As editor-in-chief of Variety, Peter Bart was one of the most powerful people in the entertainment industry. This piece got him suspended.

What it’s like to have thousands of fans who don’t recognize you.

From 1976 to 1986, one of the most violent serial criminals in American history terrorized communities throughout California. He was little known, never caught, and might still be out there. The author, along with several others, couldn’t stop working on the case.

A case of peafowl dividing a neighborhood.

In 1998, a cop named Jon Aujay went for a run in the desert. He never came back. The department decided it was suicide, but that is not the only theory.

The life of Kimi Peck, a former screenwriter, once married to Gregory Peck’s son, who turned to “saving” stray dogs.

A West Hollywood aesthetician made headlines after allegedly trying to have a business rival killed. But the real story, involving ongoing harassment and a member of the so-called Bling Ring, may be more complicated.

Nearly 70 years after Bugsy Siegel’s unsolved murder in Beverly Hills, a family finally comes forward: they know who did it.

A couple’s only son is killed in Iraq.

Yasiel Puig’s journey to the Dodgers.

The downfall of Hugo Schwyzer, feminist.

The undoing of Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who resigned in January amidst multiple swirling scandals.

A murder involving the late actor leaves unanswered questions.

On the mountain lions of Los Angeles.

A profile of legendary L.A. crack dealer Freeway Rick Ross, now out of jail and trying to sell everything from weaves to his own biopic, written by a journalist who has known him for decades.

On the meeting of shaggy-haired American ping pong ace Glenn Cowan and Chinese master Zhuang Zedong (who died this week), and how their fleeting friendship thawed relations between the twon nations during the U.S. team’s historic 1971 tour of China.

A reporter who investigated Scientology tracks down the man who once ran the church’s intelligence operations – and who may hold the secret to years of harassment (and the mysterious death of a pet dog).

A profile of Huell Howser, the happiest man on TV.

An attempt at writing about the football coach.

Suicide-by-subway, and how the dead haunt the living.

A profile of Doc Johnson, “the Procter & Gamble of sex toys.”

How one man made millions with a fancy hamburger.

Ed Rosenthal recounts the six days he got lost in Joshua Tree National Park.

How Yvette Vickers, a B-movie starlet who had appeared in Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman, ended up mummified in her Los Angeles home last year.

As mainstream news loses its relevance, Allred becomes only more relevant to mainstream news. She’s provided thousands of hours of titillating material that has helped keep cable networks from grinding to a halt. The players come and go. Past clients like Amber Frey and Tiger Woods Mistress No. 1 Rachel Uchitel slip back into obscurity. Scott Peterson rots disregarded on death row in San Quentin, and Woods’s sexual escapades no longer mesmerize. But Allred retains her significance. There are always new victims to premiere and promote, new serial sexual harassers or psychopaths to square off against. In this spectacle of scandal, grisly murder, and celebrity wrongdoing, Allred has made herself the stage manager, the content provider, the indispensable performer.