Very interesting story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47987-2003Mar18.html For years, legend had it that there was a group of powerful men in Bakersfield secretly living gay lives, sometimes with deadly consequences. When the county's No. 2 prosecutor was stabbed to death in his home last year, the "Lords of Bakersfield" legend broke out into the open - and the city's daily newspaper decided to confront it head-on. In a series of stories that ran in January, The Bakersfield Californian found evidence of a ring of closeted gay men who had sex with teenage boys and used their influence to keep from being prosecuted. Four of the men ended up slain between 1978 and 1984; in most of these cases, young men were charged with killing their suitors.