Claude Jutra -- No One Home

The former medical student turned film director was best known for his classic 1971 movie, Mon Oncle Antoine, a cinema verite exposition of a boy's coming of age in rural Quebec that won best picture at the Canadian Film Awards that year.  In 1985, an international film panel at the Toronto Festival of Festivals declared the motion picture to be the best-ever Canadian film.  Other films directed by Jutra include Kamouraska (Cannes Prize winner in 1972), For Better or Worse (1975), Surfacing (1979), By Design (1980), and La dame en couleurs (1985).  In addition to acting in films, Jutra also directed several television dramas for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and was a founding member of Quebec's Association of Professional Cineastes.

 

Depressed over the onset of Alzheimer's disease, the 56-year-old Jutra walked out of his downtown Montreal apartment on November 5, 1986, and vanished.  Friends fearing the worst, remembered a recent interview he had given in which he discussed the disease:  "I can face death, but I cannot facing watching myself disappear from within.  Nowadays, when the world comes knocking at the door of Claude Jutra, there's no one home.  I don't know who I am anymore."  At his home, Jutra left notes to his friends stating that if he did not see them again soon, they would meet in the hereafter.  On April 23, 1987, the filmmaker's body was found in the St. Lawrence River near Quebec City.  A note written in French contained in a money belt said, "My name is Claude Jutra."  The body, estimated to have been in the water for two to three months, was positively identified as Jutra's by dental records and a small tattoo found on the right arm.  It is generally believed that Jutra leapt to his death from Montreal's Jacques Cartier Bridge soon after his disappearance.

Solomon B. Stein -- "Tired, He Rests..."

Forced into bankruptcy by a $50,000 gem heist on October 8, 1928, the theatrical jeweler had recently been subpoenaed by the District Attorney's office to appear as a witness at trial for two men charged with the hold-up.  Police speculate that the mental strain combined with Stein's poor health drove the 36-year-old jeweler to take his life in the 12th floor office of the A. S. K. Jewelry Manufacturing Company at 74 West Forty-sixth Street in New York City on May 13, 1929.  A salesman found Stein's body face-down in the office propped up on cushions against a chair.  A tube leading from a gas jet attached to an open blow torch had fallen from his lips.  A poetic note written in pencil found beside the body read:  "Tired, he rests, and life's poor play is over.  Approach thy grave like one who draws the draperies of death about him and lies down to dream, and so falls the curtain on the last act of my life.  Good-bye, everybody."  And in a postscript:  "It takes a lot of gas to kill a man, but it is not so bad."

Eric Frachet -- Death on the Hooligan Express

Frachet, 33, had acted in small roles in a few films (La Cible, 1997; Le Demenagement, 1997; Vidangel, 1998) and in several television commercials in his native France.  In 1997-1998, he worked as a high speed stunt driver on director John Frankenheimer's film Ronin, starring Robert De Niro.  After spending the day of June 30, 1998, visiting his grandparents in Nouyaery, the actor boarded a train at Grenoble bound for Lyon on his way to Paris to audition the next morning for a television commercial.  Unfortunately for Frachet, who had no interest in football, a World Cup game between bitter rivals England and Argentina was being played that evening in nearby St. Etienne.  Sitting opposite the Frenchman in the train car was Paul Birch, a 43-year-old self-employed engineer from the Isle of Dogs, East London.  Birch, though not on file with Scotland Yard as a known football hooligan, was an ardent England supporter and was in France to attend the match.  He apparently believed Frachet was an Argentinian and felt the man was smirking at him and mocking the English team.  When the train arrived at the village station of of St. Andre-le-Gaz, Birch pulled out a hunting knife, plunged it into Frachet's stomach, and fled across a field.  The Frenchman bled out en route to the hospital from the 3 inch deep wound in his gut.  The next day, French police responding to a disturbance in a hotel in Grenoble, arrested Birch for attacking a porter with a broken bottle.  Under questioning, he admitted knifing Frachet after the "Argentine" mocked England's football team (England later lost the match to Argentina on a penalty kick).  Prophetically, at the time of his arrest authorities felt Birch was "mentally deranged."

On July 3, 1998, the Briton was formally charged with murder and faced a 30 year prison sentence for the unprovoked attack.  One year later, the prosecutor's office stated that psychiatric tests conducted while he was in custody established that Birch was suffering from "psychic problems" that significantly hindered his judgment and limited the control he had over his actions.  While French authorities repeatedly sought cooperation from the British Government to determine whether the engineer had a documented history of mental illness before ultimately deciding his case, Birch managed to smuggle a letter out of prison to Frachet's family.  In it, he stated that he killed Frachet under orders from a neo-Nazi gang of English fans who wanted to insure that England would stage the World Cup in 2006 (it was held in Germany).  In February 2000, a French appeals court upheld the lower court ruling that Birch was mentally unfit to stand trial.  Outraged, the victim's family and friends marched through the streets of Grenoble demanding "Real justice for Eric, the forgotten dead of the World Cup 1998."  Birch was returned to England in December 2001 and removed to a mental institution in London at the request of French authorities.

Jawed Wassel -- Welcome to America

Driven from his native Afghanistan in 1979 by the Soviet invasion, Wassel came to America, learned to speak six languages, worked his way through the City College of New York, and became a U.S. citizen.  Convinced the medium of film could be used to foster world peace and understanding, Wassel spent six years writing and directing Firedancer, an autobiographical story chronicling the pain suffered by the Afghani people under the twenty year Soviet occupation.  To cut costs, the director lived with his three brothers in a rundown apartment in Chelsea, used nonprofessionals in the film, and exercised his considerable charm to secure financial backing for the project.  Bruce Hathaway, composer for Firedancer, described Wassel as a "visionary" who would "promise the world" to get what he needed for the film, but disappointed many when his promises were not fulfilled.  Wassel allegedly promised Nathan Chandler Powell a producer's credit and 30% of the gross for Firedancer in exchanged for becoming the film's principal financial backer.  On the afternoon of October 3, 2001, hours before the film's New York City premiere, the 42-year-old filmmaker showed up at Powell's Long Island City apartment in Queens in a bid to convince the investor to take a smaller percentage.  The pair argued and Powell struck Wassel in the throat with a pool cue stabbing him to death as the filmmaker fought for breath.  Powell dismembered Wassel's body with a hacksaw and stored the severed head in the freezer of his refrigerator.  Afterwards, the producer attended the screening of Firedancer.

 The following evening, a Nassau County police officer made a routine stop of a motorist driving a van erratically with its lights off in the area of Bethpage State Park on Long Island.  "I knew I wasn't dealing with somebody going home from work," commented the patrolman after seeing a shovel, a pickax, and two bloody boxes stuffed with body parts in the vehicle.  The van's driver, Nathan Powell, was arrested and authorities believed their murder case against the producer was air-tight after they retrieved Wassel's head from his freezer.  In the first recorded use of the "9/11 defense," however, Powell claimed he was traumatized by the recent terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.  Wassel, he claimed, told him the attack was "America's just deserts" and made similar pro-Taliban statements against his adopted country.  The Afghani-American filmmaker also allegedly threatened to use his Taliban contacts to have Powell's family killed.  Outraged by Wassel's anti-American remarks, the "patriotic" producer killed the traitor during a fit of temporary insanity.  Powell's accusations, however, did not jibe with Wassel's actions.  In the wake of 9/11, the director took to the streets to film various victims' memorials for a planned documentary entitled New York Shrines.  Wassel had also given U.S. intelligence authorities over 80 hours of film shot in Afghanistan showing roads and mountain passes to aid in the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan.  On the eve of his trial in June 2003, Powell scrapped the dubious "9/11 defense" and pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter.  Sentenced to 20 years in prison, Powell could be out in 15 with time off for good behavior and time already served.  In 2002, Firedancer became Afghanistan's first submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award.  As of April 2014, Nathan Chandler Powell, Inmate #03A4785, was housed in the Auburn Correctional Facility in Auburn, New York.

Melita Powell Rovig -- A Sour Note

During the years 1910-1912 Rovig sang with the New York Metropolitan Opera Company under the stage name "Horatia Powell."  Relocating to Los Angeles, the retired singer started manufacturing an exclusive line of cosmetics targeted at an upscale clientele.  In 1935, she married Charles Rovig, a 53-year-old sales manager for a liquor house.  On the night of January 13, 1936, the pair was enjoying a quiet evening in their apartment at 706 South Mariposa Avenue when Rovig, 44, accused her husband of numerous marital indiscretions.  A loud argument ensued in which Melita Rovig, brandishing a revolver, threatened to kill him.  The liquor salesman disarmed the hysterical woman, hid the gun in a bureau drawer, and retired to bed.  Shortly after daybreak, the opera singer shot the sleeping man in the stomach and chest, and turned the gun on herself.  He survived long enough to notify police and give a dying declaration.  In a note addressed to her sister, Melita Rovig wrote she was contemplating suicide because she feared her husband planned to leave their marriage.

John E. Sampson -- Listen to the Kid

Employed at Desilu Studios as a film editor on the ABC television doctor drama, Ben Casey, Sampson, 50, was at the center of a troubled homelife.  For two years the editor and his wife, Jeane Sampson, 40, had violently quarreled in front of their ten-year-old child, Terry, in their home at 1103 Eilinite Avenue in the Verdugo Hills section of Glendale, California.  On the afternoon of May 6, 1962, the distraught woman phoned her parents in Palm Springs and threatened to end it all.  They begged her to do nothing until they arrived and hastily left to return to Glendale.  During the evening, however, Jeane called her daughter into the bathroom and locked the door.  The child screamed when she saw her mother clutching Sampson's .38-caliber pistol.  Sampson came to the door and, ignoring his daughter's plea, "Go away, Daddy, or you'll get hurt," broke into the bathroom.  During the struggle with his wife the film editor was shot point-blank in the abdomen.  He died hours later during emergency surgery in the Glendale Memorial Hospital.  Jeane could not explain why she locked herself in the bathroom with her child, but told authorities she meant her daughter no harm.  She intended to kill herself, not Sampson, because "I...got tired of being used as a punching bag."  While awaiting trial, Jeane Sampson was found dead from an overdose of barbiturates at her home in Glendale on the weekend of August 11-12, 1962.

David Oliver Huffman -- The Good Samaritan

A veteran actor equally at home in films (F.I.S.T., 1978; The Onion Field, 1979; Blood Beach, 1981; Firefox, 1982) and television movies (Eleanor and Franklin, 1976), Huffman (born May 10, 1945) was currently appearing in San Diego, California in the Old Globe Theatre stage production, Of Mice and Men.  On February 27, 1985, the 40-year-old actor was walking in Balboa Park not far from the theatre when a Canadian couple spotted someone rifling their motor home.  Huffman gave chase to the intruder, but when he failed to return, the tourists assumed the prowler escaped and their protector left the park.  Later that day, Huffman's body was found in a narrow crevice off a nature trail by a group of school children on a field trip.  An autopsy determined that he had been stabbed five times in the chest and abdomen with a screwdriver.  The Canadian tourists notified San Diego police after seeing Huffman's photo in a newspaper account of the murder.  Their description of the intruder combined with fingerprints left in the motor home led to the arrest of Mexican-born Genaro Samano Villanueva, a 16-year-old illegal alien living in the city with relatives since November 1984, was ordered to stand trial as an adult.  While admitting that he stabbed Huffman to death out of fear that his pursuer would either kill or turn him over to police, Villanueva pleaded for forgiveness insisting he never meant to kill the man.  Rejecting a defense motion to place the teenager in the California Youth Authority until the age of 25, Superior Court Jude Norbert Ehrenfreund sentenced Villanueva to the maximum term of 26 years to life on June 2, 1986.  In asking the judge for the stiffest possible sentence, Huffman's wife, Phyllis, stated, "I adored that man for 20 years.  He was life, not just to me but to all of us.  The loss is immeasurable and is impossible to articulate."  As of April 2014, Inmate #D30762 was incarcerated at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison in Corcoran under the name "Genaro Villanueva-Samano."

Raoul J. Levy -- And God Created Stupid

Brigitte Bardot

Born in Antwerp, Belgium, on March 14, 1922, the producer-director who launched the meteoric career of Brigitte Bardot served as a  pilot with the Royal Air Force during WWII before embarking on his own film career as a production assistant for his uncle at RKO on Mexican films after the war.  Returning to Europe as a representative for an American producer, Levy formed his own production company in France in 1950.  After a few undistinguished films, Levy produced Et Dieu Crea la Femme (And God Created Woman) in 1956, which unleashed sex kitten Brigitte Bardot and director Roger Vadim on the international film scene.  Levy used the film's popularity to establish himself as the only French-related film producer to occupy a position in the industry comparable with that of major Hollywood producers.  In 1962, Levy's attempt to make a big-budget Hollywood-type spectacular on the life of Marco Polo ended in financial ruin.  The film, La Fabuleuse Aventure de Marco Polo (Marco the Magnificent), was eventually completed by another director and production company in 1965.  Levy bounced back as a small independent producer-director and made Montgomery Clift's final movie, The Defector, in 1966.

On December 31, 1966, in the resort town of Saint-Tropez, the jilted 44 year old shot himself in the stomach with a rifle before the door of his 24-year-old script girl and textile heiress Isabelle Lons.  He died before arriving at the hospital.  Levy had attempted suicide with sleeping pills years earlier, but was saved when his secretary found him in his office.

Homer S. McFarland -- Suicide Interruptus

In a combination of personal persistence and police ineptitude, the 27-year-old Walt Disney Studios artist was able to finally end his life on his second attempt.  On February 18, 1937, a WPA worker in the Coldwater Canyon section of Los Angeles found McFarland slumped unconscious over the steering wheel of his car.  The man pulled a piece of garden hose from the car's exhaust, opened the door, and summoned police.  The groggy artist was taken to the Van Nuys station and questioned about the suicide attempt, which was apparently motivated by financial troubles.  McFarland was ultimately released, but authorities retained the suicide note found in his car.  The artist drove for
some time before parking on Ventura Boulevard in front of the Encino Country Club where he completed his interrupted carbon monoxide-induced suicide.  The note left to his wife read:  "Blanche, Am going to write with every grind of the motor.  I am approaching death -- terrible? -- not so bad.  My own, I love you, but I can't see the whole thing.  I'm perspiring -- HO!  I wonder how long I can keep this up.  I have got much time -- no courage -- terrible?  What!  Do you realize, my lamb, that I am bust?  I'm perspiring like hell.  Imagine what people think of me.  Not much time left.  I love you."  And in an added postscript:  "Bigger and better world I hope, O God.  Will meet after the encore -- heck!  I need love -- no sickness."

Pauline Armitage -- Read All About It

The Nashville, Tennessee-born actress appeared in several Broadway plays before accepting a role in a ten week roadshow production of Naughty Cinderella starring Irene Bordini.  During the tour, the production's "script doctor," Wilson Mizner, became enamored of the 28-year-old Armitage, and apparently promised to marry her when the show returned to open in New York City's Lyceum Theatre in early 1926.  Shortly after arriving in the city, however, Mizner broke off the engagement, and Armitage left the show at his request.  Ten days prior to her death, a visibly shaken Armitage visited a friend at a newspaper and stood transfixed before the large presses.  "Do you know my reaction to all this," she asked her acquaintance.  "I seem to see printed in great type across the front page of your newspaper, `Pauline Armitage Commits Suicide.'"

On the morning of February 16, 1926, Armitage was in the bedroom of her suite on the 14th floor of the Hotel Shelton at Lexington Avenue and Forty-ninth Street in New York City when the telephone rang in the sitting room.  When the maid left the room to answer the phone, the nightgown-clad actress locked the door, leaped from the window, and fell with a crashing thud on the sidewalk below between two laundry truck drivers.  Notified of the tragedy in Palm Beach, Florida, Mizner denied ever having been engaged to Armitage.

Jeannette Journee -- Sad Death of a Marmoset Lover

Jimmy?

The 30-year-old vaudeville dancer married Henri Journee, a foreign middleweight boxer, over the strong objections of her wealthy physician father in Noble, Illinois.  Quitting their jobs to open a beauty parlor in the Bronx, the couple lost their life savings when the business failed.  Financially ruined, the former fighter took a job as a hairdresser in a New York City beauty shop.  Worried over their finances and distressed by her father's opposition to the marriage, Jeannette Journee became increasingly moody.  At noon on august 3, 1931, Henri Journee returned to their basement apartment at 247 West Seventy-sixth Street to find the door chained and a strong smell of gas seeping from under the door.  Fearing the worst, Journee summoned a policeman and together they forced the door of the apartment.  Inside, they found the former dancer dead in a chair beside the kitchen range, with gas escaping from four open jets.  Prior to taking her life, the woman had removed a pair of love birds, Jeanette and Henri, and Jimmy, a marmoset, into an adjoining sealed room to escape the fumes.  In a note to her husband scrawled on a piece of wrapping paper she wrote, "I have been bad luck to you, so I am leaving you never to return."  In a separate note, for "Dear Pop," she added, "You have killed me.  Give Henri my trunk for being so good to me.  I want to go to the morgue.  Be good to him for my sake."

Wallace McCutcheon -- Have a Drink

The son of a Brooklyn, New York, stage manager, McCutcheon acted in some theatrical productions and also directed two films for Biograph in 1908 (At the Crossroads of Life and At the French Ball) before entering the British army at the outbreak of World War I.  He later transferred to the British Royal Flying Corps where his battlefield heroics earned him the rank of major.  Shortly after sustaining a severe head injury in combat, McCutcheon was dismissed from active service and returned to America with a metal plate in his skull.  In 1917, the war hero married actress Pearl White, famous star of the 1914 Pathe serial The Perils of Pauline.  Together they appeared in the 1919 serial The Black Secret and The Thief (1920).  She divorced him in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1921.

Depressed and unemployed throughout most of the 1920s, the 47-year-old actor shot himself through the right temple with a large caliber handgun in his room at 6326 Lexington Avenue in Hollywood on January 27, 1928.  At the scene, authorities found two cents, several newspaper clippings related to Pearl White's activities abroad, and a note from McCutcheon that read, "Have a drink," under a half-filled gin bottle.