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True Crime/History: Origin of Famous Ghost Legend

(1) Dead Move: Kate Morgan and the Haunting Mystery of Coronado (nonfiction; scholarly analysis of 1892 true crime/famous ghost legend at the Hotel del Coronado near San Diego;
(2) Lethal Journey, noir gaslamp era suspense novel dramatizing what John T. Cullen believes happened and documented in Dead Move;
(3) Or (good deal) buy both books in one as Coronado Mystery.

True Crime and Ghost Legend: Beautiful Stranger. The story of the Beautiful Stranger at the Hotel del Coronado, across the bay from San Diego, is arguably the strongest ghost legend in the area. On Thanksgiving Day 1892, a stunning young woman, traveling alone, registered at the Hotel Del under the phony name Lottie A. Bernard. After five days of acting increasingly strangely, she was found dead of a gunshot to the head on the back steps of the hotel, following a literally dark and stormy night of raging wind and ocean waves. Her story was immediately picked up by the Yellow Press of the day, and became a national sensation on the internet of the times: the telegraph. Until I published Dead Move, nobody had a clue who she was, or why she died. Rumors of scandalous affairs with men in high places abounded. The nation was breathless. The death certificate, oddly, has two names on it, and other mysteries abound. Time passed, and she is remembered only as the famous ghost of Room 3327 in the Hotel Del.

Secrets Hidden In Plain Sight (SHIPS). I took a part-time job as a shuttle driver at the Hotel Del years ago, and studied the case of the Beautiful Stranger. In Dead Move, I was able to construct the first plausible theory in over 120 years. I figured out, in excruciating detail, that the entire matter was a blackmail attempt gone horribly wrong. The owner of the Hotel Del, in 1892, was John Spreckels—one of the wealthiest men in the country, based largely on his father's sugar plantations in Hawai'i. As I see it, a ruthless grifter named Kate Morgan (mistaken for the dead woman) dreamed up this plot, and used a young, 'ruined' shop girl from Detroit named Lizzie Wyllie to threaten Spreckels. Also in the plot was John Longfield, Lizzie's factory foreman. What Kate probably didn't realize was that, at that moment, John Spreckels was in the White House with old family friend President Benjamin Harrison, negotiating desperately against a Republican-corporate takeover of Hawai'i. Spreckels could not afford a breath of scandal, so his agents in San Diego created a massive coverup that has endured to modern times. The facts are all there, hidden in plain sight if one will study a little true history and ponder on it.

Noir Thriller, Based on True Analysis. Lizzie Wyllie, the Beautiful Stranger (in contradiction to traditional stories that the B.S. was Kate Morgan) died a sad and lonely death. She is the quintessential Victorian Fallen Angel come to life. It is truly a woman's story, and our hearts ache for the poor girl. Now, in Lethal Journey, I have dramatized the entire, heart-rending truth that does not require slogging through over a hundred footnotes and intricately detailed analysis. As people often say about my fiction: "I can already see the movie." I'm thinking of modern movies like The Illusionist and The Prestige set in the late 1800s, or gaslamp era.

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