True Crime Stories

The last blog that I did involved a woman who was a member of the LAPD from the early 1980's until her arrest in 2009. It had brought my attention, or should we say, reminded me about the time period in which Daryl Gates had been the chief of police in Los Angeles. As long as you were alive and old enough to remember, you cannot forget the era of the Rodney King beating and how the acquittal of the officers involved sparked what was called the “L.A. Riots.” Then again if you were alive in the 1960's it was the second time that you had seen such activity in Los Angeles as the “Watts Riots” occurred in 1965. Sadly the core of both those incidents was the same... racism among the LAPD. And, while issues of racism seemed to plaque the department for many decades, that was far from their only issues. Daryl Gates joined the LAPD in 1949 after serving time in the military during World War II. He started out as the chauffeur to then chief, William Parker. Parker ...

This case took place in the Los Angeles area during what is basically known as the Daryl Gates era. Daryl Gates was the chief of police for the LAPD from 1978 to 1992. I will have to write another blog at some point just going through that era to fully explain what this means. I attempted to do that here and found myself on a tangent that lasted several pages and I still had not mentioned Stephanie Lazarus or the crime she was convicted of committing. With that said let me just sum up the Gates era as being one in which the officers of LAPD were encouraged to engage in police brutality and have little to do with members of the general community. Gates was known for his racist and arrogant comments and personality and it was said encouraged the officers under him to do the same. The Blue Code of Silence was likely never more prominent than it was during this era. It is this code that many people believe allowed Stephanie Lazarus to nearly get away with murder. It sh...

I generally spend throughout the week working on other projects such as my genealogy and  reading and watching things on stories about true crimes mainly to add to my growing list of cases.  Sunday is generally my day that I sit down the entire day and work on things here.  From time to time I will find a case that I feel the need to look into much sooner and this is one of them. We have all heard the stories from defendants.... they are innocent, their lawyer did not do their job properly and the all common idea that someone (quite often the police) framed them.  Sadly these things have become so common and so often proved to be false that one has difficulty in taking the claims seriously. And then from time to time along comes the case that you simply cannot ignore. I know I have blogged recently about the Steven Avery/Brenden Dassey case from Making a Murderer  and all the things involving a shady investigation in that case but I think this one completely r...