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Are now listening to True Murder The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gasey Bundy, Stalhmer, The Night Stalker, Dck every Week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zupanski, Good.
Evening, introducing the victims and perpetrators responsible for California's most notorious shootouts, lynchings, and assassinations. This account shows how homemade justice is never black and white in relating these histories. This discussion also analyzes how and why Hollywood storylines almost always follow the same skewed and unrealistic arc in which the bad guys abuse the good guys. The good guy takes the high road until the bad guy has gone too far and the good guy picks off the bad
guys one by one in an increasingly dramatic fashion. The book that we are featuring this evening is California Justice, Shootouts, Lynchings and Assassinations in the Golden State, with my special guest, journalist and author David Kolchik. Welcome to the program, and thank you for agreeing to this interview. David Kolchick, Thanks for having me on.
It's great. I appreciate it.
Thanks very much. We've got to dig right into this. I very much enjoyed your introduction. But before we get to what you wrote in the introduction, which I think is very very important, and we need to explain the state of the nation at that time, and especially what were the circumstances and surrounding California at that time. How did they treat the Native Americans, the what you call the Californios. So let's first first question, what brought you
to this story? What give us your background or the reason why you decided to write this book about California Justice, lynchings, shootouts and assassinations in the Golden State.
Well, I have a complete fascination and love for California. My wife is from California, and that's how I ended up here. Met in Seattle, and I never had any idea that I would ever live in California. It never occurred to me. So once I was here, I was just enthralled by the history that surrounds our state. And
I worked as a process server. Well, I was writing this book, and I traveled all over northern California, and I got to through other books that I had, I got to see places where these things happened firsthand, and I thought, you know, there's a lot a big history of taking justice in your own hands in California. And this book goes all the way from you know, eighteen
fifty until nineteen ninety eight or so. California just has this big history of vigilante justice, and I don't think that people knew about it.
Okay, let's that's a good segue, because as you write in your introduction, you explained further that you said in between, and this was fascinating to me, you know, and pretty horrifying. Eighteen forty nine to nineteen fifty three, you say there were over two hundred lynchings, and so as you write in the beginning of California Justice, there have been thousands of books and movies made about persons taking the lawn to their own hands, as you mentioned, and you talk
about that basic storyline. But to refute that storyline that we see in the movies and we've read in the books, tell us really what California was like at that time in the eighteen hundreds, and I alluded to it about how the Caucasians that were there were treating the Native Americans and the Mexicans. So tell us a little bit about the history in California in eighteen hundreds to set the stage so that the more fully understand some of this book California Justice.
Well, California had the explosive population growth once the gold rush started in eighteen forty eight eighteen forty nine, and Sacramento, for instance, went from eleven Caucasians to twenty thousand in a matter of a few years. And when that happened, you know, these miners showed up and most of them were just just people ought to try something new, just
to get a shot at it. A lot of people don't realize that when people came to California for the gold Rush, a lot of people ended up going back home after seven or eight years, were ten years or so they a lot of them just didn't stay. They came here, a lot of them came here and died. And back in those days, you know, people didn't carry ideas around and you know, Uncle Joe went out west and they never saw them again. You know, there was no police at all out here. And even today, you know,
California is a massive state. We have over thirty mountain ranges in the state, you know, deserts, everything from I like to tell people that we have more red neckt than most people have people in their states because the state is just so massive. And at the same time, even today, you can drive down state highways in that see a car for a half hour. So even today
it's still a fairly you know, extensive, extensive place. When people came to California the Gold rushy, the average age was twenty six years old, so basically it was like a giant frat party here. People. The water was bad, so people drank alcohol all the time. You know, an egg costs a dollar, which would be crazy now. Even a shovel costs fifty dollars, which you know you can go to home depot and pick up for fifteen bucks
or something. You know, nowadays. So you know, without having grandma and neighbors and people knowing what they were doing, a lot of these people misbehaved terribly and they would take pot shots at Indians just for no reason, you know, they would just Actually when the gold miners first came out here, the Native Americans that lived in California were here for fifteen thousand years and they had a complete civilization set up along the rivers, and California split with
the status lat or the San Joaquin River coming from the south to like the San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento River that flows north, and all these rivers flow from the mountains into it. The natives had villages about every two miles, maybe thirty to three hundred people. They all traded among each other, and their family bond was everything. If they had a fight with another village, they tried.
They they did not hurt each other. They played coup on each other, and if somebody was injured or hurt, the other person's village would would make amends for it, even if it meant that the murderer had to work as a slave for that village for so many years or things. So everything was already civilized here when when the Spaniards came, and of course they were you know, backed by the Catholic Church and everything, and they always had priests with them, and they didn't realize that they
were in the Garden of Eden. They were. They were all the natives are naked and they just eat food that's on the ground. It's like sounds like the Garden of Eden to me. Yes, So if you can imagine, is basically what happened to California to the Native Americans that lived there. They first were waked out by smallpox in around eighteen forty five or so when Fremont came out here. Within a year, nine of the natives died. It was just massive, massive death. Measles, smallpox, things like
that just wiped them completely out. So by the time the gold Rush happened, you basically had a civilization like in the Mad Max movies, just stragglers from villages, people without their families anymore. And so when the gold Rush people came, you know, they saw the most pathetic people
you can even imagine. They were all just you know, their families, their children, their wives, their husbands were all dead and so they you know, gravitated towards where the white civilization was, and that didn't work out very good most of the time.
Now let's get to let's get to some of the examples that you have in the introduction as well. There just for example, you note in eighteen sixty three is one of the first stories that you note right in the introduction to demonstrate the point that you just made, and where they some ranchers discover their horses are gone. So tell us the process of taking justice into your own hands, law into your own hands in that story that you write in the introduction eighteen sixty three.
Yeah, that was up around Chico, which is about an hour north of Sacramento. That's right of Chico's College Child and so outside of Chico. In eighteen sixty three, this guy's horses disappeared, so they figured some Native Americans to come. The first Native Americans they came across, they lynched, and the next day of the horse verses came back to the barn. It turned out that they just went for
a hike and they weren't stolen at all. In Yuba City until the late seventies, there was a bar there that had a photograph on their wall of a tree, a big live oak tree with like twenty bodies of Native Americans hanging by ropes for their necks on it like a Christmas tree. So it was bad. Most of the most of the men were dead. The women were made into prostitutes for the most part, and the children
were made in the slaves farm labor. The funny thing is, I thought, this is funny is that when you know, all the miners came out here, they didn't bring women with them. There were very few women here, and the Native Americans thought that the white men were all gay, which I think is hilarious because they're like, where's women? Yeah, who travels without their family? So right, go ahead, Dusku County doing. In the eighteen seventies, they made a treaty
with the naive Americans. They invited them from all over the place to come and have a feast, and they had a big barbecue and they made Indian bread for them, and they poisoned the Indian bread. And they figure up to ten thousand people may have died from poisoning or from getting gunned down afterwards.
Wow, amazing. Yeah, Now in this first first chapter you still have what we're talking about is the San Francisco Vigilante Committee of eighteen fifty one, and then again was another version in eighteen fifty six, and you call it a phantom government set up in place of the ultra corrupt officials official one that was all that allowed criminals at that time and politicians to commit all kinds of crimes including murder, robbery, and assault, basically with impunity. So
these were known criminals. So tell us a little bit about the formation of the San Francisco Vigilante Committee. This is a fascinating story to start our interview.
Yeah, the the you know, no one had ideas and no one could check what somebody was before they came to California. So all kinds of criminals and low lives came here too, and a lot of them were professional politicians back east. I hate to say Philadelphia, but you know it was the whole Philadelphia lawyer thing is where that comes from. A lot of sharp eats came here, and you know, San Francisco just exploded. It went from a village and the sand dunes to a massive city
in just a mass matter a few years. And they pretty much did anything they wanted to, and they would be you know, if they got arrested, they'd be just turned around and released back into into general population. There was no consequences for them. They were untouchable. So they had In the eighteen fifty one case, a bunch of Australians managed to get to San Francisco and they were called the Sydney Hounds and they would just go into tent neighborhoods and you know, loot, rob, rape, kill whatever
they wanted. And it got to the point where, you know, real upright citizens were starting to get robbed by these guys. And so that's how the first one was formed, just to chase these offees and any bad people out. He was hung people from polls and things. This is a warning. And the ships were all full leaving town. A lot of them ran out into the mountains too, to the
gold Rush area. In eighteen fifty six, it was caused by there was even more of the corruption came back and King James of Williams, this guy had this really crazy name. He made it up because there were so many James williams Is everywhere. And he was the founder and editor of the San Francisco Bulletin. And he got shot by this city supervisor which is just incredible if
you think about it. This guy named James P. Casey, and he was a fixer of elections and he won his seat and the Board of Supervisors with more votes than were registered voters. So King Williams, King Jeans of Williams was assassinated by this gambler Charles Cora. And oh no, wait, that guy shot this US marshal. So that's that's what started.
It is that first this US marshal gets shot by guy and he gets released, and then the editor of the paper gets assassinated, and people just thought, well, this is too much. This is, you know, a US marshal and the editor of their major newspaper gets assassinated, and these guys are walking out in the street.
Now we're talking about a membership too, which was amazing to me, was over three thousand volunteers in military formation. You write, marched to the jail and demanded the two prisoners to be given up to this second Committee of Vigilance, and then with the membership of eight thousand at that time, and so the sheriff gave him up. It was a hasty trial. So tell us, tell us what happened at this trial at this trial.
They actually had a defense for it. They set it up just like any other court in America, because the court was so corrupt in San Francisco that they formed it just like it should be. And they well, you know, there was a lot of anger going on. There was the National Guard was sitting in a in a ship in the bay waiting to get orders to invade San Francisco, and they ended up they meet these this this gallows out of the building. It was a warehouse in San Francisco.
They called it Fort Gunny Sacks because most of these men that were in San Francisco too, a lot of them were in the Mexican American War, and when the war it was over, they just you know, hey, California and there's gold in thatt. So we had a whole bunch of ex soldiers and they weren't about ready to get pushed around, and you know, they were all trained and everything. So they took this place and they made like a maze of sandbags to go around it so
that you know, they couldn't get rushed. They had to kind of go through a zigzag through all the the sand bags and stuff, and it was totally secure. When they were done with the trial. They just basically pushed the guy out the window with a rope around his neck and died right out in front.
And nobody was prosecuted for that. It was the end. They disbanded. You say, they disbanded this and gave back the officials there the responsibility for law and order, didn't they.
Yeah, yeah, I write more about that in actually my latest book, Fruit Flakes and Nuts. I read about a couple of people that were part of that that their lives were even more bizarre afterwards. So because a lot of those people, like one of the guys ended up being the governor of Kansas or something, the founder of Denver, you know, these a lot of these people went on to be in government.
It's incredible. There's incredible story as we turned the pages, as this story seems to have, as we'll talk about in another couple of stories in this interview, where has some modern parallels with the last escape with the two prisoners in New York State and with their accomplice, So very very interesting that one hundred and fifty years there are some parallels with modern day escapes and true crime in the same vein of the citizens taking over and
a committee forming to bring to take on order into their own hands. The next story I thought, we're very fascinating was for what it really explores as the citizens of Little Lake strike back and Elijah Frost.
Yeah, the supporters and the Coats.
So it's a hat filled in McCoy's here of sorts with Elijah Frost and his family and the Coats, which are Union supporters. So tell us a little bit about this and before we talk about eighteen sixty seven October and election day in Mendocino County.
Yeah, the Coat's family hang let me, okay, the Coats family were well, the Frost family were Confederate supporters and they came up from from Missouri and settled in Medicino County. At the same time there was the Frost family. They were equally homicidal and a huge family, and they used to just get into big fights usually especially during the Civil War, and they were always well armed and fighting
and stuff. You can't even think about things like that and about California, you know, you think of like in the movies, the Wild West is always with the wagon trains and things like that, but much more things happen in California than pretty much everywhere else when it comes down to it. On October sixteenth, eighteen sixty seven, it was election day and the families were coming in. You know, people were coming in to vote, and you know a holiday back then, it should be now too, that'd be
really great. They ended up getting into a fight. The Frost picked a fight with the Coats and it killed five members of the Coats family and one member of the Frost family was chatting at chess with double barrel shotgun. Three other people of that family were seriously wounded. So you know, that put a big chill on the family feud and things kind of cooled out from there. But Elijah for us, his father was one of the ones that were killed. He's named after his father, and he had to a.
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Other brothers. They did nothing but get in the trouble. They were putting the custody of his older sister or something, and they basically just stole horses and just did any kind of petty crame.
As he could.
He was putting prison for stealing horses. And when he got out of prison, he had some friends that he met there and they came with him over to Little Lake. And this guy was Abajeon Gibson and Thomas McCracken, and so they would just you know, petty thievery break ins they were drunk all the time. They picked fights with people, shoot guns in the air, and people were getting tired of it. You know, it wasn't.
You know.
People were They were well aware of the whole wild West thing, and what they wanted to do is make it a civilized place and people could have their families there and and get on with commerce. In eighteen seventy nine, those guys killed an entire flock of geese. They tied their heads on a rail fence, and whenever people would press charges against these guys, they would always threaten them,
and so then people wouldn't testify and get released. And this time those guys were hot, and they would always jail these guys in hotels because they didn't have a lot of jails around. So while they were waiting for their hearing, they were threatening revenge anyone who would testify against them. And so on September fourth, they crowded people came over to the jail and took them out. Two
of them were handcuffed together. They tied them around the neck with a noose and threw them off a bridge, left them there until the next day to make sure that everyone thought.
That was the goal was to lead those bodies there so that the next town could here tell that the justice had been done and not to mess with this little town if you were thinking about it or contemplating it, wasn't it.
Yeah. And also they wanted the people to know that things are going to get a little better here because they weren't going to be putting up for this kind of stuff. But a lot in California were you know, it was demn right terrorism where people were just you know, threatened right there in the courtroom. You know, people have their own guns in the courtroom. They would pull out guns on each other and stuff. It's pretty amazing if you think about something like that happened now.
Yeah, absolutely. Now. Another aspect of the state of the nation and also especially California is the railroad and the advent of the railroad and what the railroad meant for society and for commerce and the economy. So tell us about the sentiment towards the railroad and why before we talk about John Sontag and his accomplices in eighteen sixty seven.
Yeah, Sontag was really something. He was a folk hero. The Southern Pacific Railroad ran California at one point a senator and the governor were part of the you know, the members of the Big Four of the businessmen that started it. You know, crazy if you think about it, you know, that would be yeah, it would be like if Bill Gates became governor of Washington State, you know, or or Mark Zuckelberg became governor or senator from California.
You know, it's just unbelievable. But then, you know, back then, they just the railroad did anything they wanted. So they would renig on on agreements. Because the railroad got land on every side of the track for five square miles, and so they would they would sell the land and say, if you improve it for five years, you could buy it at the market price when you first came to your property. And of course the railroad renigged on that.
They would. People would have beautiful farms and and uh, you know, crops and everything, orchard, and uh, the railroad would come and say, ah, we're not that's our land. We're going to take it from you. They also mean it's the rates freight rates. It was more expensive to ship something inside California on the railroads. That would be to send it all the way across country to Chicago. It was cheaper to send a product from Sacramento to Chicago than from Sacramento to Bakersfield, which is.
In the in the and and the farmers new this, right, right they because the the CEOs of the Southern Pacific.
Railroad were the governor and uh senators and you know all those things. Uh they were just they were they were heavily inside the government of California.
Now, to demonstrate this that this story is John Sontag is working for Southern Pacific Railroad and while he's working, his ankle is crushed, and now he's hospitalized, but he's discharged before he's fully healed. And when he goes back to work, when he's forced back to work, he requests light duty, and subsequently he's fired. So now he has this lifelong grudge against the railroad, against Southern Pacific Railroad.
And you just describe the sentiment in general for a lot of the farmers and the citizens that the railroad was exploitive to a lot of people. Now you talk about while he was recovering, Sontag met Chris Evans, and so tell us about the meeting of Chris Evans, and what kind of guy Chris Evans is and why he would have share any kind of sentiment that Sontag had.
Well, it's kind of funny. Chris Evans was born in Canada and he was a lot older. He was nearly fifty years old, and he took up came out to California and they settled in San Joaquin. He ended up having families and stuff, and he had seven kids. But his homestead was taken away because they found out that the title was invalid from he bought the property from a guy who really didn't known it. That happened a
lot too. That happened with Grizzly Adams who lost four or five different homesteads because he was just like, yep, I'll buy it, and then it turns out that the guy didn't even known it and sold it to him. So Evans, you know, he worked at a bank, he had a livery station in Modesto, worked land and stuff. But you know, he he, you know, they were all
getting screwed by the river heads all the time. Around the at time there was the Muscle Souls massacre where some railroad guys that were Pinkerton detectives were meeting up with these farmers who were representing the other farmers in the area, and uh, they were basically bushwhacked. Five of them were murdered, and of course one one railroad guy was murdered, and so they had totally you know, flipped out on it. There's there's even books now that don't
even get it right about about that whole massacre. So they said robbing trains, they were, they were, they were, they were tired of the railroads screwing around. They were pretty good at robbin trains. They actually they believed that they robbed a few, like in Wisconsin and Minnesota, kind of like practices before they came back to California to start robbing the banks.
Now you said, these are really well done robberies, and they're using explosives as well. So tell us what would they need the explosives for. Tell us. The circumstances that they would use those explosives were on our four pardon me, uh, in their robbery on that train.
Well, the money was in the railcar. It was in the mail car, and the mail car had it safe and there was always a guard in there. You could not get entry into the mail car from the other parts of the train. They had a door that was locked on the inside, and they would stop the train and if the person wouldn't open the door, they would put dynamite on it and blow the door up, basically blow up the whole car. They used that in the
movie which Castie and the Sundance Kid. That was a thing that happened with Evanson Santak where they put too much dynamite on the car and just blew it to beds and the money was flying everywhere.
But we're talking about sorry, go ahead, no, go ahead, we're talking about the money we're talking is like twenty thousand dollars.
Yeah, they did pretty good. They would get out like, you know, five grand. You don't imagine how much money five grand was in the eighteen eighties. I mean, that's an amazing amount of money. So they would get that money and then they would lay low and go back to their farms and their families, and you know, a year later they'd go hit another one. They hit one in eighteen ninety. It was actually pretty close to where
my publisher's building is. It's kind of funny, but hobo thought the train stopped and jumped off and they accidentally shot him, and they got twenty thousand out of that one. So now blood was spilled and the Southern Pacific was getting a lot more concerned.
Yes, and so they again, that's interesting that they would lay that low to go back to their farms and assume this other life and then wait that long even though they'd made that much money. So very uncharacteristic of today's Steves. It sounds like they're getting a close call. So tell us about the close call. And so what is their response to the close call?
Oh, their response to the the that close call.
Well, eventually they you're talking about eighteen ninety one. So tell us what happens as they proceed with these I mean, I mean on their third one, is there a close call that necessitates them changing how they do things? Tell us how they go.
Oh, yeah, they tried to blow up the express car the mail car, and the bombs were all duds, and the crewmen jumped out and start firing at him, and they had to run with getting anything, so they laid low again. They were you know, that's that's when they disappeared for a while and went out to the Midwest and shot and robbed some things. There's also a rumor that Jesse Jeans was involved with them, that he was
out in California around that time. They can't really be verified for obvious reasons, but there's there's some truth to it that it could be possible. So they they got out of there after the big shootout with the with the railroad people because they had the Pinkerton's after them and everything, so that they left, Uh, they left town for about a good year or so.
And but they return basically because a couple of them, two of them anyway want to come back, Evans and Santag one one, and maybe George doesn't want to come back once on Tag's brother, but two of them want to come back. And so they do come back to California. And then they proceed to rob again, don't they.
Yeah, And this time they grabbed a bunch of coins that turned out to be from Peru and were workless. And they didn't realize that until they got back to their height out where one of their farms was, you know, the Suntag's farm. So that was that was kind of like the smoking gun that brought the railroad people on them. They went to you know, they were questioning people everywhere, and nobody wanted to you know, they were folk heroes, you know, robbing the railroad. It was like when you know,
Dyllinger was robbing banks, you know, for nineteen months. That's that's as long as Dillinger robbed banks. He robbed nineteen of them. And you know, people were happy. You know, my father told me everybody would cheer when they'd say on the radio that Dyllinger robbed another bank, and they were like, good for them, you know. So it was the same thing with Southern Pacific. People didn't want to talk and uh, you know it was they were finding
they were getting stonewalled. So the sheriff went to Evans Ranch to uh to question them, and he's talking to his daughter, Eva, who was a real pistol. She went on after after the trial and things and wrote plays that they performed in San Francisco and she was she would portray herself and stuff and it's actually pretty humorous to raise money for their their legal fees. So they
were talking. The sheriff was talking to Eva and she was saying he was not there, and uh, actually the one of the Santags was right behind the door and blasted them with a shotgun. They ran away, Uh, you know, the wounded officers ran away, and that night they came up with a posse and they were waiting. They they didn't know that at the Suntig and Evans already.
Left and they.
They they approached them, and well, actually they were there, but they were in an outbuilding. So they came up to the house, you know, just like they do now where they surround it and everything. But what they didn't know is that they were really in an outbuilding. So they had their backs to them and they had a big exchange of gunfire, killed a deputy sheriff and George Santa got captured there and he's sang like a canary about all the stuff they did, but they still had
no idea where they were. What they would do is this, they were close to Secoia National Park and they would go hunting there and so they knew the area really well. There's tons of caves and things up there, and and the people in the area would bring supplies up to them and just leave them. They would just leave them knowing that they would find it. You know. It was just kind of like leaving an offering for heavens and Suntag,
you know. So the cops all came over to Evans farm and they found the coin, so they knew the Peruvian coins, and they found bags of cash and stuff, so they knew that they were totally involved in the in the whole situation. They were hiding out in in Sequoia National Park. And if you ever go to Sequoia National Park now there's there's only one road in and one word out, it's still a real hassle to get to, so you can imagine these guys doing it with horses
and stuff. They had a shootout again, had killed two more cops and and wounded another. So ten months later they were still hiding in Sequoia and living off the land and food that they had. They were watching their house all the time. They supposedly held up a stage coach that they thought that one of the Peekerton guys
was on, and they didn't steal anything or anything. They just had everybody get out and they saw that that the guy from the railroad wasn't on and they just told them to go, so they were like looking out for him, just ready to assassinate. So yeah, they got they ambushed another posse. They were just unstoppable until they were eventually caught really badly.
Now the now the what's interesting about this as well is that they're sentenced to life in prison. And then Evan's daughter comes into the story again and convinces this jailer named ed Morel to smuggle a gun and to help her father escape. So as Morel though very much like I said about I alluded to in the when we first spoke, was that very much like this recent New York State breakout with the two prisoners with the accomplice, is that this Morel is he gets rattled and he
shoots the police chief. He shoots the chief of Police J. D. Morgan, and then he spooks all the horses, and so Evans isn't able to escape, and then you figure, okay, well now now he's caught. But then again they, as you write in your book, these two guys horse jack another team and then they disappear. So finally rob somebody else, and finally they get imprisoned, and then you go, well, well that'll be the end of them. Well no, they're actually both paroled. So tell us a little bit about
what I just sort of skipped over there. Tell us a little bit about the details of what happens in this story that seems to never end well.
They were they were finally ambushed at their cabin and uh it was just a cabin that was built by somebody, and uh they waited for them to come back and they had a big shootout. There's a famous picture of Sontag laying against a manure pile, just shot up and all the pictureton guys are standing around like he's a trophy f a shot, you know, a twenty buck deer or something.
Uh.
Evans crawled all the way like for miles. He Uh, he crawled uh to to another farm and he lost Armine and I Sontag ended up dying there in the in the jail after you know, in section set in and he was shot at a manure pile. So I don't think it was gonna be clean. The ad moral is. It's just amazing that Eva must have had a real turming way about her two uh to persuade this Admiraal
guy who was just a waiter. Uh that the jail had this restaurant cater to the jail for food for the for the prisoners, and uh that she was able to talk him into a smuggling gun to her father and helping him jail break and then helping him wrap is just amazing. Yeah.
Absolutely, And and you also talk about Detective Smith too, being very very creative and being on the the arch nemesis of of Evans and Sontag in terms of he creating a rumor and spreading that rumor that Evans daughter was dying of diphthery as youngest daughter, and so he he waited for them and and of course Evans fell for it and Sontag fell for it, and they we're
both captured. So very very interesting. I wanted to just mention that we have to stop for a word from our sponsor, so we'll be right back, and we've got more to talk about, So we'll be right back and we'll talk about this message from DirectTV right now, they have a super offer nineteen ninety nine a month for
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nine eight zero three eight one two. When we last left off, David, we were talking about, of course, the fascinating tale against rage against the railroad. So let's now talk about the last It's a very short story, but I think it's important just to note the time and note this fascinating story considering the incredible time that it occurs. And so the last lynching in California, tell us when it was, and tell us a little bit about the
man that was. His name is lost into history, but nineteen forty seven in California, tell us a little bit about this last lynching in California.
Yeah. This story is to me is one of the most important things that I've ever written in all my books. And I would really like to get a cold case involved in this because some people are still alive that were involved. On January sixth, nineteen forty seven, these kids were coming back to their one room school from winter vacation or Christmas vacation. This in Siskio County. It's there's a lot of lynchings and things up in that area. These kids come to school and strung up in the
telephone poll. Friends of school was about the African American man with a capskin wrapped around his shoulders and he had his full bullet holes. And there were eight grades that attended this. I had an eyewitness told me this story. He was just a kid when it happened, and you know, the kids are all shocked, and the teacher just pulled down the shades and cops came. My witness that saw this, he went to use the outhouse outside and come to a tall man wearing a cowboy hat, and he asked
what happened. He said, this is what happens when you when you wrestle cattle. Supposedly, this guy was caught wrestling cattle. He had a calf, and he was tentatively identified as a butcher who lived in the town of Reed, which is just kind of up the highway now from High five now.
But he.
Was caught wrestling this and butchering this calf, and they I don't know if they shot him there and strung him up or they strung him up and shot him. But it was reported in two different papers that etn The Gazette and Western Sentinel. They were weekly papers in
that area in Siskine County. They wrote about what happened, but all the copies disappeared from the library and from the papers itself, so it's never been Actually, no one really knew about it until I wrote about this and I found it by that there was it was kind of like it could have happened. And then I did some research and I found the guy that actually was there,
and he's a retired Marine major, I do believe. But so this was a straight out cover up to The guy that they killed was probably a veteran of the war. They killed him, they got away with it, and they cut down the body. No one knows what happened to it. It was in nineteen forty seven. There's a really good chance somebody who's in there was maybe eighteen or twenty years old, and they're still around there in their seventies.
And I was contacted by a radio production crew that was they were out of the Bay Area and they went up there to check out the story, and they got harassed. To this day, they were chased out, and I was told that some equipment was even destroyed, some of the recording equipments. So they're still teuching about that up there in Callahan.
Well it's nineteen forty seven, and I think everybody, I mean nobody can be that foolish to not have somebody in that small town that has the wherewithal to understand the ramifications of this story coming out eighteen forty seven, it's embarrassing. But the nineteen forty seven, So yeah, what's interesting too is that And what we haven't I really have mentioned that this book is chalk full of all
kinds of stories. So we're just talking about we're just featuring a few of the stories because we can't go through all of them. The one thing that's prevalent through all the stories is that there is a downright, outright pardon me, conspiracy in these towns with these vigilante committees, whereas no one ever comes forward, So either there's silence
from but they're silenced effectively. And I found that odd, given that you know from true crime itself that there seems to be always somebody that eventually will open up their mouth. But which is interesting about this is officially how many stories that are through this, throughout this entire book where people did conspire to keep their mouth shut forever.
Yeah, almost in every single one of these cases, especially where it was a lynching. Yeah, people knew and they kept quiet about it. You know, you have to realize that even now those small towns in California, there's still small towns and everyone knows each other, everyone knows their business, and there's the code of the Old West that is still strong here in California, where you don't ask too many questions and you can never ask a guy how many cattle he has, you know, you know, don't ask
too many questions. It's not a good thing that happens up in the up in the dry hills actually where we're having the big fires right now, because there's you know, a lot of illegal marijuana cultivation up there in meth labs, and people know about it, but no one says anything because that's just the code of the West out there.
Right now.
I wanted to ask this question too, because you do have a theme that goes through this book obviously that you've decided to write about. Again, not every single crime, not every single murder. You would it would be like you say, the size of a huge telephone book, and that would mean just be scratching the surface. But what is it about that about assassination? Because we're going to talk about now about Sir Hans, Sir hann and the
assassination of Robert Kennedy. Why is it that you have included lynchings and from eighteen sixty and what is it that connects this assassination we'll say, of Robert Kennedy, and we'll also talk about assassination of Harvey Mill and others in San Francisco. So tell us what it is about this assassination or the assassination of prominent figures that's in the theme of this book, which includes lynchings and stuff that happened one hundred and seventy years ago.
Yeah, there's a total thing about It's been taking justice into their own hands with Sir hanser Hand. I seriously don't believe that Sir hanser Han actually murdered Robert Kennedy. There's to so many, so many errors in the whole case that you know, and plus their handser Hand was an apolitical person. He was kind of a Gomer Pile type character. You know, he got kicked in the head by a horse, and uh, you know, he just wasn't
out there. He wasn't somebody who would even foul politics, let alone have enough any kind of gumption to as fascinate one. And before Robert Kennedy was shot, people saw a woman in a polka dot dress talking to Sir Hans or Hand, who was just a bus boy and at the Ambassador Hotel, she was talking to him, and then supposedly he went and shot him. But you know, it doesn't it doesn't really add up. He uh he he had no reason too to shoot Robert Kennedy, but a lot of other people did.
Now tell us you've got to go backwards now that you've opened up this, you know, open up this Pandora's box here. So let's talk about as you do in your book about the political climate in nineteen sixty eight, the circumstances that brought Robert Kennedy to the position that he was about to endeavor to. And so tell us what happens involving Sir hanster Hamm. But tell us before that, the political climate and the circumstances that Robert Kennedy found himself in.
Well, I was ten years old when this happened, So I was young enough to or old enough to be aware of what happened. I was actually, you know, in the house when my parents were watching, you know, when he got shot and stuff. So it was like hotly cow. But you know, nineteen sixty eight was you know, there was a very turbulent time politics, and we were in Vietnam. Actually my brother was in Vietnam exactly at that time, you know, just some hick guy from a small town
in Michigan. There were like seven people in this town of five hundred people that got sent to Vietnam, which is uh, you know that that affects people. And Johnson decided not to run for reelection, and Nixon was in there and Kennedy, you know, he was the attorney general when his brother was president, and he made a lot of enemies, especially with organized crime and the unions and things, and you know, people America was really split. It was
even the Democratic Party was divided. But something about Kennedy just inspired people and they felt there was a hope, you know, partially just because of his brother and partially because he Bobby came. He was a very earnest man, and you know, he was on the side of the people, and of course when that happens, there's usually always some kind of trouble or some people that want to stop that kind of thing.
Now, he was in light of his brother, the president, being assassinated. Robert Kennedy, as you write in your book, really didn't have didn't have a security force that seemed to take the assassination of his brother into consideration, or will say, the possibility of him being assassinated as a possibility. So tell us a little bit about who was on the security staff, but basically what type of security really had.
He basically had no security at all. Actually, after his assassination, that's when the Secret Service was decided that they were going to protect all people running for president with the Secret Service. He had writer George Plimpton, he had a football player Rosie career, a couple other big guys, but basically that's all he had was just as uh, big football friends and big writer friends, and and there was
no other security around. So whoever that they knew that the security was light, they found.
It was.
It was like a total hoax that there was a door gm They had extra bullet holes in it. They were different caliber. And the assistant police chief back then was Darryl Gates, who was the Los Angeles police chief during the Rodney King riots. He was in charge of all of all the evidence. The gun for the door frame was dissemboled. It was supposed to be for texts for tests and X rays, and they said it wasn't important.
They've destroyed it. So there were there were more bullets shot than could have been in the pistol that Uh, Sir hanser Hand used.
Robert Kennedy had had expressed his war against organized crime, and as you write, you don't talk about that, but you make the connection in terms of that when sir her Hand, Sir hann is unlikely a political person, again, connected to nothing that would seem to indicate anything like this. When he shot Robert Kennedy was right behind the ear and you talk about that, and I've read that reference before in you know, in a typical mafioso execution style, wasn't it.
Yeah, And with the same caliber of gun too when when him into hit. You know, you always see in the movie they have a giant gun that like rattles windows. But basically they use small caliber pistols and they just use you behind the ear because no one pays that much attention to a pop. That's a little louder than a plastic bag being broken. But you know, you hear a great big pistol go off, you know, forty five Uh, people are gonna look around when you hear a pop.
People aren't going to turn around too much. It could just be a balloon or something. I don't think that that labor or mafia killed him. I'm putting my money more on like CIA or some other kind of secret organization that's within America at that time. But he had no shortage of enemies, that's for sure. What do you talk about is for two that Nixon was running against him, and so is George Wallace. So yeah, there's they met very likable people.
You know, you talk about Sir Han, Sir Han when he is grabbed by someone one of the security in the audience. He's still you say, he's freakishly strong, is able to get another couple of shots off into Robert Kennedy and also a couple other people as well, and they're these four huge security guys are having a hard time with this guy. So tell us a little bit more about this battle, because that was something that I hadn't read very much at all about that actual altercation on that day.
Yeah, you know, Sir hansor Han was just this little guy. He actually wanted to be a jockey at one point, that's how tiny he was. But after he you know, he he fired his good you know, Rosie Greer, who is one of the biggest football players of the time, just a math of man. You know, he had a hard time pulling him down. There were four guys on him, and he kept on firing. He hit Kennedy two more times after he was being pinned down. However, those two
shots could have came from somewhere else too. Didn't necessarily mean that he might have fired a gun, but it doesn't mean that there wasn't somebody else firing gun at the same time. As a small caliber like that, with all the noise going on, the commotion, trays falling, carts getting knocked over, people screaming.
Yeah, and what did they Was there any determination that Sir Hans, Sir Hanna had any mental issues? Was that ever considered as a defense and was there any was there any talk of that?
Well, yeah, they said he was temporary insane, but they didn't care. They just roaded him in for a first degree murder, five degree five councils, a fault of the deadly weapon. I when I was promoting this book, I went to Bakersfield, of all places, and you know, I'll, I'll go to this bookstore. And I get there and there was a group of retired prison guards. They had
their own little book club. And when I walked in, like twenty of these guys that were in her sixties were like approached me as soon as they walked in, holding my books. And several of them worked at where the Cochraine were. Sir hanser Hand is living out the rest of his life, and they told me a few funny things about him.
He was.
They said that he was a total whiner, you know, not a tough guy at all.
He was just like this, this.
Yeah, big complainer, unlike you know, Charlie Manson, and you know all the other criminals that they have in there, and here's this guy's supposed to, you know, have assassinated a guy running for president, this famous family, and he is the most uncriminal person in the prison.
What I always found interesting given that Robert John Kennedy's assassination and then again this seemingly lax security and lots of people, like you say, with motive to kill him, and then the suspicious motiveless criminal to basically have done it. And again, as you write in here too, there are some interesting things where evidence is sort of lost or misplaced, sort of at least at least giving notion to some
of those conspiracy theories. But it seems that this is one of those conspiracy theories that really hasn't had that really didn't have that much traction I think in the public.
Yeah, and the media, things were different then. I mean, if you can imagine, you know, if we had the media you know that we have now everyone has a camera. Now everyone has a camera, and you know, you think about nineteen sixty eight, even a video camera weighed fifty pounds back then you know, we're clumsy and everyone saw you coming. You have to have a big rack of
lights to light up everything. And you know nowadays, well just here's like one thing is that I've had some older relatives tell me about how bad crime is and things, and I'm saying, no crime has actually gotten better. The cops have gotten more professional in most cases, we hope,
but you know, they are more educated. Back in the old days, it was like, you know, Billy Bob just came back from the army and you know he ain't got no job, you know, and they'd say, okay, here here's a billy club and a gun and a badge. You're a cop. And you know now when a child gets killed in Florida, we find out about it all the way across the country in a matter of hours, and it's a you know, they'll have a whole trial on cable TV when it's really just a local story.
So you hear about all these things now that used to be local stories that are blown up into big, major nationwide stories. Is is it a good thing? I don't know. Is it a bad thing? I don't think it could ever be a bad thing. If you know, people see how our justice system works, even if it fails or they think it fails. You know, sometimes there's a criminal that gets found not guilty and people are mad,
but it's like they were found not guilty. You know, what are you going to say that's they were found not guilty. You can't just because public opinion says that this person did it. That's just not the way our system works.
Well, you have to you have to let Casey Anthony know about that Vieuse Sheppard as she can't get out of her own house for the rest of her life.
So yeah, you know, I mean, that's that's the perfect case. It's you know, even ten fifteen years ago, it would have been you know, on page twenty three on section B of the paper. You know, no one would have you know, even remembered her name. But now things are a lot different. You know, I can think, you know, just where I live right here in Sacramento, I live
really close to the American River. Well, during the Grove Rush days, that was basically not only were there ship steamboats going up and down the river, but on both sides of the river there were you know, a mile wide road that wagons and freight and things and stage coaches were shipped out to you know, the the gold mines out there, so basically where I live was a super highway on it two years ago.
Well, let's talk about warfare at city Hall, because this is one of those cases that I'm familiar with. But again, thanks to you, you've uncovered some facts and tied it into one of these stories that's very very compelling to everyone,
especially Americans, and that's Jonestown. So incredibly, we have this story that illustrates very clearly a lot of things that and that's why it's near the end of the book as well, but very very important story in what it demonstrates and illustrates very clearly and all the connections it has to in these other stories like Jonestown, which is
a story very much onto itself. So let's talk about in nineteen seventy six, George Moscone and he is the mayor of San Francisco, and he's fifty seven years old, so tell us or pardon me, forty seven years old. So tell us a little bit more about the situation with George Moscone as as the mayor of San Francisco.
Yeah, San Francisco, they always wanted to be high falutin and they liked their blue bloods, and Moscone was anything. But his father was a milkman, you know, owned his mom worked at a liquor store on weekends and stuff. His father actually went mad, was put in the mental hospital. And he's a good Catholic boy, and you know, worked his way through school, became an attorney, you know, worked his way up the ladder. Because you know, San Francisco,
they don't vote for the mayor. They vote for city council people they call city supervisors, and then the city supervisors vote for the person who's going to be the mayor. So it kind of goes different different than it does in a lot of other towns. When Moscone came up, and at the same time, Harvey Milk, who owned a camera shop in the Castro district, he openly gay man back then, and even in San Francisco has had time.
The police used to raid gay bars there and basically like to steal everybody's wallet and beat up people and get a few drinks on the house and leave. Happened a lot, and so there was tension growing among the gay population there. San Francisco became a mecca for alternative lifestyles because that's where the navy bases were in the army basis, And so if you were caught doing something and you were getting get dishonorably discharged, you would be
discharged in San Francisco. And so instead of moving back home to you know, Thunder Bay, Wisconsin or something, you know, and try to explain to your family why you were dishonorably discharged, they would just stay in San Francisco. Right, So, you know, it used to be you know, now it's not a you know, it used to be a rough town, but now it's you know, a millionaire's paradise. So yeah, But the year that that they were all elected were
Moscone and Harvey Milk and Dan White. It was because they decided instead of having a large supervisors where you just get a big pool of people and you vote for it and the top sixteen people get in, they decided to have it in the districts so that there'd be a representative of certain neighborhoods or certain parts of town. And so that's how Harvey Milk and Dan White got in to into office.
Now, tell us about Dan White. You say, he's all American fellow from you know, Irish background, working class, a former Marine sergeant. You said he was a Vietnam vet who apparently later admitted that he had never fired his weapon at anyone the entire time he was in Vietnam. So tell us a little bit more about Dan White and what develops between Harvey Milk and Dan White as supervisors.
Well, Dan White was kind of pushed into the position to run for the city supervisor. He he was, you know, just backed up by by the powers that be to Uh to represent the part of the city of the South Side Valley Excelsior is real nice neighborhood. Now I can't get a house for less than a million dollars there. So, you know, they thought that Mosconi and Uh and Milk were too liberal. H they weren't pushing the city, pro downtown, pro business power base was disappearing.
So but.
Dan White was was a fireman, and this has come out just recently is that he was actually homosexual, and he had a very self hate problem because he couldn't admit to what he was and so instead he took his anger out against gays. That way, they only made like ten thousand dollars a year. So Harvey Milk had his own store and employees and things. But Dan White ended up selling like a big He had a big potato stand over at Fisherman's Wharf that he was set
up in. Uh. But White didn't know how to play politics at all, and he, you know, he would actually take people at their word and stuff. And he once pitched an idea about having a board of supervisor's softball team and everyone laughed at him and stuff. He just didn't think that he would be able to to get anything done as a city council person. And he was, you know, going broke basically. You know, he had a family to support and he was just getting pressure from
everybody on how to do his job. And he just wasn't cut out for politics. So he put in his resignation and then changed his mind about it and he went to Moscone. He actually snuck in the city Hall
because he was so well known. He knocked down a window on the first floor and like there was a janitor's area, addressing room, locker room or something, and he said, oh, hey, I got my I D and he just crawled in through the window and that's how he got into city Hall with his gun, and he went to talk to Moscone, and Moscone said that he was not going to accept him to come back, and he shot him several times right in the face.
And then what did he proceed to do from there.
Well, then he walked over to Harvey Milk's office and shot him too, killed him right there. He went to leave and he bumped into Dianne Feinstein, who is our senator. Now she's a senior senator. She was just ready to quit politics completely when her return was done as a city supervisor. And she saw she saw Dan White walking down the hallway and she said hi to him, and he just walked by. She didn't know that he had just killed the mayor and Harvey White or Harvey Milk.
So when he was caught, he was caught fairly quick. Everyone knew he did it, and the police, you know, gave him a nice cell and they waited on him, got the meals out of restaurants and stuff like that, and yeah, it was he was like protected by the police department.
The police were very very unhappy with Harvey Milk, and that's why they gave their support to White afterward after the murder, and basically and that they were showing their symphonies for White and against Milk and Moscone with their policy that they were about.
To enact, right, yeah, yeah, And you know San Francisco, you know, like I said, the cops were very they were all dirty, Harry, you know, back up into even up until the eighties. I have a friend whose father
was a motorcycle patrolman in San Francisco. It's been dead for a long time now, but she told me that she was riding the bus home from Catholic school and she was in her Catholic school girl out and some kid on the bus started hassling her and beat her up, and she told her father, and he got off on the motorcycle, called some buddies and they never saw that kid again. It disappeared. So that's the kind of San Francisco you were dealing with. So when White had his trial,
he ended up getting like seven years. It's just just ridiculous. And they caused a riot in San Francisco that they actually use a lot of the photos for it for stock photos of riots, because they burned police cars and tipped over things. Diane Feinstein stepped outside of the city Hall to tell everybody, you know, to calm down and someone hit her in the head with like a rock,
and there's still clips of that around. She just disappears among you know, she's standing there in front of the microphone. There's all these cops and everything around her, and you see this rock hitter and she just goes down. So she ended up becoming the mayor almost by default. He was ready to go back and get out of politics completely, and now she's a US senator for twenty something years. What we didn't talk about, we we didn't talk about.
Sorry, we didn't talk about his defense, which was the infamous twinkie defense that he had eaten in his dunk food and was on a sugar high, and it wasn't absurd defense, but they did trott it out in court. What was the really the gist of the nature of the anger that the crowd had in that riot and who constituted the vast majority of those people that were rioting, Oh, it was.
The gay population of San Francisco came out along with a lot of punk rockers and former hippies and just basically people that were very angry. They wanted to see changes happen in San Francisco. You know, you always see that when somebody does something horrible and they're very connected and then they get, you know, a lap on the wrist. This was a total slap on the wrist. There are
things that happened when that riot happened. Cops went into the Castro and totally trashed out a bunch of gay bars and beat everybody with clubs, just like they it was a police riot. So while there's this riot happening up uptown, another team of cops went in just took it on themselves, put tape over their badges, and just started club and everyone they saw. Because the riot happened just as you know, people were upset, they were standing outside and then they were like, well, you know, they
saw more and more people. They started heading towards City Hall. Before they knew it, they had thousands and thousands of people coming up towards City Hall.
And in the end, Harvey Milk really does become sort of a beacon for the movement of representing sort of oppression that it's at its work as well, because of he was so connected and so active in that gay community and then he was killed. So wasn't it wasn't he seen as that sort of martyr for this cause.
Yeah, he definitely was a martyr to that cause because you know, he was a funny guy. He was also pretty cranky. You know, he wasn't like mister nice guy. He was, you know, a wise guy, you know, New York first generation American, and he you know, he was He was one of the first people to go out there and say, hey, you know, it's none of your business what we do.
What was the inevitable fate of Dan White? What became of him?
Well, he got out of prison. He did not do that much of his time. He was paroled in nineteen eighty four, so he only did about six years after probation. Sinzeiner, the mayor, it said, don't come back to San Francisco. It's his hometown. There was no other place he ever lived. He was a total total San Francisco boy, you know, as much as Joe Demaggio or somebody you know. And
he did come back to his old neighborhood. And he ended up committing suicide only about a year after he got out of prison, almost right after he got off his probation. He tied the house is his ghast pipe and guessed himself.
Yeah, incredible, incredible, story, and tell us now about the Jonestown connection because it's not so tenuous, But tell us the connection with Jonestown because it's one of the stories again is very very compelling in American history.
Oh well you know about that, George, your your listeners know about Georgetown. Do they have you had?
Well, I'm just saying the connection that they have. We're not going to go through the Jonestown itself, just a connection that they have with San Francisco and the city itself and some of the players here.
Yeah. Well, Jim Jones, he you know, he had the People's Temple and uh it was the original one was right across the street from the Fillmore Auditorium. There's a post office there now, but before that was his church and he uh you know, he he fed people and and uh clothed people and did those kind of Christian things. Mayor Mosconi uh put him on a where was that he he put him on a committee for housing or
something now San Francisco's housing authority. He had no idea what was going to happen, and uh that that just happened. The whole People's Temple mass suicide or mass murder happened just before all. This happened just just a few weeks before Moscone was killed. So yeah, you know there's uh, there's the old line that comedians never tell jokes about that about the People's Temple because the punchline is too long.
Yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well I don't wanna. I don't want to laugh at because we always have victims and have been criticized, so and I really don't. But yeah, what I wanted to what I wanted to say with the Jonestown as well, is that, uh, the incredible story is that on Yeah, Harvey Milk, I guess mistakenly obviously was very supportive of Jim Jones even when there was criticism, and same as if I'm correct, not correct, is that Moscone was the same where they he had Jones.
The Jim Jones had duped these guys as well into believing that he was some benevol and soul and had some good ideas and so very very tragic story and quite the connection as well to two amazing stories, you know, with Maddy Milk masconey.
And you have to Matt, you have to remember that the People's Temple that they they brought a lot of voters in you know, for for Mascone and and for white. You know people would you know, take whatever advice Jones gave him about it, but he would produce the voters. When it came time for election day, he made sure that his people went and voted. And that's important, especially you know, in a city the size of San Francisco,
which is like nine by seven miles. It's actually very small city in area m.
Now, before we wrap up, David, I wanted to ask you what was the overall I mean, if you can't come up with one snap conclusion, but what was overall doing this project? What was your conclusion after all of this. I'm sure you went in with some preconceptions and then you came out with, as all authors do, with a different picture, at least a lot more informed picture. So tell us what you discovered after all of this that might have been profound.
I think that what I discovered most about this. And you know, this book came out seven years ago. It was you know, my first one. It was kind of my baby.
You know.
I had written a lot of articles and things like that, but this was my first shot as a book. And I guess what surprised me the most is that everyone who who took justice in their own hands believed that they were right. And that to me is is it's pretty powerful things. You know. We all have our ethics and things that we were taught by, our culture, where we lived, our parents, are whatever, the things that influence you.
But there is like right and wrong, and pretty much everybody knows that what is right and what is wrong. Sometimes when just like the terrorists family that lived up and look Out in nineteen oh one, or like in Little Lake too, the people had to take matters into their own hands or else they would have to live with terrorism. And people think of terrorism as a modern
day thing. But when you're in a town that's fifty miles in any direction to another town and you can only get around by horseback, sometimes you have to make those decisions. Sometimes they were right a lot of times. Most of the time they were wrong. Lake. They were probably right for doing that look Out. They were probably right in Yukaya when they hung forward they had four murderers in their jail at one time in eighteen ninety eight,
eighteen ninety five. The people were like, you know, here's this little town twelve thousand people, you know, county the size of Rhode Island, and you know, what are they going to do. They have four murderers in their little jail and none of them were from there, none of them had roots there. They got rid of them. They believe they are right and they were never caught, but they always anybody that's involved in any kind of situation like this, they're going to think of that for the
rest of their life. It's going to that whole thing is going to be burned into their memory. They'll never forget it. They'll never forget the smells, the sight, the last words of the people that they took justice in their own hands about that was something that they are all going to have to live with for the rest
of their lives. In the case in Santa Rosa, where these gangsters shot a bunch of cops, they were lynched and afterwards, actually while I was writing this book, came out that this one old man said, I was eighteen years old when that happened, and I was in on it, and he spun this whole story. I put it in a book, but really, you know, if he was an eighteen year old kid, he was just there backup muscle and show he didn't have anything to do with how
they were what they were doing. And you know, but evidently, you know, he died of an old man and he never forgot the lynching of those three gangsters.
What's interesting, too, is that we hadn't mentioned this. It seems like a good percentage of the stories in this book where there were lynchings that the people took the effort to wear masks, didn't they.
Yeah. Yeah, and everyone pretty much knew who all these people were. I mean, you know, you're hearing with these small villages basically, and you know they were your uncle, they were your father, they were your brother, they were your neighbors. And like I said before, no one's gonna, you know, be ostracized by their community because they turned in somebody who was basically in a VI's a anti justice that they couldn't fix any other way.
Yeah.
Wow, Yeah, it's a fascinating book. California Justice, Shootouts, lynchings and assassinations in the Golden State. I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking about this book for those that might want to look at other work you Like you say, this is your first true crime book. You have tell me tell our audience how many true crime books you have and how they might contact you if you're interested in If you have a website or a Facebook, tell us about how people might contact you.
So yeah, I'm on Facebook. I have a Death in California site on Facebook. All my books are available on Amazon, and of course they can always be ordered online, you know, good Reads or anything like that. My second book is Death in California, The bizarre, freakish, and curious Ways people die in the Golden State. There's plenty of murders and things in that one too, but there's also a lot of freak accidents and airplane crashes and things like that.
After California Justice came out, publisher thought they might want to lighten up a little bit. But I managed to sneak into Death in California. And my latest book is California's Fruit Flakes and Nuts, and it's about California crazy crackpots, creeps, centrics, stupid criminals. It's kind of my thing right now is very stupid crimes. In Fruit Flakes and Nuts, I kind of focus on people who lived pretty much a normal life and then had one bad day.
So yeah, I've read a little bit of it already with a session musician named Jim Gordon. I believe that it's again fascinating to tale about how he If you are listening to radio today, if you're listening to classic rock radio today, you're probably hearing him every day play the drums. He was on twenty nine records in one year alone and went on to be one of the most popular session drummers. So he's probably on something that you're going to listen to every day in, day in,
day out. So very very interesting book. But I want to thank you for coming on and talking about the most murderous of the three books that you have, which is California Justus and a fascinating story about lynchings and assassinations, all kinds of stories of all kinds of stories I've never heard of. And also just an amazing time in history again when you just when you think you know a lot about history, comes along this book. So thank you very much, and then you have a great evening.
Thank you very much for this interview, Thank you.
Very much for having me on the shows. A very because of the honor and a pleasure.
Thank you very much, David. You have a great night. Good night