Written by: Alex Green

Crime writer Michelle McNamara has died.

Although no cause of death has been determined, her publicist revealed the writer died in her sleep.

She was 46.

A graduate of Notre Dame and the University of Minnesota, McNamara was the founder of True Crime Diary, a site that focused on crime stories, both old and new. McNamara was an incisive and brilliant crime writer and she had a knack for finding arcane details that were able to shed new light on unsolved murders.

Her essays on the Golden State Killer and the murder of Melanie Howell, a nurse who was killed in 1976, are particularly riveting.

A native of Oak Park, Illinois, McNamara married comic Patton Oswalt in 2005.

McNamara is survived by Oswalt and their 7-year-old daughter Alice.