Animal sacrifices, cadaver preservation, disappearing people. The Blackburn Cult was among the strangest of religious cults to have started in Los Angeles.
Saddle Ridge Brush Fire Status
Update on the Saddle Ridge Brush Fire burning in northwestern Los Angeles.
Photo from the L.A. Times Photographic Archive at UCLA Library
1938. Dr. Frank R. Webb examines human remains from a Los Angeles crime scene with LAPD forensic specialist Ray Pinker looking on. Pinker joined the LAPD crime lab in 1929 as the nation's first civilian forensics specialist, six years after the lab was established as the nation's first public-funded crime lab. Well into the 1930s, Pinker and a single LAPD officer were the entire scientific forensics team for the city of Los Angeles.
During one summer afternoon in 1961, the story was that, for several hours, this creature terrorized the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles.
It is the largest crime lab in the nation and the only one co-located with a university forensics program.
