Important- This house fire predates the wildfires in California.
The news is from November 28/24
So, David McGowan? Not sure who here at this time remembers Mr McGowan? Or read any of his books? I’ve read them all. Own them all. Have two copies of the Weird Scenes book. One autographed by Dave. The other is the one I lend out. When Dave was writing the LC series, many in my blogging circle were eagerly awaiting each & every chapters release. The numerous anomalous/cleansing fires in Laurel Canyon were definitely a strange main feature of this saga.
Here’s a recent one from LATimes
- Neighbors said a man found dead in a Laurel Canyon home that burned on Wednesday was William Rothschild, a member of the prominent banking family.
- The fire was put out by 45 firefighters in a little more than 30 minutes, with some returning a day later to extinguish a small section of the home that was still smoldering.
A man found dead after his Laurel Canyon house was badly damaged in a fire Wednesday afternoon was a member of the prominent Rothschild banking family, neighbors said.
The body discovered at the Lookout Mountain Avenue property was that of William Rothschild, three people told The Times on Thursday. A magazine seen at the property was addressed to “WM DE ROTHSCHILD.”
Lookout Mountain? Where the CIA had a highly secretive, little known, movie studio
The studio’s story had not been fully told because it was run largely in secret, as a unit of the U.S. Air Force. Its films and photos were rarely credited and many are lost or were destroyed. No systematic effort was made to preserve its 22-year history, from 1947-69.
Lookout Mountain, however, played a central role in the U.S. government’s efforts to control – often unsuccessfully – the science and story around nuclear weapons in their early years, say co-authors Kevin Hamilton and Ned O’Gorman.
The Rothschilds, a sprawling Jewish family originally from Frankfurt, Germany, long dominated European banking, with its English and French branches playing major roles in finance and politics, most notably during the 18th and 19th centuries. At one point, the Rothschilds were widely considered to have amassed the largest private fortune on Earth.
Voter registration records show that William A. De Rothschild, listed as 87, has resided at the burned house. Another database shows a 77-year-old man with a similar name owning the property. The deceased man will be formally identified and his cause of death determined by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner.
A portion of the home, located near Wonderland Avenue (Bringing to memory the Wonderland murders that David McGowan wrote about) Elementary School and built in 1937, was smoldering Thursday morning, prompting a neighbor to call the authorities. Within minutes, firefighters arrived on the scene and extinguished what one of them said was a decorative piece of wood.
Rothschild, neighbors said, maintained a vintage car collection, storing some at his house and others up the street at another property that was ornamented with busts of great thinkers including Raphael and Michelangelo — and several security cameras. Two people said his holdings included a red Porsche that had once been owned by Michael Jordan.
You can read a fair amount of the material from the Laurel Canyon book at the site maintained by David McGowan’s daughter- Center for an Informed America
Wonder if Mr Rothschild lived in the Canyon in it’s heyday? He would have been a young man at that time (late 60’s early 70’s) if he did.
Just a trip down memory lane.