They say there are no coincidences in homicide investigation.

For the most part, they're right.

It's usually the husband or the boyfriend.

I mean, that's the stereotype, but it's actually true.

Eight in ten murderers who kill a family member are male,

and nearly half of all women killed in the U.S. are murdered by a romantic partner.

Women are far less likely to be murdered than men are.

But when women are the victims, odds are very good that a man was her killer.

When a wife goes missing and her body is found a couple of days later, and the husband

can't quite account for his whereabouts exactly, and maybe there's a few pieces of

forensic evidence that he can't explain

away. Maybe he confesses, maybe not. But odds are in that generic case, that man's going to jail.

Most often, rightly so. There are no coincidences in homicide investigation the same goes, but of course

there are. This week I reread Michelle McNamara's book,

I'll Be Gone in the Dark, in which she describes her own obsessive hunt for the elusive

golden state killer. And I was struck by one possible suspect in particular. This man had been

stopped by police within a half mile and within 15 minutes of one of the Golden State Killer rapes, he had a knife

and a gun in his car at 4.30 in the morning. Shoes found inside the car were similar to footprints

of the scene. Hand lotion on the front seat of the car was consistent with part of the

MO of the Golden State Killer during his rapes. He used hand lotion in almost every rape.

This man was questioned by police,

and he was a chain smoker. During his questioning, he refused to touch a cigarette or a soda can,

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