KELLY LUND’S SURPRISING FAN
As controversy continues to swirl around the shooting death of movie legend Sterling Marshall, his daughter-in-law Kelly Lund has been taken in for questioning. But while many believe her to be guilty, convicted murderer Lund has gained an unlikely ally.
Pulitzer Prize–nominated author Sebastian Todd—who detailed Lund’s 1981 murder conviction in both the Los Angeles Times and in the acclaimed true-crime opus, Mona Lisa—has now launched an attempt to prove Kelly Lund is not a killer after all. Claiming that Lund is innocent of both the Marshall murder and the 1980 shooting death of director John McFadden, for which she was found guilty and served twenty-five years in prison, Todd says his change of heart was inspired by a surprising conversation. “I’ve spoken to Kelly’s mother,” says Todd, who refuses to reveal the whereabouts of Rose Lund, said to have joined a commune after disappearing from her L.A. home in 1984, three years after Kelly Lund’s incarceration. “Rose has convinced me of her daughter’s innocence.”
Todd recently conducted a full-length interview with Mrs. Lund at an undisclosed location, in which he questioned her extensively on the McFadden murder in particular, the details of which will be forthcoming in the July issue of Vanity Fair. “Like Kelly, Rose got a bad rap,” says Todd of Mrs. Lund, who was said to have abandoned her daughter four months before the crime, leaving the troubled young girl in the care of her father, James Lund, a drug-addicted movie stuntman with questionable parenting skills. “She had already lost a daughter [Kelly’s twin sister Catherine] to suicide and was going through a rough time in her life, but Rose never stopped caring,” Todd says. “And she never stopped believing in her daughter’s innocence.”
But will anyone else believe? Already, law enforcement officials are accusing Todd, a notorious publicity seeker, of stirring up controversy for the sake of future book sales. (He’s rumored to be speaking to publishers about a Mona Lisa sequel.) “There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that we put the right person behind bars,” says former U.S. attorney Lawrence Schwartz, who prosecuted the case and is now in private practice. “With all due respect, Mr. Todd should know better than to try to tip the scales of justice.”
And those old enough to remember the chilling photograph of a teenage Kelly Michelle Lund, smiling on the day of her sentencing, would no doubt agree. “The poor girl never had a chance,” remarks clinical psychologist and talk show host Dr. Bob O’Neil. “It was almost as though she was raised to be a killer. Sterling Marshall’s strikingly similar murder is proof enough to me that some folks are best off behind bars for good.”
Yet whether his main interest is human rights or movie rights, Todd isn’t going away anytime soon. “We’re always quick to blame the girl,” says the flamboyant journalist. “Especially the girl who can’t cry on cue.”
ABC News Online
April 24, 2010