Many thanks to NetGalley and Mulholland Books for gifting me a digital ARC of this fascinating true crime book by Rick Jackson and Matthew McGough. All opinions expressed in this review are my own - 5 stars!
In June 1990, Ronald Baker, a straight-A UCLA student, was found repeatedly stabbed to death in a tunnel near Spahn Ranch, where Charles Manson and his followers once lived. Shortly thereafter, Detective Rick Jackson and his partner, Frank Garcia, were assigned the case. Was there an occult factor? Their investigation soon focused on Baker's roommates, one Black and one white, and the investigators' dogged pursuit of truth and justice.
I thought this was a fascinating look back at LA in the 1990s, where race, police brutality, and satanism were the headline stories. But it's also such a close introspection of police work at its finest, where finding the truth takes priority over everything else. These detectives worked for years and even decades to get justice for families. It's a look back at the effects of the Rodney King and OJ Simpson verdicts, and you'll recognize many names from that era. Now that our movements and conversations are tracked by cellphones and cameras, this is true, gritty detective work when DNA was in its infancy. The crime itself was horrifying and such a tragic loss of a young man, but kudos to Jackson and Garcia for their devotion.
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