All suspicious deaths cause headlines in Hollywood, and there have been a great many over the years. But in 1979 two veteran actors were brutally murdered within days of each other and people began to wonder: Was there a serial killer on the loose, or were the deaths just a strange but tragic coincidence?
Charles Wagenheim was born on 21 February 1896 in New Jersey and suffered shyness for much of his childhood. His quiet nature was not something he particularly liked about himself so in an effort to gain some confidence, he decided he would try his hand at acting. The work was hard but rewarding; his shyness subsided somewhat and he became so enthralled with the idea of becoming a professional actor that he enrolled in an acting course at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
After graduating in 1923, Wagenheim went to Broadway where he was involved in several successful shows and ended up touring with a Shakespearean acting company. However, having most certainly developed a bug for the profession, he craved success not just on the stage, but in movies too, so in the late 1920s he moved to Hollywood to find his fame and fortune.
It was here that he received his first disappointment on the bumpy road to fame, when he discovered that work in Hollywood was very different to the New York theatre. While he had achieved a great deal of success on the East Coast stage, suddenly nobody seemed to want him in large roles in the movies. He therefore spent most of his time playing tramps, waiters, taxi drivers and anything else that came his way.
He did not complain, however, as the small roles he obtained helped to pay the bills, and after just over a decade of struggle, in 1940 he was given one of his best parts, as an assassin in Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent. His career continued on a slow but steady path, and after playing a thief in the 1959 film The Diary of Anne Frank television came knocking at his door. It was there that, in the 1960s and 1970s, he found most of his roles, including a popular, regular role as Halligan in Gunsmoke.
In his later years, Charles Wagenheim lived quietly with his psychologist wife and earned money as landlord of a number of apartments that he had purchased in years gone by. Still, he continued to win the occasional acting job, too, and in 1979 took on a role on the TV show All in the Family, where he worked with fellow actor Victor Kilian.
Kilian was also born in New Jersey and had gone into acting as a teenager by joining a vaudeville company. His early career took an eerily similar path to that of Wagenheim, appearing on Broadway before trying his hand in the movies at the end of the 1920s. However, Kilian’s career in films had been more successful than Wagenheim’s, and he quickly became known as a stellar character actor, with roles in the likes of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938) and 1939’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in which he played Pap Finn.
Unfortunately his career was tragically marred during one film which saw him working with John Wayne. During a particular fight scene, things took a horrifying turn when he suffered an injury so bad that it led to the loss of an eye. Then in the 1950s things became bleak again when he was a victim of communist blacklisting in the McCarthy witch-hunts, which had hurt the careers of many actors and writers alike. Still, these setbacks did not deter the hard-working actor and he persevered with his career, appearing in various theatre shows and later making the successful switch to television, just as Wagenheim had done. It was while working on the small screen that he achieved a great deal of success and became a household name by starring as the Fernwood Flasher in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.
By the time Kilian worked with Charles Wagenheim in an episode of All in the Family, both actors were well into their eighties. The episode was entitled “The Return of Stephanie’s Father” and revolved around the story of alcoholic Floyd Mills, who arrived at the home of main characters Archie and Edith to try and sell them his daughter, whom they had already been looking after.
Floyd is staying in a rundown, prostitute-filled hotel when Arthur and Edith arrive to negotiate with him over the care of the child. Before they meet him, however, they encounter the desk clerk played by Kilian, who asks the couple if they want to rent the room for an hour. Assuring him that they’re not interested in sex as they’re already married, they then move over to some chairs in the lobby, one of which is occupied by a tramp played by Wagenheim. At first he seems reluctant to leave, but eventually moves from his perch when Archie tells the tramp that there is an unconscious man in the alley who appears to have some money on him. “Oooh thank you,” Wagenheim says, as he scuttles towards the door.
The two roles played by Kilian and Wagenheim may have been small, but they certainly raised a laugh or two during the filming. Unfortunately, just weeks later, before the episode was aired, the laughter stopped when tragedy struck both of the actors.
Charles Wagenheim’s wife Lillian had previously suffered a stroke and a nurse, Stephanie Boone, was hired to help out at the couple’s apartment at 8078 Fareholm Drive. Little did they know, however, that the woman apparently had a criminal record for armed robbery, and she now saw the Wagenheims as easy targets and allegedly began stealing items from their home.
Details of the last moments of Wagenheim’s life are sketchy, but there are two theories as to what might have happened. The first is that the actor had become suspicious that his wife’s nurse had been writing cheques and cashing them for her own gain. He had been keeping tabs on the woman, and after finding that he was right with his suspicions, had decided to have it out with her. She became so incensed at his bravado that their encounter inevitably led to Wagenheim’s death.
The other theory is that the unsuspecting actor came back to the apartment after shopping and caught Boone rifling through his drawers and stealing items. Once again, he confronted her and demanded to know what she was up to, and the scenario ends with the same result as the first – she kills him after a heated argument.
Nobody is entirely clear on what exactly happened in the house that day but we do know this: on 6 March 1979 (which quite coincidentally was fellow-actor Victor Kilian’s birthday) Charles Wagenheim was severely beaten around his head while in the bedroom of his apartment. The pounding he received was enough to knock him to the ground and ultimately kill him.
After the man had died, the nurse phoned the police and told them that she had briefly gone to the building’s laundry room and returned to see the body of the elderly actor lying face down on the floor. His bedroom window was open, she said, and his wife was in the living room, oblivious to everything that had happened. Unfortunately for both Wagenheim and the police, the ailing woman was unable to help with any details after a stroke had left her unable to communicate.
At first the police said they had no idea who could have done such a thing to the innocent actor. However, just five days later, their suspicions were aroused when it was reported that Victor Kilian, who had acted with Wagenheim just a short time before, was also found beaten to death at his home at 6550 Yucca Street.
Kilian’s son, Victor Jr, had been trying to get his father on the telephone but was unable to get through. Being concerned, the man travelled to his house and was devastated to discover his father was dead; the television was still switched on and a snack remained uneaten nearby. The police were called and an investigation revealed that the apartment doors looked as though they had been opened with a pass key. There was no definite motive for the killing, but it was decided that robbery was most certainly a possibility.
When they then discovered that Kilian and Wagenheim had recently worked together in All in the Family, the police were intrigued. Was it possible that the two men had been targeted because they had worked together? Was there a serial killer on the loose, going after old actors? It was hard to tell. However, there was no doubt that at first the two deaths did look as though they were somehow related, and police began intensively investigating the Wagenheims’ nurse over the course of the next three months to see if she was responsible for one or both murders.
After looking at the case for some time, the police came to the conclusion that while it was likely that the care-worker was at the very heart of the Wagenheim mystery, it just did not make sense that she would have had the inclination or opportunity to be at Kilian’s house too. So in the end, their suspicions came to nothing and, to this very day, the savage killer of the elderly actor Victor Kilian has never been found or brought to justice.
The same could not be said in the Wagenheim case, however. After the police discovered the nurse’s past armed robbery and escape convictions, things started to make more sense. On Friday, 25 May, the police travelled to the Los Angeles County Animal Shelter, where the nurse was now working as a kennel attendant. There they arrested and charged the woman for the murder of Charles Wagenheim, and for good measure added on a charge of grand theft too. She eventually pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and in January 1980 was sentenced to eight years in prison.
No other details were ever revealed about why the nurse had any motive or wish to kill Charles Wagenheim, and to this day people still take to the internet to discuss what really happened during the course of that week in March 1979. Many still believe that somehow the two killings are related, though after studying what we know of the events, it seems unlikely. The two actors had worked together, certainly, but it appears just a tragic coincidence that they were both taken from life within a week of each other, and in such a violent and undignified way.