“It is a beautiful hand: strong, with long, slender fingers and smooth skin, its nails ridgeless and pink. If you didn’t know Jonathan Koch—if you first met him, say, on the courts at the Calabasas Tennis & Swim Club—you might not suspect that his hand previously belonged to someone else.”
In 1982, a family disappeared from their Los Angeles home. A writer and former neighbor is still trying to put the pieces together.
From 1976 to 1986, one of the most violent serial criminals in American history terrorized communities throughout California. He was little known, never caught, and might still be out there. The author, along with several others, couldn’t stop working on the case.
The creator of the California-based food chain kills his mother, sister and, finally, himself.
From Hollywood to Anaheim, he had opened a chain of fast-food rotisserie chicken restaurants that dazzled the food critics and turned customers into a cult. Poets wrote about his Zankou chicken. Musicians sang about his Zankou chicken. Now that he was dying, his dream of building an empire, 100 Zankous across the land, a Zankou in every major city, would be his four sons’ to pursue. In the days before, he had pulled them aside one by one -- Dikran, Steve, Ara, Vartkes -- and told them he had no regrets. He was 56 years old, that was true, but life had not cheated him. He did not tell them he had just one more piece of business left to do.
As editor-in-chief of Variety, Peter Bart was one of the most powerful people in the entertainment industry. This piece got him suspended.
What it’s like to have thousands of fans who don’t recognize you.
A case of peafowl dividing a neighborhood.
In 1998, a cop named Jon Aujay went for a run in the desert. He never came back. The department decided it was suicide, but that is not the only theory.
The life of Kimi Peck, a former screenwriter, once married to Gregory Peck’s son, who turned to “saving” stray dogs.
A West Hollywood aesthetician made headlines after allegedly trying to have a business rival killed. But the real story, involving ongoing harassment and a member of the so-called Bling Ring, may be more complicated.
Nearly 70 years after Bugsy Siegel’s unsolved murder in Beverly Hills, a family finally comes forward: they know who did it.
A couple’s only son is killed in Iraq.
Yasiel Puig’s journey to the Dodgers.
The downfall of Hugo Schwyzer, feminist.
The undoing of Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who resigned in January amidst multiple swirling scandals.
A murder involving the late actor leaves unanswered questions.
On the mountain lions of Los Angeles.
A profile of legendary L.A. crack dealer Freeway Rick Ross, now out of jail and trying to sell everything from weaves to his own biopic, written by a journalist who has known him for decades.
On the meeting of shaggy-haired American ping pong ace Glenn Cowan and Chinese master Zhuang Zedong (who died this week), and how their fleeting friendship thawed relations between the twon nations during the U.S. team’s historic 1971 tour of China.
A reporter who investigated Scientology tracks down the man who once ran the church’s intelligence operations – and who may hold the secret to years of harassment (and the mysterious death of a pet dog).
A profile of Huell Howser, the happiest man on TV.
An attempt at writing about the football coach.
Suicide-by-subway, and how the dead haunt the living.
A profile of Doc Johnson, “the Procter & Gamble of sex toys.”
How one man made millions with a fancy hamburger.
