Death in California: The Bizarre, Freakish and Just Curious Ways People Die in the Golden State

With details about grim and grisly fatalities, this history of California’s arcane deaths encompasses the murders and accidents that at one time shocked the West Coast. The stories of hangings, gun accidents, suicides, crashes, and overdoses of both the famous and obscure offer a bizarre and lighthearted, if sometimes perverse, glimpse into the Golden State’s strange past. From the tragic tale of 14 tourists swept to their deaths over Vernal Fall in pastoral Yosemite National Park and the gritty details of Bob ?Bear” Hite overdosing on heroin in a seedy Hollywood nightclub to the shocking chronicle of a 10-ton jet crashing into a Bay Area kitchen, this zany collection is delightfully weird and enthrallingly human.

David Kulczyk is a historian and author whose work has appeared in the Chico News and Review, the East Bay Express, the Sacramento News and Review, and the San Francisco Guardian. He is the author of California Justice. He lives in Sacramento, California.