Albert Dekker was a character actor who was best known for his part in the 1940 film Dr Cyclops (1940), playing the role of Dr Alexander Thorkel. However, unfortunately for him, it is for his mysterious and weird death that he is most famous these days.
Born Albert Van Ecke on 20 December 1905, he grew up in New York with plans to attend Bowdoin College in order to become a psychiatrist. However, an introduction to Broadway actor Alfred Lunt put paid to any aspirations of being a doctor, and he instead made his stage debut in 1927 in a play called Marco’s Millions. Albert then moved to Hollywood in 1937 to try his hand at movies, where he achieved some success, appearing in films such as Strange Cargo (1940) and the James Dean movie, East of Eden (1955).
Dekker’s career was spent for the most part moving between the mediums of movies and theatre, and he achieved great success on Broadway in Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman. In the movies he acquired a name for himself as a “barrel-chested character actor”, and at one point in the 1940s he even tried his hand at politics, serving as the Democratic Assemblyman for the 57th district in California. However, this achievement got in the way of his acting career, so he stepped down at the end of his term, although he maintained a fairly outspoken interest in politics and at one point even found himself on Senator McCarthy’s anticommunist “blacklist”, much to his surprise.
In 1929 he married Esther Guernini and they had three children before later divorcing, though they kept in touch for the sake of their children. In April 1957, while Dekker was in Palm Beach, Florida, appearing in the Agatha Christie play, Witness for the Prosecution, their son Jan was found dead in the family home in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. According to Dekker, the sixteen-year-old Jan had been experimenting with constructing a rifle silencer when the gun suddenly went off, piercing his right eye and killing him immediately. He was found in his bedroom by his mother, lying on a .22 calibre rifle and clutching a piece of cloth in his left hand. The tragic death was later pronounced as accidental by the coroner, though questions remained, mainly involving why he was in possession of a highly dangerous weapon in the first place.
After the tragedy, Albert Dekker’s film career started to wind down somewhat, and as he got older he resigned himself to no longer trying to make it big in the movies. Instead, he was happy with the parts he was able to win and concentrated on making appearances on television shows such as Bonanza and Mission: Impossible.
In his personal life, the divorced Dekker eventually became involved with a woman called Geraldine Saunders, who later told reporters they were due to be married in summer 1968. However, this date never came for the couple, as death was about to come knocking on Dekker’s door . . .
The actor had just returned from filming on location in Mexico, and on 2 May 1968 he and Saunders went to the Huntingdon Hartford Theatre, where they enjoyed their last evening together, at the opening of Zero Mostel’s play The Latent Heterosexual. Dekker then made plans to see Saunders the next evening before returning to his apartment at 1731 North Normandie Avenue, Los Angeles. However, when he did not show up as planned, Saunders became worried and tried to reach him many times over the course of the next few days. Strangely, all calls went unanswered, so finally the woman decided to go round to Dekker’s apartment to see for herself what had happened to her fiancé.
On 5 May, Geraldine arrived at Dekker’s apartment where she was shocked to find his door covered in notes from concerned friends desperate to get hold of him. A sense of foreboding overcame her and she was so concerned that something awful had happened that she immediately ran down to alert the manager of the building, telling him that she had been unable to contact her partner for several days and was now worried that he was ill – or worse – inside his apartment.
The manager listened to her story and made the decision to use his pass key, opening the door to the actor’s apartment and gingerly entering with Geraldine. They were both apprehensive about what they might find inside, but at first all looked to be okay. Certainly there was no sign of an intruder or a burglary, but there was also no sign of the actor either, which was rather concerning.
The two shouted his name over and over but to no avail, until finally the only room left to look in was the bathroom, which they were disturbed to discover was locked from the inside by a chain. By this point it was obvious that if Dekker was anywhere in the apartment, it had to be in this room, so the couple managed to break in and discovered a sight they would remember for the rest of their lives.
There was Albert Dekker, naked and kneeling in the bathtub with a noose tied one end around his neck and the other around the shower rod. The body was in “complicated knots” according to detective Daniel K. Stewart, who appeared on the scene shortly afterwards; his hands were cuffed; and hypodermic needles stuck out of his arms. Not only that but explicit words were scrawled over his body and on closer inspection the apartment contained a large number of women’s clothes, whips and chains.
At first it looked as though the death was a suicide and was listed that way by the authorities. However, this was soon changed by the Deputy Coroner Herbert McRoy, who declared, “We have no information that this individual planned to take his own life, so it will be listed as an accidental death.” But in spite of the ruling, everyone had to admit that the whole thing was bizarre: “This is certainly a strange death,” McRoy told reporters. “But just because there was a rope around his neck does not mean that he committed suicide.”
Still, an accidental death seemed a rather bizarre theory, given the way the man was found, and it was not long before rumours began to circulate that Albert Dekker had been murdered after a robbery gone wrong, as various items were discovered to be missing from his apartment. It could very well be the case that the man was killed after a bungled theft, but this would in no way explain the bizarre way Dekker was found. For a burglar to kill someone who has come home unexpectedly is not unheard of, but for him to then truss the victim up like a turkey and hang him from the shower rail calls for a little too much imagination.
Over the years it has become more and more likely that neither murder or suicide were the real reasons for the death of Albert Dekker, and instead it has been put forward that perhaps Dekker was a fan of autoerotic asphyxiation – cutting off the air supply to heighten orgasm. This would certainly account for the rope around his neck, but this theory has in turn presented further questions, such as was he alone when the deed happened?
It would seem possible that he was, given the fact that the bathroom was chained from the inside with no other way of gaining exit. However, it still doesn’t explain how he managed to cuff his hands, stick needles into his body and then finally place a noose around his neck and over the shower rail. Unless, of course, this was a well-practised event – a way of releasing tension that the actor had performed on many occasions over the years.
In spite of all the rumours, stories and hearsay, it seems as though we will never know the full story of how and why Albert Dekker passed away, and his death will always be something of a mystery. But one thing’s for sure – his bizarre and unexplained death has ensured he will be remembered for many years to come, though unfortunately, mainly for the wrong reasons.