The unparalleled tour guide to creepy California is David McGowan, author of Programmed to Kill and the sensational Inside Laural Canyon Series. A wastebasket set next to you, may be in order, if the need hits to hurl your guts! WARNING! Horrific pictures of mutilation are included as evidence of possible ritualistic murder! McGowan attempts to link the Black Dahlia murder to the activities in the canyon of the sixties in Part XVIII, “Inside the LC: The Strange But Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation“. McGowan succeeds tremendously and a reader has to love his quips about walk-in vaults beneath a home as “a very handy feature!”

David McGowan possesses the mind and instincts to see through the bull thrown at the public, in other words, a writer equipped with a top flight bullshit detector! Part XVIII revolves around John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas and quotes from his biography, “Papa John”.

Phillips relates events in his life but doesn’t fool McGowan. Inside the LC, a series of essays reveals how many of the lead characters of the Hippie Movement, came from military families in the towns surrounding the Pentagon. Phillips is no exception as McGowan points out, “Phillips played basketball at George Washington High School, from where he graduated in 1953. He then scored an appointment to Annapolis Naval Academy, but soon dropped out. One of his first paying jobs was working on a fishing charter boat. As John later recalled it, the crew consisted of him, a retired Navy officer, and four retired Army generals. Seems like a perfect fit for one of the future guiding lights of the hippie movement.” McGowan implies the hippie movement was little more than an intelligence-backed psyop perpetrated on the public. Wow!

Part XVIII reveals a world-weary McGowan, who sees only a “business as usual” style of the rich and powerful. Dr George Hodel is regarded as one promising suspect in the murder, and also, the father of Tamar Hodel, who acts as a mother figure to the then seventeen year old Michelle Gilliam, John Phillips’ future wife. Tamar was treated like a sex object, typical, in these families, but became pregnant by her father and against his wishes got an abortion. Hodel was later arrested and charged.

McGowan sees clearly how privilege works while noting accusations that came out during Hodel’s trial. “Allegations that the rich and powerful were dabbling in incest, hypnotism/mind control, pedophilic orgies, and Luciferian philosophies must surely have been shocking to Angelenos in the 1940s, as they would still be to most Americans today, but to these jaded eyes and ears, it just sounds like business as usual. Also sounding like business as usual is that Tamar was roundly vilified by both the press and the defense team (led by Jerry Giesler), and Dr. George Hodel was acquitted.”

“How it is that the fourteen-year-old daughter of a lowly probation officer fell into the orbit of the daughter of the wealthy and influential George Hodel (Hodel’s former home is currently valued at $4.2 million) has never been explained, but Tamar, described by Michelle as “the epitome of glamour,” quickly took the youngster under her wing, buying her clothes, enrolling her in modeling school, teaching her to drive, and providing her with a fake ID and a steady stream of prescription drugs – obtained, one would presume, from her father.”

Have you come to the conclusion McGowan leads the reader? The Black Dahlia was recruited by a daughter of a rich and connected doctor for a ritualistic slaying in an underground walk-in vault beneath the home, her death, dismemberment and missing organs facilitated by drugs and participated in by members of a cult engaged in satanic worship. This is McGowan’s premise in his book also on mind controlled serial killers, it’s a cover for satanic worship and the “serial killers” are mostly patsies!

This article doesn’t do complete justice to McGowan’s essay. McGowan, a native of Los Angeles, pins down Phillips as possessed of occult leanings, and successfully, shows how “The Black Dahlia“ may be connected to occult practices in the shadows of a sixties’ Laurel Canyon. The book and series Inside the LC are a must read! Your world will never be the same!