The Murders That Made Us
How Vigilantes, Hoodlums, Mob Bosses, Serial Killers and Cult Leaders Built the San Francisco Bay Area
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The 170-year history of the San Francisco Bay Area told through its crimes and how they intertwine with the city’s art, music, and politics
In The Murders That Made Us, the story of the San Francisco Bay Area unfolds through its most violent and depraved acts. From the city’s earliest days, where vigilantes hung perps from buildings and newspaper publishers shot it out on Market Street, to the kidnapping of Patty Hearst and the Zodiac Killer, crime has made the people of San Francisco who they are. Murder and mayhem are intertwined with the city’s art, music, and politics. The Great 1906 Earthquake that burned down the old Barbary Coast shook a city that was already teetering on the brink of a massive prostitution scandal. The Summer of Love ended with a pair of ghastly acid dealer slayings that made the Haight too violent for even Charles Manson. The ’70s ground to a halt with San Francisco pastor Jim Jones forcing his followers to drink cyanide-laced punch in Guyana, and the assassination of gay icon Harvey Milk. With each tale of true crime, The Murders That Made Us will take you from the violence that began in the original Gold Rush into the brutal displacement of today’s techie ruination.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This compulsively readable account from Calhoun (Beer, Blood & Cornmeal) brings to life the famous and infamous murders in the San Francisco Bay Area from the mid-19th century to the present. The author admits his interest in this macabre history was piqued by his mother's involvement as a suspect in a 1959 murder and his connection to the underground San Francisco music scene in the late 1990s. His main focus is on tabloid crimes, from the newspaper wars of the Gold Rush era, which ended in a publisher's homicide, to the office building massacre in 1993 that left eight dead from shots fired from a Tec-9 and led to the passage of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban in 1994. In between, he covers such sensational crimes as the Tong wars of the late 19th century; the unsolved murders of the Doodler, who preyed on gay men in 1974 and 1975; and the 1978 shooting murders of San Francisco mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk by Dan White, who proffered the "Twinkie defense" (the argument that eating junk food drove him insane) and was convicted on two counts of manslaughter. Calhoun writes with wit and passion about the city he loves and its bloody history. This is a feast for true crime fans.
