Dennis McDougal

A chilling study of a murderous matriarch presents Terry Knorr Groves's account of the brutal torture and murders of her two older sisters at the hands of their mother and brothers in the summers of 1984 and 1985 and describes her desperate search to find someone who would believe her story. Original.

Mother's Day

A portrait of the enduring Hollywood personality draws on numerous interviews and other sources to describe his childhood in New Jersey, early escapades, drug problems, celebrity relationships, films, and professional achievements.

How Jack Nicholson Became the Biggest Movie Star in Modern Times

Five Easy Decades

Mary Murphy

He was Robert Blake, former child actor, acclaimed star ofIn Cold Blood, an iconic '70's TV detective inBaretta.By the late '90's, he was a troubled has-been coasting on the fumes of past success. She was Bonny Lee Bakley, a Hollywood parasite and con artist known for elaborate Internet sex scams and a shameless pursuit of money and fame. She settled for Blake. It was a doomed relationship that came to a dead end on May 4, 2001, when Bonny was shot to death in a parked car on a dark Hollywood side street. Eleven months later, Blake was charged with the murder of his wife, the mother of their child-a crime that would reveal the sordid secrets of their marriage. Bestselling journalist Dennis McDougal and seniorTV Guidecorrespondent Mary Murphy uncover the lives of two violently dysfunctional lovers who crashed head-on in a squalid soap opera of sexual and physical abuse, alcohol and drugs, desperate betrayals between husband and wife, and rumours of incest, death threats, and murder for hire.

Fame Sex and Murder in Hollywood

Blood Cold

Since he was seven, Cary Stayner had dreamed of capturing women . . . and killing them They were crimes that grabbed headlines around the world and stunned America. Four women dead, their bodies charred and horribly mutilated. Now Dennis McDougal, acclaimed author of the spellbinding true crime tour de force Mother's Day, brings his considerable investigative and narrative skills to the Yosemite murders to give you the most complete account of what really happened. Drawing on several personal conversations with the confessed killer and interviews with the victims' families, McDougal presents the definitive story, and answers many lingering questions. What demons drove this quiet handyman and nudist colony habitue to burn, mutilate, and murder four women he didn't even know? How did he overpower a woman and two teenaged girls? And most disturbing, did the glory-seeking FBI actually hinder the investigation, leaving the killer free to kill once more before he was caught? THE YOSEMITE MURDERS offers valuable insight into these savage and senseless murders in the heart of America's most beautiful wilderness.

The Yosemite Murders

Randy Kraft was highly intelligent, politically active, loyal to his friends, committed to his work--and the killer of 67 people--more than any other serial killer known. This book offers a glimpse into the dark mind of a living monster. "To open this book is to open a peephole into hell".--Associated Press. Photographs.

The True Story of Randy Kraft and the Most Heinous Murder Spree

Angel of Darkness

Ronald Reagan's personal attorney Roy Miller was a California success story. The Miller family's friends could never have imagined the horror and darkness that were to follow as Michael, the Miller's youngest son killed and raped his own mother.

The Anatomy of a True Tragedy

In the Best of Families

A search for the truth behind the DEA’s life imprisonment of acid's most famous martyr. Operation White Rabbit traces the rise and fall—and rise and fall again—of the psychedelic community through the life of the man known as the “Acid King:” William Leonard Pickard. Pickard was a legitimate genius, a follower of Timothy Leary, a con artist, a womanizer, and a believer that LSD would save lives. He was a foreign diplomat, a Harvard fellow, and the biggest producer of LSD on the planet—if you believe the DEA. A narrative for fans of Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind, Pickard’s personal story is set against a fascinating chronicle of the social history of psychedelic drugs from the 1950s on. From LSD distribution at UC Berkeley to travelling the world for the State Department, Pickard’s story is one of remarkable genius—that is, until a DEA sting named “Operation White Rabbit” captured him at an abandoned missile silo in Kansas. Pickard, the DEA said, was responsible for 90 percent of the world’s production of lysergic acid. The DEA announced to the public that they found 91 pounds of LSD. In reality, the haul was seven ounces. They found none of the millions of dollars Pickard supposedly amassed, either. But nonetheless, he is now serving two consecutive life sentences without possibility of parole. Pickard has become acid’s best-known martyr in the process, continuing his advocacy and artistic pursuits from jail. Pickard has successfully sued the US government because his requests for information on his case returned two blank DEA documents. But the appeals of his sentence have continually failed. The author visits him regularly in jail in an effort to find the truth.

LSD, the DEA, and the Fate of the Acid King

Operation White Rabbit

The ultimate biography of the musical icon. A groundbreaking and vibrant look at the music hero to generations, DYLAN: The Biography digs deep into Bob Dylan lore—including subjects Dylan himself left out of Chronicles: Volume One. DYLAN: The Biography focuses on why this beloved artist has touched so many souls—and on how both Dylan and his audience have changed along the way.Bob Dylan is an international bestselling artist, a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, and an Oscar winner for "Things Have Changed." His career is stronger and more influential than ever. How did this happen, given the road to oblivion he seemed to choose more than two decades ago? What transformed a heroin addict into one of the most astonishing literary and musical icons in American history? Dylan's final act of his career is more intriguing than ever—and classic biographies like Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades (2003) and even his own Chronicles: Volume One (2005) came too soon to cover this remarkable new chapter in Dylan's life. Through extensive interviews and conversations with Dylan's friends, family, sidemen, and fans, Los Angeles Times journalist Dennis McDougal crafts an unprecedented understanding of Dylan and the intricate story behind the myths. Was his romantic life, especially with Sara Dylan, much more complicated than it appears? Was his motorcycle accident a cover for drug rehab? What really happened to Dylan when his career crumbled, and how did he find his way back? To what does he attribute his astonishing success? McDougal's meticulous research and comprehensive interviews offer a revealing new understanding of these long-standing questions—and of the current chapter Dylan continually writes in his life and career.

The Biography

Dylan

The true story of Theresa Knorr, the twisted child abuser who murdered her daughters—with the help of her sons—told by a former New York Times reporter. In June 1985, Theresa Cross Knorr dumped her daughter Sheila’s body in California’s desolate High Sierra. She had beaten Sheila unconscious in their Sacramento apartment days earlier, then locked her in a closet to die. But this wasn’t the first horrific crime she’d committed against her own children. The previous summer, Knorr had shot Sheila’s sister Suesan, then ordered her son to dig the bullet out of the girl’s back with a knife to hide the evidence. The infection that resulted led to delirium—at which point Knorr and her two sons drove Suesan into the mountains, doused her with gasoline, and set her on fire. It would be almost a decade before her youngest daughter, Terry Knorr Graves, revealed her mother’s history of unfathomable violence. At first, she was met with disbelief by law enforcement and even her own therapist. But eventually, the truth about her monstrous abuse emerged—and here, an award-winning journalist details the jealousy, rage, and domineering behavior that escalated into homicide and shattered a family. A former reporter for the New York Times and Los AngelesTimes and the author of true-crime classics including Angel of Darkness, about serial killer Randy Kroft, and Blood Cold, about Robert Blake and Bonny Lee Bakley, Dennis McDougal reveals the shocking depths of depravity behind a case that made headlines across the nation.

Dr. Lyle Fields is having a bad day. A once-renowned Hemingway scholar desperate for recognition, he's lost his wife, his reputation and teeters on losing his livelihood as a Stanford professor when a former star pupil waltzes through his office door. Clarissa Daugherty is more than a vision of loveliness. She has found the holy grail of his years of research: a long lost, possibly apocryphal suitcase containing the young Hemingway's unpublished first novel. One tiny problem: her sometimes boyfriend passed the suitcase on to a greedy Beverly Hills literary agent who promised to turn the novel into a movie ... and now he's gone missing. The chase is on, from Stanford to Hollywood to a freaky Big Sur rehab clinic, a palatial Carmel Valley winery, and a mysterious hilltop manse overlooking the San Francisco Bay. Along the way, Professor Fields strikes a strange alliance with an offbeat homicide detective and a moody ferret that shows up at the most inopportune moments ... usually along with a corpse or two.

Hemingway's Suitcase

The riveting true account of the 2001 murder of Bonny Lee Bakley, starring Robert Blake—the Hollywood icon accused of killing his wife in cold blood In May 2001 Bonny Lee Bakley was shot to death in a car parked on a dark Hollywood side street. Eleven months later Robert Blake—her husband, the father of her child, and the star of the classic film In Cold Blood and the popular 1970s TV detective series Baretta—was arrested for murder, conspiracy, and solicitation. Did Blake kill his wife? Did he hire someone to do the job for him? Award-winning journalist Dennis McDougal and entertainment-media expert Mary Murphy recount a real-life crime story more shocking and bizarre than any movie, chronicling the parallel worlds of Blake and Bakley, from their troubled youths to their sham of a marriage. By the late 1990s Blake was coasting on his past success. Bakley was a con artist who concocted online sex scams and victimized unsuspecting men, netting big money and dangerous enemies. In true noir style, McDougal and Murphy lay bare the stories of two violent people whose lives collided in a tragic tangle of abuse, betrayal, and love gone horribly wrong.

Fame, Sex, and Murder in Hollywood

Drawing on in-depth interviews and connections with his friends, family, sidemen and fans, this authoritative biography of the musical icon, international best-selling artist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author sheds new light on the life and work of this music hero to generations.

Bob Dylan

The reviewer of the Boston Globe said point blank: "Over the years, I've read hundreds of books on Hollywood and the movie business, and this one is right at the top." As the elusive, tyrannical head of the Music Corporation of America (MCA) until the 1990s, Lew Wasserman was the most powerful and feared man in show business for more than half a century. His career spanned the entire history of the movies, from the silent era to the present, and he was guru to Alfred Hitchcock, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, and Jimmy Stewart, and to a new generation of filmmakers beginning with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. For more than four years, Dennis McDougal interviewed over 350 people who knew the man with the giant dark horn-rimmed glasses—colleagues, relatives, rivals—and drew on tens of thousands of pages of documents to produce this extraordinary and first-ever portrait of a legend and his times, a book that the New York Times Book Review called "thoroughly reported and engrossing" and that the Daily News called, simply, "a bombshell."

Lew Wasserman, MCA, and the Hidden History of Hollywood

The Last Mogul

Pierce O'Donnell

An updated edition of the best-selling book about the workings of Hollywood recounts the suit against Paramount Pictures by humorist Art Buchwald, who claimed Paramount stole the story to the film, Coming to America, from him. Original.

Dennis McDougal

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