Hollywood & Crime

July 1, 1981. The Fourth of July weekend is over before it begins for LAPD Detectives Tom Lange and Robert Souza. Four people have been found brutally murdered on Wonderland Avenue in the Hollywood Hills. Another has been left for dead. From the extreme violence of the crime, Lange suspects that someone is sending a message. When a handprint is found near one of the victims, the detectives believe it could be their first big break.

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Seventeen-year-old Dorothy Stratten is working at Dairy Queen in East Vancouver when a man walks in who will change her life. His name is Paul Snider and around town he’s known as a hustler and a pimp. Paul sees Dorothy as his ticket to Hollywood. As their relationship progresses, Paul tries to convince Dorothy to pose nude to enter a Playboy 25th Anniversary playmate hunt. 

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Nineteen eighty was going to be Dorothy Stratten’s year. Playboy’s Hugh Hefner thought it might even be her decade. She was just 20 years old, the girl next door with the shy smile and whispery voice who didn’t know her own beauty. But to the men in her life -- magazine mogul Hugh Hefner, director Peter Bogdanovich, and small time hustler Paul Snider -- Dorothy represented the promise of better things -- a centerfold on her way to movie stardom, a muse who could help revive a dying career, and a ticket to the Hollywood dream.  

But who was Dorothy really? And how did her rise to fame ultimately lead to her death? 

This is a six-part series about love, sex and murder in 1970s Hollywood when glitter pants and roller skates were all the rage, and the Playboy mansion hosted the biggest party in town.

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Eight-year-old Tali Shapiro is abducted on her way to school. At the crime scene, LAPD officer Chris Camacho finds her attacker’s student ID. His name: Rodney Alcala.

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In 1978, Rodney Alcala won a date on the popular TV show, The Dating Game. What no one knew was that he was a prolific serial killer in the middle of a cross-country murder spree. In this six-part series, co-hosts Tracy Pattin (Hollywood & Crime) and Stephen Lang (Avatar, Don’t Breathe) take listeners on an unbelievable journey into Alcala’s twisting secret life. He hid behind normal jobs as a typesetter at a prominent newspaper and a summer camp counselor. How did this predatory monster fool employers, prison psychiatrists, and parole boards — all while committing heinous crimes from coast to coast? And how did a one-time appearance as a game show contestant help lead to his capture? From the makers of Dirty John, Dr. Death, and Young Charlie, learn the story of the most famous serial killer you’ve never heard of - The Dating Game Killer.

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On the morning of August 9, 1969, the bodies of actress Sharon Tate and four other people were discovered at the sprawling Benedict Canyon home of Miss Tate and her husband, film director Roman Polanski. The victims had all been brutally murdered. The next day, the bodies of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were discovered at their home in Los Feliz. They had been murdered in a similar, gruesome fashion.

In 1939, young Charlie Manson’s mother Kathleen is arrested in Charleston, West Virginia and jailed for robbery. After her release, she is unable to control her son and has him sent to the Gibault School for Boys in Indiana. Charlie runs away after only ten months. Then, after being arrested for burglary, he is given a second chance when a kindly judge sends him to the famous Boys Town in Omaha, Nebraska. After just four days, he escapes from there as well.

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The dark journey of Charles Manson, from his troubled childhood to orchestrating the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders.

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The murder of William Desmond Taylor rocks Hollywood. Within hours, everyone has heard the news and is asking the same question: why would anyone want Taylor dead? After examining the crime scene, detectives start narrowing in on the first suspects in this shocking crime.

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On February 1, 1922, William Desmond Taylor, one of Hollywood’s most successful directors was found dead in his home with a bullet in his back. The list of suspects was as long as the line outside one of his premieres, and the search for the killer would take investigators across the country and into the underbelly of downtown Los Angeles tracking down clues. As the case unfolded, famous names like Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand, and Mack Sennett would be dragged through the mud. The press published torrid love letters, exposed scandalous affairs, and filed incendiary reports on the drug problem on Hollywood sets. But the bigger questions remained — how much did the studios know about the murder, and why were they covering up evidence? And more importantly, who would have reason to murder one of Hollywood’s most promising directors? 

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