26. TRUE CRIME & HAUNTINGS: Touring LA's Iconic Locations with James T. Bartlett

Los Angeles, CA | Join us for an audio tour of Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles’ most haunted locations and infamous crime scenes with James T. Bartlett, journalist and author of Gourmet Ghosts Volumes 1 & 2. From the lingering spirit of Marilyn Monroe to the poetic capture of a murderer, this journey will give you a new perspective on these iconic locations. 

To read more about James’ work and order Gourmet Ghosts (there are many more locations we could not cover in the episode!), visit his website at gourmetghosts.com and follow him on Instagram at instagram.com/gourmetghosts/.

A quick list of the locations we cover: 
Grauman’s Chinese Theatre
Roosevelt Hotel
Barclay Hotel
Biltmore Hotel
Holland Hotel
The Suicide Triangle (Cecil Hotel, Haywood Hotel, Rosslyn Hotel)

Follow us for episode photos and more at:
📷 Instagram: instagram.com/darkcity.podcast 
🪡 Threads: threads.net/@darkcity.podcast 
👤 Facebook: facebook.com/darkcitypod
🦋 Bluesky: darkcitypodcast.bsky.social
🎥 TikTok: tiktok.com/@darkcitypod 
🌎 Website: www.darkcitypodcast.com
✉️ Email:  [e-mail] 

Have ideas or suggestion? We would love to hear from you! Send us a text via this link.

👏 Special thanks to our talented partners:
Paolo Sbrighi for Musical Composition (instagram.com/paulosbrighi/)
Mario Cintra for Logo Design (instagram.com/alacarala/)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi friends, this is Leah and this is April.
Today it's easier than ever tomake and publish a podcast, but
that also means it's never beenharder to stand out, especially
as an indie podcast.
We absolutely love creatingDark City episodes for you, so
to make sure the show is asuccess, we need your help.
Easy ways to do it.

(00:26):
Number one rate and review theshow wherever you get your
podcasts.
Number two click that sharebutton and send a link to
friends and family you thinkmight also like the show.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
And number three follow us on social media at
Dark City Pod.
That's Dark City Pod onInstagram, facebook Threads and
TikTok.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
So remember one rate and review, two, share with
family and friends and threefollow us on social media.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Thank you so much and we hope you enjoy the episode.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Hi there, this is Leah and this is April.
Today we are taking you on ajourney through some of the most
haunted hotels and infamouscrime scenes in Hollywood and
downtown Los Angeles.
From the ghostly presence ofMarilyn Monroe to the poetic
capture of a murderer, we thinkyou might find the living are
much more terrifying than thedead.
This is Dark City Season 1, losAngeles.

(01:18):
We are joined today by aspecial guest, james Bartlett.
James, you've carved out thisgreat niche, exploring the
hidden, haunted histories of LosAngeles' most iconic
establishments.
Could you tell us more abouthow?

Speaker 3 (01:42):
you got started researching and writing about
this topic?
Yeah, sure, I mean.
I guess it'll probably be mostapparent as soon as someone
hears me speak that I'm notAmerican originally.
I'm from London, england,originally, and I've been here
in Los Angeles about 20 yearsand that basically led into how
I ended up writing these sort ofalternative guides to LA,
because when I came here I triedto explore and I wanted to

(02:04):
explore around the city as muchas I could, especially downtown,
which was where you know thecity began, and I looked for
some sort of guides, of whichthere were plenty, but there
weren't any, particularly forthe kind of things that I was
interested in, which was sort ofghost stories and true crime
and a little bit of architecture, a little bit of history, sort

(02:26):
of all combining those in aguide.
And so I work as a journalist.
I'm a freelance journalist, soI guess I did what most people
do when they move somewhere.
New is I started bar hopping insome of the places and I would
talk to the bartender or some ofthe people who were working
there and just ask them aboutthe history of the bar that I
was in, especially the olderones as opposed to the new ones,

(02:48):
and they would often tell mestories, sometimes about
celebrities that had been there,sometimes about how old the
building was.
But they would also sometimestell me ghost stories or stories
that they considered to be, youknow, unusual or scary.
And sometimes they would tellme stories about the building's
history, strange things that hadhappened, and I started to sort

(03:09):
of collect them until I sort ofrealized this is possibly more
than an article.
It might actually work as aguidebook, like the guidebook
I've been looking for, but theimportant thing to me was that I
looked in the newspaperarchives the LA Times, the LA
Examiner which is a newspaperthat doesn't exist here anymore
and other newspapers from theera to see if there was anything

(03:31):
that had happened at these barsand hotels and restaurants that
I'd been to, rather than justtaking everyone's word verbatim
and just writing down.
You know they say that it saidthat.
I thought I'd try and see ifthere was any basis in truth
from history, and I was quitesurprised to find out that there
was, a lot of the time, some ofthe stories I was told did have

(03:54):
a basis in truth and it justsnowballed from there into one
book and then it snowballed intoa second book which was more
about crime, which I got reallyinterested in.
So the second book was moreabout crime, again, at bars and
restaurants and hotels, becauseI wanted them to be guides to
places you could actually go,rather than places you know that

(04:15):
you could just walk past andlook at the sign outside which a
lot of the guides tended tohave and I thought, well, no, I
want to go in.
You know, I want to have a lookat these places.
I want to sit at the tablethat's supposed to be haunted
rather than look outside andthink well, that must have been
great.
I wonder what it's like inside.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yeah, it's such a cool idea for a guidebook.
I love that idea of havingsomething that's practical but
also going into like kind ofreminds me of dark tourism a
little bit, where people want toknow what the dark histories
are at times, and sometimes thenthey'll also get interested in
the good stuff that's happenedto.
It's always compelling when youhear about potential hauntings

(04:57):
or true crimes happening incertain places.
So I found your work.
When I was looking at potentialtopics for our first season on
Los Angeles, I came across bothbooks.
Now that we are approaching theend of the season, we're having
a hard time wrapping it upbecause, as you probably know
all too well, Los Angeles couldbe its own dark city podcast and

(05:18):
just go on indefinitely.
So what we're going to do todayis go through a few select
locations that you've researchedand written about.
In both of those books, james,I realized, even though they're
called Gourmet Ghosts, I don'tthink we really talk about
restaurants, or maybe we will insome of the haunted bars when
we get into.

(05:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
I mean, it was supposed to be like a food guide
and I did talk about the foodand the drinks that you could
get at some of the restaurants.
But I did quickly realize a lotof the restaurants you know
change their food all the timeand a lot of the restaurants you
know change their drinks allthe time.
But luckily that didn't seem tobe the thing that people were
the most interested in.
They were most interested inthe history and the ghost

(06:00):
stories and the crime, ratherthan the actual food and drink
recommendations, although someplaces do have drinks that, like
the Biltmore Hotel, which we'llprobably talk about later that
has a specific drink that honorssomething specific that
happened there, and they stillserve that now.
So there are some that are stillin there.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
So we'll talk about Biltmore Hotel, for example, in
just a little bit here.
But that comes to mind isthat's a good place.
You can go and potentially havea drink next to a ghost and you
wouldn't know it.
So let's go through theseproperties.
They're all on that hotel themebecause they've just got so
many people who have been therefor various different reasons,
so they collect all of thesedifferent stories.

(06:39):
But before we go into the listof hotels, I had to put in one
of the sites you talked about inyour guidebook Not a hotel, but
very famous the Gromans ChineseTheater on Hollywood Boulevard.
It's arguably the most famoustheater in the world and
definitely one of the mostsought out locations for

(07:00):
Hollywood movie premieres, andit's also known for celebrity
handprints and footprints in thecement in its forecourt, which
is not to be confused with theWalk of Fame, and this is
embarrassing, but I have livedhere for 10 years and I have not
visited either.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
What you could.
I mean.
The thing is you can easily gothere in a day.
It's just a little day trip.
It's walking up and down thestreets along the boulevard and
you can see the Chinese theater,which really is the theater.
There's a lot of people I'vespoken to who think it's a movie
prop, but it is a properworking movie theater and you
can see IMAX and 70 mil andstuff there.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yeah, I've been outside, but not ever inside.
Yeah, I think people look at itand they think oh, because it's
only got those little doors.

Speaker 3 (07:46):
And I think people think, oh well, that's obviously
not where you go in, but it iswhere you go in.
You buy your ticket and you dogo in there and it is a big, big
cinema.
But I think people don't thinkthat because they've seen it on
TV so often and, as you say,leofa, it's so often used for
premieres constantly.
I mean that part of town, thatblock, is closed off so often.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
I also wanted to put Gromans on there too, because
there's a few very famouscelebrities that haunt this
location.
So can you talk about thebackstory on that?

Speaker 3 (08:18):
Yeah, there's a few, or allegedly a few.
Again, it depends with some ofthese stories and whether you
believe in ghosts or not, butcertainly when I went in there
the staff told me that theythink that Sid Grauman, who
built the Chinese theater, whowas the big theatrical
impresario of the time, built itin 1927.
It cost a million and a halfdollars, which was a lot.

(08:40):
It's a lot now, but it was alot then.
He built the Chinese, he builtthe Egyptian, which is just a
little further down the road,did a million dollar theater
downtown which cost a milliondollars, and a number of other
theaters.
He was a big impresario.
Now he's supposed to haunt thetheater.
He's supposed to come in whenyou walk in, if you go to the
right hand side of the lobby.
He's supposed to check behindthe curtains to make sure that

(09:03):
everyone is watching the screenand that the screen is running
okay and everyone's enjoyingthemselves.
But there also have been acouple of other stories, again
related to the crime thatactually happened, related to a
couple of actors who were.
One of them is supposed tostill haunt the area.
He's supposed to haunt theforecourt, actually where the
handprints and the fingerprintsare.

(09:24):
He's supposed to have been seen, or his ghost is supposed to
have been seen on the um webcamthat they have outside.
Um, and his name was, wasvictor killian.
Um, he was in a.
He was a actor from the 60s and70s.
He was in mary hartman marymanwhich some of your listeners may
remember.
He played the Fernwood flasher,and in March 1979, he was found

(09:55):
beaten to death in hisapartment, and police were
somewhat confused because thedoors were locked from the
inside.
Oh my gosh, yes, exactly so hewas found beaten to death.
And then the very next day,another actor who lived in the
area up in the hills calledCharles Wagenheim.
He was found beaten to death inhis house as well, and so there
was a panic for a while thatthere was a serial killer on the

(10:18):
loose targeting older men.
Victor Killian's killer wasnever found.
Charles Wagensheim's killer wasactually the nurse who was
looking after his wife.
Charles Wagensheim's wife,lillian, used a wheelchair and
she was actually mute, she waspretty much unable to

(10:38):
communicate, and he had aconstant carer, and this
constant carer had tried,apparently, to cash some checks
illegally and, uh, charlesconfronted her about it and
there was a fight and she beathim to death.
So she went to prison for that.
But they had both been on thesame episode of all in the
family, which I'm sure many ofyour listeners will remember.

(11:01):
They'd both been on the sameepisode of all in the family,
which was then on tv soon afterthey'd both been on the same
episode of All in the Family,which was then on TV soon after
they had both been murdered.
That really is, and so VictorKillian's ghost is supposed to
haunt the outside and SidGrauman's ghost is supposed to
haunt the inside.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
When you said it was who was caught on the webcam, it
was.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
Victor Killian, the actor who was beaten to death in
his apartment, and they didn'tfind the killer.
And when you said they were onthe webcam, like what was on the
webcam, Well it's just astrange sort of a figure of what
seemed to be a man but goingbackwards and forwards, seen
quite often on the webcam, andpeople couldn't understand what

(11:44):
he was doing because it lookedlike he was looking for someone.
He didn't look, he wasn't withanybody and the theory goes that
he was looking for his killerbecause he met where he had been
last seen, uh, drinking in abar on yucca which is very close
, very close to the, the chinese, and they reckon perhaps he'd
met someone there or there was afriend, or they had gone back

(12:06):
to the apartment.
And so, because this killer wasnever found, he is supposed to
be there still looking for hiskiller.
Which is quite a common tropewithin ghosts and the spirit
world is that the person willwait, looking still for their
killer if it's someone who'sunfound.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
You know, I haven't heard that, which is surprising,
especially as steeped as I amin true crime.
But gosh, if only we could havethem actually solve some of the
pressing mysteries we've hadthroughout time.

Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yeah, it would really help and that's supposed to be.
You know there would be somethat would say you know, that's
their indication.
Once you notice that the ghostis there, there there's a reason
that they're there and then ifyou look into it, if you ever do
any research, hopefully they'rehoping that you will see that
their crime was unavenged.
Because also, you know again,in many cultures you know you
can't pass through to the nextlife if you have been murdered

(12:58):
or again, if you have suicided,that you can't pass through to
the next life until your killeris caught.
Getting a bit deep there forthat.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
One of the hauntings I thought, if I'm remembering
correctly or maybe it's the nextsite we're going to talk about
is Marilyn Monroe.
Does she haunt that site?
I thought I remembered.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
No, that's the Roosevelt Hotel.
Oh, that's the hotel, that'sright across the road, okay,
right across the road from theChinese Theater.
That's a very old hotel, 1927.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
They did the first.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
Oscar ceremony and she stayed there when she had
first arrived in Los Angeles, inroom 229, apparently.
And it is said there was astory with the mirror.
But it said that one of thestaff came into the room that
she'd stayed in and saw her areflection of her in the mirror,
and was very freaked out, andso freaked out, in fact, that

(13:57):
they removed the mirror from theroom and it was down in the
manager's office for a while.
But then they put it in thelobby for a long time and they
actually had like an etchedMarilyn Monroe glass next to it
and people would come in andlook in the mirror and people
would say you know, they saw thereflection of Marilyn in the
mirror.
And then for a long time, aboutfive, five to ten years ago, the

(14:19):
mirror was taken down again andno one knew where the mirror
was.
There was a rumor it had beensold to Disneyland to go into
one of their attractions.
There was a rumor it had goneinto storage.
There was a rumor it had gonesomewhere else.
But then I went there mostrecently and it's back again.
It's a very tall, large mirrorwith a sort of curved top, but

(14:40):
it's back again.
And because I asked them, isthe Marilyn Monroe mirror here?
And they said yes, that waswhat I found in a lot of
locations is sometimes if youask staff about things they
won't.
They'll say there isn'tanything like that here.
A lot of venues don't courtinterest from people who are
interested in the supernatural,whereas some do, and I guess

(15:02):
Roosevelt has started to embraceit again.
So I went up and had a look inthe mirror, but I did not see
her.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
I did not see her and I can only imagine if it
disappears.
It's probably all too easy tomake up a story about where it's
at or why it's somewhere elseor why it's been moved.

Speaker 3 (15:21):
I mean there was the rumor that Marilyn Monroe, like
memorabilia fan, had bought themirror, that kind of thing
because it's a large woodenmirror.
It's a lovely mirror, you know,but it had this, this story that
she would appear in the mirrorto people and people would say
they would put it online,because of course I did a lot of

(15:41):
online research and peoplewould say, oh yes, I went there
and I saw her in the mirror, butof course there was an
expectation that you would seeher in the mirror, so that one
is a little more of a pinch ofsalt, but it's a very, very
long-term story of a ghost atthe Roosevelt.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
So kind of sticking around.
At the Roosevelt they did amajor re-update and they had the
grand reopening in 1985.
Were there other ghostsightings at the hotel?

Speaker 3 (16:10):
Yeah, that's right, specifically after a renovation
which, as you can imagine,changes things literally within
a building in lots of differentways.
Yes, there were some sightings.
Children were heard playing incorridors and in some of the
rooms running up and down, youknow girls and boys.
And there was a sighting that Igot told about by some of the

(16:30):
staff that were there and I readabout a line of a girl in a
blue dress seen by the fountainin the lobby.
It's a beautiful lobby.
Again, if you ever get thechance to go into the Roosevelt
you can just go into the lobbyand it's beautiful and there is
a fountain there.
There was supposed to have beena girl seen, often in a blue
dress, who the staff assumed wasa guest or the child of a guest
, but not necessarily so.

(16:53):
Apparently the story was thatit was someone who had drowned
in the swimming pool.
The child had drowned in theswimming pool.
Now I couldn't find anyevidence of that in the, in the
archives, in the newspaperarchives, but that doesn't
necessarily mean it didn'thappen, because everything isn't
always reported in thenewspapers.
A lot of the time, as I foundin the archives, there might be.

(17:14):
You know, there was an accidentat a hotel in Hollywood.
You know it wouldn't say whichhotel and it wouldn't say
anything specific.
I mean, a child drowningprobably would have been
mentioned.
But also you know it's aRoosevelt Hotel.
It was where all thecelebrities went.
It was a very influential,high-end hotel.
They might well have been ableto say to the newspapers at the

(17:36):
time, which were cutthroat, andthere were a lot of newspapers
in town, but even so they mighthave said look, keep this one
out, don't mention this one.
You know, and we'll give youthe word on other cases.
Because if you ever looked atthe journalism from the 30s, 40s
and 50s in Los Angeles, youknow the newspaper people were
getting a call, often before thepolice did you know, for things

(17:58):
, and so there is a reciprocal,that or and there probably still
is now reciprocal arrangement.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
Right, we literally just talked about that in our
Black Dahlia case.
Well, and I get the reciprocitything to a certain extent, but
my goodness, they were brutal atthat time.
They were absolutely.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
You know if it bleeds , it leads, and you know the
Black Dahlia was particularlybrutal.
And people buy newspapers.
You know it's hard to imaginenow, but you know when
newspapers were the primarysource of communication,
something like that happened.
Everyone would go out and buy anewspaper.
They would be selling them onthe streets, you know, and
everyone would buy those and thenewspapers.

(18:40):
There were a number ofnewspapers across the land and
they were very competitive, youknow there would be sometimes
several editions a day and theywould have to have the best
stuff.
And the best stuff sometimeswas stuff that you know we would
think now.
You know that that seems maybein poor taste.
You know they used to printsuicide notes and they used to
print, you know, pictures of thedead bodies covered in blankets

(19:01):
, and you know they would putarrows from where somebody
jumped from the top of abuilding to where they hit the
pavement.
You know stuff that you can'treally do now, but at the time
people of course loved it.
I mean, it's just a differentway of looking at true crime
then.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
As to true crime now, so if we swing back to the
Roosevelt, it's got a fewdifferent themed cocktail bars
and they all sound pretty cool.
Have you been to any, and whathauntings are reported there?

Speaker 3 (19:30):
I've been to a couple of them.
There's the Tropicana Bar,which is by the swimming pool,
and the swimming pool is reallycool because it was painted by
David Hockney on the bottom.
So that's a beautiful bar.
And then there's the Spare Room, which is a sort of a bar but
also has like two little bowlingalleys in it, sort of vintage
bowling alleys, not for properbowling, more sort of for fun

(19:51):
bowling.
But yeah, those two bars arethere.
I don't know of any particularstories in the bars themselves
because I know, I know that thespare room is certainly later
and the tropicana is laterbecause hockney, okay, painted
that in the 60s.
But as far as the hotel goes,there are still a number of
stories.
Probably the most famous one isabout again, hopefully

(20:15):
listeners of a certain age willremember Montgomery Clift.
Monty Clift, the actor.
He was in a film called Fromhere to Eternity in 1953, which
was Frank Sinatra and BurtLancaster, wasn't it Very
successful film?
And he stayed at the Rooseveltin room 928.
And he played a bugler in thefilm.
It was set during World War IIand he played a bugler in the

(20:36):
film.
It was set during World War IIand he played a bugler and he
would practice his bugle.
He would practice it in hisroom.
He would actually go up anddown the corridors practicing at
night, which didn't make himincredibly popular.
But since that time people haveheard bugle playing in the
hotel, on that floor, even inthat room.
Oh, that is an obnoxioushaunting, yeah, yeah, I mean I

(20:59):
guess, if he's in a shoe it'sprobably not that bad, but it
depends on the day it is.
But in 1992, there was a ladywho stayed in his room and it is
very common for people,especially with hotels, to ask
to stay in specific rooms wheresomething happened, like Janis.
Joplin.
Um, that's very common thatpeople that room is always
booked you'll pay a premium tobe in the room that she died in,

(21:21):
and the same for montgomeryclift, or that they don't
encourage it that much at theroosevelt.
But if someone asks for 928 anddoesn't say you know, I want to
ghost hunt, what are they goingto say?
So a lady stayed in there in 92and she said she was moved from
her room in the end because thecoffee pot was coming on, the
tv was coming on, the lightswere going on and off, she was

(21:43):
feeling sort of someone tappingher shoulder and she moved rooms
in the end.
And then she actually checkedout in the early hours and they
which was you know which wasfair because she was freaked out
.
But they found out that she hadspecifically taken that room
and had taken a ouija board into try and contact.
Now, montgomery cliff didn't diethere, you know he died there

(22:07):
or anything, you know.
He just stayed there butobviously some part of him had
remained.
So she obviously messed withthings she shouldn't messed with
and uh checked out what youasked for well, yeah, I mean,
you're asking for trouble withthat, aren't you?

Speaker 1 (22:23):
yeah, yeah, definitely.
I mean, I don't know what kindof ouija board was it.
It's hard to believe that aouija board made by what is it?

Speaker 3 (22:32):
hasbro the company there was actually a toy game.
Yeah, I mean, you know you goback to Victorian awarding times
.
You know Ouija boards andsomething similar to that were
very common and it was very muchbelieved, certainly around
World War I especially, thatcould be contacted.
You know, because World War Iso many people were killed
around the world and peoplewanted some sort of closure to

(22:54):
try and contact these peoplethat they lost.
It was very common.
Then I mean, the Bradburybuilding in downtown which is a
really famous, beautifulbuilding which has been in Blade
Runner and the Artist, it'svery recognisable, the guy who
designed that, the architect.
He contacted his brother usinga Ouija board to see if he
should take the job.

(23:14):
You know, but that was 1893.
You know that wasn't unusual.
It wasn't unusual that someonewould do that and the answer
came back in the positive and hedid the building and now it's
like one of the most famous inLos Angeles, if not the world.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
Oh, that's funny.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
Well, speaking of downtown, because that's where
we're headed.
Next, I wanted to ask you aboutthe Barclay Hotel.
This is the oldest continuallyoperated hotel in Los Angeles.
It opened in 1897.
What the details are and youprobably know this it's been

(23:57):
converted now into affordablehousing, but when it first
opened it sounds like there wasnothing affordable about it.
It is still today a six-storyboat art style building, really
ornate decorations, and they hadmodern conveniences which we
take for granted, likeelectricity, and that was very,
very rare to have.
Now, this hotel in your bookthere's just so many tragedies

(24:21):
and crimes.
It feels like it's competingwith the Cecil Hotel, another
location we'll talk about andwe've done an episode on.
So there's so much there, soI'm just going to try to hone in
on just a few.
So what did you find were themost surprising stories you
uncovered when you wereresearching that long list of
things that had happened there?

Speaker 3 (24:42):
Yeah, it's interesting For a hotel that's
been around for so long and isquite well known.
Quite a lot's happened there,but it's not that famous in
terms of the people knowing it.
So I was quite surprised tofind so much had happened there.
I just looked it up because itwas the oldest hotel and I
thought, well, there must besome stories.
But yeah, there'd been several.
One thing I found that wasinteresting in research was

(25:04):
elevator deaths.
There were several at theBarclay Hotel, or the Van Nuys
Hotel it was originally called.
It became the Barclay in 1935.
Um, and elevators.
Obviously, back in the dayelevators were, uh, stop, start,
they weren't electric, therewas no um safety on the doors or
what was my.
So what happened?

(25:25):
A lot, and it was nearly alwaysemployees.
You would often be, you know,getting on and off quickly in
relation to it, coming up anddown and stopping it, and a lot
of the time people miss timethere oh gosh, step or whatever.
And I wasn't gonna, I wasn it.
And a lot of the time peoplemistimed their oh gosh, step or
whatever, and I wasn't gonna, Iwasn't gonna quote any of the
stuff.
But you know, people werecrushed, crushed regularly, and
again the other times.
The newspapers would alwaysreport it and say his his legs

(25:47):
snapped like pipe stems, was oneof them.
Um, so that happened.
There were several.
In the barclay hotel um 1902,just just five years after they
opened, there was a fightbetween several staff members,
two brothers and the steward,and they fell out over.
Apparently I guess it doeshappen back of house some sort

(26:08):
of quip about their uniform orsomething, and the steward, who
was called Lloyd Alcott,actually picked up a knife, a
kitchen knife, and the steward,who was called Lloyd Alcott,
actually picked up a knife, akitchen knife, and they chased
the other two out of the throughthe kitchen, out through the
hotel into the street where theywere sort of scuffling in the
street, and one of the twobrothers actually stabbed to
death and died, oh my gosh.

(26:28):
And the other one was stabbed aswell.
So there was a really goodstory in 1915 about a guywig
steiner who was german, justpost-war, who suddenly
disappeared.
He worked there and he livedthere.
That was really interesting.
Hey, he spoke a number offoreign languages.
He said that he'd beenimprisoned as a spy in japan.
Why, you would say that I don'tknow.

(26:50):
Post-world war one.
But after world war one, whenthe war started, people got a
little suspicious of germans,and this happened everywhere.
And he disappeared one day,left all his possessions behind,
just disappeared, and Icouldn't find any evidence, uh,
any reference to him after that.
So whether he just left all hisstuff behind or whether
something else happened to him,I don't know.

(27:12):
But yeah, there's a serialkiller well, two really, um 1944
, um otto stephen wilson.
He was 31, he was called stevethe slasher.
He was created by thenewspapers.
He was called the ripper killeras well.
He uh killed two women.
There was a 26 year old ladycalled virginie griffin who he?

(27:33):
Um picked up in a bar on mainstreet and possibly a sex worker
, brought her back to theBarclay where he was staying and
killed her.
Very much akin to Jack theRipper, sort of eviscerated her,
cut off her arm.
There is actually a book of.
There's an autopsy book thatyou can get and it has the

(27:54):
pictures from the autopsy.
Oh my gosh um, he, he, uh.
He cut her up, put her into thecloset.
The next day he went out, metanother lady.
They came back to the hotel.
He did the same to her.
Then he went out, watched amovie, went to a wine bar and
some police came into the winebar, which was near near the

(28:15):
hotel, looking for, I guess, theusual suspects.
And the guy had bloodied handsand he had a matchbook from the
Barclay Hotel and he basicallyconfessed straight away and he
said he had a long criminalrecord.
He said he had a strange sexualcomplex and he said I went
insane.
That's what he said.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
Oh, my gosh.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
And in the trial they , uh, they used alienists, which
is what we call psychologistsnow, to prove that he was mad.
But uh, they didn't believe it.
So he was executed at sanquentin, but they were brutal
murders well, that sounds likeI'm sure there were more beyond
that.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
That doesn't sound like a first time.

Speaker 3 (28:57):
Yeah, I mean you have to hope it seemed like that he
was caught before he didanything else, because it seemed
like he didn't care.
I mean it seemed like he wassort of making that he'd had
some sort of psychotic break,was what he had made.
But he did have a history oflike robbery and assault and
then later in the 70s, 1970,december 1974 to january 1975 so

(29:20):
that's only like six to eightweeks there was a guy called
vaughn or in greenwood, who wascalled the skid row slasher.
His is a story that gets verylittle play, which I was
surprised to hear about.
He killed nine people in thattime in downtown, mainly
homeless and indigent people onSkid Row, which I guess is why

(29:41):
the authorities didn't pay muchmind to it.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
Right.

Speaker 3 (29:44):
One of them was in the Barclay Hotel, a guy called
Samuel Suarez who was 49.
He had a room in the fifthfloor there and he was killed
there by Vaughan Greenwood, whowas caught for these murders,
three of which he dumped thebodies outside the Central
Library.
So next time I try not tomention that, usually because I
love the Central Library.

Speaker 1 (30:03):
I know that's a beautiful building.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
It's such a beautiful building, but one was outside
the door, one was outside one ofthe other doors and then one
was outside some of the bushesoh my gosh.
Oh, that's horrible.
And one was outside some of thebushes oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
And this guy Greenwood.
He'd killed two people alreadyin like 1964.
But that was again at theBarclay Hotel.
So it has a gruesome historyfor something that doesn't get
as much play as, say, the CecilHotel.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
Right, which surprisingly manages to beat
that track record beat thattrack record.
But one question I have fromall of those tragedies and
killings that had happened atthe property, were there reports
of residual hauntings from any?

Speaker 3 (30:46):
of those, or ghost ones.
I haven't got for thatparticular property because when
I've gone in to talk, as yousay now, it's like low income
housing, it's not a hotelanymore.
So if the only person aroundwas the person at the front desk
and usually they tend not toencourage people the person I
talk to is someone who doesn'tencourage people to talk like

(31:09):
that.
But, as you say, talking aboutthe Cecil Hotel, it seems hard
to believe.
Although I never came acrossany ghost stories at the Cecil
Hotel.
It seems hard to believe.
Although I never came acrossany ghost stories at the Cecil
Hotel.
It seems hard to believe thatwhen something like that happens
, and with such frequency or anumber of times, that there
can't be something there, it'sjust whether people you know,

(31:30):
because people aren't going tocall the newspapers to report
seeing a ghost, you know if youthink about it, they're never
going to report something likethat.
The newspaper is never going toreport it.
Today, more contemporary times,you know people can go online
and put what they think online.
So there's been a huge influxof reporting in the last 20
years because anybody has anoutlet that they can put a story

(31:52):
Up.
Until then it's really hard forany outlet or print journalism
outlet to print a story about aghost, because how do you
possibly prove it?

Speaker 1 (32:02):
Sure, you can't exactly verify.

Speaker 3 (32:05):
Never was that yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
Basic challenges with it.
Well, and it sounds like thoseproperties are sufficiently
haunted by the living.

Speaker 3 (32:16):
Yeah, I mean it is the same case for a lot of
downtown.
All the hotels downtowninitially, when they were built,
were all pretty much all highend, you know, because downtown
was the center of Los Angeles,the center of the business and
government as it governmentstill certainly, but business
and movie industry was very muchbased around there a lot.
So a lot of these hotels werereally good high-end hotels,

(32:40):
built sort of in the 20s just intime for the Depression and the
recession and then the war, andthen the city started to move
further out, to expand and therewere more places that you could
go and that you could stay, andso it just was like a slow
decline and a lot of the hotelsnow, the ones that weren't
converted into apartments insort of the last 10, 15 years,

(33:02):
became just lower, lower rent,lower rent, and then they became
housing and then some of themjust came off altogether and are
now a derelict.
There's still a few left.
I mean, even the Cecil Hotel'sfuture is still pretty up in the
air.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Right, Well, and then also too, around that time with
the Great Depression Skid.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
Row isn't too far away, and that was the city's
policy was.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
we're just going to let it be contained, even though
yeah.

Speaker 3 (33:33):
And that was where a lot of people still are is
around a fair amount of thatarea and you know, and again,
huge influx of people after thesecond world war as well, and
they all needed somewhere tostay and they didn't necessarily
have money.
You can't have luxury hotels.
You know, if you can bang extrarooms out and you can do rooms
for cheaper, you're going to getmore people well, about a half

(33:53):
a mile from the barclay Hotel isthe Biltmore and this building
seems pretty impressive.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
It sounds like it's a pretty large place, probably
well worth the visit.
How would you describe it?

Speaker 3 (34:07):
You know, to be honest, it's the place that I
always take people.
When they come from out of town, I'll always take them.
If we go downtown, I alwaystake people.
Downtown Biltmore is usuallythe first place I go.
I mean it's huge, I mean it isa block.
It's a block in size.
It was expanded over the years.
There's a large tower now whichis residential, and then

(34:28):
there's the hotel which is sortof like you imagine.
It's sort of a bit like atrident.
It's got sort of three prongsthat go in and out and I call it
like a bit of like the granddame of downtown.
I mean it's 100 years old.
It was 100 years old last yearand it really is what you would
think a really grand hotel wouldbe like, especially if you go

(34:49):
in at night when all the lightsare on and the chandeliers and
stuff absolutely beautiful.
It's got angels all over thehotel.
There's supposed to be athousand various types there.
There are large sculptures,sort of half human size, and
then they're in the carpets,they're in the walls, they're
everywhere.
Uh, it's very, very, um,elegant and sophisticated.
And again, it was one of thebig hotels I mean still is.

(35:12):
It's very, very still popular.
You know they held eight oscarceremonies there.
You know they were supposed to.
The story says that the man whodesigned the oscar statuette
did it at a dinner in thebiltmore.
He scratched it on a napkinwhen the movie industry was
getting together to say do weneed some sort of organization

(35:33):
that protects our interests andcelebrates our interests?
Perhaps we should have an award.
And this guy sketched somethingon a napkin at the Biltmore.
So it has a long history.
I mean I always like to say youknow, ghostbusters was shot
there for ghosts.
You know there were severalscenes where Ghostbusters were
in the Biltmore Hotel.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
I did not realize that.
I know that the library scene,even though in the movie it's
supposed to be the new yorklibrary, but it was actually
shot, yeah right yeah, if youlook, you can look online.

Speaker 3 (36:02):
It's a cool thing to look up, to look up the shots,
because all they did is put up,you know, like some plants and
things like that behind it tocover some of the areas.
But yeah, they did severalscenes for ghost buses in their
um poseidon adventure, the bigballroom from the Poseidon
Adventure the original one, thatwas the Biltmore, and they
filmed so much Mad Men in theBiltmore.

(36:25):
I mean, you've often got a goodchance if you go to the
Biltmore that they're filmingsomething.
It's a lot for filming and, ofcourse, as we said before, it
was the last place the BlackDahlia was seen alive.

Speaker 1 (36:41):
Well, allegedly.

Speaker 3 (36:42):
Allegedly yeah.
Officially it was the lastplace.
As I found out, nearly everybar that was around at the time
downtown says that that was thelast place she was at just
before.
But officially, as far as thepolice reports went, she was
dropped off on the I think it'sthe Olive side now which is the

(37:02):
Grand Lobby, which has bigstaircases that go up and
there's a piano underneath wherea guy plays the piano and they
do afternoon teas downstairs.
That used to be the main lobby,because it looks like a big
main lobby.
That was where she was droppedoff and she said she was going
to meet her sister, I think, andshe went inside.
She used the pay phones therearen't any pay phones in there

(37:23):
anymore, but they did have payphones then and apparently left
through the other side becauseit's a whole block.
So you can go in one side andcome out the other side and be
on a different street and thenthence after.
She officially wasn't.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
Well debatable.
There were some accounts thatsounded pretty convincing, but
that you know what.
If you guys want to know moreabout that, you can listen to
our part two episode of theBlack Dahlia.
Well then, I wanted to move allthe way over to the other side
of the 110, to the Holland Hotel.

(37:59):
So this hotel is not exactly.
It's not in terms of size.
I think it's only 20 rooms,right.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
Yeah, it's a tiny place.
It's by MacArthur Park.
It's kind of pretty muchexactly the opposite of the
Biltmore.
It's not in the best part oftown, it's not somewhere that
probably you or I would tend tostay and look up.
I don't even know.
Every time I go past it lookslike it's closed.
But it was a hotel.
It wasn't the worst hotel, itwas a small hotel 1902 was the

(38:31):
earliest reference I had to it,which makes it old, but makes it
really old.
And there was a reallyinteresting crime that I found
there, going through thenewspaper archives, called well
the Rose Murderer.
Going through the newspaperarchives, called well the Rose
Murderer.
That was the name again thatthe newspapers gave this guy At
the Holland Hotel.
The newspapers actually printedthe room where it happened,

(38:52):
room 307, because in those daysagain, they would print room
numbers, they would printpeople's addresses, the
addresses of the victims and thealleged assailants.

Speaker 1 (39:04):
Why does that need to be printed?
That is insane.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
I think just because it is a thing in journalism, at
least that I found, is that whenyou write a story about someone
, they nearly always want toknow nearly always their age and
perhaps where they're from andperhaps what part of town they
live in, which is fine.
But you don't have to put theirfull address.
You don't need an address,right Exactly, but if you're
going from a police report orthe police, they will give you
the full address, and so, ofcourse, the newspapers will

(39:28):
print the full address, neverthinking for a second, because
you know that's not theirconcern.
Is it that anyone ever actuallymight go to this address and do
something about it?
But yeah, so this was a guycalled Otis Hall and he bought
three dozen roses for $3.
Can you imagine?
Can you imagine getting adollar, a dollar.

Speaker 2 (39:50):
A dollar a dozen.

Speaker 3 (39:51):
It sounds ridiculous but he bought three dozen roses
and left them at room 307 with,had them delivered to room 307
with a note that said goodbye,my darling, I will see you in
heaven.
And what he done elsewherewhere he was staying was, uh,
tried to commit suicide.
He was separated from his wifewho was staying in the holland

(40:13):
hotel.
They had been I mean, it's asad story in a way they'd been
high school sweethearts yearsago, but she had actually
married someone else.
But they had met again and theyhad married about nine months
ago.
But he was very jealous andthey were separated.
At the time she was staying atthe Holland Hotel and he had

(40:33):
been.
I guess it might be stalkingher, maybe, or keeping an eye on
her.
We would look at it.
He was.
He had a bit of a problem withbeing drunk in public and it
seems like he saw her with asoldier and he followed her back
to the hotel and on the hotel,at the door, there was a towel
on the door which I guess wasthe signal for you know, don't

(40:55):
come a knocking I guess is theidea in those days or do not
disturb.
And he was very jealous and hewent back there and he
confronted her and he strangledher with the cord of her
bathrobe, and so he left thebody in the room and thought to
himself right, what have I done?

(41:16):
So he went away and decided toend his own life, but he sent
the flowers to make it look asif she was still alive at the
time that he was doing what hewas doing, so that he would.
He was making the big romanticgesture of commit, taking his
own life, give it, sending her,sending roses to his, his former
wife, who tragically, would youknow, find that he had, he had

(41:40):
ended his life.
But of course, what he was done,he was trying to cover up his
own crime.
And the reason I mean it's,it's pretty calculated,
obviously, but the reason I uh,I mentioned it to you, leah,
especially is that the newspaperagain printed a picture of him,
of otis hall.
It's in the police station andone of of the police officers

(42:02):
comes in with the box of theroses behind him in front of the
cameras, and, like, shows it tohim.
And obviously he's notexpecting it.
And his face when he sees theroses, because he knows they've
obviously got him and it's over.
But they showed that picture.
You know, they printed thatpicture.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
I'm okay with that.
Yeah, it's a great picture.

Speaker 3 (42:23):
I mean obviously he deserved it because he he'd
murdered her but there wereother pictures.
There were ones that I in thebook and even on my website I I
wouldn't pin them because nowthey just they just so upsetting
, you know to see.
It was a guy whose wife hadjumped off a bridge and again
ended her life and there was apicture of him sitting on the

(42:43):
curb with his head in his handsas a policeman is like taking
the details and it was the lookon his face and you could hardly
look at it.
But again, the newspaperprinted that.
Yeah, because that's whatpeople want to see, you know,
you're heartbreaking from thehorror of it.
When you see it as a newspaperor as a tv show, as a movie,
it's not happening to you, ithappens to someone else and we

(43:06):
are intrigued by that side yeah,that was the holland hotel.
The rose murderer.

Speaker 2 (43:13):
They called him the roses of death so in a previous
episode we covered the cecilhotel and a lot of the tragedies
that have happened at that site.
But what we didn't realize isthe Cecil is part of what's
called the Suicide Triangle,with the Hayward and Roslyn.
Can you talk about how theseproperties got this designation?

Speaker 3 (43:36):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I won't go on too much about the
Cecil Hotel because you'vealready talked about it.
It's been so well covered.
But obviously that was in mysecond book at the biggest entry
in the book.
I've been there a couple oftimes to do TV stuff and all I
can say is so much has happenedthere and I don't really have an
explanation why.

(43:57):
There's no particular thingthat makes it seem like it might
stick out.
But what I did was, as I wasdoing my research for a
potential third book becausethere's lots of places I've
researched but I don'tnecessarily think perhaps good
enough to be in a book and Inoticed I mean I'm holding up a
map now to the camera, which isnot much use for the listeners,

(44:18):
but it is like a triangle Iwould share.
It is like a truck.
Can you see that?
That it is like a triangle.
Can you see that?
That can be?
Leah and April can give theirthing.
It is a triangle shape.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (44:29):
So you've got the Cecil Hotel and you've got the
Haywood Hotel and the RoslynHotel.
They're all within like a blockand a half of each other,
pretty much in a triangle.
The Roslyn and the Cecil areboth on Main Street and the
Cecil are both on Main Streetand the Haywood is on Spring
Street.
And I'm going to say that I cantake credit for the suicide

(44:55):
triangle thing because I putthat in an article just because
people love triangles.
With my research that thesethree hotels had the most, by
quite a long way, um suicidesand crimes and murders.
Of all the hotels that I'dresearched all over, even just
in downtown, I mean the cecil's,miles and miles ahead of
everything but the roslyn hotel.

(45:16):
There's actually two of themopposite.
They're on the opposite side ofthe road.
There was one built and thenlike an annex, as they call it,
that has, let's see, 13 peoplekilled themselves in that hotel,
five people in 1924 alone.
And then the hotel hayward, umthat six people have ended their
lives.
There have been three murdersin there as well, and again some

(45:38):
unusual things as well.
The hayward Hotel seems to be aplace where people fall out of
windows.
There were two men who weresitting on the windowsill
telling jokes.
It was a room and one of themmade a joke and sort of slapped
the other one on the back andoverbalanced and they both ended
up falling out of the window.

(45:58):
That was in the Hayward Hotel.
I mean, it sounds like a jokebut that actually happened.
And again, 100-year-old hotelsthey were built 100 years ago
and expensive and sumptuoushotels, but for some reason
these three particular hotels Imean there are other ones that
are not too far away from themas well but those three are in a

(46:20):
triangle and they're like theone, two, two and three of the
downtown hotels with the mostsuicides, the most crimes.
You know the Cecil has snipersand baby murderers and arsonists
, but the other two it doesn'tsound a lot Six suicides in you
know 80 years, but these arejust the ones that I could

(46:42):
absolutely.
You know 80 years, but these arejust the ones that I could
absolutely you know correspondto those hotels from the
archives, right, you know, anewspaper report could say you
know, a dead body was found at ahotel on 6th and main.
Now that's probably that hotel,but it doesn't say I intended
not to put it in the bookbecause it had to.
You know I had to be.
But as you said at thebeginning, leah hotels.

(47:05):
Hundreds and hundreds ofthousands of people will
probably pass through a hotelover a decade.
It's open.
There's going to be naturaldeaths, for sure, and there are
going to be suicides as well andmurders.
I mean it definitely happens inall the hotels.

Speaker 1 (47:20):
The issue with the triangle is because of its
proximity to Skid Row, where youjust you have so many problems,
a lot of people who they'rejust in that location because
they're in a very bad place.
It's just, it's a very crimeridden place, it's a very tough
place, and so you know theproximity of the hotels.

(47:41):
I guess I could see that, butthen there are other.
Those are not the only hotelsthat are by Skid Row.

Speaker 3 (47:47):
No, and a lot of the you know.
The suicides especially, youknow, were in the 20s and 30s.
Skid Row was nowhere near asdeveloped as we think it was
today.

Speaker 1 (47:58):
That didn't become like the huge Skid Row really
became an issue after thedepression, or like during after
the depression.

Speaker 3 (48:04):
Yeah, yeah, again, you know in a hotel.
If you're looking for somewhereto go to be private, for a love
affair or to end your life, ahotel is a completely logical
choice.
Before the age of credit cardsand electronic banking, you
would sign into a hotel andregistration book.
You would put your name downand they would just trust that

(48:25):
that was your name.
You pay cash for something, youput a sign or a note on the
door saying do not disturb andyou would not be disturbed.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
Amy Price, the former manager of the Cecil Hotel, had
talked about how, for a longtime, that you could just put
down cash you didn't have tohave ID and then that changed
later.
Now it's just so obvious to us,but our listeners are going to
want to stay at Airbnbs.
Well, let's see.

(48:56):
So we could not cover all ofthe locations and stories from
your books, so are there anyquick previews of other places
that you can give of, like ifpeople wanted to go and look at
the pocket guides?
And yeah, I would say if youever get a chance again in
hollywood.

Speaker 3 (49:15):
It's a bit of a cliche again, but if you can
ever go to the magic castle, itlooks a bit like.
I mean, I always thought itlooks a bit like the house from
psycho, but kind of like with.
A bit like the house fromPsycho but kind of like with a
castle.
It's the home of magic.
It's part museum, part library.
It has performance theaters andyou go there to see magic shows
and illusion shows.
They have about five or sixbars.
They've got their several ghoststories there.

(49:38):
One of them you know isInvisible Irma, the lady lady
who plays the piano and theyhave postcards that you can get
of her.
But then there are otherstories that are not.
They don't have postcards ofabout one of the barmen there.
That's supposed to be a ghost.
And there's also above themagic castle, actually yamashiro
, which is a huge sprawling likejapanese compound.

(49:58):
Really it's beautiful,beautiful gardens.
There are a number of storiesthere.
That's usually a combo that I dothose two places and then
downtown a particular place thatI really love is the fine arts
building, which is on a seventhstreet.
I think um.
It's beautiful from the outside.
It's got these large um figureslike lying down on the outside

(50:20):
luxuriating on the outside, butinside, just in the lobby, it's
like an enormous Moroccan palace.
It's absolutely beautiful.
It's like gold and sparklingand there's a fountain in the
middle and there's two littlekids and like a child in the
middle standing up where thewater comes out.
And they're the children of thearchitect of the building and

(50:41):
he died just before theyfinished the building back in
the 20s and he used his kids asthe models for the fountain.
And I've spoken to severalpeople.
I go in there every time I godowntown and I ask the security.
They said they hear childrenall the time in the buildings.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
Interesting and they reckon it's the kids, I do not.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
Yeah, I mean not's the kids, you know the kids.
Yeah, I mean not for the scaryway.
I don't like child ghosts.
There's something about childghosts that just really creeps
me out, which is so weirdbecause they would probably be
less harmful than adult ghosts.

Speaker 3 (51:15):
Yeah, because it's always like I guess the bigger
fear is something that'shappened to a child.
Yeah, and this one one I thinkit's nice because I'm like the
children are there, you know,because their dad died there and
they're still in the building,you know.
That was a tribute to them.
I mean, so rarely did I evercome across any stories where
people were like frightened ofghosts.
A lot of the bars andrestaurants in, like the Formosa

(51:38):
Cafe in West Hollywood, peoplewere just used to the ghost.

Speaker 1 (51:42):
They a cafe in West.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
Hollywood.
People were just used to theghost.
They were just like, oh yeah,yeah, yeah, we don't really
think about it, we're just usedto him.
You know it's a guy who used toown the place.
He's still here.
He's still like bugging us toget get working and, and you
know not, yeah, you know, andthey were just used to it.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
You know it's very rarely malevolent as they say
yeah, that makes me feel a lotbetter.

Speaker 3 (52:01):
Yeah, so it was very rarely malevolent and I believed
all the people I talked to.
It was always the littledetails in the story, rather
than something that sounded likea pat go story.

Speaker 2 (52:13):
Right yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
So I tried to get stories and back up and archival
and witness stuff for all thestories.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
I think a lot of the times, the stories that come
from the people that work inthese places I find, I don't
know, to be more genuine orvalid.
Those people are there not forthe reason of telling ghost
stories and not for sellingsalacious information or that
type of thing.
They're there every day, in andout, and they really get to see

(52:44):
what's going on in the place.

Speaker 3 (52:51):
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean it's like the programswhere people go into buildings
with equipment and stuff likethat looking for they have to
find something because they havea program that they have to do.
Chances are they probably spenthours and hours and hours there
and nothing happened at all.
But you're getting the twominutes where something exciting
or unusual happened, where yougo to somebody who's the
security guard at night, youknow, and you just have a chat

(53:12):
with the guy's going to go.
Yeah, you know, I walk aroundhere at night and you know we
all just don't go on the eighthfloor.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
James, any upcoming projects or books that you have
planned in the future that weshould look out for listeners
should look out for I guess I'mhoping to do a book about crime
and murder and mayhem in Burbank, which is where I live now.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
We moved here to Toluca Lake about a year ago and
so obviously I immediatelystarted looking up places around
here and I found some good ones.
So there might be a book aboutthat, because I think that's not
really been an area that'scovered, because you know
Burbank people think of, likethe movie studios, and you know
there's nothing else.
So that's hopefully that's thenext thing I'm doing, but that
will probably be next year orthe year after.

(53:56):
But I do talks occasionally, Ido the odd walk downtown.
You know, if people ask aroundsome of these places and I'm
always out looking for stories.
It makes me sound awful, butI'm always out looking for
stories.
You know, if a new restaurantor a new bar opens, especially
downtown, I always look it up.
I look up the address becauseyou know it's a new restaurant

(54:19):
there, but chances are it wasprobably something years and
years before.
Yeah, and if it was there, butchances are it was probably
something years and years before.
Yeah, and if it was there,something probably happened.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
Well, we are like-minded.
I find the history just sointeresting.
So interesting.

Speaker 3 (54:33):
There's nothing worse than what human beings will do.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
No.

Speaker 3 (54:37):
There's nothing weirder and stranger than what
people will do.
And again, you know 100 yearsago.
It's so far removed from how itis today.
It's just fascinating to readabout it Whereas contemporary
crime you know it's so wellcovered, you know any murder
trial that comes up is so wellcovered that there's nothing
really to discover.

(54:57):
You know, there's nothingunusual that you can find.
But you dive into the archivesand you look up a place that you
know.
You look up an address of arestaurant from 80 years ago.
No one's probably discoveredthat.

Speaker 1 (55:11):
I'll link your website and your books in our
show notes so if you guys wantto check them out, there's a lot
more stories in there, james,thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (55:22):
That was great, very fun.
It's always fun talking aboutthese stories, thank you.