Show Notes
When 21-year old college dropout Christopher Boyce got a job as a clerk at the TRW Defense and Space Systems complex in Redondo Beach, he was given access to some of the country’s biggest government secrets. And under a Robin Hood-like ethos, he and his childhood pal Andrew Daulton Lee began sharing those secrets with the Soviet Union. Their story lived on in the 1985 film “The Falcon and the Snowman,” but their friendship had a much shorter shelf life.
More from Crimes of the Times
William Mulholland was the water boss who made L.A. possible. His reputation gave him unchecked authority as a dam builder. In 1928, that led to one of America's deadliest disasters--and the question of whether it was a crime.
From his law office in downtown Los Angeles, an attorney named Leon Lewis ran a clandestine operation to thwart Nazi and fascist plots in the 1930s and 40s to kill Jews in Southern California. His work went unseen and uncelebrated until long after his death.
On screen, Errol Flynn played a series of daredevils, fortune hunters, and suave romantics. Off screen, he lived a life of outsize debauchery and recklessness, including a persistent interest in underage girls. In 1943, at the height of his fame, he faced trial in Los Angeles on charges of statutory rape.
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The Hillside Strangler murders terrorized Los Angeles in the late 1970s. The killers were a pair of sadistic cousins. One confessed. The other was set to stand trial—until L.A. prosecutors flinched.