ROGUES’ VALLEY : The Life and Times of the Valley’s Most Notorious Villains

Nefarious Angelenos have kept evil secrets here. From the Manson gang’s haunt at the old Spahn Movie Ranch--where police believe a headless wrangler is still buried--to the Reseda garage where a millionaire whiz kid cooked up a plan to defraud investors of millions of dollars, the regions north of Downtown Los Angeles have played host to some of the great crimes of the West.

The Charles Manson Gang

Spahn Movie Ranch, 12000 Santa Susana Pass Road, Chatsworth

One day in 1969, wrangler Donald (Shorty) Shea disappeared from this rugged ranch where Charles Manson and his homicidal crew once lived. Police believe Shea was decapitated and buried somewhere on the property, which has since been subdivided. The corpse has never been found.

The Hillside Stranglers

703 E. Colorado St., Glendale

Angelo Buono with his cousin Kenneth Bianchi, the so-called “Hillside Stranglers” who sexually tortured and killed nine women, dumping the bodies on hillsides in 1977 and 1978, allegedly committed some of the grisly deeds on this site, Buono’s auto upholstery shop.

The murder of Vicki Morgan

4171 D Colfax Ave., Studio City

Morgan, the mistress of Diners Club founder Alfred Bloomingdale, was beaten to death with a baseball bat here in 1983 by roommate Marvin Pancoast. Pancoast died of AIDS in prison at Chino in 1991.

The Rodney G. King beating

11700 block, Foothill Boulevard, near the Hansen Dam Recreation Area

Rodney G. King’s long night at the hands of the Los Angeles Police Department started and ended on the freeways and streets of the San Fernando Valley. The now legendary beating by officers of the LAPD’s Foothill Division--and surreptitious videotaping of the event--happened here, on a busy Valley street in front of a large apartment complex.

The ZZZZ Best swindle

7040 Darby Ave., Reseda

Teen-age millionaire Barry Minkow was convicted of 57 fraud counts for turning his ZZZZ Best carpet-cleaning company into a sophisticated scam. Minkow began his career at 15 in his parents’ garage here with $6,200 saved from evening and summer jobs. Before the scheme unraveled when he was 21, Minkow was reported to be worth more than $103 million. A federal court jury determined that the company bilked investors out of more than $26 million in loans and stock offerings by cooking the books with bogus earnings. Minkow told the court that he was a puppet being controlled by organized crime figures.

Vasquez Rocks: A Robbers’ Roost

Agua Dulce Canyon Road, off the Antelope Valley Freeway

This county park is believed to be the only park in the United States named for an outlaw. But 19th-Century bandit Tiburcio Vasquez, who along with his gang used the rocks as a hide-out, has been portrayed as both an American Robin Hood and an Old West rogue. Still others see him as a popular revolutionary. In the 1850s and 1860s, when Anglo immigration was increasingly threatening the native Mexican population, Vasquez targeted the newcomers by rustling their cattle and robbing their stagecoaches. Known to Anglos in his day as the “Scourge of California,” Vasquez was hanged for murder in 1875.

Research by Abigail Goodman/For The Times