His name probably isn’t familiar to you—and that’s what makes the story of Percy Douglas so intriguing. In Bakersfield’s Wild West days, he was feared, violent, and impossible to ignore… yet today he survives only as an obscure footnote in loca...

Long before Colonel Thomas Baker arrived in what we now call Bakersfield, a solitary hill rose from the valley floor near the site of today’s Mercy Hospital. For generations, that hill was home to a Yokuts village, a place chosen for both its v...

Who knew there has been more than one murder on the Bakersfield College campus? 

I'm took a couple of weeks off for the holidays. Enjoy this encore episode. 

For years, Woody’s Toy Circus was a Bakersfield landmark—a place where childhood excitement filled the aisles and memories were made by the cartload. Built by a larger-than-life local personality, the store became more than a toy shop; it was a...

Today, finding out whether a convicted sex offender lives nearby takes just a few clicks — but decades ago, communities had no such warning system. Long before Megan’s Law made that information public, one small Kern County town was forced to c...

In the final summer of the Roaring Twenties, just weeks before the stock market crash would shatter the nation’s confidence, a quiet and disheveled stranger wandered into Bakersfield. Within hours, that man—49-year-old Augustus Mahillon—would b...

For decades, Sidney “Sid” Sheffield devoted his life to making Bakersfield a better place — as a teacher, administrator, and champion of local education and health care. His warmth drew people in, his optimism lifted spirits, and his...

Notorious Bakersfield Brief: A Greenlawn Cemetery worker was shot while on his lunch break in front of his coworkers in 1974. Ruby Lee Jackson Meriweather was murdered in 2000. Her case went unsolved for nine years

 It all started with a clown, a few eerie pictures posted to Instagram, and a wave of panic that spread faster than anyone could’ve imagined. 

 It was a quiet afternoon in 2013 in the Rosedale community when neighbors heard gunfire. What began as a family’s desperate attempt to save a troubled young man from addiction would end in tragedy. 

Nearly a decade before the murder that would shock Bakersfield, Dennis Weis had been convicted in Illinois for a brutal sexual assault against an ex-girlfriend who tried to leave him. By the mid-1980s, he’d quietly resettled in Bakersfield, whe...

Inside a charming Northeast Bakersfield Craftsman-style home lived Joe and Margy LiCastro—he, a 91-year-old Pearl Harbor survivor; she, his 84-year-old wife, known for her grace and kindness. But one cold winter morning, that home became the sc...

Illah O'Malior was a divorced woman living alone in Bakersfield’s Westchester neighborhood when she was murdered in 1952. Purchase this year's Notorious Bakersfield Halloween audio driving tour here:

I first covered this story back in 2022. Here is a much overdue update regarding that story. 

On a quiet Wednesday morning in October 1996, the staff and patients at a Bakersfield dialysis clinic were going about their routines when tragedy struck. Within moments, a workplace dispute turned deadly, leaving beloved nurse administrator Da...

Encore: Almost thirty-seven years ago, Lorraine Rodriguez was murdered. She was a single mother to two young daughters. Her case remains unsolved. 

 In the early morning hours of Labor Day 1987, a young couple traveling through Bakersfield made an unexpected stop at a gas station on White Lane. Within minutes, they would become witnesses to a shocking act of violence.