Estouric to offer West LA crime bus tour

Absolutely No O.J. Guaranteed on Esotouric's Historic West LA Crime Bus Tour

WHAT: Esotouric's Wild Wild West Side Crime Bus Tour

WHEN: Saturday January 16, 12pm-4pm

WHERE: Departing from The Museum of Jurassic Technology, 9341 Venice Boulevard, Culver City, CA 90232

COST: $58/person (15% off for KCRW or KPCC members)

FREE TICKETS: Esotouric will be raffling off 5 pairs of tickets to subscribers to their weekly email list, so sign up before January 10 at http://www.esotouric.com

INFO: http://www.esotouric.com, 323-223-2767

RELATED TOURS: The tour's opposite number, East Side Babylon (Boyle Heights, Commerce, Montebello and East LA crimes), rolls on Saturday, January 30

On Saturday, January 16, Esotouric, the eclectic bus adventure company that's redefining bus tourism for a more sophisticated audience, presents its only West Los Angeles crime tour, WILD WILD WEST SIDE.

All Esotouric tours defy expectations, and this tour avoids such obvious and familiar West L.A. crimes as the O.J. Simpson and Menendez murders in favor of revealing shocking historical crime lore. To create this tour, Esotouric's crack researchers dove head first into West L.A.'s blood-soaked history to uncover a selection of forgotten and utterly fascinating crime stories dating from the 1910s through the 1960s, and spanning Venice, Santa Monica, Marina del Rey and Culver City.

Tour creator Kim Cooper says, "I started stockpiling amazing crime stories from the west side of town in Esotouric's early days, knowing my husband Richard was adverse to starting a tour anywhere but downtown. Eventually,the crimes in my stash were simply too compelling to ignore, and WILD WILD WEST SIDE was born. Where else in LA could we visit the grave of a mummified teenage cult priestess who was buried with seven puppies for future reanimation? Only on the West Side!"

Crime Bus passengers will be treated to detailed descriptions of some of the most notorious, strange and fascinating forgotten tales of the region, each told at the scene of the crime. They'll shudder to tales of wicked mothers, when they meet the secret wife who shot her hubby as he celebrated New Years Eve with his controlling mommy (then willed herself into a coma rather than face sentencing!), the evil old ladies who kept unwanted children as prisoners in a filthy beachside shack and may have gotten away with dozens of murders, and the gifted UCLA film student who slaughtered his girlfriend because he believed his dead mother's evil spirit possessed her. All this, plus a wealthy retiree tried for a murder that may never have happened, the vicious slaughter of a child by a serial killer beneath the Santa Monica pier, the school for feeble minded children burned down by a miserable resident, the grand old hotel that became home to a murderous anti-drug cult, a traditional duel conducted by knife-wielding teenage girls for the love of a married bus driver, and other tales of terror and mystery that will forever change the way you view the West Side of Los Angeles.

Upcoming Esotouric bus tour and special event schedule:
Sat January 9 - The Real Black Dahlia crime bus tour
Sat January 16 - Wild Wild West Side crime bus tour
Sat January 23 ­ Weird West Adams crime bus tour
Sat January 30 - East Side Babylon crime bus tour
Sun Feb 7 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: South LA
Sat Feb 13 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: Route 66
Thurs Feb 18 ­ Jeremy Kasten presents "Spider Baby" with director Jack Hill
Sat Feb 20 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: The New Chinatowns
Sun Feb 21 - Joan Renner lecture "How the 'Bob' Changed History" (tentative)
Sat Feb 27 - Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles: The Lowdown on Downtown-The Secret History of LA
Sat March 6 - Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice crime bus tour
Sat March 13 - Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles
Sat March 20 - Maja's Mysteries: Rapture & Release (debut)
Sat March 27 - Raymond Chandler's Bay City
Sat April 3 ­ John Buntin's L.A. Noir
Sat April 10 ­ Crawling Down Cahuenga: Tom Waits' L.A.
Sat April 24 ­ Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski's L.A.
Sat May 1 - Pasadena Confidential crime bus tour with Crimebo the Clown
Sat May 8 - Blood & Dumplings crime bus tour
Sat May 15 - The Real Black Dahlia crime bus tour
Sat May 22 - The Birth of Noir: James M. Cain's So. Cal Nightmare

For more info on Esotouric, visit http://www.esotouric.com