THE MURDER OF SAL MINEO

2/12/1976 - Attempting to revive his floundering career by appearing in the successful play, "P.S. Your Cat Is Dead," struggling 37-year-old actor Sal Mineo instead becomes yet another Hollywood tragedy when he is murdered in the alley behind his West Hollywood apartment.

Mineo

The son of an Italian coffin maker and an Italian-American mother, Salvatore "Sal" Mineo, Jr. is born in the Bronx in 1939.  At an early age his mother enrolls Mineo in acting and dancing school ... and the entertainment industry becomes a way of life when he makes his stage debut in Tennessee Williams' play, "The Rose Tatoo." Door opened, he follows up that success with playing the young prince opposite Yul Brynner as his father in "The King and I," beats out Clint Eastwood for a role in the film "Six Bridges to Cross," and plays a teenage cadet colonel opposite Charlton Heston in "The Private War of Major Benson."  Cast as the doomed John "Plato" Crawford, at 16-years-old he becomes a star in 1955 with the release of the James Dean drama, "Rebel Without a Cause" (for which he will win a Golden Globe and be nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award).

Mineo And Actress Gigi Perreau

With a major hit now on his resume, from 1955 into the early sixties, Mineo is the go-to actor for playing troubled teens and ethnic youths, and garners roles in major Hollywood releases that include "Somebody Up There Likes Me," "Giant," "The Gene Krupa Story," "The Longest Day," "Exodus" (a role for which he will receive his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination), "Cheyenne Autumn," and "The Greatest Story Ever Told," acting with Paul Newman, James Dean, Natalie Wood, Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Eva Marie Saint, Ricardo Montalban, and being directed by George Stevens, Nicolas Ray, Otto Preminger, John Ford, and Robert Wise.  But beneath the surface of Mineo's success there are problems, his age precludes the type roles he has become famous for as teenagers, and his poorly kept secret bisexuality prevents producers from putting him in leading man roles.  By the end of the 60s, Mineo is scrambling for work beyond appearances in TV dreck (playing himself on "The Patty Duke Show!") and his last movie role is as the ape, Dr. Milo, in "Escape from the Planet of the Apes."

With James Dean And Natalie Wood

In 1976, things appear to be turning around for Mineo with his appearance as a bisexual burglar in the hit San Francisco production of "P.S. Your Cat Is Dead."  When the play comes to Los Angeles for its run in Southern California, Mineo comes with it, renting an apartment in West Hollywood, one block south of the Sunset Strip.  Happy to have a meaty role to play once more, Mineo is enjoying his life and the prospect of a comeback when he returns home from rehearsal at the Westwood Playhouse on the Thursday night of 2/12 and his story abruptly ends.

Mineo

Parking his blue Chevelle in the garage behind his apartment, Mineo exits his car and is about to head upstairs when he is suddenly attacked and screams for help (heard by neighbor Raymond Evans, his last words are, "Help!  Help!  Oh my God!"). There will be no help though ... stabbed once with a knife, the wound nicks the actor's heart, and in a handful of minutes, he bleeds to death in the alley.

Crime Scene

The Investigation Begins

Searching For Clues

Despite the crime being considered a top priority of the police department, it at first appears that the murder will go unsolved and become just another Hollywood mystery (no robbery it seems, Mineo has his wallet, $21 dollars in his left jacket pocket, change in his left pants pocket, and is in possession of a pocket watch on a chain and has a ring on his left index finger) ... the suspect in the killing described by witnesses as being white and having long hair can't be found, investigations of other crimes in the area prove to be dead ends, no leads come from Mineo's work for prison reform, and an analysis of Mineo's gay friends and house full of homosexual porno leads nowhere.  The crime is unsolved for two years, and then out of the blue, the case is broken in Michigan.
Death Certificate

An ancient story told often, the biggest help the authorities have in solving the case is yet another guilty culprit with diarrhea of the mouth. Bragging to fellow inmates within earshot of Michigan jail guards that he has killed Sal Mineo, a violent robber named Lionel Ray Williams with drug issues who once delivered pizzas in West Hollywood, becomes the focus of the murder investigation. Extradited back to California, Williams goes on trial in 1979.  A two-and-a-half month affair overseen by Judge Ronnie Lee Martin, a jury finds cause for conviction in the purported statements of Williams (who denies involvement as soon as he is arrested for the murder), a $5.28 hunting knife in Williams possession that is an exact match to the wound in Mineo's body, a photo of Williams with his hair dyed brown and pulled back matching a witness description of a stranger seen leaving the area after the actor's attack (the difference between the perp being black and not white as witnesses reported is explained away as being caused by poor lighting in the alley), testimony that Williams came home wearing a bloody shirt on the night of the killing, and other evidence, but unwilling to believe 21-year-old Williams planned to murder Mineo all along, settles on a lesser sentence of second degree murder (the jury also finds Williams guilty of 10 robberies).  One murder and 10 robberies nets Williams a sentence of 57 years behind bars ... but California being California, the killer only serves 11 years before being paroled in 1990, then he is arrested again for robbery and goes back in the slammer ... AND IS ONCE MORE PAROLED BY THE END OF THE DECADE.  Madness! 

Killer

Gone but not forgotten, Mineo lives on in the handful of songs he recorded while not acting (one, "Start Movin' (In My Direction)" reached #9 on Billboard's pop chart and earned Mineo a gold record for over one million in sales), his TV and movie performances, the two books written about his life (Sal Mineo: His Life, Murder, and Mystery by H. Paul Jeffers and Sal Mineo: A Biography by Michael G. Michaud), and the Harold Stevenson painting New Adam, featuring a nude Mineo as the model, that hangs in the permanent collection of New York's legendary Guggenheim Museum (it has been described as "one of the great American nudes").  Mr. Mineo rests with members of his family in Hawthorne, New York's Gate of Heaven Cemetery. 

New Adam

Sal Mineo
  

THE FIRST HOLLYWOOD WHO-DONE-IT

2/1/1922 - At a time when the nation is still debating whether government censorship needs to be put in place to control the rapidly growing Hollywood film industry, the decadence and madness many fear the new form of entertainment celebrates (as these events are taking place, silent film star comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle is undergoing three trials for murder in San Francisco ... the third and last will find the actor not guilty!) becomes headline news with the murder of Irish born actor and director, William Desmond Taylor.

Taylor

Typical of the first wave of individuals to be made sudden celebrities by the film industry, Taylor is actually born William Cunningham Deane-Tanner in County Carlow, Ireland in 1872 to a retired British Army officer, Major Kearns Deane-Tanner and his wife, Jane.  In 1890, studying farming methods in Kansas, Deane-Tanner arrives in America and begins his transformation into Taylor ... marrying Ethel May Hamilton in 1901 (they will be divorced in 1912), and using funds from his wealthy Wall Street broker father-in-law, to open up an antique store in New York City (for a time before Hollywood, he is also an engineer and a gold miner in Alaska).  Life path seemingly chosen, something goes awry in Deane-Tanner a few years later, and the 36-year-old man vanishes, abandoning his wife and his daughter, in 1908 (in 1921, Taylor will do the right thing and make his daughter, Ethel Daisy, his legal heir). When he reemerges on the West Coast, remade, Deane-Tanner has become the actor William Taylor, who soon becomes the director William Taylor (he will direct over 60 movies in his brief career).  

Left - Directing May McAvoy In Top Of New York

Directed By William Desmond Taylor

In 1918, towards the end of WWI, despite being 46-years-old, Taylor joins the Canadian Expeditionary Force and is promoted to lieutenant before being mustered out in 1919.  Back in Hollywood and honored as a "hero," working for Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, Taylor is one of the top directors in Hollywood, coaxing star performances out of Mary Pickford, Dustin Farnum, Mary Miles Minter, and Wallace Reid. Seemingly on top of the world, Taylor's Hollywood success all comes to a screeching halt when the 49-year-old director is discovered dead in his bungalow at the Alvarado Court Apartments in Westlake by his valet, Henry Peavey, shot in the back with a small-caliber pistol.  Found carrying $78 in cash, an expensive silver cigarette case, a Waltham pocket watch, a pen knife, and a locket bearing a picture of actress Minter, and wearing a two-carat diamond ring, the police quickly rule out robbery as a motive behind the murder (the killing shot will sound like a car back firing according to neighbors).

Bungalow In Back


Crime Scene Area

A celebrity murder requiring immediate who, what, where, why, when answers, and the arrest of an evil culprit, the crime instead, gradually makes its way into the file of unsolved killings for 1922 ... helped along by stupidity and politics.  Arriving after Peavey finds his boss in the morning and calls the cops, Lt. Tom Ziegler shows up at the crime scene and discovers an assortment of actors, actresses, studio executives, and newspapermen rummaging through the dead man's belongings, destroying or filching an unknown amount of evidence; an unfortunate pattern that continues when other clues are lost or suppressed (races for governor and L.A. District Attorney effect major decisions on the case) in the weeks ahead.  Though there are suspects galore in the killing, no one will ever be tried for the crime. 

Visitor Evidence

Headlines

Among the suspects and theories that will be brought forth during the investigation are that former valet Edward F. Sands killed Taylor in a bungled blackmail attempt (an embezzler, forger, 
burglar, and US military deserter, Sands is never seen again after the murder), current valet Henry Peavey killed his employer over issues involving secret gay parties (Peavey also has a criminal record, and dies in 1931 in a San Francisco asylum where he had been placed for syphilis-related dementia), actress Mabel Normand's drug suppliers kill Taylor when the director becomes involved in helping his friend fight her $2,000 a month cocaine addiction (she is the last person other than the killer to see Taylor alive, sharing an Orange Blossom Gin cocktail with the director before leaving his home at around 7:45 in the evening as the pair blow kisses to each other), the killer was a woman dressed as a man (such is the testimony of neighbor, Faith Cole MacLean), 19-year-old actress Mary Miles Minter has killed Taylor over unrequited love (she admits falling in love with him when he directs her for the first time at the age of 17 ... three long blonde hairs belonging to Minter are found on Taylor's jacket, and a female night gown said to be Minter's is also found by police where searching the victim's home), Minter's mother, Charlotte Shelby kills Taylor for messing with her meal ticket, her daughter Mary (a close friend of District Attorney Thomas Lee Woolwine, she has been heard by numerous Hollywood folks to say she will kill the director if he ever lays a hand on her daughter ... and strangely, her personal pistol, the same caliber as the weapon that kills Taylor, goes missing during the time period of the murder), a career thug named "Blackie" Madsen does the deed after Taylor refuses to pay blackmail hush money to keep quiet that he is a practicing homosexual, and as part of yet another blackmail plot, that 27-year-old actress Margaret Gibson is responsible when Taylor refuses to help her produce her own movies (a recent convert to Roman Catholicism, she is said to have confessed to the killing on her death bed in October of 1964).

Sands
 
Peavey & Normand
 
Minter & Mom

Gibson

Indeed ... "A Cast of Killers" as Sidney D. Kirkpatrick will name his 1986 book on the infamous Taylor murder ... none of whom are ever officially charged in the crime; 94 years later, the killing remains an unsolved Hollywood mystery!  A mystery with extreme ramifications for the film business ... beyond Taylor's death, the murder and fallout from the crime will end the screen careers of Normand (she dies of tuberculosis in Monrovia, California at the age of 37) and Minter (she will marry a wealthy real estate developer and die of a stoke in Santa Monica at the age of 82), and help speed the hiring of William Hays to start policing the film industry.  What doesn't happen though is an end to scandals coming out of southern California ... next up, less than a year later, film sensation Wallace Reid (called the "screen's most perfect lover" by Motion Picture Magazine), will die in a Los Angeles sanatorium while trying to kick an addiction to morphine (brought on in 1919 when he is given the drug so filming can continue after he suffers a painful three inch scalp wound in a train accident that requires stitching) ... he is 31 at his demise.

Reid - 1920

Reid - Forest Lawn - Glendale

Who killed William Desmond Taylor ... too late to know now ... the Big Guy in the Sky will have to make the final ruling on the matter ... both guilt, and the punishment!

Headlines

William Desmond Taylor    

THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER

1/15/1947 - Taking a morning walk with her three-year-old daughter to a nearby shoe store through Leimert Park along South Norton Avenue in Los Angeles (between Coliseum Street and West 39th Street), at around 10:00 am, local housewife Betty Bersinger notices what appears to be a discarded and broken department store mannequin laying in the weeds of a vacant lot just off the sidewalk. It is not a mannequin however, but is actually the horribly mutilated body of 22-year-old murder victim Elizabeth Short ... a woman who will soon become famous in death as the mysterious Black Dahlia.
 
Short 

Stifling a scream when she recognizes she is looking at a corpse cut into two pieces, Bersinger grabs her daughter, runs to a nearby house, and immediately calls the police.  Within minutes, Officers Frank Perkins and Will Fitzgerald arrive on the scene, and seeing the state of the body, call for assistance ... soon, the area is swarming with more cops, newspaper reporters, photographers, and ghoulish curiosity seekers that damage the crime scene and destroy evidence.  The hideous condition of the body makes LAPD Captain John Donahoe assign the case to his top detective and his partner, Detective Sergeant Harry Hansen and Finis Brown.  Investigation started, the as yet unidentified body of Short is taken to the Los Angeles County Morgue for an autopsy, and her fingerprints are sent to FBI headquarters in Washington D.C., with the help of the Los Angeles Examiner's "Soundphoto" equipment (in a squalid moment for the Fourth Estate, a newspaper reporter will pump Short's mother for info on her life by lying that she has just won a local beauty pageant ... only when he has what he wants does he tell Phoebe Short of the death of her daughter).

Vacant Lot

Crime Scene

Bersinger

L - R ... Hansen & Brown

A very personal killing by someone, Short's body is completely severed at the waist and drained of all blood, at some other site the body has been washed, her face bears numerous slashings, including a "Glasgow smile" in which the corners of the mouth are cut all the way to the ears, there are cuts to her thighs and breasts, the intestines of the corpse are neatly tucked beneath her buttocks, the body is posed with hands over head, elbows bent, and her legs spread open, there are ligature marks to be found on the ankles, wrists, and neck, and there are bruises on the front and right side of her scalp consist with a beating to the head taking place.

The Investigation Begins

Morgue

Name finally known using her fingerprints, police dig into Short's life to try and find who killed her and discover she was born in Boston in 1924 into a well-to-do family (until the Depression destroys the father's miniature golf course building business), she had a bad case of asthma and bronchitis as a child, spent time living in the widely separated communities of Miami, Vallejo, Lompoc, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles, and had lost two lovers to WWII. An aspiring actress and model in a town full of such dreamers, it is noted that Short liked to drink, go dancing at night clubs, and had been missing for a week before her body was discovered in Leimert Park.  Rumors that she worked as a prostitute, or that she had a child size vagina and couldn't have sex are shot down, but no one can stop William Randolph Hearst from seizing the opportunity to sell more papers by transforming the black tailored suit wearing women into a femme fatale seeking romance and success in Hollywood called the Black Dahlia (a recently released crime thriller starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake is called The Blue Dahlia).

Headlines

1943 Mug Shot - Underage Drinking

Short and Army Major Matthew Gordon

Partying At Center

And sadly for justice, it all leads nowhere, becoming one of the most infamous unsolved murder cases in American history. Despite thousands of hours of investigation by hundreds of police officers (many borrowed from other nearby agencies), and scores of suspects being interviewed, no one will ever be arrested and brought to trial for the murder (there will be over 60 confessions to the crime over the years, none of which the authorities will ever find viable) and eventually the case goes cold ... but never entirely. Over the ensuing years since Short's body is discovered, newspaper, book, and screen writers will keep returning to the case ... along with a cottage industry of true crime books (many featuring folks accusing dead family members of being the killer), Lucie Arnaz will play Short on television, the crime will be featured in the book True Confessions by John Gregory Dunne, and in the movie version starring Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall, James Ellroy's novel "The Black Dahlia" will be published in 1987, actress Mena Suvari will play Short in an episode of American Horror Story, the killing will play a role in the novel "Toros & Torsos" by Craig McDonald, famed author Joyce Carol Oates will write a short story called "Black Dahlia and White Rose," and Brian De Palma will make  a movie called "The Black Dahlia" in 2006.

Former Suspect - Salesman Robert "Red" Manley

Best Seller

Movie Poster

Gone but certainly not forgotten, Elizabeth Short is buried at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California.  Were she still alive, Short would be 92 in 2016!

Grave Marker

Elizabeth Short