Marquis Publishing, an affiliate of the Marquis Gallery announces the release of author and photographer Marques Vickers' "Murder in California: The Topography of Evil." The 417-page edition is a visual return to 101 infamous crime scenes detailing the shocking and often searing narratives behind each tragedy. Over 200 images amplify the experience by escorting the reader to the crime location, offering a critical context and perspective for understanding.
The captured snapshots portray visual testimonies of extinguished lives removed by acts of violence. Crime scenes often revert back into unremarkable landscape or unassuming buildings over the ensuing years and decades. Several have altered little since their moment of infamy. Many are passed daily by pedestrian and vehicular traffic unaware of a location's unique significance. California has been the residence for many notorious individual and serial killers including the Zodiac, Ted "Unabomber" Kaczynski, Dan White, Charles Manson, Sirhan Sirhan, Jim Jones, Richard Allen Davis, David Carpenter, Menendez Brothers, Juan Corona, Rodney Alcala, Phil Spector, Juan Corona, Richard Ramirez and Scott Peterson. The media has renamed some such as the Trailside Killer, Co-ed Killer, Children of Thunder, Vampire of Sacramento, Zebra Killers and the Death House Landlady. The region has also buried notables among the profiled victims including Senator Robert Kennedy, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, Supervisor Harvey Milk, Mobster Bugsy Siegel, Black Panther Huey P. Newton, Journalist Chauncey Bailey, Nicole Simpson-Brown, Rapper Christopher Wallace a.k.a. Notorious B.I.G., Actors Haing Ngor, Ramon Novarro and Sal Mineo, Singers Marvin Gaye and Sam Cooke, Polly Klaas, Lacy Peterson and members from the People's Temple Massacre in Jonestown, Guyana and Heaven's Gate cult suicide in Rancho Santa Fe.Videos