‘Notorious Bakersfield’ podcast set to release 2nd book, 4th ‘notorious’ tour

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) – Since true crime is the No. 4 genre in America in terms of podcast popularity it only stands to reason that this news-making city an hour north of L.A. should have one such show.

And it does, thanks to Robert Peterson, who is spending his retirement years as an amateur historian.

His Notorious Bakersfield Podcast is a 20-minute bite of a dark history that has spawned two books. Petersen researches and records the weekly show in this bedroom walk-in closet – which he refuses to allow anyone to see.

From infamous murders like the 1938 slaying of miserly recluse Matthias Warren – father of future governor Earl Warren  – to the tales of brutal killers Robert Courtney and Vincent Brothers, Peterson spins tales that explore the dark side of the human psyche.

“I just wanted to retell these stories, for people, because if I hadn’t heard them, a lot of other people hadn’t heard them,” he said. “So I just wanted to re-tell them for generations to come.”

But he also looks back at public tragedies for which there are few explanations – catastrophic train wrecks and the 1986 small plane crash in Harte Park of a  Sheriff’s Department search and rescue team on a training flight. A small memorial still stands near the west entrance pond nearly 40 years later.

“It was at a low altitude so it grabbed everybody’s attention that was in the park that day,” Petersen said. “And it banked and one of the wings clipped the overhead power lines.”

The podcast is so chock full of interesting tales, that the next steps were probably inevitable. The first was a self-guided tour of some of the locations where crimes and other events occurred. Petersen will debut another tour on Oct. 1, and make it available through Halloween. Then there are the books.

“Last year I started getting all these episodes under my belt – 143 episodes now,” Petersen said. “I thought, ‘You know, there’s a whole audience that doesn’t listen to podcasts.’ And I thought, ‘You know, I want to tell these stories for that audience …. Target that audience.’ So I decided to write a book.”

Notorious Bakersfield, the book, is available at Russo’s and Amazon, and Volume 2 will be available on Black Friday — a month before Christmas. You can find the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your other podcasts, or at NotoriousBakersfield.com.

The way things are going expect volumes three, four, five and six sometime in the future.

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