San Francisco's Hottest Cold Case: How I Exposed a Police Cover-Up and Solved My Father's Murder - Paperback

by Jon Kinyon (Author)

"Something clearly stinks in how police handled this case."
- Tony Serra, famed Civil Rights Attorney

Andy Kinyon was raised in Palo Alto, California. He was a born hustler. He became the top national salesman for the publisher of LOOK Magazine at the age of 22 in 1965. That same year, he befriended notable figures like Ken Kesey and Jerry Garcia. Andy was among the first to join the counter-culture movement in Haight-Ashbury and worked for Bill Graham and Chet Helms, conducting psychedelic light shows for performances by Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and many others.

In 1968, as the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood was overtaken by runaways, pimps, and speed dealers, Andy relocated to North Beach. His penthouse apartment became a hub for famous and not-so-famous people alike. Unfortunately, tragedy struck in the early morning hours of January 22, 1972, when he was found dead on the stairwell of his residence. Andy, who was only 29 years old, had been viciously stabbed and slashed to death. The killer -or killers- were never brought to justice.

Over the next four decades, the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) refused to let the victim's family access any evidence related to the case. The lead detective even lied to the family about key facts and never revealed the prime suspect's true identity. To this day, the SFPD continues to obfuscate and cover up the truth about the crime and even refuses to run DNA tests on evidence.

In 2010, Andy's son, Jon Kinyon, took on a 10+ year-long private investigation into his father's murder. Through iron-willed determination and relentless sleuthing, he tracked down long-lost witnesses, discovered disturbing facts, and dug up long-buried evidence. Jon's work ultimately forced the SFPD to finally name the prime suspect as "the person responsible for the death of Andy Kinyon" and close the case.

This book is not a typical cold case story or a tale of police corruption. It is a "true-crime memoir," as James Ellroy calls it, a deeply personal account of the investigation, as well as a universal commentary on the pursuit of justice. This tour de force sheds some light on the earliest days of the hippie movement in the Bay Area, as well as the workings of the shadowy San Francisco Crime Family (also known as the Lanza Crime Family: a La Cosa Nostra crime syndicate), providing some information that has not been widely known or published before.