Unmasked: My Life Solving America's Cold Cases
Book by Paul Holes
DETAILS
Publisher : Celadon Books (April 26, 2022) Language : English Hardcover : 288 pages ISBN-10 : 1250622794 ISBN-13 : 978-1250622792 Item Weight : 1.05 pounds Dimensions : 6.5 x 1.2 x 9.55 inches Best Sellers Rank: #4,506 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #1 in Forensic Science Law #3 in Law Enforcement Biographies #11 in Serial Killers True Accounts , **THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** "It’s a mark of the highest honor when I say it’s even more riveting than an episode of 'Dateline'." ―The New York Times From Paul Holes, the detective who found the Golden State Killer, Unmasked is a memoir that "grabs its reader in a stranglehold and proves more fascinating than fiction and darker than any noir narrative." ( LA Magazine ) I order another bourbon, neat. This is the drink that will flip the switch. I don’t even know how I got here, to this place, to this point . Something is happening to me lately. I’m drinking too much. My sheets are soaking wet when I wake up from nightmares of decaying corpses. I order another drink and swig it, trying to forget about the latest case I can’t shake. Crime solving for me is more complex than the challenge of the hunt, or the process of piecing together a scientific puzzle. The thought of good people suffering drives me, for better or worse, to the point of obsession. People always ask how I am able to detach from the horrors of my work. Part of it is an innate capacity to compartmentalize; the rest is experience and exposure, and I’ve had plenty of both. But I have always taken pride in the fact that I can keep my feelings locked up to get the job done. It’s only been recently that it feels like all that suppressed darkness is beginning to seep out. When I look back at my long career, there is a lot I am proud of. I have caught some of the most notorious killers of the twenty-first century and brought justice and closure for their victims and families. I want to tell you about a lifetime solving these cold cases, from Laci Peterson to Jaycee Dugard to the Pittsburg homicides to, yes, my twenty-year-long hunt for the Golden State Killer. But a deeper question eats at me as I ask myself, at what cost? I have sacrificed relationships, joy―even fatherhood―because the pursuit of evil always came first. Did I make the right choice? It’s something I grapple with every day. Yet as I stand in the spot where a young girl took her last breath, as I look into the eyes of her family, I know that, for me, there has never been a choice. “I don’t know if I can solve your case,” I whisper. “But I promise I will do my best.” It is a promise I know I can keep. Read more
REVIEW
I remember well the day that the Golden State Killer (GSK) was finally unmasked as Joseph James DeAngelo, whom I will simply refer to as JJD from here on for brevity. My wife and I were having our house painted and I was lying in bed inside, trying to avoid the outside chaos, and also trying to keep from getting any paint on me as well. I picked up my iPad, looked at the day's news, and then my eyes got big. No, they got HUGE. But I jumped out of bed, ran to the front door, opened it, and exclaimed to one of the painters, "Did you hear that the Golden State Killer was just arrested?!" His reply: "Who's the Golden State Killer?" I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that the GSK was finally caught. But maybe more incredibly, I couldn't believe that someone didn't know who that was, especially in the area where I live, just above the Napa Valley. I thought that everyone knew about the Visalia Ransacker (VR) who morphed into the East Area Rapist (EAR) who then became the Original Night Stalker (ONS) whose nickname was finally wrapped up into the Golden State Killer (GSK) by Michelle McNamara. She was in the middle of writing a book not long before his capture, from memory. Unfortunately, she didn't live long enough to finish it but lucky for us true-crime aficionados her book "I'll be Gone in the Dark" (IGD) was finalized and published, supposedly by some of her assistants. And I can attest to the fact that IGD is a very good read as I bought, downloaded, and read it myself. But then again, I've read many books about the GSK. "Killers Keep Secrets" (KKS) which is an interesting book written (from memory) by the ex-brother-in-law of JJD. "The Case of the Golden State Killer" (CGSK) which is a slightly unpolished effort but nonetheless informative read about the case where you will learn information probably not found anywhere else. "Hunting a Psychopath" (HAP) which is an oddly humorous look at the case written by one of the original detectives on the EAR case, Richard Shelby. I've even taken on a couple others which I found nearly unreadable. But of course now I've just read "Unmasked: My Life Solving America's Cold Cases" (UNMASKED) which might be the most interesting of them all, mostly because it is written by the CSI-slash-DNA Expert-slash-detective Paul Holes, maybe the most important person in the case as he finally solved it around 45 years after it all started. But of course a big assist goes to Barbara Rae-Venter, the genealogist who helped Mr. Holes with research and building family trees for the case. Now, the GSK case isn't the only one included in "Unmasked: My Life Solving America's Cold Cases" as the title implies. Mr. Holes returns periodically throughout the book to discuss his progress on the GSK case, intermingled with other cases he worked alongside stories about his own personal life as well. Some of that life Mr. Holes seems to be very happy about -- investigating and solving cases is his "purpose on Earth" to risk misquoting him -- and some of that life Mr. Holes seems to be not always proud of -- perhaps how chasing serial killers and other bad guys had detrimental effects on his family. And I'm assuming that Mr. Holes has had three of them. Families, that is. His original family included his parents and siblings. Then he was married in his mid-twenties and started having children of his own perhaps before he was really ready, as he even admits. Then he was divorced and was married again to his second wife and then had a couple more kids. Mr. Holes has had at least four more children than I have but I still am able to empathize with him as he tells his story about feeling guilt, guilt that maybe he wasn't there enough for those children. But if you take my strong recommendation to buy and read UNMASKED you can read about that yourself. I just watched an interview this week -- the week of April 28, 2022 -- with Mr. Holes where the interviewer actually brings up the fact that he discusses a lot of his private life in the book. I would say that usually, most true-crime "fans" -- fans of the genre and not fans of the crimes themselves, of course -- aren't really much interested in "personal stuff." They want to read about the crime! And they want to read about how the detectives investigated the crime! And they want to read about how the UNSUB became the suspect who became the Number One Suspect who became a convict sitting in an 8 x 10 cell so he can realize why committing that crime was such a bad idea in the first place! That kind of stuff. But to me I actually like the parts in the book where Mr. Holes discusses his private life. I was a fan of his television show -- "The DNA of Murder with Paul Holes" -- even though each episode didn't necessarily have a tidy conclusion, and I actually wanted to know more about him, and not just his investigations. It was just that he seems like a nice guy and so I was interested to learn how he became that nice guy. It's either that or he does one heck of a job faking it. But I'm so rarely "accused" of being a nice guy myself I found it interesting to see how someone else can pull it off. Ahem. In reality this review could become a book in and of itself if I wrote about everything that I liked, disliked, or maybe was simply neutral about. Instead I'll keep it short and just create a bulleted list of highlights or interesting points, at least for me, in no particular order: 1. I thought it was interesting that Mr. Holes and his family, after he retired, moved to the same town where Joe Kenda had been a detective, and Mr. Kenda had moved out of that same town when he retired. (I guess maybe detectives find it necessary to "Get out of Dodge.") 2. There is a show called "Real Detective" on the Investigation Discovery (ID) Network that I really like. Season 2, Episode 1, entitled "Blood Brothers" is a must see. John Conaty, a friend of Mr. Holes, is heavily featured during that episode. At any rate the story in that episode is included in UNMASKED. 3. I really like the fact that Mr. Holes uses the first-person "I" throughout. I do it myself in reviews, usually to alert the reader that what I'm writing is my opinion. 4. Believe it or not I got some really good laughs while reading. One: "Guns don't kill people, I kill people." Everything is funny dependent upon context, I suppose. Two: "Hurricane Holes." Supposedly that was Mr. Holes' nickname given to him by his coworkers and I used it for comic relief in the title of this review. 5. The Jaycee Dugard case. I read her book "A Stolen Life" -- I recommend it -- and I actually once drove past the house in Antioch where she was held for 18 years, mostly out of curiosity. (I drove past JJD's old house in Citrus Heights once too but THAT story is for another day as it is just too crazy to include here.) Well, if you've ever seen Paul Holes on TV you'll probably think that he at least seems like a nice guy. And that is true even though his coworkers gave him the nickname "Hurricane Holes." But how about changing that nickname to "Hilarious Holes" as he does have a way of periodically bringing some humor into an otherwise dark story. But to finally wrap this up before I overstay my welcome, to Mr. Holes I will write, "Enjoy your retirement! You deserve it!" although it seems he's working harder nowadays than he ever has, what with his book and television deals alone. But then I'd add, "Thanks again for catching the Golden State Killer. Even if that painter guy didn't know who that was."
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