Episodes

For 76 years, the last Thursday of November was the official Thanksgiving holiday...until 1939...when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proclaimed the Thursday before the last Thursday of November would be the official Than...

In 1971, 9-year-old Eddie Owen watched from his bedroom window as his father Everett got in his pickup truck. As soon as Everett turned the key in the ignition, the bomb detonated. Over 50 years later and this case remains u...

In episode 22, Notorious Bakersfield brought you the story of a 5-year-old girl who was abandoned on the side of a freeway south Bakersfield in 1969. Her name was Jody. For this episode, for the first time in 52 years, Jody ...

In October 1969, a little girl named Jody was abandoned on the freeway south of Bakersfield. Officials didn't have a lot to go to positively identify her. When her story ran in newspapers and broadcast on local TV news progr...

For this episode of the Notorious Bakersfield podcast, I'm going to take a look back at how the people of Bakersfield responded to the 1938 radio adaptation of "War of the Worlds". This is considered one of the biggest Hallow...

Just before dawn on March 9, 1972, Daniel Fusselman, a 49-year-old unemployed bartender sat in his car, outside his estranged wife Priscilla's house in Park Stockdale. She was working the graveyard shift at a downtown Bakersf...

Whenever a violent crime occurs at a well-known institution in a community, the community takes notice-people pay attention. And that's certainly what happened when 24-year-old Bakersfield College student Frances Lorine Brown...

In Bakersfield and feeling the Halloween spirit? Load your friends and family into your car and take them on the creepiest ride of their lives. The Notorious Bakersfield Halloween Tour is a self-paced audio driving tour to so...

Wiley Dorris was one of the most respected criminal defense attorneys in Bakersfield. If you found yourself on the wrong side of the law, Wiley was the guy you wanted in your corner. But overshadowing his courtroom triumphs, ...

The 1990 abduction and murder of 4-year-old Jessica Martinez remains one of Bakersfield's most notorious mysteries. If you have any information regarding Jessica Martinez's murder, please call the Bakersfield Police Departmen...

William Compton, a 76-year-old cancer patient, was murdered in his home in 1993. The first Bakersfield Police detectives to investigate the murder tentatively and wrongly determined the elderly man committed suicide. Despite ...

28-year-old Matthew Dale Odom was assaulted and stabbed in his front yard in the early morning hours of September 15, 2014. The father of four later died at the hospital from his injuries. The seven-year anniversary of this c...

Ralph Smith Jr was a prominent Bakersfield home builder, real estate developer, and broker. He built many of the homes in Bakersfield's now well-established neighborhoods. In 1966, he and his family were living at 275 Panoram...

This past week, a parole board recommended parole for a convicted murderer. In 2001 Torie Lynn Knapp was brutally stabbed to death by her then 15-year-old son Parker Chamberlin. This was a gruesome murder that shocked everyon...

The 1961 kidnapping, sexual assault, and murder of 6-year-old Rose Marie Riddle happened in Shafter, only 15 miles from Bakersfield. It was so horrific, news of the crime reverberated throughout the state of California like a...

During the summer of 1952, Bakersfield-actually, most of Kern County-experienced an earthquake, and a string of aftershocks that forever changed our city's landscape. Besides the tragic loss of lives, the earthquake altered d...

The Bakersfield Police Department was embroiled in a corruption scandal that rocked city hall. It was a grudge match between two of Bakersfield's most powerful government officials.

Through the Summer of 1981, there was a serial rapist prowling the streets of Bakersfield. But you wouldn't have known about it unless you had a connection to law enforcement or a local news reporter. Or were one of his victi...

The subject of this episode deals with the death of a law enforcement officer. Coincidentally, just last Sunday, July 25, 2021, the Kern County Sheriff Office and the entire community suffered a tremendous loss. Deputy Philip...

The circumstances surrounding Eddie Lee Peel's 1977 murder are not only sad but truely bizarre. If this were a movie, nobody would believe it. But, it happened. And it's true. Except for a few names that had to be changed.

The neighborhood that runs along Palm Ave in Rosedale looks remarkably the same as it did in 1992. Like then, this neighborhood doesn't seem to be the type of neighborhood where a triple murder could happen. But it did. And...

On July 11, 1986, a mysterious United States military aircraft—an aircraft that the Air Force never before acknowledged existed—had crashed just outside Bakersfield. This accident threatened to expose one of the United States...

In March 1960, Bakersfield was the site of an awful railroad tragedy. A passenger train collided with a truck hauling highly flammable oil product. 14 people were killed and 64 more were injured. While this train accident wa...

In March 1960 , Bakersfield was the site of an awful railroad tragedy. A passenger train collided with a truck hauling highly flammable oil product. 13 people were killed and 64 more were injured. While this train accident w...