Frank C. Girardot, Jr.(1961 in Detroit, Michigan) is metro editor of the Pasadena Star-News and the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, two newspapers owned by Colorado-based newspaper chain MediaNews Group. He also writes a conservative-leaning column for those papers and maintains their Crime Scene blog.
Girardot worked during the 1980s and 1990s as a copyboy and later as a news and sports reporter for the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, the Pasadena Star-News, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and the Los Angeles Daily News. His work has also appeared in the San Jose Mercury News, the Oklahoma City Journal Record and syndicated throughout the country via the New York Times News Service.
Girardot's 1993 article on unsolved mysteries of the San Gabriel Valley prompted author James Ellroy to investigate the 1958 strangulation murder of Geneva Hilliker Ellroy, the writer's mother, as Ellroy described in his book, My Dark Places. The article has also been the subject of an E! True Hollywood Story and an episode of CourtTV's Murder by the Book.[1]
Girardot and Star-News writer Nathan McIntire wrote a 2008 story linking a 23-year-old missing persons case and the 1994 discovery of bones in a San Marino backyard to Clark Rockefeller. The two later broke the news that most of the bones had been cremated by the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner.