While homicide detectives from Orange County to Oregon invested thousands of hours throughout the '70s parsing the clues to scores of so-called "gay" murders, mild-mannered computer programmer Randy Kraft kept a low profile in a quiet suburban neighborhood where he brought hitch hikers whenever he got the itch, drugging, torturing and murdering them for pleasure before tossing their corpses on the side of the nearest freeway. How he did it and eluded capture for 13 years is a chilling testimony to the obsessive mind of a serial killer. His story is not for the squeamish, but works a lot better for those who must stay awake during the graveyard shift than a triple dose of No-Doz.

Selected Works

Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the L. A. Times Dynasty
"Part biography, part dysfunctional family chronicle, and part institutional and urban history, with generous dollops of scandal and gossip." --
The New Yorker

Five Easy Decades: How Jack Nicholson Became the Biggest Movie Star in Modern Times
"McDougal makes Nicholson’s everyday life just as fascinating as his films in Five Easy Decades"
--Publishers Weekly

The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA and the Hidden History of Hollywood
“Engrossing”
--New York Times
“A bombshell!”
--New York Daily News
“Tough and adversarial”
--Los Angeles Times

Blood Cold: Fame, Sex & Murder in Hollywood (co-authored by Mary Murphy)
The true Hollywood nightmare and tragic love story of Robert Blake and Bonny Lee Bakley.