Will the Lords of Bakersfield ever spring to life? - By N.L. Belardes

Murder or suicide of Glen Fitts?
All images on this page from 2003 Bakersfield Californian report,
"The Lords of Bakersfield"

Although I still won’t tell people about Lords: Part Two other than vague references here and there, I haven’t written about the topic of the Lords of Bakersfield for some time. I feel another Op-Ed follow-up is due... I told one local punk rocker where part two begins—not in Bakersfield, Hollywood, LA or the Central Valley. You’ll have to track him down for such info (whoever ‘he’ may be), and I might just deny what I told him even if he does spill the beans.

I will say the beginning to Lords: Part Two is an important logical path to what I think follows the urban myth of the Lords of Bakersfield: murderous and prominent Bakersfield men leading dualistic hidden gay lives as they preyed on society to fulfill illegal aims of sex and immorality. Their path in part two? As they attempt to keep themselves transparent to society, their plan is to turn the eyes of society inward. Will Minstrel be in part two? You know it…

It is important again for me to note that time periods for Lords Part One and Two fall between 1977-1981. And although I have received messages that state those years are not long ago, I disagree, it is long ago, especially when you think in terms of disaster movies like Flight 93 and World Trade Center subverting pop culture less than five years after the tragedy of 9/11. Think about Apocalypse Now—that film smashed into pop culture with its diatribe of Vietnam meets the eerie seafaring world of novelist Joseph Conrad—a mere four years after America’s controversial pull out from the war-torn region.


Possible Lords murder victim, Dana Butler

I won’t, however, write about events after 1981, like Murder Incorporated, or rumors that exist now about Ed Jagels and other prominent Bakersfield folks who allegedly still harbor boy toy fascinations, potentially degrading our Bakersfield youth. If the local paper wants to write about such topics, or about Chris Hillis and the Tauzer murder case, then let them. There are always going to be creepy old gay men in society that abuse their powers to get kids to help them fulfill their lust fantasies. And there are always going to be cops and ex-cops that lose control. Doesn’t mean I have to write about them, or that they are even a part of the Lords of Bakersfield conspiracy. And doesn’t mean I have to prod into recent events, especially with knowing the creepy defense of the Harper family slayings. Who knows… Maybe Vincent Brothers committed murder. Maybe bad cops were in the mix. Perhaps the Lords of Bakersfield were somehow running the show. I’m not even going to speculate in detail; I have other novels to explore. Besides, I start digging and I could end up like the Harper family: killed either by a psycho, or by cops for prying too deep into overturning mean justice.

I don’t think fictionalizing the Lords of Bakersfield 25 years after some of their alleged macabre events regarding a certain young man at the time does any harm, or weeds creepy old men from the shadows to wantonly wreak a newfound wrath over Bakersfield.


Citizens speak out against one of alleged Lords

On the contrary. Such storytelling illuminates and helps ease societal fears, lends validity to the storytelling and myth-making. Folks can sit back and breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that it’s OK to have kept secrets, and to not just whisper about them, but talk about them. Society can suddenly deal with a possible traumatic past because of pop culture analyzing such tragedy—especially in fiction form.

No need to be afraid of ghosts when everyone knows they’re there, right? Boo!

And let me point out that I am not a conspiracy theorist. I’m a novelist who wrote about conspiratorial articles released by Bakersfield’s local newspaper. That would make the newspaper, its publisher, involved journalists and editors the conspiracy theorists, not me. And my book being allegedly redundant by a "wild-eyed conspiracy theorist"? That's just their attempt to dust my book under the rug. I’ve already explained in a past article ("A literary perspective on the Lords of Bakersfield") that if my book is ignored, then everyone might as well accept the high school level writing of local newspapers, and their story as the finality of gospel truth, and not the academic integrity of literature and a possible history of such events to come (Not by me. I’m not interested in the non-fiction book).

Interestingly at the time that conspiracy journalist Robert Price wrote his dusting-under-the-rug blurb in the local paper, he admitted to not even reading my book.


Glen Fitts, an alleged Lord of Bakersfield

Right. The leading Bakersfield conspiracy journalist on the trail of the Lords of Bakersfield ignores my book on The Lords of Bakersfield as if it were a frivolous paper weight?

I don’t think so. I think he scoured it for more evidence of the Lords of Bakersfield and attempted to play head games with me by jokingly calling my book redundant without reading it. Or is he that full of himself that he thinks he uncovered every stone.


Was publisher Ted Fritts the Lord of Bakersfield?

Thank goodness Columbus took the Book of Winds with him when sailing the ocean blue, and thank goodness I pursued my book my way, or I would have fallen off the edge of the earth with Price’s articles in my hand.

History has yet to really explore the Lords of Bakersfield. Who knows when that will happen? Or who will do it.

In regards to the body of knowledge now surrounding the Lords of Bakersfield myth: Have I claimed to be the end all in exploring the Lords of Bakersfield? No way. Everyone who has written about the Lords of Bakersfield contributes to an overall body of knowledge; whether non-fiction, or pop culture’s reflection of the facts revolved around the myth. Why myth? Because nothing about the Lords of Bakersfield is proven. Just maybe the local newspaper released conspiratorial articles to taint a jury pool in the Tauzer murder case. After all, there has been a war of words between conspiracy journalist Robert Price and Ed Jagels.

Is the real question then: what was the intention of the newspaper to release such articles? Were they used as tools to taint a jury pool, to educate readers of local myth, to scare citizens into believing straw men exist, to paint a past publisher as an evildoer, to gain more readership through controversy? Who knows? Maybe all of the above and more. True intentions of newspapers are often just as suppressed as newsworthy stories. I really doubt if conspiracy journalist Robert Price interviewed hundreds in his investigative report as the articles claim. I’d love to see his notes. Yet the local newspaper wanted to express such claims for the purpose and sake of credibility to its readers, and readers across the globe interested in the subject.

Yet my novel and the local paper’s release of the Lords of Bakersfield story have one similar aim: to perpetuate a myth, and to try to find solutions and resolutions that could lend to how society could explain and understand the kind of evil-doing that can affect those in its own midst—whether true or not. Yes, we all need resolution our myths.

Really, both newspaper stories and my novel are fiction. Not the facts behind the newspaper stories (at least we hope the facts are always true) but perhaps the conspiratorial glue holding the facts together. It’s that the glue of the news stories lacks facts, and refuses to resolve for the readers an answer as to whether the Lords of Bakersfield exist or not. The newspaper wants the readers to decide, to gossip, to sit around their kitchen tables and work cubicles and whisper and debate. Why? Why couldn’t the newspaper resolve the Lords of Bakersfield for us? Because they want us to believe, or to doubt? Or both? And maybe they never want us to resolve such issues, so jury pools are forever tainted in related cases.

I created a novel that attempts suspension of disbelief—the idea of a psychological manifestation of sickening thoughts—much more disturbing to the readers—and with a similar end result of ‘what if?’ It’s just that my novel, though fiction, dives into the consciousness of Bakersfield that the atmosphere the Lords of Bakersfield might have subverted. That consciousness affects the reader without a straight-faced journalism bent on the topic, though I have also gone into detail how interesting it is that the local paper mimicked the Lord of the Rings font to ram home their idea into the gossip-consciousness of Bakersfield society (and beyond). Pop culture popularity can infect and subvert a news story of such conspiracy proportions: the imagery of monstrous evil and secret networks lurking within a Bakersfieldian Middle Earth of land toilers—yes we’re just a bunch of fuzzy-footed Hobbits to the local newspaper: eating and drinking and merry—until what, a Frodo comes along to carry the ring right back into the newspaper’s hands?


The actual newspaper logo that headlined the story.
Do you feel like a Hobbit?

I think they’d actually like me to cast my book into the fiery chasm of Mt. Doom.

In the realm of creepiness surrounding the myth, there are strange stories. I get enough emails to fill up section C for my own newspaper. Let’s call it the CREEP section, and it could have a new article everyday, with minor sports reports added in for good measure. Let’s just say I have encountered plenty of strangeness through hearsay, rumor, and emails from people claiming to have known the Lords of Bakersfield.

Doesn’t make the Lords of Bakersfield any more or less a reality for me. I just think of such stories as good storytelling. Near Akron Ohio there’s the town story of the Peninsula Python, a mythical snake seen like an apparition, slithering around the Eerie Canal and Ohio River. There’s a sculpture façade in their town library. But did the snake exist? Rumor has it a Circus Train lost a big snake years ago. Today, the Peninsula Python simply lurks in children’s nightmares, or in the minds of those walking in the strange woods.

Sure, Bakersfield has it’s own snakes with stories of the Lords of Bakersfield slithering through the public consciousness, shaking rattles, and literally scaring people into corners—people afraid of a venomous bite. But hell, people eventually do tell stories and the myth gets perpetuated.

Cinema of the Lords will be an interested collection of online sculptures—filmmaker interpretations of fanciful Tim Burtonesque nightmares of our own dark Bakersfield culture—a fashionable couture of creepiness for our society to wear, for outsiders to peer in and say, “Interesting top hat of nightmares you have going on there in Bakersfield.”

The myth will be perpetuated even further.

Almost makes us proud of our pop culture evil, doesn’t it? Why not? The newspaper was when they touted their Lords of Bakersfield of the Rings news stories.

Getting cryptic emails isn’t new to me. I used to get them during my research for Lords: Part One. Once you interview a few strange folks, the letters just sort of just begin creeping in like zombies from Night of the Living Dead—they just keep coming and slashing their way into my inbox.



Yes, you can buy a survival guide. But that doesn’t keep them away. Just gives you tools in how to deal with the consciousness of the myth as people write their thoughts. There’s been the story of the family who lost their grandfather. He wandered around early in the morning hours, saw some strange cars, and eventually was found dead. The family thinks the Lords of Bakersfield had something to do with it. No proof.

There are letters about people with creepy tattoos and medallions—a cult of darkness with ghost kids to match over in Westchester of yesteryear. And of course the letters just read, “Beware of what you might learn.”

Heck, there were even some creepy people testing my knowledge at book signings. How much do I really know, and am I going to tell all… Why act so paranoid? Are there hidden truths? People have said, “You won’t ever really know the truth. They won’t let you get in that close.” Retired and ex-cops have said that to me.

Such statements don’t prove that boogeymen peer in my window at night.

Does that make me fear my phones are tapped? Should I fear the Lords stories are true because one person overheard a creepy conversation: “Is the Lords book hard or soft?”

“It’s soft,” came the reply at the Petroleum Club.

What, was someone wondering if my book was pornography? Or if I had penetrated to the hard dirt of the story? Scratching against such knowledge could be the most revealing, eh?

Tap my phones. I don’t care. My conversations are less exciting than my blogs.

It’s like I tell people: If the Lords of Bakersfield do exist, these guys are having a field day with me. They’d probably take me to dinner if they weren’t ghosts—and conspiracy journalist Robert Price would be there too—and where they’d thank him for his Middle Earth saga, they’d thank me for perpetuating their myth to the level of comedy.

Although my book is a horror novel that scares the shit out of people, I’d like to think that if society can’t eventually make fun of itself, then there’s the real problem, not whether the Lords of Bakersfield will ever spring to life.


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This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Wednesday, August 02, 2006. You can leave your response.