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A life of crime

Teamsters new leader killed, brutal murder of prostitute, Amanda Geike case, Olaf Wieghorst forgeries, Mission Beach crime

I ran out of the swap meet, down into a shopping center. They shot at me three times, but I ran, and I ended up standing next to the lemon in Lemon Grove,
I ran out of the swap meet, down into a shopping center. They shot at me three times, but I ran, and I ended up standing next to the lemon in Lemon Grove,

My Life of Crime

I married my third wife in ’78. She was pregnant. We went to the swap meet in Spring Valley, and I was doin’ dealings for some turquoise rings, and I looked up and there was an AB member, and one on each side a few yards away. I recognized these guys instantly. So I knew that if I didn’t get away, I was gonna die. I told my wife to go get in my truck.

By X, Oct. 9, 1986 | Read full article

Rodger with Marianne Lachman, November 1983. He was sitting in his car in the drive-through line at the Jack-In-The-Box at 24th and Market streets when, according to the police report of the incident, a man came up to his car and asked, “Who you gonna vote for?"

Who Killed Rodger Whitehead?

“We’d gotten flyers about some people tryingbush to organize and take over the union,” Nageotte recalls. “I was pretty disenchanted with the union myself — the rank and file hated the union management — but at first I thought, this is just another group of people who wanted to rip us off. But other guys went to a meeting and came back and said, ‘Hey, you oughta meet these guys. They’re for real.’”

By Neal Matthews, June 7, 1990 | Read full article

Lori, age 3; Cynthia, age 4; Mark, age 5. The three Maine children — Mark, Cindy, and Lori — grew up in Clairemont. Their father was a policeman — a motorcycle cop.

Yellow Roses

I wanted to know what caused Cynthia Lou McVey to climb into that Ford van, and what really happened to Cynthia Lynn Maine, why Buzzard Stevens stuffed blue socks into McVey’s mouth, or why this someone I tried to conjure in my mind’s eye crammed rocks down Donna Gentile’s throat. I thought how excruciatingly painful the rocks would be, shoved past the mouth, teeth, a resistant tongue. I hoped Donna Gentile was already dead when that happened.

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By Judith Moore, Jan. 10, 1991 | Read full article

Amanda Gaeke. "Her behavior the last two weeks before she died...maybe it was a premonition that something bad was going to happen to her — but her behavior was very different than normal. That’s why I made an appointment at Kaiser."

Something of an Angel

“She was having a problem,” Price sighs deeply as if this issue still concerns her, “with patience and concentration. We almost thought that somebody was molesting her before they killed her. That could have been a possibility. Her behavior the last two weeks before she died...maybe it was a premonition that something bad was going to happen to her — but her behavior was very different than normal. That’s why I made an appointment at Kaiser.”

By John Brizzolora, March 2, 1995 | Read full article

Amanda Gaeke. My La Jolla girlfriend thought it in very poor taste for me to be involved in a gruesome murder case. We saw less and less of each other, and before Christmas we were history.

Amanda Gaeke: the Guy Who Killed Her and the Guy Who Didn't

The first thing I did was call the cops and tell them about this. I spoke to Sgt. Furtak, who asked me to repeat C.P.’s name several times as if he were writing it down. He seemed unfamiliar with the name. He then asked me to fax him the letter. I did. Immediately. Other reporters might chide me for doing so, but this letter made me nervous, though much of it was so vague it lacked credibility.

By John Brizzolara, Jan 22, 1998 | Read full article

Detail from Salt River Canyon. Wieghorst sold paintings to John Wayne, Roy Rogers, and Gene Autry. Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan bought his work, and Barry Goldwater wrote the foreword to the only biography written about him.

Bushwhacked

We look at a Wieghorst painting called Spring Rain, a dark, impressionistic work, one of about a dozen Wieghorsts on the walls. Thackeray can remember when Wieghorst painted it. “It was raining cats and dogs, and he couldn’t sleep. So he got up and started that painting. He called me up and said, ‘George, come on over. I want to show you something.’ So I went over, and there it was.”

By Phyllis Orrick, Jan. 25, 1996 | Read full article

The murdered couple, Melvin and Katherine Heine. My father was doing some work consulting after retiring from Rohr Aircraft. My mother worked part-time at the National City Library shelving books.

This Is the Way It Happened

We bought a big dog and we fortified ourselves with weapons and people. My sister Karen left her family in New Hampshire and came to stay with us for more than a month. My younger brother Mel moved his family from Denver into our house. We sat on the front porch and smoked and waited for the police, waited for answers, waited for chaos to subside, for logic and order to return.

By Susan Luzzaro, July 8, 1999 | Read full article

Drug Runners Hideaway

“He wants you to try to accept his story that he's but a poor fisherman and give him this condo. You're going to hear from special DEA agents Jim Nims and Kelly Rae, who met with Manuel Rodríguez-López in prison in La Paz, and you're going to hear how Manuel Rodríguez-López subsequently called them on the phone and offered to cooperate with the U.S. government against the Arellano-Félix brothers. You'll hear that from the agents themselves."

By Matt Potter, Feb. 25, 1999 | Read full article

David Fast: “See that big wall safe there? It’s full of marijuana. We keep it as evidence, then it’s taken out and burned somewhere in an open pit up near Long Beach."

San Diego: Mail-Theft Capital

“I think Rancho Peñasquitos someplace. It’s about 6:15 in the evening, he’s driving along, and he sees a female letter-carrier opening a collection box. He thinks, ‘Gee, it’s a little late for this run. That box should have been tapped a couple of hours ago. Oh, well, they’re running behind.’ But then he realized there wasn’t a postal truck anywhere to be seen. So he pulls up and starts making small talk with the woman.”

By Linda Nevin, Jan 27, 2000 | Read full article

El Carmel Point, Mission Bay, where Paul Mefford was murdered

Fatal Shore

The phone call about a possible lineup intrigued Cullen, because it came only days after police arrested Darius Days and Calvin Pearce, both 18, on suspicion of murdering SDSU student Paul Mefford on El Carmel Point in Mission Bay earlier in the summer. At the time of his killing, Mefford had been trying to retrieve his bicycle from the bed of a departing pickup. The murder occurred not more than 200 yards from the site of Cullen's robbery.

By Joe Deegan, Nov. 21, 2002 | Read full article

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India Hawthorne is common in coastal gardens, Citrus trees are in full bloom

The vernal equinox is on March 19
I ran out of the swap meet, down into a shopping center. They shot at me three times, but I ran, and I ended up standing next to the lemon in Lemon Grove,
I ran out of the swap meet, down into a shopping center. They shot at me three times, but I ran, and I ended up standing next to the lemon in Lemon Grove,

My Life of Crime

I married my third wife in ’78. She was pregnant. We went to the swap meet in Spring Valley, and I was doin’ dealings for some turquoise rings, and I looked up and there was an AB member, and one on each side a few yards away. I recognized these guys instantly. So I knew that if I didn’t get away, I was gonna die. I told my wife to go get in my truck.

By X, Oct. 9, 1986 | Read full article

Rodger with Marianne Lachman, November 1983. He was sitting in his car in the drive-through line at the Jack-In-The-Box at 24th and Market streets when, according to the police report of the incident, a man came up to his car and asked, “Who you gonna vote for?"

Who Killed Rodger Whitehead?

“We’d gotten flyers about some people tryingbush to organize and take over the union,” Nageotte recalls. “I was pretty disenchanted with the union myself — the rank and file hated the union management — but at first I thought, this is just another group of people who wanted to rip us off. But other guys went to a meeting and came back and said, ‘Hey, you oughta meet these guys. They’re for real.’”

By Neal Matthews, June 7, 1990 | Read full article

Lori, age 3; Cynthia, age 4; Mark, age 5. The three Maine children — Mark, Cindy, and Lori — grew up in Clairemont. Their father was a policeman — a motorcycle cop.

Yellow Roses

I wanted to know what caused Cynthia Lou McVey to climb into that Ford van, and what really happened to Cynthia Lynn Maine, why Buzzard Stevens stuffed blue socks into McVey’s mouth, or why this someone I tried to conjure in my mind’s eye crammed rocks down Donna Gentile’s throat. I thought how excruciatingly painful the rocks would be, shoved past the mouth, teeth, a resistant tongue. I hoped Donna Gentile was already dead when that happened.

Sponsored
Sponsored

By Judith Moore, Jan. 10, 1991 | Read full article

Amanda Gaeke. "Her behavior the last two weeks before she died...maybe it was a premonition that something bad was going to happen to her — but her behavior was very different than normal. That’s why I made an appointment at Kaiser."

Something of an Angel

“She was having a problem,” Price sighs deeply as if this issue still concerns her, “with patience and concentration. We almost thought that somebody was molesting her before they killed her. That could have been a possibility. Her behavior the last two weeks before she died...maybe it was a premonition that something bad was going to happen to her — but her behavior was very different than normal. That’s why I made an appointment at Kaiser.”

By John Brizzolora, March 2, 1995 | Read full article

Amanda Gaeke. My La Jolla girlfriend thought it in very poor taste for me to be involved in a gruesome murder case. We saw less and less of each other, and before Christmas we were history.

Amanda Gaeke: the Guy Who Killed Her and the Guy Who Didn't

The first thing I did was call the cops and tell them about this. I spoke to Sgt. Furtak, who asked me to repeat C.P.’s name several times as if he were writing it down. He seemed unfamiliar with the name. He then asked me to fax him the letter. I did. Immediately. Other reporters might chide me for doing so, but this letter made me nervous, though much of it was so vague it lacked credibility.

By John Brizzolara, Jan 22, 1998 | Read full article

Detail from Salt River Canyon. Wieghorst sold paintings to John Wayne, Roy Rogers, and Gene Autry. Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan bought his work, and Barry Goldwater wrote the foreword to the only biography written about him.

Bushwhacked

We look at a Wieghorst painting called Spring Rain, a dark, impressionistic work, one of about a dozen Wieghorsts on the walls. Thackeray can remember when Wieghorst painted it. “It was raining cats and dogs, and he couldn’t sleep. So he got up and started that painting. He called me up and said, ‘George, come on over. I want to show you something.’ So I went over, and there it was.”

By Phyllis Orrick, Jan. 25, 1996 | Read full article

The murdered couple, Melvin and Katherine Heine. My father was doing some work consulting after retiring from Rohr Aircraft. My mother worked part-time at the National City Library shelving books.

This Is the Way It Happened

We bought a big dog and we fortified ourselves with weapons and people. My sister Karen left her family in New Hampshire and came to stay with us for more than a month. My younger brother Mel moved his family from Denver into our house. We sat on the front porch and smoked and waited for the police, waited for answers, waited for chaos to subside, for logic and order to return.

By Susan Luzzaro, July 8, 1999 | Read full article

Drug Runners Hideaway

“He wants you to try to accept his story that he's but a poor fisherman and give him this condo. You're going to hear from special DEA agents Jim Nims and Kelly Rae, who met with Manuel Rodríguez-López in prison in La Paz, and you're going to hear how Manuel Rodríguez-López subsequently called them on the phone and offered to cooperate with the U.S. government against the Arellano-Félix brothers. You'll hear that from the agents themselves."

By Matt Potter, Feb. 25, 1999 | Read full article

David Fast: “See that big wall safe there? It’s full of marijuana. We keep it as evidence, then it’s taken out and burned somewhere in an open pit up near Long Beach."

San Diego: Mail-Theft Capital

“I think Rancho Peñasquitos someplace. It’s about 6:15 in the evening, he’s driving along, and he sees a female letter-carrier opening a collection box. He thinks, ‘Gee, it’s a little late for this run. That box should have been tapped a couple of hours ago. Oh, well, they’re running behind.’ But then he realized there wasn’t a postal truck anywhere to be seen. So he pulls up and starts making small talk with the woman.”

By Linda Nevin, Jan 27, 2000 | Read full article

El Carmel Point, Mission Bay, where Paul Mefford was murdered

Fatal Shore

The phone call about a possible lineup intrigued Cullen, because it came only days after police arrested Darius Days and Calvin Pearce, both 18, on suspicion of murdering SDSU student Paul Mefford on El Carmel Point in Mission Bay earlier in the summer. At the time of his killing, Mefford had been trying to retrieve his bicycle from the bed of a departing pickup. The murder occurred not more than 200 yards from the site of Cullen's robbery.

By Joe Deegan, Nov. 21, 2002 | Read full article

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