'I'll Be Gone In The Dark': Where is Michelle McNamara and Patton Oswalt's daughter Alice now?
It is always expected for comedians to come up with a good joke and make audiences laugh. And, that’s a rational expectation from them – to spread joy using their humor and help people forget, even if it’s for a bit, about their stressful lives. But what happens when tragedy strikes at the comedian’s home, how do they and their family members deal with it. Fifty one-year-old Patton Oswalt, comedian and actor and daughter Alice Rigney have gone through a similar situation.
Oswalt married true crime writer Michelle McNamara in 2005 and they had Alice four years later. However, tragedy struck their household when McNamara, 46, died suddenly in her sleep. According to various reports, her death was caused due to a combination of prescription medications and an undiagnosed heart condition. The writer had launched her website True Crime Diary in 2006 because of her interest in the unsolved murder case of Kathleen Lombardo who happened to live two blocks from where she lived when she was young. Eventually, the author became interested in the crimes of the unidentified rapist and murderer known as the 'East Area Rapist', 'Original Night Stalker' and the 'Visalia Ransacker'. She coined the term ‘Golden State Killer (GSK)’ and wrote articles for Los Angeles magazine about the serial killer in 2013 and 2014. This led to signing a book deal with HarperCollins and she began to work on a book about the case. Her book, titled I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, was posthumously updated and finalized by writers Paul Haynes, Billy Jensen and Oswalt following her death. On February 2018, the book was released and the same year in April, police arrested the killer -- Joseph James DeAngelo. HBO acquired the rights of the book ad developed it into a documentary series which released in June this year. The documentary series is directed by Liz Garbus.
While her work and legacy are kept alive, it is always hard for family members to come to terms with the loss. Oswalt, who tied the knot in 2017 with actress Meredith Salenger, opened up in an interview to People magazine about how they coped with McNamara’s death. He said they were always true about their feelings and expressed it openly. The comedian further added that he did shield Alice, now 11, from a lot of “darkness and sadness” he was experiencing. He stated in the interview, “She's already suffered this blow by losing her mom, I don't want her memories of me to be of a parent that's despairing even deeper than she is. I don't think that's a good foundation to grow up on, so I went out of my way to deal with myself and just be there as a symbol of strength and happiness for her.”
Alice has adjusted well with her stepmother. In fact, recently Salenger joined one of the online classes of her stepdaughter. Oswalt tweeted a photo of Salenger and Alice and wrote: “My daughter’s class is learning about The Great Depression so they all watched THE JOURNEY OF NATTY GANN and they’re about to do a Zoom meeting with a very special guest.” Salenger played the role of Natty Gann in the eponymous 1985 movie.
Talking about his present wife, Oswalt told People magazine, “After the darkness, I went through all the ways I had to strengthen myself to try to recognize joy again. Meredith was a beacon I had to reach for.” But he admits that there was initial “weirdness” due to Alice’s new responsibilities in the house. In an interview with actor Kevin Nealon on the latter's YouTube series ‘Hiking With Kevin’, Oswalt was quoted as saying, “When Michelle was Alice’s mom, Alice was 3, 4, 5 – she was still a little kid. And now Michelle passes away, a year or so goes by, and then I marry Meredith, and now Alice is 10, and both Meredith and I are like, 'You have responsibilities, you have chores.' … You know, we are treating her like a 10-year-old.” He further added in that interview that Alice sometimes did try to reason with them by saying “With Mommy, I didn’t have to do this”, but Oswalt made her understand that: “Well, that’s because you were 5, and you know if Mommy were here, you’d be doing all this same stuff, probably even more.”