So, once again, you will not find some of the most famous Hollywood legends like those involving Marilyn Monroe, Lana Turner, Bruce Lee, and OJ Simpson. These have been arbitrated so frequently in public life that it's difficult to have interesting discussions of them, and I kind of feel like they are settled fact, or at the very least I have nothing new or illuminating to say about these crimes. I also won't be discussing people like Barbara Colby or Ronni Chasen, where the crimes feel random acts of violence; obviously toward someone connected to the entertainment field, but the crime itself was random...tragic, unsolved, but the entertainment figure's involvement feels arbitrary without more evidence that they were the specific target of the crime.
So I've spent a while (it took me over a month to write the first article and assemble evidence) coming up with a list of twelve more crimes connected to Hollywood that have a similar level of intrigue. Today we're going to look at some of the most notorious chapters in Hollywood, including crimes connected to Charles Manson, the mob, the Kennedy assassination, the porn industry, and the FBI, among others. Like the previous article, we'll list these alphabetically and take a look at how the victims were connected to Hollywood, the crime itself, and why this remains unsolved. Also, like the other article, this features some delicate subject matter, so if you are squeamish about such things, proceed with caution.
The Hollywood Connection: David Bacon was a bit contract player signed to Howard Hughes in the 1940's. Hughes frequently kept people on his payroll that he never actually put in pictures, frequently women he was sleeping with (some later alleged that Bacon was also one of Hughes's many, many lovers, as allegations persist that the womanizing Hughes was bisexual). Bacon did appear in a couple of pictures to little success, the most famous of these being The Masked Marvel, a 12-part serial from Republic starring Louise Currie (who is probably best-known today as the last surviving cast member of the film Citizen Kane, as she appears as a reporter in the film and only passed away six years ago).
The Murder: On September 12, 1943, Bacon was seen in Venice, California, by a young woman through her telescope driving erratically. He was clearly distracted in some way as he sped along the highway, eventually crashing in a bean field, and was nearly naked. He was discovered by the locals, still alive and calling for help, and covered in blood. Despite being asked by those trying to aid him, Bacon wasn't able to tell them who had killed him. It was discovered during his autopsy that a knife wound had punctured Bacon's lung, killing him, and he had been wearing only a swimsuit when he was found. There was no weapon in the car, however, and it was never found.
Why It's Unsolved: Perhaps of all of the crimes listed here, Bacon's is at once the oddest and the one most at-a-loss for explanations. Varying reports at the time counter whether or not someone was spotted with Bacon in the car prior to his crash (or the number of people that were in the car); some accounts say 1-2 people of varying genders were seen in the car before the crash, but there is no consistency. Robbery didn't seem to be the reason for his death, as he died with an expensive ring on and cash in his pocket. Bacon had had his car attacked several days prior to the murder, according to his wife, and had also had a secret diary with codes in it (similar to something a character in one of The Masked Marvel movies had done), as well as had a secret apartment that had supposedly not been used (according to the landlord) except on the day of the murder. Despite pursuing a few leads, the police never were able to confirm anything about Bacon's killer, saying the murderer could have been someone who knew him (perhaps related to the diary, apartment, and attack on his car), or those could have been unconnected enigmas, perhaps with him being killed by a hasty hitchhiker.
The Hollywood Connection: We go way back to the beginning of Hollywood with Paul Bern, a producer and screenwriter who moved to Hollywood in the 1920's who had his biggest triumph posthumously when the movie he co-produced with Irving Thalberg (Grand Hotel) won the Best Picture trophy. When he died, he was also married to film legend Jean Harlow, having just married her a few months prior.
The Murder(?): On September 5, 1932, Paul Bern was found shot dead with a suicide note next to his body. The note was addressed to "Dearest Dear," (presumably Harlow) and said that "this is the only way to make good the frightful wrong I have done you." Harlow stated before a grand jury that she knew nothing about why Bern would have wanted to kill himself (particularly considering his personal and professional triumphs at the time), and she never spoke publicly about the death, which was officially ruled a suicide.
Why It's Unsolved: Many people question the "why?" behind Bern's death, particularly considering Harlow knew no reason why he would have killed himself. Screenwriter Ben Hecht speculated that Bern was having an affair, was killed by the woman he was having an affair with, and MGM covered it up so that it didn't look like Jean Harlow couldn't keep her man happy (Hecht would have been alive & working at the time of Bern's time in Hollywood, though I couldn't find evidence they actually met). Someone who did know Bern personally was Samuel Marx, then a Story Editor for MGM who would later become a producer of the Lassie pictures in the 1940's. Marx posited in his memoirs some 60 years after Bern's death that Thalberg was covering for Dorothy Millette, who had been Bern's common-law wife prior to his relationship with Harlow, and who killed herself two days after Bern's death. He thought that Millette had killed Bern out of jealousy (and then herself out of guilt), and that Louis B. Mayer covered up the murder because he couldn't afford his top star (Harlow) being involved in a scandal.
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| DeVore, with his wife Wendy (who survived him) |
The Hollywood Connection: DeVore was a Hollywood screenwriter who started working in the industry on The Newlywed Game, but gained his biggest fame with a handful of 1980's films, writing for stars like Sally Field, Christopher Walken, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Dolph Lundgren.
The Murder(?): In 1997, DeVore disappeared while on a road trip from Santa Fe to Santa Barbara. Despite repeated searches, his body was not found for over a year after the disappearance, when an amateur sleuth found DeVore's body, still at the wheel of the car, in an aqueduct near Palmdale, CA. His hands were not attached to his body in the car, and were found nearby (though some have alleged those were not, in fact, his hands, as we'll get to the conspiracy theories in a second).
Why It's Unsolved: It is entirely possible that DeVore simply died in an unfortunate car accident, but there are some mysterious aspects of his death that should give pause. For starters, things that should have been in his car (namely his laptop and gun) were not in the vehicle. They could have been stolen after his death, of course, but it's suspicious that a car with a well-known dead man was found a year later with items that should have been present missing. There was also no plausible explanation as to how DeVore managed to crash in this particular position-according to detectives, he would have had to have driven for 3 miles, the wrong way on the highway, with the lights off, at night, a seemingly impossible feat even for a professional race car driver, much less a Hollywood screenwriter. These are all relatively confirmed facts. What isn't able to be confirmed is a conspiracy theory espoused in the documentary The Writer with No Hands, which claimed that the hands found near the car were too old to have been DeVore's, and that the entire murder was a setup by someone who wanted to stop DeVore's script from seeing the light of day. DeVore was allegedly writing a movie about the US invasion into Panama in 1989, and journalist Matthew Alford alleged in No Hands that DeVore was set to expose government secrets. This is of course unverifiable, and might just be reaching in a story that doesn't offer an easy explanation...but it is still weird that his laptop, which would have contained any evidence of the script was missing from the car of a man who died in an "accident."
The Hollywood Connection: We could basically fill up this entire article with just people connected to the Manson Family. The criminals who committed arguably the most notorious (though solved) crime in the history of Hollywood (the death of actress Sharon Tate in 1969), have enormous numbers of conspiracy theories and unsolved aspects of their criminal enterprise. However, the Manson family is really only connected to Hollywood through their victims, and so the one unsolved crime in this list we'll profile the victim herself is connected to the film industry. Here, we have Marina Habe, the 17-year-old daughter of journalist Hans Habe and actress Eloise Hardt, who as a character actress starred opposite Marilyn Monroe, William Shatner, & Jack Lemmon before she died two years ago.
The Murder: Habe was killed on December 30, 1968, roughly nine months before the deaths of Sharon Tate and her party guests on Cielo Drive. Habe was, according to the LA Times, abducted near her home in West Hollywood, and had died from knife wounds to the throat and chest. The coroner's report stated that she likely bled to death. According to newspaper reports at the time, Habe had not been robbed (credit cards and cash were found on her body), and that she was likely killed by more than one person.
Why It's Unsolved: The murder was never solved, though there are a number of theories around who killed Habe. A quiet girl who is literally described as "not hippie-ish" in newspaper reports I found published at the time, assertions that Habe had actual connections to the Manson family feel like a stretch, but they were definitely stated as a possibility during the Manson trials. However, the Manson Family's connection to the crime becomes more tangible if you assume the same people who murdered Habe also murdered Reet Jurvetson, as many people do. Reet Jurvetson (aka Sherry Doe), was murdered in November 1969, a few months after the Tate-LaBianca murders, and had reportedly been seen in the company of the Manson Family using the name "Sherry." Considering that both Habe and Jurvetson were found short distances from each other a year apart with similar knife wounds, it's either a strange coincidence that two women similar in appearance and body type were found near each other, or their deaths could be connected, as many contemporary investigators of the murders have posited. And if Jurvetson's death was connected to the Manson Family, it's possible Habe's was as well.
The Hollywood Connection: Ivers wrote music for David Lynch's first film Eraserhead, as well as worked in the music scene with such figures as Muddy Waters, Fleetwood Mac, and Diana Ross.
The Murder: On March 3, 1983, at the age of just 36, Ivers was found beaten to death with a hammer in his LA apartment. In a huge miscarriage of justice, the scene in Ivers' apartment was not secured, so a number of figures (including future suspects) were able to enter the crime scene while it was still active, and one figure was even allowed to leave with what eventually became evidence (blood-soaked bed sheets).
Why It's Unsolved: Because of the scene being corrupted, no suspect probably could ever be brought to trial, even if they had solid leads. Initially actor Harold Ramis was a suspect (Ivers had a very close, potentially romantic, relationship with Ramis's then-wife Anne), but he was cleared on all charges. There are many, though (including Ramis) who suspected it was David Jove, the man who came and took the blood-soaked bed sheets, of having killed Ivers. Jove had a rough relationship with him, and was an LA-based musician who would have been in town at the time. Jove died in 2004 and Ramis died in 2014-if they knew anything more about Ivers' death, they never shared it.
Karyn Kupcinet
The Hollywood Connection: The daughter Chicago columnist Irv Kupcinet, Kupcinet was a bit actress in the early 1960's. She was one of a number of women in the boarding house in the Jerry Lewis comedy The Ladies Man, and despite only working in Hollywood for four years, she made appearances on The Donna Reed Show, The Gertrude Berg Show, and Perry Mason.
The Murder: Kupcinet died on November 28, 1963, after having dinner with actor Mark Goddard (best known as Don West on Lost in Space) and his then-wife Marcia in Beverly Hills. Kupcinet was despondent at the time, acting strangely and not eating (she had a history of abusing diet pills, which may have been one of the culprits of this behavior). She went home, where she was joined by at various junctions three men: freelance writer Edward Short Rubin, actor Robert Hathaway, and Kupcinet's on-again-off-again boyfriend actor Andrew Prine. Karyn went to bed, and the three men watched television until about 3 AM before also leaving the house. Karyn's body was discovered three days later, naked and on the coach, by the Goddards, who were worried that she hadn't been in contact. There was a note talking about her fragile emotional state found near the body, indicating suicide, but when the coroner's report came back, it was apparent that Kupcinet had had a bone in her throat broken, and her death was ruled a homicide by strangulation.
Why It's Unsolved: The most logical solution here is that one of the three men in her house killed Kupcinet, though none were ever charged. Kupcinet, erratic and worried about Prine leaving her, had been stalking him and another woman he was seeing, and it was discovered after her death that she had faked threatening letters addressed to she & Prine for some reason, perhaps to try and get him to return to a failing relationship. Occum's razor states that Prine or one of his friends found out about this, and in anger killed her. But there's another, stranger aspect to Kupcinet's murder that we're going to discuss briefly, even though the facts of it are murky (but they're so ingrained in the legend of her death it'd be a bit of an oversight not to mention them), and that is that she was involved with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. You'll notice above that Kupcinet died five days after President Kennedy was shot. On that day, according to an AP wire in the Chicago Daily News at the time, a young woman called 20 minutes before the assassination stating "the President is going to be killed." For some reason (and it's hard to pinpoint why, as I couldn't find a grounded explanation), Kupcinet has frequently been pinpointed as this "mysterious woman," perhaps because she died in such unusual circumstances after the president's death (a clear homicide with a suicide note suggests something of an attempt at a coverup), but the only connection between the two is A) she was within 50 miles of where the phone call took place, though obviously hundreds of thousands of women could claim the same in Los Angeles and B) that her father did know Jack Ruby in the 1940's, though there's no suggestion that they were still in contact in 1963. Though Karyn had spoken with her father earlier the day of the assassination on the telephone, the columnist vehemently denies that his daughter's death had anything to do with the assassination. It all feels relatively specious, but if you google Karyn Kupcinet I wanted to let you know what you're in for, as she is often cited by JFK conspiracy theorists as the first "murdered witness" to the crime.
The Hollywood Connection: The daughter Chicago columnist Irv Kupcinet, Kupcinet was a bit actress in the early 1960's. She was one of a number of women in the boarding house in the Jerry Lewis comedy The Ladies Man, and despite only working in Hollywood for four years, she made appearances on The Donna Reed Show, The Gertrude Berg Show, and Perry Mason.
The Murder: Kupcinet died on November 28, 1963, after having dinner with actor Mark Goddard (best known as Don West on Lost in Space) and his then-wife Marcia in Beverly Hills. Kupcinet was despondent at the time, acting strangely and not eating (she had a history of abusing diet pills, which may have been one of the culprits of this behavior). She went home, where she was joined by at various junctions three men: freelance writer Edward Short Rubin, actor Robert Hathaway, and Kupcinet's on-again-off-again boyfriend actor Andrew Prine. Karyn went to bed, and the three men watched television until about 3 AM before also leaving the house. Karyn's body was discovered three days later, naked and on the coach, by the Goddards, who were worried that she hadn't been in contact. There was a note talking about her fragile emotional state found near the body, indicating suicide, but when the coroner's report came back, it was apparent that Kupcinet had had a bone in her throat broken, and her death was ruled a homicide by strangulation.
Why It's Unsolved: The most logical solution here is that one of the three men in her house killed Kupcinet, though none were ever charged. Kupcinet, erratic and worried about Prine leaving her, had been stalking him and another woman he was seeing, and it was discovered after her death that she had faked threatening letters addressed to she & Prine for some reason, perhaps to try and get him to return to a failing relationship. Occum's razor states that Prine or one of his friends found out about this, and in anger killed her. But there's another, stranger aspect to Kupcinet's murder that we're going to discuss briefly, even though the facts of it are murky (but they're so ingrained in the legend of her death it'd be a bit of an oversight not to mention them), and that is that she was involved with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. You'll notice above that Kupcinet died five days after President Kennedy was shot. On that day, according to an AP wire in the Chicago Daily News at the time, a young woman called 20 minutes before the assassination stating "the President is going to be killed." For some reason (and it's hard to pinpoint why, as I couldn't find a grounded explanation), Kupcinet has frequently been pinpointed as this "mysterious woman," perhaps because she died in such unusual circumstances after the president's death (a clear homicide with a suicide note suggests something of an attempt at a coverup), but the only connection between the two is A) she was within 50 miles of where the phone call took place, though obviously hundreds of thousands of women could claim the same in Los Angeles and B) that her father did know Jack Ruby in the 1940's, though there's no suggestion that they were still in contact in 1963. Though Karyn had spoken with her father earlier the day of the assassination on the telephone, the columnist vehemently denies that his daughter's death had anything to do with the assassination. It all feels relatively specious, but if you google Karyn Kupcinet I wanted to let you know what you're in for, as she is often cited by JFK conspiracy theorists as the first "murdered witness" to the crime.
The Hollywood Connection: Leppert was a teenage beauty queen in the late 1970's/early 1980's from Florida, who won hundreds of beauty pageants and seemed like the sort of girl that might end up a star. She had appeared in background or bit roles in three different films before her disappearance became front-page news in 1983 (most notably Brian de Palma's Scarface), and was headed to Hollywood to find work before she disappeared a few months after turning 18.
The Murder(?): Leppert disappeared on July 6, 1983. She and a friend were driving home to her house in Rockledge, FL, and she had a fight with the (male) friend (the driver of the vehicle that Leppert had been in), leaving her in the middle of a parking lot in Cocoa Beach (the man is not considered a suspect in her disappearance). Leppert was never seen again, and her body was never found, so this is still considered a "missing person" case even though it's been 35 years.
Why It's Unsolved: Obviously, without a body we don't even know if Leppert (who would be 54 were she still alive today) actually passed away. There's a lot of conflicting story here, and quite frankly there's so much swirl about Leppert without a lot of reputable news stories taking on her case that it's hard to figure out exactly what happened to this young woman; essentially I've found three potential theories about what happened to Leppert. The most popular theory is that she was a victim of serial killer Christopher Wilder, who was known as "the Beauty Queen Killer" because he would pose as a photographer to gain the trust of young women before murdering them (one of his earliest victims was a Miss Florida finalist, hence where he got his nickname). Wilder would have been in Florida at the time of Leppert's murder, though it would have been a year before the eventual crime spree that would be attributed to him (he died post the killing spree so he wasn't able to be questioned about Leppert's disappearance). A second theory involves John Crutchley (who was known as the "Vampire Rapist" for reasons that are too disgusting for me to discuss here), who was never convicted of murder but many people feel he likely had killed women, and was committing crimes in Florida around the time of Leppert's disappearance. And finally there are people who believed that Leppert (who had been behaving somewhat erratically and may have even been pregnant at the time-like I said, lot of gossip, not enough facts on this one) may have simply run away from home, not wanting to pursue the film career that her talent agent mother had been preparing her for. To this day, though, the case remains unsolved.
The Hollywood Connection: Nigg's connections to Hollywood are twofold. First, he was at one point in the mid-1990's a struggling actor, appearing on the syndicated TV series Liars, but largely a bit player who certainly hadn't achieved any level of fame by the time he died in 1995. As a struggling actor, he was working at the Mezzaluna restaurant in Brentwood, where he was friends with another waiter, Ronald Goldman, who would be murdered on June 12, 1994, with Nicole Brown Simpson in a case involving former NFL star and Naked Gun movie actor OJ Simpson (the story, admittedly, with a more tangible connection to Hollywood).
The Murder: Nigg, over a year after the deaths of Brown Simpson and Goldman, was getting money from an ATM with his girlfriend Julie Long in the car on September 8, 1995. Two armed men walked up, demanding the $40 that Nigg had just gotten from the ATM, and when Nigg refused, he was shot in the head by one of the men. Nigg died from the wound, while Long (who saw the events transpire) was unharmed.
Why It's Unsolved: Here's the deal-Michael Nigg's unfortunate death would probably not be on this list were it not for his connection to Ronald Goldman. However, considering that the Brentwood murders that rocked the nation are still technically unsolved, there's a level of intrigue to Nigg's death, particularly for those who believe in OJ Simpson's innocence. After all, Nigg and Goldman had very similar profiles, and both have been alleged to be involved in narcotics crimes, something that OJ Simpson claims was the actual reason for the deaths of Goldman & Brown Simpson, rather than him being the culprit. The potential connection between the death of a struggling actor and the "crime of the century" is fascinating, and why I included Nigg's death on this list.
The Hollywood Connection: While everyone on this list has at least some connection to Hollywood, no name on this list should feel quite as familiar as Jean Seberg. Discovered in a contest for Otto Preminger's Saint Joan, Seberg became a screen legend with the Jean-Luc Godard film Breathless, where she played Patricia opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo. The film made her a household name, and though she never made a movie quite as significant again, she would go on to star in multiple major Hollywood films opposite Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, and Dean Martin.
The Murder(?): Seberg went missing on August 30, 1979, and it was reported by her boyfriend Ahmed Hasni (whom Seberg had accused of abuse), that she had been suicidal when she left. She was found on September 8th, dead for some time (her body had started to decompose) in a parked car near her Paris apartment. She was found with a note begging her son for forgiveness, as well as an empty water bottle.
Why It's Unsolved: You may be wondering why Seberg is on the list, since it appears she committed suicide. That's where some other things about Seberg's life need to be considered. For starters, charges were filed shortly after the death of Seberg indicated that she likely needed help in committing suicide. Her blood alcohol level was so high it's probable that she would have been nearly comatose at the time of her death, and as a result, wouldn't have been able to get into the car she was found in without some sort of assistance. Other than the empty water bottle, there was no indication she'd drank herself to death in the car, so how did she get into the car? While this might not qualify as murder, it certainly counts as suspicious, with police at the time wondering if Hasni (who had been running Seberg's bank accounts dry) might have been involved. In addition, Seberg had a fascinating political life off-screen, working in support of the Black Panthers (even giving them cash donations), and being repeatedly investigated by the FBI, who launched a smear campaign against the actress using the LA Times (seriously-we could spend this whole article just looking at her life-it's wild), which caused her to miscarry and be suicidal in the first place. Either way, though, Seberg's death, while potentially not a murder, definitely feels more nefarious than a tragic suicide, and has some very key unanswered questions.
Carol Wayne
The Hollywood Connection: Wayne was a comedic actress that had enjoyed guest spots on a number of television series such as The Man from UNCLE, I Spy, Mannix, and Bewitched throughout the 1960's and 70's. She was best known, however, for a recurring bit on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson as the "Matinee Lady" and was well-known for her blonde hair and buxom figure. By the mid-1980's, though, her appearances on The Tonight Show had become limited thanks to Johnny cutting the show down to only 60 minutes, and she had filed for bankruptcy in 1984, a combination of a lesser income and a problem with cocaine.
The Murder(?): On January 13, 1985, Wayne was vacationing in Mexico with car salesman Edward Durston, her romantic companion at the time, and they had an argument. Wayne stormed off for the beach, and was found dead, three days later, having drowned in a shallow bay. The coroner's report said that there were no drugs or alcohol in her system at the time, and the death was ruled accidental.
Why It's Unsolved: Again, it's entirely possible that this was, truly, a horrible accident. But a few facts about Wayne make you raise an eyebrow here. The first was that she supposedly couldn't swim, and didn't really like the water. She had no signs of having fallen or slipped on rocks on her body (showing that if she went into the water and died from drowning, it was of her own volition), and the police investigating the crime years later still said they had "unanswered questions" about the case, specifically for Edward Durston. This is where things get really interesting, because Durston was also present for the death of another woman who died under unusual circumstances, Diane Linkletter, the daughter of media personality Art Linkletter. Ms. Linkletter died while on an LSD trip by jumping out of a West Hollywood apartment...an apartment whose only other occupant at the time was Edward Durston.
The Hollywood Connection: Wayne was a comedic actress that had enjoyed guest spots on a number of television series such as The Man from UNCLE, I Spy, Mannix, and Bewitched throughout the 1960's and 70's. She was best known, however, for a recurring bit on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson as the "Matinee Lady" and was well-known for her blonde hair and buxom figure. By the mid-1980's, though, her appearances on The Tonight Show had become limited thanks to Johnny cutting the show down to only 60 minutes, and she had filed for bankruptcy in 1984, a combination of a lesser income and a problem with cocaine.
The Murder(?): On January 13, 1985, Wayne was vacationing in Mexico with car salesman Edward Durston, her romantic companion at the time, and they had an argument. Wayne stormed off for the beach, and was found dead, three days later, having drowned in a shallow bay. The coroner's report said that there were no drugs or alcohol in her system at the time, and the death was ruled accidental.
Why It's Unsolved: Again, it's entirely possible that this was, truly, a horrible accident. But a few facts about Wayne make you raise an eyebrow here. The first was that she supposedly couldn't swim, and didn't really like the water. She had no signs of having fallen or slipped on rocks on her body (showing that if she went into the water and died from drowning, it was of her own volition), and the police investigating the crime years later still said they had "unanswered questions" about the case, specifically for Edward Durston. This is where things get really interesting, because Durston was also present for the death of another woman who died under unusual circumstances, Diane Linkletter, the daughter of media personality Art Linkletter. Ms. Linkletter died while on an LSD trip by jumping out of a West Hollywood apartment...an apartment whose only other occupant at the time was Edward Durston.
The Hollywood Connection: Possibly the least famous story on this list, Whiting had a very real connection to Hollywood before his strange death. Whiting was the business manager, and later it was revealed to be, lover of Oscar-nominated actress Sarah Miles, who at the time was married to famed screenwriter Robert Bolt.
The Murder(?): On February 11, 1973, Whiting was on the set of Miles film The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing, which was filming in Arizona. He was in Miles room when she came back, after attending her costar Burt Reynolds' birthday party. He asked her where she was, and according to Miles, he hit her and she screamed, awakening her son's nanny in the nearby room. Miles claimed that she asked the nanny to "get Burt" and when it became clear that Reynolds was headed to the room, Whiting supposedly left the room, with Miles spending the night in Reynolds's room. The next morning Miles returned to the room, and found Whiting, face down in a pool of blood with an empty vial and dozens of red tablets on the floor next to him. There were abrasions on his hands and body.
Why It's Unsolved: Officially, David Whiting's death is considered a "drug overdose." However, several things following the crime have left people intrigued over what the two actors' involvements in Whiting's death may have actually been. For starters, while Miles claimed she had seen the vial, Reynolds had apparently picked it up, and couldn't recall where it was during the inquest. Miles had also changed her story 11 days after the investigation began, stating that she and Whiting had fought, which would explain the abrasions on his hand, though not necessarily the blood, which was extensive even if it wasn't necessarily the cause of the death, and found throughout the hotel room. A logical explanation would be that Whiting hit his head during the drug haze on a nearby table or washbasin, but that we don't know this for sure seems odd (reports vary, but most point out that the extensive amount of blood and its presence in so many places in the hotel room was not easily explained). MGM didn't help the matter (in retrospect) when they refused to let Miles or Reynolds testify, claiming that they couldn't afford the production cost of having the film's two stars missing from the set, though they did eventually testify anyway. An independent investigation conducted by Whiting's mother stated that the amount of drugs in her son's system wouldn't have been necessarily fatal, and perhaps it was the injury that resulted in the loss of life; making MGM's behavior (particularly in a film featuring one of the biggest stars on the planet at the time, Reynolds) even more eyebrow-raising. Reynolds's career didn't suffer as a result of this (though the film only broke even) as he'd be in The Longest Yard within a year of this picture's release and be set for his most successful financial period as a star for the next decade, though Miles's marriage to Bolt would fall apart as a result of her revealed affair, before they would reconcile and remarry in 1988.
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| Site of Wonderland Gang Murders |
The Hollywood Connection: This case is more on this list because it's bizarre and until I started researching this article, I'd never heard of this group of four people who were killed in a gruesome attack in the early 1990's. The murder victims themselves actually had nothing to do with movies (they were drug dealers in the LA area), and instead it was one of the men that many believe was involved in their death, porn star John Holmes, who has our (admittedly loose) connection to the film industry.
The Murders: On July 1, 1981, four members of the Wonderland Gang (leader Ron Launius and his associates Billy DeVerell, Barbara Richardson, and Joy Miller) were murdered. All four, along with Launius's wife Susan (who survived the attack but suffered brain damage and lost a finger as a result of the attacks) were beaten to death, likely with some sort of blunt object, potentially a hammer or a pipe. Despite several key suspects, no one was ever charged in the four people's deaths.
Why It's Unsolved: Couple of things here to discuss. First, two days prior to the murders, the Wonderland Gang (aided by Holmes) successfully robbed the home of club owner (and drug dealer) Eddie Nash, coming away with over $1 million in drugs and jewelry. The Gang was seen by both Nash and his bodyguard Gregory Diles during this robbery, so it is entirely possible that either they forced Holmes to commit the crimes (as he was a known associate of the robbery), or they did it themselves. However, no charges ever stuck-Holmes, Nash, and Giles were all tried for the murders (with Liberace's one-time boyfriend Scott Thorson providing key testimony for the latter two as he was a client of Nash's), but all three were acquitted. Save for Thorson & Susan Launius, every figure involved in the murders of the Gang has since died, so it's likely that the identity of the true killer in the Wonderland Murders went with them. The murders were featured in the 2003 movie Wonderland, which starred Val Kilmer as Holmes, Josh Lucas as Ron Launius, Christina Applegate as Susan Launius, and Eric Bogosian as Eddie Nash.
4 comments:
Who was Edward Durston and how did one person get involved in three mysterious high profile deaths?
Durston was a two bit director and crappy actor, who most likely killed atleast both Linkletter and Wayne.
He did shitty movies like 'I drink your blood' that was marketed as 'loosely based on the Manson family'.
You cant make this stuff up.
Hi. Just putting it out there that Diane Linkletter's autopsy came back that she had no drugs in her system when she jumped and there wasn't any proof that she had taken LSD before that. It was her father who put the thought out there that she had taken LSD that had killed her. It was falsely claimed by media accounts that she thought she could fly being on drugs. In reality she had been despondent according to many sources. Sad outcome whatever reasons. 😔
Hi. Yes I find it suspicious as well...especially since Diane Linkletter didn't have drugs in her system as her father claimed. I will give Durston the benefit of the doubt with Diane Linkletter since many sources...including her brother who talked to her that night...said she wasn't in a good place. But with Wayne what person doesn't at least call the police to see if someone is ok after not showing back up all night...and then leaving without seeing what happened to them? Especially being at a vacation spot? No matter how bad of a fight they had he should of raised concerns...especially if he had nothing to do with it. Leaving her bag at the airport saying she will show up? Doesn't make much sense to me and at the very least if he was innocent that was a 100% dirtbag move if she had been ok. We will probably never find out what happened to the poor woman so she can RIP. If it wasn't Durston could someone else have done or know something?
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