Download or read book The Disappearance of Jean Spangler written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-02-07 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Profiles Spangler's life and looks at the theories and suspects regarding her disappearance *Includes online resources, footnotes, and a bibliography for further reading "Can't wait any longer, Going to see Dr. Scott. It will work best this way while mother is away," - An unfinished letter found in Spangler's purse after her disappearance The Hollywood culture of the 1940s served as a symbol of fantasy for a country at war. The American population, steeped in a dark global reality, lived vicariously through the film industry's fantasy offerings on the big screen, and eagerly embraced the advent of television in the latter part of the decade. On the stage, images of idealized feminine beauty thrived in the Ziegfeld Follies tradition, Radio City Music Hall, Las Vegas, and the fantastical world created by Earl Carroll in his Hollywood theater. The marketing of American fantasy made for a spectacular outward show, but the interior of Hollywood's entertainment industry was at the same time experiencing its most corrupt decade. Mob bosses vied for power over the drug, alcohol, prostitution, and "protection" markets interconnected with the larger Hollywood image, and for women trying to get ahead in the movie or stage business, the environment was a dangerous one. Beauties came from all over the country to take their chance with fame, but for several, being abducted and gruesomely murdered was the best they could do to attain name recognition. Beginning with the mid-decade murder of actress Elizabeth Short, dubbed the Black Dahlia, a series of murders thought to be the serial work of one perpetrator became emblematic of Hollywood's hidden dangers. The mysterious case of actress and dancer Jean Spangler remains one of the most enduring such riddles in the annals of Hollywood crime. The nature of the case itself still evokes a public fascination many decades after her disappearance. Spangler found herself in southern California as a beautiful actress and dancer trying to land movie roles, a common story among the many young women gravitating to American entertainment centers from more conservative towns and cities. As a high-profile celebrity event, Spangler's case does not match the sensationalism attributed to figures such as Amelia Earhart, who sought to circumnavigate the globe by air, the political importance of union boss Jimmy Hoffa, or the fate of Judge Crater, a likely victim of the New York underworld. However, the Spangler story differs in that it carries no dearth of rational possibilities or relevant clues with which to accommodate all of the leading theories. In fact, in the minds of investigators, the difficulty of finding the best path to pursue was that there were "too many good clues, pointing in different directions." Likewise, where Earhart, Hoffa, and Crater intentionally pursued goals with inherent hazards, Spangler was publicly perceived as a professional if not personal innocent, hoping to make a living and to be discovered for greater things. The Disappearance of Jean Spangler: The History of One of Hollywood's Most Enduring Unsolved Mysteries looks at the life of Jean Spangler and the mysterious events behind her disappearance. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Jean Spangler like never before, in no time at all.
Download or read book The Song Is You written by Megan Abbott and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-02-19 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fictionalized account based on the mysterious 1949 disappearance of actress Jean Spangler, whose demise was linked to the Black Dahlia killings, is a darkly sensual tale that imagines what may have been her fate.
Download or read book Hard Boiled Hollywood written by Jon Lewis and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017-04-19 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The history of Hollywood's postwar transition is framed by two spectacular dead bodies: Elizabeth Short, AKA the Black Dahlia, found dumped and posed in a vacant lot in January 1947 and Marilyn Monroe, the studio era's last real movie star, discovered dead at her home in August 1962. Short and Monroe are just two of the many left for dead after the collapse of the studio system, Hollywood's awkward adolescence during which the company town's many competing subcultures--celebrities, moguls, mobsters, gossip mongers, industry wannabes, and desperate transients--came into frequent contact and conflict. Hard-Boiled Hollywood focuses on the lives lost at the crossroads between a dreamed-of Los Angeles and the real thing after the Second World War, whose reality was anything but glamorous"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Black Dahlia Avenger written by Steve Hodel and published by Skyhorse. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For Viewers of the TNT Series I Am the Night and Fans of the Root of Evil Podcast, the Bestselling Book That Revealed the Shocking Identity of the Black Dahlia Killer and the Police Corruption That Concealed It for So Long A New York Times Bestseller An International Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book An Edgar Award Finalist In 1947, the brutal, sadistic murder of a beautiful young woman named Elizabeth Short led to the largest manhunt in LA history. The killer teased and taunted the police and public for weeks, but his identity stayed a mystery, and the murder remained the most tantalizing unsolved case of the last century, until this book revealed the bizarre solution. Steve Hodel, a retired LAPD detective who was a private investigator, took up the case, reviewing the original evidence and records as well as those of a separate grand jury investigation into a series of murders of single women in LA at the time. The prime suspect had in fact been identified, but never indicted. Why? And who was he? In an account that partakes both of LA Confidential and Zodiac, for the corruption it exposes and the insight it offers into a serial killer’s mind, Hodel demonstrates that there was a massive police cover-up. Even more shocking, he proves that the murderer, a true-life Jekyll and Hyde who was a highly respected member of society by day and a psychopathic killer by night, was his own father. This edition of the book includes new findings and photographs added after the original publication, together with a new postscript by the author.
Download or read book 100 Things They Don t Want You To Know written by Daniel Smith and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2017-11-02 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE . . . Who was Jack the Ripper? Where did the Nazis stash their gold? Who are the real Men in Black? Did aliens send the 'WOW' signal? And how will the world end? 100 Things They Don't Want You to Know sets out to uncover the truth behind the world's most mysterious cover-ups and unexplained events that have been shrouded in secrecy for generations. From suspicious deaths and disappearances to enigmatic identities, from Cold War cover-ups to puzzling paranormal phenomena and from ancient artefacts to coded documents, 100 Things They Don't Want You to Know takes you on a quest to solve the greatest mysteries, strange disappearances, suspicious cover-ups and conspiracy theories. Including: Black Dahlia, the Marfa Lights, the Turin Shroud, Spontaneous Combustion, Lost Literature of the Mayan Civilisation, Disappearance of Jean Spangler, Shakespeare's True Identity, the Turin Shroud, the Easter Island Glyphs, the Death of Lee Harvey Oswald, the Mothman, The Flying Dutchman, the Secret Mission of Ruldolph Hess, the 'WOW" signal, Lewis Carroll's Lost Diaries, the Man in the Iron Mask and the Beast of Bodmin Moor.
Download or read book American Murder written by Mike Mayo and published by Visible Ink Press. This book was released on 2008-02-01 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How would you treat a murderer? If you’re from Hollywood and he’s notorious, you might turn him into a folk hero. Separate the facts from the many legends and revisions that have blossomed around these killers in this frightening look at the bloody real lives of movie’s infamous antiheroes. You’ll find a blood-curdling assortment of the “criminal elite” in American Murder: Criminals, Crime and the Media, a rogue’s gallery of our most famous killings, killers and other scoundrels (and some that ought to be more famous than they are). A collection of high-profile murderers, gangsters, assassins, psychopaths, such as O.J., Amy Fisher, Robert Blake, Susan Smith, Claus Von Bulow, the Menendez brothers, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Richard Speck, Al Capone, Pretty Boy Floyd, Bugsy Siegel, Jesse James, John Dillinger, Charles Manson, Albert Fish, T. Cullen Davis, Ronald DeFeo, Jr., Edmund Kemper, Beulah Annan, Bonnie and Clyde, Billy the Kid, Charlie Starkweather, as well as an assortment of lesser known killers with some incredible tales! With numerous photos and illustrations, this tome is richly illustrated, and its helpful bibliography and extensive index add to its usefulness. American Murderexplores the legends as depicted in movies, stories, and songs. You’d not want to meet any of them in person – either the real or Hollywood versions!
Download or read book The Black Dahlia Files written by Donald H. Wolfe and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1946, Elizabeth Short traveled to Hollywood to become famous and see her name up in lights. Instead, the dark-haired beauty became immortalized in the headlines as the "Black Dahlia" when her nude and bisected body was discovered in the weeds of a vacant lot. Despite the efforts of more than four hundred police officers and homicide investigators, the heinous crime was never solved. Now, after endless speculation and false claims, bestselling author Donald H. Wolfe discovers startling new evidence—buried in the files of the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office for more than half a century. With the aid of archival photos, news clippings, and investigative reports, Wolfe documents the riveting untold story that names the brutal murderer—the notorious Mafia leader, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel—and the motive—an unwanted pregnancy resulting from Short's involvement with the most powerful figure in Los Angeles, Norman Chandler. But Wolfe goes even further to unravel the large-scale cover-up behind the case. Wolfe's extensive research, based on the evidence he discovered in the recently opened LADA files, makes The Black Dahlia Files the authoritative work on the murder that has drawn endless scrutiny but remained unsolved—until now.
Download or read book The Last Embrace written by Denise Hamilton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-07-01 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Los Angeles 1949. A city of big dreams and dark shadows... Lily Kessler, a former stenographer and spy for the OSS, comes to Los Angeles to find her late fiancé's sister Kitty, an actress who is missing from her Hollywood boardinghouse. The next day, Kitty's body is found in a ravine below the Hollywood sign. Unimpressed by the local police, Lily investigates on her own. As she delves into Kitty's life, she encounters fiercely competitive starlets, gangsters, an eccentric special-effects genius, exotic denizens of Hollywood's nightclubs, and a homicide detective who might distract her from her quest for justice. But the landscape in L.A. can shift kaleidoscopically, and Lily begins to see how easily a young woman can lose her balance and fall prey to the alluring city's dangers.... With vibrant characters and unerring insight into the desires and dark impulses that can flare between men and women, The Last Embrace showcases Denise Hamilton at the height of her storytelling powers as she transports readers to a fascinating, transitional time in one of America's most beguiling cities.
Download or read book Natalie Wood written by Suzanne Finstad and published by Crown. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The definitive biography of a vulnerable and talented actress, now with explosive new chapters and insider details of her tragic death, the cover-ups, and the reopened investigation. An ID Book Club Selection • “Impressive, disturbing, and revelatory.”—Variety Natalie Wood has been hailed alongside Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor as one of the top three female movie stars in film history. We watched her mature on the movie screen before our eyes in classics such as Miracle on 34th Street, Rebel Without a Cause, Splendor in the Grass, and West Side Story. But the story of what she endured, of what her life was like when the doors of the soundstages closed, had long been obscured. Based on years of astonishing research, Natalie Wood (previously published as Natasha) raises the curtain on Wood’s turbulent life. Award-winning author Suzanne Finstad conducted nearly four hundred interviews with Natalie Wood’s family, close friends, legendary costars, lovers, film crews, and virtually everyone connected to her death. Through these firsthand accounts, Finstad reconstructs a life of emotional abuse and exploitation, of unimaginable fame, great loneliness, and loss. She reveals painful truths in Wood’s complex relationships with James Dean, Frank Sinatra, Warren Beatty, and, of course, Robert Wagner. Thirty years after Natalie Wood’s death, the L.A. Sheriff’s Department reopened the investigation into her drowning using Finstad’s groundbreaking research and chilling, hour-by-hour timeline of that tumultuous weekend as evidence. Within a year, the L.A. Coroner changed Natalie Wood’s death certificate from “Accidental Drowning” to “Drowning and Other Undetermined Factors.” In 2018, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department officially named Wagner a “Person of Interest” in Wood’s death. In this updated edition, Finstad will share her explosive findings from the last two decades. With her unprecedented access to the LASD’s “Murder Book,” ignored by the original investigators, and new witnesses who have never spoken publicly, Finstad uncovers what really happened to Natalie Wood on that fateful boating trip in 1981 with Wagner and Christopher Walken. She expands on intimate details from Wood’s unpublished memoir, which affirms her fear of drowning and the betrayal by Wagner that shattered their first marriage. Finstad tells this heartbreaking story with sensitivity and grace, revealing a complex and conflicting mix of fragility and strength in a woman who was swept along by forces few could have resisted.
Download or read book Die A Little written by Megan Abbott and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Die A Little tells the story of Lora King, a schoolteacher, and her brother Bill, a junior investigator with the district attorney's office. Lora's comfortable, suburban life is jarringly disrupted when Bill falls in love and marries a glamorous yet mysterious young woman named Alice Steele, a Hollywood wardrobe assistant. Lora soon begins to suspect that things aren't all they seem with Alice. Spurred on by inconsistencies in Alice's personal history, Lora finds herself lured into the dark alleys and mean streets of seamy Los Angeles. She uncovers a shadowy world of drugs, prostitution, and ultimately, murder. But the deeper Lora digs to uncover Alice's secrets, the more her own life begins to resemble Alice's sinister past - and present.
Download or read book The Murder Farm written by Andrea Maria Schenkel and published by Quercus. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Times Literary Supplement said of The Murder Farm, "With only a limited number of ways in which violent death can be investigated, crime writers have to use considerable ingenuity to bring anything fresh to the genre. Andrea Maria Schenkel has done it in her first novel." The first author to achieve a consecutive win of the German Crime Prize, Schenkel has won first place for both The Murder Farm and Ice Cold. The Murder Farm begins with a shock: a whole family has been murdered with a pickaxe. They were old Danner the farmer, an overbearing patriarch; his put-upon devoutly religious wife; and their daughter Barbara Spangler, whose husband Vincenz left her after fathering her daughter little Marianne. She also had a son, two-year-old Josef, the result of her affair with local farmer Georg Hauer after his wife's death from cancer. Hauer himself claimed paternity. Also murdered was the Danners' maidservant, Marie. An unconventional detective story, The Murder Farm is an exciting blend of eyewitness account, third-person narrative, pious diatribes, and incomplete case file that will keep readers guessing. When we leave the narrator, not even he knows the truth, and only the reader is able to reach the shattering conclusion.
Download or read book L A Noire written by Rockstar Games and published by Mulholland Books. This book was released on 2011-06-06 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of short fiction expands on the world of a groundbreaking achievement in storytelling: Rockstar Games' interactive crime thriller L.A. Noire. 1940s Hollywood, murder, deception and mystery take center stage as readers reintroduce themselves to characters seen in L.A. Noire. Explore the lives of actresses desperate for the Hollywood spotlight; heroes turned defeated men; and classic Noir villains. Readers will come across not only familiar faces, but familiar cases from the game that take on a new spin to tell the tales of emotionally torn protagonists, depraved schemers and their ill-fated victims. With original short fiction by Megan Abbott, Lawrence Block, Joe Lansdale, Joyce Carol Oates, Francine Prose, Jonathan Santlofer, Duane Swierczynski and Andrew Vachss, L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories breathes new life into a time-honored American tradition, in an exciting anthology that will appeal to fans of suspense and gamers everywhere.
Download or read book Cruel Sacrifice written by Aphrodite Jones and published by Pinnacle Books. This book was released on 2005-05 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a freezing January in 1992, five teenage girls crowded into a car. By the end of the night, only four of them were alive. The fifth had been tortured and mutilated nearly beyond recognition. Her name was Shanda Sharer; her age-twelve. When the people of Madison, Indiana heard that a brutal murder had been committed in their midst, they were stunned. Then the story became even more bizarre. The four accused murderers were all girls under the age of eighteen: Melinda Loveless, Laurle Tackett, Hope Rippey, and Tonl Lawrence. Here, for the first time, veteran true crime journalist Aphrodite Jones reveals the shocking truth behind the most savage crime in Indiana history-a tragic story of twisted love and insane jealousy, lesbianism, brutal child abuse, and sadistic ritual killing in small-town America...and of the young innocent who paid the ultimate price.
Download or read book Unsolved No More written by Kenneth Mains and published by Wildblue Press. This book was released on 2017-05-24 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a law enforcement officer for over fifteen years, Detective Kenneth L. Mains has investigated thousands of cases. Although he has been called a modern day success story, it wasn¿t without failure. This book will take you on a journey from a struggling kid who barely graduated High School to a teenager who joined the Marine Corps and finally to a man who put himself through college in order to accomplish his lifelong goal of being a Detective. Mains has held a distinguished career in law enforcement which has included working undercover with the FBI, solving cold cases, investigating the Mafia and later leading one of the greatest cold case organization ever assembled. Because of his innate ability to solve cases, Mains is routinely sought out by law enforcement and victims¿ families to help solve cold cases. He will take you through some of his very own cold case investigations to give the reader an insight on how he solves cases by using the art of deduction. Through triumph and tragedy you will see that he has succeeded by staying focused on his goals regardless of the obstacles placed in front of him. Yet, this is a story about success as much as it is a cold case instructional by someone who has been referred to as One of this Country¿s Greatest Detectives. He will show you how he has succeeded in law enforcement but more importantly he will show you how he has succeeded where it matters most...in life.
Download or read book Speculative Los Angeles written by Denise Hamilton and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The debut title in a new city-based anthology series featuring all-new stories with speculative, sci-fi, and paranormal themes—each using distinct neighborhood settings as a launching pad. “A stimulating anthology of 14 futuristic L.A. fables . . . Some of the best of these tales seem illumined by the humanistic spirit of the late Ray Bradbury, poet laureate of Southern California fantasy literature.” —Wall Street Journal As an incubator of the future, Los Angeles has long mesmerized writers from Aldous Huxley to Octavia E. Butler. With its natural disasters, Hollywood artifice, staggering wealth and poverty, and urban sprawl, one can argue that Los Angeles is already so weird, surreal, irrational, and mythic that any fiction emerging from this place should be considered speculative. So, bestselling author Denise Hamilton commissioned fourteen stories (including one of her own) and did exactly that. In Speculative Los Angeles, some of the city’s most prophetic and diverse voices reimagine the metropolis in very different ways. In these pages, you’ll encounter twenty-first-century changelings, dirigibles plying the suburban skies, black holes and jacaranda men lurking in deep suburbia, beachfront property in Century City, walled-off canyons and coastlines reserved for the wealthy, psychic death cults, robot nursemaids, and an alternate LA where Spanish land grants never gave way to urbanization. As with our city-based Akashic Noir Series, each story in Speculative Los Angeles is set in a distinct neighborhood filled with local color, landmarks, and flavor. Since the best speculative fiction provides a wormhole into other worlds while also commenting on our own, that is exactly what you’ll find here. Featuring brand-new stories by: Charles Yu, Aimee Bender, Lisa Morton, Alex Espinoza, Ben H. Winters, Denise Hamilton, Lynell George, Stephen Blackmoore, Francesca Lia Block, Duane Swierczynski, Luis J. Rodriguez, A.G. Lombardo, Kathleen Kaufman, and S. Qiouyi Lu.
Download or read book In Search of Common Ground written by Mariteuw Chimère Diaw and published by CIFOR. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Most Evil written by Steve Hodel and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-09-22 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of Black Dahlia Avenger Former LAPD detective Steve Hodel compiles never-before-seen evidence that reveals his father as a serial killer who may have been responsible for some of the most infamous murders of the last century- including the Zodiac killings.
