How A Hillside Strangler Nearly Went Free

Armed with a new kind of bomb, militant unionists were waging a nationwide campaign of industrial sabotage against their perceived enemies. In 1910, they set their sights on the West Coast's biggest target. The result, now largely forgotten, was one of the deadliest terror attacks in the country's history.

When a violent felon with a long record kidnapped a 12-year-old girl from a slumber party in Northern California in 1993, it triggered a massive search -- and far-reaching changes in the law.

Robert Blake, the star of "In Cold Blood," played killers with unsettling intensity and spoke openly of his own dark impulses. As his fame faded, he was charged with murdering his wife. The star witnesses: his former stuntmen. 

William Mulholland was the water boss who made L.A. possible. His reputation gave him unchecked authority as a dam builder. In 1928, that led to one of America's deadliest disasters--and the question of whether it was a crime.

From his law office in downtown Los Angeles, an attorney named Leon Lewis ran a clandestine operation to thwart Nazi and fascist plots in the 1930s and 40s to kill Jews in Southern California. His work went unseen and uncelebrated until long after his death.

On screen, Errol Flynn played a series of daredevils, fortune hunters, and suave romantics. Off screen, he lived a life of outsize debauchery and recklessness, including a persistent interest in underage girls. In 1943, at the height of his fame, he faced trial in Los Angeles on charges of statutory rape.

House of Troy is a new podcast from LA Times Studios tracing the rise and fall of USC football, from coach Pete Carroll’s back-to-back national titles in the 2000s, to the Reggie Bush scandal, to the series of missteps that followed. It’ll feature exclusive interviews with coaches, players, and USC officials who saw it all up close — and shine new light on how a college football dynasty came undone.

The Hillside Strangler murders terrorized Los Angeles in the late 1970s. The killers were a pair of sadistic cousins. One confessed. The other was set to stand trial—until L.A. prosecutors flinched. 

In 1984, soul legend Marvin Gaye was in the grip of a cocaine habit and living with his father, a hard-drinking Pentecostal preacher with whom he had a lifetime of bad blood. One day, Gaye gave his father a gun and told him it was to protect the house. Some would see an elaborate plan to orchestrate suicide by his father’s hand.

When retired art teacher Joseph Gatto was shot to death inside his Silver Lake home in 2013, the LAPD theorized that a fleeing car burglar might be the killer. The victim’s son, a prominent California legislator, found that story increasingly hard to believe.