LAistory is our new series that will take us on a journey to what came before to help us understand where we are today. We began with Val Verde, the "Black Palm Springs" and now we go to Thelma Todd's Roadside Cafe. This December 16th, it will have been seventy-three years since Thelma Todd was found dead at 29, in the garage of her home. The car she was sitting in was still on.......

Photo of unrelated Disneyland Hotel balcony by clouddinner via flickr. A man leaped to his death from a 14th-floor balcony at the Disneyland Hotel this morning. "He went out on the balcony and intentionally leapt,'' said Anaheim police Sgt. Rick Martinez, all but confirming the apparent suicide of a businessman in his 30's or 40's, around 11 a.m. outside the the Disneyland Hotel's Wonder Tower. ( -- OC Register). An investigation is ongoing and......

Photo by kpeII via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr The elderly women known as the 'Black Widows' have been found guilty of murder conspiracy. Partial verdicts were read today against 77-year-old Helen Golay and 75-year-old Olga Rutterschmidt for their roles in two murders. A 27-year-old man from Sherman Oaks jumped to his death this morning from an overpass on the 210 Freeway at Sierra Avenue in Fontana. He had left his car......

An on-duty Orange County sheriff's investigator was found dead in the driver's seat of an unmarked Ford Crown Victoria in Aliso Viejo on Wednesday. The veteran investigator's body was found about 2:30 p.m. in an unmarked Ford Crown Victoria parked in the parking lot of a shopping center in the 26700 block of Aliso Creek Road near Enterprise. Blood covered the front seat. -- OC RegisterEarly news reports described a "body ... discovered ... in......

Photo by Try Hank via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr The "severely decomposed" body of an infant has been found in Santa Ana. An area resident saw a dog playing with something unusual, which turned out to be the baby, whose body has been taken to the Orange County coroner's office for an autopsy. Police may now be ruling yesterday's 101 freeway death a suicide, reports the Daily News. Initial reports intimated......

Move over dentists, the boys in blue at the Los Angeles Police Department are encroaching on your fabled love of suicide. According to a report released today by the department, officers are more likely to commit suicide than die in the line of duty. During the last nine years, 19 sworn members of the LAPD have committed suicide, and seven were killed in the line of duty. Between 1990 and 1998, there were 24 suicides.......

At 6 a.m. on January 26, 2005, a man sat his Jeep Grand Cherokee across Metrolink train tracks near Chevy Chase Drive in Glendale in an attempt to, what he and his family members claim, commit suicide. Juan Manuel Alvarez, then 26, abandoned his vehicle before a southbound train hit it, derailing and colliding with a northbound train. Glendale Police say his actions were "not consistent" with those of someone attempting suicide and a Glendale......

Taken from the 8th Floor of the City National Bank Building | Photo by Mitch Oberstein with an iPhone *Update, 6:42 p.m.: A maintenance man familiar with the building has said they found an apparent suicide note.A witness is reporting to LAist that it appears a person has fallen from a building at 14724 Ventura Blvd. in The Village area of Sherman Oaks. "There's streaks of blood and just a sheet covering him," said......

I'm so glad there weren't any blogs in 1999. Otherwise they'd have been blamed for Colombine. But in all seriousness, last weekend it was reported that the death of advertising mogul Paul Tilley (The alleged Brain behind The Dell Dude and "I'm Lovin' it," if you can believe that) was ruled a suicide. In the wake of the disturbing end to a career filled with ridiculous, though culturally significant ephemera, an unlikely culprit is being......

When police arrived last night to a call, the suspect was standing in the middle of the street holding a handgun. Luckily, no struggle occurred. Unfortunately, moments before it was not so good:Two women and a 4-year-old girl were killed and two other children were wounded in a shooting Monday night in a Baldwin Park neighborhood, police said. The slayings occurred after a man argued with his mother and then shot her with a handgun,......

Photo by view from a loft via LAist Featured Photos Pool on Flickr The Los Angeles Fire Department is responding to a call regarding a possible jumper onto the 110 Freeway Northbound at Stadium Way. A week ago today, someone committed suicide by jumping onto the 101 Freeway at Wilton Place. Update, 2:12 P.M.: After the first responders arrived, nothing was found after a 10-minute search according to d'Lisa Davies of the LAFD. The......

*Updates as of 10:53am: The LA Times is now reporting: "Witnesses described a man approximately 64 years old leaping from the Wilton Place crossing over the northbound Hollywood Freeway near Sunset Boulevard at about 8:30 a.m."A man jumped to his death from the 101 North overpass at Sunset Boulevard this morning; reports are coming in from Sigalert.com that traffic is badly snarled. LAist spoke to a witness at the scene who was caught in......

Love is in the air tonight. / Photo by lush.i.ous via flickr. Ahhh luuuurve is in the air. Need some last-minute ideas for the Hallmark-inspired holiday? Yes, tonight’s Valentine’s Day and here are a few different ideas that will beat flowers and candy any day. ART To coincide with the opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) at LACMA this weekend, “Women in the City” selected to exhibit four prominent contemporary artists (Cindy......

On the Pier in Santa Monica Mr. Lincoln, we like your pennies, says the US Postal service, just a day shy of his birthday. To celebrate, they announced today that postage will go up by 1 cent to 42 cents, effective May 12th. A 15-minute car chase had CHP officers trying to catch up with a woman wanted in a forgery case today. The pursuit began in El Monte and ended in Sylmar, reaching......

The fountain at the LA Central Library is rather strange and fantastical "I'll have a footlong Subway club on white, hold the mayo, and GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY!" Police are looking for the man who held up a Subway sandwich store at gunpoint Monday on Beverly in the Wilshire area. The owner and manager of a Burbank apartment building was found liable for their role in the murder of one of his tenants, who......

The answer is yes, there was good chance that these two domestic violence related homicides could have been prevented. If it took place in another part of the city, say the Van Nuys area, Eagle Rock, Hollywood, South LA, or even the Pacific Palisades, something maybe could have been done. Though, in Tunjunga where two murders took place yesterday, under the jurisdiction of the the LAPD's Foothill Division, the funding just wasn't there for a......

After the holidays, some offices are feverishly trying to catch up on missed work, while others are still lounging in the holiday lull, trying to look busy. Here are a few popular sites for goofing around, or taking a little break from that feverish bean-counting. Just try not to laugh so hard you disrupt the entire office. I usually avoid adorable animal sites, but you have to forgive me, Stuffonmycat.com is hysterical. This site even......

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. People want to lose weight this year, get in better shape, look good naked, blah, blah, blah, blah. Does it actually happen? Sure, some do. But most? We all know that reality. The problem for some is motivation. We've found one excellent way to walk the talk that is a little more than six months from right now. It's called The World Famous Mud Run, a 10K Adventure/Military race outside of......

If tonight's slim pickings in the music scene had an official theme, it would fall into Western/Country. In mid-country, House of Blues, Sunset Strip, is hosting a night of insane Psychobilly (punk, meet rockabilly). The Southlands of Long Beach finds the baritone country rock sounds of Brad Johnson at Cowboy Country and to the north in the Valley, the straight ahead country rockabilly Jeffrey Michaels visits The Cowboy Palace Saloon. Of other interests and......

TV character actor John Berg was found dead at his Van Nuys residence Sunday afternoon. Berg took his own life by carbon monoxide poisoning using a hibachi grill. He was 58. "He died as a result of suicide ... from suffocation," Lt. John Kadas of the coroner's office said. "A hibachi grill was used inside his bedroom. It's a fairly common form of suicide where it's put inside an enclosed space and then lit up.......

Joel McHale hosts The Soup, a celebration of the most embarrassing moments in pop culture every Friday night on E! From Tila Tequila to Yo Gabba Gabba you can count on The Soup to gather all the "best of" moments into one big pot of funny. LAist headed to the E! studios for a backstage tour, taping of the show, and one on one with the man who is not afraid to say Oprah's Va-Jay-Jay......

For those of you who might not be familiar with the story, this is a tale of suspicion, revenge, and MySpace gone terribly wrong. In 2006, Lori Drew of Dardenne, Missouri, invented a fake profile on MySpace pretending to be a young boy named "Josh". Her intent was to use "Josh" to romance and keep tabs on her daughter's ex-best-friend, Megan Meier, who Drew believed was harassing her daughter via MySpace. "Josh" also "friended"......

Mr. Negative is tired of watching the GOP candidates pussy-foot around the hardcore questions that YouTube and CNN are dishing. Mr. Negative ain't stupid, he knows what you're really saying. With immigration reform failing, will I have a job? Yes, there are still openings at Wal-Mart...but they don't provide health insurance. Actually most corporations are moving towards eliminating all benefits for the working class. But $1.99 tube socks, you just can't fuckin' beat that!......

All I wanted was a deep-fried turkey blowing up. Just a little cautionary video. Instead I got a Frosty the Snowman gay suicide, nazi gingerbread, and a drunk interfering with a newscaster. Bonus!......

Fun Fun Fun Fest 2007 Recap from Super!Alright! on Vimeo. Austinist attended a town hall meeting about proposed noise ordinances that could undermine the city's future as the Live Music Capital of the World, and lamented the possible loss of Texas's only feminist bookstore. Throughout the week, they interviewed a bunch of indie fashion designers and D-I-Y websites—Etsy, Ornamental Things, 31 Corn Lane, and Aorta Designs—for the upcoming Stitch Fashion Show. They also did......

On the last night of a short west coast tour to promote his ridiculously great new record Bluefinger, (review here) Charles Thompson the Third aka Frank Black aka Black Francis hit Safari Sam’s last night with a blistering hour-plus set comprised of the entire Bluefinger “rock opera”, and just a very few extra songs thrown in for good measure. The set was loose and blissfully raw. Like any good maestro, Black was talkative, and......

Various Artists Kurt Cobain About A Son Music From The Motion Picture Barsuk Records, released 9/11/07 The loud-quiet-LOUD bipolarity and creepy darkness of Kurt Cobain's music comes across loud-and-clear in this excellent collection of grunge, punk, and blues that make up the music of Kurt Cobain About A Son. The fact that no actual Cobain material is used in this makes it even weirder, and if you ask me, better. It makes you miss......

Eulogies Eulogies Dangerbird Records Release Date: 09/11/07 Peter Walker did the right thing when he decided to ditch the solo career for his band Eulogies. For some reason or another, his solo career didn't interest me, but Eulogies' self-titled 2007 release has proven otherwise. The new album is a striking and addictive indie rock endeavor, the antithesis of Walker's previous Wilco-compared work. Eulogies is built upon deceivingly poppy premise. The band name, lyrical content,......

Welcome to October! Metroblogging wants to know how you and your neighborhood will celebrate the run up to All Hallow's Eve. Kobe "I can't live with you, I can't live without you" Bryant was in a jolly mood today as the Lakers greeted the media at its El Segundo practice facility. Construction on a proposed child-care facility, once touted as the centerpiece to Panorama City redevelopment, is hampered by political and building delays. I......

Your boy begins his 10-night stand at the re-opened Palladium. This is why they hate us. Morrissey @ Palladium Angie Stone @ Roxy Oliver Future, Asher, Salt & Samovar @ Spaceland Burning Brides, Who Rides The Tiger @ Viper Room Castledoor @ The Echo Metal Skool, Suicide Holiday, Glass Pinata @ Key Club Swords of Fatima, Abe Lincoln Story, Themes @ Mr. T's Bowl The Black Angels, Spindrift, Brian Glaze @ The Troubadour The......