Walter Bosley and Richard Spence: Occult Murder from 1915?

About three years ago, Walter Bosley’s background in criminal investigation led him to a century-old series of unsolved deaths. As he looked into the unusual incidents, he noticed that the authorities of the time seemed to have little interest in pursuing any leads or making any real effort to solve the crimes, even though one of the victims was written up in newspapers as far away as Salt Lake City.

Empire Of The Wheel recounts Bosley’s increasing efforts to follow leads based on newspaper accounts, public records, and coroner reports from the autumn of 1915 in an effort to reconcile the unusual spate of unexplained deaths in the burgeoning town of San Bernardino, California. On the way, he and co-author Richard Spence discovered possible links to spiritualist groups, Masons, foreign spies, Aliester Crowley, and even a possible coverup by members of the local establishment at the time. Spence’s most recent book is Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence and the Occult.

Perhaps the strangest and most startling revelation was that the infamous “Zodiac” serial killer of the 1960s may have been using elements of occult geology to plan his murders in the same way that an unnamed person or persons might have been doing at the turn of the 20th century in San Bernardino.

Bosley and Spence do not claim to have solved the mystery, but ask that the questions they raise be considered as hitherto unexamined motivations for the possible murder of at least seven people over a four-month period, which was highly unusual for the time.