Audio Up has joined forces with the revered author of L.A. Confidential, The Black Dahlia, and American Tabloid for a groundbreaking new podcast series centered in the City of Angels, featuring some of the most gruesome murders of our time.

In this five-part series entitled James Ellroy’s Hollywood Death Trip, the Demon Dog of American literature takes listeners on a nocturnal tour of murder and mayhem in the city of Los Angeles, based on his lauded true crime reportage. Featuring Ellroy himself as the series narrator, the stories presented here span mid-century Hollywood’s most memorable murders.

Each one will be recreated with period music, archival radio, and sweeping, cinematic sound design. Listeners will travel back to a time when tabloid radio reported the misdeeds and misadventures of the rotten and unlucky, exploring some of the darkest crimes in Los Angeles history with James Ellroy as their guide.

James Ellroy’s Hollywood Death Trip will feature episodes including “Glamour Jungle,” which takes readers back to the 1963 unsolved murder of Karyn Kupcinet, daughter of Irv Kupcinet, famed columnist and friend to mobsters. “Stephanie” tells the haunting tale of Stephanie Gorman, who met an untimely end in the Cheviot Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1965. “Clash By Night” fast forwards to 1976, to the murder of Rebel Without a Cause star Sal Mineo. The series concludes with a dramatic two-part episode—“Body Dumps” and “My Mother’s Killer”—which takes the listener all the way back to the 1958 murder of Ellroy’s own mother.

– Audio Up founder and CEO Jared Gutstadt

James Ellroy’s first ever podcast series is the perfect addition to our growing slate of prestige programming that will see Audio Up become an HBO for your ears in the coming months. I can’t wait to reveal what else we have in the hopper. But for now, Ellroy and true crime is a match made in heaven.

James Ellroy’s Hollywood Death Trip is slated for an August release. It will come hot on the heels of Ellroy’s latest novel, Widespread Panic, which will be published on June 15, 2021 from Alfred A. Knopf. Widespread Panic features the fictionalized exploits of legendary Hollywood “fixer” Fred Otash, a corrupt cop-turned-private eye, shakedown artist, and strongman in 1950’s Los Angeles. Otash, who has played a supporting role in three of Ellroy’s previous novels, now takes center stage in Ellroy’s latest outing. Told in Otash’s viciously entertaining voice, Widespread Panic torches 1950’s Hollywood to the ground, laying bare its sins and salacious secrets.