Writers celebrate the tentative deal with the studios with drinks, group hugs and selfies. They now turn their attention to support for actors on strike.

State regulators faulted two hospitals in Southern California for medication errors that put patients at risk, including one who suffered a brain bleed after receiving repeated doses of blood thinner.

Half the nation's federal wildland firefighters could quit if Congress fails to avert major pay cuts, according to the union representing federal employees.

Before blowing out the Denver Broncos on Sunday, the Miami Dolphins honored Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Ryan Clinkunbroomer, a fan of the franchise who was gunned down Sept. 16 in what authorities have described as an ambush.

The city is among the first to set new speed limits and is also looking to reduce speeds in business district areas.

The new legislation expands a decade-old law that requires K-12 schools to allow students to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity.

Residents of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties have until Oct. 16 to file their taxes.

Most California voters possess a more nuanced view on the lasting legacy of slavery and how the state should address those wrongs. Still, there is overwhelming opposition to cash reparations.

The Republican Party will hold a presidential candidates debate at the Ronald Reagan library Wednesday. It's a bad fit. The GOP's modern idol is exactly the opposite of Reagan in personality and character.

The LAPD is investigating the midnight heist of a Buddha statue valued at $1.5 million from Barakat Gallery on La Cienega Boulevard.

On February 10, 1947, the nude and mutilated body of a 40-year-old pilot, nurse, and small-time actress Jeanne French was discovered in a vacant lot in West Los Angeles.

The woman had been beaten and stomped to death. A cryptic message, “Fuck you BD,” and “Tex Andy,” was scrawled onto her skin with red lipstick.

Investigators who arrived at the scene were shocked to discover that French’s murder bore eerie similarities to the Black Dahlia case. Not only did both crimes occur less than a month and seven miles apart, but both women suffered extensive pre and post-mortem injuries. Media reports speculated that the initials “BD” found on French’s body could refer to the “Black Dahlia.”

On the same day of the discovery, the police arrested and questioned French’s husband, Frank. The 51-year-old aircraft plant worker told the police that the two had separated about a week ago and had agreed to live apart for six months following a domestic violence dispute.

After further questioning and a polygraph test, Mr. French was cleared of any suspicion.

Captain Jack Donahoe told the press that French’s shoes did not match the plaster cast of the footprints found at the scene. Donahoe also noted that French’s husband was unable to drive a car, while the killer was believed to have dragged the victim from a car to the desolate field where it was found.

Three days after the shocking discovery, investigators received a detailed description of a man with whom Jeanne French is believed to have shared a late-night snack.

A waitress from an all-night Culver City cafe told the police she had served Mrs. French and her unknown male companion shortly after midnight. The waitress described the man as a short Latin man with a neat mustache.

The couple reportedly appeared to be on good terms and engaged in lively conversation.

French’s mutilated body was discovered eight hours later, a mile from the restaurant. Autopsy results revealed that she was likely murdered an hour after leaving the restaurant.

More than seven decades have passed, yet both the Dahlia and French cases remain unsolved. Despite exhaustive investigative work, investigators have struggled to unearth any substantial leads.

Behind the Tape Photobook features 17 never-before-seen graphic shots following the bloody footsteps of Black Dahlia’s killer, as well as nearly a thousand more crime scene photos.

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A handpicked roundup of 15 little-known true crime facts featured in True Crime Factbook.

Thanks to a legal loophole, you could technically get away with murder within a fifty-square-mile section of Yellowstone National Park.

Under the Sixth Amendment, the accused has the right to a jury composed of people from the state where the murder was committed and from the federal district where it was committed.

However, as the small sliver of the park, known as the Zone of Death, is uninhabited, it would be impossible to form a jury.

According to Brian Kalt, a law professor at Michigan State University, who brought the loophole into the spotlight in 2005, “the loophole looms, waiting for a murderer to exploit it. I feel like I’ve done what I can to prevent this; the blood will be on the government’s hands.”

Upon Samuel Little’s arrest in 2012, police learned the killer had a near-photographic memory.

During confessions, the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history described his crimes in painstaking detail, sometimes smiling or laughing at the memory.

A Texas ranger who interviewed Little noticed that the killer liked to draw and gave him art supplies. Little went on to produce over thirty color portraits of women he strangled and handed them over to the FBI, who released the sketches to the public in hopes someone would recognize the women and provide a crucial clue to identify them.

The strategy was successful as two women who appeared in the sketches were identified.

While serving in the U.S. Army, Bobby Joe Long got into a motorcycle accident and suffered his seventh head injury.

During his time at the hospital, Long discovered a new obsession with sex, which drove him to relieve himself at least five times a day.

Long continued the practice at home despite twice-daily intercourse with his wife, claiming the accident made him hypersexual.

At one point following his release from the hospital, Long could no longer achieve enough satisfaction and began his career as the “Classified Ad Rapist,” sexually assaulting at least fifty women and murdering ten.

Lois Gibson, who holds the Guinness World Record for being the most successful forensic artist of all time, has helped Houston Police Department solve over 1,000 crimes.

Gibson’s motivation to seek justice came from personal experience, when, at the age of twenty-one, she was assaulted and nearly killed.

“I got attacked by a guy who almost choked me to death for twenty-five minutes straight,” said Gibson.

Later, by accident, she witnessed police arresting her rapist.

“I saw the arrest,” she said. “I know what it is to see justice … It changes your life.”

During her career, Gibson worked in a number of high-profile cases and authored a textbook, Forensic Art Essentials.

In 1981, Clifford Olson reached a controversial deal with the authorities, agreeing to confess to eleven murders and show the location of the bodies in return for $10,000 being paid into his wife’s trust for each victim.

Olson’s wife received $100,000 in total, with the eleventh body being a “freebie.”

During his time in prison, Olson continued toying with police and journalists, promising them details on unsolved crimes in return for privileges and media coverage.

The killer also submitted poems and stories to literary contests and used his manipulative narcissistic personality and his quasi-knowledge of the law to taunt lawyers and the families of his victims.

In 1984, Charles Manson was drenched in paint thinner and set on fire by a fellow inmate, Jan Holmstrom, who claimed Manson threatened him for participating in the Hare Krishna religious sect.

Manson suffered burns over 18 percent of his body, concentrated on his face, scalp, and hands.

“He was screaming, ‘My face is burned!’” said the prison guard who responded to the incident.

“Manson was lucky because it turned out that his beard prevented much more serious injury.”

In 1999, Joel Rifkin unveiled his plans for “Oholah House,” a proposed shelter for prostitutes that would include drug treatment, counseling, medical care, and job training.

“It’s a way of paying back a debt, I guess. Sitting here until I die or get murdered is not paying a debt,” Rifkin said.

In his ten-page proposal, Rifkin included an idea for the “Motivation Room,” where women could be “scared straight” with photographs of the violent ends prostitutes often meet. “There could also be field trips to morgues,” he said.

“These girls think, ‘I can’t be touched,’” Rifkin added. “Well, seventeen girls thought that. And now they’re dead.”

During his incarceration, Peter Sutcliffe proved himself to be very disliked among his fellow inmates and patients, leading him to be seriously injured four times.

In 1983, career criminal James Costello slashed the left side of Ripper’s face with a broken coffee jar, resulting in injuries that required thirty stitches.

Sixteen years later, convicted robber Paul Wilson attempted to strangle Sutcliffe with headphones, however, the luck was on Ripper’s side — two other patients intervened and saved Sutcliffe’s life.

A year later, fellow patient Ian McKay stabbed Sutcliffe in both eyes with a pen, leaving the Ripper blind in one eye and severely damaged the other. Ten years later, Sutcliffe was attacked again when Patrick Sureda unsuccessfully tried to completely blind the Ripper with a knife.

To this day, the McMartin preschool trial remains the most expensive trial of all time.

After the mother of one of the students made allegations of sexual abuse against a teacher at the preschool, police sent a letter to 200 students’ parents detailing the allegations, asking them to question their children.

This resulted in 360 children claiming they had been abused. A series of interviews conducted by inexperienced investigators were highly suggestive and invited children to pretend or speculate about supposed events.

The case dragged on for seven years, involved testimony from hundreds of witnesses, charged seven defendants on hundreds of counts, received massive media attention, and cost $15 million. Yet, in the end, there wasn’t a single conviction.

In an interview several years after his arrest, John Wayne Gacy said that the murder of Timothy McCoy felt like some strange and violent form of sex.

“The splat of the knife, the screams of pain and fear, the awful “guzzling” of open chest wounds. It was like that Goodbar movie, where he stabs the girl in the end,” Gacy said.

When McCoy went still, Gacy experienced a mind-numbing orgasm.

“I felt exhausted, just totally drained,” the Killer Clown said.

“That’s when I realized that death was the ultimate thrill,” he added.

In 1982, while incarcerated in a high-security block, Donald Gaskins managed to kill a death row inmate, Rudolph Tyner.

Gaskins initially made several unsuccessful attempts to kill Tyner by lacing his food and drink with poison but later opted to use explosives. Gaskins rigged a device similar to portable radio with a C-4 plastic explosive and placed it in Tyner’s cell, under the pretext that this would allow them to “communicate between cells.”

He then instructed Tyner to hold a speaker to his ear at an agreed time and eventually detonated the explosives, instantly killing the condemned inmate.

Gaskins later said, “The last thing he heard was me laughing.”

During his confessions, “The Kansas City Butcher” Bob Berdella claimed that the movie adaptation of John Fowles’ 1963 novel The Collector had a huge impact on him as a teenager and served as inspiration for his crimes.

Eerily enough, Berdella was not the only killer who took the novel as a source of inspiration.

The infamous murderous duo, Charles Ng and Leonard Lake, named their murder and torture plot “Operation Miranda” after the character in Fowles’ book. Lake was obsessed with the novel and had a copy of The Collector inside his bunker.

After being bludgeoned to death, Jeffrey Dahmer was left partially shackled until a forensic pathologist began an autopsy.

“Such was the fear of this man that chains were on the feet, even post-mortem,” said Dr. Robert Huntington, a forensic pathologist at the University of Wisconsin who performed the autopsy.

Although prison officials said Dahmer died within minutes after the attack, he wasn’t pronounced dead until he was taken to a hospital.

Upon learning of her son’s death, Dahmer’s mother Joyce responded angrily to the media: “Now is everybody happy? Now that he’s bludgeoned to death, is that good enough for everyone?”

After Randy Kraft was arrested, police discovered his “score card,” a coded list of sixty-one people Kraft claimed to have murdered.

Although the investigators were able to connect at least forty-three entries to Kraft’s victims, the killer never admitted his guilt and claimed the list merely referred to sexual encounters he had.

However, in one of his interviews, Kraft changed his story and said that the “score-card” was actually a list of people he was going to invite to a surprise housewarming party he planned to throw for his boyfriend, Jeff Seelig.

“One column was the names of people I wanted to invite and the other column were maybes. It was in code so he wouldn’t recognize it,” Kraft explained.

During Karla Homolka’s trial, the judge issued a publication ban, preventing members of the public from attending the proceedings and sharing the details of her trial with the media.

The ban was designed to ensure Homolka’s partner in crime, Paul Bernardo, received a fair trial in the future.

However, the plan did not work out well. Since the ban did not apply to the U.S. or anywhere else outside of Ontario, details of the proceedings, including Homolka’s testimony, were published by the American press, forcing Canadians to bring bootlegged newspaper copies across the border.

Although the trial occurred during the Internet’s infancy, the information was widely distributed through many chatrooms, and the rumors went beyond the confirmed details of the case.

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The morning of June 23, 1990 started out perfectly normal at a McDonald’s in Bellevue, Washington — until an employee went to take out the trash.

Lying incongruously near a pile of sweepings was a nude deceased woman. Although investigators saw no visible gunshot or stab wounds, they noticed something unusual – the victim’s body was deliberately posed.

“Somebody had taken quite some time staging the body. I had noticed there was a large size coffee cup lid covering her right eye. One foot was crossed over the other and her hands were folded over her stomach and they were holding a pine cone,” Detective John Hansen told the press.

The police knew they had a sadistic necrophile on their hands. What they did not expect was that they were facing a serial killer with one of the most distinctive methods of operation in history – George Russell.

On August 9, 1990, seven weeks after the first murder, a 13-year-old girl realized her mom hadn’t woken up for work yet. When she went to check on her, she walked into Russell’s second murder scene.

The victim was carefully positioned in an open display on top of her bed. She was naked, except for a pair of red and white high-heeled shoes on her feet. The victim’s legs were completely splayed and her exposed groin was facing the doorway of her bedroom. Inserted well up into her vagina was the barrel of a rifle that the victim kept under her bed, with its stock resting across her shoes.

This time, Russell slashed his victim’s ear and left 13 distinctive Y shapes on her body. She had been bitten and kicked with such ferocity that two broken ribs penetrated the chest cavity. Her head was bound in a plastic dry-cleaning bag.

Just as the investigators thought they were making progress investigating the first two murders, Russell claimed another victim.

Once again, the “Charmer” took his time to pose the victim. Her legs were spread and an electronic dildo was inserted in her mouth, with the book More Joy of Sex cradled in her left arm.

The victim’s spread-legged body was stabbed and covered from the scalp to the bottom of her feet with 231 small knife wounds, some in patterns.

According to Dr. Robert D. Keppel, the victims “were posed in sexually degrading positions: naked, arms spread or folded over as if in deliberate repose, holding or supporting items that revealed the killer’s attitude toward them, and legs deliberately spread.”

“The killer obviously received an intense sexual thrill from manipulating the victims’ bodies so as to demonstrate their vulnerability after death. These bodies belonged to him. As part of the pose, only items that the killer found at the crime scene were incorporated into the victim’s portraits—the crime shots that he knew would be taken by police photographers. He did this consistently in all three murders,” Keppel said.

Two weeks after the third attack, Russell was arrested while trying to break into the residence of his fourth intended victim Robyn Oldenburg.

In November 1991, the “Charmer” was found guilty of all three murders and sentenced to two life imprisonment terms plus 28 years.

Despite the conviction, in one of his phone interviews, Russell continued denying his guilt and told the press that much of the evidence against him was circumstantial and he had alibis.

“Supposedly I’m a Ted Bundy fan. I had books on him, but as far as a fan, no!” Russell told Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

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From Charles Manson publicly calling Ted Bundy names, to Sherriff Ken Katsaris revealing he had thought about murdering Bundy in his cell, here are 8 lesser-known facts about Ted Bundy from our best-selling True Crime Factbook.

Following Ted Bundy’s recapture in 1977, Pitkin County’s Sheriff’s Department greeted the killer with a sign that read “Welcome Home, Teddy.”

The judge immediately ordered Bundy to wear ankle restraints during court appearances after the first attempt to excuse him from wearing them resulted in an escape from Pitkin County Courthouse.

Bundy was unhappy with the judge’s decision, saying, “I’m at a psychological disadvantage cross-examining witnesses with these on.”

Prison guards had planned to hire a welder to install extra bars in Bundy’s cell after the reports that he was planning to escape again, but the welder never got around to it, and Bundy fled again.

According to one of Charles Manson’s prison friends, interviewed by investigative journalists Dylan Howard and Andy Tillett, the infamous criminal mastermind was not a big fan of Ted Bundy.

“Charlie knew his influence and how big he was. Sometimes he’d say, ‘Ted Bundy was a coward’—and then tell you he, Manson, was the greatest serial killer of all time,” the prison jail confidant said.

Following Bundy’s execution in 1989, Manson did not miss the chance to make a public statement of how he felt about the infamous serial killer:

“Bundy’s a rumpkin. Bundy’s a poop butt. Bundy’s his mama’s boy. Bundy’s out there trying to prove something to his own manhood — that’s got nothin’ to do with me. I don’t roll around with poop people like that.”

Many serial killers have paraphilias, but Ted Bundy took the term “fetish” to another level by being obsessed with white socks.

Bundy loved the fact that he possessed so many of them and fell into euphoria when his possessions were mentioned during court proceedings.

In Hugh Aynesworth’s book Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer, Bundy himself said:

“I’ve got a sock fetish. No question about it. I must have six or seven pairs right here with me in my cell. Socks are such a serious part of my life. They’re so very important to me. They kept reading the list of socks and all [in court] and I felt proud. Honestly, it didn’t even begin to occur to me that people might wonder why I had all those socks. I just felt proud.”

Knowing Ted Bundy’s ability to hamper the investigation, detectives had to take all necessary precautions to prevent him from smashing out his teeth or grinding them down on his cell bedposts in an attempt to throw bitemark evidence out of the case.

Although Bundy refused to provide his dental impressions voluntarily, investigators eventually outsmarted the killer by acquiring a warrant that allowed them to take Bundy on a surprise trip to a forensic odontologist under the ruse that he was going to the doctors for a routine checkup.

Upon seeing the search warrant, Bundy realized that the officers could use force, so he sat down in the dental chair, leaned back, opened his mouth, and said:

“Do what you have to do, Ken. You know I’m not a violent person.”

In his trials, Ted Bundy always made sure to address his female fans.

Bundy believed that the more supporters he had, the more the jury would be swayed into thinking he wasn’t capable of horrific acts of kidnapping, rape, and murder.

While in prison, Bundy received more than 200 letters a day from women obsessed with him. Many groupies were so deluded that they believed Bundy was actually innocent.

A number of women took their obsession to another level by showing up to the courtroom wearing their hair parted down the middle and hoop earrings, on the assumption that this style matched his victims. Some even dyed their hair brown to match the hair color of the women Bundy murdered.

As a part of his psychology studies at the University of Washington, Ted Bundy volunteered at the suicide prevention hotline, where he met the future true crime sensation, Ann Rule.

Perversely enough, Bundy also worked as the assistant director of the Seattle Crime Prevention Advisory, where he helped draft the state’s new hitchhiking law and wrote a rape prevention pamphlet for women.

According to journalist Stephen Michaud, who managed to record more than 100 hours of interviews with Bundy on death row, this job “allowed Bundy to spot holes in the system to be exploited.”

“It gave him access to a lot of crime statistics. He saw what the police did and what the police did not do. He saw all sorts of places where somebody who was smart enough could take advantage,” Michaud said.

Although Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgway had significantly different methods of operation, they both shared a twisted ritual – revisiting their dead victims.

On numerous occasions, Bundy had sex with the decaying bodies and laid with them for hours afterward. He also decapitated at least twelve of his victims and took some heads home as temporary trophies. Bundy would wash their hair, apply make-up, engage in sexual acts and take Polaroid pictures before disposing of the body part.

During his confession, Ridgway revealed that he would occasionally return to the dumpsites to watch the bodies decompose and have sex with them. The Green River Killer later explained that he did not find necrophilia more sexually satisfying, but having sex with the deceased reduced his need to kill again and thus reduced his chances of being caught.

Following Ted Bundy’s ultimate recapture in 1978, Sheriff Ken Katsaris was in charge of watching over Bundy. Considering the killer’s history with escapes, Katsaris put three locks on the cell door Bundy was kept in and made sure the keys were always in the hands of three different people.

“I got written up by the fire marshal’s office because they said if the jail were to catch on fire, he couldn’t get out,” Katsaris said. “I said, ‘Too bad.’”

The former sheriff said he had requests from constituents to kill Bundy in his cell.

“I thought about it,” Katsaris said.

“I can’t tell you the times I have watched the sun rise and set and thought about the light he took out of the lives of so many people.”

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In the late 1970s, Los Angeles was a hotbed for serial killers. Randy Kraft prowled Southern California’s seemingly endless network of highways, murdering young men.

William Bonin, the “Freeway Killer,” stalked the streets in a beat-up van, killing at least 21 boys and young men.

For four months, starting in October 1977, the residents of South California were living in fear of a monster who strangled and raped women as young as 12, and scattered their naked bodies around hillsides.

Starting off by murdering three sex workers, the Hillside Strangler eventually began abducting young women regardless of race or background, before simply vanishing for good.

What people did not expect, was that it was the work of not one, but two insatiable killers – cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono.

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