Overview

Who is the famous ghost said to haunt the Hotel del Coronado near San Diego? What is the truth behind the enigma surrounding her violent and mysterious death at the hotel in 1892? For the first time ever, the truth is revealed -- hidden in plain sight for over 120 years, due to a highly successful cover-up in 1892 to protect the reputation of hotel owner John D. Spreckels, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the United States during the late Gilded Age. What were the national and global implications of the blackmail plot in Coronado? Who was the Beautiful Stranger? Why did she come to Spreckels' hotel and register under a false name? Why did she died of a gunshot to the head, five days later, on the back stairs of the hotel? The mystery became an overnight, national sensation in the Yellow Press. The national telegraph network was the Internet of its day. Daily, even hourly, breathless reports issued from Coronado. Repressed Victorian readers were titillated, and couldn't get enough, when rumors of scandal and her alleged liaisons with men in the highest places leaked out. Was she murdered to silence her for what she knew? Was her husband a violent gambler, as myth has long maintained, who used her to lure gullible male victims to card games aboard luxurious transcontinental railroad cars? The truth, as finally revealed in John T. Cullen's painstaking, completely logical analysis, is far stranger than fiction. There are no paranormal effects here -- just cold, objective logic. All that we know has lain hidden in plain sight for over 120 years -- we just need to put the puzzle pieces together in their obvious, correct combination. When you have a puzzle of many pieces, and you put it together in the only way that they can possibly all fit, it can confidently be asserted that the puzzle has been solved. The author has discovered the intricate but logical (and only possible) solution to this very old true crime, a police case that went cold long ago because it was meant to. Dead Move: Kate Morgan and the Haunting Mystery of Coronado, Third Edition, is a scholarly, nonfiction historical analysis that relies only on known facts to draw the inevitable conclusions that should have been obvious in 1892, to an objective observer not blinded by Spreckels' newspapers and agents. The coverup left us a confused, muddled, illogical tangle of myths and legends. It was a maze of known facts, tantalizing clues, and baffling dead ends--because it was designed that way. While Kate Morgan and her accomplices were at John Spreckels' Hotel del Coronado, attempting to pull off a doomed and ill-timed blackmail conspiracy, the target of that conspiracy -- John D. Spreckels, scion of the great Hawai'i sugar fortune -- was in Washington, D.C. fighting for Hawai'i's continued national sovereignty, the monarchy which stood in the way of foreign corporate interests, and his father's vast sugar plantations. A breath of scandal could have doomed Spreckels' delicate and desperate negotiations (even while Claus Spreckels, his father, was conducting last minute shuttle diplomacy between San Francisco and Honolulu). The Beautiful Stranger -- the tragic dead woman in Coronado -- was not Kate Morgan, as legend has long suggested. Instead, she was a poor, beautiful runaway from Detroit, a shopgirl named Lizzie Wyllie. She was a 'ruined' woman, having been made pregnant by her shop foreman, John Longfield. Together, they fell into the clutches of a ruthless grifter from Iowa, named Kate Morgan, who had a bizarre master plan for extracting a lot of money from the distant Mr. Spreckels. Kate and John escaped, while John Spreckels was shielded by the long-told lies this book dispels, and Lizzie became, in her death, that great, contradictory Victorian ideal of womanhood -- the Fallen Angel. Lethal Journey replaces the old dramatization in the book. It is a noir, period thriller you will not be able to put down.

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9781478141112

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John T. Cullen, a San Diego author of fiction and nonfiction, lives with his wife, son, and cat in the 1870s town of Grantville, within San Diego city limits. Cullen specializes as a history and science writer. In the true crime analysis Dead Move: Kate Morgan and the Haunting Mystery of Coronado (2008), he was the first researcher to plausibly explain the 1892 true crime at the U.S. National Landmark Hotel del Coronado, source of a premier national ghost legend. He explains the violent and mysterious 1892 death of the Beautiful Stranger at the hotel, thus solving a cold case well over a century old. The author followed with a noir period novel (Lethal Journey), closely based on the true analysis in Dead Move. He is the author of an acclaimed virtual tour of ancient Rome, titled A Walk in Ancient Rome (first authorized edition due out 2015 from Clocktower Books). His fiction includes historical novels (The Spy's Daughter, Lethal Journey) and suspense thrillers (Doctor Night, Vanished Flight 777). Autumn of the Republic is a political thriller and thought experiment based on the terrifying premise: What if we, under Article V, called a 2nd Constitutional Convention (CON2) to revise or even discard the 1787 Constitution? His novel, written as an entertaining thriller, is the first to actually think through many details and ramifications. It's been adopted by major university law school libraries as reference material. His June 2014 novel Vanished Flight 777 is a thriller and thought experiment on the premise that Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 may not have crashed into the Indian Ocean, but was hijacked by Islamic terrorists, is being weaponized, and will be used in a horrifying attack like those of 9/11. Vanished Flight 777 is recommended reading for U.S. Navy personnel (Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy's official reading list) and is being considered for recommended reading by other military and intelligence services. He is recognized as an early pioneer in online science fiction publishing, both for his writing and publishing under the pseudonym John Argo, and for editing and publishing the acclaimed pioneering online speculative fiction magazine Deep Outside SFFH, later Far Sector SFFH (1998-2007) - more information at his author website (www.johntcullen.com).

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