Sex, crime and mystery: 5 deaths of stars that continue to intrigue Hollywood
Death is always lurking. Around the corner, in the closet of an expensive hotel or in the bathroom of a luxurious and messy Hollywood mansion. Death is always waiting , like the murderer who seeks to outdo his victim to give him an end without turning back.
But while some occur naturally, other star deaths are shrouded in mystery and suspicion. Some remain unresolved and others simply went down in history as chilling episodes of fame and life itself.
Brittany Murphy, poisoned or victim of a plot?
In the eyes of the press and Hollywood, the death of Bittany Murphy on December 20, 2009 was the outcome, beyond cliché, of a well-known movie. It was speculated that the movie star had fallen into addictions and that she was the victim of an eating disorder; All of this would have led to her death.
But the reality of Brittany's death was much more complex. A network of unfavorable and mysterious circumstances. From a cocktail of 14 different drugs that were found in the autopsy that she underwent, unsanitary housing and the delayed reaction of her relatives to call the paramedics.
Brittany had flown back to Los Angeles, California after she ran into problems with the production crew of a movie she was working on. She returned home with a severe infection in her respiratory system that immediately put her in bed; then everything went downhill.
That December morning, when she passed away, Brittany had already been bedridden for four days. She could barely breathe and her symptoms, according to the documentary Autopsy: The Final Hours Of Brittany Murphy, included confusion and chest tightness. Despite the discomfort, the actress who gained fame in the acclaimed 90's film Clueless, she insisted on not treating herself: she was cloistered to avoid meeting the paparazzi and creating a scandal.
Perhaps that was the straw that broke the camel's back. Experts pointed out that if she had been treated with antibiotics a little earlier, she would have survived. But Murphy was not treated in time and she died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center at the age of 32. The official cause of her death: drug poisoning, acute pneumonia and iron deficiency in the blood due to anemia.
After her death, a series of speculations about her death were triggered. Beyond anorexia and drugs, which had been insistently denied by her in her lifetime, some of her pointed to the possibility of poisoning , since they had found large amounts of heavy metals in the actress's hair.
The poisoning would explain the symptoms of the actress during the last hours of her life. However, it was later explained that the presence of arsenic in Murphy's system would have been due to the hair dye she was wearing at the time.
The death of her husband, photographer Simon Monjack, five months later added another dimension to Brittany's death. Both died in similar circumstances and their relatives assured that they had been assassinated by a conspiracy of the Department of Security of the USA.
That would be based on the fact that the government viewed with mistrust that Brittany was part of a trial in which it was revealed that the customs authorities accepted bribes to allow entry to terrorists. After that, they both feared for their lives and took extraordinary measures.
Even before he died, Monjack revealed that her house in Hollywood was similar to a fort with high security: security cameras everywhere, a system to detect if the landlines were tapped, biometric doors to access the residence. The couple was paranoid... rightfully so?
Linda, Simon's mother, supported that version. “Simon said that he was under surveillance. He was detained by the government because his passport expired and then he was beaten and detained for nine days. Brittany took him out, but since then they felt that there was a deep conspiracy. There's definitely something wrong there, but what it is, I don't know,” she explained.
The truth is that the British makeup artist, screenwriter and photographer died on May 23, 2010, under the same circumstances as his wife: acute pneumonia and anemia. They accompanied each other to death and left Hollywood with one of the most mysterious deaths he has ever seen, but not the only one.
David Carradine: a risky sexual practice
As soon as it was reported that actor David Carradine was found dead in a luxurious hotel room during his stay in Bangkok on June 3, 2010, details of his lurid death began to emerge and what pointed to a murder or a homicide, soon gave. step to the truth: an erotic accident that cost him his life.
The 72-year-old actor was found by cleaning staff in a hotel room Swissotel Nai Lert Park, with a nylon cord tied around his neck, around his genitals. Soon, the first police hypothesis pointed to the fact that 'Bill', in the Quentin Tarantino film Kill Bill, had decided to take his own life.
However, although David had told of a suicide attempt years before, the family quickly denied that possibility. This scenario opened the way to another possible cause of death: a homicide.
“I think he was killed, that he was targeted by someone. Someone who entered the room without permission. Or maybe he got bored, went into town and brought someone to the room. I don't think he was alone ," said Marina Anderson, wife from 1998 to 2001 of the actor.
That may have been supported by a footprint that the authorities found on the sheets that covered the bed where the actor slept. At the same time, while investigations were being carried out, photographs of Carradine's body were leaked to the Thai press.
In them, although they had been darkened, some distinctive signs of the actor could be seen. His tattoos on the lower part of the body, and, above all, the actor's feet drew attention. From the state they were in, the experts inferred that he had been dead for several hours before they found him.
Some time later, the police investigation showed that no one had entered the hotel suite and that there were no traces that David had fought for his life: “There is no trace of a struggle in the hotel room and the room was closed from the inside. . There are also no signs of bruises on the body, it seems that his death was the result of an accident while he was masturbating , ”Bangkok Metropolitan Police reported at the time.
Elizabeth Short: The Most Sadistic Murder Under the Hollywood Sky
Much has been written about the murder and life of Elizabeth Short. The woman who sought fame and whose murder she was so brutal that she continues to inspire pieces in pop culture and the world of entertainment. But behind her that name, "The Black Dahlia", was a woman of only 22 years whose dreams were frustrated by a sadistic man who cut her in half.
In 1947, Elizabeth's dream of succeeding because of her indisputable beauty, with black hair and deep blue eyes, was seen more and more distant. She had previously tried her luck in southern California, where she lived with her father after saying goodbye to her family in Boston, and in Florida. But she hadn't gotten much.
Now she lived in cheap hotels and boarding houses in the city of Los Angeles. She just went to one of those places where she was seen for the last time. On January 9, 1947, Elizabeth, or "Beth" as her family called her, was seen in the bar of the Cecil Hotel. At ten o'clock at night she left the compound and six days later, her body was discovered by a woman who mistook it for a broken mannequin.
There was not a drop of blood in the place, her body had been cut in half and the blood had been drained in its entirety. Her corpse needed so many things; his arm, heart, and intestines had been ripped out. She had mutilated her left nipple and in her vagina she had a piece of her body. Her face had a cut from the corner of her mouth to her ears.
Suffocated, with broken legs and marks on the wrists and ankles; All of this indicated that she had been tortured to death . Then in Los Angeles there was a strong commotion. The police took the case, but did not have much progress in finding the murderer, who, being sadistic, communicated with them to give them some clues and shake up the case.
It would not be known until many years later that the police did suspect a man who is now believed to have tortured and murdered Beth and a couple of other women: surgeon George Hodel.
In 1999, Steve Hodel, a homicide detective from the Californian city, discovered some photographs of a woman very similar to Beth among the belongings of her father who had already died. In the snapshots, a woman with blue eyes and black hair poses with a flower crown, looking down at the ground.
Steve began to connect the dots. The closeness of his father's office to the hotel where Short was last seen, the thoroughness of his torture and the anatomical knowledge required to carry out such a practice, the resemblance between his father's handwriting and that of the letters that had reached the police to reactivate the case.
In addition, the behavior of his father and the sexual meetings that he used to organize with young aspirants to fame who sought to stand out in the Los Angeles show business in his millionaire mansion, Swoden House. He even managed to gather testimonies that matched Elizabeth and George, as he recounted in the book The Avenger of the Black Dahlia.
Everything indicated that his father, who had already been identified as a sexual predator by his half-sister Tamar Hodel, was the murderer. The detectives in charge of the case had also suspected George so they watched him from February 18, 1950 to March 27, 1950 and obtained a tape in which he confessed to the crime, which was recovered by Steve in 2001.
On the tape, made from a tap on the mansion's landline, George said: “You realize there was nothing I could do, I put a pillow over his head and covered it with a sheet. I got a taxi. He died at 12:59. They thought there was something strange. Well, now they may have found out. The mate. ”
At another point, he stated: “Assuming she killed the Black Dahlia, they can't prove it anymore. They can't talk to my secretary anymore because she's dead." And he was right, the doctor escaped justice and died unpunished for the atrocities he committed. Among them, Steve suspects, the heinous murder of at least three other women.
Bob Crane: The Intrigue of a Pool of Blood
Bob Crane was a comical and extremely talented man. At only 22 years of age, he had already positioned himself as the "King of Tune" on Los Angeles radio, but, as he gained fame as an actor, other addictions and vices came that cost him his life.
Although on the surface Bob was a “family man”, since he had married his high school sweetheart, Anne Terzian, and had three children, the truth is that Crane had a penchant for videotaping himself while having sex.
In fact, as Carol Ford later wrote in Bob Crane: The Definitive Biography, Crane liked to film everything he did, and sexual practices were part of the life he sought to document. It was not uncommon for the star of the sitcom Hogan's Heroes, in the company of his “partner in crime” John Carpenter, to go to strip clubs and then invite them to film a scene with explicit content.
But in 1971, after the untimely end of the American comedy that was related to Crane's bad behavior, Bob's career went into decline. They only offered him second roles until he managed to find a place in the Disney production, Superdad.
Since then, he has been active in different programs and plays. Until June 29, 1978, when he was found dead in a pool of blood at the Winfield Place Apartments in Scottsdale, Arizona. At that time, the versions pointed to John as the probable person in charge; from whom, it was speculated, Bob wanted to get away entirely.
The murder weapon was reportedly similar to a camera tripod, and although Carpenter was a suspect, no evidence was found that he was guilty. Thus, he remained completely free until the day of his death and Bob's murder remained unpunished and unsolved.
Natalie Wood: Sail to Death
When Natalie Wood was just ten years old, she fell deeply in love with actor Robert Wagner. Perhaps it was her smile or her huge blue eyes, but the truth is that the little girl of Russian descent dreamed of that man who years later would become her husband and one of the last people to see her with lifetime.
Natalie was walking with her mother in a hallway at 20th Century Fox when she saw Wagner, then 18 years old. "I turned to my mother and said 'I'm going to marry him,'" she confessed to People magazine in 1975.
They met again in 1957, thanks to Rebel Without a Cause, and after a very brief courtship, the couple married. However, as Natalie's career took off, they soon began to drift apart and divorced in 1962; the reasons would have been various, but especially Wagner's jealousy of Wood, who was living in the twilight of her career at that time.
Although both continued with their lives in 1970, they met again at a dinner and, sharing a nice evening followed by other invitations, finally married for the second time two years later.
After twists and turns, Wood Wagner seemed to stabilize as one of the most important couples in Hollywood. Handsome, millionaires and happy. However, it all ended with a tragedy that shook celebrities.
On the night of November 29, 1981, Natalie Wood's body fell into the waters of the Pacific Ocean, off Los Angeles. The couple had taken a three-day break aboard the Splendor, the luxurious yacht where they were traveling accompanied by fellow actor Christopher Walken .
And after a few hours of drinking without measure and what, according to some witnesses to the scene, seemed to be a quarrel between the three, Natalie disappeared.
She was found the next morning, and investigations began that have on different occasions identified Robert Wagner as a "person of interest." Although the mobile remains hidden to date, versions maintain that it was an attack of jealousy, like those that caused her first divorce.
Although this time they would not have been caused by Wood's success, but by the love triangle in which both were involved.
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