California Justice: Shootouts, Lynchings and Assassinations in the Golden State

Like many, I've done my time in California -- from a wide-eyed seaside / Disneyland vacationing kid in my Beach Boys shirt to a failure at any cost San Francisco rock star to a back of the hand L.A. style working class fool. People have been California Dreamin' since before the gold rush, pouring in from every corner of the globe, for some reason always expecting something better. There are more broken hearts in the Golden State than anyplace on earth. In his excellent book CALIFORNIA JUSTICE, David Kulczyk gives us a fast paced, page turning foray into the dark side of the dream. As if he found a cache of secret documents hidden buried beneath the HOLLYWOOD sign, Kulczyk unveils the lurid and disturbing true history of lynchings, (based on their frequency, when it comes to guilty pleasures, evidently murder in the name of justice is hard to beat.), shootouts, assassinations, and guns in the desperate or sadistic hands of crazies, drunks, gangsters, punks, and heretofore decent citizens, all who for their own reasons just want someone dead. Like a kid glued to the rear window of your cursing Dad's car as he maneuvers past a smash-up - you can't look away. Kulczyk's highly tuned, unforgiving prose gives hope that a detective novel or noir screenplay might be forthcoming from his pen. After all, the best noir is set in California. When things come apart in paradise, they come apart hard and fast. In the Promised Land it's just not supposed to be that way.

This is a great book of criminal vignettes, kinda in the style of AJ Benza's E! series "Mysteries & Scandals." David, you should seriously consider pimping yourself out to E! or the Tru network for historical crime documentaries. But seriously, this is a perfect introduction to some of California's most fascinating and important crimes. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and so did my lovely wife. The short chapters made it a quick read and perfect for the train. I only have one issue with the book - the time span leaps too much at the end of the text, jumping from 1978 to 1997 to 2003. Were you trying to pad out 150 years? Was anything cut? If so, can we expect an unabridged edition anytime soon?

Shoot outs, lynchings, and massacres were not just things that happened in the frontier towns in the Mid- and Southwest. California was a frontier for many years, and the California Gold Rush brought thousands of men, many rough and hardened, into the state. Kulczyk has collected thirty-five stories of justice, California-style, starting with the Sacramento Squatters Massacre in 1850 and ending with a Eagle Scout helping an injured police officer shoot and kill an ex-con trying to free his girlfriend in 2003. California has been the home of more than a few headline-generating killings, many of which are covered in /California Justice/ - Bugsy Siegel, Sirhan Sirhan, Harvey Milk, and George Moscone. An interesting collection of stories, and a nice addition for any California history buff's library.

California Justice is an well researched and eminently readable compendium of some of the most interesting cases of crime and punishment (often by mobs) in California from the 19th to the 21st century. Included are the more famous examples of Sirhan Sirhan killing Robert F. Kennedy, the mob rubbing out fellow gangster Bugsy Siegel, and the assassination of San Francisco's Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk by Dan White; but also more obscure though equally fascinating stories of the Golden Dragon Massacre, the (not so) Brite Brothers, and the last lynching in California in 1947. The author does a great job of bringing these true sagas to life by adding just the right amount of detail and by keeping the stories moving along at a brisk pace. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in history, offbeat characters, or crime.

"I'm goin' to cut down my old lady, you know I caught her messin' 'round with another man." California Justice. Yeah, it's a little screwy. Here Mr. Kulczyk gives us over 30 vignettes of what's passed for justice in the Golden State: lynching galore, Bugsy Siegel riddled with bullets in a Hollywood mansion, the saga of Sirhan Sirhan (the assassin so nice they named him twice), and Dan White's infamous Twinkie defense (look out, though, because the Twinkie defense is not mentioned by that name). California Justice is fine reading whether you're on the toilet or in your living room. Disclaimer: O. J. "Class-Act-All-the-Way" Simpson does not show up here, nor does "Hey Joe' by Jimi Hendrix.