In 1947, California's infamous Black Dahlia murder inspired the largest manhunt in Los Angeles history. Despite an unprecedented allocation of money and manpower, police investigators failed to identify the psychopath responsible for the sadistic murder and mutilation of beautiful twenty-two-year-old Elizabeth Short. ..... BUT STEVE HODEL FIGURED IT ALL OUT... but he's not that happy about what he discovered...dad was the evil killer.
“Our father was a homicidal maniac,” says Steve, and he is deadly seriousSteve says more Saturday 2pm PT on True Crime Uncensored with Burl Barer and Frank C. Girardot, Jr plus fact checker Mark Boyer. Our producer is Magic Matt Alan, our archivist is Doug Shearer and Lori Downey Jr. says "Burl! Hold my Purse!!"
YES— Ted Bundy— he killed ‘em, he had sex with their dead body parts and some of them he had for lunch,L The world’s number one TED BUNDY EXPERT-KEVIN SULLIVAN returns to True Crime Uncensored at 2pm Pacific time. /5pm Eastern time this Saturday!
Join Burl Barer, Frank C. Girardot Jr.,fact checker Mark Boyer and producer Magic Matt Alan for another true crime experience archived by the Justice League of America . ..or something like that (Douglas Shearer)
MOTHERS AND MURDERERS: A True Story by Pulitzer Prize Winner Katherine Ellison
Yes this crime hottie joins us live Saturday 2pm pt on True Crime Uncensored on Outlawradiolive.com
“A dark jewel”– Jacquelyn Mitchard, bestselling author of The Deep End of the Ocean
Mothers & Murderers:A True Story of Love, Lies, Obsession … and Second Chances takes readers on a wild tragicomic ride from the criminal courtrooms of California’s Silicon Valley to the Himalayan mountains of Pakistan to the deserts of Ethiopia.
In delightful, insightful prose, Ellison reflects on her mistakes and her triumphs as she weaves together the stories of how her Pulitzer Prize-winning career almost ended before it began, how she nearly missed marrying the love of her life, and how she unwittingly got drawn into a stranger-than-fiction murder case. Rich in drama and self-reflection, replete with unique characters –including two bumbling hitmen, a rodeo-riding prosecutor, a flamboyant Beverly Hills defense attorney, and a charismatic stay-at-home mother-of-three who is keeping outrageous secrets– Mothers & Murderers is a mashup of “Fargo,” “Body Heat,” and “Eat, Pray, Love.”* It’s guaranteed to make you laugh, cry – and think.
“Ellison is wickedly funny, and her writing is irreverent, mordant, and always compelling.” —Literary Mama
From The Book:
Before he agreed to murder Howard Witkin, Andy had never shot anyone or anything other than pheasants, while hunting in Michigan with his Uncle Stu. His criminal experience amounted to a single charge as a juvenile, for destroying mailboxes with a steel pipe while joyriding with friends. After his arrest in 1981, Andy’s hometown newspaper quoted neighbors who said they’d seen the tall teenager playing with GI Joes in a sandbox in his mother’s front yard.
Author Katherine Ellison
Still, what Andy lacked in experience he made up in determination. At his first sight of Howard, he fell into a crouch, a posture he remembered seeing on TV crime shows. Raising his rifle, he closed his eyes and fired the first three shots.
…
Andy would later claim to have clear memories of that night, down to the scent of pear blossoms on the warm breeze as he walked past the redwood chips lining the concrete path to Howard’s front door. Still, by the time he reached Howard’s townhouse, he had to have been more than a little cognitively handicapped. He’d spent the last three days driving cross-country from Flint with his childhood friend and accomplice, Gary Oliver. As they’d waited out the hours before nightfall and their drive to Howard’s townhouse, they smoked joints and drank beer, after which, as Andy would confide to police, he’d attempted to further calm his nerves by taking five “microdot” tabs of LSD – a hefty dose by anyone’s standards. The drugs were just starting to kick in as he approached Howard’s door, cradling his .22-caliber Marlin-Glenfield semi-automatic rifle…..
“Gripping, surprising, and vividly told, Ellison’s true crime tale invites us on an intimate journey, not just to explore the soul of murderer, but to reckon with, and master, our own darker impulses.” –Dr. Craig Malkin is a clinical psychologist and Harvard Medical School lecturer, and the best-selling author of Rethinking Narcissism: The Bad — and Surprising Good — About Feeling Special
New York Times Bestselling Author Caitlin Rother Releases Updated Edition of DEAD RECKONING, Packed With New Details
I’m thrilled to announce that I’m working with WildBlue Press once again, this time to release a newly revised and updated version of my book, DEAD RECKONING, one of my most popular books .
So much has changed since the book was originally released in 2011 that I barely know where to start. But suffice it to say that this meaty update provides lots of up-to-the-minute new material, including recent photos, many of which can be found on the WildBlue photo gallery page for the book (wbp.bz/deadreckoninggallery) as well as a Cast of Primary Characters to make it easier to keep track of who is who.
One of the biggest, most recent breaking-news developments in this book, which tells the story of the murder of Tom and Jackie Hawks by transgender killer Skylar Deleon and her then-wife, Jennifer Henderson, is this: Skylar, one of two transgender women on death row at a men’s prison in California, has just legally become a woman.
That said, we are keeping the original portion of the book as it was first published, using the “he” pronoun for Skylar, because she was still presenting as a man until her arrival at San Quentin, where she transitioned, using hormones. We switch to the “she” pronoun in the updated section at the end of the book, which reflects her transformation and explains all the background in the proper context. We made this distinction, with no disrespect to the LGBTQ community intended, so as not to confuse readers with corrections throughout the book.
Author Caitlin Rother
Representing herself without an attorney, Skylar petitioned the Marin County Superior Court in February 2019 to change her name to Skylar Preciosa Deleon and her gender to female. A judge granted her petition in May.
This move may put Skylar one step closer to achieving her goals of being transferred to a women’s prison and of obtaining taxpayer-subsidized gender confirmation surgery, which would surely anger the victims’ families as well as many of those who have followed this case since the Hawks were murdered in 2004.
A former child actor, Skylar has already gone by a number of other names. Born John Julius Jacobson, Skylar was named after her father, John Jacobson. John Sr. abused Skylar and both of his wives, and also served time in federal prison for drug trafficking.
Wanting to distance herself from this abusive man, Skylar changed her name to Skylar Julius Deleon around the time she met her future wife Jennifer, apparently because the name Skylar was ambiguous in terms of gender.
Although Skylar was still presenting and identifying as a man when she married Jennifer Henderson, Skylar had been trying on dresses since childhood and knew she wanted what was then known as a sex change operation. Today it’s referred to as gender confirmation surgery.
She wanted that operation so badly, in fact, that she was willing to kill Tom and Jackie Hawks for it.
Exterior view of the Well Deserved. Photo by NBPD
Deeply in debt, Skylar and Jennifer concocted a scheme to steal the Hawkses’ yacht, the Well Deserved, and pillage their bank accounts. Sure, they wanted to pay off their $100,000 in credit card and other bills, but Skylar had already put down a $500 deposit for the surgery, and needed $15,000 to pay the balance.
Using their daughter and unborn son as pawns in their scheme, Skylar and her pregnant wife Jennifer brought their toddler, Haylie, in a stroller to the yacht to win the Hawkses’ trust. The ploy worked.
When Skylar returned with a young former jail guard named Alonso Machain, the Hawkses viewed Skylar as a promising potential buyer for the yacht. They also didn’t blink when Skylar came back for a final sea trial with Alonso and “Crazy John” Kennedy, an OG (original gangster) with the Long Beach Insane Crips, who posed as Skylar’s accountant. (Kennedy was nicknamed JFK during his trial, even though he in no way resembles our former president.)
Once they were out to sea, Skylar and his crew of criminals tied Tom and Jackie to an anchor and threw them overboard—alive—off the coast of Newport Beach.
Dan Zupansky was an amateur journalist when he started corresponding with Canada’s infamous “Shall We Dance” killer. Today, his fans hail him as the James Fenimore Cooper of true crime podcasts. His fans would call Burl Barer the Soupy Sales of true crime podcasts...thankfully Frank C Girardot Jr has the professional demeanor to balance Burl's peculiar broadcast persona,
Dan and Burl get along famously and delight in promoting each others' shows -- Dan has TRUE MURDER on Blog Talk Radio, and Burl obviously has True Crime Uncensored on outlawradiolive,com... you know that because you are on that show's website!
Dan wrote Trophy Kill: one of the most shocking and unnerving true crime books ever published.
On July 1st, 2003 Susan Sarandon called police from the set of the Miramax movie Shall We Dance to report the theft of some of her jewelry, including a gold necklace. The next day Sidney Teerhuis calmly walked into a police station to report waking from a drunken blackout to find his acquaintance dead in the bathtub. At the rented room police found the victim dismembered, beheaded, sawed in half, disemboweled and castrated with the chest sliced open and all of the internal organs gone! One eye had been removed and the body posed, crudely reassembled. Susan Sarandon's stolen gold necklace was found a few feet away from the murder-horror spectacle. Obsessed with celebrity, his role models-serial killers, with Susan Sarandon's stolen jewelry, Sidney hatches a diabolical plan to achieve his ultimate fantasy.. (this is real sick sh*t)
Frank Girardot is our new co-host on True Crime Uncensored. Burl's previous co-hosts, Don Woldman and Howard Lapides, both died suddenly, but the cause of their demise wasn't the radio show. Frank, in good health, is a brilliant author, journalist, victim advocate, and radio host. Girardot has won several writing awards, including the Southern California Press Association's award for Investigative Journalism 1995, the Los Angeles Press Club's First Place Award for sportswriting in 1998, and he was a finalist for the 2015 University of Florida Award for Investigative Data Journalism in 2015.[6] Girardot headed a project for the Los Angeles Newspaper Group titled "Getting Away with Murder." The effort chronicled 11,242 homicides that occurred in Los Angeles County between 2000 and 2010. Relying on data supplied by the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner the project found that less than 50 percent of all homicides that occurred countywide were ever solved.
Girardot is the author of true crime non-fiction books, including Name Dropper, which was cited by author Walter Kirn in his book Blood Will Out. He is co-author with Burl Barer of A Taste For Murder, Betrayal in Blue with Barer and Ken Eurell and Burned, the biography of serial arsonist John Orr. Burned was written with Orr's daughter Lori Orr Kovach. All, except Name Dropper, are published by Wild Blue Press.
Frank and Burl are both regular contributors to several true crime TV shows, including the new program KILLER SIBLINGS on Oxygen.
Listen Saturday 2pm Pacific Time 5pm Eastern Time -- our show is produced by Magic Matt Alan our fact checker is Mark Boyer. You can hear the show on Itunes, Spotify, Anchor.fm and wherever podcasts are available.
Most of my true crime books contain insights and commentary by Travis Webb who gets full credit for bringing the murders covered in my book HEAD SHOT to my attention. In a recent Q&A for Wild Blue Press's re-release of HEADLOCK, my private eye novel, I was asked: is Travis Webb the same Travis Webb who is a famous rave producer and pop culture icon in the Northwest?
A: Yes, but the Travis Webb in HEADLOCK is the Travis I knew almost 20 years ago when he wasn’t famous, wasn’t really handsome (he is now), and was much heavier. Travis says he reads the novel to remind himself of what his life was like back then. He is very smart, and probably even smarter than he appears in the book.
We had Travis on our show almost ten years ago, and it is the perfect time to have him back as he is featured in a new documentary on the rave culture in the Northwest -- a documentary made several years ago when Travis was ruling the Rave scene in Seattle. Travis shows up about 11+ minutes into the documentary
Travis now has two new comics coming out in addition to new books. Brilliant? No doubt. Don't ,miss this exclusive interview with the versatile Travis Webb.
A trio of Midtown burglars waited for the stroke of midnight to pull off a $6 million New Year’s Eve heist, law enforcement sources said Monday.
“They laid in wait until the ball dropped,” said a law enforcement source.
The three hooded and masked men broke into a West 36th Street jewelry wholesaler at 12:01 a.m. Sunday in what appears to be an inside job — while 7,000 cops were distracted protecting Times Square revelers just a few blocks away.
The source said the thieves “100 percent” planned the heist to coincide with the ball drop.
They made off with around $6 million in gems and are still at large, police sources said.
The burglars were caught on video inside Gregg Ruth, a commercial jewelry store known for its rare yellow and pink diamonds. One of the robbers, a bearded white male in a hood without a mask, looks straight into the camera during the heist, surveillance footage shows.
They came in through a freight entrance to the sixth-floor business and then used a hammer and crowbar to break a lock, gaining access to a room containing four safes, sources said. The gloved suspects removed diamond-encrusted and 18-karat gold bracelets, earrings and necklaces from two of the safes. The safes were either already open or the burglars knew the combinations, and they stuffed the pricey merchandise into several backpacks, sources said.
The two unopened safes contained another estimated $7 million in merchandise, sources said. The lock boxes were on loan to the wholesaler, who was in the process of building a more secure vault.
The footage shows one of the suspects talking on a cellphone while he is opening the safe, perhaps receiving the combination from a fourth person, sources said.
The trio then fled down a stairwell in the beige, 16-story office tower that lacks any exterior signage about its sixth-floor tenant.
“It’s weird to me that they randomly tried that floor in this building. How would somebody know to come here? That’s real fishy,” a building worker told The Post.
“It definitely seems like an inside job,” the worker said.
“The timing is weird too,” he said, adding that the thieves likely knew the business would be empty when they broke in.
The break-in was reported at 3 p.m. Sunday.
Another building source agreed that the burglars seemed to be “aware of their surroundings.”
“They would have needed a key [to access the freight entrance] or someone left it open for them,” the second source explained.
A security guard was posted in front of the jewelry business Monday. “They said, ‘Keep us safe,’” the guard told The Post about his orders from the owner, adding that the company had no security officers protecting the premises before the robbery.
A third person who works in the building said the owner was likely “embarrassed” by the incident.
“It’s a black eye for their company. They couldn’t secure it. That money, a lot of money — it’s embarrassing.”
A police source said the owner is out of the country in India.
The jeweler specializes in colored diamonds and imported stones, including rare yellow and pink diamonds set in pendants and necklaces worth up to $150,000 apiece. The baubles are sold at area retailers like H.L. Gross in Garden City, NY, and Neves Jewelers in Woodbridge, NJ.
It was a shattering death bed confession by a heartbroken mother. But would it solve the oldest cold case murder case in American jurisprudence?
LISTEN LIVE SATURDAY 2pm Pacific time/5pm Eastern time/10pm UK time by clicking this link
In January 1994, Eileen Tessier told Jack McCullough's half-sister Janet Tessier that he, her son, kidnapped 7-year-old Maria Ridulph from their neighborhood in Sycamore, Illinois and killed her in December 1957. It was a case that tore the child’s family apart, as well as dividing and terrifying the town as the days, then the months, and finally the years passed with no arrest.
In 2008 the Illinois State police reopened the case against Jack after receiving an email from Janet Tessier about their mother's deathbed confession. After the Illinois State police interviewed Janet and learned that Jack had also been accused of raping their other sister, Jeanne Tessier, they reopened the case. But would reopening the case solve the question of who killed Maria Ridulph? And was McCullough the killer?
In THE LAST MAN STANDING, true crime author Alan Warren writes in exacting detail about the kidnapping, murder and subsequent investigations—both in 1957 and 2008—that eventually led to the murder conviction of Jack McCullough. But the story doesn’t stop there as it delves into the years McCullough spent in prison and the efforts to have his conviction overturned.
Was McCullough the brutal killer of a little girl? Or was he the last man standing when the justice system decided he needed to pay for the crime? You decide.
Cathy Scott says: "We can talk about the Torrey Pines State Beach murder cases (Claire Hough and Barbara Nantais -- cops say a CSI employee killed one of them after DNA was tested again, but it no doubt was cross contamination; I think the cops named the wrong killer). I can also talk about the Rebecca Zahau case in Coronado, where homicide deemed in a suicide (quite a reverse Houdini trick to tie herself up in nautical rope then climb over a balcony railing and jump) . I was on Marcia Clark's show for the Zahau case."
Cathy Scott is a true crime author, award-winning journalist, public speaker, and presenter of writers' workshops. Her books have been reprinted in the U.K. and in Poland. Scott's work has taken her to Somalia, Saudi Arabia and Panama.
