10 Unsolved Hollywood Mysteries That Will Shock You.
Celebrities are victims of seemingly unrestricted access to their private lives since they are
always spied on and documented by the media. In some cases though, their fame and popularity
proved to be insufficient in saving them from dying or even in finding the true cause of
their death. Of course, homicide cases frequently go unsolved not only for decades, sometimes
even longer, yet one would expect the police would have an easier job in discovering the
killer (if there is one) when the victim is famous. However, many of the celebrity murder
and mysterious death cases end up closed after years of fruitless searching. Still, some
of them remain open and even decades after the murder authorities are still attempting
to piece together what actually happened. Will we ever find the answers to these tragic
events? One can only hope. As of now however these 10 celebrity deaths are still unsolved
and at least for now remain a mystery. 1. Johnny Stompanato.
Lana Turner, one of Hollywood's greatest beauties and sex symbols – she was the original "sweater
girl" – was discovered in 1936 by Hollywood Reporter Editor Billy Wilkerson after she
skipped a high school typing class in favor of a coke at a soda fountain in Hollywood.
Struck by her beauty and figure, Wilkerson gave Turner his card and introduced her to
an agent who promptly got the attractive 15-year-old a part in an otherwise-forgettable low-budget
film called They Won't Forget. Hollywood soon beat a path to her door, and
Lana became one of the most sought-after actresses in the industry. Men were similarly attracted
to her, but the success Lana found as a Hollywood leading lady was not something she could duplicate
in her personal life; she would be married seven times in all – none of her unions
would last more than four years.
The relationship for which Lana is perhaps most remembered was not a marriage but an
affair. It was both emotionally and physically violent – and it ended in a most unexpected
and shocking way.
Lana met Johnny Stompanato during the spring of 1957, shortly after divorcing actor Lex
Barker, her fourth husband. She fell for Stompanato's good looks and his prowess as a lover, but
when she discovered his ties to gangster Mickey Cohen (Stompanato was his bodyguard and enforcer),
she tried to break off the affair, fearing bad publicity. But Stompanato was not easily
dissuaded, and over the following year, the two of them became entangled in a relationship
marked by violent arguments, physical abuse and serial reconciliations.
Stompanato had already lived a life of adventure. A Marine war veteran, he converted to Islam
in order to marry a Turkish woman. After World War II he spent time in China and claimed
he ran nightclubs, though in truth he was only a civil bureaucrat.
He was also a gigolo, being spotted frequently in public on the arms of beautiful, older
women on whom he was financially dependent. He'd been married at least twice before
meeting Lana Turner, but nothing had ever lasted more than two years.
Neither Lana – nor her daughter Cheryl Crane (her daughter from her second marriage) – were
enamored of Stompanato by the end, but in the beginning, when he was courting her, Lana
found him very persuasive.
"I believed the lies a man told me, and by the time I learned they were lies it was too
late," she would write years later. "He was utterly considerate, and I began to warm toward
him physically. His wooing was gentle, persistent and finally persuasive."
Shortly after their relationship became public one of Lana's close friends told her that
the man she knew as John Steele was actually mob affiliate John Stompanato. The warning
was not enough for Lana to break it off.
"Call it forbidden fruit or whatever," she wrote. "This attraction was very deep, maybe
something sick within me. And my dangerous captivation went far beyond lovemaking."
While in England filming Another Time, Another Place with Sean Connery, Lana hoped on the
one hand that when she'd said goodbye to Johnny in Los Angeles, he would follow his previous
pattern and move on to another woman. But on the other, Lana soon found herself lonely
and reached out to him, asking Johnny to join her.
In England Johnny became physically violent with Lana for the first time. Bored and complaining
bitterly about Lana's reluctance to be seen in public with him, an argument escalated
to a shoving match.
"I reached for the phone, but he knocked it away and lunged for my throat," she wrote.
"As his grip closed around my larynx, I managed to let out a loud scream, though I could feel
the strain on my vocal chords."
Because he'd entered England illegally (using a passport with the alias John Steele), Lana
was able to get him deported. But she would eventually have to return to the United States,
where he would be waiting.
The 1958 Academy Awards marked a milestone in Lana's acting career – she'd been nominated
for Best Actress for her performance in Peyton Place. But they also helped set off the final,
fatal convulsion that spelled the end of Johnny Stompanato.
A photograph of Lana and Cheryl from that night at the awards dinner showed a spectacular
Lana in a form-fitting strapless white lace gown. With her wide, bright eyes, flawless
skin, charming smile and beautiful platinum blonde hair, Lana and daughter Cheryl – more
modestly attired in a green taffeta gown – were the distilled essence of Hollywood glamour
and royalty.
Watching the ceremony from his home in Beverly Hills, Stompanato grew angrier by the moment.
When Lana returned home from a round of post-Oscar parties, he was in the grip of a violent rage.
"You'll never leave me home again!" he roared. "That's the last time."
After castigating Lana for not winning the Best Actress Oscar, and for her growing dependency
on alcohol, he began slapping her face. "He cracked me a second time, this time knocking
me down. I staggered back against the chaise and slid to the floor," she wrote. "He yanked
me up and began hitting me with his fists. I went flying across the room into the bar,
sending glasses shattering on the floor."
Picking her up again, he grabbed her shoulders and peered down at her.
"Now do you understand?" he asked. "You will never leave me out of something like that
again. Ever."
"Underlying everything was my shame," she wrote in her biography. "I was so ashamed.
I didn't want anybody to know my predicament, how foolish I'd been, how I'd taken him at
face value and been completely duped."
Lana lay bruised and bleeding in bed the day after the Academy Awards ceremony. Beside
her lay a sleeping Johnny Stompanato – completely unaware of his approaching end.
Forever afterward Lana would speak of it only as "the happening". Cheryl would not speak
of it at all.
It began on a Friday evening. Lana and Johnny were fighting and Lana would remember later
she knew this fight would be a bad one. They were in her bedroom. Cheryl was in her room
next door. Cheryl could easily hear everything that was being said.
After the Academy Awards, Cheryl had seen her mother's bruised face; there was no question
John was beating her. Cheryl never saw – and never claimed she saw – Johnny hit Lana.
But the after-effects – in London, and after the Oscars – were impossible to deny.
Outside the bedroom, Cheryl begged her mother and Johnny to stop.
"Cheryl, get away from that door!" Lana yelled back. "I'm not going to tell you again!"
Cheryl wasn't going anywhere. But her mother matched her stubbornness. "She wouldn't open
the door," Cheryl recalled. "She said, 'Go back to your room. John is leaving.'"
Only he wasn't leaving. Instead he started making threats. He would cut Lana's face.
He would kill Lana's mother. "And I'll get your daughter, too."
As the argument raged, Cheryl went to the kitchen and grabbed a carving knife. Johnny
and Lana had actually bought it that same day. Cheryl went back upstairs and stood outside
her mother's closed door.
The argument started to dissipate; Stompanato was leaving the house. He pulled a set of
clothes and some heavy, wooden hangers out of the closet.
Still holding the knife, Cheryl pleaded with her mother to open the door, which an exhausted
Lana finally did. Lana stood between Cheryl and Johnny. Johnny was facing the door and
looking at Lana with a raised arm holding his clothes over his shoulder so that all
Cheryl could see was the arm – and some kind of weapon.
As he moved past Lana toward the door, his arm upraised holding ... something ... Cheryl
thrust her arm out. From Lana's point of view it looked only as though Cheryl had punched
Johnny hard in the stomach.
"Oh, my God, Cheryl, what have you done," he gasped. Then he pirouetted and collapsed
to the floor. His eyes closed and he wheezed horribly – mortally. Johnny Stompanato was
dying on the carpet of Lana Turner's new home.
Cheryl dropped the knife and backed away. To her horror Lana realized now what had just
happened. Cheryl had not punched John – she'd stabbed him. Lana went to Cheryl, who was
sobbing, and helped her to her room. Then she returned to tend to the dying Stompanato.
He was unconscious by the time he hit the floor. His breathing was heavy. Lana took
the knife and dropped it in the sink in the pink marble bar. Then she called her mother.
Within minutes a doctor and Lana's mother were there. Turner gave Johnny mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation. The doctor gave Stompanato a shot of adrenaline directly into his heart.
But it was too late. Johnny Stompanato, war hero, actor wannabe, two-bit hood, gigolo
and abuser, was dead.
The coroner's inquest into the death of Johnny Stompanato was a white-hot television event,
filling up the largest courtroom in the Beverly Hills Hall of Records. Three out of four seats
in the court were reserved for the press. CBS and ABC broadcast the inquest live and
it went out by radio as well.
Interest in the case was enormous. Box office receipts for Peyton Place, already quite healthy,
increased by a third immediately after Johnny's death. By an amazing coincidence, one of Lana's
key scenes in the movie was a courtroom interrogation in which she was questioned about crimes committed
by her daughter. Lines formed for the relative handful of public
seats at 6 a.m. Just before 9:00, under a merciless sun cruelly intensified by TV lights
and flashbulbs, Lana, Stephan Crane and their lawyer Jerry Geisler entered the building
and were hustled into the courtroom.
Because he was the person who had identified Stompanato's body at the morgue, mobster Mickey
Cohen was the first person called to testify. An inveterate showman, he made waves in court
by refusing "to identify the body on the grounds I may be accused of this murder." After only
two minutes on the stand he was excused and left the building.
The coroner produced an autopsy report showing that not even "a whole team of doctors" could
have saved Johnny's life from the wound inflicted by Cheryl Crane. He had been stabbed a single
time in the abdomen. After slicing Stompanato's kidney, the carving knife had struck a vertebra
and twisted upward, puncturing his aorta. Even disregarding that mortal wound, the coroner
believed that Johnny probably wouldn't have lived another 10 years because of his bad
liver.
For the first hour, she answered questions from the coroner, his deputy and Geisler while
a 10-man, two-woman jury watched, riveted. She hardly made eye contact with her questioners,
staring instead at the far end of the courtroom where the wall and ceiling met. Twice she
broke down on the stand.
Speaking quietly, she explained as best she could why she stayed with a man who beat her.
Under Geisler's gentle and considerate questioning she recalled a moment-by-moment account of
the argument leading up to the stabbing.
When she finished, the coroner asked for a recess and the press instantly crowded around
Lana, who was on the verge of fainting when Geisler maneuvered her away from the commotion.
Reporters talked among themselves about her performance on the stand.
The jury deliberated less than a half-hour before deciding that John Stompanato's death
was a case of justifiable homicide. Acting out of fear for her life and for that of her
mother, they found that Cheryl Crane had been justified in using deadly force to stop Johnny.
The decision was not unanimous, but it did not have to be.
Though the inquest verdict was not binding on the prosecution, the next day a decision
was made not to pursue charges.
Among those outraged by the verdict was Mickey Cohen. "It's the first time in my life I've
ever seen a dead man convicted of his own murder," he said colorfully. "So far as that
jury's concerned, Johnny just walked too close to that knife."
Johnny Stompanato's family later brought a wrongful death lawsuit against Lana Turner.
It was settled out of court. 2. Ronni Chasen.
Left with more questions than answers a day after a well-known movie publicist was shot
to death on a winding side street here, a stunned Hollywood started scripting possible
scenarios of its own.
Was Ronni Chasen, a veteran press agent and Oscar strategist, simply the victim of a carjacking
gone terribly wrong? Had the killer followed her as she drove home from a premiere party
for the movie "Burlesque"? Did somebody want Ms. Chasen dead? Was the person (or people)
responsible in the car with her?
Detectives were investigating all of those questions and more on Wednesday but appeared
as lost as Ms. Chasen's friends and clients when it came to making sense of the crime.
Early Tuesday, Ms. Chasen, 64, was shot repeatedly in the chest while driving on palm tree-lined
Whittier Drive, often used as a cut-through between Sunset and Wilshire Boulevards. Her
black Mercedes-Benz crashed into a street light, and the air bags deployed. She was
pronounced dead at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center at 1:30 a.m.
Although witnesses reported hearing five gunshots, the police on Wednesday would say only that
Ms. Chasen suffered "multiple" gunshot wounds, pending the results of a coroner's
report.
Adding to the mystery: despite a shattered passenger window, "there's no damage to
the car that I'm aware of from the gunshots," said Sgt. Lincoln Hoshino of the Beverly Hills
Police Department. "The person could have been in the car, outside the car, could've
walked up to the car, driven up — we don't know at this point."
Sergeant Hoshino said investigators were collecting security camera images from home and business
cameras along the stretch of Sunset Boulevard Ms. Chasen had driven before turning onto
Whittier. The killing — one of only three this year
in Beverly Hills, according to the police — stunned a clubby film industry in which
Ms. Chasen had been a fixture for three decades, getting her start as a bit player on soap
operas before quickly making the transition to the dark arts of publicity and Oscar campaigning.
On Wednesday the Palm Springs International Film Festival, a client of Ms. Chasen's,
offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of her killer. About
150 people turned out for an impromptu memorial at the Four Seasons hotel here on Tuesday
night; the Oscar-winning producer Scott Rudin was helping to plan a similar gathering in
New York City for Wednesday night.
The death of Ms. Chasen — whose hard-charging and abrupt style was softened by a petite
frame, quick smile and perfectly blown-out blond hair — hit a nerve in Hollywood in
part because she was seemingly everywhere: lunching at industry watering holes (where
she would always pluck a tiny bottle of sweetener from her purse for the iced tea) and attending
virtually every awards dinner, charity event and premiere.
Unmarried and without children, Ms. Chasen focused all of her attention on her clients.
Just six minutes before her death, she left a voice message at her office with a to-do
list for her lieutenants to tackle when they arrived at work the next morning.
Alan Citron, a former reporter for The Los Angeles Times, recalled a vintage moment from
1990, when Ms. Chasen was working on behalf of Giancarlo Parretti, an Italian investor
who took and ultimately lost control of M.G.M. Ms. Chasen met Mr. Citron for lunch at the
Polo Lounge and playfully "threatened to kill me if we didn't lay off him," Mr.
Citron said. When he laughed, Ms. Chasen picked up her butter knife and jokingly pressed it
against his chest.
"When she represented you she was an unshakable support," said the producer Donald De Line,
whose credits include "Burlesque." Vivian Mayer-Siskind, a fellow publicity veteran,
noted that Ms. Chasen, a close friend, had a charming sense of self-awareness.
"She was the first one to point out that she was pushy or could drive people crazy,
and that was part of her success," Ms. Mayer-Siskind said.
Armed with a New York accent and a dry wit, Ms. Chasen was one of a handful of elite strategists
employed by studios to influence the Oscars. In a clever business move, she cornered the
publicity market for composers and songwriters, thus making herself an indispensable part
of the best song and best score niches of the Oscar race.
"I'm really almost paralyzed by this," said the producer Richard D. Zanuck, who,
backed by a campaign orchestrated by Ms. Chasen, won an Oscar for "Driving Miss Daisy."
Ms. Chasen grew up in the Washington Heights and Riverdale sections of New York, the daughter
of a real estate broker and a homemaker. As a child, Ms. Chasen was athletic and gregarious,
entering and winning yo-yo contests organized by the Duncan Toys Company, according to her
brother, Larry Cohen.
It was Mr. Cohen, a director and writer of B movies, who gave Ms. Chasen one of her first
publicity jobs: promoting his 1973 blaxploitation movie "Hell Up in Harlem."
"She played in one or two soap operas — I can't remember which — but the rejection
of acting wasn't for her," Mr. Cohen said. "She was a natural publicist, though. Oh,
how she loved to throw a party." 3. Jill Dando.
In a series of articles, the Bristol Post will be highlighting all the unsolved murders
committed or connected to the city.
The first in the series starts with a mystery which has baffled the nation for more than
17 years.
Weston-super-Mare's Jill Dando was one of the seaside town's most famous and much loved
residents.
Shock took hold of the area when it was revealed she had been gunned down outside her London
home.
Police thought they found the killer; a loner, obsessed with the Crimewatch presenter.
But he was the wrong man and spent eight years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.
Seventeen years on and after a lot of speculation, Jill's family are still no closer to finding
out who killed the cheerful and loving mum.
The golden girl of the BBC was returning home when she reached the door of her home in Fulham
on April 26, 1999.
But before she could get her keys in her door before she was shot once in the head with
a 9mm bullet.
There was no sign of a struggle and the killing was said to have taken place from close range
at 11.30am - broad daylight.
Immediately suspicion and the execution style of the shooting led to speculation that Jill
Dando was the victim of a professional hit. A silencer was even thought to be used on
the gun as neighbours did not hear the firing.
Aged just 37 years old and engaged at the time, Jill was in the prime of her career
- a household name. But she worked often as an investigative journalist
and on the television show Crimewatch, which meant somewhere along the line she had probably
made enemies with the wrong people.
Another line of enquiry also being considered was that Jill could have been murdered by
an obsessed stalker, which for some television presenters becomes an occupational hazard.
Leading the inquiry from the outset was Detective Chief Inspector Hamish Campbell, who said
at the time: "It could either be a stalker or a hitman. However, there are many theories
to be explored and nothing will be left untouched." Detectives believe the killer had "staked"
out her home for at least an hour before the shooting and there were said to be seven sightings
of "a smartly dressed man carrying a mobile phone - who might have donned heavy black-framed
spectacles in an attempt to disguise himself" outside her £400,000 two-storey home.
Jill's body was discovered by a neighbour 14 minutes after she had been shot. She was
taken to Charing Cross Hospital and announced dead on arrival just after 1pm.
Tributes came in at a rate of four-a-minute to the BBC while her fiance Alan Farthing,
brother Nigel and father, Jack, both journalists, mourned her death.
The former Worle schoolgirl had started out as a trainee reporter for the weekly paper
the Weston Mercury, with her brother and dad, before she moved to Radio Devon in 1985.
Later she made the switch to regional television and then national. By 1995 she had made it
to Crimewatch, a year after moving to Fulham. Jill's murder attracted a huge amount of media
coverage and for more than a year the Metropolitan Police tried to solve the mystery of Operation
Oxborough with no breaks. They spoke to more than 2,500 people and took
1,000 statements before their investigation focused on Barry George.
George lived just half a mile away from Jill and had a history of stalking women and so
was put under surveillance. The man with the low IQ was charged, tried
at the Old Bailey and convicted to life imprisonment in July 2001.
But he maintained his innocence and appealed his conviction.
By November 2007 his legal team successfully discredited forensic evidence to do with the
gunshot residue. A retrial was ordered and on August 1, 2008
- after eight years in jail - George was declared an innocent man.
Despite trying to claim £500,000 in compensation for his wrongful conviction, his case was
turned down by the then Home Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, who ruled he was "not innocent enough".
The High Court had previously ruled the then 53-year-old's conviction was not so unfair
as to be considered a miscarriage of justice. In 2013 Scotland Yard confirmed the investigation
was open, but no officers had been working on it full-time.
A forensic review of the case, that same year cost nearly £600,000, but did not shed any
light on finding out who was responsible for Jill's death.
Last year the Sunday Mirror exposed the report and stated that review concluded: "We have
conducted a lengthy and highly detailed scientific investigation of this case... At the end of
all this, our efforts have not directly assisted with the identification of Dando's killer."
Its investigation revealed there had been crucial evidence not followed up by the police
and some 100 suspects never traced. A police spokesman said at that time: "If
any new information comes to our attention, then this will be investigated."
Every few years a new theory about who killed Jill and why comes to ahead in the national
press. With her work as a journalist and on the BBC
program Crimewatch, combined with the professional style assassination, there seems to be a wealth
of theories. Over the years there have been allegations
that police have not investigated a wealth of possibilities put forward about Jill's
death. Sadly none seem to have ever attracted the
evidence to see police charge anyone, but here are just some of the most likely theories
put forward. In 2014 a former colleague came forward and
said Jill was trying to expose a VIP paedophile ring just months before her death.
The source said Jill raised concerns to her BBC bosses about allegations of sexual abuse
happening at the Beeb. The source told the Daily Star Sunday: "I
don't recall the names of all the stars now and don't want to implicate anyone, but Jill
said they were surprisingly big names. "I think she was quite shocked when told about
images of children and that information on how to join this horrible paedophile ring
was freely available. "Jill said others had complained to her about
sexual matters and that some female workmates also claimed they had been groped or assaulted."
A BBC spokesman said they would always investigate allegations of this nature, but said they
had "not seen anything that substantiates these claims".
One message to detectives on the Jill Dando case seemed to suggest that Serbian gangsters
had plotted to kill her in revenge for the Nato-led bombing of a television station.
Detectives were allegedly told that men had met at a London nightclub and planned the
hit. Weeks before her death Jill had been the face
of a TV appeal for Kosovan-Albanian refugees, making her a target from Serb paramilitaries.
A message filed to detectives reportedly said: "Dando was murdered by a Serb hitman in revenge
for the attack that NATO mounted... "The people who planned Dando's murder meet
and drink in a club called Scandal in London's West End. One of those involved is a tall
male with a swallow tattoo on his neck." A call to the BBC three days after Jill's
murder contained an apparent death threat against Watchdog's Anne Robinson and Alice
Beer. Police traced the call to Gerrards Cross,
Buckinghamshire, but never found the culprit. Slavko Curuvija, a journalist and critic of
the Serb regime, was shot in the head at point-blank range outside his home 15 days before Jill's
death. Alice Beer has also spoken about how both
she and Jill received rape and kidnap threats leading up to her murder.
She told the Mirror last year: "There are a lot of questions I would like answering.
They've been at the back of my mind. "I waited for a call from the police after
Jill's death – but it never came. Nobody spoke to me about the threat.
"Nobody questioned anything. If no stone were left unturned in that investigation then I
would have been called." An intelligence report once put forward the
names of two men from one of London's most notorious crime families.
Police search the area around Jill Dando's home following her murder in 1999
Jill's murder has always had to the hallmarks of a gangland professional hit. She died with
a single bullet to the head in broad daylight on a busy street.
Not a trace of DNA or a definitive sighting of the shooter was left.
That intelligence report suggested that Jill was being targeted for an investigation into
crime for the television. The lead detective on the Dando case at the
time ordered no further action on the report. It came as prime suspect Barry George had
already been charged. Documents seen by Barry George's legal team
revealed a killer wrote a letter from prison claiming to be part of an IRA hit squad that
killed her. Although dismissed by many, the letter claimed
she had been targeted because of her position as presenter of Crimewatch.
An image of a suspect released after Jill Dando's death in 1999
He claimed she was shot with a 9mm bullet before the gang escaped to a safe house in
London in a Land Rover. He claimed the confession was to stop a cover
up and Barry George taking the blame. The letter stated that the IRA was getting
away with the murder to avoid problems with the Northern Ireland peace process.
A report from the former National Criminal Intelligence Service suggested a barman called
Joe from Tenerife could be the killer. A Crimewatch appeal helped to lock up road
rage killer Kenneth Noye in 1996. The report is said to have stated: "Joe runs
a bar in Tenerife, frequented by leading ex-pat criminals.
Detective Chief Inspector Hamish Campbell led the initial investigation into Jill Dando's
murder "He's described as a frustrated gangster reputed
to owe money to Kenny Noye. "There's been talk Joe has been keen to rehabilitate
his reputation with gangster creditors." But Joe was never traced.
4. Mary Meyer. On October 12, 1964, Mary Pinchot Meyer, the
glamorous sister-in-law of Ben Bradlee and sometime lover of Jack Kennedy, was shot to
death while walking along the C & O Canal in Georgetown. And in the hours that followed,
the search for Meyer's scandalous diary would find the future Washington Post editor
in a race with one of the Cold War's most legendary spies.
Bradlee, who died Tuesday at age 93, is rightly lionized as a master journalist. But he was
also a key figure in a Washington establishment that arguably no longer exists—the kind
of guy who advised presidents even as he reported on them, and counted some of the CIA's top
officers as personal friends.
The day Meyer died, these roles converged. After Bradlee had returned home from identifying
Meyer's body at the city morgue, he and his wife Tony received a call from the Tokyo-based
artist and sculptor Anne Truitt. "She had been perhaps Mary's closest friend," Bradlee
recounts in his memoir, A Good Life, "and after she and Tony had grieved together, she
told us that Mary had asked her to take possession of a private diary 'if anything ever happened
to me.' Anne asked if we had found any such diary, and we told her we hadn't looked
for anything, much less a diary."
Bradlee and his wife began their search the next morning, only to find that someone else
had been tipped off about the diary's existence. Meyer's door had been locked, but when Bradlee
made his way in, he found James Jesus Angleton, the CIA's counterintelligence chief, standing
there in the living room. He, too, was looking for Meyer's diary.
Asked how he had gotten into the house, Angleton, who was among other things an expert at picking
locks, "shuffled his feet." Angleton was a Washington social figure in his own right,
and his wife Cecily had been close with Mary, who had been married to another high-ranking
CIA officer. "We felt his presence was odd, to say the least, but took him at his word,
and with him we searched Mary's house thoroughly," Bradlee wrote. After an exhaustive search,
however, no diary was found.
Angleton is one of those people who will always be shrouded in mystery. To his detractors,
he was a half-mad paranoiac who nearly destroyed the CIA in his obsessive search for a Soviet
mole. He was also an unquestionably brilliant "master of the game" with highbrow literary
interests—borrowing a line from T.S. Elliot, he memorably referred to the world of espionage
as a "wilderness of mirrors." He essentially invented the CIA's counterintelligence operation
and, until his fall from grace nearly a decade after Meyer was killed, was perhaps the most
powerful man at the Agency.
"If [British defector Kim] Philby was, as many have called him, the spy of the century,"
wrote historian Ron Rosenbaum, "James Angleton was the counterspy of the century."
And here he was, on his hands and knees, fruitlessly searching for a diary with his friend Ben
Bradlee, then the Washington bureau chief for Newsweek. Eventually they both gave up,
and parted ways.
A few hours later, though, it occurred to Bradlee that Meyer could have kept the diary
in her artist's studio, which was actually located behind his house. "We had no key,"
Bradley wrote, "but I got a few tools to remove the simple padlock, and we walked toward
the studio, only to run into Jim Angleton again, this time actually in the process of
picking the padlock. He would have been red-faced, if his face could have gotten red, and he
left almost without a word."
Meyer, in addition to being considered one of the great, sought-after beauties of Washington
at the time, was involved with the artists' scene in the city and its nascent counterculture.
She was friendly with Timothy Leary, with whom allegedly she dropped acid. "Her paintings
and paints in the palest colors, and simplest shapes, pretty much covered the studio,"
Bradlee wrote. After about an hour, Tony found the diary.
It was slim, about "fifty to sixty pages," according to Bradlee, and mostly concerned
with her paintings. Ten or so pages of it, though, recounted her affair with President
Kennedy, of which Bradlee and his wife had been completely unaware.
"To say we were stunned doesn't begin to describe our reactions," Bradlee wrote.
The Bradlees and the Kennedys had been close, and while there were persistent rumors that
the president cheated on his wife, Kennedy had always denied it to Ben even as he playfully
flirted with Tony. Jackie Kennedy once joked to the Bradlees that Jack liked to call Tony
his "ideal woman." Jack, meanwhile, told Ben that he imagined the trouble-loving Mary
must be "hard to live with." It all threw the Bradlees off Jack's scent.
Kennedy disliked having girlfriends, preferring one-off conquests instead, but made an exception
for Mary Meyer. "I was truly appalled by the realization of the deceit involved,"
Bradlee wrote. "I remembered, for instance, Kennedy greeting Tony often by asking, 'How's
your sister?', presumably including those occasions when he had just left her arms."
Bradlee felt deceived by his friends but, "with both of them gone from my life, resentment
seemed foolish." In hindsight, the affair made sense to him: "They were attractive,
intelligent, and interesting people before their paths crossed in this explosive way,
and they remain that way in mind." Coming to terms with their relationship, he wrote,
was harder for Tony, who "had been kept in the dark by her sister and her friend."
Mary Meyer had told her friend Anne Truitt that she had wanted the diary destroyed, and
while Bradlee felt it was in some sense "a public document," he agreed that it this
was mostly a family matter, and went along with Mary's wishes. Here, again, Angleton
comes into the picture: In exchange for the diary, he promised Ben and Tony, he would
destroy it. After all, who better to make something disappear than the CIA? And so Tony
handed it over.
In 1976, Anne Truitt's "troubled" ex-husband told the National Enquirer about the diary
and Meyer's affair with JFK. He said that the pair had smoked weed together on one occasion,
and that the romance lasted from 1962 until roughly Kennedy's assassination in 1963.
Bradlee was on vacation when the story broke and, when reached by his own reporters for
comment, told them off-the-record that the diary had been destroyed.
Except it hadn't. A few years after the Enquirer story broke, Tony asked Angleton
what, exactly, he had done with it, and Angleton admitted it was still in his possession. Tony
demanded he give it back. Angleton complied, and Tony finally set the thing on fire "with
a friend as witness."
"None of us has any idea what Angleton did with the diary while it was in his possession,
nor why he failed to follow Mary and Tony's instructions," Bradlee wrote. According
to Truitt and Angleton's wife, he burned "the loose papers" and "safeguarded"
the rest of it, insisting that he had never been explicitly told to destroy it in its
entirety.
The murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer was never solved, and is still a regular fixture of
JFK conspiracy narratives. The police apprehended a man shortly after her shooting, but without
much by way of evidence against him, he was acquitted at trail. Regardless, the psychic
blow of Mary's murder, coming so soon after his friend Jack Kennedy's, had a profound
effect on Bradlee.
"Even after more than 40 months in a shooting war, after years as a police reporter, and
after more years covering shooting wars in the Middle East, violence as a fact of my
life had begun only with Kennedy's assassination," he wrote. And now, after Mary's "almost
unbearable" funeral, he felt that "his own world was somehow threatened."
5. David Carradine. Carradine, 72, was discovered naked and hanged
in the wardrobe of his Bangkok hotel room on Thursday morning. A rope was tied around
his neck and another around his genitals. An autopsy has yet to determine the cause
of death and Thai police said they could not rule out suicide or a sex game gone wrong.
The star's personal manager, Chuck Binder, rejected the suicide theory but told CNN's
Larry King: "I don't know if you want to call it accidental.
"I got some some calls from Thailand today from a producer that worked with him. I don't
want to get into the middle of this whole investigation, but this guy said to me for
sure there was foul play." Tarantino, who revived Carradine's career
by casting him in Kill Bill, described the star of 1970s series Kung Fu as "one of Hollywood's
great, mad geniuses". Asked if Carradine would have liked his death to be the subject of
such fevered speculation, Tarantino agreed: He told CNN: "If the last chapter of his autobiography
was 'The Mysterious Demise of David Carradine', that would be perfect."
Michael Madsen, Carradine's Kill Bill co-star, added: "I think he would like it that way.
It's a typical David way to go - the mysterious death of David Carradine."
Rob Schneider, the actor and director who appeared with Carradine in 2007 comedy Big
Stan, said there were parallels with the case of Bruce Lee, whose death in 1973 sparked
numerous conspiracy theories. "The truth is, I think David always felt bad
he took the Kung Fu role that was originated from Bruce Lee. I think it's a really odd
and beautiful mystery that it's the same way as Bruce Lee. We'll never know exactly what
happened with Bruce Lee," said Schneider. A maid discovered Carradine's body in the
luxury suite of the Nai Lert Park Hotel in Bangkok, after she knocked on the door and
received no response. The actor was in the city to make a film.
"This certainly was not a natural cause of death," said Nantana Sirisap, chief coroner
at Bangkok's Chulalongkom Hospital, adding that toxicology tests had been ordered.
Police chief Colonel Somprasong Yentuam said the investigation was continuing "We are currently
interviewing witnesses, film crew, hotel staff and the last person who saw David alive. So
far, no-one saw anyone enter David's room around the estimated time of death."
Aurelio Giraudo, the hotel's general manager, said the actor checked into the hotel on May
31 and appeared in good spirits, chatting with staff and entertaining guests by playing
piano in the lobby. "I was a fan. I had a very nice talk with
him when he checked in. He was very much a person full of life. I mentioned to him that
I had seen [the film] Crank with my family and that was the last smile he gave me," Mr
Giraudo said. Carradine's wife, Annie, and close friends
rejected suggestions that the actor deliberately took his own life, despite the fact he had
spoken openly of contemplating suicide in the past.
Michael Madsen said: "I don't think he was suicidal by any stretch of the imagination.
I talked to Annie and she said the most important thing she wanted everybody to know is that
David was not suicidal, he was not depressed and he was not going to do something like
that." Tarantino added: "There might have been a
period of David's long life that he could have been suicidal, but this wasn't the time."
6. Anna Nicole Smith. Anna Nicole Smith was only 39 when she died
in a Florida hotel room six years ago as a result of an overdose of prescription drugs.
A former model, one-time stripper and occasional reality TV star, she was a symbol of her times
– a smalltown-girl-turned-sex-goddess who was perhaps best known for her surgically
enhanced breasts and a brief marriage to a billionaire 63 years her senior.
In life, her story possessed some of the tragic qualities of her heroine Marilyn Monroe – including
an addiction to painkillers – and she was devastated by the premature death of her son
Daniel at the age of 20. But perhaps most tragically of all, Anna Nicole's demise
meant her one surviving child, daughter Dannielynn, has absolutely no memories at all of her mother.
Dannielynn was just five months old when her mother died and her story is told in the documentary
Life after Anna Nicole, which airs tomorrow night.
Dannielynn's father, Anna Nicole's former boyfriend Larry Birkhead, narrates much of
the programme and, even at seven years old, Dannielynn's resemblance to her mother is
striking. 'When she smiles, she looks just like her mum,' says Larry. 'She's a
beautiful little girl.'
Larry, softly spoken and in his own words 'just a geek from Kentucky', has raised
Dannielynn on his own for the past seven years. 'I have to be both parents,' says Larry,
40. 'Some days she gets sad her mum's no longer here, but other days she's very
accepting and will say, "I have an angel for a mum." She knows Anna was a model and
is in heaven, but obviously she's too young to know the whole story.'
The Anna Nicole Smith story isn't always palatable reading. The pneumatic blonde was
performing in a strip club when she met the elderly oil tycoon J Howard Marshall, and
became an instant sensation after featuring on the cover of Playboy and replacing Claudia
Schiffer as the model for Guess jeans.
She married Marshall in 1994 – she was 26 to his 89 – and his death a year later sparked
a long court battle between Anna Nicole and the Marshall family over the tycoon's £1
billion estate that's still going on.
She began dating Larry, a photographer, in 2004, 'but it wasn't an easy relationship,'
he admits. 'She had an entourage and that got in the way sometimes, but I loved her
and we talked about marriage. I was just some guy – I never thought I'd have a chance
with Anna Nicole Smith, but we ended up having a child together.'
To preserve Anna Nicole's status as a sex symbol she insisted they keep their relationship
a secret, and she only informed Larry he was to be a father via a text message. 'But
I really wanted to be there at the birth,' he says. 'I pictured myself in the delivery
room and I thought the worst thing that could happen was that I'd faint. I was so wrong.'
He certainly was. Without warning, Anna Nicole decamped to the Bahamas with her lawyer, Howard
K Stern, and a couple of months later, in September 2006, gave birth to Dannielynn – news
Larry only learned after paying a subscription fee to access Anna Nicole's website.
'I'd been planning on being there for the birth, and then one day it was just ripped
from me. It was puzzling when she took off. I never saw her again, so we didn't have
any kind of closure.'
Worse was to come. Three days after Dannielynn was born, Anna Nicole's 20-year-old son
from her first marriage, Daniel, died of a drug overdose. 'Anna was so close to Daniel
that when she lost him, I didn't think she'd make it,' says Larry. He was proved right:
five months after Daniel's death, Anna Nicole also died of a drugs overdose. 'I kept thinking
about what I could have done differently to help her, but I was helpless.'
By then Larry had become embroiled in a custody battle over Dannielynn after several men came
forward claiming to be the father, including Anna Nicole's lawyer Howard K Stern, a previous
boyfriend Mark Hatten and, most bizarrely, Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband Frederic Prinz von
Anhalt, who claimed to have had a ten-year affair with her.
'It hadn't mattered to me that Anna had wanted to keep our relationship secret, but
when I had to prove paternity it became difficult. I only had about 20 pictures of us together
but I could have been a fan, anyone.' In the end, while Dannielynn was living in the
Bahamas with Stern, DNA tests confirmed Larry was the father. 'I didn't get to see my
daughter for months, but I've got her now and that's all that matters.'
They live in Kentucky where Larry still does photography when he can. 'But I can't
travel and take care of Dannielynn, so I now renovate properties for a living.'
Though he insists he wants to keep Dannielynn out of the limelight, Larry let her do a photoshoot
for Guess jeans like her mother. 'Dannielynn loves the Guess pictures of Anna,' he says,
'it's like a connection to her. It's not a regular thing though.'
There is also the matter of a court hearing in January where Anna Nicole's estate is
still fighting for a share of J Howard Marshall's fortune. Should they win, Dannielynn could
end up 50 million dollars richer. 'I'm not fighting for it,' says Larry, 'it's
the estate's fight and if it comes in, it'll be for Dannielynn at 18, not me. My job is
to prepare her for life.' Larry once described Anna Nicole's story
as 'a cautionary tale'. He says, 'I always try to teach Dannielynn about making
decisions and how they always have consequences. One day her doll fell off the stairwell and
got hurt, and she suddenly asked, "Is that what happened to my mum?"
'I didn't know what to say accept, "No, the doctors couldn't fix your mum, but if
you keep yourself healthy and safe, you can grow up to be a good mum yourself." It's
hard not to cry when she says things like that, but all I want is for Dannielynn to
grow up happy and be her own person.' 7. JonBenét Ramsey.
Twenty years ago a 911 call reporting a missing and possibly kidnapped 6-year-old girl launched
a murder mystery — one that continues to endure, fascinate and perplex.
In their Boulder, Colorado, home on the morning of Dec. 26, 1996, parents John and Patsy Ramsey
found a ransom note handwritten on a pad with a black Sharpie that belonged to the family.
It demanded $118,000 — the exact amount of a bonus recently received by John — for
the return of JonBenét, the couple's blonde, child-pageant princess daughter.
Later that morning JonBenét's body, beaten and strangled with a garrote around her neck
and duct tape covering her mouth, was found in the basement of the family's Tudor brick
home.
Police are still looking for the killer.
At least 37 books have explored the crime, along with at least a dozen TV programs and
movies. None have helped resolve the cold case.
John and Patsy — among more than 140 suspects — have been investigated. The Boulder County
District Attorney at the time said there was insufficient evidence to bring charges after
grand jurors voted to indict the parents in 1998 for child abuse resulting in death and
accessory to a crime.
More recently, a CBS docuseries this past fall presented a case against JonBenét's
brother Burke, then aged 9, as the likely killer, prompting the family's attorney
to announce his intent to file a libel suit on Burke's behalf against the network. CBS
issued a statement saying it stands by its report.
The Ramseys' attorney, L. Lin Wood, tells PEOPLE he believes there is still a clear
path to finding the murderer. The answer lies in the DNA profile drawn from apparent saliva
he says was identified in the crotch of JonBenet's underwear after she was found.
"That profile is the profile of the killer," Wood says. "The question is whether we'll
ever get a match."
It clearly does not match Burke Ramsey, Wood says.
In a court filing in October, Wood accused forensic pathologist Dr. Werner Spitz of libeling
Burke by stating that Burke killed JonBenét. Spitz's attorneys have since moved to dismiss
the suit, which seeks damages in excess of $150 million and is based upon comments Spitz
made to a Detroit radio station after participating in the CBS docuseries.
Spitz' attorneys responded in court papers by saying that his comments about Burke amount
to free speech protected by the First Amendment, and arise "from the public discussion about
theories involving one of the major unsolved crimes of the 20th Century."
Wood disagrees.
"The United States Supreme Court has made it very clear that the First Amendment does
not provide blanket protection to all statements characterized as opinion," Wood said in
a written response to Spitz's motion to dismiss the case. "Spitz's statements
conveyed that Burke Ramsey killed his sister. That accusation is capable of being objectively
proven to be false."
"Further, Spitz's accusation was based on undisclosed facts and more importantly,
false and distorted facts," Wood said. "Simply stated, Spitz's accusation is legally viewed
as a statement of fact, not a protected opinion. In a statement to PEOPLE, the network said
after the two-part The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey, aired in September, "CBS stands
by the broadcast and will do so in court."
Wood points to just one statement about JonBenét's mother early in the broadcast that he says
undermines the entire series' claim of accuracy.
"The broadcast starts off by stating that Patsy Ramsey developed Stage 4 ovarian cancer
a couple of years after JonBenét's death," he says. "Patsy Ramsey was diagnosed with
Stage 4 ovarian cancer in 1993, three years before JonBenét was murdered."
"If you can't get the little facts right," he says, "be very careful about what that
person says about the big facts."
Two decades after JonBenét's death, however, the facts as they are known have yet to move
the case toward closure or criminal charges.
Investigators continue to review whether JonBenét was murdered by an outside intruder or by
someone within her own family. A 2008 statement by then-Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy,
who publicly apologized to the family for placing them under suspicion and announced
that evidence cleared JonBenet's brother and parents, failed to halt debate.
Earlier this month, current Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett reiterated his belief
that his predecessor erred in declaring anyone to be innocent.
"When any district attorney goes around and starts issuing exonerations based on a
particular piece of evidence, that can be very misleading to the public about the nature
of the case," Garnett told PEOPLE.
Citing the infamously "compromised" crime scene, he said, "The state of the evidence
is not one where you could really say anything definitively."
But Garnett does not now lay blame on the parents or anyone in the Ramsey family, who
are "totally covered by the presumption of innocence," he said. "If we ever change
our opinion about that with regard to the Ramseys or anyone else, we will file charges
and say what we have to say about the case in open court."
Patsy died in 2006. John, 72 and remarried, owns a promotional marketing firm and lives
in Charlevoix, Mich., and Las Vegas. Burke, 29, is a software developer in Indianapolis.
Burke ended his long public silence about the case last September in a three-part broadcast
interview with Dr. Phil McGraw, stating he had not killed his sister and that his parents
had not covered for him. "I know that's not what happened. … Look at the evidence.
Or lack thereof," he said.
John shared his own account in a 2000 book written with Patsy, The Death of Innocence:
The Untold Story of JonBenét's Murder and How Its Exploitation Compromised the Pursuit
of Truth. (In 2012 he also wrote The Other Side of Suffering: The Father of JonBenét
Ramsey Tells the Story of His Journey from Grief to Grace, chronicling his loss of JonBenét,
Patsy, and a daughter, Beth, from an earlier marriage who was killed in a 1992 car accident.)
On Dec. 14, Boulder police announced they are working with the Colorado Bureau of Investigations
to again apply the latest DNA testing technology on evidence in the unsolved case "to determine
if this new technology could further this investigation."
Garnett told PEOPLE: "I don't anticipate that it's going to lead to any dramatic
developments in the case, but obviously we would love to solve it."
Asked how the years without any resolution have affected John, the Ramseys' attorney
Wood tells PEOPLE: "I'm hesitant to try to put words into John's mouth. Only he
can express his feelings accurately, because he's had to live the experience."
"I'm sure that there is a mixture of emotions that John experiences. It probably goes from
frustration to hope, perhaps at times to anger," he says. "But I think that John's predominant
position has always been one of hope that one day the killer of his daughter will be
identified. He is still involved in efforts to himself aid in the investigation."
John, says Wood, "is a man of deep faith, and I think that's what has helped him survive."
8. Mary Rogers. Mary Rogers was a Kardashian of the 1840s.
The pretty girl became a hit in social circles, based on her looks alone. A brief "disappearance,"
thought to have been done to drum up publicity for the shop she worked at, made headlines
across the Eastern seaboard. But her mysterious death made waves that even affected Edgar
Allan Poe.
Mary was born around 1820 in Lyme, Connecticut. She and her widowed mother, Phoebe, moved
to New York in the 1930s. Phoebe ran a boarding house while Mary worked at a cigar shop. Anderson's
Tobacco Emporium was one of the most popular cigar stores in New York. Writers Washington
Irving and James Fenimore Cooper were known to frequent the shop. Mary, a beautiful young
woman, was certainly a draw for the young men of New York. The press dubbed Mary "The
Beautiful Cigar Girl," and her looks alone made her a celebrity.
On October 5, 1838, Mary was reported missing by the local papers causing a minor hysteria.
Her Mom Phoebe claimed to have found a suicide note, authenticated by the local coroner.
The next day, however, the papers declared this was all a hoax, and that Mary had been
visiting friends in Brooklyn and hypothesized that it was all a publicity stunt for Anderson's
Tobacco Emporium. She returned to work at the shop, but it wasn't long before she
quit and went home to help her mother run her boarding house. Mary had plenty of attention
amongst the male boarders, but one in particular caught her eye: Daniel Payne. They got engaged
in the summer of 1841.
On July 25th, 1841, Mary left home to visit her aunt uptown. She was never heard from
again. At first, people assumed she had just run away, likely for attention or to escape
her fiancé. After two days with no word from her, Daniel filed a missing persons report.
It was July 28th when a couple of locals were down by the Hudson River near a popular tourist
attraction, Sybil's Cave, when they saw a body floating in the river. Mary's ex-boyfriend,
Arthur Crommelian, had recently joined the search and arrived in Hoboken just as the
body was retrieved. He identified the body as Mary Rogers. Arthur was a suspect for a
time because of the coincidental timing of his appearance, but he was eventually ruled
out. Daniel became a suspect as well after rumors surfaced that he and Mary were fighting
a lot, and she threatened to call off the wedding. But he provided a solid alibi. After
that, police were out of suspects. The story was in all the New England newspapers.
The governor of New York, William H. Seward, even offered a reward for information on the
crime. Edgar Allan Poe was an avid follower of the case and began work on a book based
on Mary's story.
In early September, 1841, some boys playing near Sybil's Cave found a pile of bloody
clothes in what would become known as The Murder Thicket. Their mother, Frederica Loss,
who operated the Nick Moore House pub, alerted the police. She remembered that on July 25th
or 26th, Mary and an unknown man had checked into the Nick Moore House. They went out that
night, and she never saw them return, but didn't think much of it until the boys found
the bloody clothes.
On October 7, 1841, Daniel visited The Murder Thicket. After a drinking binge across Hoboken,
Daniel drank an entire bottle of laudanum and died on a bench outside Sybil's Cave.
There was a suicide note in his pocket: "To the World—Here I am on the spot. God forgive
me for my misfortune in my misspent time."
Edgar Allan Poe published the first part of "The Mystery of Marie Rogȇt" in November
1842, with the second part coming the following month. The story was set in Paris, but other
than that and changed names, the story was a faithful retelling of the Mary Rogers case.
Considered a sequel to "The Murders at the Rue Morgue," Poe thought himself a keen
detective and claimed that he knew who murdered Mary Rogers. He even said as much to editors
in a desire to get it published faster. If Poe did know who murdered Mary Rogers, he
never named names. New details about the case came out at the end of 1842 that caused Poe
to delay publication of the third and final installment of "The Mystery of Marie Rogȇt."
He needed to make minor changes that suggested he knew about these new developments the whole
time. You see, Frederica Loss was accidentally shot
by one of her sons on November 6, 1842. She did not die immediately; rather, she lived
for ten days, in pain that caused her to babble in a mixture of English and German. One of
the proclamations she made in this state was about Mary Rogers. She said that Mary and
the unidentified man who checked into her inn were there to undertake a "premature
delivery" – the term at the time for an abortion. Mary died during the illegal operation,
and Frederica's sons dumped the body and scattered the bloody clothes. Later, it would
be suggested that Frederica was actually an assistant to notorious abortionist Madame
Restell. Frederica's two eldest sons were briefly considered suspects in Mary's death.
Charges were brought against them for improper disposal of a body, but with no evidence,
and Frederica's unreliable confession, the charges didn't stick.
It wasn't long before police gave up on the case. With no suspects, few clues, and
the growing suspicion that this was an abortion gone wrong, there was nothing else for the
police to do. To this day, Mary Rogers' death remains unsolved.
As an interesting epilogue, Mary's former employer, John Anderson, died in 1881. In
the years leading up to his death, he was reported to be "unstable" and claimed
that Mary's ghost was haunting him. He seemed to mean that both literally and figuratively,
blaming his association with the dead girl as a reason he was unable to cross over from
business to politics. During the extended legal battle over his fortune, one of the
opposing lawyers suggested that "John Anderson gave Poe $5000 to write the story of Marie
Rogȇt in order to draw people's attention from himself, who, many believed, was her
murderer." These claims were never confirmed. 9. George Reeves.
On June 16, 1959, George Reeves gave millions of children worldwide firm evidence of why
it's important to separate fantasy from reality ... because on that day, in the world of make-believe,
Superman was not faster than a speeding bullet. But in reality it was the day that George
Reeves was discovered in the wee morning hours, on his bed with a bullet to the temple. Apparently
self-inflicted. Although the official police report would list Reeves' death as a suicide,
his mother insisted her young, happy son was incapable of killing himself. To this day,
there are three possible scenarios that explain the death of George Reeves.
Born George Keefer Brewer in 1914 in Woolstock, Iowa to Helen Lescher and Don C. Brewer, young
George would grow up in Ashland, Kentucky and later in Pasadena California where his
sister also lived. It was in California where George would take up boxing and amass a record
of 31-0 by the time he was 20. But his somewhat controlling mother insisted that he preserve
his handsome looks and give a shot at show biz. So young George hit the stage at the
famed Pasadena playhouse. His talents would soon be noticed, garnering him roles in such
films as Gone with the Wind, The Strawberry Blonde and Proudly We Hail! But then came
the war.
After his return from his duties in WWII, George would find his career in the dumps.
Relegated to numerous small B-movie roles from which he would find it difficult to make
a living, George realized he needed a big break, so he turned to television. Although
he considered TV work to be the low hanging fruit of his profession, George was desperate
so he took a part in a low-budget movie called Superman and the Mole People that was to serve
as a pilot for a forthcoming television series. He shot 26 segments in the first year, but
they would not be aired until 1952. By this time, George was reaching a pudgy 38 years
old, but the series would go on to become a huge "smash" as they say in the business.
Between 1953 and 1957, George would film 104 episodes making his character famous worldwide.
But he began to sense problems with his newfound fame. The same problem that would eventually
curse other actors in the business. George was becoming typecast in his character. George
Reeves would never be anybody but Superman.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, unbeknownst to the majority of his legion of fans, George
Reeves was keeping a huge and potentially damaging secret. He was involved in a relationship
not only with a married woman, but with the wife of an MGM Studios executive. Toni Mannix
was married to Eddie Mannix, a purported former crime boss who was now employed as a "fixer"
for the studio - someone who keeps the studio's actors' personal lives out of the news. It
has been widely reported that Eddie Mannix knew about his wife's relationship with Reeves,
but that he enjoyed his "open" relationship. Toni loved to treat her new beau like a king,
and George liked having his sugar momma. She would buy him a new car, open up a nice bank
account for him and even go so far as to purchase him a home at 1579 Benedict Canyon Road for
$12,000! (Wonder what that house is worth today.) But along with the nice things, would
come the bad side of Toni. She was controlling, manipulative and, overall, just a real bitch.
George would eventually sever the relationship setting up scenario number 1 for his death.
George would soon hook up with Lenore Lemmon, a New York showgirl who had at one time been
banned from performing at many of Manhattan's clubs because of her reputation as a "troublemaker."
Hmmm... Nice girl! Not only was Lemmon reported to have had some kind of connections with
the mob back East, but she was also an extremely jealous sort who was known to overreact upon
even the smallest of suspicions. What a deadly combination of characteristics! Could Lemmon's
drunken fit of jealousy have lead to scenario number 2?
After a year of dating, George and Lenore would announce their engagement to be married,
but not before receiving numerous death threats on George's life that included phone calls,
traffic accidents, and even one incident in which George would wreck his car before discovering
that all of the brake fluid had been drained. Oh, and no leak was ever discovered.
"Hey, Be Quiet. I'm trying to sleep up Here". On June 15, 1959, three days before he and
Lenore were to become married and go on their honeymoon to Spain, the couple hosted a small
party at their house. Having already retired to his bedroom, George descended the stairs
in the modest abode and yelled at the guests to keep the noise down. As the sulking George
returned to his upstairs bedroom, his intoxicated fiancee would jokingly exclaim "Oh no, he'll
probably go up to his room and shoot himself"! A few minutes later, at approximately 12:30,
a gunshot would ring out from Reeves' bedroom. A male guest, Bill Bliss would run upstairs
to check on George only to find the despondent actor on his bed with a .30 caliber Luger
pistol on the floor between his feet, and hole in the side of his head. No suicide note
was found. The police investigation concluded that the
facts surrounding George's death "indicated suicide", but that the investigation was an
arduous one due to the intoxicated state of the house guests. His toxicology report would
later indicate that his blood alcohol level at the time of his death was .27, well beyond
the legal minimum for intoxication. Woo, Superman did some drinkin' that night!
Because of the mountain of evidence that doesn't quite match up with the facts of his death,
many speculate, even to this day, that George was murdered. Among some of the facts are:
no fingerprints on the gun (was it wiped clean?); the spent shell casing was found underneath
Reeves' body; there were no powder marks found on Reeves' body; he had several fresh bruises;
and the location of the entrance and exit wounds did not line up with the path of the
bullet indicated by its entrance into the wall. Reeves' mother would later open an investigation
by private detectives who concluded that the death was not a suicide. No charges were ever
brought up as a result of Reeves' death. George Reeves, in the gray double-breasted
suit that he used as Clark Kent on Superman, would be buried at Forest Lawn memorial park
in Glendale, California. His marker would read "My Beloved Son "Superman" George Besselo
Reeves, Jan. 6, 1914 June 16, 1959."
In his will, George would leave his $71,000 worth of assets, including his Benedict Canyon
house, not to his fiancee, but to Toni Mannix.
Eddie Mannix would die in 1963, Toni Mannix in 1983. We may never solve the mystery surrounding
the death of the Man of Steel.
10. Jack Nance. HIS NAME WAS LESS CELEBRATED than his mane,
but for a generation of cult-movie fans, Jack Nance's towering hair and woebegone gaze
in David Lynch's bizarre first feature, Eraserhead (1978), made him the Elvis of alienation.
For Nance it wasn't much of a stretch to play the movie's gloomy antihero, who was
beset by panic (and hallucinations) when his girlfriend presented him with a slimy reptilian
"baby." Offscreen the actor was a nonconformist—a bit of a loner with a sometimes abrasive attitude.
Director Lynch told reporters on Jan. 3 that Nance had a bad temper and used to say that,
given his poor physical condition, he "wouldn't be too hard to kill."
That grim prophecy may have come true. At 5 a.m. on Dec. 29, according to friends, Nance
brawled with two men outside Winchell's Donut House across the street from his inexpensive
South Pasadena, Calif., apartment. Actress Catherine Case and her fiancé, screenwriter
Leo Bulgarini, met him that afternoon at another coffee shop in the neighborhood and saw he
had a black eye. " 'I told off some kid,' " she says Nance told her." 'I guess
I got what I deserved.' " Maybe he got more. Looking for Nance the next day, Bulgarini
went to the actor's apartment and found him crumpled on the bathroom floor. Police
later said that Nance, 53, probably died of "blunt-force trauma" to the head.
Police have left open the possibility that Nance, who suffered two minor strokes in the
past 18 months, might have died from a fall. But given the nature of the injury and the
fight ("At least one suspect hit Mr. Nance in the head with his fist," a police report
says), they launched a murder investigation, reviewing security videotapes from the strip
mall where the fight occurred and interviewing workers at the doughnut shop. Four weeks later
they had still found no leads. "I can't imagine what happened," says actress Catherine
E. Coulson, another veteran of the Eraserhead cast and Nance's wife from 1968 to 1976.
"It's incredibly sad because he was really gifted—as much a character in real life
as he was on the screen and stage."
Nance, who grew up in Dallas, was never comfortable with the kind of convention represented by
his parents—Hoyt Nance, 73, a former Neiman Marcus executive, and Agnes, 72, a homemaker.
The oldest of three boys, Jack took up acting at North Texas State University in the early
1960s and liked it so much he quit school and moved to California to study at the Pasadena
Playhouse, a local theater. Then, as always, "he cared very little for money and material
things," says his brother Richard Nance, 48, a software firm executive. "He was incredibly
focused on acting."
Nance made a living in small film and theater roles, but he never flirted with mainstream
fame. Cult status was another matter, thanks to Lynch, who, after Eraserhead, cast Nance
as Pete Martell in his short-lived TV series Twin Peaks and also used him in the movies
Blue Velvet (1986), Wild at Heart (1990) and the upcoming release Lost Highway, due Feb.
21.
But steady work wasn't Nance's only worry. In 1991 his second wife, Kelly Jean Van Dyke-Nance,
the daughter of Jerry (Coach) Van Dyke and niece of Dick Van Dyke, hanged herself just
six months after the wedding. Her father said Kelly Jean, a secretary, had abused alcohol
and prescription drugs, popping Quaaludes from age 13. "One way or the other, drugs
will kill you," Jerry Van Dyke told reporters at the time. Nance, according to his brother,
"never did get over the death of his wife."
Richard says Nance also battled alcoholism and had been in a recovery group for 10 years.
He was fired from the film Joyride last year after showing up on the set drunk. "He was
a nice guy and very funny," says the movie's executive producer Laurent Zilber, "but
it's tough to work when someone's drunk all day." Later, Nance acted in the TV movie
Little Witches, but on the final day of the shoot, his car was in a six-car pileup. "He
got beat up and injured his knee," says Richard Nance. "He was walking with a cane."
On Thanksgiving Day, Richard Nance went to see his brother, who had moved to a South
Pasadena neighborhood where rents were low. " 'I'm right back where I started,'
" Richard Nance says his brother told him, referring to his days in the local playhouse.
But he had found a new passion: writing. Before he died, Nance was working on a screenplay
with Bulgarini called Tics and Bruises, a quirky tale of two crooks who get conned,
and writing a novel. "The title was Derelict on All Fours," says Richard Nance. "It
was somewhat autobiographical—an angry piece of work."
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