Probably the true crime case I followed the closest was the Ted Bundy case, and not just because he went to my high school. The murders of young women with long-hair, parted in the middle, terrorized Western Washington throughout all of 1974 long before Ted Bundy's name ever became associated with the crime. By that time, Ted has been arrested in Utah on suspicion of burglary. He was later charged with attempted kidnapping of the only woman known to have escaped from Ted. Eventually, Ted was connected to all of the disappearances in Washington, plus others in Utah and Colorado and finally in Florida (he escaped twice), as well as being suspected in dozen of other missing women's cases.
In a eerie footnote, back in the early Sixties a little eight year old girl disaapeared from her home here in Tacoma. At first it was thought to be a possible custody battle between her parents, but eventually became one of Tacoma's most high-profile unsolved kidnappings. Only years later did we find out that at the time of the kidnapping, fourteen year old Ted Bundy was the family's paperboy, and knew the little girl very well.