Patton Oswalt appeared stunned in media reports about the Golden State Killer as he gave credit to his late wife Michelle McNamara in the arrest of the suspect in California on Wednesday, Entertainment Weekly reported.
The comedian and actor helped finish McNamara's book about the case, "I'll Be Gone in the Dark," after she died in 2016. He had been doing interviews about The New York Times best seller when news broke that ex-police officer Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, had been charged in Sacramento with some of the murders linked to the killer, CNN reported.
"My mind is going in a million directions right now, but on top of all the exhaustion and surrealism," Oswalt told PeopleTV, per EW. "I just feel very, very happy that her work wasn't in vain. Weirdly enough, I had been with her family the night before, doing a talk for her book, so that was very strange."
The Golden State Killer is suspected in 12 murders and at least 50 sexual assaults from 1976 to 1986, Entertainment Weekly noted. The case gained renewed interest when McNamara started posting her research on the case on her website True Crime Diary.
Emmy Award winner Oswalt earlier shared his thoughts in a video on Instagram about the arrest, which McNamara had been digging into from 2013 until her death.
"This is insane, looks like they've caught the East Area Rapist, and if that's true, they caught the Golden State Killer," Oswalt posted while on a flight from New York to Chicago. "Think you got him, Michelle ... full tilt freak-out in effect."
Oswalt also pushed back on Twitter against law enforcement statements that McNamara's work played no role in helping in the arrest of the suspect in the decades-old case, adding that it even was his wife who coined the phrase "Golden State Killer," The Hollywood Reporter reported.
Oswalt added on social media, though, that McNamara never sought fame for herself in the case.
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