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A Murder Case Unearths a WEB of Crime! With Authors Burl Barer & Frank C Giradot,Jr.!

January 28, 2026·33 min·2 clips

Police told Jimmy: confess to the murder or we'll charge your pregnant girlfriend — so he confessed, and served 20 years for a crime he didn't commit.

Jim opens from the Investigation Room, with the Sherpa goofiness still in place, stuffed mountain lion included. Then the episode turns toward Where Murder Lies, and the mood tightens pretty quickly. The guests say people tied to the case were not exactly thrilled about the book. Nobody paid them to stop. Attorneys for central figures were contacted for comment, they say, and one response turned into a request that the book not happen at all. Another was blunter: don't write it. That pushback gives the interview some bite, because the authors treat resistance as the sort of thing that can show up when a true-crime story gets near something touchy. Jim answers the tension with nervous humor. When death threats come up, the conversation keeps them hypothetical, bouncing between danger, dark understatement, and the practical question of what was going on in the case. The appendix opens the next door. Jim notices the long list of connected homicides, and the guests explain that those deaths trace back to the central killing. Even the names are slippery. The victim is identified as Alexi, Alex, or Sasha Markites, which leads into how careful the authors had to be. From there, the story keeps spreading: homeless teens, a troubled young man in Hollywood, a pregnant girlfriend, and a low-level Russian mobster all sit around the edges of the main death. Jim keeps circling the plain question. Why was this man dead, especially if robbery did not explain it? The excerpt does not wrap the case in a neat bow, but it makes the book sound tangled, uneasy, and loaded with motives and dangerous associations. Then Jim shifts back to Sherpa business, pointing listeners to podcast apps, YouTube, and the show's social channels before closing with the Sherpa-lution signoff.

As heard by us

A straightforward true crime interview that follows a tangled case and its fallout.

Jim the Podcast Sherpa talks with Burl Bearer and Frank C. Gerardo, Jr. about their co-authored true crime book, Where Murder Lies, Death and Deception in West Hollywood.

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Why you'd press play

Play this if you like true-crime book talk with real-world friction.

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