Dateline: Missing In America - Dateline presents: Murder in the Hollywood Hills

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

Hey Dateline fans! As a bonus, we’re giving you a special preview clip of our new podcast series, Murder in the Hollywood Hills. In this story Keith Morrison takes us to the city of dreams, where a smooth-talking predator lured young women into a nightmare with promises of fame and fortune. He evaded justice for years, but when a group of women banded together, they fought to lock him up for life.If you like what you hear, you can listen to Murder in the Hollywood Hills for free each week. Or, subscribe to Dateline Premium on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or DatelinePremium.com to unlock new episodes one week early: https://link.chtbl.com/mithh_fdlw

Hello, I'm Keith Morrison with a special preview of Murder in the Hollywood Hills. Our latest podcast takes us to Hollywood for a story about a smooth-talking predator who lured young women with the promise of fame. But most of all, it's about how a group of those women banded together to put him behind bars and keep him there. It was late on a Saturday afternoon when Douglas Kirkland ambled down to the end of his driveway in the Hollywood Hills to check the mail. To the west, way out over the Pacific, he might have seen a line of bruised-colored

clouds puffing themselves up. Looked like they meant business. L.A. was in for some rain. It was at that moment that Douglas' wife, Francoise, who was puttering in the garage, looked up and noticed that a young woman in a white sports car had stopped in front of her husband. It was a mealtide, and there was a very pretty girl, pretty blonde girl in there with all it looked was her entire wardrobe next to her. And she looked very frazzled.

Francoise overheard the girl in the sports car ask Douglas about a house that resembled a castle. Douglas said he didn't know what she was talking about. But Francoise did. And I kind of yelled out, said, you know, the castle is that place on Green Valley. It's sort of like at the corner of a little street and it's got, you know, statues all around it,

a little turret and all that. That's the castle. That's what we call the castle. Relief washed over the young woman's face, along with anticipation, anxiety, excitement, all mixed up in those big blue eyes. Douglas Kirkland knew the look. For decades he'd been a celebrity photographer in Hollywood. He made his reputation taking iconic pictures of stars, and those who had stars in their eyes. The young woman said thank you and pulled away, and as her red taillights disappeared

around the bend, Douglas turned to Francoise and said, It's another one of those like little hopeful girls who is going to a photo shoot. I hope she's going to be okay. Douglas was right, of course. The young woman in the white sports car was on her way to a photo shoot, or what she thought was a photo shoot. Her name was Christy Johnson. She was 21 years old that day. She would not see 22.

Christy Johnson disappeared February 15th after telling friends she was going to meet a man about a movie role. Yes, this is a story about what happened to Christy Johnson one Saturday afternoon. But it's about more than that. It's about dreams. And a man who told a lot of young women like Christy that he could make their dreams of Hollywood stardom come true. He talked about big bucks. He named numbers of money that I can't recall today, but it was a lot of money. He said, are you kidding me?

He said, you know, you're perfect. You're going to make all this money. You're going to be famous. You're going to be on all the talk shows. It's a story about what can happen when the people who administer our courts play let's Make a Deal with Justice. And it's about a group of victims and near victims determined to turn the tables on a predator.

He did try this ruse on all of us and that seemed to be enough to bond us together. We all feel very connected, like a sisterhood. They were everything to the case and without them, we most likely would not have had a case. I'm Keith Morrison and this is Murder in the Hollywood Hills, a podcast from Dateline. Thanks for listening. Search Murder in the Hollywood Hills to hear the full episode now, completely free. Or subscribe to Dateline Premium on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify.

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