Murder in California: Serial Killers and Famous Unsolved Murders

Book excerpt: Murder in California: Serial Killers and Unsolved Murders profiles some of California’s most infamous murder cases. The edition photographically transports you to actual murder sites along with images related to the case and perpetrator(s). The images and accompanying profiles offer a descriptive account and follow-up aftermath providing an important understanding into the far-reaching effects of each crime. Convicted killers and their confirmed victims are identified. For criminals still living, their current incarceration location is provided. A directory of precise crime site locations is included. The captured snapshots portray visual testimonies of extinguished lives removed by acts of violence. Crime scenes often revert back into unremarkable landscape or unassuming buildings over the ensuing years and decades. Several have altered little since their moment of infamy. Many are passed daily by pedestrian and vehicular traffic unaware of a location’s unique significance. California has been the site for many notorious serial killers. The following are portrayed in this edition: Zodiac Serial Killer: Public and media taunting Charles Manson’s serial killing clan Dorothea Puente: The elderly and frail targeted and eliminated for profit Efren Saldivar: Caregiving medical homicide The Unabomber: His UC Berkeley experience Zebra Killings: San Francisco’s racially targeted genocide Heaven’s Gate Cult mass suicide Edmund Kemper III: Monstrous hitchhiking murders Bittaker and Norris: Torture van murders Juan Corona: Migrant workers serial killer Richard Trenton Chase: The vampire killer The Speed Freak Killers and their burial bone yards Herbert Mullin: Killing for earthquake preventiveness David Carpenter: The devil behind bifocals and a stutter Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple Massacre: Lost in a jungle mass suicide The Hillside Strangler Duo: Killing Cousins Rodney Alcala: A beastly killing machine slaying beauty Richard Ramirez: Satan’s ambassador Golden State Killer: The triumph of forensic tracking A Black Hand of Death and Inhumanity (Jose Manuel Martinez) A Killing Rampage Preying On Society’s Most Vulnerable Population (Jon David Guerrero) The Santa Rosa Hitchhiking Murders: preying on the innocent David Nadel: The death of a man and rebirth of a performance icon Torrey Pines Beach: Sands, Secrets and A Butterfly Dancer The continued fascination with the Black Dahlia Murder Fatty Arbuckle’s sex and homicide scandal A Classic Mob Contract Killing Of An Unwanted Distraction Was a 1963 beachfront slaying a prelude to future Zodiac terror? Geneva Ellroy: The transference of tragedy into literary expression A Double Tragedy Complicated By Mysterious Scenarios (Spreckels Mansion Death) Kym Morgan: Death by classified advertisement Kevin Collins: A solitary bus bench memorial to every parent’s nightmare Unauthorized Celebrity Biography Comics and A Founder’s Murder (Todd Lawrence) Ted Healy: The suspected homicide of the fourth Stooge The Resolute Will to keep William Desmond Taylor’s murder unsolved A Contract Killer Terminated By His Own Profession (Frank Bompensiero) Ramona Irene Price strolls innocently into a vanished past Raymond Washington: A cycle of senseless violence devours the Crips gang founder The Senseless Murder of a Catholic Priest on Holiday (Monsignor Louis Gutierrez)