Death on Ocean Boulevard

Death on Ocean Boulevard
Author: Caitlin Rother
Publisher: Citadel Press
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2021-04-27
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 0806540907

“[This] is one of the great crime mysteries of modern times. It took an author of Caitlin Rother’s caliber to bring it into sharp focus. A riveting read.” —Gregg Olsen, #1 New York Times bestselling author “I got a girl, hung herself in the guest house.” The call came on the morning of July 13, 2011, from the historic Spreckels Mansion, a lavish beachfront property in Coronado, California, owned by pharmaceutical tycoon and multimillionaire Jonah Shacknai. When authorities arrived, they found the naked body of Jonah’s girlfriend, Rebecca Zahau, gagged, her ankles tied and her wrists bound behind her. Jonah’s brother, Adam, claimed to have found Rebecca hanging by a rope from the second-floor balcony. On a bedroom door in black paint were the cryptic words: SHE SAVED HIM CAN YOU SAVE HER. Was this scrawled message a suicide note or a killer’s taunt? Rebecca’s death came two days after Jonah’s six-year-old son, Max, took a devastating fall while in Rebecca’s care. Authorities deemed Rebecca’s death a suicide resulting from her guilt. But who would stage either a suicide ora murder in such a bizarre, elaborate way? Award-winning investigative journalist Caitlin Rother weaves stunning new details into a personal yet objective examination of the sensational case. She explores its many layers—including the civil suit in which a jury found Adam Shacknai responsible for Rebecca’s death, and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department bombshell decision to reconfirm its original findings. As compelling as it is troubling, this controversial real-life mystery is a classic American tragedy that evokes the same haunting fascination as the JonBenet Ramsey and O.J. Simpson cases. “Rother’s meticulous journalism shines through in this authoritative account of the Rebecca Zahau death incident. If you think you know this case, think again. And read this book.” —Katherine Ramsland, professor of forensic psychology and author of The Psychology of Death Investigations

The Sundance Kid Died of Old Age in San Diego

The Sundance Kid Died of Old Age in San Diego
Author: Syd Love
Publisher:
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2013-12
Genre:
ISBN: 9780988264397

Readers of this Western novel will meet a flesh-and-blood Sundance Kid and the previously mysterious Etta Place during the dangers, thrills, and wanderings they experienced as well as the lifelong love they shared. From Old West days to post-WW II San Diego this novel follows Harry Longbaugh, The Sundance Kid, from childhood into old age. Etta Place, the Southern beauty who rode at his side, recounts their activities before they establish a livestock ranch in Argentina, their robbery spree in South America, and sidekick Butch Cassidy's leaving to roam alone. Etta relates how she and Sundance acquired guns and stole federal payrolls for rebel leader Emiliano Zapata during the Mexican Revolution and moved on to new adventures in wide-open Tijuana and nearby San Diego during Prohibition. This story is Etta's testimony and deposition that the shootout in which Sundance and Butch were alleged to have been killed never happened.

Twisted Tour Guide to San Diego: Shocking Deaths, Scandals and Vice

Twisted Tour Guide to San Diego: Shocking Deaths, Scandals and Vice
Author: Marques Vickers
Publisher: Marquis Publishing
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2022-04-09
Genre: Travel
ISBN:

Avoid The Tourist Herds. What could be more uninspiring than seeing the identical attractions that everyone else has for decades? This Twisted Tour Guide escorts you to the places locals don’t want to talk about anymore…the same places people once couldn’t stop talking about. Long after the screaming headlines and sensationalism has subsided, these bizarre, infamous and obscure historical sites remain hidden awaiting rediscovery. Each visitation site in this guide is accompanied by a story. Many of the narratives defy believability, yet they are true. The profiled cast of characters feature saints and sinners (with emphasis towards the latter). Notorious crimes, murders, accidental deaths, suicides, kidnappings, vice and scandal are captivating human interest tales. The photography from each profile showcases the precise location where each event occurred. The scenes can seem ordinary, weird and/or sometimes very revealing towards clarifying the background behind events. If you’re seeking an alternative to conventional tourism, this Twisted Tourist Guide is ideal. Each directory accommodates the restless traveler and even resident looking for something unique and different. Historical Scandals: Dead Man’s Point, Old Town’s Flawed Jail, Hanging A Horse Thief, A Rouge Litany of Flawed Mayors, The Rainmaker, Abraham Lincoln’s Love Letters, Kumeyaay Forced Relocation, Children’s Hospital Tainted Blood, Strippergate, Big Boom Bust and Del Mar Racehorse Fatalities. Flawed Personalities: Count Agoston Haraszthy, Davis’ Waterfront Folly, The Future Duchess of Windsor, Beach Boy Brian Wilson’s Vagrancy Arrest, Actor Desi Arnez’s Parking Shooting, Bird Rock Bandits Fatal Beating, Distancing From Aviator Charles Lindbergh, Junior Seau, Kellen Winslow II, Online Influencer Ali Abulaban and Unconventional Dr. Seuss. Architecture With A Distinctive Past: Stingaree District, The Golden Poppy Brothel, U.S. Grant Hotel, Cabrillo Monument, Escondido Bomb Factory, 101 Ash Street Skyscraper and Horton Plaza Hospitality and Hauntings Casa de Estudillo, Cosmopolitan Hotel, Whaley House, Villa Montezuma, El Cortez Hotel and Del Coronado Resort Hotel, Financial Sleights of Hand California National Bank Bust, Anti-Gambling Crusade, C. Arnholt Smith’s Crumbled Empire, J. David Investments and the Foreign Currency Scam, Congressman Randy Cunningham, Drug Money Laundering Sting of a Political Fixer, Congressman Duncan Duane Hunter and Gina Champion-Cain Legacies and Notorious Events Southern California To Phoenix Road Race, Balboa Park’s Nudist Colony, Japanese-American Internment, Elvis Presley’s 1956 Concert, El Cajon Boulevard Drag Racing Riots, Del Coronado Bridge Suicides, Baseball’s Roberto Clemente Abduction, Midair Collision of PSA Flight #182 and Cessna aircraft and Menacing Runaway Tank. Infamous Murders Ruth Sackett Muir, Morse and Goedecke Family Murders, Tara Rand, Donald Tubach, Mobster Frank Bompensiero, Robert Alton Harris, Torrey Pines Beach, Brenda Spencer, San Ysidro McDonald’s Massacre, Broderick versus Broderick, John Morency, San Diego State Graduate Student Kills His Professors, Comic Publisher Todd Loren, Charles Keever and Jonathan Sellers, Father Louis Gutierrez, Heaven’s Gate Mass Suicide, Santana High School Shooting, Serial Killer John Albert Gardner III, Ryan Jenkins, Trading Places With Your Murder Victim, Vanishing McStay Family, Death at Speckles Mansion, Suburban Bondage Killing, Murder and Abduction By A Trusted Family Friend, Homeless Serial Killer, Poolside Party Shooter and Poway Synagogue Shooting Law Enforcement Related Killings Fatal City Jail Fire, Hub Loan Shoot Out, Grape Street Park, Officers Christopher Wilson, Jeremy Henwood and Jonathan DeGuzman, Demetrius DuBose and Daniel Chong’s Isolation Hell.

Dead in Their Tracks

Dead in Their Tracks
Author: John Annerino
Publisher:
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2009-02-27
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

It is America’s killing field, and the deaths keep mounting. As the political debate has intensified and demonstrators have taken to the streets, more and more illegal border-crossers die trying to cross the desert on their way to what they hope will be a better life. The Arizona border is the deadliest immigrant trail in America today. For the strong and the lucky, the trail ends at a pick-up on an Interstate highway. For far too many others, it ends terribly—too often violently—not far from where they began. Dead in Their Tracks is a first hand account of the perils associated with crossing the desert on foot. John Annerino recounts his experience making that trek with four illegal immigrants—and his return trips to document the struggles of those who persist in this treacherous journey. In this spellbinding narrative, he takes readers into the “empty quarter” of the Southwest to meet the migrant workers and drug runners, the ranchers and Border Patrol agents, who populate today’s headlines. Other writers have documented the deaths; few have invited readers to share the experience as Annerino does. His feel for the land and his knowledge of surviving in the wilderness combine to make his account every bit as harrowing as it is for the people who risk it every day, and in increasing numbers. Each book includes an In Memorium card recognizing an immigrant, refugee, border agent, local, or humanitarian who has died in America's borderlands." The desert may seem changeless, but there are more bodies now, and Annerino has revised his original text to record some of the compelling stories that have come to light since the book’s first publication and has updated the photographs and written a new introduction and afterword. Dead in Their Tracks is now more timely than ever—and essential reading for the ongoing debate over illegal immigration. For information on First Serial Rights, Book Club, Film, Television, & Options, visit the Author's Web site.

Cemeteries of San Diego

Cemeteries of San Diego
Author: Seth Mallios
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780738547145

San Diego has a rich and unique cultural history that can be effectively told through the commemoration of its dead. Local cemeteries throughout the city reflect San Diego's multiethnic cultural dynamism and pinpoint marked shifts in power from Native American to Spanish to Mexican to American governance. They also reveal the current struggle for space in a burgeoning metropolis. Graveyards, with their individually detailed and hauntingly beautiful monuments, offer an unrivaled historic yet continuous glimpse at the essence of this diverse community. The story of San Diego's cemeteries is a telling narrative that offers remarkable insight into the evolution of "America's Finest City."

Living Between Danger and Love

Living Between Danger and Love
Author: Kathleen B. Jones
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2000
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9780813527444

Using the murder of Andrea O'Donnell, who was killed by her boyfriend, and her own experiences as a launch pad, the author examines the dichotomy between love and power. The text looks at the unreasonable choices women feel they have to make between care for themselves and care for another.

Monster

Monster
Author: Sanyika Shakur
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Total Pages: 426
Release: 2007-12-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0802198236

The classic memoir of life as a Crip, written in solitary confinement: “A shockingly raw, frightening portrait of gang life in South Central Los Angeles.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times After pumping eight blasts from a sawed-off shotgun at a group of rival gang members, twelve-year-old Kody Scott was initiated into the L.A. gang the Crips. He quickly matured into one of the most formidable Crip combat soldiers, earning the name “Monster” for committing acts of brutal violence that repulsed even his fellow gang members. When the inevitable jail term confined him to a maximum-security cell, a complete political and personal transformation followed: from Monster to Sanyika Shakur, black nationalist, member of the New Afrikan Independence Movement, and crusader against the causes of gangsterism. In a work that has been compared to The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice, Shakur makes palpable the despair and decay of America’s inner cities and gives eloquent voice to one aspect of the black ghetto experience.

Fat Girl

Fat Girl
Author: Judith Moore
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2005-03-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1101213248

A Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2005 (Entertainment Weekly) For any woman who has ever had a love/hate relationship with food and with how she looks; for anyone who has knowingly or unconsciously used food to try to fill the hole in his heart or soothe the craggy edges of his psyche, Fat Girl is a brilliantly rendered, angst-filled coming-of-age story of gain and loss. From the lush descriptions of food that call to mind the writings of M.F.K. Fisher at her finest, to the heartbreaking accounts of Moore’s deep longing for family and a sense of belonging and love, Fat Girl stuns and shocks, saddens and tickles. “Searingly honest without affectation… Moore emerged from her hellish upbringing as a kind of softer Diane Arbus, wielding pen instead of camera.”—The Seattle Times “Frank, often funny—intelligent and entertaining.”—People (starred review) “God, I love this book. It is wise, funny, painful, revealing, and profoundly honest.”—Anne Lamott “Judith Moore grabs the reader by the collar, and shakes up our notion of life in the fat lane.”—David Sedaris “Stark… lyrical, and often funny, Judith Moore ambushes you on the very first page, and in short order has lifted you up and broken your heart.”—Newsweek “A slap-in-the-face of a book—courageous, heartbreaking, fascinating, and darkly funny.”—Augusten Burroughs

Deal

Deal
Author: Bill Kreutzmann
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 397
Release: 2015-05-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1250033799

A ground-breaking rock and roll memoir by one of the founding members of the Grateful Dead