ROBERT OPEL
Updated: 4 days ago
A QUEER TRUE-CRIME STORY OF MURDER, POLITICS, AND SECRETS
Bang. 10:40 PM. July 8, 1979: Robert Opel is dead.
We know who pulled the trigger, or do we?
Robert Opel was a bisexual political activist, gallerist, and 1974 Oscar streaker. He was a pioneer: his gallery, Fey-Way Studios, in San Francisco showed artist Tom of Finland and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe before nearly everywhere else.
Opel was more than a provocateur or a footnote in queer history: he was deeply entrenched in the radical underground of 1970s San Francisco, moving between political activism, art, leather, performance, and the intense queer world. His murder came at a moment when he was increasingly challenging powerful people and institutions—and what happened next remains deeply troubling.
Prior to being shot in the head from about a foot away, Opel publicly tried to take down the San Francisco Police Department and Dan White, the man who killed out politician Harvey Milk. Someone or someones wanted Opel dead.
No one has ever pieced the pieces together like the QueerCore Podcast. We bring you narration, interviews with performer and leather icon Camille O’Grady—who was in the next room when Opel was shot—and others who were there, in some way.
How did the “murderer” escape from captivity at least three times? The first time, he was wearing street clothes and allegedly had money in his pocket. He was gone for a month... But behind the official story is something darker: strange escapes, spells, conflicting testimony, police misconduct, and questions that have lingered for decades. Who was behind the trigger? We name names.
The decades of whispers are now projected over the airwaves. Robert Opel did not have to die.
It’s a queer true-crime story, political mystery, and historical investigation unlike anything the curious world has ever been exposed to. Join us.
Topics: Political assassinations, police cover ups, Robert Mapplethorpe, Tom of Finland, black magic, leather gods and goddesses, Harvey Milk, Dan White, injustice, justice, escaped murderers, flipping the queer world upside down, queer history, San Francisco underground, Oscar streaking, and MORE!
Release Dates
EPISODE ONE: OCTOBER 6, 2026
EPISODE TWO: OCTOBER 13, 2026
EPISODE THREE: OCTOBER 20, 2026
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About The LGBTQ History Project
The LGBTQ History Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit preserving the lives and legacies of LGBTQ+ activists from the first wave of gay liberation through oral histories, archives, and the QueerCore Podcast.
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