About the Author

John T. Cullen [personal website] is a professional author, journalist, and editor with over fifty years of experience in research, writing, and publishing. He brings the skills and disciplines of the experienced journalist, the trained scholar, and the entertaining novelist and essayist to the task of analyzing the Hotel del Coronado ghost/crime enigma.

John T. Cullen, an Active Member of International Thriller Writers (ITW), is the author of more than twenty books and many articles, including the acclaimed A Walk in Ancient Rome (Clocktower Books, 2012, First Authorized Print Edition). He has written a scholarly article for peer review, endorsed by several academic subject matter experts, regarding the Sator Rebus—an enigmatic, undeciphered epigram found in many archeological locations around the ancient Roman Empire.

He holds a B.A. in English (University of Connecticut, Storrs), a B.B.A. in Computer Information Systems (National University, San Diego), and an M.S. in Business Administration (Boston University). After growing up in Germany and Connecticut, the author as a young man served six years in the U.S. Army in Europe. He has lived in San Diego for 40~ years, and raised a family.

A Great San Diego Story. The Beautiful Stranger's saga is a unique, amazing San Diego story. It illustrates the principle that truth is stranger than fiction. These discoveries about the 1892 drama will revolutionize how San Diegans view the history of their city. While the author by nature is not conspiracy-minded, he reluctantly concluded that there clearly was a coverup in 1892 to protect the interests of John Spreckels. What is almost unknown around San Diego today is that the owner of the Hotel del Coronado in 1892 was one of the nation's wealthiest men, heir to a vast San Francisco-based sugar fortune made in the cane fields of Hawai'i.

A Great World Story. As the blackmail plot against John Spreckels transpired in November 1892, Spreckels was in the White House with President Benjamin Harrison to negotiate the future of Hawai'i. However bogus the scheme of Kate Morgan—who was using poor, pregnant Lizzie Wyllie as bait at the hotel—even a false rumor might have torpedoed Spreckels' delicate negotiations—hence, the coverup. As it turned out, Spreckels' rivals, including the Sanford Dole pineapple fortune along with various U.S. corporate adventurers and religious zealots, would overthrow the legitimate Queen of Hawai'i just a few weeks after the Beautiful Stranger's death, and the sovereign nation of Hawai'i became a U.S. territory. President Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress in 1993 issued a joint resolution of apology to the Hawai'ian people (US Public Law 103-150). Many historic truths have been hidden in plain sight for over a century. Other remarkable connections reach to Queen Victoria in London, as well as her namesake, the beautiful and talented Crown Princess Victoria Ka'iulani, and to the latter's good friend, author Robert Louis Stevenson.