I keep reading stories of bizarre deaths in California. First was the married couple with a baby who were all found dead, just a mile from their car, on a hike during a very hot day last year. There was no trauma on any of the bodies. It was later determined they died from heat stroke, and hadn't brought enough water due to not expecting the temperature to rise to 108 that day.
Then there was the Tahoe-area local who vanished from a ski resort on December 24, and was found dead three miles away in a residential neighborhood, despite his truck still being at the resort. Again, this did not appear to be murder, and it was assumed that he became disoriented during the heavy storm that day, got lost, and just barely fell short getting to a door to knock and ask for help.
Now we have another mysterious pair of deaths, one being a locally famous person.
Larry Petree was part of the original Bakersfield country music scene, which was a sub-genre of country music beginning in the Bakersfield area in the 1950s. Some of the famous musicians from Bakersfield include Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, and Susan Raye, while more modern musicians such as Dwight Yoakam have adopted the style for themselves. It often features a steel guitar, which Petree played.
Petree was 88 years old. For unknown reasons, Petree and his wife were driving on a dirt road east of California City, which is located approximately between Bakersfield (west) and Barstow (east).
Both were dead. His wife was leaning up against the tire, and Larry was in the driver's seat.
KTLA article: https://ktla.com/news/musician-larry...zarre-tragedy/
It is not known why they were out there, but the car was out of gas. It is also not known at this time if Larry was senile, and why there doesn't seem to have been an attempt to call for help. I'm not sure if there is cell reception out there, but I'm guessing that there probably is, given the location's proximity to California City, which has a 15,000 population.
The police are certain that there was no foul play involved.
I have a feeling that, like the death of the family in Yosemite, this was a case of dehydration. Petree might have been somewhat senile and forgot to fill up the tank, and ran out of gas in the middle of the desert. It was probably very hot, and without the ability to run the engine, the A/C wouldn't have worked. I'm guessing they didn't have a cell phone with them, or if they did, perhaps it was out of power or didn't work. The plan was probably to wait for help (since neither of them were in the physical condition to walk very far in the hot desert). Larry stayed in the car, and his wife, feeling like it was cooler outside (though still very hot), decided to wait outside and sit up against the tire. In not too long, both died of dehydration and/or heat stroke, which kills a number of very old people each year in the US.
That's my working theory. Strange to make it to 88 and die that way (especially with a second person along), but I bet the truth isn't very far from the above.
What is California City? That place has an interesting story itself, and I will probably talk about it on the next PFA Radio "Mojave Desert and Las Vegas History" segment.
Despite the relatively small population of 15,000 people, California City has the third largest land are of all cities in California! That means it's larger by area than San Francisco, Sacramento, San Jose, Fresno, Riverside, and every other city in California except LA and San Diego.
So why is it so big geographically with such a small population? Because California City was an elaborate scam. In 1959, various hucksters got together and promoted California City as the next major city in California (hence the name), and was envisioned to end up similar to what Riverside is today. They even established a "real estate school" to churn out a huge salesforce of new realtors, and tons of plots of land were sold. An outright lie was told that the city was built on top of a massive "underground lake", thus guaranteeing easy access to water in its remote desert location.
This scam went on for about 10 years, with a lot of promotion but relatively little real development. Finally, the government clamped down on the whole thing. In 1969, the FTC started inspecting the situation, and famed asexual consumer advocate Ralph Nader published a book about the various California land scams at the time, citing California City as "a complete fraud, and a particularly stark study of government failure."
If you look on Google Maps today, you will see tons of streets on the map of California City (as well as the outlying areas which were supposed to later be annexed as part of the city), but when you got to a satellite view, you will notice most were never developed.
Anyway, that's where Petree died.
While vehicular summer dehydration/heat death in the desert definitely occur each year, this one is mysterious for a few reasons. It's not clear why Petree was driving with his wife on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, it's not clear why he would have driven his car with no gas into such an area, and it's not clear why there was seemingly no attempt to get help. Most deaths like this occur when a car simply breaks down on a remote desert highway, where there is no cell reception and nobody comes by for awhile to get the person help.
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Originally Posted by Dan Druff
