Four decades before the O.J. Simpson trial, Ventura County had its own version of the Trial of the Century: The Duncan murder case.
Meet the author of A Lovely Girl: The Tragedy of Olga Duncan and the Trial of One of California’s Most Notorious Killers.
Saturday, November 4, 10:00 am to 12:00 pm The Atrium at Ventura City Hall, 501 Poli Street
Deborah Holt Larkin was ten years old when her father, the court reporter for the Ventura County Star-Free Press, was immersed in the trial of Olga Duncan’s killers taking place at the Ventura County Courthouse (now Ventura City Hall).
Larkin’s memoir tells the story of this stranger-than-fiction murder case, and the influence of her reporter father’s work in her early life.
The book will be available for sale and the talk will be followed by book signing.
“My life-long interest in true crime stories began in 1958 when Olga Duncan vanished
from her Santa Barbara apartment in the middle of the night. At the time, I was a
passionate Dragnet and Nancy Drew fan. But when Olga’s brutally-beaten body was
discovered a month later in a shallow grave on a lonely road near my home town, my
focus shifted to the real-life mystery. And with a constant source of information from both
my father’s newspaper articles about the murder and his never-ending monologue around the house detailing the bizarre case, I became obsessed with the true crime story.”
“In between the carefully researched true crime procedural chapters, the thread of the story winds back to chapters of my coming-of-age memoir about our quirky family life and my dawning realization that sometimes terrible things can happen to good girls. That evil can hide behind a mask of normalcy.”
This event is sponsored by Ventura Friends of the Library
as part of the 150th Anniversary of Ventura County Celebration.