Yosemite Murders

Cary Stayner lived in the shadow of his younger and more famous brother, Steven, following his bizarre kidnapping in the early '70s at the hands of a convicted pedophile. Stevens's story, recounted in the bestselling "I Know My First Name Is Steven," became a popular NBC Movie of the Week and for a time, turned him into a national hero for courageously breaking free of his kidnapper after almost a decade and testifying against him in court.

But Steven died in a motorcycle accident a short time after the movie was broadcast and Cary Stayner meshed his grief with envy and dark, dark fantasies of his own about rape and torture and murder -- fantasies that dated back to his own troubled childhood. Before he was caught, four women would die -- all amid the pastoral beauty of America's greatest and most beautiful National Park.

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.