Mark Anderson at the Marin County courthouse, where he faced charges that he embezzled $1.1 million worth of wine from his clients. Anderson, a Berkeley native, later set a fire at a wine storehouse in an attempt to cover his tracks. Photo: courtesy Jeff Vendsel/Marin Independent Journal
Today marks the publication of Berkeleyside co-founder Frances Dinkelspiel’s new book, Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California. (See our critic’s review.) Its central character is Mark Anderson who was born in Berkeley in 1948 and who attended John Muir Elementary School. Anderson’s childhood haunts will be familiar to many long-time residents: he loved to slide down the circular exterior fire escapes at the Claremont Hotel, he put pennies on the trolley tracks that went down Claremont Avenue, and he snuck through the tunnel that went from school to the cluster of stores on Domingo Avenue.
“The Pappas family ran the Star Grocery and Sam and Quentin ran the Northgate Pharmacy next door,” Anderson recalled in one of a series of letters he wrote Dinkelspiel from the Sacramento County Jail. “Mrs. Dinwiddie’s Dress Shop had wooden mannequins in the store window that were an ideal target for a five-year-old terrorist, who could visualize their wooden ‘body parts’ strewn all over the display, at any cost.”(...)
Read the rest of Berkeley man at center of new book, ‘Tangled Vines’ (759 words)
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Post tags: Berkeleyside, Claremont Hotel, Frances Dinkelspiel, John Muir Elementary School, Mark Anderson, Star Grocery, Tangled Vines, Tangled Vines: Greed Murder Obsession and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California, wine crime, wine embezzlement