Esotouric™

Go East, Young Crime Fiend!

For years, the devoted and demented crime historians of Esotouric have been stockpiling hideous 20th century crime tales from the east side of the Los Angeles River, and waiting for the perfect moment to spring them upon an unsuspecting world. That moment has arrived. On the EAST SIDE BABYLON tour you'll discover fascinating, little-known neighborhoods and the grim memories they hold. Come visit Boyle Heights, where the Night Stalker was captured and a mad dad ran amok. Roam the hallowed lawns of Evergreen, L.A.'s oldest cemetery and home of some memorable haunts and strange burials. Visit East Los Angeles, where a deranged radio shop employee made mince meat of his boss and bride--and you can get your hair done in a building shaped like a giant tamale. Explore the ghastly streets of Commerce, where one small neighborhood's myriad crimes will shock and surprise. Visit Montebello, for scrumptious milk and cookies at Broguiere's Farm Fresh Dairy washed down with a horrifying case of child murder. All this, and so much more on EAST SIDE BABYLON, Esotouric's exploration of L.A.'s most horrifying forgotten crimes.

Click to purchase L.A. NOIR

LA. NOIR uncovers the secret criminal history of Los Angeles that inspired writers and filmmakers for generations and profoundly shaped the city we live in today. Get on the bus as the whole filthy truth is spread out before you, as John Buntin's acclaimed book comes to life.

Novelist Michael Connelly calls L.A. NOIR "fascinating, flat out entertaining," Kirkus Reviews raves, "A roller coaster ride…. gripping social history and a feast for aficionados of cops-and-robbers stories, both real and imagined," and USC historian Kevin Starr says the book is "a tour de force of non-fiction narrative."

Now John Buntin, the author of "L.A. NOIR: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City" (Random House), brings his groundbreaking book to life with a guided tour of the haunts, "hits," and harems where some of the most shocking and influential moments of 20th century crime history played out and an introduction to the two men whose rivalry profoundly shaped Los Angeles — one L.A.'s most notorious gangster, the other its most controversial police chief.

Former street thug turned featherweight boxer, Mickey Cohen left the ring for the rackets, first as mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel's enforcer, then as his protégé and successor. A fastidious dresser and an unrepentant killer, the diminutive Cohen was Hollywood's favorite gangster — and L.A.'s preeminent underworld boss. Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum, and Sammy Davis Jr. palled around with him; TV journalist Mike Wallace wanted his stories; evangelist Billy Graham sought his soul, declaring memorably that the fast-quipping gangster "has the making of one of the greatest gospel preachers of all time."

William H. Parker was the proud son of a pioneering law enforcement family from the fabled frontier town of Deadwood. As a rookie patrolman in the Roaring Twenties, he discovered that LA was ruled by a shadowy "Combination" of tycoons, politicians, and underworld bosses. His life mission became to topple it — and to create a police force that would never answer to elected officials again.

For more than three decades, from Prohibition through the Watts Riots, their struggle convulsed the city, intersecting in the process with the agendas and ambitions of J. Edgar Hoover and Bobby Kennedy, Mike Wallace and Billy Graham, Lana Turner and Malcolm X, and inspiring writers from Raymond Chandler to James Ellroy. Its outcome shaped American policing and the history of Los Angeles, fueling racial distrust that sparked the Watts riots and continues to this day.

From the streets of Boyle Heights to the downtown movie palaces where the young Bill Parker worked as an usher — and Mickey Cohen commenced his life of crime, Esotouric's luxurious coach passenger bus will revisit the haunts where Parker mentor James "Two Gun" Davis played William Tell — and the gutter where "the Combination" disposed of the garroted bodies of those who dared to cross it. We'll stop by "the glass house," visit the apartment tapped by LAPD sergeant Charles Stoker and "sound technician" Jimmy Vaus as well as the site of Billy Graham's "canvass cathedral," which launched Rev. Graham as a celebrity preacher and began his curious effort to "save" Mickey Cohen. We'll check into Cohen's old commission office, hear a first-hand account of how Mickey operated, and visit the Lincoln Heights jail, where on Christmas 1951 events transpired that inspired the opening of the book L.A. Confidential. With Kim Cooper, the creator of Esotouric's true crime tours and founding editrix of the new website www.inSROland.org riding shotgun, there will also be plenty of surprises. So get on the bus and get ready to meet the Dragnet-era LAPD — and the "the Mickey Mouse Mafia" — on a very special Esotouric bus adventure.

Please note that this is a special event tour.

"This bus tour... has established itself as an L.A. classic." -The Los Angeles Times

The Black Dahlia murder in 1947 is the most compelling unsolved crime Los Angeles has ever known. What Jack the Ripper is to London, the Torso Killer to Cleveland, the Black Dahlia is to L.A. And yet unlike those other cases, the name Black Dahlia refers not to the killer, but to the victim. What was it about Elizabeth Short that keeps her the object of obsessive fascination by writers, musicians, artists, filmmakers, cops and readers, more than sixty years after she was slain?

The Real Black Dahlia Crime Bus Tour seeks to answer this question by intimately exploring the last weeks of Elizabeth Short's life, asking not "who killed her?" but "who was she?"

The tour takes us from the human hustle of Main Street to the serene lobby of the Biltmore (the second-to-last place she was seen alive), to the newspaper offices and the Greyhound station where she checked her bags, and concludes at the site where her bisected body was found in Leimert Park and with a little known suspect who lived nearby.

From the few personal possessions she left behind to the friends who scarcely knew her, from the mass hysteria of the investigation with its fruitless leads, wacko suspects and false confessions, the tour reveals all that's known about this enigmatic black-haired girl who reinvented herself at whim, and shows how she came to be the unfortunate symbol of her time and place.

For the first time, the true crime archeologists of the 1947project have set their sights on points west of Robertson, and the results are truly astonishing. In this new tour spotlighting some of the weirdest, most horrific and downright unbelievable crimes of historic West Los Angeles, you’ll thrill and shudder to tales of teenage girl gangs, tortured tots, wicked wives, evil spirits, cults, creeps and assorted maniacs on a tour so wild, we had to say it twice.

On this tour, you'll meet Weird Ward, the boy husband of the nefarious cult leader who made her followers carry their mummified daughter all across 1920s L.A. You'll meet the peculiar Helen Love, who nearly escaped justice when she willed herself into a coma during her very odd murder trial. Along the Venice shore you'll see where a pair of real life witches tortured their own Hansels and Gretels for decades as neighbors pretended not to hear their cries, and visit the grand hotel that was formally a flop house for ex-junkies in the Synanon Cult. Wild Wild West Side offers a new way of looking at West Los Angeles, and a tour recommended for residents, tourists and anyone who likes to explore the unexpected.

Esotouric is thrilled to announce a very special tour for everyone seeking some blood, guts and swagger in their Christmas week: "James Ellroy Digs L.A."

Passengers on “James Ellroy Digs L.A.” will accompany the author on an uncensored time travel journey to tony Hancock Park, where he stalked his teenage classmates and later broke into houses. . . to the Hollywood flats to explore some of the heinous 1950s murder cases that fascinated him as a youth and continue to feed his obsessions. . . and out to El Monte, where his mother Geneva was murdered, the unsolved crime that runs through all his work, from “The Black Dahlia” to “My Dark Places.”

We are unable to honor any of our regular tour discounts (including KCRW or Season Passes) on special event tour.

From the founding of the city through the 1940s, downtown was the true center of Los Angeles, a lively, densely populated, exciting and sometimes dangerous place. After many quiet decades, downtown is making an incredible return. But while many of the historic buildings remain, their human context has been lost.

This downtown double feature tour, hosted by Kim Cooper, Joan Renner and Richard Schave, is meant to bring alive the old ghosts and memories that cling to the streets and structures of the historic core, and is especially recommended for downtown residents curious about their neighborhood's neglected history.

The Hotel Horrors portion is a true crime and oddities tour featuring some of the wildest, weirdest, goriest and most memorable happenings in historic hotels like the Alexandria, St. George, Barclay and Cecil. Get on the bus to see inside some of these legendary locales and find out where Night Stalker Richard Ramirez liked to stay and the hotel that saw a visit from the Skid Row Slasher, and where two traveling chocolate salesmen laughed so hard they fell backwards out a window to their deaths. You'll also explore the fiery curse that repeatedly leveled the St. George Hotel. Included are some light hearted stories to help the blood and gore go down.

The Main Street Vice portion is a social history tour celebrating the ribald, racy, raunchy old promenade where the better people simply did not travel, but kicks were had by all who did. Burlesque babes and dirty picture parlors, mummified western outlaws and old time tattoo parlors, wax museums and pawn brokers, "professors" offering sex lectures and magazine peddlers with nudie Marilyn Monroe calendars under the counter, sophisticated steak houses and nickel donut dives -- these were the pleasures and the people to be found along Main during the first half of the 20th century, a street that every Angeleno knew offered more (yet less) of what could be seen anywhere else. On this tour, we'll visit the scenes of some more unforgettable debaucheries and share stories of crime, smut, passion and commerce.

Climb aboard for a time travel journey back to the downtown that's not there anymore, and the surprising amount of gems that survive.

Photo: Derek Hutchison

A criminal and gastronomical excursion into the San Gabriel Valley, Blood & Dumplings rolls through Alhambra, Temple City, Monterey Park, Rosemead and El Monte, revealing dozens of weird, forgotten crimes and oddities from the valley's past. Highlights include the mysterious Man from Mars Bandit, the lesbian couple whose bickering over spending cash resulted in one pumping the other full of downers until she died, the young bride who spent her wedding day buried under her parents' house, the battling neo-Nazis of El Monte, Phil Spector's spooky castle and the little bar where James Ellroy's murdered mother Jean had her last drink. The tour includes a selection of dumplings from one of the San Gabriel Valley's best Chinese restaurants.(Vegetarian passengers, please let us know your food preference several days before we depart.) If using a gift certificate, please note that this tour has an additional $5 dumpling fee, payable in cash or check at the bus door.

The Crown City masquerades as a calm and refined retreat, where well-bred ladies glide around their perfect bungalows and everyone knows what fork to use first. But don't be fooled by appearances. Dip into the confidential files of old Pasadena and meet assassins and oddballs, kidnappers and slashers, Satanists and all manner of maniac in a delightful little tour you WON'T find recommended by the better class of people! From celebrated cases like the RFK assassination (with a visit to Sirhan Sirhan's folks' house), "Eraserhead" star Jack Nance's strange end, black magician/rocket scientist Jack Parsons' death-by-misadventure and the 1926 Rose Parade grand stand collapse, to fascinating obscurities, the tour's dozens of murders, arsons, kidnappings, robberies, suicides, auto wrecks and oddball happening sites provide a alternate history of Pasadena that's as fascinating as it is creepy. Passengers will tour the old Millionaire's Row on Orange Grove, thrill to the shocking Sphinx Murder on the steps of the downtown Masonic Hall and discover why people named Judd should think twice before moving to Pasadena.

On this guided tour through the Beverly Hills of the early 20th Century, Crime Bus passengers thrill as Jazz Age bootleggers run amok, marvel at the Krazy Kafitz family's litany of murder-suicides, attempted husband slayings, Byzantine estate battles and mad bombings, visit the shortest street in Los Angeles (15' long Powers Place, with its magnificent views of the mansions of Alvarado Terrace), discover which fabulous mansion was once transformed into a functioning whiskey factory using every room in the house, and stroll the haunted paths of Rosedale Cemetery, site of notable burials (May K. Rindge, the mother of Malibu) and odd graveside crimes. Featured players include drunken ice cream men, the most famous dwarf in Hollywood, mass suicide ringleader Reverend Jim Jones, wacky millionaires who can't control their automobiles, human mole bank robbers, comically inept fumigators, kids trapped in tar pits, and dozens of other unusual and fascinating denizens of early Los Angeles.

There are even some celebrity sites along the route, including the death scenes of Motown soul sensation Marvin Gaye and 1920s star Angels baseball catcher Gus Sandberg. And the architecture too is to die for, as the Crime Bus rolls down the elegant streets of old West Adams, lined with gay mansions, adorable bungalows and signs of a century's decay which only enhance the neighborhood's charm.

Passengers on this eye-opening, funny and informative tour will forever see the West Adams district in a new light. It is highly recommended for natives and newcomers alike, crime and history buffs and anyone who likes to seek out the unexpected.

The most grisly Crime Bus tour, this seasonal confection rolls from Echo Park to the San Fernando Valley and back through Hollywood, stopping at the sites of the weirdest and most disgusting crimes in LA's history, and a few with a Halloween theme. Halloween Horrors features lurid crime scene photos and more sick jokes per mile than the other Crime Bus tours, and is the only no-kids-allowed tour on the schedule. Vintage crime scene photos are featured, with passengers urged to BYOBB (bring your own barf bag), always a smart idea when Crimebo the Crime Clown is in attendance.

Ghost Hosts Kim Cooper and Richard Schave have dug into the archives to uncover such terrible tales as the lady dope dealer left with her eyes gouged out on Echo Park's Lovers' Lane, the one-time silent screen star who died alone and was gnawed on by her doggy, the trick or treat murder of the handsome hairstylist, an astrologer and a palm reader who didn't foresee being killed by the women they loved, Silver Lake's exploding gun shop, the poignant death of the bravest dog in Hollywood, plus visits to Bela Lugosi's home, Crimebo's tales of Halloween celebrations gone terribly wrong and history of holiday pranks in Los Angeles, plus light-hearted oddities like the mysterious midnight disappearance of thousands of cucumbers from a Hollywood farm.

The 2008 edition of Halloween Horrors features a super spooky guest star. Jeremy Kasten is a horror filmmaker and a fetishist of all things related to Los Angeles’ past. Jeremy’s film’s include "The Attic Expeditions" starring Seth Green, Alice Cooper, Ted Raimi and Jeffrey Combs. "Attic" premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival and played at dozens of film festivals around the world and is considered a cult favorite among horror fans. Jeremy’s second film, "All Souls Day: Dias De Los Muertos" (David Keith, Laura Harring, Danny Trejo) premiered at the 2005 Slamdance Film Festival and his third film, "The Thirst", (Jeremy Sisto and Matt Keslar) is notoriously one of the most bloody modern vampire exploitation films. Jeremy has just released his latest, a remake of H.G Lewis’ "The Wizard of Gore," starring Crispin Glover, Kip Pardue, Bijou Phillips, Brad Dourif, Jeffrey Combs and featuring the Suicide Girls. "Wizard" premiered to sold out crowds at the Los Angeles Film Festival and is a love letter to post-punk Los Angeles. Jeremy will be showing and discussing favorite disturbing clips from horror films featuring Los Angeles. We will see the city as a background to heinous crimes as well as a stand-in for everything from sleepy suburbs to a post- apocalyptic nightmare world. Not for the squeamish.

Passengers on this eye-opening, funny and informative tour will leave with a new understanding of Halloween in old Los Angeles, and the promise of nightmares. It is highly recommended for natives and newcomers, crime and history buffs and anyone who likes to seek out the unexpected.