Mysteries

Concluding the most sensational medical investigation in local history, the Riverside County coroner's office announced Friday that Gloria Ramirez died of kidney failure as a result of cervical cancer--and the fumes that sickened the emergency room staff tending her probably were simply the smell of death.

The city is sprinkled with sites of the untimely deaths of the famous and the fated. From John Belushi to the Black Dahlia, Los Angeles has been the backdrop for many a notorious demise. Solved or unsolved, some murders and suicides become part of the cultural fabric, spawning books, movies and even sightseeing tours. Here is a look at episodes from the city's homicidal history. 1.

A Denver police officer turned up in Utah after his mysterious disappearance prompted a weeklong manhunt, and he told investigators Friday that financial and personal problems compelled him to abandon his patrol car and head west on a motorcycle. David Hayhurst, 39, who had gotten a new apartment and a job at an auto-body shop in Reno, Nev., said he decided to return home after reading a newspaper account of the manhunt and deciding: "I couldn't do this to all those good people in Denver.

'Mysteries of Lisbon' No MPAA rating Running time: 4 hours, 17 minutes Playing: At the Landmark, West Los Angeles

Since moving to this cloistered upscale community last year, Ian and Gail Spiro and their attractive, redheaded children maintained an active, outgoing and prosperous lifestyle. Sara, 16, and Adam, 14, rode horses and skateboards. Gail, 41, served on the local Welcome Wagon when she wasn't playing tennis or bridge at a tony country club.

On a clear day, the expanse of blue ocean seen from the living room of this San Clemente home seems almost endless. Sometimes, as day gives way to evening, a line of pink stretches like a crayon scrawl in the sky. When night falls, the sea is an abyss of black. Margrit Ucar fell instantly for the panorama. Even before her husband, Manas, had a chance to see the house, she knew it was where they would raise their two young daughters, twins Margo and Grace.

In his role as editor of the online magazine Lapis, Ralph White is scholarly and staid, offering literary explorations of myths, traditions, symbols and lore that have swayed thought for centuries. But once a year, White, 60, leads a number of adventurous souls on quests for the deeper mysteries of spiritual experience in castles, cathedrals, temples, tombs and ancient ruins around the world. Last week, White and 65 others have been on "An Esoteric Quest for Inner America" in Rip Van Winkle country, or upstate New York, which is the birthplace of such homegrown spiritual and cultural movements as the 19th century utopian Oneida Community and the 1969 Woodstock festival.

His name might not rank with Amelia Earhart's and Judge Crater's, but the disappearance of Everett Ruess has been an enduring legend of the Southwest for 75 years. Only 20 at the time of his disappearance, the writer, artist and environmentalist who has been compared to a young John Muir was last seen near Utah's Davis Gulch in 1934. Numerous search parties failed to find him, and authors have speculated widely about his demise. Many believed he drowned in the Colorado River.

Cutting through a predawn mist hovering over a field in the English countryside, two balls of light appear out of seemingly nowhere. The air crackles with the sound of a thousand electronic crickets. Seconds later, a sophisticated geometric formation has been laid in a field, with each stalk of wheat gently bent flat against the earth.