My latest article for Crime Reads relates to The Alaskan Blonde, and expands much more on what’s in the book about “Perry Mason” author Erle Stanley Gardner, whom the Wells family asked to recommend a private eye who could look into Cecil’s murder. Gardner’s choice was “Bud” Bodell, a cigar-chomping PI with an amazing story of his own…
Category Archives: Blog
Crime on the Titanic, Halloween Murders in LA, and the Xmas Tree King….
My articles for CrimeReads are about crime on the Titanic, several Halloween nights when trick-or-treat turned deadly in LA., the 1929 murder of LA vintner Frank Baumgarteker (his body was never found but the case was investigated for years), the love triangle murder that entangled the San Diego “Xmas Tree King”, and about Lucille Parker and Alexander Mackay, two young lovers who committed dozens of robberies in LA in the early 1930s: she was called “the red-haired bandit queen”!
100 Years of the Cecil Hotel – the most infamous hotel in LA history
The Cecil Hotel in downtown LA is infamous for murders and suicides – plus the “Night Stalker” stayed here, and tourist Elisa Lam was found dead in the roof water tank. I wrote about the Cecil Hotel recently celebrating its 100th birthday, and how one man is trying to make a difference…. https://www.sfgate.com/la/article/cecil-hotel-la-priest-20059489.php
I talk to LAist 89.3FM about Strange and Bizarre Museums in LA
Recently I appeared on LAist 89.3FM to talk about six undiscovered and unusual museums in LA – including the Museum of Death in Hollywood! You can read my article about it here
Hagning out with @spookyfoodie at The Wolves in downtown LA
It was great fun meeting SpookyFoodie at her Spooky’s Restaurant Club – the place was packed with lovely people who liked LA history, ghosts and crime: my type of people! Here are some pics…
This daring LA robber wrote King Edward VIII to save him from the noose…
My latest article for SFGate is about America’s first Bonnie & Clyde – robbers Alexander Mackay and Lucille Walker – whose gang terrorized LA in the early 1930s. Mackay ended up in San Quentin, condemned to death after a failed escape, and he decided to get help. Being a British subject (born in Scotland), he wrote King Edward VIII for help…
https://www.sfgate.com/california/article/california-crime-couple-bonnie-clyde-21069355.php
DISCOVERED! The grave of actress Elsa Lanchester, the “Bride of Frankenstein”!
My recent piece for the BBC about the discovery of the resting place of actress Elsa Lanchester (famous for playing The Bride of Frankenstein) is here.
EXTRA! Cary Grant’s cook sued over Christmas Eve French Flap
The other day I was walking along Orange Street in Beverly Hills when I saw this interesting Moorish/castle-style home. Of course, I looked it up in the newspaper archives when I got home, and found that back in the 1940s it was the home of French couple Alma and Joseph Pouilet.
Alma was the cook for Cary Grant, the article states, and she had been sued by 22-year-old blonde Jean Bowen after an incident several weeks earlier on December 24, 1946, at a drive-in restaurant.
The Pouliets and Jean and her husband Jack were sitting next to each other in booths, and Jean apparently objected to the Pouliets speaking French, seemingly because she thought she overheard Alma calling her a “pig” (though whether this was after she objected is unclear). Anyway, a scuffle followed between the women, and Jean alleged that Alma tore her clothing.
In court, the feisty Alma joyously admitted “I called her worse than that, but her high school French is no good, and she misunderstood me.” The “jabberer” then had her 30-day jail sentence suspended, and paid a $10 fine “with a smile.”
In the “aftermath” it seemed the Pouliets had been divorced, presumably in part because Joseph had been arrested for carrying a knife and threatening Jean. And of course, Jean (picture below, left) and Alma (right) were suing each other for $10,000 damages.
Joyeux Noël to all!
Friday 13th – the Best Mysteries from Gourmet Ghosts
There are maybe one or two Friday 13ths every calendar year – sometimes there are none – but on this Friday 13th September 2024, I thought I would list some of my favorite (and most mysterious) mysteries from Gourmet Ghosts. What do you think happened?
The “Ghost Woman Sought” headline is from November 1922, when rancher Vaden Elwynne Boge was poisoned at the Alexandria Hotel. Police searched for his wife, who was suspected of the crime, but never found her…..
The man in the collar and tie is Ludwig Steiner, a clerk and resident at the Barclay Hotel in 1915 – until he disappeared suddenly among rumors that he was German spy. Steiner spoke seven languages, and among the possessions he left behind was a picture of him in the uniform of the Austrian army. He said he had been arrested while in Japan and charged with espionage too… but was all that true?
A severed leg? One was found in 1895, wrapped in pages from a newspaper, at the downtown LA address that’s now the STILE Hotel (and was built as the United Artists Theater in 1927). The United Theater still operates there as an events venue – and it is said to be haunted (but by any one-legged ghosts?).
Also below is a picture Chinese-Canadian tourist Elisa Lam, and the Cecil Hotel. If you don’t know about her bizarre 2013 death here in the water tank – then just Google it!
That sad picture of that kid praying to Santa (?) is from December 1925, and poor “Buzz” Reeve, 3, wants his dad, Raymond, who had gone from LA to meet a business contact at the Hoover Dam, near Las Vegas, to discuss a lucrative contact – and had not been seen since. It had emerged that this meeting seemed to be a scam – or a trap….
Finally, that’s a picture of Elizabeth Short from the Historic Corridor at the Biltmore Hotel, the last place she was officially seen alive in 1947. A few days later, she was found brutally murdered – and is known to his history now as “The Black Dahlia.”
You can read more about all of them, of course, in the Gourmet Ghosts books….
Ghost signs from my recent trip to Hobart, Tasmania
We recently returned from a trip to Australia, visiting Melbourne and Hobart on the island state of Tasmania. Both cities have some excellent ghost signs – you can see them in earlier posts here – but I thought I would show you the new ones from Hobart…
Gourmet Ghosts 