August 2, 2016
Los Angeles, California

Frank Girardot

 

Burl Barer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The Library Community Room is located at 1115 El Centro Street. No tickets or reservations are necessary and refreshments will be served. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. Autographed books will be available for purchase.

An Author Night with dynamic true crime writing duo, Burl Barer and Frank Girardot, will be presented at the South Pasadena Public Library onThursday, August 25 at 7:00 p.m. The arresting event will focus on their 2016 investigative thriller “A Taste For Murder”. The Author Night is presented by the South Pasadena Public Library, the Friends of the South Pasadena Public Library, and Sisters in Crime—LA, a mystery and true crime reading group that has met monthly at the South Pasadena Public Library for many years.

Frank Rodriguez, a much-loved counselor of troubled teens, lay dead on his bedroom floor. His wife and step-daughter were in total shock, and so was the medical examiner who performed the autopsy. Although he was found dead, Frank had been in perfect health. Demanding to know the cause of her husband’s death, Angie Rodriguez badgered the police, insisting Frank was murdered. The cops attributed her assertions to overwhelming grief, but soon they believed that Frank didn’t die of natural causes. When the police enlisted their number one suspect to help in the investigation, things spiraled out of control until police were dealing with a daring plot to murder Angie’s best friend, and allegations of another homicide so evil and twisted that even seasoned L.A County Detectives were startled beyond belief.

The case first came to Frank Girardot’s attention when he was compiling a database of unsolved homicides in LA County. Out of more than 11,000 homicides that occurred between January 1, 2000, and December 31, 2010, only one of them involved poison –the murder of Frank Rodriguez. Frank shared his findings with Burl Barer and together the award-winning journalist and the Edgar Award-winning writer began researching the case. The research took them from the gritty eastern LA suburbs to the gleaming Central California Coast. Their efforts convinced a superior court judge to allow them access to never-before-released court documents that revealed the planned hit on a key witness in the case, and a previous murder with similar circumstances. They also revealed the grisly details of Angie’s childhood.

Frank C. Girardot is the former Editor of the Pasadena Star-News and an honorary board member of the Justice for Homicide victims in LA County. He has been twice recognized as the group’s hero of the year. Girardot is the author of “Name Dropper: Investigating the Clark Rockefeller Mystery”. Frank’s 1994 story on the unsolved murder of Geneva Hilliker Ellroy, the mother of novelist James Ellroy, resulted in Ellroy’s book, “My Dark Places”. Frank has won several writing awards including the Southern California Press Association’s award for Investigative Journalism 1995, the LA Press Club’s Award for sportswriting in 1998 and was a finalist for the 2015 University of Florida Investigative Data Journalism Award. Girardot headed a project for the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, “Getting Away with Murder.” that chronicled  more than 11,000 homicides that occurred in L.A. County over a decade and found less than half were ever solved.

Burl Barer is an acclaimed author of bestselling fiction and non-fiction. He is best known for “The Saint”, “Capturing the Saint,” and many other true crime classics. Regarded as one of America’s premier investigative journalists, Barer’s true crime books are required reading in many criminology classes and among true crime fans. Burl Barer is an Edgar Award-winning author of fiction and non-fiction and is best known for “The Saint”, “Capture the Saint” and many bestselling True Crime Classics. Regarded as one of America’s premier investigative journalists, Barer’s true crime books are required reading in many criminology classes and among true crime fans.