Murders
Hollywood Forever in Hollywood, California © 2001 by Albert L. Ortega
November 23, 1959–November 4, 1982
In June 1982, the beautiful young actress Dominique Dunne was praised for her performance in the hit movie Poltergeist (1982), in which she played the elder daughter of Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams. Five months later, with everything to look forward to, she was strangled to death by her estranged boyfriend, John Sweeney, at her West Hollywood apartment.
Dominique was born with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth. Her industry pedigree was impeccable; she was the daughter of socialite Ellen Griffin Dunne and film producer, screenwriter, and novelist Dominick Dunne. Her older brother, Griffin, would also become an actor, director, and producer. Dominique was the niece of writers John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion. Dominique was born in Santa Monica, California. After her parents’ divorce, she lived first on the East Coast and then in Beverly Hills. She attended the fashionable Taft School in Watertown, Connecticut, the Fountain Valley School in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and also the British Institute and the Michelangelo School in Florence, Italy.
Deciding on an acting career, Dominique had more than enough industry contacts to break into show business with a minimum of fuss. She had roles on segments of several major TV series (Breaking Away, CHiPs, Fame, Family, Hill Street Blues, and Lou Grant) and appeared in such telefilms as Diary of a Teenage Hitchhiker (1979) and The Day the Loving Stopped (1981). She gained further popularity with her role in Poltergeist. Most recently, she had been cast as a regular on the projected science fiction series V (1983), which was then shooting an elaborate four-hour pilot.
Meanwhile, Dominique’s buoyant social life led her to John David Sweeney, then a chef at Ma Maison, a very chic Los Angeles eatery. A relationship soon developed and just as quickly turned turbulent. He was so physically and emotionally abusive to her that everyone warned her to end the situation. Dominique did so and was relieved that the troubled Sweeney was out of her life—or at least she thought so.
On Saturday evening, October 30, 1982, at her home on the 8700 block of Rangely Drive in West Hollywood, Dominique and John got into a screaming argument about a possible reconciliation and his desire to move back in with her. When she said “No!” he began to throttle her in a fit of anger. Police were summoned to the scene of the disturbance and found a distraught Sweeney standing over her. When taken into custody, he said, “I have killed my girlfriend.” But Dunne was not dead. The unconscious actress was rushed to the intensive-care unit at the nearby Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she remained comatose on a life support system for five days. At about 11:00 A.M. on November 4, her heart stopped beating. (Hospital authorities stated later, “We did not pull the plug. She never regained consciousness and just died.”) Dominique was buried at Westwood Memorial Park where her marker, featuring a rose, was inscribed “Loved by All.” Her kidneys were donated to an organ transplant bank.
At John Sweeney’s subsequent trial, it was revealed that several weeks before Dominique’s death, the obsessive man had already tried to strangle her once. Becoming fearful of him, she had ordered him to move out of her place and had changed the locks. During the court proceedings, a letter from the victim to the killer was read. It stated, “The whole thing has made me realize how scared I am of you and I don’t mean just physically. I’m afraid of the next time you are going to have another mood swing.” (The jury, however, was not allowed to hear testimony from one of Sweeney’s former girlfriends who had endured several beatings from him, resulting in a broken nose and a collapsed lung.) When the jury convicted Sweeney of only involuntary manslaughter in November 1983, the presiding judge (Burton Katz of Santa Monica Superior Court) angrily lectured the defendant: “You hung on to this fragile and vulnerable woman and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed the oxygen from her while she flailed for her life. . . . This is an act that is qualitatively not of manslaughter but of murder.” Sweeney was sentenced to the maximum prison term of 62 years. Nevertheless, he was released in June 1986, having served less than four years behind bars. Such is justice.
[Philip Edward Hartmann]
September 24, 1948–May 28, 1998
Being a Hollywood comedian in the mid-1990s obviously wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be. A massive heart attack claimed the life of the extremely rotund funnyman John Candy in 1994, while drugs and alcohol decimated the corpulent Chris Farley in 1997. Farley had been a Saturday Night Live TV series cast member in the early 1990s, overlapping with veteran funster Phil Hartman (whose tenure on SNL lasted from 1986 to 1994). Thereafter, Phil had gone on to costar in the sitcom NewsRadio, which debuted in March 1995. The show and Hartman (as the self-centered anchor Bill McNeal) were well-received; on May 12, 1998, NewsRadio broadcast its fourth season finale. The series had been renewed for the 1998–99 season. All seemed well for the cast of this NBC show.
But then on May 28, 1998, came the tragic news that the 49–year-old Phil Hartman—the master of comic impressions—was dead. What was even more shocking was that Hartman had been violently murdered in his bed by his wife, Brynn. And the tragedy got worse. A few hours after shooting her husband to death, Brynn committed suicide.
Philip Edward Hartmann (he dropped the final “n” of his surname when he entered show business) was born in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, in 1948. He was the fourth of eight children of Rupert Hartmann (a building-supplies salesman) and Doris Hartmann. His family later moved to Connecticut, and then to southern California, where Phil grew up in the culture of the 1960s. At Westchester High School, he was voted the class clown, famous for his impressions of Jack Benny and John Wayne. He attended Santa Monica College (1967–68), and later California State University in Northridge (1972–73), where he studied graphic arts. After that, he found employment designing album covers for rock bands. A marriage to Gretchen Lewis in 1970 was short-lasting.
In 1975, Phil’s life took a new turn. One day, he attended a performance by the Groundlings (an improv group), and more tired of his humdrum existence than he imagined, he impulsively jumped from the audience to the stage. He quickly became part of the Los Angeles—based troupe. From the start, Phil had no fear onstage and thrived on the process of becoming other people. (One of his favorite characters was a film-noir private eye named Chick Hazzard.) In December 1982, Phil, age 31, married 22-year-old Lisa Strain, a real-estate agent. That union lasted less than three years; she later claimed that he would “disappear emotionally.”
Through his Groundlings contacts, Hartman met Paul Reubens (a.k.a. Pee-Wee Herman), and when that innovative, offbeat comedian began his TV shows in the 1980s, Phil was part of them. (Hartman also cowrote Herman’s 1985 feature, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.) In 1986 Hartman could be seen in such big-screen features as Jumpin’ Jack Flash and Three Amigos.!—still billed as Philip E. Hartmann. Also that year, he met Brynn, who was 10 years his junior and came from Thief River Falls, Minnesota. Born Vicki Jo Omdahl in 1958, she had dropped out of high school to wed her school sweetheart. The marriage didn’t work out and she went to Los Angeles in 1980 to be a model. She changed her name and look (via plastic surgery) and hoped for a career in show business. Acquaintances would later note that whenever Brynn drank or did any form of drugs, her self-esteem would plummet. It also came out that she had an obsession about someday being married to a well-known comedian and had flirted with several in Los Angeles.
In this landmark year of 1986, Phil was asked to join the cast of Saturday Night Live. Excited by the opportunity, he and Brynn moved to New York City. (They were married in November 1987 and would have two children, Sean and Birgen.)
Phil Hartman and his wife, Brynn, at a Los Angeles charity event.
© 1992 by Albert L. Ortega
On SNL Phil created skits with other troupe members, including Dana Carvey, Chris Rock, Jan Hooks, and Kevin Nealon. During his eight seasons on the air, Phil would become known for his sharp impressions of such personalities as Frank Sinatra, Liberace, Ed McMahon, Phil Donahue, and Bill Clinton. Hartman wrote many skits for SNL during his tenure. (He would receive an Emmy nomination in 1987 and an award in 1989 for his scripting contribution to the series.)
By 1994, Phil, at age 46, was the oldest performing member of the SNL troupe. That spring, he decided to leave the show, after having done 153 grueling episodes of the series. The Hartmans moved back to southern California and settled in Encino, an upscale suburb in the San Fernando Valley. Hartman nicknamed the $1.4 million, four-bedroom, ranch-style home “The Ponderosa.”
Hartman’s film career continued with supporting roles in featherweight big-screen comedies like Greedy (starring Michael J. Fox, 1994), Stuart Saves His Family (an Al Franken vehicle, 1995), Sgt. Bilko (with Tom Arnold, 1996), and, best of all, a sizeable part in Jingle All the Way, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger (1996). When not on the soundstages, Phil—now quite well-to-do—indulged his various passions, which included cars, planes, and boats; range shooting; and marksmanship. At one point, he was named honorary mayor of Encino.
Brynn was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with being the non-famous partner in the marriage, “stuck” with being a homemaker. To ease her frustration and mounting insecurity, the gentlemanly Phil tried to engineer acting assignments for her. But she continued to pressure him about their disparate lives and careers, which made him withdraw from the situation, and this frequently led to a fight. During this period, Brynn worked on a screenplay (a narrative about infidelity and drugs) that she couldn’t sell. Later she became involved in a small stage production, Spoiled Women, but left the show before it opened. Meanwhile, Phil had the high-profile and lucrative gig on NewsRadio. As if he wasn’t busy enough already, he agreed to handle several different voices on the hit animated TV series The Simpsons, including those of attorney Lionel Hutz and washed-up educational-filmstrip actor Troy McClure.
As the months passed, there was less and less communication between the adults in the Hartman household. By the late 1990s, Brynn reportedly was getting drunk and using assorted drugs frequently. Unhappy as the situation was, she would not consider divorce. Phil, on the other hand, was coming to the conclusion that this was their only option. In the spring of 1997, Brynn went to an Arizona rehab center, but she couldn’t seem to kick her dependencies.
A year later, in May 1998, Phil had just completed the movie Small Soldiers (1998) with Denis Leary and was looking forward to a relaxing vacation. But Brynn was determined to return with Phil to her Minnesota hometown for a friend’s wedding. Hartman reportedly told friends that his wife was getting violent and physically abusive.
That same month, Brynn had agreed to enter Promises, a fashionable rehab center in Malibu. She had been in a highly emotional state lately because she saw her 40th birthday (which had occurred in April) as a dangerous turning point in her life. On Tuesday, May 26, she phoned a friend about seeing a mutual pal in a play that was due to open soon. The next weekend was the weekend of Memorial Day, and Brynn made plans for her and Phil to spend Monday at a luxurious spa.
On Wednesday, May 27, Brynn met a girlfriend at 8:00 P.M. for a drink at a bar (Buca di Beppo) near her home. She had two drinks and left about 9:45 P.M., when she received a call from Hartman saying he was now back at their house. Brynn returned home at about 10:00 P.M., and she and Phil got into an argument over her drinking. The confrontation continued in the kitchen for about 20 minutes. During the fight, one of their children awakened and called out in fear about their raised voices. Brynn went to comfort the child, promising that she and Phil would never divorce. After that, the couple continued their escalating argument. Later in the night, after Phil took his turn at comforting their distressed daughter, he retired to the bedroom, where, wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt, he went to sleep in the king-sized bed.
Meanwhile, Brynn was slamming through the house looking for any evidence that might prove her suspicions that Hartman was having an affair. (Reportedly he had met someone in recent days, but had not been dating before then, despite the rockiness of his marriage to Brynn.) Enraged, Brynn finally crept into the bedroom and shot her husband three times—twice in the head and once in his side—while he lay sleeping.
The distraught woman, still clad in pajamas, then left the estate and drove to the Studio City home of her longtime friend Ron Douglas, a stuntman. As later recounted, she was nearly incoherent by this time. She informed him that she had shot Phil. He didn’t believe her at first, but eventually followed her back to her home. During the drive Brynn called another unidentified person from her cell phone to make the same confession. After Douglas saw Hartman’s corpse in the bedroom, he called 911 at 6:23 A.M.
About 6:30 A.M. the police arrived at the grisly scene, just as Douglas was removing Sean from the house. Brynn had by this time barricaded herself in the bedroom with her husband’s body. As the police officers rushed in to escort a terrified Birgen from her bedroom to safety, Brynn took out a second handgun, lay down on the bed beside her dead spouse, and, moments later, aimed the gun at her head and pulled the trigger. It was later determined that she had a high level of alcohol in her system at the time, as well as traces of cocaine and Zoloft, an antidepressant. Shortly before killing herself, Brynn had called her sister in Minnesota and sobbed hysterically into the phone, “Tell my kids I love them more than anything and I always loved them, and Mommy doesn’t know what happened, she’s just very sorry.”
After the Hartmans’ bodies were released by the police, they were cremated, their ashes to be scattered over Catalina Island’s Emerald Bay. (Months later Phil’s younger brother Paul would tell a tabloid newspaper that he had custody of his brother’s ashes, which he kept in a small ornamental wooden box.) On June 4, 1998, a private service was held at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. The two Hartman children were in attendance along with other family members. (Phil’s father, age 83, had passed away just weeks before the tragedy.) Thereafter they went to Wisconsin to live with Brynn’s sister and her husband.
The Hartmans’ property was sold for approximately $1.23 million, almost all of which passed to their orphaned offspring. In a case of eerie foresight, the will provided $50,000 for whatever person volunteered to become the children’s guardian in the event of both Hartmans’ untimely deaths.
On June 13, 1998, Saturday Night Live aired a special tribute to the late Phil Hartman, culled from his eight seasons on SNL. As for NewsRadio, the network finally decided to give the production another season, with Jon Lovitz stepping in to fill the void. When NewsRadio began its fifth season on September 23, 1998, the episode (entitled “Bill Moves On”) was devoted to the mourning of the Bill McNeal character, who had died of a heart attack. The installment’s plotline—wry and touching but not overly sentimental—focused on how the dysfunctional staff at WNYX was dealing with Bill’s passing, now that the memorial service had come and gone.
For lovers of inspired comedy and comedic imitation, Phil Hartman will be long missed and even longer remembered.
[Salvatore Mineo Jr.]
January 10, 1939–February 12, 1976
Compact, charismatic Sal Mineo was perpetually stereotyped in his movie roles as the sensitive juvenile delinquent. An Emmy winner, and twice nominated for an Oscar, he unfortunately never got much beyond his career successes in the 1950s as a teen idol. By the 1970s his professional life was floundering. Then, just as his career was reviving (thanks to his stage work), he was murdered one evening in West Hollywood, killed by the sort of disturbed young man he had so often played on camera.
Sal was born Salvatore Mineo Jr. in 1939, one of four children of a Sicilian immigrant couple. His father Sal Sr., who came from Sicily as a teenager, made caskets for a living. His mother Josephine, who was a go-getter and a strong believer in the power of education, did much to push young Sal toward making the most of any opportunity that came along. When the boy was nine, he and his sister Sarina (age six) were offered a chance to enroll in a midtown Manhattan dance school, where they took tap, singing lessons, and drama. By the time he left that class, Sal knew that the world of entertainment was for him. He was later enrolled in a professional school for show-business children.
With his Italian good looks, young Sal was cast on Broadway in Tennessee Williams’s The Rose Tattoo (1951), where he had one line—“The goat is in the yard.” Next he was an understudy in the musical The King and I, but soon graduated to playing the young prince to Yul Brynner’s king. He made his screen debut playing the young version of Tony Curtis’s character in Six Bridges to Cross (1955). It was his role as Plato, the confused delinquent in Rebel Without a Cause (made in 1955 and starring James Dean and Natalie Wood), that won Mineo an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actor and ensured his fame.
With his newfound success, Sal bought his family a fancy home in Mamaroneck, New York. As a teenage heartthrob, he tried a recording career, and his song “Start Moving” was a hit. But the rest of the 1950s saw him stuck in a casting rut as the screen’s most appealing street rebel. Occasionally, he got a chance to play someone different on camera, such as a Native American brave in Tonka (1959) or a drum-playing musician in The Gene Krupa Story (1959). Sal’s career peaked with his Oscar-nominated role as the Zionist terrorist in Exodus (1960).
Offscreen Mineo generally preferred men, but in the limelight he had publicity-engineered “romances” with an assortment of starlets, such as Tuesday Weld and Joey Heatherton. He did seem to have genuine feelings for his Exodus costar, Jill Haworth, with whom he shared a beach home for a time.
By the end of the 1960s, Sal’s acting roles were few and far between, and he turned to stage directing. He supervised a controversial new production of Fortune and Men’s Eyes (about homosexuality and rough life in prison) in Los Angeles and off-Broadway in New York City. His last movie role was as one of the simians in Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971).
In the fall of 1975, Sal starred in P.S. Your Cat Is Dead in San Francisco, playing a bisexual burglar. On the night of February 12, 1976, he was returning home to his West Hollywood apartment from a rehearsal of the upcoming L.A. production of P.S. Your Cat Is Dead, which was to costar Keir Dullea. In the alley behind his apartment building, he was waylaid by an unknown assailant. A neighbor heard him shout, “Help! Help! Oh my God.” Raymond Evans rushed to his aid, giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. But by the time the paramedics arrived, it was too late. According to the coroner, Mineo “died of a massive hemorrhage, due to the stab wound of the chest that penetrated the heart.” A witness came forth later, stating he saw a long-haired blond Caucasian male fleeing the scene. Robbery was ruled out as a motive, since Mineo’s wallet had not been taken. Other theories suggested that Sal had died as a result of a bad drug deal, or that he had been stabbed by a jealous lover.
(Left to right) Mark Rydell, Sal Mineo, John Cassavetes, and James Whitmore acting tough in Crime in the Streets (1956).
Courtesy of JC Archives
With the crime still unsolved, a funeral service for the 37-year-old Sal was held at Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church in Mamaroneck, New York, five days after the murder. Among those attending were Jill Haworth, Desi Arnaz Jr., Michael Greer, and Rebel Without a Cause director Nicholas Ray. Mineo was buried at the Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven in Valhalla, New York, next to his father’s grave.
Two years later in a Michigan prison, 21-year-old African-American Lionel Ray Williams, a career criminal, supposedly bragged to his cellmate that he had killed Mineo and that it had been easy to do. The Los Angeles police were already looking into a potential Williams-Mineo connection because of prior statements made by Lionel’s ex-girlfriend, who had been arrested in Los Angeles on charges of alleged criminal behavior. She was hoping that supplying information about Williams and Mineo would help to smooth over the current charges against her. She told law enforcers that on the night of Sal’s murder when the news flashed on TV, Williams (then her boyfriend) had told her, “That’s the dude I killed.” (In fact, not long after Mineo had been murdered, Williams had been detained by the Los Angeles police on robbery charges and possible connection with the Mineo homicide case. But the police were pursuing the jealous-lover and the blond-Caucasian-fleeing-from-the-scene-of-the-crime theories, so they let Williams go.)
Williams, who had a disturbing record of arrests and brutality toward victims, was tried for Mineo’s murder (as well as several counts of armed robbery). Eventually, he was convicted of second-degree murder and received a sentence of 51 years to life. The trial judge categorized Williams as “a sadistic killer” who “if released . . . will no doubt kill again.” Despite the (circumstantial) evidence presented at the high-profile trial, Williams insisted he hadn’t killed Mineo.
Eleven years after Lionel Ray Williams’s conviction, he was paroled in July 1990. Soon afterward he was arrested yet again, this time for alleged robbery and other charges. In the course of his police interrogation he reportedly said, “I killed Sal Mineo,” which countered his prior protestation of innocence. He served more time for his latest criminal charges, but by the late 1990s was paroled yet again. He still insists he is innocent in the Sal Mineo murder case.
Today, although two TV documentaries have aired and a full-length biography has been published on the life and death of Sal Mineo, the shocking murder of this charismatic star still remains a puzzle to the many people who have intensively studied his complex case.
March 22, 1940–February 25, 1996
Dr. Haing S. Ngor holds the very unfortunate distinction of being the only Oscar-winning actor to have been later murdered. This well-educated individual, a physician in his own country, had never acted before he was cast in The Killing Fields (1984). But it was felt that his horrendous real-life experiences in his native Cambodia qualified him for a key assignment in that graphic movie about the bloodbath that occurred when a communist guerilla group, the Khmer Rouge, took over Cambodia’s capital, forced everyone into labor camps, and banned all institutions, including stores, banks, religion, and the family. How ironic that Ngor, having emigrated to the United States as a refugee, should be shot to death outside his Los Angeles apartment.
He was born in 1940 in the small farming village of Samrong Yung, some miles south of Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. His father was Chinese and his mother was Khmer. (The Khmer are the people who make up the majority of the Cambodian population; they also live in a section of southeast Thailand and the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. The Khmer Republic was the prior, official designation of Cambodia.) Cambodia was a war-torn country while Ngor was young, and he frequently had to work in the fields or sell produce. Despite poverty and adversity, his family managed to send him to school. After studying at a local Chinese institution, Ngor completed high school in Phnom Penh in a French lycée. During this schooling, he lived in a Buddhist temple along with the monks. He attended medical school in the capital, graduating with specialties in gynecology and obstetrics. As a young physician he ran his own clinic in Phnom Penh and also served as a medical officer in the government army.
In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge overran Phnom Penh. Ngor was among the many intellectuals forced to hide for fear of being dispatched to “reeducation camps” or perhaps killed. To survive, he held a variety of jobs, including working as a cabdriver. He only practiced medicine in secret. But eventually he was imprisoned, horribly tortured, and put into forced labor. During this time, his mother was sent to a jungle prison camp where she died, while his father, brother, and sister-in-law were executed. Three years later, on June 2, 1978, Ngor’s wife Huoy died in childbirth because proper medical care was denied her. Ngor—who had been forced to dig canals, farm, haul soil, and build huts in a labor camp for 12 to 14 hours each day—was a witness to the ongoing bloody executions and purges conducted by Pol Pot, the Cambodian Communist leader.
In May 1979, he escaped to freedom accompanied by a niece he had rescued. They walked many miles to a refugee camp in Thailand. For nearly a year he worked as a medical technician in Khao I-Dang, a Thai city. In August 1980, Ngor flew to the United States. He lived first in Columbus, Ohio, then moved to Los Angeles to be near relatives. He worked at odd jobs (including as a night watchman) while learning English at school. By November 1980 he had become a caseworker with the Chinatown Service Center, helping southeast Asian refugees find employment.
During 1982, a Warner Bros, casting director approached Ngor about participating in a forthcoming feature film, The Killing Fields. The movie was to be based on articles by Sydney Schanberg, who had been a New York Times Magazine correspondent in Cambodia during the regime of Lon Nol, the U.S.-favored Cambodian ruler before Pol Pot deposed him. Schanberg’s writing detailed his work with and respect for Dith Pran, his Cambodian assistant and interpreter. The film would also recount the horrific atrocities of the Pol Pot regime and their genocide against the Cambodians. Above all, the picture was to be a testament to human friendship and the will to survive oppressive odds. At first, Ngor was not interested in the part, but after interviews with the filmmakers he changed his mind, remembering that he had promised his late wife to tell Cambodia’s story to the world.
For his touching portrayal of Dith Pran, the first-time screen performer won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1984. In his acceptance speech, Ngor said he wished to “thank Warner Bros, for helping me tell my story to the world, to let the world know what happened in my country.” (He also won a British Academy Award for his performance in this harrowing movie.)
Thereafter, Ngor pursued an acting career in television and film. He was in episodes of Miami Vice, Highway to Heaven, China Beach, The Commish, and Vanishing Son, as well as such movies as The Iron Triangle (1989), Vietnam, Texas (1990), Heaven & Earth (1993), Fortunes of War (1993), Hit Me (1995), and The Dragon Gate (1996).
In 1987, Ngor’s graphic autobiography, A Cambodian Odyssey (written with Roger Warner), was published. As with much of the salary earned from his film work or from his lecture-circuit tours discussing the plight of the Cambodians, the royalties from his book were used to help his fellow country men and women—not only the refugees who had come to the United States, but those back in his homeland whom he visited periodically, bringing medical supplies and other necessities. Ngor was also very involved with the Cambodian community in Long Beach, California.
Dr. Haing S. Ngor in a jovial public moment.
© 1994 by Albert L. Ortega
Unmindful of his fame, Ngor continued to reside alone in the same simple two-bedroom apartment on Beaudry Avenue in the Chinatown section of Los Angeles, where he had been living in his pre-Killing Fields days. On Sunday, February 25, 1996, he was found shot to death (with two bullet wounds) outside his home in a dark parking lot. He had been returning from spending the day visiting friends in Long Beach. At first it was thought that the slaying was politically oriented, and many people feared that it could lead to retaliatory rioting. In April 1996, however, three suspects were arrested, charged with murder during the commission of a robbery gone bad. Just before he was killed, Ngor had given up his Rolex watch, but he had refused to part with a chain and locket containing a photo of his deceased wife. One of the suspects, age 21, was arrested on Friday, April 26, 1996, while the other two, both age 20, had been apprehended earlier on unrelated robbery charges. The three were allegedly members of a Chinatown-based gang that focused on home-invasion robberies and carjackings.
On April 16, 1998, after a lengthy trial, the three defendants were found guilty of first-degree murder and second-degree robbery charges. One of the trio was also found guilty of the special charge of murder during the commission of a robbery, which carried a sentence of life imprisonment with no chance of parole. Because of the relative youth of the defendants, the district attorney had not sought the death sentence in their case.
After the untimely death of Haing Ngor, who had suffered so much in his life, a memorial fund was established in his name by the not-for-profit American Refugee Committee.
A few years before his murder, Ngor, ever the activist, had said, “I don’t want history to blame me, saying Dr. Ngor has many opportunities, why does he not help? Now I know the value of the arts. The arts can explain everything possible to tell the world.” The humanitarian also observed, “Maybe in my last life before this one, I did something wrong to hurt people. But [in] this life, I paid back.”
[Ramón Gil Samaniego]
February 6, 1899–October 31, 1968
In the 1920s, Hollywood boasted a trio of handsome matinee idols who could make women everywhere swoon: Rudolph Valentino, John Gilbert, and Ramón Novarro. By the end of the decade, Valentino had died and Gilbert’s career had been swept away with the advent of “talkies.” In contrast, the Mexico-born Ramón, with his dashing good looks, possessed a fine, if accented, speaking voice and could sing as well (his version of “Pagan Love Song” became a recording hit). His career continued to thrive well into the 1930s. As he grew older and acting styles changed, however, the roles grew fewer. Nevertheless, Ramón continued to work occasionally on TV during the 1960s. But then, on Halloween eve in 1968, he was murdered brutally in his Spanish-style Hollywood Hills home on Laurel Canyon Drive. The horrific bludgeoning of the former star gave Novarro the kind of headlines he had not had since he starred in the silent Biblical epic Ben-Hur (1925).
He was born Ramón Gil Samaniego in Durango, Mexico, in 1899, 1 of 13 children of a well-to-do dentist. The closely knit family later moved to Mexico City to flee the revolution that had begun in Durango in 1911. They relocated again, to Los Angeles, in 1917. When the father became gravely ill, Ramón became the head of the strongly Catholic household. Scrambling for an income, Ramón held assorted jobs: piano teacher, grocery store clerk, theater usher, and busboy at the Alexandria Hotel—all the while trying for an entertainment career (especially in the field of opera). For a while, Ramón was a café singer, worked as an extra in numerous films, and performed in a modernistic vaudeville ballet troupe. Eventually, he began winning more noticeable screen parts. He did a dance in Mack Sennett’s A Small Town Idol (1921), clad only in a loincloth and turban. He also had a bit part in the large-scale The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), starring Rudolph Valentino and directed by Rex Ingram. Ramon’s professional break came when Ingram cast him as the swashbuckling, suave villain of The Prisoner of Zenda (1922). The feature was a hit, and, with his roles in Scaramouche (1923) and The Arab (1924), Novarro was dubbed the screen’s newest Latin lover. Ironically, although Novarro was the idol of millions of women, he preferred the company of men.
In 1925, Novarro was earning $1,000 a week at MGM and was given the lead in their upcoming big-budgeted epic, Ben-Hur. It was the zenith of Ramon’s career. He built a 17-room mansion so that his parents and several of his brothers and sisters could come to live with him. For a while, he thought of leaving pictures to become an opera star or a Jesuit priest, but the talkie revolution allowed him to both act and sing, letting him expand his talents without leaving his profession. Ramón made a successful first talkie, the musical Devil May Care (1929), and his screen career continued with roles opposite Greta Garbo (Mata Hari, 1931) and Myrna Loy (The Barbarian, 1934).
Growing very restless with the changing Hollywood scene (as restless as MGM was becoming with him), Novarro went on a stage tour with his sister Carmen in Europe and South America. Once his MGM contract ran out, he directed and produced a Spanish-language feature in Los Angeles. He later tried a movie comeback (The Sheik Steps Out, 1937), but the result was more burlesque than the intended satire.
The 1940s found Ramón alternating between making an occasional motion picture abroad, staying at his 50-acre ranch near San Diego, touring in summer stock, and (late in the decade), doing character parts in Hollywood features. His final movie role was in Heller in Pink Tights (1960), although he made infrequent TV appearances throughout the 1960s.
By the late 1960s, the gray-haired Novarro was approaching 70. This devout Catholic, who went through periods of depression and guilt over his homosexuality, lived a quiet existence in his Hollywood Hills home. Attended by his longtime friend and secretary, Edward Weber, Ramón found distraction in alcohol (he had several drunk-driving arrests) and the services of male hustlers.
Ramón Novarro (left) at the height of his fame as the star of the silent film The Student Prince (1927). Character actor Jean Hersholt shares the scene.
Courtesy of JC Archives
On the morning of October 31, 1968, Weber summoned the police to Novarro’s home. They found the living room in a shambles and the bedroom a bloodbath. The former star was lying dead on his king-sized bed, nude, his body bruised from head to toe. His ankles and wrists were tied with an electric cord and there was a zigzag mark (perhaps an “N” or “Z”) on his neck. On the mirror was scrawled “Us girls are better than fagits.” A broken black cane had been placed across the actor’s legs. Underneath the bloody corpse, the police noted the name “Larry” scribbled in large letters on the sheet. (The name “Larry” was also found written on a telephone pad nearby.) In a neighbor’s yard, they found a heap of bloody clothing.
It turned out that the Larry referred to had known Novarro. Larry had told his 22-year-old brother-in-law, Paul Ferguson (from Chicago) the rumor that Ramón had $5,000 in cash stashed in his house—actually, that was the sum the celebrity had spent on redecorating his music room. Paul was on the loose in Hollywood, having been dumped by his wife and in need of money. Joined by his 17-year-old brother, Tom, Paul arranged for a rendezvous for pay at Novarro’s house. When they arrived around 5:30 P.M., the three began drinking. Weber came to the house with cigarettes for Novarro at 6:00 P.M. But after giving his employer the package at the door, he left without going into the house.
When drunk, Paul—who despised himself whenever he hustled—became extremely violent. In the bedroom, when Novarro reportedly tried to sodomize him, Paul began to beat the nude actor viciously. Tom then dragged the unconscious Novarro to the shower to wash off the blood. Novarro briefly regained consciousness, infuriating the drunken Paul, who then smashed the riding cane over the actor’s head and shoulders. Novarro fell to the floor and, shortly thereafter, suffocated in his own blood. The brothers dragged his body to the bedroom and tied it to the bed in a clumsy attempt to make it look like a woman had been with Novarro and then murdered him. It was Paul who had written Larry’s name on the sheet and the notepad and had scribbled the mirror message. They even placed a condom in the dead man’s hand. The only money they found in Novarro’s house was $45. The young men tore off their bloody clothes, put on others taken from Ramon’s closet, and, while fleeing, flung their blood-soaked clothing over a fence into the neighbor’s yard.
With the notoriety from his murder, more than one thousand people paraded by Novarro’s open coffin on November 4, 1968, the day of his funeral. He was buried in a simple family grave at Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles.
In following up clues, the police checked a 48-minute phone call that had been made on the murder night from Novarro’s house to Chicago, and found that it had been made by Tom Ferguson. With that and other evidence (including fingerprints at the scene of the crime), the police arrested the brothers in Bell Gardens (near Los Angeles) on November 6, 1968. At their July 1969 trial, which lasted for six and a half weeks, the Ferguson brothers were convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Eight years later, however, the 25-year-old Tom was granted an early parole. In short order, he returned to prison for the rape of a 54-year-old woman. He is scheduled to be released in 2001. Paul Ferguson served several years behind bars and then was released. He too is now back in prison in Missouri, also for rape.
November 6, 1967–July 18, 1989
Other Hollywood personalities have been murdered over the decades, but the senseless shooting of Rebecca Schaeffer in 1989 stirred the public to more than the usual amount of sympathy and outrage. Perhaps it was because the promising actress was 21, very beautiful, and headed for great things; her assassin was a crazed fan who had been stalking her for years, obsessed by his unrequited love for her.
Rebecca was born in 1967 in Eugene, Oregon, the only child of a psychologist and a writer. As a child growing up in Portland, she was active in the local synagogue and thought briefly of becoming a rabbi. By age 14, she was modeling and considering an acting career. When a TV movie (Quarter-back Princess, 1983) was shot on location in McMinnville, Oregon, she won a tiny role. At age 16, Rebecca took off on her own for New York City. She attended the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan, and in 1984, she had a small continuing role on the soap opera One Life to Live. She then went to Japan to model—there, her relatively short height (five feet, seven inches) wouldn’t be an obstacle. Upon returning to New York, she was cast by Woody Allen in a brief part in Radio Days (1987).
Rebecca became a prime-time TV personality when she was cast as Pam Dawber’s 16-year-old sister in My Sister Sam (1986–88). With her career ascending, she made the sex farce Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (1989), went to Italy for the two-part TV movie Voyage of Terror: The Achille Lauro Affair (1990), and back in the United States was directed by Dyan Cannon in the movie The End of Innocence (1990).
On Tuesday, July 18, 1989, at 10:15 A.M., Rebecca was at her apartment, at 120 North Sweetzer Avenue in West Hollywood, about to leave for an audition for The Godfather, Part III (1990). She was going to read for director Francis Ford Coppola. The doorbell rang, and because the intercom system was broken, Rebecca answered the ring in person. Dressed in a black bathrobe, she opened the glass security door to the two-story apartment building. After talking briefly with the visitor, she went back inside when he left. He soon rang the bell again, however. Rebecca came down and asked him to leave, but when she tried to end the conversation, the young man aimed a handgun at her. The shot hit her in the chest and she collapsed. Paramedics rushed her to nearby Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead on arrival.
On July 22, 1989, Rebecca was buried at Ahavai Sholom Cemetery in Portland, Oregon. Rabbi Joshua Stampfer eulogized that Rebecca “brought in her short life more joy to more people than most of us achieve in a lifetime.” Among the two hundred people attending the service were Pam Dawber and her husband, actor Mark Harmon. As the casket was lowered into the ground, Rebecca’s father, Benson, grieved, “Oh Rebecca. We’re always thinking of you. We will always think of you.” Then, he and other relatives each tossed a ceremonial shovel full of dirt into the grave. Schaeffer’s boyfriend, Bradley Silberling, and her best friend, Barbara Lusch, gave everyone copies of Schaeffer’s poems (which they had typed the night before).
Within a short time after Rebecca’s murder, the Los Angeles police had compiled information about a “bookish-looking” suspect whom neighbors had observed in front of Schaeffer’s apartment building several hours before the shooting. The man had been holding up a picture of Schaeffer and asking passersby where she lived. After the murder, the suspect had fled the scene. The next day, on July 19, 1989, police in Tucson, Arizona, detained 19-year-old Robert John Bardo for creating a disturbance on public streets. During his arrest, he made statements that linked him to the Schaeffer case.
As the facts were pieced together, it became evident that Bardo, a one-time Tucson janitor and fast-food restaurant worker, had all but worshiped Rebecca. He had begun writing fan letters to her in 1987. (Years earlier, he had been obsessed with Samantha Smith, a 10-year-old Maine girl who gained fame by writing to the premier of Russia. Bardo had traveled to Manchester, Maine, to meet her, but had been prevented by police, who detained him as a runaway minor.) Bardo received an autographed picture of Rebecca in response to writing her in care of My Sister Sam; he interpreted that as evidence of a special rapport existing between himself and the actress. In late June of 1989, Bardo paid a Tucson detective agency $250 to trace Rebecca’s whereabouts (accomplished through a quick search of the California Department of Motor Vehicles database).
Now that he had her address, Bardo quit his job in Tucson and took a bus to Los Angeles. He showed up one day at the Burbank Studios with a five-foot-tall teddy bear and a bouquet of flowers for Schaeffer. A security guard at the front gate tried to dissuade the young man from continuing his quest. Next, with a gun that Bardo’s brother had purchased for him (and which he had then taken without permission), Bardo arrived at Schaeffer’s building. He talked briefly with her, they shook hands and he left. Having forgotten to give his idol a letter and a compact disc he had for her, he returned and rang the bell again. When she politely tried to get him to leave by saying, “I don’t have much time,” he became offended and pulled the .357 Magnum gun from his shopping bag. While she screamed, “Why? Why?” Bardo fired, and then ran away. He later testified in court that he “almost had a heart attack” when he learned that night on TV that Rebecca was dead.
In his September 1991 trial in Los Angeles, it was determined that the defendant, who had a history of mental problems, suffered from schizophrenia. But it was ruled that he was not legally insane at the time of the killing. The Superior Court judge found Bardo guilty of first-degree murder and guilty of murder in “special circumstances” (lying in wait to kill the actress). Because Bardo had waived the right to a jury, the death sentence was not an option; instead, he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Rebecca’s parents had attended each day of the trial. After the verdict was read, Mr. Schaeffer stated outside the courtroom, “Rebecca will not come back to us as a result of the verdict, but I feel that justice was done.”
One of the repercussions of Rebecca’s tragic death was that a California law was passed restricting public access to Department of Motor Vehicle information. Using her daughter’s needless death as an example, Mrs. Schaeffer became a vocal advocate of handgun control laws nationwide. The Los Angeles Police Department also formed a Threat Management Unit to surveil and track suspected stalkers.
June 16, 1971–September 13, 1996
The life of Tupac Shakur, one of rap’s most influential performers during the 1990s, was a struggle to simultaneously dramatize and overcome his rough background. He became one of the most notorious—and wealthy—representatives of gangsta rap, also displaying a gritty acting style in his increasingly numerous movie roles. As a modern-day exponent of the “outlaw” image, Tupac was constantly involved in high-profile scrapes with the law. Sadly, his career was cut short in 1996 when he was murdered at the age of 25. His death left behind several albums and eight film appearances as testimony to his maturing performance style. For many, the mercurial, baffling Shakur has become a martyr of gangsta rap, and a symbol of the cost that a violent lifestyle can exact on anyone.
Tupac was born in 1971 in New York City. His mother, Afeni Shakur (born Alice Faye Williams), was then a member of the Black Panthers. In 1969, she and several others in the militant organization were arrested on suspicion of a conspiracy to blow up buildings in New York City. In 1971, the pregnant Afeni was still in jail, incarcerated at the Women’s House of Detention in Greenwich Village. She was finally acquitted in May 1971 and one month later gave birth to Tupac Amaru Shakur (named for an Inca prince). Afeni, who had been going through very rough times at the time of Tupac’s conception, would later tell her son that she didn’t know who his father was. (His godfather was the former Black Panther leader Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt, who in 1972 would be convicted of murdering a woman in Santa Monica, California.) Thus, Afeni was faced with raising her boy alone. (Years later in 1997, William Garland, a New Jersey trucker, would sue to collect a share of the inheritance from Tupac’s estate, claiming that he had fathered the boy. The court denied his claim, since the testimony showed that Garland had not seen his alleged son during 15 of his 25 years.)
During Tupac’s early years, he and Afeni moved quite frequently within Harlem and the Bronx. As he grew into a teenager, the creative boy found release in writing poetry. His mother enrolled him in Harlem’s 127th Street Ensemble. He made his acting debut with them at age 13, in a benefit production of A Raisin in the Sun at the Apollo Theatre. Bit by the acting bug, he would later recall thinking, “This is the best s——t in the world!”
When he and his mother moved to Baltimore, Maryland, Tupac attended the School for the Arts, studying acting and dance. While there, he wrote his first rap number. In his junior year he and his mother moved to Marin City, California, a few miles north of Sausalito and San Francisco. Shakur soon left home. Wanting badly to fit in, he turned to selling drugs and making his name known in other ways on the streets of “The Jungle,” as his new hometown was known.
Never abandoning his artistic inclinations, in 1990 Tupac auditioned for Digital Underground, a Bay Area rap ensemble. Hired as both a dancer and a roadie, Shakur was part of the group’s “Sex Packets” tour, which played the United States and Japan. He made his recording debut on Digital Underground’s 1991 album This Is an E Release.
Shakur’s solo debut was 2Pacalypse Now (1991); it proved that his promotional efforts to get known by “everybody” were working. The album engendered some bad publicity when, in April 1992, a young man shot a Texas state trooper and alleged later that listening to “Soulja’s Story” (a cut from Tupac’s album) had inspired the violent deed. This led several politicians, including Vice President Dan Quayle, to demand that Shakur’s album be removed from stores. The controversy only boosted the artist’s outlaw reputation and helped sales of the album.
Tupac Shakur at the premiere of Poetic Justice (1993), in which he costarred.
© 1993 by Albert L. Ortega
As a member of Digital Underground, Tupac (billed as 2Pac Shakur) had made his film debut in Nothing But Trouble (1991). But it was in the Ernest Dickerson-directed Juice (1992) that he was noticed by critics and moviegoers. Meanwhile, he made headlines of another sort when a six-year-old boy died in the crossfire between Tupac’s posse and their opponents back in Marin City.
As before, the publicity about Shakur wavered back and forth between his album releases (such as Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z [1993], which went gold) and his growing list of alleged offenses and confrontations with the police, both in California and in Atlanta, Georgia, where he had relocated.
Tupac got very positive reviews for his performances in John Singleton’s Poetic Justice (1993), in which he costarred with Janet Jackson, and in the basketball picture Above the Rim (1994). But negative publicity was forthcoming when allegations were made that Shakur and three pals had sexually abused a young woman. Then there was the charge that the rapper/actor had punched filmmaker Allen Hughes when he fired Tupac from the movie Menace II Society [1993] for being a troublemaker on the set. For that charge, the undaunted Shakur spent 15 days in jail. By now, Shakur had his own music group called Thug Life; their self-titled album Thug Life: Volume One was released in 1994.
While out on bail for the sexual abuse charge, Tupac was preparing to make a guest appearance on another rapper’s album. On November 30, 1994, in the Times Square building that housed the recording studio, he was shot and robbed. Despite his many life-threatening injuries, he survived, going against his doctors’ advice to attend his sentencing for the sexual abuse charge. He was sentenced to one-and-a-half to four-and-a-half years at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Danemora, New York.
Meanwhile, his latest album, Me Against the World (1995), was selling well. While incarcerated, Tupac announced that he had stopped marijuana smoking and reformed in many other ways. Still behind bars, Tupac wed college student Keisha Morris, in a ceremony that Vanity Fair magazine described as a “jailhouse convenience,” so he could have conjugal rights.
When released from prison after eight months, pending an appeal, Shakur found himself in the midst of a rumble between Marion “Suge” Knight’s New York-based label, Death Row Records (for whom he now recorded) and such competitors as Los Angeles-based Bad Boy Records (headed by Sean “Puffy” Combs). Possibly, this East Coast-West Coast record company feud played a part in the events of September 7, 1996. Tupac and Suge Knight were driving in a black BMW sedan near the Las Vegas Strip. The Mike Tyson-Bruce Seldon heavyweight boxing match had just ended, and Knight’s BMW was 1 of a 10-car convoy heading to the Shark Club after the match at the MGM Grand Hotel. As Knight stopped for a traffic light, four unknown assailants in a Cadillac opened fire on the passenger’s side of his car. It was about 11:15 P.M.
In the melee, Shakur was badly injured by four bullet wounds. (Knight received only minor injuries.) During three emergency surgeries at Las Vegas’s University Medical Center, Tupac’s right lung was removed. It had been shredded by three bullets. He was in a coma for six days and died on September 13, 1996, at 4:03 P.M. Las Vegas time. (Tupac, who had a fatalistic streak, had often talked about his belief that he would have a relatively short life.) After an autopsy was conducted that night, his body was released to his mother. After a small service in Las Vegas, Afeni had her son’s remains cremated and took the ashes back to her home in Atlanta.
To date, no suspects have been arrested. One supposed witness to the homicide, a member of Shakur’s backup group, the Outlaws Immortaliz, was murdered days after the shooting. Knight, who was barely injured in the brawl that killed Tupac, has not told the media anything substantive about the sad episode.
On September 14, 1996, two thousand rap fans packed themselves into a Harlem community center to pay tribute to Tupac Shakur. (Some seven hundred others, unable to get in, stood outside in the harsh rain, listening to the event over loudspeakers.) The Nation of Islam hosted the event, described as a “hip-hop day of atonement.” Everyone there pledged to work toward ending violence in the black community. On November 10, 1996, in Atlanta, Georgia, four thousand people attended a memorial service for Tupac at the local Civic Center.
Not long after Shakur’s slaying, the Death Row label released Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, which became a bestseller. The artist featured on the record was listed in the credits as “Makaveli,” but it was Shakur; this led to speculation that perhaps Tupac had faked his own death. Unfortunately, the rumor proved to be false.
Since Tupac’s passing, several albums of compilations and outtakes have been issued to good sales, and also several more films featuring Shakur, including Gridlock’d (1997) and Gang Related (1997). (A cottage industry has grown up around the release of albums, magazines, books, and videos devoted to the late rapper, not to mention various lawsuits and countersuits regarding rights to Shakur’s music.) All these things are a testament to the myriad gifts of this champion of gangsta rap, whose intensity about life, art, music, and power helped bring forth his undeniable talent but also led to the combustion that ended his short life.
August 7, 1927–January 21, 1959
In 1935, the makers of the “Our Gang” movie shorts added another pleasing young actor to their roster. He was gangling, freckle-faced Carl Switzer—the kid with the cowlick and squeaky voice that screeched off key when he sang. Nicknamed “Alfalfa” by producer Hal Roach, the boy quickly developed into a popular screen personality. But he had one career problem: he grew up. No longer a hot property in the industry, Alfalfa turned to heavy drinking. Eventually, he ended up shot in a pathetic argument over $50.
Carl was born on a farm in Paris, Illinois, in 1927. He and his older brother, Harold, often sang at local events. In early 1935, while visiting their grandparents in California, the boys decided to try and see the studio where those great “Our Gang” comedy shorts were being made. They had no way to gain entrance onto the lot, but the studio cafeteria was just outside the gate. One day at lunchtime, the siblings made an unscheduled appearance there. Dressed in coveralls, they treated the diners to an impromptu round of hillbilly songs. Roach was impressed by their chutzpah and hastily wrote them into a comedy short (Beginner’s Luck, 1935) that was currently in production. Harold, known as “Deadpan” or “Slim,” remained with the series for a few years, but generally as a background figure. Carl, however, developed quite a following, soon rivaling Spanky McFarland as the focal point of the trouble-prone gang. In a six-year period, “Alfalfa” bounced through 61 short subjects.
By the end of 1941, Switzer had left the Gang, too adult-looking to continue participating in their juvenile shenanigans. He made the rounds of the film-casting offices, where he was greeted with a constant “Didn’t you use to be . . . ? Hey, Alfalfa! Sing off-key for us!” It frustrated the young man—badly! Infrequently, he was given small movie parts; The Human Comedy (1943) and Going My Way (1944) were two of these. He joined the low-budget Gas House Kids film series in the mid-1940s, but the property sputtered out after only three mediocre entries. When screen jobs were too few, Carl made a modest living as a bartender and sometimes as a hunting guide in northern California. (Henry Fonda and Roy Rogers were among his clients.)
In 1954, Carl married an heiress from Kansas, but the union was finished in five weeks. A disillusioned Switzer told the press, “Bear hunting and marriage don’t mix.” Irritated with life’s stumbling blocks, he began drinking more frequently and more heavily. When inebriated, he turned very boastful and pugnacious, which often led to barroom brawls.
Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer, Jane Frazee, and Vera Vague in a scene from Rosie the Riveter (1944).
Courtesy of JC Archives
His pal Roy Rogers let Switzer guest-star on his TV series four times between 1952 and 1955; Switzer also appeared in a segment of Science Fiction Theater in 1955. Mostly, though, Hollywood had forgotten him. When he was hired for the small role of Angus in The Defiant Ones (1958, starring Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier), he had visions of the long-hoped-for comeback finally happening. Instead, the picture proved to be his swan song.
On January 29, 1959, Carl and a friend stormed over to the bungalow home of Bud Stiltz at 10400 Columbus Avenue, Mission Hills, in the San Fernando Valley. Carl had recently lost Stiltz’s hunting dog (temporarily); it had cost Carl a $50 reward to retrieve the animal, and he wanted Stiltz to reimburse him. Having failed in his efforts over the telephone, Carl now barged into Stiltz’s living room. During the ensuing argument, the drunken Switzer grabbed a heavy clock and cracked it over Stiltz’s head. The blow cut Stiltz badly over his eye. While Switzer’s pal remained an observer, Stiltz ran to his bedroom for his gun with Switzer in hot pursuit. The two men grappled for the weapon. It discharged, causing Stiltz’s fiancée and her three children (who were huddled with her in the bedroom) to flee to a neighbor’s house. Even though Stiltz had gotten his hands on the gun, Carl drew his hunting knife and yelled that he was going to kill his opponent. He charged the man and Stiltz fired. The bullet hit Carl in the stomach and he collapsed, dead.
Carl was buried at Hollywood Memorial Park. His marker bears his name, a profile drawing of Petey (the Our Gang dog), and two Masonic symbols. At the trial, Bud Stiltz broke into tears while reciting the facts of the case. The jury decided it was “justifiable homicide.”
When Carl Switzer’s father died in 1960, he was buried next to Alfalfa—the boy who couldn’t take it when Hollywood turned its back on him.
January 24, 1943–August 9, 1969
In the lengthy, bizarre annals of Hollywood, there have been many shocking murders of show-business celebrities. None, however, was as gruesome as the wanton killing of actress Sharon Tate and her jet-setting Hollywood pals by the satanic Charles Manson and his deranged clique. More than three decades after the atrocious massacre, the mere mention of the sensational case can still make even the most stoic person shudder.
Sharon Marie Tate was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1943, the oldest of three girls. Because of her father’s employment—he was a lieutenant colonel with the U.S. Army in the intelligence division—the Tates frequently moved around the United States and other countries as well. While growing up, the stunning Sharon won several beauty contests and was the Homecoming Queen at the Vicenza American High School in Verona, Italy. Stagestruck, she found work as an extra in several movies filmed on location in Italy: Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man (1962) and Barabbas (1962). Determined to break into the motion-picture business, Sharon was thrilled when her dad was reassigned to California. Now she would be that much closer to her dream city—Hollywood.
By early 1963, Sharon was based in Los Angeles, living at the Hollywood Studio Club and working occasionally in television commercials. She was introduced to Martin Ransohoff, the president of Filmways, and he cast her in the recurring role of Janet Trego on The Beverly Hillbillies (1963–65) and other bit TV parts. Ransohoff also cast the breathtakingly attractive blond in several of his productions: The Wheeler Dealers (1963), The Americanization of Emily (1964), and The Sandpiper (1965). For a short time, she dated the French actor Philippe Forquet, who was then in Hollywood making a picture. But their brief affair was full of heated arguments. More lasting was her relationship with the swinging hairstylist Jay Sebring, who thrived on a celebrity clientele of male Hollywood stars.
While on location in England for Eye of the Devil (made in 1965, released in 1967), Martin Ransohoff introduced Sharon to the Polish-born director Roman Polanski. Ransohoff convinced the offbeat Polanski to cast Sharon in the female lead of The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), as a Jewish innkeeper’s daughter. Polanski reluctantly agreed to use Tate instead of actress Jill St. John. Before they completed the parody classic, this most unlikely pair—the diminutive, cynical, worldly-wise Roman and the tall, cheerful, unsophisticated Sharon—had fallen deeply in love.
When Tate and Polanski returned from making their horror spoof, they shared a house in Santa Monica. For her next role, Ransohoff gave her the flashy part of a curvaceous surfer in the Tony Curtis comedy Don’t Make Waves (1967). One of the small number of highlights of the tawdry Valley of the Dolls (1967) was Tate’s appearance as sex siren Jennifer North, who commits suicide after suffering a mastectomy. Unlike her costars, Patty Duke and Barbara Parkins, Sharon received glowing reviews.
On January 20, 1968, in London, the 24-year-old Sharon wed Polanski, 10 years her senior. Among those attending the nuptials were Warren Beatty, Leslie Caron, and Michael Caine. After playing one of Dean Martin’s girl toys in Matt Helm’s spy-movie parody, The Wrecking Crew (1969), Tate ended her exclusive contract with Ransohoff. She preferred to freelance now that she was a rising force in the international film industry. Meanwhile, she and Polanski played and dined among the trendy Hollywood set.
Before Sharon left for London to shoot Thirteen Chairs (released in 1970) with Orson Welles, the Polanskis rented a house at 10050 Cielo Drive, off Benedict Canyon Road, in Bel Air. (The previous tenants had been Doris Day’s son Terry Melcher and his girlfriend, Candice Bergen.) Because Roman had preproduction film conferences to attend in Europe, Sharon returned alone to California in July 1969 after finishing her movie. At the time, she was eight months pregnant.
Sharon also had several new movie projects lined up, such as The Story of O and Tess of the D’Urbervilles, but her real attention was on the impending birth of her child and planning a party for Roman, who was due home sometime before his birthday on August 18. On a hot Thursday, August 7, 1969, the very pregnant Sharon went with several actor pals to a TV episode screening at Universal. The next day, actress Joanna Pettet and another friend came to Sharon’s for lunch, and that evening, Sharon was invited by a friend to a small dinner party. But she declined the invitation, mentioning that she was very tired. She decided that she would go out for hamburgers with Jay Sebring and then spend a quiet night at home.
Sharon Tate in a spooky moment from Eye of the Devil (1967).
Courtesy of JC Archives
On Saturday morning (August 9, 1969), when the maid arrived at the house on Cielo Drive, she found a terrifying sight. In the blood-drenched living room were the butchered bodies of Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring, with a white cord trailing from Sharon’s neck to a ceiling beam and extending to Sebring’s neck. (He had also been shot.) The word “Pig” was written in blood on the front door. On the lawn were the mutilated bodies of a couple who had been staying with Sharon while Polanski was away: Abigail Folger (the 25-year-old daughter of the chairman of the Folger Coffee Company) and Wojtek Frykowski (Roman’s 32-year-old childhood pal). Eighteen-year-old Steven Parent was found dead in his car near the entrance gate. He was a friend of 19-year-old William Garretson, the estate’s caretaker, who had been in the out-of-the-way guesthouse during the entire massacre. Because Garretson had his stereo on, blasting music into his headphones, he had not heard the victims’ screams.
Over two hundred people attended Sharon’s funeral at Holy Cross Memorial Park in Culver City. A tearful Polanski had returned for the service. Father O’Reilly eulogized, “Goodbye Sharon, and may the angels welcome you to heaven, and the martyrs guide your way.” The casket, containing the bodies of Sharon and her unborn son, Paul Richard, was buried on the cemetery grounds. The white marble marker reads, “Beloved wife of Roman . . . Sharon Tate Polanski . . . Paul Richard Polanski . . . Their Baby.” A few days later, Sharon’s movies were reissued nationwide.
At first it was suspected that the slayings were drug-related, since Sebring and some of the other victims had been part of that culture. But on December 1, 1969, the police issued homicide complaints against Charles Manson, Susan Atkins, Linda Kasabian, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Tex Watson, a group who would soon become known as the Manson Family. (The Family had killed several other people before and after the Tate massacre, but this time, they had left traceable clues of their having been at the scene of the crime.)
Although the full motives may never be known, it seems that the psychotic Manson had sent his followers to the secluded hilltop mansion on Cielo Drive for revenge. One theory holds that Manson had written several songs which he brought to record producer Terry Melcher, who had rejected them as insufficiently interesting. Believing Melcher was still living at the house, Manson had returned there asking for a second “audition” and been turned away by Sharon and Jay. The rejection led the twisted Manson to order the mass killing. Another theory insists that Manson became incensed when he discovered that the patio of Tate’s home was made of lumber from protected redwood trees, and that Manson ordered the killings because he was an extreme “nature advocate.”
At their trials in 1971, Manson and the other members of his Family were given death sentences. Before they could be executed, however, California did away with the death penalty (in most instances) and the Family was, instead, sentenced to life imprisonment. Manson is at San Quentin Prison, and his underlings are at other institutions around the state. Sharon’s mother became involved with POMC (Parents of Murdered Children). Whenever any of the infamous murderers come up for parole, she gathers new sets of signatures to petition California officials to veto the idea and keep them in jail. When Polanski finally made Tess (1979) with Nastassja Kinski in the role once intended for Tate, the movie was dedicated: “To Sharon.”
As for the notorious site of the Manson murders, it was razed in 1994 so that a new mansion could be built.
