California's Most Notorious Crimes: 1950-1999 - Paperback

by Margaret Laplante (Author)

True stories of murder, fraud, espionage, and crime unfold in California's dark history, from family inheritance killings to mafia figures.

California is known as the "Golden State." However, it has been said that "all that glitters is not gold." Within the pages of this book are true stories including the murder of a family for a 7.5-million-dollar inheritance, and a landlady accused of murdering seven tenants and burying them in her yard. Read about the murders of twenty-five farm workers buried in peach orchards, and a child who was murdered and buried in a pet cemetery. There is the case of the man wanted in forty-three states for passing half-a-million dollars in fraudulent checks using 350 aliases. Also within the book are the true stories of how twenty-six children and their school bus driver were buried alive, and how a simple shoplifting incident led to a bunker hidden in the woods where forty-five pounds of charred human remains were found. California mafia figures, "The Mick" and the "Capone of Los Angeles," are featured in this book, along with an espionage case that resulted in more than a million top military secrets sold to the Soviet Union.