Chase Darkness with Me

by Billy Jensen

  In Conversation with Billy Jensen and Paul Holes

  On an afternoon in November 2018, Sourcebooks sat down with Billy Jensen and Paul Holes as they were on a break from shooting a TV docuseries in San Diego, California. As the two drank from a bottle of whiskey aptly named Writer’s Tears, we asked them about the future of detective work and crowdsolving.

  I’d love to hear about what you guys are up to and your process. First of all, can we talk a little bit about the Golden State Killer and DeAngelo and how you’re feeling watching the progression of that investigation over the past several months?

  Paul: Since DeAngelo has been in custody, I’ve been paying attention to the court process to see where things are at. Of course, I’m absolutely thrilled that that case is solved and the fact that the tool that was used in that case has proven to be highly successful in solving other cases—I think about twenty at this point.

  Billy: Right, now it is about twenty. But to have it be this case as the entry point for using familial DNA to solve crimes, that was important because we knew that there was going to be some sort of a privacy backlash. And I remember the day it was announced that it was solved, Pete Headley called me up and said, “How bad is it?” And I was like, “What do you mean how bad is it? We just solved this thing.” And he’s like “How bad’s the backlash?” And you know what? There were people writing little op-eds about privacy, but no one was gonna want to be on the side of protecting a guy that has killed at least twelve people and raped at least forty-nine women. So it was great that it was this case. And now all of these dominos are falling in these cases that a lot of people never thought would be solved. It’s just the tip of the iceberg, though. We’ve got a lot more work to do.

  Paul: I did get a little bit of backlash after DeAngelo. A fair number of journalists were calling me up saying I was becoming the poster child for the law enforcement guy that was violating everyone’s privacy. But especially with some of the journalists that I’ve talked to, the concern now is that law enforcement are going to try to use [familial DNA] as a routine tool on lesser crimes. I think you’re going to start seeing legislators coming forward to see if they can’t do something legally to possibly limit its scope.

  Billy: I mean, listen, we still have so much of a backlog of rape kits they haven’t even processed, much less try to use familial DNA. So, the idea that you might get some weird police department that has a [Breaking and Entering] or something and is like “Let’s use familial DNA to solve this burglary case…”

  Paul: Exactly. The amount of resources it takes to do this technique when you’re starting with bad matches or distant relatives—no agency is going to put those kinds of resources on a smaller crime.

  Billy: That was the most frustrating thing when Michelle [McNamara] was working on the case—that we knew the answer was behind that locked door at 23andMe. The answer was there. And now we’re going to see a lot more crimes being solved because of it.

  Apart from familial DNA, do you have any thoughts about how the process of crime investigation is going to be changing over the next five years, whether it’s through technology or just how people are using information that’s already available?

  Paul: During the last five years, there has been a shift. Law enforcement always lags behind the private sector when it comes to implementing new technology. So technology that has been out there with the social media world and with locational aspects tied to your phone, law enforcement is just now catching up and implementing that in a more robust way. And that’s just going to continue to drive developments. People may not appreciate how much information they put out about themselves in their social media. We find out so much about somebody by looking at their Facebook page and their Twitter accounts.

  Billy: Five years ago, I would talk to certain police agencies and they weren’t yet looking at people’s social media. And I was like, “Come on, guys, their entire social network is right in front of you!” My concern now is that a lot of young people aren’t using Facebook. I kick myself for not coming up with this system five years earlier, when Facebook was really humming. Now younger people are abandoning it. That’s why I started using Instagram more now, but on Instagram you can’t really share a post or anything. I think there’s two ways to use social media. One way is to push knowledge of the crime out there and geotarget people who might have seen something. And the second is looking at the profile of someone who has been killed and seeing who’s connected to that person. And you’re gonna see that hopefully happen more and more, because the police are wise to it and they see that as a great investigative tool.

  Paul: Back in the day—and it wasn’t that long ago—if we wanted to find out about a group of people, a family, a gang, or just friends, we would have to sit on the house and watch who’s coming and going, talk to people that we had confidence wouldn’t go back and burn us. Now, we go to the social media accounts. We can, from afar, develop intelligence that helps guide us in terms of how we’re going to deploy resources on whatever the circumstances of that particular investigation are.

  Can you talk about any of the cases that you’re actively working on now and using these methods on?

  Billy: What we’re doing with Murder Squad, our podcast, is introducing people to cold cases that we feel like we can pick back up and do something with. There are so many listeners for podcasts like My Favorite Murder or Case File that have all this knowledge and want to be a part of something. So we are interviewing people that were involved in an old case, then putting that out to the public and saying, “This was somebody that was doing this in the early ’80s, late ’70s. Show this to some people that might not be on social media, go share this with your uncle or aunt who lived in Southern California or wherever at the time.” Being able to utilize social media and people’s connections and telling them, “Remember your great aunt? Why don’t you send her a message over Facebook and say, Hey, do you recognize any of the people connected with this case?” It sounds like it’s a shot in the dark, but if you have enough people doing it, you’re gonna get answers.

  Paul: In many ways, it’s targeted crowdsourcing. The people listening to the podcast obviously have an interest in true crime, and there’s going to be a percentage of those people that want to do their own little investigation. So now we’re going to have an army of individuals that are out there trying to find the answers and feed them back to us or back to the investigating agency. I think it’s going to be a lot more effective than a law enforcement agency holding a press conference and saying “Hey, you recognize this person?”

  Billy: That’s the main reason why I started the Facebook thing in the beginning with the Marques Gaines case. When you have a press conference, it might get shown on TV, but guess what? Nobody really watches TV anymore. But they are on social media, and they’re opening up Facebook multiple times a day. That’s where you have to hit these people if you want to get their attention.

  Paul: Law enforcement is now starting to set up their own social media accounts, whether it be a Facebook page or Twitter—but how many people want to follow the county sheriff’s office?

  Billy: What we’re trying to do is move the true-crime fan—who has got all this knowledge and has been sitting on the sidelines—and we’re trying to push them now to the front lines, obviously in the right way and following the rules. A lot can be done because we have the tools right here. We just need to have the resources. And whenever you ask any police department, “Hey, why didn’t you solve this case or that case?” one of the biggest things they’re going to say is lack of resources.

  Do you think that you have an advantage over active law enforcement officers in your ability to run investigations in unconventional ways?

  Paul: There’s no question that now that I’m outside of the law enforcement sphere there is a fair amount of flexibility I didn’t have before. Of course, you lose something when you don’t have access to the
law enforcement resources, when you don’t have the police officer powers to be able to compel somebody to do something for you, get search warrants, whatever. But with Billy’s skill set and my experience, together we possess a lot more knowledge than most departments have.

  Billy: I’ve certainly been able to talk to certain suspects who won’t talk to the police. We’re at a point right now that distrust of the police is pretty high. That cascades down to things like if you know something about a murder, you’re not going to say anything. A lot of people don’t want to get involved with the cops unless there’s a reward.

  What trait or quality in yourselves have you found most useful to this kind of work that you’re doing?

  Paul: Obviously, I spent twenty-four years on one case and had lots of failures, and so one trait that I will pat myself on my back over was the persistence. To just keep going and keep it moving. I’ve also developed a broad area of expertise across multiple disciplines used in investigations, whether it be forensics, behavioral, or other investigative components. And so I can look at a case using that breadth of knowledge. Oftentimes, a detective knows nothing about forensics, can’t even read the reports, and so he has to rely on somebody to tell him what the report means. Then later if he stumbles across something in his investigation, he may not put two and two together and think, “Oh! Hold on, I understand the science behind this particular investigation, and I just ran across a witness who’s telling me something that matches up.”

  Billy: For me, it’s definitely the persistence. It’s the one thing that you can control when you know you’re going to hit so many dead ends. If you had a Paul for every crime, a lot of them would eventually get solved. If there are five thousand unsolved murders in America every year, that’s thirteen a day that aren’t going to get solved. And there’s only one way to solve a crime, and that’s to just keep pushing forward no matter what gets in your way.

  Do you feel like there are changes that could be made within our law enforcement agencies that would give more room for that kind of focus and persistence that maybe we’re not fostering right now?

  Paul: The biggest thing I see that hampers a lot of these investigations is the reality that there are always more cases coming in. So somebody may be highly motivated to work a select case, but once that case starts to get a little bit older, they’re going to catch more cases. Then the case they were working starts getting less and less attention until eventually there’s nothing happening to it. That’s how they go cold. And the reality is that there are more cases than you have bodies to work them. And I just don’t see an answer to that.

  Billy: It comes down to money; it comes down to resources. In the same way that there’s a lot of knowledge out there with some citizen detectives, you could think about bringing those people into police departments to work on old cases. One thing that takes forever is taking old files that are handwritten and typing them up so they’re searchable. And you know those files are gonna get lost at some point. They’re going to get destroyed in a flood or you’ll go looking for something and they’ll say, “Oh, that was the old building, we threw everything away.” We’ve heard that so many times. But with everything we’re talking about, familial DNA and using social media are the two biggest things that are going to be able to help to solve a lot of these crimes. I just hope that there’s a couple police officers out there that are willing to put this stuff in the budget and try and see if it works.

  What would be your number one piece of advice for those people that are out there and are interested in getting involved in citizen investigations?

  Paul: If they really want to maximize their impact, they need to kind of always treat it as a profession, and they need to educate themselves as best they can about all aspects related to a crime and criminal investigations so they can better understand what they are seeing, what they are reading. You have to get up to snuff in terms of your knowledge base.

  Billy: You have to stay on it. A lot of people might start a website for a missing-persons case and then forget all about it. We see that a lot. If you’re really into true crime, and if you want to take it beyond the kind of soap-opera aspect of it that you see on certain TV networks and really want to get into the nitty-gritty and solve it, you have to do your research. You’ve gotta find a case that speaks to you and a family that wants help. And you can never give up.

  What do you see yourselves doing in ten years? Are you still going to be running these investigations?

  Paul: You know, I’ve been doing it now for so long that it’s just part of me. People have asked how I feel now that the Golden State Killer is solved, and one of the biggest things that I feel is a void since that case was such a big part of me, and now I’m not doing it anymore. So I don’t see myself ever getting away from being a part of criminal investigations, although now it’s going to be on the media side.

  Billy: Michelle [McNamara] used to worry about what would happen to her when the Golden State Killer was solved, after she spent five years looking only at that case. I talk about this sort of White Whale. Once you catch the White Whale, what do you do? And the key is to use all that experience that you used in catching that White Whale and apply it to the next case. What we do, telling stories, investigating, trying to help people, those are things that don’t really have a time limit or an age limit. There are a lot of cases people ask us to look into. It’s just going to be a matter of picking the ones that we feel that we can help with, and also training a lot of other people to do it to solve as many as we can. I’m gonna ask Paul here—what’s the one case that you would want to solve? We know the granddaddy of them all is Jack the Ripper.

  Paul: Jack the Ripper would be interesting. Obviously Zodiac is a big one right now. Many people are very interested to know who that guy was. Of the most notorious cases out there, that’s probably the one I would like to find out who that was. Just to understand him. Obviously, we want the solution for the victims’ families, but we gotta understand that guy because he was somewhat different. Now, I’ve said, compared to GSK, the Zodiac is a coward, and the types of crimes he was just committing were just not as scary, he was doing lovers’ lane stuff. But the ego, the narcissism reaching out to the newspapers and wanting that attention is an interesting aspect about him for me.

  Billy: He was very much a supervillain. He had his own outfit. He had his own logo. He talked in ciphers. This guy is right out of the Batman essential casting. He toyed with the police; he toyed with the media. He wanted that attention. Then he faded away. There are so many other murders to solve, but Zodiac, Jack the Ripper, the Cleveland Torso Murderer—those stories are always going to bubble to the top when people talk about unsolved cases. We want to see them unmasked. BTK was like that. But then we saw him, and he was just a pathetic little worm. These guys are not supervillains in the end. Quite frankly, I just wish they were identified so we can focus on all of the other ones. If solving those would give us the opportunity to solve a hundred other ones, I would go for it.

  Reading Group Guide

  1. Billy’s passion for true crime developed early in life as a result of his dad pointing out newspaper articles about local crimes. Do you remember any crimes that happened in your town or region during your childhood that affected you deeply? Do you think it’s common for people interested in true crime to often come to it during childhood or adolescence?

  2. Chase Darkness with Me covers a wide spectrum of cases, some solved and some unsolved. Which ones do you find most compelling?

  3. Billy’s current method of investigation relies heavily on social media and reaching out to the networks of victims to seek information. Do you think he opens himself up to any kind of risk through his unorthodox techniques? If he were to contact you about a crime committed against a friend or family member, would you be willing to share information with him?

  4. Are there any investigative techniques, involving social media or other
wise, that you think Billy could adopt? What other opportunities does the internet open up for people interested in solving crimes?

  5. One of the main points Billy highlights in Chase Darkness with Me is that our current law enforcement institutions are severely limited by a lack of manpower and resources. How do you think law enforcement is going to need to change in order to continue to be relevant and effective as technology becomes a bigger part of our lives?

  6. The man accused of being the Golden State Killer was identified through familial DNA. What are your thoughts about the ethics of private organizations like 23andMe refusing law enforcement access to the DNA information they have collected? How would you feel if a distant relative were convicted of a crime as a result of DNA evidence you had submitted?

  7. What crime would you call your “White Whale”?

  8. Billy posted a soundtrack playlist to this book on Spotify (“Chase Darkness with Me” by LonesomeCowboyBill) and every song, from the Beatles to Bowie to Prince to Public Enemy, has a specific reason for being on the playlist, along with a reason for being in the order in which they are presented. Some are actual moments from the book, while others have lyrics or moods that match up with major moments. Can you guess what songs match up to which events in the book?

  9. Many true-crime fans struggle with the ethics of enjoying media that explores other people’s tragedies, while a lot of true-crime writers and journalists frame the work they’re doing as seeking justice for the victims. Have you experienced this internal conflict at all? How do you view the balance of privacy and dignity for the victims and their families versus raising awareness and seeking justice?

  10. Have you ever thought about helping to solve crimes yourself? If so, where would you start? Do you have a particular case in mind that you think you might be able to contribute to?