The Blog Page

Same Day: Philippe’s Restaurant, LA.  John and I walked into Phillipe’s lunch hour crowd, put in our order, and headed for a back booth. Within five minutes, Dambacher sprinted in, spotted John, and shook his outstretched hand. He turned to me, smiled with a megawatt...

I expected the usual ten minute-drive from the Parker Center parking lot to Philippe’s in lunchtime traffic to take just a few minutes. Normally, he’d zip through traffic like Mario Andretti at the Indy 500. Instead, we were stuck behind what seemed a never-ending...

September 20, 1985.  I stepped into our master bedroom closet, dodged the wicker laundry basket, a pile of clothes and stack of shoeboxes. My brain buzzed with one question. What would I wear to a meeting between LAPD Detective John “Jigsaw” St. John and Chief Medical...

I sat on a cold, hard bench in a crowded courtroom listening to testimony about the mental state of two teenage boys who murdered their parents. This “law and order” experience was different from all the other mornings I’d spent in courtrooms, because Jeff, my...

Peter Vronsky, author of Sons of Cain: A History of Serial Killers from the Stone Age to the Present, wrote this about how the term ‘serial killer’ evolved: “Before the term was coined in 1981, there were no ‘serial killers.’ There were only “monsters”- killers...

January 1989, Los Angles California. Walking into Taylors Steak House on a chilly afternoon reminded me of the Oxford winters when Jim and I lived in England. A big treat would be lunch at our local pub. I’d open the heavy oak door of the Clifden Arms Pub, walk into a...

Back in the beginning of this journey, I wasn’t sure if me–a newbie writer who’d only met Detective St. John twice–had the chutzpah to approach him with a favor. I had nothing to lose. My interview with Barbara went well, and he didcompliment me on doing my homework....

January 2021. Camarillo, California. Thirty-eight years have passed since I interviewed Barbara Bien, mother of Steven Wood, the seventeenth victim of Freeway Killer, Bill Bonin. The memory of that interview is still fresh in my mind. The day I met Barbara, we sat in...