The very name Beverly Hills conjures images of glamour, wealth and success; in reality, the place has more than its share of malice, mayhem and even murder. In the breathtaking and sometimes macabre pages of Beverly Hills Confidential, the underbelly of the tummy-tucked gets exposed. Investigative reporter Barbara Schroeder and BHPD CSI inspector Clark Fogg re-examine the sensational stories of the past century, such as the Charlie Chaplin paternity trial and the mystery surrounding the death of Jean Harlow's MGM mogul husband.
Discover the definitive book on the Menendez case—and the primary source material for NBC's Law and Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders. A successful entertainment executive making $2 million a year. His former beauty queen wife. Their two sons on the fast track to success. But it was all a façade. The Menendez saga has captivated the American public since 1989. The killing of José and Kitty Menendez on a quiet Sunday evening in Beverly Hills didn't make the cover of People magazine until the arrest of their sons seven months later, and the case developed an intense cult following. When the first Menendez trial began in July 1993, the public was convinced that Lyle and Erik were a pair of greedy rich kids who had killed loving, devoted parents. But the real story remained buried beneath years of dark secrets. Until now. Journalist Robert Rand, who originally reported on the case for the Miami Herald and Playboy, has followed the Menendez murders from the beginning and has continued investigating and interviewing key sources for 28 years. Rand is the only reporter who covered the original investigation as well as both trials. With unparalleled access to the Menendez family and their history, including interviews with both brothers before and after their arrest, Rand has uncovered extraordinary details that certainly would have changed the fate of the brothers' first-degree murder conviction and sentencing to life without parole. In The Menendez Murders: The Shocking Untold Story of the Menedez Family and the Killings That Stunned the Nation, Rand shares these intimate, never-before-revealed findings, including a deeply disturbing history of child abuse and sexual molestation in the Menendez family going back generations, and the shocking admission O.J. Simpson made to one of the Menendez brothers when they were inmates at the L.A. County Men's Central Jail.
It's one of the most brutal unsolved murders in the Elvis Presley universe - the 1981 slaying of his beautiful "Blue Hawaii" co-star, Jenny Maxwell. It was reported at the time that the murder was part of a botched robbery in Beverly Hills, but that's not at all what happened. Forty years after the murder, thanks to this book, it's finally been solved. Who killed Jenny Maxwell, and why? For the first time, the truth is revealed in "Murder of an Elvis Girl: Solving the Jenny Maxwell Case," And the truth is incredible.Jenny Maxwell was one of the hottest young actresses in Hollywood in the early 1960s, and she became best known as an Elvis Girl, playing the bratty Ellie Corbett in Elvis Presley's classic 1961 film, "Blue Hawaii." The performance made her one of the most memorable Elvis Girls ever and endeared her to generations of the King's fans. She appeared in dozens of TV shows, as well - everything from "Bonanza" and "My Three Sons" to "Father Knows Best" and "The Twilight Zone." In the 1960s, Jenny Maxwell's career was red-hot. She was friends with Sharon Tate and Peggy Lipton and dated a slew of young Hollywood stars.Off the screen, though, her personal life was a mess. She married film director Paul Rapp when she was just seventeen and became a mom at nineteen. Her marriage and her motherhood fell apart thanks to a lifestyle of Hollywood parties, drugs and sex. In an effort to win back her son, she quit Hollywood altogether in 1968 and married Ervin "Tip" Roeder, a high-powered and mobbed-up Los Angeles divorce attorney who was twenty years her senior. Their marriage was a rocky one, and by the time 1981 came around, they were separated and heading for divorce. Tip Roeder was at Jenny's side that fateful day in Beverly Hills, as they were both gunned down by the assassin outside her condo."Murder of an Elvis Girl" tells the amazing Hollywood life story of a true Elvis legend. Jenny Maxwell shared the screen with the likes of Jimmy Stewart, Robert Conrad, Joey Bishop. Bob Hope and Joan Crawford. She rubbed elbows with Frank Sinatra and Sandra Dee. And biggest of all, she was an Elvis Girl.The story of how this book came about is just as incredible. "Murder of an Elvis Girl" is written by Buddy Moorehouse, a longtime journalist from Michigan who is actually Jenny's first cousin, once removed (his grandfather and her father were brothers). The family had always been told that Jenny's murder was part of a botched robbery, but they never quite believed that, so Buddy embarked on a journey in 2019 to learn the truth of what really happened to their famous cousin. He eventually struck pay dirt when he found the detective who had investigated - and solved - the murder.This is the untold story of a long-forgotten Hollywood legend - how she lived, how she loved, and how she died.
A troubled Los Angeles socialite is both terrorized and tempted by a killer in this “brilliantly written” true story by the author of A Death in Canaan (Ann Rule). Hope Masters lived in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Beverly Hills—but was entitled to food stamps. Pretty, petite, and privileged, she was recovering from two failed marriages and a string of poor decisions. But when Hope met and fell in love with a handsome advertising executive, she believed her life was finally back on track—until the morning she woke up to find the barrel of a gun in her mouth. Hope’s fiancé lay dead in the next room. His killer was a new acquaintance who’d been visiting the couple in a remote ranch in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. He claimed to be a journalist, but his real identity was as mysterious as his motivations. Even more bizarre, however, was what happened at the end of the long, nightmarish weekend in which Hope saw everything she cared about destroyed: She began to fall in love with her tormenter. A fascinating and frightening portrait of the power of evil to lead the most innocent of victims down the darkest of paths, A Death in California is “a first-rate piece of reporting” (Kirkus Reviews) on “one of the strangest cases in the annals of American crime” (The New York Times).
Describes how, in 1990, wealthy antiques and art dealer George Kogan was killed in cold blood and how it took authorities almost twenty years to uncover the evidence needed to convict his estranged wife, Barbara.
One mother's son is killed in a tragic accident; another's daughter murders two people in a wild rage. From these bitter facts, Beverly Lowry--the first child's mother and an acclaimed novelist--has fashioned a memoir in which the objectivity of true-crime reportage resonates with acute feeling and even, ultimately, with redemption. In Houston, in the early morning hours of June 13, 1983, twenty-three-year-old Karla Faye Tucker showed up with two friends at the apartment of a man they hated, Jerry Lynn Dean. Fired by a lost weekend of drugs and bravado, during which their grievances against Jerry Lynn became magnified out of all proportion, they had it in mind to steal motorcycle parts. Maybe to scare him a little. But by the time they left, both Dean and his chance, one-night companion had been murdered with such thorough wickedness as to ensure Karla's place among the handful of young white women on Death Row in this country. The next fall, outside of Austin, Beverly Lowry's son Peter, after an increasingly troubled adolescence, was back in high school and back living at home when he was killed--an unsolved hit-and-run. He was eighteen. The despair that descended into Lowry's life seemed without end, but eventually and almost inevitably she became obsessed by the beautiful young killer whose photograph she'd seen in a Houston newspaper. "If Peter hadn't been killed," she writes, "I would not have made that first trip up to see Karla Faye." In Crossed Over, Beverly Lowry reveals how Tucker, a full-time addict and part-time prostitute, had been dealt this fate as a child--only to pursue it relentlessly herself in Houston's violent subculture of bikers and outlaws. Working backward from the murders, Lowry delves into character and motive, looking for reasons that might explain these unthinkable acts. But this is also an account of the unlikely and powerful friendship between a writer--a mother--coming to terms with her loss and a young woman who, even under the sentence of death, begins the life she'd never before had a chance to lead. Crossed Over is a story of crime and punishment, but more importantly it explores the connection between grief and hope, and between different kinds of victims. In the end, what Beverly Lowry uncovers is the unexpected ability of life, however blighted the circumstances, to assert its best, most urgent claim upon us.
On October 26, 1961, after an evening of studying with friends on the campus of Transylvania University, nineteen-year-old student Betty Gail Brown got into her car around midnight—presumably headed for home. But she would never arrive. Three hours later, Brown was found dead in a driveway near the center of campus, strangled to death with her own brassiere. Kentuckians from across the state became engrossed in the proceedings as lead after lead went nowhere. Four years later, the police investigation completely stalled. In 1965, a drifter named Alex Arnold Jr. confessed to the killing while in jail on other charges in Oregon. Arnold was brought to Lexington, indicted for the murder of Betty Gail Brown, and put on trial, where he entered a plea of not guilty. Robert G. Lawson was a young attorney at a local firm when a senior member asked him to help defend Arnold, and he offers a meticulous record of the case in Who Killed Betty Gail Brown? During the trial, the courtroom was packed daily, but witnesses failed to produce any concrete evidence. Arnold was an alcoholic whose memory was unreliable, and his confused, inconsistent answers to questions about the night of the homicide did not add up. Since the trial, new leads have come and gone, but Betty Gail Brown's murder remains unsolved. A written transcript of the court proceedings does not exist; and thus Lawson, drawing upon police and court records, newspaper articles, personal files, and his own notes, provides an invaluable record of one of Kentucky's most famous cold cases.
ATAC Briefing for Agents Frank and Joe Hardy MISSION: To finally get to the bottom of the ongoing deadly scares taking place on the set of the reality TV show Deprivation House. LOCATION: A huge villa in Beverly Hills, CA, without a single luxury left inside. POTENTIAL VICTIMS: Every contestant on the reality show is in extreme danger. SUSPECTS:It's possible one of the new contestants has a devious agenda, or else someone who's been there all along is hiding a huge secret.
