Black tunnel white magic : a murder, a detective's obsession, and '90s Los Angeles at the brink / Rick Jackson and Matthew McGough ; foreword by Michael Connelly.

By:

Jackson, Rick (Retired detective) [author.]

Contributor(s):

McGough, Matthew

Material type: Text

TextPublisher: New York : Mulholland Books, Little, Brown and Company, 2025Description: xiv, 512 pages : illustrations ; 25 cmContent type:

text

Media type:

unmediated

Carrier type:

volume

ISBN:

9780316365789
0316365785

Subject(s):

DDC classification:

364.1523 23

LOC classification:

HV6533.C2 J33 2025

Summary: "In June 1990, Ronald Baker, a straight-A UCLA student, was found repeatedly stabbed to death in a tunnel near Spahn Ranch, where Charles Manson and his followers once lived. Shortly thereafter, Detective Rick Jackson and his partner, Frank Garcia, were assigned the case. Yet the facts made no sense. Who would have a motive to kill Ron Baker in such a grisly manner? Was the proximity to the Manson ranch related to the murder? And what about the pentagram pendant Ron wore around his neck? Jackson and Garcia soon focused their investigation on Baker's two male roommates, one Black, and one white. What emerges is at once a story of confounding betrayal and cold-hearted intentions, as well as a larger portrait of an embattled Los Angeles, a city in the grip of the Satanic Panic and grappling with questions of racial injustice and police brutality in the wake of Rodney King. In straightforward, matter-of-fact prose, Rick Jackson, the now-retired police detective who helped inspire Michael Connelly's beloved Harry Bosch, along with co-writer, Matthew McGough, take us through the events as he and his partner experienced them, piecing together the truth with each emerging clue. Black Tunnel White Magic is the true story of a murder in cold blood, deception and betrayal, and a city at the brink, set forth by the only man who could tell it." -- Publisher annotation.

Average rating: 0.0 (0 votes)

Holdings
Item type	Current library	Collection	Shelving location	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Adult Book	Phillipsburg Free Public Library	Adult Non-Fiction	New Books	364.1523 JAC	Available		36748002610220

Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Detective Rick Jackson, a decorated LAPD detective and a key inspiration in the development of Harry Bosch, delivers a shocking and immersive look into the one case he could never let go.

In June 1990, Ronald Baker, a straight-A UCLA student, was found repeatedly stabbed to death in a tunnel near Spahn Ranch, where Charles Manson and his followers once lived . Shortly thereafter, Detective Rick Jackson and his partner, Frank Garcia, were assigned the case . Yet the facts made no sense. Who would have a motive to kill Ron Baker in such a grisly manner? Was the proximity to the Manson ranch related to the murder? And what about the pentagram pendant Ron wore around his neck?

Jackson and Garcia soon focused their investigation on Baker's two male roommates, one Black, and one white. What emerges is at once a story of confounding betrayal and cold-hearted intentions, as well as a larger portrait of an embattled Los Angeles, a city in the grip of the Satanic Panic and grappling with questions of racial injustice and police brutality in the wake of Rodney King.

In straightforward, matter-of-fact prose, Rick Jackson, the now-retired police detective who helped inspire Michael Connelly's beloved Harry Bosch, along with co-writer, Matthew McGough, take us through the events as he and his partner experienced them, piecing together the truth with each emerging clue. Black Tunnel White Magic is the true story of a murder in cold blood, deception and betrayal, and a city at the brink, set forth by the only man who could tell it.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"In June 1990, Ronald Baker, a straight-A UCLA student, was found repeatedly stabbed to death in a tunnel near Spahn Ranch, where Charles Manson and his followers once lived. Shortly thereafter, Detective Rick Jackson and his partner, Frank Garcia, were assigned the case. Yet the facts made no sense. Who would have a motive to kill Ron Baker in such a grisly manner? Was the proximity to the Manson ranch related to the murder? And what about the pentagram pendant Ron wore around his neck? Jackson and Garcia soon focused their investigation on Baker's two male roommates, one Black, and one white. What emerges is at once a story of confounding betrayal and cold-hearted intentions, as well as a larger portrait of an embattled Los Angeles, a city in the grip of the Satanic Panic and grappling with questions of racial injustice and police brutality in the wake of Rodney King. In straightforward, matter-of-fact prose, Rick Jackson, the now-retired police detective who helped inspire Michael Connelly's beloved Harry Bosch, along with co-writer, Matthew McGough, take us through the events as he and his partner experienced them, piecing together the truth with each emerging clue. Black Tunnel White Magic is the true story of a murder in cold blood, deception and betrayal, and a city at the brink, set forth by the only man who could tell it." -- Publisher annotation.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

Foreword (xiii)
Part I The Betrayal
1 Holy Terror (June 21 to 22, 1990) (3)
2 "Mr. Baker, We Have Your Son" (June 21 to 24, 1990) (13)
3 Partners in Crime (June 24, 1990) (21)
4 Searching Chatsworth Park (June 24 to 25, 1990) (31)
5 "I Always Thought Ron Would Be There" (June 26 to 30, 1990) (45)
6 Deception Indicated (July 2 to 6, 1990) (61)
7 "The Coolest Motherfucker I've Ever Dealt With" (July 7 to 11, 1990) (83)
8 "Not a Flight Risk" (July 12 to 24, 1990) (94)
9 On the Run? (July 25 to August 3, 1990) (102)
10 The Roller Coaster (August 6 to 22, 1990) (117)
11 "Things To Do" (September 4, 1990 to January 21, 1992) (132)
12 A Request for Immunity (February 6 to 10, 1992) (145)
Part II The Second Betrayal
13 King for a Day (February 10, 1992) (153)
14 Blood Warrant (February 11 to July 6, 1992) (201)
15 "Where the Hell Have You Been?" (July 9 to 13, 1992) (224)
16 "No Changes, No Edits" (July 18 to October 21, 1992) (247)
17 "It's Too Bad We Had to Meet Under These Circumstances" (October 21, 1992 to January 23, 1993) (267)
18 "I Need You for One More Day" (February 9 to 17, 1993) (274)
19 "A Hugging Circle" (February 22 to June 10, 1993) (307)
20 "A Murder That Someone Else Did" (June 30 to July 16, 1993) (315)
Part III The Third Betrayal
21 The Burglary (December 13, 1993 to March 4, 1994) (333)
22 Deputy D.A. Marcia Clark (May 13 to June 12, 1994) (355)
23 Governor's Warrant (June 20 to November 14, 1994) (378)
24 The Passport Investigator (November 28, 1994 to February 26, 1996) (386)
25 Judgment Day (March 18 to 29, 1996) (401)
26 Equal Justice? (June 3 to August 26, 1996) (425)
27 My Return to the Scenes of the Crimes (1996 to 2020) (436)
Part IV The Final Betrayal
28 "By Virtue of the Authority Vested in Me" (June 21 to December 7, 2020) (445)
29 A Shallow Dive for the Truth (December 8, 2020) (467)
30 And in the End, the Life You Take Is Equal to… (January 25, 2021 to April 26, 2022) (485)
Acknowledgments (491)
Authors' Note on Sources (495)
Selected Bibliography (496)
Index (497)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Retired LAPD detective Jackson teams up with true crime author McGough (The Lazarus Files) to recount how Jackson and his partner, Frank Garcia, spent six years solving the bizarre murder of Ron Baker. The 21-year-old Baker was found dead in a Los Angeles train tunnel on the summer solstice in 1990, his throat slashed with a Marine Corps knife. Almost immediately, Baker's two roommates, Nathan Blalock and Duncan Martinez, became the sole suspects, but the case stalled after Martinez faked his own kidnapping and disappeared for 18 months. Jackson and McGough's account of the investigation, which is dotted with strange red herrings--Baker was interested in Wicca, and his family received cryptic ransom calls--unfolds like a mind-bending prestige TV crime drama, with the details liable to grip readers as tightly as they did the authors. If the final product is occasionally long-winded, and the prose more serviceable than striking, those minor flaws fail to break the story's spell as a stirring testament to Jackson and Garcia's persistence. Readers drawn to complex, slow-burn investigations will be rapt. Photos. Agent: Andrew Blauner, Blauner Books. (Mar.)

Booklist Review

June 1990. A UCLA student is stabbed to death; his body is found in a tunnel near the infamous Spahn Ranch, where Charles Manson and his "family" lived in the 1960s. Rick Jackson and his partner led the investigation, but this was no straightforward murder case. Was the Spahn Ranch relevant? Why was the victim wearing a magical symbol? Who had a motive to kill this seemingly fine, upstanding citizen? This true-crime tale, written by detective Jackson and investigative detective McGough, is the kind of book descriptors like "searing," "intense," and "haunting" were custom-made for. The case itself is utterly compelling--a murder with potentially satanic overtones, committed in the midst of the "satanic panic" of the 1980s and '90s--and the writing is exquisite, keeping the reader glued to the page. The book comes highly recommended with a foreword by renowned crime fiction writer Michael Connelly, who's known Jackson for many years (the detective was part of the inspiration for Connelly's protagonist Harry Bosch), and if you can't trust Connelly, who can you trust? This is a first-rate work of true crime.

Kirkus Book Review

True-crime memoir that minutely details the labyrinthine investigation of a brutal murder. Retired Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective Jackson (writing with McGough) surveys his 34-year tenure via the long road to justice in the 1990 stabbing of UCLA student Ron Baker in a train tunnel near Chatsworth Park. Given the era's suspicions of occult conspiracies, investigators first pursued "a possible 'devil worship satanic connection.'" Yet Jackson's suspicions soon fell on Ron's roommates, Duncan and Nathan, white and Black military veterans, respectively; despite their affability, once Duncan fails his polygraph, "the evidence [soon] stubbornly suggested that Duncan and Nathan had had a hand in Ron's killing, whether or not it made sense." Duncan, a committed fabulist, faked his own kidnapping and disappeared, only to be later apprehended for passport fraud; he agreed to record Nathan admitting to their planning of the killing as a faux kidnap for ransom, an "outlandish motive." This convoluted investigation plays out against the backdrop of the Rodney King beating and O.J. Simpson's trial: "In the span of just a few years, Los Angeles and its criminal justice system had become ground zero for the country's racial divisions." Regarding Duncan's and Nathan's divergent fates, Jackson ruefully observes, "Little did we imagine at the time how perceptions about race would enter the equation later." After five years, both were convicted at trial and "thus deserved the same sentence: life without any possibility of parole." Yet 25 years later, Duncan successfully received clemency while Nathan has not, deepening the appearance of structural racial bias in this bizarre case. Interviews are represented at length, which seems exhaustive, yet it allows the reader to follow a complicated homicide investigation with only senselessness at its heart. Satisfyingly intricate journey into the policing of urban violence. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.