islander game—he would always reply “maybe.” Now keep in mind, the “maybes” almost always turned to “yesses.” But there was always this uncertainty. I was always having to share my Dad with his work. Except at Disney World.

 

He first took me to Disney World when I was a two-year-old boy. When we there every February, my Dad was all mine. When I would ask “Can we go on the Pirate’s of The Caribbean,” the answer was always “Yes.” Can we go to the hotel arcade? “Yes.” The Mystery Fun House? “Yes.”

 

I was 12 the last time he took me to Disney, and for the first time we stayed at the Contemporary Hotel–the hotel that the monorail rides straight through. We rode every ride. We played every game in the arcade. And there were no maybes.

 

 

We never got to go back again.

 

My Dad died 2 months after my daughter was born. A rip-off. That’s the term that pops into my mind whenever I think about him dying: A rip-off. He didn’t get to see most of the things that I have done in my career. Mike Myers said it best when his dad died. It’s like winning chips at the craps table when you do great things in life. But cashing those chips in? That’s what happens when you tell your dad about it. That’s how I feel. But the biggest rip-off is him not being able to hang out with his grandchildren. He would have loved to take his grandkids to the arcade, the little amusement parks, the playgrounds, and most of all, Disney World.

 

When our kids were 3 and 5, I was making $27,500 at the Village Voice. But I HAD to take the kids to Disney. So I went on eBay and sold one of the few things my father left me when he died: His Lionel Mickey Mouse Train set (along with a mint, in-the-box Kenner Star Wars Death Star I had been saving for the kids). That gave us enough money to scrape together a trip. We couldn’t afford to stay at the Contemporary, but we had a great time, with his spirit by our side the whole time, and doing the thing he always liked to do: Going to the further reaches of the park at closing time and making them kick us out, being the last people in the park. I told that story in his eulogy.

 

Thirteen years later, my daughter was graduating high school and I asked her what she would want for her graduation present. She said she wanted to go back to Disney World.

 

I set about building the best trip possible, planning everything to the last minute. We would stay at different hotels close to the parks—The Boardwalk, The Animal Kingdom Lodge, and then we would end the trip at The Contemporary. It would be one last hurrah for a little kid before she goes to college.

 

So we arrived at Disney, and started riding the rides. We went to an obscenely expensive princess dinner at Epcot, and challenged each other at the Toy Story Mania ride at Hollywood Studios.

 

On Sunday morning, we woke up at the Animal Kingdom Lodge, looked out our window at the zebras and giraffes, and went to breakfast.

 

 

On our way to the restaurant I checked my phone and learned what happened at the Pulse Nightclub seven hours earlier. Twenty people were reported dead at that time. My heart sunk. But at breakfast, at the happiest place on earth, you would never know anything bad had happened. Cast members were still smiling, loading carved ham onto our all-you-can-eat plates. Families were either unaware, or trying to forget what that 20 people had been slaughtered less than 20 miles away, so their kids could enjoy their vacation. Me? I felt anger.

 

But one of the redeeming things about being a journalist is that when something horrible happens, the one emotion you rarely feel is hopelessness. When something horrible happens, as a journalist, you have something to do–even if it seems insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

 

You can go tell a story.

 

Amidst all of the pain, there is always a story of hope or heroism than can–and should–be told. Flashing through my mind that morning was the quote from Mr. Rogers: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’

 

The show I work on, Crime Watch Daily, had gone on hiatus just two days before. But I sent my producers a note saying that I was down here and could help in any way possible.

 

In the time it took to send the note and check the news again, the death count had climbed from 20 to 50.

 

We left breakfast, and checked out of the Animal Kingdom Lodge. The plan was to head to the monorail and ride it to the Contemporary, where we would check into the hotel that reminds me of my dad. The hotel that I have tattooed on my leg.

 

One of the favorite things Dad and I liked to do at Disney was to rent the little boats and ride around the lakes. It is the one time you can go pretty much anywhere you want—there are no lines, no people telling you to go this way or that. You can explore, and my Dad loved to explore. He also loved to break the rules. We rented a boat once on Lake Buena Vista, and we drove under a bridge into a cove. At the front of the bridge was a sign, waving in the wind. We couldn’t read what it said, but we kept going. We wound up on a golf course, with golf balls flying over our head. As we returned, we past under the bridge and got a better look at the sign. “No Boats Past This Point” became a mantra in our family any time we started to do something against the rules.

 

 

Zoe and I shared a boat, and explored the abandoned Discovery Island and River Country, then drove into Seven Seas Lagoon. And sure enough, as my daughter was trying to get as close as possible to the Magic Kingdom train station, harbor patrol sped up to us and told us to vacate the area, as we had disregarding the buoys. We hadn’t seen them. Honest.

 

When we were pulling up to the dock, I checked my phone and saw a note from one of my producers, asking if I could go to the scene at Pulse and work the story for our sister show, Extra.

 

I went upstairs to our room, took a shower, called a Lyft and headed off. The Magic Kingdom would have to wait. My kids understood.

 

When I got to the scene, the TV crews had been set up for hours. I met my crew and searched for anyone we could talk to. 

 

In an effort talk to anyone whose story hadn’t been already told, we went down a side street and walked to the closest spot to the club that we could.Our sound technician snapped a photo of the holes the SWAT team poked into the wall to breach the building and get people out. The police had put up temporary fencing to cover the parking lot of the club, but there were just two international photographers taking photos of the dead as they were being wheeled out in white sheets. For a split second, my first reaction was that this was exploitative. But that moved quickly to more anger, moved to wanting people to see what these guns can do. To thinking that instead of their”thoughts and prayers,” every law maker should be forced to tour the inside of the club to see first hand what these guns can do. 

Two white vans carrying the dead drove past us.

I found the gentleman who lives closest to the nightclub, who heard the first shots and spent the three hours of the siege watching from his balcony, closer than any news crew. He showed me the video he took on his phone of the final raid. It was nothing but light flashes and a cacophony of bullets.

 

I went back to the Contemporary, these words and images banging around my head, but still wanting to ride the Monorail and spend some time with my son at this ridiculously expensive hotel. I was trying to capture the same feelings I felt with my dad when I on the cusp of being a teenager, hoping my son would get the same feelings and recreate them with his kids. It felt forced, but there moments. We had as good a time as we could, and I went to sleep at midnight.

 

I have strange dreams about Disney–been having them my whole life. They usually contain a story line where I am really close to the Magic Kingdom, but can’t get inside for some reason, and I am scrambling to find a way in. Sometimes I actually enter the park, but it looks all different, with twisted rides and attractions.

 

On Monday morning, I woke up at 5am at the Contemporary Hotel, took the elevator downstairs past the monorail station, and climbed into a Lyft to take me to the murder scene.

 

There, I was able to talk to Christopher Hansen. He was at Pulse that night, and dropped to the floor when the man next to him was shot. After he escaped, he helped a man who had been shot in the arm, taking off his bandana to apply pressure. Then he saw the bullet hole in his back. He then used the bandana to put pressure on the wound until help arrived. He has no idea if he survived, but would not forget him. He remembers he has a chest tattoo. When the names are released, he told me he is going to go through all of the photos to find him. I couldn’t help but hug him after we talked.

I found Billy Manes, former Orlando Weekly columnist and one of the biggest voices in the LGBT community in Orlando. I had only talked to him on facebook before.

I spoke to a woman outside the hospital visiting her cousin who had been shot. A man who was at the club alone and had managed to get out. Even a man who had grown up with the shooter.

 

Only one person I spoke with mentioned the words “ISIS” or “terrorism.” Every person I spoke with mentioned the words “hate” and “guns.” Easy access to guns. They were all resilient. They were all clear that at the end of the day, love would trample hate.

It was incredibly hot outside. I was wearing jeans. Jeans are what I wore at Disney the last time I went with my Dad, because as a kid I hated my skinny legs. That day, they were drenched with sweat. I took a break and walked into a bank that had set up waters and cookies for the media. Exhausted, I sat down and took a cold drink. After my third gulp, I looked out the window and saw a Benjamin Moore Paint sign on the store across the street. That was the brand my Dad used, the colored liquid my he bought thousands of gallons of, that put me through college and let me have those Disney trips with him.

 

He wore pants in the 100 degree every day as he painted houses for 30 years before he was taken too young. I heard my Dad’s booming voice: “Ok, you’re hydrated. Now go back out and get some more stories. Let’s go.”

 

I did.

 

We wrapped at 4pm. I took a car back to the hotel. I wanted to recreate the photo of me and my dad at the Contemporary, so I grabbed my son and we took this picture.

 

I just hope I am making him proud.

 

We spent the next day at the Magic Kingdom. We left before it even got dark, and took the monorail to the Polynesian Hotel on the Seven Seas Lagooon. We put our feet in the water and watched the storm roll in. Maybe it was the strong cocktails from Trader Sam’s, but for the first time it felt like a vacation.

 

 

We learned later that night that 15 minutes and 300 yards from where I took this photo, a two-year-old boy playing in the sand was snatched by an alligator.

 

A fucking alligator.

 

 

 

Sending as much love as I can to the families and friends of the victims of the Pulse, the family of the little boy, and to everyone who has ever lost anyone to violence. Now we need to package that love with action. That is the only way to make change. 

Michelle McNamara was dogged. Fiercely dogged. Don’t-take-no-for-an-answer, don’t-leave-any-stone-unturned dogged.

 

She was a mother and a wife, but after she took her daughter to school or put her to bed, she spent seemingly every waking moment working on her book about a series of unsolved rapes and murders that took place across California in the ’70s and ’80s. Her ultimate goal? To identify the villain, to give the real name to the unknown assailant who goes by the monikers “The Original Night Stalker” and “The East Area Rapist.” She had written about the case in Los Angeles Magazine–where she rechristened him “The Golden State Killer”–and on her site, True Crime Diary.

 

Every month or so we would meet for lunch or drinks, where she would tell me about the latest clue she had uncovered–some bit of information that had been missed all those years ago. Her eyes lit up like Christmas as she walked me down the path of how the new clue might fit into the ever-expanding jigsaw puzzle she was putting together.

 

Then we would meet the next month, where she would excitedly tell me how that piece fit into the picture… or how it sent her down one of many rabbit holes.

 

She was unearthing an intense amount of information–boxes and boxes full of documents and police reports, old phone books, news articles. The kind of stuff you just can’t google. She went digging– into dusty archives, newspaper morgues. She knocked on doors. Shoe-leather work.

 

But her most amazing skill–what set her apart from any writer I have ever seen–was getting grizzled detectives from different police departments and law enforcement agencies to talk to each other and share details about their individual cases–something they never did at the time of the crimes. If they did, they could have helped solve the case and brought this serial killer to justice. But they are doing it now, because of Michelle. It’s not always easy talking to detectives about a cold case they worked on. It’s their unfinished businesses. Imagine if someone called you up to get you to talk about a project you failed to complete 40 years ago. Now imagine telling that person no. Now imagine that person not going away until you talked to them about it. Now you have an idea of Michelle.

 

She knew more about this case than anyone, and I truly believe she would have solved it. Hell, I bet she already has solved it. I bet she has the name of the bastard in one of her thousands of pages of notes. She texted me earlier this month saying she had a real good lead on a suspect. “A lot of tiny details in his favor,” she wrote. “We’ll see. Have been here before. But God I would be so happy.”

 

I don’t know what is going to happen to the book, but If asked I would do my damndest to help get it out there. I know our mutual friend and fellow crime writer Steve Huff feels the same way.

 

After the book was finished, Michelle and I were going to start a cold case group, a sort of Los Angeles Vidocq Society, where we would invite the smartest people we knew from Hollywood, law enforcement and journalism to a dinner one night a month and review an unsolved murder case. We would then give each person a task, and at the next meeting would present their findings, which we would deliver to law enforcement before introducing the next case.

 

Michelle was really excited to do this, as was I. We were building a list of people to invite and a list of cases to work. The only thing we didn’t know was what to call this little group. The Vidocq Society was named after the French criminal-turned-detective who is credited with ushering in a new era of detective work. Michelle was ushering a new era of citizen sleuthing, and her investigation is going to illustrate what a dogged woman who wouldn’t take no for an answer could do for justice. If I can ever muster up the strength to start this group without her, I guess I now know what it will be called.

 

 

Update: 826LA–which teaches kids creative writing out of the back of the Time Travel Mart in Echo Park–has set up a page to make a donation in Michelle’s name. On top of being a great investigator, Michelle was a fantastic writer. She merged her creative writing skills with true crime facts to build a different type of crime storytelling.

 

In this age of bytes and screens, we need to get a pen and piece of paper into more kids’ hands–and some guidance from fun, talented teachers. That’s what 826LA does, so please think about donating in Michelle’s name–so we can foster the next generation of true crime writers.

 

Michelle and I at SXSW in 2014 for our panel, Solving Murders With Social Media.