Harry Bosch

Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch (b. 1950) is the son of Margerie Lowe and J. Michael Haller, the half-brother of Mickey Haller, the ex-husband of Eleanor Wish, the uncle of Hayley Haller, and the father of Madeline Bosch. He was named after a 15th Century Netherlandish painter, and his first name rhymes with the word "anonymous" while his surname (as shown in a poetic letter written by a serial killer) rhymes with "gosh."

Early Life

Bosch was born at the Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles in 1950, and his birth certificate lists "Hieronymus Bosch" as his father. Growing up, Bosch did not know his father; his mother was a prostitute, and he was taken from her custody in July of 1960 and placed in the McClaren Youth Hall. When his mother was strangled in an alley off of Hollywood Boulevard in October 1961, Detective Jack McKittrick informed Harry, and Bosch was reclassed as Available to Adopt at McClaren, at which point he began moving through a series of foster homes.

In 1966, he was adopted by Earl Morse, who believed that Harry, a southpaw, could be taught to pitch. Harry remained with the Morse's until he was 17, at which time he chose to join the Army, compelling Morse to sign his military enlistment form by insisting he'd never pick up a baseball again. He later served as a "tunnel-rat" with the First Infantry alongside Billy Meadows and Al Crofton during two tours in the Vietnam War, and was stationed in the Echo Sector of Củ Chi district in Ho Chi Minh City in late 1969 and early 1970.

After returning to the United States during the Summer of 1970, Harry began the search for his father, beginning at the county recorder's office. Finding nothing useful, he hired a lawyer to petition the presiding judge of the juvenile dependency court to allow him to examine his own custody records, and there he discovered that J. Michael Haller had filed all of the paperwork in Marjorie Lowe's attempts to regain custody of Harry. When Bosch later pulled his mother's cases from the archives at the Criminal Courts Building, he discovered that Haller had also represented her on six loitering arrests.

At that point, he deduced that Haller was, in fact, his father, and found the man's address in the roll of registered voters. He visited Haller at his Beverly Hills residence, and discovered that Haller was in the final stage of cancer. He assured the man that he had "made it by okay" in life, and also learned that he had a half-brother. Haller also told Bosch that he had worried about him, but that he couldn't do anything more than he did because it was "different times." Two weeks later, Bosch attended Haller's funeral at Forest Lawn, and spotted his half-brother and three half-sisters, whom he did not approach.

Los Angeles Police Department

Bosch joined the LAPD in August of 1972, after reading Hermann Hesse's novel Steppenwolf. Haller had mentioned the book during their brief meeting, because Harry would have shared the protagonist's name – Harry Haller – had he taken his father's surname.

He first met medical examiner Jesus Salazar as a beat cop in the aftermath of the Symbionese Liberation Army shootout in mid-May of 1974. In 1977, he took his detective's test and passed, graduating to the robbery table with the Van Nuys Division. By 1982, he had worked his way into the Robbery-Homicide Division of the LAPD, where he worked for eight years alongside Frankie Sheehan. In 1989, Harry checked out case-file #61-743 – the unsolved murder of his mother – from the LAPD storage facility on Ramirez Street.

Later that year, he and Sheehan investigated the murder of an unidentified 15-year-old girl. Against Sheehan's wishes, Bosch submitted a profile to the FBI, and met Special Agent Terry McCaleb, with whom he discerned the identity of the girl's killer and rescued another potential victim. On 9 September 1990, he shot and killed Norman Church, who he believed to be the perpetrator of the Dollmaker murders, and later served a 22-day suspension in Mexico before being demoted to the "sewer" of the Hollywood Homicide Division.

Transfer to Hollywood

On 5 March 1991, Bosch and his fellow detectives first saw the Holliday video of the Rodney King beating.

In May of 1991, Bosch and his partner Jerry Edgar investigated the murder of Meadows, whose body was found in a pipe near the Hollywood Reservoir. Bosch soon became involved in an FBI investigation into an unsolved break-in at the WestLand National Bank, for which Meadows had been a suspect. During the investigation, he began a relationship with FBI agent Eleanor Wish, though the two were unable to remain a couple beyond the case. In the course of solving the muder, Bosch was shot and nearly killed himself, but recovered and spent six weeks in Mexico before returning to the Hollywood Homicide beat.

On 25 December 1992, Bosch overheard a call on his police radio, and became involved in the investigation into the death of Hollywood Narcotics detective Calexico Moore. At that time, he was also assigned the eight open cases left behind by Hollywood Homicide detective Lucius Porter when Porter quit the force, in the hopes that he could clear at least one in order to give the Hollywood Division a 33-for-66 homicide record for the year. He focused on an unidentified man beaten to death and left behind a diner, and discovered that the man had been found by detective Moore the day before Moore's death.

Around that time, Bosch had become involved with medical examiner Teresa Corazón, and exploited his relationship with her to get details on Moore's autopsy that he then leaked to the Lost Angeles Times. Angered by the betrayal, Corazón ended their personal relationship. In the process of investigating Moore's death, and its connections to the deaths of "Juan Doe #67" and a drug dealer, Bosch also became involved with the dead detective's ex-wife, Sylvia Moore, before traveling to Mexico in order to pursue leads in his cases.

Bosch continued his relationship with Moore for nearly a year, and she supported him through the wrongful death trial that Deborah Church brought against him and the city in November of 1993. At that time, another victim turned up, casting additional doubt on whether Bosch had killed the right man. As the trial proceeded, Bosch followed and contributed to the new investigation, which revealed that the eleven murders attributed to the Dollmaker had actually been committed by two killers.

His relationship with Moore became strained by the secrets that she knew that Bosch was keeping from her, one of which was the murder of his mother which Moore learned of when she attended court on the day that Bosch gave his own testimony. Moore eventually told Bosch that she needed time to decide whether to continue seeing him after Bosch took her into protective custody because he believed that the Dollmaker copycat had targeted her. After Bosch's trial ended, he joined the Follower investigation following the discovery of another victim, and apprehended the copycat killer shortly after.

At that point, Moore chose to continue her relationship with Bosch, but they lasted as a couple for only another two months. In January of 1994, shortly after the Northridge earthquake destroyed both Grant High School and Bosch's cantilevered house in the Hollywood Hills, Moore took a sabbatical and left the city, ending the relationship. Shortly after that, Bosch and Edgar investigated the death of a prostitute who they believed to have been murdered by her last client.

The detectives escorted the man to the Hollywood Police Station as a witness intending to trip him up on details, but before they could begin, Lt. Harvey Pounds advised the man of his rights, causing him to request a lawyer and ruining the detectives' chance at finessing a confession. The man was subsequently released due to lack of evidence, and Bosch confronted Pounds. The two argued heatedly, until Bosch siezed his commanding officer and threw the lieutenant face-first through a plate-glass window.

Involuntary Stress Leave

Bosch was placed on Involuntary Stress Leave by Chief Irvin Irving, and was ordered to visit with police psychologist Dr. Carmen Hinojos three times a week. During his newly-acquired free time, he once again checked out his mother's murder book, and retraced the investigation. He re-interviewed his mother's friend Meredith Roman and posed as Pounds to make contact with Gordon Mittel before traveling to Venice, Florida to meet with McKittrick, the sole surviving investigator.

Upon returning to Los Angeles, Bosch learned that Lt. Harvey Pounds had been tortured and murdered, and discovered that he was IAD's prime suspect. He was subsequently cleared of involvement, and continued his investigation into Mittel and Arno Conklin, and their connections to Johnny Fox in the 1960s.

Return to the Department

In January of 1995, Bosch returned to the Hollywood Division's burglary under detective bureau commander Lt. Grace Billets. He worked there for eight months before being promoted back to the homicide table, where he was reteamed with Jerry Edgar and Pacific Division transfer Kizmin Rider.

In June of 1996, Edgar, Rider, and Bosch investigated the murder of Anthony Aliso, a low-end film producer who was found shot to death in the trunk of his Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud on a bluff overlooking the Hollywood Bowl. The investigation brought Bosch and his team into conflict with the LAPD's Organized Crime Intelligence Division before leading them to Las Vegas where they became embroiled in an FBI operation. While in Las Vegas, Bosch reconnected with Wish, now a professional poker player, and the two married on June 13th.

In late 1996, Bosch investigated the murder of a teenage girl in Hollywood, and discovered similarities to a case being investigated by Jaye Winston in West Hollywood. Together, the two traced the histories of the victims, and realized that both had used the same dry-cleaning service. Bosch and Winston interviewed the manager of the dry-cleaning business, and Bosch quickly deduced that the man himself was responsible, and he and Winston managed to rescue a potential third victim from an locked freezer in the man's garage.

In April of 1999, Bosch was contacted directly by Deputy Chief Irving and instructed to assemble his team and report to the Angels Flight funicular railway in the Bunker Hill district, where housekeeper Catalina Perez and notorious civil rights attorney Howard Elias had been murdered. Bosch's team was assigned to with a squad of Internal Affairs detectives including John Chastain, who had twice previously tried to strip Bosch of his badge. The investigation took Bosch and his team through the civil case of Michael Harris, which Elias had been two days from taking to court, in which the LAPD would be sued for brutality against Harris after Harris alleged that he was tortured by detectives for three days in an effort to coerce him into confessing to the murder of Stacey Kincaid. Bosch subsequently reopened the investigation into Kincaid's murder, retracing Elias's own private investigation and clearing Harris by discovering the girl's killer.

On 16 May 1999, Bosch and Rider investigated the murder of Eidolon production assistant Angella Benton. Several days later, while interviewing the director of a film that Benton had been working on, Bosch became involved in a shoot-out with four men who robbed the set and stole two million dollars in cash that was intended to serve as a prop in the movie. After the robbery, the investigation into the Benton murder was reassigned to the Robbery-Homicide Division.

In October of 2000, Bosch, Edgar and Rider were called to Nichols Canyon Road in the Hollywood Hills to investigate the death of Jody Krementz. While the actress appeared to have died as a result of autoerotic asphyxia, Bosch determined that she had in fact, been murdered and her death was later staged to appear accidental. His investigation led him to film director David Storey, who was arrested later in the week and charged with Krementz's murder.

Storey stood trial in January of 2001, and Bosch joined district attorneys Roger Kretzler and Janis Langwiser in prosecuting the case. He was later approached by Terry McCaleb, who had since retired from the FBI, and New Times journalist Jack McEvoy, and deduced that he was being treated as a suspect in the murder of Edward Gunn, who had been found dead on New Years Day in a manner that McCaleb had linked to the artwork of Bosch's namesake. After McCaleb was ousted from the Gunn investigation, Bosch implored the profiler to re-examine the case with an eye toward clearing Bosch, and the two determined that Gunn's death was, in fact, connected with the Storey trial because individuals associated with the defense had committed the murder with the intention of framing Bosch in order to destroy his credibility as a witness.

In October of 2001, he had a wisdom tooth removed, and received a prescription for Vicodin. On 1 January 2002, Bosch was called out to the deaths of a 34-year-old actress and an elderly resident of the Splendid Age Retirement Home, both of which he determined to be suicides. Later in the day, he was called out to Wonderland Avenue in Laurel Canyon, where the arm bone of a child had been discovered.

On 12 January 2002, Bosch was promoted from the Hollywood Division back the city's elite Robbery-Homicide Unit by Deputy Chief Irving. On the evening of January 14th, however, Harry tendered his resignation by locking his badge, ID, and service sidearm in his desk and leaving the key on Lt. Billets's desk.

Private Investigation

In March of 2002, Bosch applied for and received his private investigator's license.

In October of 2002, he was contacted by RHD detective Lawton Cross, who mentioned the unsolved murder of Angella Benton. Bosch retrieved his own files from the case, and arranged a meeting with Benton's former employer, producer Alexander Taylor. Later in the day, he was visited by Kizmin Rider on behalf of the interim Chief of Police and instructed to stop his personal investigation into Benton's death. Ignoring the warning, Bosch pursued a connection between Cross's investigation and a missing FBI agent, and met again with agent Roy Lindell.

Lindell unofficially requested that Bosch look into the disappearance of Special Agent Martha Gessler, but Bosch's investigation brought him into conflict with the Los Angeles office of the Department of Homeland Security. Bosch was later detained overnight by DHS agents and questioned by Special Agent John Peoples before being released, and recovered evidence that DHS agents had brutally interrogated Cross as well.

Bosch traded copies of that evidence to Peoples for the case files on Benton's murder and the movie set robbery, and pursued leads back to the bank that lent the money to the film production. After interviewing the employees involved in the transaction, Bosch located the man responsible for both Benton's murder and the film set robbery, confronting him at his new place of business. The man and three associates then followed Bosch back to Bosch's home in the Hollywood Hills, leading to a shootout that resulted in the deaths of a federal agent and three of the men, as well as leaving the last man in a coma.

In April of 2004, Bosch traveled to Catalina Island to attend the funeral of Terry McCaleb. Later in the month, he was approached by Terry's widow, who hired Bosch to look into Terry's alleged heart attack because inconsistencies in his autopsy indicated that someone may have tampered with his medications. Bosch interviewed Buddy Lockridge, then spent the night aboard The Following Sea reviewing McCaleb's case files where he found McCaleb's notes on the connections between six men who had gone missing in Nevada. Bosch also found photographs on McCaleb's computer indicating that someone had been stalking Graciela and Terry's children, as well as pictures of the Zzyzx Road exit and a beached boat in the Mojave Desert.

Bosch then traveled to Zzyzx Road, where he found a federal excavation team and was detained by FBI agents including Rachel Walling.

Open-Unsolved Unit

Robbery-Homicide Division

Case record

For a complete list of Harry Bosch's closed cases, see here.

WARNING: this article contains spoilers regarding the identity of killers.

Appearances

for more specific information on individual appearances, see here