Courtesy of Barbara Williamson

Undated photo of John Williamson at the Sandstone Retreat in California.

John Williamson, a pioneer of the 1960s sexual revolution as co-founder of Topanga Canyon's Sandstone Retreat, where nudity and free love once took place with abandon, has died. He was 80.

Williamson died of cancer March 24 at a hospital in in Reno, Nev., according to his wife, Barbara Williamson. The pair had lived on a Northern Nevada ranch for the past 18 years, taking in abandoned lions, tigers, cougars and other big cats.

They were a young newlywed couple in 1968 when they bought a cluster of rundown buildings on 15 acres overlooking the Pacific Ocean and turned it into the Sandstone Foundation for Community Systems Research.

It offered seminars on human bonding, relationships and sexuality, but its Sandstone Retreat, where as many as 500 people would gather on weekends to frolic in the nude, swap spouses and engage in group sex, quickly made its existence in the bohemian canyon notorious.

"We actually had open sexuality and nudity, but it was optional. Everything was optional," Barbara Williamson told The Associated Press on Thursday. "We provided a wonderful, wonderful environment in a natural setting, and that natural setting just sort of gave people permission."

As the retreat's frontman, Williamson became known as the "messiah of sex" — a title his wife said he always carried proudly.

Many celebrities were said to have paid quiet visits to Sandstone over the years, and Williamson joked Thursday that she probably "saw more naked Hollywood stars than any other woman."

Author Gay Talese has said he spent a substantial amount of time there, much of it naked, when he researched his 1981 book, "Thy Neighbor's Wife" on the sexual revolution. Sandstone was also the subject of a 1975 documentary.

It was reading Ayn Rand's book "Atlas Shrugged" that John Williamson said prompted him to quit a defense-industry job in electronics and move to California in the early 1960s. The book portrays a society in which people, fed up with government and industry controlling their lives, walk away from their jobs.

But Williamson continued to work in a mainstream job, running an electronics company, until he met his wife when she came by his office one day in 1966 to try to sell him insurance. A few weeks later they were married, and soon after they were planning Sandstone.

Although membership flourished, Barbara Williamson said, the retreat never took in enough money to pay the bills. They sold the property in 1972, and Sandstone closed a couple years later.

After an effort to build a tribal community in Montana foundered, the couple moved to the San Francisco Bay area, then to Nevada. There they began to take in big cats whose owners wanted to get rid of them.

At the time of his death, Williamson was attempting to turn their property into a wild animal sanctuary and educational center.

Slideshow: California wildfires

Jonathan Alcorn / Reuters

A fire engine is parked on Pacific Coast Highway as the Springs Fire burns in the hills at Point Mugu State Park on May 3.

Launch slideshow

Southern California firefighters battled back a series of sprawling, brush-fueled wildfires on Friday, including one that had blazed a trail to the beach in Ventura County overnight and was pushing toward the upscale city of Malibu, officials said.

At least six fires of various sizes flared up as high temperatures, low humidity and brittle brush left the state a veritable tinderbox over the last two days, although conditions were improving by the afternoon.

The so-called Springs Fire, made worse by howling Santa Ana winds and unusually dry vegetation, crept within "seven or eight miles" of Malibu around 2 a.m. local time [5 a.m. ET], Ventura County Fire Department spokesman Bill Nash said.

"We've got hot, dirty, unglamorous firefighting work going on right now, guys with shovels trying to scratch out lines on the ground," Nash said in the early hours of Friday. "We've got those guys on these steep hillsides in the dark with nothing but the light of the fire and a flashlight."

Dry winds from inland to the ocean brought gusts of 40 to 50 miles per hour to the Southern California region on Friday. By 1 p.m Pacific time, the temperatures had dropped 11 degrees and the humidity shot up to 19 percent. Warnings remained in effect as winds stoked the flames, the National Weather Service reported.

“We’re looking good,” Battalion Chief Fred Burris of the Ventura County Fire Department said on Friday, according to NBC Los Angeles. “We believe we’re past the major structure threat at this time.”

The Springs Fire grew to 10,000 acres and was 10 percent contained as of early Friday morning, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention.

An eight-mile stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway was shut down for a time on Thursday night as bright orange flames raced down scrubby hillsides toward the Pacific Ocean.

“We are asking members of the public to be very aware: This is very dangerous,” said Ventura County Fire Department spokesman Tom Kruschke. “This is still a moving fire. If you were asked to evacuate, it will be a while before you are allowed in. And if at one point you are uncomfortable, please leave the area. It’s not safe to stay.”

“The firemen have been doing a really great job of keeping it away from the houses,” said Sara Mallam, a resident of Newbury Park, near Thousand Oaks, Calif. “It is kind of scary to see it get so close, but they really seem to know what they’re doing.”

Though the more than 925 firefighters on the scene got a brief overnight reprieve as the humidity jumped and winds died down, winds picked up again after sunrise on Friday.

Firefighters received help from tankers and helicopters in the air after the sun rose on Friday, according to a release from the Ventura County Fire Department.

Complicating the situation is the extremely dry plant life left from a season in which only about five inches of rain fell, officials said.

Friday "may be the hottest day of the week, and the humidity we do expect to plummet," Nash said. "We’re faced with a situation right now where the vegetation on the hillsides, the moisture level is what we typically see in August."

The cause of the fire remained under investigation Friday. There had been no lightning or other natural fire-starting phenomenon in the area when the blaze began, Nash said.

In Riverside County, hundreds of firefighters had begun to gain control of a wind-lashed 3,000-acre wildfire that consumed one home and led to the evacuation of hundreds of others.

The Riverside County fire, dubbed the Summit Fire, remained at just under 3,000 acres Friday morning and was about 65 percent contained, according to a Cal Fire incident report. Firefighters worked to improve containment lines around the raging blaze that threatened homes on Wednesday, but one building had been destroyed.

Two of the 650 firefighters trying to tame the blaze sustained non-life-threatening injuries, according to the report.

Additionally, more than 1,000 firefighters were battling a third major wildfire, designated the Panther Fire, Friday in rugged timberland in Northern California’s Tehama County about 30 miles east of Chico.

NBC News' Jeff Black contributed to this report.

Related:

• Thousands in Calif. wildfire's path evacuated
• 'Monster' California wildfire reaches ocean, pushes toward Malibu
• 12-square-mile Springs Fire spreads toward Ventura County coast

This story was originally published on Thu May 2, 2013 9:46 AM EDT

El Dorado County Sheriff's Office

Jason Wayrynen, 42, was arrested on Tuesday morning.

A man arrested for an alleged kidnapping 50 miles north of and three days after the fatal stabbing of an 8-year-old is being investigated in the girl's murder, but officials concede the link between the cases is a "shot in the dark."

Jason Wayrynen, 42, was arrested Tuesday in Placerville, Calif., the morning after a vigil was held Leila Fowler, a Valley Springs, Calif., third-grader who was stabbed by an intruder in her home on Saturday afternoon while she was at home with just her older brother.

Leila's murder, which happened while her parents were at a Little League game, has left parents in her small community terrified to leave their kids' sides while officials hunt down the killer. The circumstances surrounding Wayrynen's arrest on Tuesday bore enough similarities to Leila's case to prompt authorities to take a DNA sample from him and compare it to DNA recovered from the Valley Springs crime scene.

In Tuesday's alleged kidnapping, a mother told police she and her 15-month-old girl were followed into their Placerville apartment by Warynen, who they didn't know. Once inside the apartment, Wayrynen allegedly tried to kidnap the girl, the mother told police, while another woman in the apartment ran into the bedroom, locked the door, and called police.

Wayrynen was arrested and is being held on $250,000 bail.

"It's truly a shot in the dark," said Placerville Police Captain Mike Scott. "There's some similarities in the suspect's description ... and that an unknown intruder enters the residence with the intent to harm a child."

The suspect in Leila's murder is believed to be about six feet tall, and either white or Hispanic, with a muscular build, according to authorities.  Wayrynen, of Camino, Calif., next to Placerville, is 6'1'' and 200 pounds, with blond hair and blue eyes.

Calaveras County Sgt. Christ. Hewitt said DNA and fingerprints were collected from the scene of Leila's murder, and said he hopes the results of Wayrynen's DNA sample will come back "within a week or two."

"Right now, it seems to be very unlikely that they're connected, but of course, we have to take measures to either rule out that person or see if in fact they're involved. It's just standard investigative practice," Hewitt said.

The case still has no leads, Hewitt said.

"We do not know the motive. We don't know if it was intentional, if it was random. We do not know yet," he said.

Related: 

• 'We will not rest': Sheriff hunts California girl's killer
• Town grows nervous as girl’s killer is hunted
  

   

Pinned between a massive slab of granite and the wall of a cargo container, a worker who appeared to aid in his own extrication was rescued Tuesday afternoon in Fontana, Calif.

The 1,000-pound piece of rock, often used for countertops, was being delivered to a contracting company in Fontana. The trapped worker apparently was helping take the slab out of the truck when it split in two.

Crews from the San Bernardino County Fire Department cut open part of the truck's rear wall, allowing the worker to dangle his right arm outside the truck.

"As soon as they cut a section out, his arm fell out," witness Lucky Lira said. "At that point they were frantically trying to get him out."

The worker appeared to be helping rescuers break down the granite that was trapping him, at one point taking a hammer from crews to chip away at the rock.

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"He got quite lucky," said Battalion Chief Kathleen Opliger, who led the rescue. "When the granite came down, it formed an alcove for him, putting pressure on his lower extremities instead of his whole body."

Paramedics hooked up the man to an IV drip attached to what appeared to be a saline bag taped to the outside of the truck.

The man became trapped in the truck about 5 p.m. (8 p.m. ET) on Industry Avenue.

Rescue crews pulled the man out of the truck about 6:30 p.m. He appeared to be moving his arms freely and speaking with rescuers as he was airlifted to the hospital.

Witnesses called the rescue a "miracle."

"He grabbed hold of his rescuer, was trying to hug his rescuer, then did thumbs-up with both arms while we were trying to load him to the gurney," Opliger said.

The worker remained in the hospital late Wednesday. It was not immediately known when he would be well enough to leave.

A 50-year-old pharmacist was arrested Monday night after police say she removed two bottles of orange juice from a bag - which they say were filled with rubbing alcohol - and placed them on the shelf with other refrigerated items at a Starbucks in San Jose, California.

San Jose Police Sgt. Jason Dwyer took Ramineh Behbehanian of San Jose into custody on an attempted murder charge because the orange juice contained what police said were lethal quantities of isopropyl alcohol. She is scheduled to appear in court Thursday.

She has no criminal record in Santa Clara County, according to court records. Late Tuesday, sources confirmed for NBC Bay Area that Behbehanian is a pharmacist working for a company owned by Johnson and Johnson.

Authorities are still not sure why she would have allegedly mixed rubbing alcohol with some orange juice in the afternoon, left the bottles in the refrigerated section alongside some yogurt and milk, and left the Snell Avenue store about 3:30 p.m. local time (6:30 p.m. ET).

"Why would she do such a thing?" Chris Africa said, standing outside the Starbucks on Tuesday morning. "Was she trying to poison us?"

An alert customer standing behind her in line spotted her taking out her own bottles of juice from a green Starbucks bag, and put them in the refrigerator section. He also noticed a toxic smell. He told management. The woman might have felt under suspicion, police said, but a Starbucks employee got her license plate.

"A lot of people out there may have seen something and probably dismissed it," Dwyer said. "But I believe that person saved lives by doing that."

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The San Jose Fire Department responded to the scene, retrieved the bottles and tested the contents with hazardous materials equipment. It turned out, the bottles were filled with orange juice and rubbing alcohol.

On Tuesday morning, customer Brent Breyer said he was a little "apprehensive" about what happened at his usual Starbucks. He said he often brings his young daughter, who routinely grabs for items in the refrigerated section.

Police were able to track her down at her home, though no motive has surfaced.

A Starbucks spokesperson told NBC Bay Area that the company destroyed all the other juices in the Snell Avenue store out of an abundance of caution and had all other stores in Bay Area check their juice seals. 

All checked out OK.

The sheriff in a Northern California county where an 8-year-old girl was stabbed to death has vowed to catch her killer.

“We will not rest until we capture the responsible person,” Calaveras County Sheriff Gary Kuntz said at a televised news conference on Monday.

Leila Fowler's parents, Barney Fowler and Krystal Walters, were scheduled to speak, but appeared too distraught to do so. 

The girl and her 12-year-old brother were home alone on Saturday afternoon in Valley Springs when she was killed, NBC affiliate KCRA reported, citing school district superintendent Mark Campbell, who met with the parents. The parents were at a Little League game in the small town at the time of the attack, Campbell said.

An intruder, described as being a white or Hispanic man, six feet tall and muscular, ran away after being spotted by the brother, and the boy then found his injured sister, police said.

The county coroner told KCRA that Fowler died of shock and hemorrhaging caused by multiple stab wounds.

“We also want to report that members of the Calaveras County Sheriff’s office, California State Patrol, and Calaveras County probation department have nearly completed contacting and in many cases searching all known registered sex offenders and parolees in the area where this crime took place,” said Sgt. Chris Hewitt, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office.

The young girl’s parents appeared at the Monday news conference, standing well away from the cluster of microphones on the dais.

They held hands, with Walters leaning against Fowler’s arm.

When Sheriff’s Capt. Jim Macedo turned to ask if they wanted to speak, Walters covered her mouth, began crying and turned away, resting her head on her husband’s shoulder.

Macedo said they had wanted to ask that the media respect their privacy and to announce that a memorial fund had been set up for their daughter.

Meanwhile, police were saying little more about the case itself, apart from noting that a witness had reported seeing a man who fit the description given by Leila’s brother of the man he encountered in the family home.

As state and local authorities continued searching for the killer, residents of the small town expressed shock and a sense of worry that the man might still be in their midst.

"Nobody is staying alone," parent James Barci told KCRA.

Barci, a truck driver, who is a volunteer at Jenny Lind Elementary School, where Leila was a popular third-grader, added: "I told my work I'm not coming in, and I'm just going to have all of my kids' friends at the house until this is over."

NBC News’ Matthew DeLuca contributed to this report.

Town grows nervous as girl's killer is hunted

More NBC News coverage from California

Sheriff’s deputies stood guard at schools and bus stops Monday and officers fanned out across a Northern California town hunting a man suspected of breaking into a home and stabbing an 8-year-old girl to death.

The attack on Leila Fowler, a third-grader who friends said had a heart-melting smile, shattered the relative calm in Valley Springs, a town on the slope of the Sierra Nevada range that neighbors described as safe and trusting.

“This is way too close to home,” Julia Poland told The Associated Press. “This kind of thing does not happen here.”

Sheriff’s deputies said Leila’s 12-year-old brother found an intruder in the house Saturday afternoon, while the parents were away. The boy said the intruder fled and that he found his sister with stab wounds.

On Sunday, officers searched houses, sheds, even crawl spaces in Valley Springs, The Sacramento Bee reported. The Calaveras County sheriff said more than 100 officers were on the hunt.

Sheriff’s deputies were looking for a man described as 6 feet tall, white or Hispanic, with long gray hair and wearing a black shirt and blue jeans. They said he should be considered armed and dangerous.

NBC affiliate KCRA reported that a neighbor told police a man was running from the home after the stabbing.

The guards at bus stops and schools were part of what the sheriff described as an “increased and very visible presence.” Several dozen anxious neighbors showed up Sunday for an official news conference on the stabbing, The Modesto Bee reported.

The sheriff said authorities had collected fingerprints and DNA evidence from the home.

A candlelight vigil for Leila was planned for Tuesday night. People were asked to bring candles and pink or purple ribbons.

Valley Springs mostly consists of large homes built on acre lots populated by retirees and people who commute to jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area and the San Joaquin Valley, The Sacramento Bee reported. It is about 60 miles southeast of Sacramento.

Mike Rourke told the newspaper that people there used to let young children run free in the neighborhood. His son, Michael, 11, said that he did not know the girl but was fearful.

“I’m nervous, especially to be by myself,” he said.

This story was originally published on Mon Apr 29, 2013 6:58 AM EDT

A man has been arrested for investigation of attempted murder after he allegedly shot at the father of a player in a Little League T-ball game following an argument.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports 23-year-old Joshua Chi was arrested Wednesday and being held on $750,000 bail.

Authorities say the shooting occurred April 17 during a North Vallejo T-ball game after Chi and the father of a player argued with each other at the baseball field.

The dispute continued in the parking lot and police say when the father tried to drive away, Chi opened fire and hit the vehicle. The father was not injured.

Police didn't say what started the argument.

The North Vallejo Little League suspended games for several days after the shooting.

The driver of a U-Haul truck led police on a high-speed chase over rain-soaked freeways and surface streets in two Southern California counties Wednesday night.

The pursuit began in Riverside and ended in Orange County, police said. The driver is believed to have tripped silent alarms at a U-Haul facility in Riverside during a robbery attempt earlier in the evening.

Driven by a man with no shirt, the U-Haul truck was traveling upwards of 90 mph on the westbound 91 Freeway through Anaheim Hills at 10:30 p.m. (1:30 a.m. ET) before transitioning onto the southbound 55 Freeway into Orange County.

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About 15 minutes later, he changed directions and headed north on the 5 Freeway in the Santa Ana area before transitioning back onto the 91 Freeway, this time heading east.

Roads in the area were wet as the truck barreled down nearly empty freeways. The driver fishtailed on at least three slippery on-ramps.

It appeared California Highway Patrol officials successfully used a maneuver against the moving truck, causing it spin out and crash on a freeway underpass shortly after 11 p.m. (2 a.m. ET) along State College Boulevard on the border between Anaheim and Santa Ana.

Matthew Simmons / Getty Images file

Crowds gather for the re-launch ceremony of Disneyland's Space Mountain attraction on July 15, 2005 in Anaheim, California.

California safety regulators have fined a Disney contractor $60,995 after a worker was injured while cleaning the Space Mountain ride.

The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health says Los Angeles-based HSG Inc. violated several safety rules. The fine was levied on Friday.

A 37-year-old contractor fell and suffered broken bones last November while cleaning the exterior of Space Mountain at Disneyland.

The Orange County Register reports the contractor was cited for failing to make sure anchors were provided to the worker.

HSG has two weeks to file an appeal. An email to the company was not immediately returned.

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Earlier this week, Cal-OSHA proposed a nearly $235,000 penalty against Disneyland in connection with the worker's injury.

Disney has not decided whether it will appeal the penalties.

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