Michelle McNamara, Crime Writer And Wife Of Patton Oswalt, Dies At 46

Michelle McNamara, a crime writer and the wife of comedian Patton Oswalt, has died. She was 46.

A publicist for Oswalt told the AP that McNamara passed away in her sleep in her Los Angeles home. McNamara founded the website True Crime Diary in 2006, which focused on both breaking stories and cold cases.

In 2013 McNamara told LAist she was interested in unsolved cases, saying she was "not [interested] in looking back at solved ones and dissecting the mind of the psychopath, like [the case of] Ted Bundy, etc. It's the puzzle that's the draw for me. I'm drawn to cases that have enough data (clues, evidence, etc.) that there's the possibility, through inventive use of the Internet, of helping solve them."

While the general interest in crime tends to be towards celebrity or high-profile killers, McNamara said she was drawn towards the less-publicized cases. "I'm not interested in Phil Spector. I'm not interested in Anna Nicole Smith," she said in an interview with SuicideGirls in 2007 (link SFW).

For Los Angeles Magazine, McNamara wrote features about the Original Night Stalker/Golden State Killer and the murder of nurse Melanie Howell. In one of her latest posts on True Crime Diary (from 2014), McNamara wrote that she was working on a book about the Original Night Stalker.

McNamara and Oswalt were married in 2005. Together, they have a 7-year-old daughter, Alice.