Earl Cavanaugh -- Home Again!

Formerly of the vaudeville team "Cavanaugh and McBride," the 33-year-old comedian had been out of work for four months when, on September 16, 1926, he sent his wife and their 6-year-old daughter to a birthday supper at a local restaurant in the girl's honor.  Alone in their apartment at the Hotel Alpine in New York City, Cavanaugh brooded over the fact that he did not have enough money to buy his daughter a present or to visit his dying mother in Chicago.  When wife and child returned hours later, they found his pajama-clad body face down in bed.  Cavanaugh had strangled himself by tying a valise strap around his neck and fastening the other end to the bedpost.  Cavanaugh's wife denied that he had killed himself, insisting instead that the unemployed vaudevillian had died accidentally while rehearsing a new comedy skit called "Home Again!" in which an estranged husband tries unsuccessfully to hang himself with his belt.

Kadamba Simmons -- Ending Up with a Loser

Born in London in May 1974, Kadmaba (Hindi for "flower of enlightenment") Simmons was better known for her non-stop partying lifestyle than her career as a model and film actress.  Dropping out of school and leaving home, the 16-year-old rented a flat in Notting Hill, West London, and soon became a reqular on the club scene.  Strikingly beautiful, the sultry wannabe attracted the attention of a string of celebrity lovers including Bros singer Matt Goss, record producer Nellee Hooper, rock star Liam Gallagher of Oasis, and by age 21, champion boxer Prince Naseem Hamed.  Although some reports stated Simmons converted to Islam to be "spiritually closer" to the boxer, Hamed broke off the relationship seemingly alarmed by her flamboyant lifestyle characterized by heavy drinking and drug abuse.  Professionally, Simmons modeled in ads for Martini, Pantene shampoo, and appeared in small roles in the films Grim (1995), Mary Reilly (1996), Cash in Hand (1998), Breeders (1998), and The Wonderland Experience (2000).

By 1997, however, Simmons had become increasingly disenchanted with the endless cycle of work and all-night parties.  According to family members, she stopped being the "London party girl," began reading D. H. Lawrence, watched classic films, and gradually transformed into a "daytime girl."  Seeking spiritual fulfillment, Simmons traveled with her sister, Kumari, to India for a six-week holiday in the spring of 1998.  While vacationing in Goa, a former Portuguese colony on the country's west coast, the 24-year-old actress was approached by Yaniv Malka, a 22-year-old former Israeli soldier.  Living in a rented shack, the near penniless Malka was barely surviving on a small
pension from the Israeli army.  Infatuated with Malka, Simmons moved in with him the day after they met.  Obsessed by his lover's beauty, Malka picked fresh flowers for her every morning, and placed them with candlewax formed into the shapes of hears around her pillow before she woke.  When sister Kumari returned to London, Simmons and Malka left India for Berlin where they eked out a living working in a fruit juice stall.  According to Kumari, one month in Germany alone with Malka convince the actress she had made a terrible mistake.  Malka was too reliant on her, she said, and things had deteriorated to the point where they stayed in different rooms all day and did not speak.

In June 1998, Simmons managed to disengage herself from her lover and returned alone to London.  After receiving several hysterical call from Malka in which he threatened to kill himself, Simmons agreed to see him.  The night before their fateful meeting, she told her father, "He is a loser.  I don't want to end up with a loser."  On June 13, 1998, Malka arrived in London and, after spending the day with Simmons, went with her to a friend's borrowed flat in Islington, North London.  The next day, Simmons' naked body was found in the blood-smeared apartment hanging in the shower from a leather strap.  Later that morning, police spent ninety minutes coaxing a sobbing Malka off the
fifth-floor ledge of a residential block at University College, Central London.  In custody, the former soldier denied strangling his lover to death in anger over her desire to end their relationship.  Instead, he claimed her death was the culmination of a suicide pact they had forged in Germany.  After making love in the apartment, she asked him to strangle her.  Unable to do so with his hands, Malka used a ligature fashioned from a luggage strap to hang her in the shower.  Afterwards, he repeatedly slashed his wrists, arms, and neck with a knife in an unsuccessful attempt to complete the pact.  None of the injuries were remotely life-threatening.  He was still allegedly trying to keep his side of the bargain when police foiled his suicide attempt.  At trial in London's Old Bailey in March 1999, the prosecution discounted the suicide pact theory maintaining Simmons was manually strangled to death by a jealous lover then placed in the shower with a noose around her neck.  The subsequent "faked" suicide attempt was made to bolster Malka's claim of a mutual death pact.  Displaying no emotion, Malka was sentenced to life imprisonment on March 29, 1999.  In February, 2000, an Appeals Court upheld the killer's conviction.

Marguerite Calvert -- Zing Went the Strings of Her Heart

Calvert, a popular 24-year-old vaudeville dancer and violinist, was married for less than a year to W.D. Harris, a New York-based automobile tire dealer, when she took her life in San Francisco's Palace Hotel on October 22, 1922.  Days before arriving at the hotel following an exhausting cross-country car trip, the pair had visited the grave of Calvert's brother in Portland, Oregon.  At the hotel, Calvert's depression and fatigue were exacerbated by a quarrel with her husband over his attentions to other women.  Good-naturedly teased by another couple in attendance, Calvert burst into hysterics, and locked herself in the bathroom.  When a night clerk opened the door, the alarmed spectators found the violinist lying on the bathroom floor with the muzzle of a gun pressed against her heart.  Ignoring their pleas not to harm herself, Calvert pulled the trigger.

George Fitzalan Bronson Howard -- God's Man

Howard (born in Howard County, Maryland, on January 7, 1884) was already a successful playwright (The Snobs, 1911) and novelist (God's Man, 1915) when he volunteered for service in the British Army in 1915.  Commissioned as a lieutenant in the Intelligence division, he was on active duty in France in 1916 when a mustard gas shell exploded near him.  The writer spent five hours in the field before a stretcher could reach him.  For the next 18 months Howard recuperated from the effects of mustard gas poisoning in a British hospital.  Though released, Howard's health was shattered and he was addicted to the drugs the doctors had prescribed for his condition.

 In Hollywood, Howard wrote the screenplays for The Power of Evil (1916) and The Spy (1917) while several of his stories were made into films (Come Through, 1917; Queen of the Sea, 1918; Sheltered Daughters, 1921; Don't Shoot, 1922; Borrowed Finery, 1925).  In 1922, Howard, 37, was working in Hollywood developing film stories for Universal when his estranged second wife and young child were living in Baltimore, Maryland.  In the early morning hours of November 20, 1922, Howard and his secretary, J.C. Dubois, were working on a film treatment for Universal in the writer's apartment at 2500 Highland Avenue in Los Angeles.  According to Dubois, Howard repeatedly questioned him about the effects of gas on the human body and how long it would take to die of gas poisoning.  Dubois left the writer in apparent good spirits around 2:00 A.M.

 Around 8:30 A.M. other tenants, alarmed by the smell of gas, entered Howard's fume-filled apartment through an outside window.  Howard's body, dressed in pajamas and a bathrobe, was found in a small closet adjoining his bedroom.  A long length of rubber tube clutched in his hand ran from under the closet door across the floor of the bedroom to an open gas outlet.  Howard had sealed the window crevices with paper.  A letter written in pencil to his wife, Jean Bronson, was found on a bedside table next to a copy of his novel, God's Man.  In it, Howard cryptically referred to his drug addiction and his inability to send her money.  It read (in part):

"Jean:

I got your unsteady and insulting letter.  Now there is no use in writing me in such a crazy strain.  I am going to send the baby $10 a week until I manage to get on my feet.  Whenever I can I will send you some but after what has happened I think you have a nerve to expect me to send you anything...Do you realize that the money I was sending you is being eaten up altogether by what I have to pay for what you know about?  If you worry me too much, I will probably give up in disgust."

Florence Reynolds -- Through with Mankind Forever

Reynolds (real name Walsh) fell in love with fellow vaudevillian Bruce Healy while acting with him in the Reynolds Trio.  Despite learning that Healy was married, she pawned $500 worth of her jewelry and borrowed money against a life insurance policy to post his bail on a bigamy charge.  Healy repaid the kindness by leaving her.  On May 25, 1928, a housekeeper found the young actress' body in her fourth-floor room at 148 West Seventy-eighth Street in New York City.  Reynolds, clad in a nightgown, lay on the floor with her mouth pressed over an open floor board gas jet.  Two notes found on a dresser in the sparsely furnished room asked that her family be notified and gave instructions for disposing of certain personal effects.  Also lying on the dresser was a five page letter neatly written in green ink addressed "Dear Uncle Charlie."  In it, Reynolds wrote:  "I wish God would take me for I don't see how I can go on and on.  My faith in mankind is gone.  I am through with mankind forever."

Evelyn Nelson -- Hang On Wally, I'm Coming

Often paired with Jack Hoxie in Western melodramas (Cyclone Bliss, 1921; The Crow's Nest, 1922; Desert Rider, 1923), Nelson was in her late teens when she met and fell in love with motion picture he-man Wallace Reid.  The pair began an affair that continued until the married Reid, fearful that the scandal might ruin his career, broke it off.  The relationship resumed after Reid was granted an interlocutory divorce decree, but again fearing negative press, he finally called it quits.  Ravaged by drug addiction, the so-called "King of Paramount" died in a sanatorium on January 18, 1923.  Devastated by Reid's death, the 23-year-old actress tried to go on living, but as The Los Angeles Examiner reported on June 17, 1923, "heart broken, (she) gave up the struggle and embarked on the Great Adventure."  The day before, Nelson's body was found in a gas-filled room in her luxuriously appointed bungalow as 6231 De Longpre Avenue in Hollywood.  In a note addressed to her mother Nelson begged for forgiveness, adding that she had no reason for the suicide except that "I am tired."  In another note penned moment before her death, the actress wrote:  "I am just about gone, and will soon be with my friend, Wally Reid."

Joseph Walter Leopold -- Death Via Enchilada Sauce

A member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) since 1942, Leopold was a veteran novelty songwriter ("Oh!  How She Can Dance," 1919) who, as a piano accompanist to his wife, singer Emma Carus, toured vaudeville for many years.  In the 1950s, the songwriter changed professions to work as a collection investigator for loan and credit companies.  On December 28, 1956, the 66 year old was paying for groceries in a Hollywood market at 1921 N. Cahuenga
Avenue when a gunman burst into the store and demanded money from the counter attendant.  The robber scooped $50.00 out of the register and was fleeing the scene when Leopold tossed a can of enchilada sauce at the gunman striking him in the shoulder.  The man whirled, fired a single shot from a .38-caliber pistol, and ran to the parking lot where an accomplice waited in a light green sedan.  Leopold, struck in the left temple, died a few minutes after being ambulanced to Hollywood Receiving Hospital.  Shooter Charles F. Neely, 26, and wheelman Norman Golland, 30, were arrested the next day.  Both pleaded guilty to the murder and were sentenced to terms of life imprisonment.

Lew Mason -- They Always Leave a Note

"The people who may know me
Will not miss me when I'm gone,
They have sacrificed their birthright,
With their souls put up in pawn.
I've put my house in order,
Insofar as just I can
And I'm going to meet--I wonder!
But I'm going like a man."

Mason, an assistant casting director for film producer Edward Small, penned his intention to make the "Grand Exit" weeks before inhaling gas in his room at the Christie Hotel in Los Angeles on May 18, 1924.  Friends found the unconscious film man next to an empty bottle of champagne and clutching a picture of an unidentified woman.  In a note filled with several postscripts, Mason left all his belongings to Marcella Daly, a young film actress.  Prefacing the suicide letter with "This is the note.  They always leave some kind of note," Mason observed that life was too fast paced for him, and advised his readers never "to lose their sense of humor."  Mason was removed to the Hollywood Hospital, but died the next day after failing to respond to blood transfusions taken from two of his actor friends.

Alexander Winkler -- A Perfect Wedding Gift

A dancing instructor and manager of the vaudeville act Winkler's Madcaps, the 42-year-old divorced father of an 18-year-old daughter violently opposed the young woman's upcoming marriage to a waiter when, he argued, a prominent artist wished to marry her.  Following a quarrel with his ex-wife over the proposed nuptials, Winkler inhaled gas at his apartment at 342 West Forty-fifth Street in New York City on November 18, 1916.  Winkler was found holding a picture of his mother in one hand and a miniature of his wife in the other.  He left several letters and in one, addressed "To the Public," wrote:  "He died without leaving one cent of debt."  Prior to taking his life, Winkler decided to leave his daughter a macabre wedding gift.  In a telegram sent to his wife shortly before inhaling the fatal gas, he wrote:  "Lilly's wedding present will be ready for shipment when you receive this."  The shaken woman vowed, "Even his death will not prevent her from marrying the man she loves."

Yolanda Presburg -- Hypochondria in High C

The wife of a wealthy Chicago banker, Presburg, 41, sang for a decade in the chorus of the Chicago Civic Opera Company and was a member of the New York Grand Opera Choral Alliance.  Obsessed with the notion that she had tuberculosis, the Hungarian-born singer checked into a sanitarium in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Despite being given a clean bill of health by specialists, she refused to accept their diagnosis.  On August 20, 1926, Presburg boarded a North Shore Line train in the Windy City bound for Milwaukee.  Registering at the Wisconsin Hotel as "Yolanda Sugar," Presburg took a 7th floor room overlooking an inner court.  At 2:50 P.M. guests heard a thunderous crash as the singer slammed into the roof of the hotel ballroom.  Barely conscious, Presburg murmured, "I am from Chicago, my husband is not to blame," a phrase she reiterated during the five hours she clung to life in Milwaukee's Emergency Hospital.  In her room at the hotel two notes were found, one in Hungarian to her husband, the other addressed to police.  The message to authorities read:  "Do not blame me for this act and do not blame my husband.  I am sorry to do it.  I have been suffering from what the doctors call T.B.  My husband has done all he can do to cure me, sent me to sanitoria in the south, but it is no use."

Viola Gordon Munro -- It's Raining Blood

Viola, 55, a former stage actress, and husband Alfred, 75, a one-time theatrical representative of the Schubert organization in Boston, occupied a modest apartment over a two-car garage in Norwich, Connecticut.  On the morning of June 21, 1949, their downstairs neighbor noticed blood dripping from the ceiling as he went to get his car out of the garage.  Police entered the Munro's apartment and found the former theatrical manager dead in bed from a gunshot wound to the head inflicted by his wife, who had then fired a fatal shot through her right ear.  Facing imminent eviction, the pair had been unemployed for several months and known to be heavily drinking.

Percy C. Melrose -- Always Blame the Wife

Melrose, 57, a former circus performer in a bicycle act, made a small fortune in the teens manufacturing patent medicine in the Columbus, Ohio, area.  Married with two children, Melrose began an affair with his neighbor's wife, Eva Tootle, the 27-year-old mother of a small child.  The affair ended in tragedy on May 16, 1918, with the discovery of their bullet-riddled bodies in the front seat of Melrose's car near Lockbourne, just south of Columbus.  A passing motorist found the pair when she noticed that the windshield of the car was covered with newspapers and its curtains were drawn.  Ballistics and a note found on the car's rear seat told the story of a murder-suicide.  According to authorities, Melrose shot Tootle three times in the head during a struggle (as evidenced by defensive wounds on the woman's hands) then fired one bullet into his head just behind the right ear.  A note found at the scene read, in part:  "Facts:  A ruined home and a ruined life, all because my wife was so extravagant.  We have not loved each other for three or four years.  I love little Eva because she is so pure.  God have mercy on my soul and grant that my wife will rear my two children in the right way."

Jerome Cady -- I Did It. I Did It. I Did It

Cady (born in West Virginia in 1904) worked for several Los Angeles daily newspapers prior to becoming one of the top screenwriters at 20th Century-Fox.  His screen credits include Guadalcanal Diary (1943), The Purple Heart (1944), Forever Amber (1947), and the classic James Stewart film Call Northside 777 (1948).  On November 8, 1948, less than one week after suffering a severe heart attack, Cady 44, was entertaining some friends aboard his yacht, the Harp, moored in Avalon Bay off Santa Catalina Island in California.  According to witnesses, Cady entered the cruiser's galley, poured sleeping pills into his hand, and gulped them down with a glass of water.  As the dying screenwriter writhed in agony on his bunk, he kept moaning, "I did it.  I did it.  I did it."  Shortly before dying Cady instructed a friend to call his wife and tell her he had just committed suicide.

Harry Lud Hamilton -- 4 Cents and a Note

Eden Park Reservoir

A native of Marysville, Kentucky, Hamilton, 65, spent 43 years in theatrical work and served as manager of Gus Sun's vaudeville houses throughout Ohio.  In his career, he was also an advance manager for stage productions, carnivals, and circuses, and business manager to former heavyweight boxing champion of the world Bob Fitzsimmons, and magicians Howard Thurston and Blackstone.  The veteran showman, however, had been unemployed since the beginning of 1940 and living in a room at the Oxford Hotel in Cincinnati since June 4.  Shortly after 7:00 A.M. on November 18, 1940, a passerby stopped to investigate a coat and hat hanging on the west wall of the Eden Park Reservoir in that city.  Nearby, Hamilton's body was visible close to shore standing upright in some ten feet of water.  Authorities found 4 cents and a note outlining his burial arrangements in the showman's pockets.  Personal effects in Hamilton's hotel room included insurance policies and several notes.  One to a hotel clerk read:  "What is the use of fooling myself any longer.  I will take the step that will part us.  You will find my body over near the band stand in the park.  I am going with my chin up.  No regrets!  Good wishes." Police determined that Hamilton probably drowned himself two days before he was found.

Roy Edgar Schuster -- The Sing Sing Minstrel

A former vaudeville dancer, Schuster, 26, took a job as a dance instructor for theatrical producer Ned Wayburn in New York City to support his one-time actress wife, Amy, and their four-year-old daughter.  The four-year marriage crumbled in mid-1930.  Schuster was living alone and struggling to pay a court ordered alimony settlement of $40 a week while attempting to reconcile with his wife when he lost his job in January 1931.  On the morning of May 2, 1931, the dancer showed up at the fourteenth-floor office of his wife's attorney, Israel Siegel, at 49-51 Chambers Street to make one last attempt at reconciliation.  Schuster argued with his estranged wife in an outer office of the law firm and became even more irate when Siegel told him to stay put while he conferred alone with his client in a private office.  Schuster drew a .32-caliber revolver and shot his wife twice in the head killing her instantly.  Before the crazed dancer fled past dazed office workers he emptied his gun leaving Siegel with two flesh wounds in the arm.  On May 28, 1931, the former dancer was arrested in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he was living under the name "Anderson" and writing a book on dancing.  While awaiting extradition to New York on a murder charge, Schuster insisted he only went to the law office with the intention of killing himself if the reconciliation failed.  "I guess I'll get the electric chair," he told authorities, "for no jury will listen to my story.  But the killing was accidental...I went to the door and I supposed Siegel was trying to dissuade my wife from coming back to me.  I pulled out a gun to end it all.  But Siegel thought I was going to shoot him and he rushed toward me.  We grappled and the gun went off several times as we scuffled.  When I regained my senses my wife was dead and Siegel was gone."  Schuster was found guilty of second-degree murder on October 22, 1931, and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.  At the state penitentiary in Ossining, New York, Schuster was a member of the Sing Sing Minstrels, a group of talented prisoners who put on public shows with proceeds earmarked for a relief fund for families of inmates.

Claude Bornais -- Another Destroyed Him

Claude Bornais

On the morning of August 24, 2000, horrified neighbors of Canadian-born Claude Bornais, 65, and his 51-year-old Dominican wife, Carmen, witnessed the knife-wielding woman chase the big bandleader-jazz musician of of their home, and down the street of a gated community in Boca Raton, Florida.  When Claude Bornais finally crumpled to the pavement he had been gravely wounded from at least 20 slash marks and stab wounds ranging from the top of his head downwards.  The tip of the knife blade broke off in his body.  Bornais died the following day and Carmen was charged with second-degree murder.  She told police her husband of eight month had been abusive, and that she had merely acted in self-defense after Bornais had attempted to stab her.  A sheriff's report, however, indicated the wounds on her left arm looked to be self-inflicted.  Although the marriage appeared outwardly tranquil according to the bandleader's professional associates, a note found in Bornais' car after his death listed 21 domestic problems with his wife.  Bornais wrote, "(she) Cannot fill out job application," "(her) closets and drawers (are in) total disarray," and complained that she spoke little English, and was unable to read street signs or music.  The laundry list of complaints closed with the cryptic entry, "Don't let others destroy me!"

Attorneys for Carmen, a hairstylist in Boca Raton, mounted a "battered spouse defense" arguing

Carmen Bornais (Florida Dept. of Corrections)

Bornais was such a controlling tyrant that he forced his wife to give him all her money while physically punishing her for offenses as minor as bringing him the wrong brand of beer.  Insanely jealous by Carmen's account, the bandleader barred her from taking English lessons because he feared she might meet Latin men.  Often, she claimed, Bornais dragged her by the hair, slapped her, and afterwards begged her not to leave him.  The prosecution countered this image of the battered spouse justifiably driven to protect herself from an abusive husband, by casting Carmen as a "weeping-but-wily" woman attempting to manipulate events to stay out of the penitentiary.  On February 13, 2002, a jury rejected Carmen's battered spouse claim and found her guilty of second-degree murder.  After hearing the verdict, she fell to her knees and prayed.  In June 2002, Carmen Bornais was sentenced to the maximum prison term of 20 1/2 years and, following her release, ordered placed on probation for another 20 years.  As of January 2014, she was listed by the Florida Department of Corrections as serving her sentence in minimum security at the Hernando Correctional Institution in Brooksville with a projected release date of January 22, 2018.

Murray M. Steele -- Saturday in the Park

Three days after Mabel Foy, a vivacious 22-year-old divorcee and vaudeville actress, turned down his proposal of marriage, Steele, the 38-year-old former manager of San Francisco's Kinemacolor Motion Picture Company, sent a bunch of white roses to her apartment in that city on September 28, 1912.  The accompanying note read, "I am going to the Park, sweetheart."  Later that day, Steele was found under the bridge just inside the Golden Gate Park, a victim of a self-administered dose of cyanide of potassium.  He died en route to Park Emergency Hospital.  Inside the man's clothes, authorities found $114.92 in cash, a picture of his beloved, and notes to his father and Foy.  To the actress he wrote:  "My Dear Little Mabel:  I am still so sorry and brokenhearted about your not wanting to marry me, that I do not care to live any longer.  I wish you good luck, and may God bless you.  Your devoted friend, Murray M. Steele."  Foy, who previously knew Steele back in his hometown of St. Louis, explained that the only reason she had not married him was that having been divorced for only three weeks she feared a bigamy charge.

Robert Lees -- Saying Sorry Isn't Enough

On June 13, 2004, Morley Hall Engelson, a 67-year-old retired physician, was on the phone with a Southwest Airlines booking agent when the conversation was abruptly ended by a commotion.  The agent immediately notified the Los Angeles Police Department and after they arrived minutes later at Engelson's home on Stanley Avenue they spotted his body through a window.  Forcing entry, officers verified that Engelson was dead from multiple stab wounds then made the grisly discovery of a severed head in another room of the house.  While examining the scene, investigators received a call from the Los Angeles Fire Department reporting that they had responded to a call at a neighboring house in the 1600 block of North Courtney Avenue belonging to Robert Lees, 91.  Lees, who had served in Frank Capra's Army film unit during World War II, was best known as the comedy film writer (often with partner Frederic I. Rinaldo) of scripts for Abbott and Costello (Hold That Ghost, 1941; Buck Privates Come Home, 1947; The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap, 1948; Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, 1948; Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, 1951; Comin' Round the Mountain, 1951; and the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis vehicle Jumping Jacks, 1952).  The laughter and the scriptwriter's film career, however, abruptly ended on April 10, 1951, when actor Sterling Hayden named him to the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC).  Lees joined the Communist Party in 1939 and steadfastly refused to name names when called before the committee.  Blacklisted by Hollywood, the studio attempted to removed his name from the credits of Jumping Jacks, but was prevented by the Screenwriters Guild.  Lees was working as a maitre d' in the dining room of the Hotel Westerner in Tucson, Arizona, when the Martin and Lewis smash opened in a theatre up the street.  Under the alias "J.E. Selby" Lees wrote episodes for the television programs Rawhide, Flipper, and ironically given future events, Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Kevin Lee Graff

Lee's longtime friend, Helen Colton, arrived to pick him up for a social function to discover the scriptwriter's bloody and headless corpse lying under a comforter with a big heavy drawer on top of him.  Police theorized that the random killer decapitated Lees, hopped a backyard fence between the properties carrying the writer's head, and murdered Engelson.  A massive manhunt in the surrounding Hollywood neighborhood culminated in a televised news conference on June 15 in which police showed a photograph of 27-year-old drifter, Kevin Lee Graff.  Within minutes of the broadcast, a security guard at nearby Paramount notified police that a man answering to that description was currently outside the studio's front gate talking to himself and making obscene gestures at passing cars and pedestrians.  Graff was quickly taken into custody by LAPD officers, but during subsequent questioning admitted that he was high on methamphetamines and Ecstasy and had no memory of the horrific murders.  "If I did this man, I just want to say I'm sorry," he told detectives.  "I'm so sorry.  I know saying sorry isn't enough.  It isn't going to do nothing.  But I'm no criminal, dude.  I'm a really good kid.  I don't know how all this happened."  Graff escaped a possible death penalty by pleading guilty on February 26, 2008, to two counts of first-degree murder along with eight other charges including torture, mayhem, and burglary.  In April 2008, the killer was sentenced to two life terms without the possibility of parole and ordered to pay $9,000 in restitution and court fees.  As of January 2014, Graff is incarcerated at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California.

Evelyn Childs -- All for Love

Lawrence S. Mueller, 32, a sign painter-artist from the California desert town of El Centro, married New York showgirl Evelyn Childs (real name Evelyn Pearl Tatum) on March 26, 1927.  The 25-year-old performer quickly tired of life away from the footlights and, on May 26, went to Los Angeles following a quarrel with her husband.  Checking into the Rosegrove Hotel at 532 Flower Street, Childs made the rounds of Hollywood studios and theatrical agencies looking for work.  Distraught and anxious to save their marriage, Mueller sent a flurry of letters and telegrams addressed to his "golden girl" begging her to come back.  Childs advised him not to come to Los Angeles on the pretext that it might discourage producers from casting her.  In a final letter before driving to the "City of Angels," Mueller pleaded with his wife for "one week of happiness" together during which time he would look for work in the city and, if they still proved incompatible, would accept a position in Chicago.  On the morning of May 30, 1927, the maid at the Rosegrove let herself into Childs' room to clean.  The young showgirl, clad only in a flimsy pink nightgown, lay on the bed strangled to death with a bedsheet.  Mueller's nude, lifeless body was found a few feet away suspended by a bedsheet wound tightly about his neck attached to a closet door lintel.  The record "All for Love" was on a running phonograph beside the bed.  Among numerous letters chronicling the buildup to the tragedy was a picture of Mueller with the following written across the corner:  "To Pearl, my perfect pal.  Yesterday, today, and I hope, forever."

Charles J. Chic -- Rubber Death Mask

The Philadelphia-born Chic (real name Schick) came to Los Angeles in his youth, attended the University of Southern California, and began his motion picture career in 1918 as a prop boy at Universal.  Serving his film apprenticeship as an assistant director under William Duncan and W. S. Van Dyke, he moved to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1927 and by 1938 had worked his way up the studio ladder to become a $1,000 a week production manager.  Although active in his work, the 48 year old had recently worried over his poor health.  On April 26, 1941, Chic's Japanese servant girl found a brief note addressed to her after arriving at her employer's Beverly Hills home at 151 1/2 Bedford Drive.  It read:  "I have killed myself.  First call Helen Lawson [his secretary].  If you can't get her call Rachel Chic [his ex-wife].  I thought that the garage would be too noisy, so I'm near the lot in Beverlywood."  Police found the production manager's body under his limousine at a dead-end road at South Beverly Drive and Oakmore Street in Beverly Hills.  Chic has fashioned a death mask out of a rubber hot water bottle by slashing its bottom and stretching the opening tightly over his face.  Next, he fitted the funnel end of the container over the car's exhaust pipe after starting the motor.

Carl C. Erickson -- Divorce, the Hard Way

A contract writer at Warner Bros., Erickson, 27, started as a reader at the studio in 1930 before collaborating on the screenplays of Silver Dollar (1932), Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), Easy to Love (1934), Sweet Music (1935). and Black Fury (1935).  On August 29, 1935, Erickson's body was found by two teenaged hikers slumped beneath a eucalyptus tree off Wonder View Place, a popular lover's lane area in the hills near Hollywood Lake overlooking the Warner Bros. studio.  The writer had shot himself in the base of the skull just above the neck with a 2.9mm Luger automatic found under the body.  The coroner estimated that Erickson had been dead about two days.  In his home at 2139 Fairfield Avenue, detectives found an opened letter from an attorney in Reno, Nevada, informing Erickson that his wife had established residence there "for the purpose of securing a divorce on grounds of mental cruelty."

John C. Olsen -- Don't Look in the Attic

Ole Olsen, father to a suicide

Despondent over the death of his 5-year-old daughter from leukemia two years before, Olsen, the 38-year-old television actor and son of movie comedian Ole Olsen of Olsen and Johnson fame, was found dead in the attic of his apartment in Flushing, Queens, New York, on May 5, 1956.  Last seen alive on April 13 when he apparently left home to work in Los Angeles, Olsen was reported missing by his wife five days later when she failed to hear from him.  During his absence, the woman stayed with her sister, and together on May 5 they visited the apartment at 69-01 150th Street to pick up some draperies. They found Olsen in the attic, a narrow air space above the ceiling, surrounded by a pitcher of water, three empty bottles of sleeping pills, and a suitcase.  A police examiner estimated that the actor had been dead about five days.

Jeanette Lafferty -- HE Took Her Off

Minutes after dropping her boyfriend off to meet a train at the Thirtieth Street Station in Philadelphia on August 14, 1950, the 24-year-old singer paid her toll at the Camden, New Jersey, bridge, drove 20 feet from the booth, and parking amidst bridge traffic, pressed the muzzle of a .22-caliber rifle against her left temple and pulled the trigger.  Lafferty, an elementary school teacher in Woodbury, New Jersey, died in Cooper Hospital three and a half hours later.  In the bloodstained car, authorities found five suitcases filled with clothes, and postcard sized photographic cards advertising the "Lafferty Sisters," Jeanette and her sister Beulah who, with a ventriloquist's dummy described as the "third member of the family," entertained on local radio and in private "Temperance Engagements Only."  A note found in her handbag read:  "I'm done living.  God put me on earth.  He is taking me off because I've failed miserably."

Jack Buchanan -- Benny and the Gas Jets

The 6 foot, 4 inch contortionist was booked at the Cat and Fiddle at 1345 Central Avenue in Cincinnati, Ohio, when he committed suicide in his apartment next door to the nightclub on July 25, 1941.  After Buchanan, 24, failed to appear for his show, the club's owner called and found the contortionist with his head covered in a blanket draped over an open gas range in the owner read:  "Benny, I tried the bath tub, but it wouldn't work.  Maybe I'll have better luck with the gas."  In a separate note, Buchanan asked God's forgiveness for his act.

Edward Mansfield -- Very Good, Eddie

Elsie Orr, 24, and sister, Helen Stolte, were known theatrically in the Bath Beach section of Brooklyn, New York, as the Carr Sisters.  Expert swimmers and divers since the age of 12, the pair was members of a water carnival show managed by Edward Mansfield, and following a two year run, were together again in the chorus of Very Good, Eddie.  Mansfield became obsessed with Helen Stolte, recently separated from her husband, but was opposed by Orr who warned her sister against having any involvement with him.  Orr was married less than three weeks to Edward Orr, a member of the Canadian Flying Corps, when Mansfield invited Stolte to Metuchen, New Jersey to pick up a car there he had promised to give her.  Suspicious of his intentions, Orr accompanied her sister to Metuchen on June 15, 1918.  Mansfield told the pair that the car was in a forest outside the town and drove them to a remote area near a rubber factory.  Stolte waited in the car while Elsie Orr walked into the woods with the theatrical manager to retrieve the vehicle.  Fifteen minutes later, Stolte heard moans coming from the woods.  Investigating, she found the theatrical manager standing beside a stream holding a bloody pen knife, his throat gashed, and drinking from a bottle.  Asked by Stolte where her sister was, Mansfield ominously replied, "Where she will never go on the road again."  Stolte fled the scene, returning minutes later with the police.  Mansfield lay unconscious on the ground from a near fatal dose of paris green while, nearby, Orr was found in a clump of bushes with her throat slit.  Mansfield expired from the overdose later that night in Metuchen's St. Peter's Hospital.

Kid Thomas -- Why He Sings the Blues

An obscure early blues and rock 'n' roll performer heavily influenced by Little Richard, Kid Thomas (a.k.a. Tommy Lewis/Louis) was born Louis Thomas Watts on June 20, 1934 in Sturgis, Mississippi.  The family moved to Chicago when Thomas was 7 and as a teen he took harmonica lessons from Little Willie Smith, a minor bluesman in the city.  By the late 1940s and early 1950s Thomas was playing harmonica at various blues clubs in Chicago sharing the stage with the likes of Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, and Elmore James.  Signed by the local King-Federal label in 1955, the harmonica playing blues singer cut two singles ("Wolf Pack" and "The Spell"), both flops.  In 1956, after a stint in Wichita, Kansas, Thomas broadened his musical horizons and moved into rock 'n' roll affecting a processed pompadour in the style of Little Richard.  In Los Angeles in early 1959, Thomas cut two singles for Modern Records for which he is best known today -- "You are an Angel" and the aptly titled "Rockin' this Joint Tonight."  The label quickly folded and the record was never promoted.  Five years passed before Thomas, renamed Tommy Louis and the Rhythm Rockers, recorded two singles for Muriel -- "The Hurt Is On" and "Wail, Baby, Wail!"  Again, the records failed.  Throughout the mid- to late-1960s Kid Thomas performed at private parties and in clubs like the Cozy Lounge in South East L.A.  One night at the Cozy Lounge, the owner of Cenco Records saw Thomas perform and brought him in the studio to record his last singles -- "(You are an) Angel" and the instrumental, "Willowbrook."  Like Modern Records, however, Cenco Records tanked.

Kid Thomas, the poor man's Little Richard, was operating a moderately successful lawn care service in Beverly Hills when what was left of his life forever changed.  On September 3, 1969, Lou T. Watts (Kid Thomas), 35, was driving his van in the 300 block of South Doheny Drive in Beverly Hills, whe he accidentally struck a child riding a bicycle.  Ethan Friedman, 10, died of his injuries later that afternoon.  The boy's father, Eugene K. Friedman, pressed police and requested the district attorney to file manslaughter charges.  Although Thomas possessed five driver's licenses (four obtained by fraudulent means), police were only able to revoke his license.  In the absence of witnesses to the accident, the district attorney refused to prosecute citing insufficient evidence.  Friedman hired a private investigator to tail the bluesman.  On March 2, 1970, police (acting on an "anonymous" tip) arrested Thomas for driving on a revoked license.  Friedman was present in court when Thomas came up on charges, but the case was postponed until April 13.  That day, Eugene Friedman waited in the parking lot of the public library across the street from City Hall for the arrival of the man he blamed for the death of his only child.  Immediately upon his arrival, Kid Thomas was confronted by the distraught father.  The men spoke briefly and then Friedman pulled a 9mm automatic pistol from a briefcase and fired point-blank into the bluesman.  Thomas ran across the street toward the rear entrance of the police station with Friedman in pursuit still squeezing off rounds.  Thomas fell to the curb, but a stray shot struck Beverly Hills Police Sgt. John Carden in the leg as he was standing at the rear door of the station.  Friedman dropped his gun and was arrested without incident.

Lou T. Watts, nominally well-known in certain musical circles as Kid Thomas, was pronounced dead at 9:20 A.M. at UCLA Medical Center.  At his first-degree murder trial in August 1970, Friedman faced the death penalty and a charge of assault with a deadly weapon in the shooting of Officer Carden.  The grieving father testified that he believed his son was standing next to him when he confronted Thomas to plead with him to stop driving.  When Thomas assumed what Friedman interpreted as a menacing position the father shot him to protect his son.  Following two days of deliberation, a jury found Friedman guilty of the reduced charge of voluntary manslaughter, but acquitted him on the assault with a deadly weapon charge.  Superior Court Judge Adolph Alexander subsequently placed Friedman on three years probation and ordered him to obtain psychiatric treatment, get a job, and not to use weapons or drugs.  "I do not condone violence in any form," added the judge, "but if it was in my power to reduce the charge to a misdemeanor I would do it."

Recommended Reading

Koda, Cub.  "Kid Thomas."  www.allmusic.com

Simmonds, Jeremy.  The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars:  Heroin Handguns, and Ham Sandwiches.  Rev. ed.  Chicago, Ill.:  Chicago Review, 2008.

Wallace R. Parnell -- Killing to Keep Her?

The son of Fred Russell, a brilliant ventriloquist on the London variety stage of the teens, Parnell briefly followed in his father's footsteps before turning to theatrical promotion.  After mounting several revues like Beauty on Parade in the 1920s and 1930s, he suffered a nervous breakdown in 1934 and was in and out of British bankruptcy courts for the next few years.  Following a family dispute, Parnell went to America and distinguished himself as an advertising wonder boy.  Returning to England, yet another family fracas forced him away this time to Australia where his tireless efforts as a theatrical producer made him an important figure in that country's entertainment industry.  In 1942, Parnell immigrated to America with his sights set upon a theatrical producing career in Hollywood.  His one success, The Beaustone Affair, played for a record setting eleven weeks at the Las Palmas Theatre in 1951.  Four weeks into the show's run, the press revealed that the play's author, "L. Len Rap," was in fact, Parnell (with his name spelled in reverse).  In the mid-1940s, the theatrical producer resuscitated his advertising career and founded a highly profitable direct mail business, Canterbury Press.  He was also president of Karseal, Inc., a wax polish firm sharing offices with his advertising business at 915 W. Highland Avenue in Hollywood.

Known by friends and business associated to be prone to spells of moodiness, Parnell also suffered from a dangerous physical condition in which any bruise he sustained could result in a life-threatening blood clot.  These maladies combined with the recent tumult in his business life, perhaps, offer an insight into the deadly rampage that was to come.  Early in 1954, Parnell became convinced that Beryl Erickson, his executive secretary at Canterbury Press, was responsible for the loss of several big accounts.  Despite being close friends with the 35-year-old divorced mother of three young children, Parnell hired a private investigator to monitor Erickson's activities.  Concurrent with the investigation, the 59-year-old businessman's house was twice burgled.  At Parnell's request, the P.I. purchased his employer a .38-caliber pistol ostensibly for home protection.  The situation apparently improved on April 7, 1954 when Parnell sold a controlling interest in Canterbury to Erickson and instructed his operative to destroy all documents pertaining to the investigation.  He seemed in a good mood and told everyone he was taking his third wife on a trip to Australia before settling down in his home country of England.

Prior to the opening hours on May 19, 1954, the janitor in the Highland Avenue building housing Canterbury Press and Karseal, Inc. made a gruesome discovery.  Beryl Erickson lay face-down on the floor beside her desk dead from a single gunshot wound inflicted at close range to the left side of her face, below the temple.  Parnell's briefcase was beside the body and among the documents found in it was a detective magazine with a front page article entitled, "She Was His Woman and He Was Ready to Kill to Keep Her!"  The businessman's body was found in a nearby executive washroom where he had shot himself in the right temple.  Attempts to explain Parnell's murder of Erickson and his suicide as motivated by any romantic interest between them were discounted by everyone who knew the close friends.

Denise Morelle -- Justice for "Dame Plume"

The popular Canadian actress (born in Montreal in 1927) was a versatile performer equally at home in films (Don't Let It Kill You, 1967; Once Upon a Time in the East, 1974; L'Amour bless, 1975; The Late Blossom, 1977) and theatrical productions (Bonjour, la, Bonjour, L'Impromptu de'Outremont).  It was, however, as the hysterical opera diva "Dame Plume" on the late 1960s children's afternoon television show, La Ribouldingue, that Morelle became an instantly recognizable and beloved figure in Quebec.  As a member of the National Arts Centre's French ensemble under director Andre Brassard, she was scheduled to appear in the premiere of Albertine, en cinqs temps in a role Michel Tremblay had written specially for her, when a tragic confluence of random coincidences resulted in Morelle's brutal death.

"Dame Plume"

On July 17, 1984, the 59-year-old actress visited a ground-floor flat she was considering renting on Sanguinet Street in central Montreal.  The landlord, unable to meet Morelle at the apartment, gave her permission to view the unlocked residence alone.  The next day, friends reported the actress missing to police after she failed to appear for her stage performance in Ste. Adele.  Authorities found Morelle's body in the empty flat savagely beaten with an iron bar which had shattered her nose, jaw and skull.  The killer had heated the bar on a gas stove and sadistically burned her before raping then strangling her to death with a rope.  Montreal police collected liquids from the scene and sent the specimens to a DNA bank in Ottawa where they failed to match any samples on file from known criminals.  Meanwhile, more than 1,000 friends, family, and mourners gathered at St. Clement's Roman Catholic Church in Montreal's east-end for a memorial service for the beloved actress.

Gaetan Bissonnette

The Morelle murder remained unsolved, but not forgotten, by Montreal police for 23 years until the department's collaboration in April 2007 with the producers of a French language television network documentary on the case aired and finally yielded the tip authorities needed to make an arrest in August 2007.  Using advancements in DNA, cold case detectives matched the sample taken at the Morelle crime scene in 1984 with a specimen in 2006 from a "solved" rape.  In both instances, the perpetrator was Gaetan Bissonnette, a 49-year-old lifelong junkie whose criminal career between 1976 and 2006 was comprised of an unbroken record of 19 convictions for offenses like theft and breaking and entering.  Two months after the discovery of Morelle's savaged body, Bissonnette was convicted of breaking into a woman's apartment and raping her at knife-point over a seven-hour period.  Remarkably, the career criminal received only a three year sentence, but the DNA sample from this case led to Bissonnette being charged for first-degree murder in the Morelle homicide.
 
Confronted with the irrefutable DNA evidence, Bissonnette accepted the Crown's offer to allow him to escape trial in exchange for a guilty plea to a second-degree murder with its mandatory life sentence, but with the possibility of parole.  As Bissonnette supplied details of his deadly 1984 encounter with the actress it became painfully aware to everyone that the murder had sprung from pure coincidence, a simple matter of a person having been in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Bissonnette, 26 at the time, was squatting in the vacant unlocked apartment when Morelle entered the flat to view it for possible rental.  While the Crown and Bissonnette's lawyer had previously agreed on the life sentence with no eligibility of parole for at least 14 years, Justice James Brunton took just twenty minutes to overturn the joint sentencing suggestion observing that it was not "harsh enough" given the seriousness of the crime.  In a later proceeding, Bissonnette was ordered to serve 20 years before the possibility of being declared parole eligible in 2027.

Wesley Eddy -- A Boy and His Mother

Eddy (real name Edward Gargiulo) was a versatile vaudeville and nightclub performer who gained renown as the one-time master of ceremonies at the Roxy Theatre in New York City as well as other large movie houses throughout the East.  Subject to fits of despondency since the death of his mother in 1926, the 31-year-old emcee had flowers placed weekly on her grave in St. Michael's Cemetery in Stratford, Connecticut.  During the night of September 16, 1934, Eddy visited the cemetery and shot himself once in the head over his mother's grave.  While police initially suspected foul play when the gun was recovered partially buried in the ground some 20 feet from the body, they decided upon suicide when they found two notes at the scene.  In one addressed to his brother, Eddy wrote:  "Please see that I am buried right away, next to our dear mother."  Authorities reasoned that an individual found Eddy's body prior to the person who notified them and, because of religious scruples, attempted to bury the gun.  The Bridgeport, Connecticut, medical examiner ruled the death a suicide.

Charlotte Carter Flather -- A Peaceful Death

Once touted as the "best dressed girl in New York," Flather, 30, had acted on stage in Turn to the Right under the name "Charlotte Carter" before taking up scenario writing for the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation.  She collaborated on the 1920 film Devil's Garden starring Lionel Barrymore.  When her career as a scenarist fizzled, Flather turned to short story writing, but actually supported herself by working for the Features Syndicate, Inc., interviewing political leaders like Benito Mussolini and Georges Clemenceau.  In 1921, the troubled woman attempted to end her life by drinking veronal laced with opium.  Flather survived for another four years until bankruptcy, ill health, and the failure to find a publisher for a recently completed novel prompted her to try again.  On March 13, 1925, the despondent writer penned eight exit notes, bathed and styled her hair, swallowed a dose of sodium cyanide, and peacefully crossed her hands and died in her New York City hotel room.

Anne Duane -- No Money + No Friends = The Exit

Unable to sustain herself by playing small roles like the maid in the vaudeville act "Cave-Man Love" at the Wintergreen Theatre in 1921, the 19-year-old actress ingested six bichloride of mercury tablet in the restroom of the Pennsylvania Station in New York City on July 3, 1922.  When asked by a physician why she did not tell her friends at the scene of the poisoning, Duane replied, "When you have no money in the theatrical business you have no friends."  Destitute, the actress had not eaten for four days at the time of her suicide attempt.  Duane died on July 8, 1922.  With monies jointly contributed by an actress-friend and the Actors' Fund, Duane was buried at the Evergreen Cemetery.

King D. Gray -- Death, the Great Revelator

At noon on June 30, 1938, a pedestrian walking by a parked car outside the Hollywood post office at 1615 North Wilcox Avenue noticed a man slumped in the vehicle's front seat.  The driver, dead from a single .32-caliber gunshot wound to the chest, was identified as studio cameraman, King David Gray, active in films since 1915 when he shot The College Orphan for Universal Film Manufacturing Company.  Born in Danville, Virginia, on March 9, 1886, Gray photographed over 50 films (The Mark of Cain, 1916; The Scarlet Car, 1917; Forgive and Forget, 1923) in a twenty year career.  From 1932, he worked exclusively for Universal Pictures as either a camera operator (The Invisible Man, 1933) or as second cameraman (The Black Cat, 1934).  When found, the 52-year-old married father of two was holding a letter in his right hand postmarked from New Castle, Pennsylvania bearing the salutation, "Dear Daddy."  Police established the identity of the letter writer as Frances Bleakley, a 29-year-old University of Southern California student once employed in the art department of a Hollywood department store, but now living in Pennsylvania.  During their four year relationship the cameraman passed himself off as unmarried and rented a secret post office box to hide the deception from his family.

Although baffled police ultimately settled on the theory that Gray was shot during a robbery attempt no valuables were taken from the dead man or his car.  The death weapon, a .32-caliber automatic, was retrieved a few days later from a vacant lot at Santa Monica Boulevard and El Centro Street eight blocks from the murder scene.  Ex-convict Joseph L. Chester, considered a suspect in the Gray murder, committed suicide to avoid capture on an unrelated matter on July 20, 1938, following a high speed car chase with authorities in Ventura County.

Max J. Jelin -- Death of a Deadbeat

A former picture exhibitor in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Jelin moved to New York City in the 1940s to try his hand as a theatrical producer.  The career change marked the beginning of a period of bad luck and shady financial dealings that left the producer one of the most despised men in theatre.  Jelin leased the Belasco Theatre, presented flop after flop, and when pressed by the owners for rent, filed numerous court actions to fight dispossession.  The 40-year-old producer was finally ousted in October 1947, but had already leased the International Theatre.  After two flops there, The Magic Touch and the short-lived black musical Calypso, Jelin was in serious tax trouble, owing the Internal Revenue Service some $140,000.

On January 22, 1948, four days after losing the lease on the International, Jelin was home alone in his 13 story apartment at 300 East Fifty-seventh Street when he opened four gas jets on the kitchen stove.  The resulting blast instantly killed the producer and ripped out the walls adjoining two other suites in the new 18 story residential building.  Jelin died owing $12,000 in back rent.

Leslie Ray Raymond -- Brother Bob's Family Affair

Once familiar to Oakland, California, radio audiences as "Brother Bob," Raymond, 41, left the business, relocated to Los Angeles, and worked as a salesman in an air conditioning concern until his complicated personal life ultimately drove him to tragedy.  On December 6, 1935, a motorist in the Palos Verdes Hills off Western Avenue noticed a parked car, engine running, with a 12-foot piece of rubber hose leading from the exhaust pipe in through a window of the vehicle.  Investigators found Raymond's body in the car along with two scrapbooks filled with clippings chronicling his career as "Brother Bob."  In his hat, lying on the seat beside him, was a note addressed to his wife expressing grief and shame over an affair he had been having with his young niece, Esther.

The suicide note read:  "Tubbsy Dear, I have done about every bad thing to you that any one person could--you are going to like Esther.  She is a sweet, sweet girl--she is at a hotel in San Pedro--get her and start her on her way--give her a break--she, too, was wrong because she loved the wrong person--in my Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde existence there has never been anyone like you--be a good gal--here is zero hour and nothing more to say...."

John W. Fletcher -- The Seer Sucker

In 1912 the well-known palmist moved into a luxurious fourth floor suite in Boston's Hotel Pelham at 74 Boylston Street after a crusade against the practice drove him from New York City.  Fletcher, 60, conducted discreet readings there until early 1913 when authorities received a rash of complaints from several young men who accused the seer of attacking them.  An undercover officer managed to secure enough incriminating evidence to have an assault warrant issued against the palmist.  On April 22, 1913, police served the warrant in Fletcher's suite.  According to published reports, Fletcher turned white, moved hesitatingly towards a telephone, but instead of placing a call removed poison from the pocket of his vest and swallowed it.  Seconds later he staggered across the room and fell unconscious to the floor.  Fletcher died two hours later.

Ernest William Steele -- Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down

A trapeze artist with the Ringling Brothers Circus, Steele left the tour and returned to Boston after arguing with his partner.  Soon afterward, the 37-year-old aerialist's marriage to wife Jenny, 28, dissolved under the strain of his jealousy and uncontrollable fits of melancholy.  On January 31, 1915, the acrobat had not lived with his estranged wife and their two young children for 17 months.  As was his custom, Steele picked up the older child every Sunday morning so the boy could spend the day with his grandmother.

While in the 4th floor apartment at 1366 Washington Street that his wife shared with her mother and three grown brothers, Steele took exception with the manner in which she was caring for their 20-month-old son, David.  After making a few insulting remarks to his wife, Steele whipped out a homemade blackjack from his pocket and struck her three times in the head.  A scuffle broke out between the acrobat and two of her brothers, but Steele wrenched himself free and, scooping up his infant son, stepped out of the window onto the ledge of the apartment building.  Moments later, he tossed the child to the street below in full view of a crowd of worshipers leaving church after mass.  Steele, brandishing a hunting knife, re-entered the apartment long enough to threaten, "I've got rid of one of them, and now I'll get the other," before retreating back onto the narrow ledge.  When a policeman attempted to move toward him, Steele dropped the knife, put his arms to his side, and dove headfirst to his death.  Remarkably, both mother and child survived.

Ward C. Fritz -- Hard Landing

With partner Betty Wetenkamp, Fritz (under his professional name "Paul Ward") was a well-known stage, ballroom, and nightclub dancer in Omaha, Nebraska.  In 1937, the pair danced in a benefit for a "free shoe fund" sponsored by the local newspaper, The World-Herald.  On May 15, 1938, the 22-year-old dancer left the home he shared with his parents in good spirits and took a taxicab to a nearby airfield, Dodge Park, in Council Bluffs, Iowa.  Fritz bought a ticket for an aerial sightseeing tour, making a point to tell the pilot that he preferred to be the only passenger in the two-seater, open cockpit plane.  The plane took off from the field and had reached its cruising speed of 100 miles per hour when, 2,000 feet up, the pilot noticed that Fritz had climbed out onto the lower wing of the biplane.  Before the pilot could shout, the dancer jumped, hurtled through the air, and smashed face-up into the ground below just ten yards from a man working in his vegetable garden.  The impact drove Fritz 18 inches into the ground, split his clothes up the back, knocked the heels of his shoes, and threw the watch he was wearing four feet away from the body.  A woman sitting in her home 75 feet away reported that the body's impact jarred her entire house.

Donald F. Taylor -- He Ain't Go No Body

[The following is offered in acknowledgment of the birthday of Rebecca Baumann, stalwart friend and "First Lady of LaffLand."]

The sixth husband of wannabe sex symbol Marie "The Body" McDonald, Taylor produced the 1963 sex farce Promises!  Promises! starring his wife and Jayne Mansfield, who appeared nude in the Tommy Noonan-directed film.  Despite a massive publicity campaign that touted McDonald's impressive physical dimensions, the bonde glamour girl never achieved star status.  On October 21, 1965, Taylor found his 42-year-old wife's lifeless body slumped at her dressing table in their ranch-style home in the Hidden Hills section of Hollywood.  An initial coroner's inconclusive finding of suicide or accidental death by "acute drug intoxication" was later ruled "accidental" based on a review of McDonald's past life and normal pattern of living.
  

On January 3, 1966, Taylor, 47, was found dead in the same house at 5337 Jed Smith Road by his 16-year-old stepdaughter and her boyfriend.  His fully-clothed body was discovered lying on the floor alongside his bed.  An empty bottle of Seconal was found on the nightstand.  Taylor left two handwritten suicide notes and a will instructing that his mother be fiven the remainder of his estate after the payment of bills.  In a note addressed to Robert N. Hirte, his business partner in the Marie McDonald, Inc., cosmetics firm, Taylor wrote:  "Please go on with the cosmetics business.  It was Marie's fervent desire to give women a product that would do them some good at a reasonable price."  The fact that the note was dated two days before the discovery of his body led police to believe that Taylor actually took his life on January 1, 1996.

Robert Love -- "I'm Brave, I'm Brave"

http://life.time.com/

Known as a set designer under his real name, Abraham Levine, Love, 34, was a bit player in several films including the 1938 Norman Foster vehicle I Cover Chinatown in which he played an unnamed cop.  According to his roommate, Daniel Harris, Love had been brooding for days over the suicide of actress Carole Landis, whom he had never met.  On the morning of July 8, 1948, Harris entered the kitchen of the home he shared with Love at 1737 North Whitley Avenue in Los Angeles to find his roommate standing with his head over an open gas jet.  When Harris turned off the gas, Love displayed a razor blade and, pointing to a minor cut on his neck, said:  "This was too painful--I couldn't do it that way."  Later that day, Harris took love to visit a doctor with an office on the third floor of the Guaranty Building in downtown Hollywood.  While waiting, Love suddenly jumped up (cutting his finger on a piece of overturned furniture) then ran up two flights of stairs to the fifth floor office of another doctor.  According to the receptionist there, the actor muttered, "I'm brave, I'm brave.  I can stand it," as he pushed through the crowded waiting room and dove through a half-opened window facing Ivar Street just off Hollywood Boulevard.

Jake Wells -- Two Strikes You're Out

Known as the "Father of Vaudeville" in Atlanta, Wells managed the Richmond Bluebirds of the Atlantic League to three pennants before purchasing his first theatre in Richmond, Virginia, in the late 1890s.  In his nearly 30 year career as the "Dean of Southern Vaudeville," the showman purchased several other theatres and opened a chain of summer amusement parks throughout North Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia.  Five weeks before committing suicide on March 16, 1927, the 63-year-old promoter suffered a nervous breakdown precipitated by concern over his own ill health and that of his wife.  On the fatal day, Wells accompanied by Betty Schaeffner, manager of his Park Hill Inn, was driving near Hendersonville, North Carolina, when they stopped to pick wild flowers.  Schaeffner began picking flowers while Wells leaned against a pine tree.  Moments after uttering, "It'll all be over soon," the promoter drew a revolver from a pocket and shot himself under the chin.  The woman vainly tried to wrest the gun from Wells before he fired a second deadly bullet into his head.

Roy G. Daniels -- Mr. Clean Meets Death

Failing in his bid to control all the popular priced vaudeville and picture theatres in Arkansas, Daniels, president of the Arkansas Amusement Company of Hot Springs, lost his business to creditors in 1909.  In ill health and facing imminent financial ruin, he returned to Topeka, Kansas, where longtime residents remembered him as a wild young man who as a bartender in the 1890s beat a man to death with a beer mallet in a seedy dive.  Tried for the murder, Daniel was acquitted in a controversial verdict that had turned the town against him.

On October 4, 1909, the promoter (age unreported) took a room in the National Hotel and committed one of the most fastidious suicides on record.  After writing notes to his mother, the press, the undertaker, and the coroner, Daniels removed pillows and a sheet from the bed, spread them on the floor and laid down to wait for the strychnine he swallowed to take effect.  Fearful the poison would act too slowly, he shot himself once over the heart and in the side of the head with an old fashioned cap and ball revolver.  The notes revealed Daniels' unusual attention to detail and a concern over how he would be remembered.  In one he wrote:  "This medicine is too slow.  I have taken off the clothes I wish to be buried in, so as not to soil them."  Another addressed to the newspapers begged:  "Please be merciful...I have been unsuccessful...This and sickness caused me to do this and for God's sake be merciful, this, the last, time."  And to the coroner:  "No investigation is necessary.  I have done this myself owing to business failure, sickness and despondency."

George Augustus Kelly -- Dancing into the Dark

Palais de Danse - Hammersmith

Kelly, a native of Omaha, Nebraska, joined the U.S. Army at the outbreak of World War I, but transferred to the British Air Force where distinguished service in the sky over France gained him a captain's commission.  Described as possessing a "magnetic personality," the handsome 30-year-old ex-flyer was acting as the manager of the Palais de Danse in Hammersmith when he met the attractive divorcee and dancer Sophia Erica Taylor, 29, there in 1920.  Known as "Babs" to her friends, Taylor was a chorus girl at the Gaiety Theatre and Hippodrome and was notorious for making the rounds of London nightclubs to dance.  The pair became lovers and dance partners, appearing in private exhibition dances in London though working principally in the suburbs.  Their extravagant lifestyle coupled with Kelly's gambling and addictions to alcohol and drugs soon cooled the relationship.  A pattern of violence developed.  Taylor, looking for a new benefactor, flirted with men while Kelly, drunk and insanely jealous, beat her.  Weeks prior to the impending tragedy (during which time the ex-soldier would often disappear for days) the dancer confided to a friend:  "I am very unhappy and Kelly is so strange.  He has hit me many times, and threatened me.  I do not know what to do."  Taylor became intimate with Captain Allan Leslie, formerly in the Golden Highlanders, and the two arranged to live together in Brighton.

Shortly after receiving a notice cancelling his appointment as manager for a circuit of suburban movie houses, Kelly entered Taylor's London flat at 8 St. James Street, Piccadilly, W., on December 17, 1920.  In the presence of her maid, he attempted to strangle his former lover to death on her bed.  The maid broke his grip, but Kelly fired a fatal shot into the fleeing Taylor before shooting himself in the head.  Among items found on Kelly's body were a quantity of cocaine and notes to Babs in which he wrote:  "Wish we could have fallen in love with each other as we have gotten along splendidly."

Harry Rush Raver -- Killed by a Gentleman

A leading film distributor in the teens, Raver was among the first to hold press previews for films.  In 1914, he previewed the Italian film Cabiria in the Gold Room of New York City's Astor Hotel.  Crippled by arthritis, Raver retired from show business and operated an antiques store before going blind.  On September 5, 1941, a burglar broke into the 62-year-old man's home at 1366 N. St. Andrews Place in Los Angeles.  Ignoring Raver's pleas not to hurt him because he was blind, the robber took $39 and beat him severely.  "If I verify the fact you are blind," Raver quoted the bandit, "I'll send your money back."  Raver died of his injuries on September 14, 1941.  A nightclub entertainer appearing before a Coroner's jury stated that for the last year or so Raver wrote the scripts for Busy Blind, a radio program featuring sightless talent.

Harold Blake Van Alstyne -- The Unbalanced Acrobat

A member of the hand balancing team of Van and Emerson, the 24-year-old acrobat became infatuated with Marian MacLaren of the vaudeville musical troupe the Five MacLarens while touring on the same circuit with them in 1922.  MacLaren, 30, accepted Van Alstyne's marriage proposal, but later broke off the engagement and returned his ring.  In September 1922, the acrobat turned up on the doorstep of the MacLaren home in Philadelphia demanding to speak to his former fiancee.  MacLaren's father intercede informing Van Alstyne that not only would the marriage break up the family act, but their age difference was also too great.  When finally allowed to see Marian MacLaren she refused to explain her reasons for cancelling the marriage although it was later reported she planned to marry another.  On the night of January 12, 1923, Van Alstyne attempted to talk to MacLaren backstage at New York City's Grand Theatre where the family was performing.  She again refused.  The acrobat waited until after the last show and followed the four MacLarens (three sisters and a brother) to the Autodine Cafeteria on 8th Avenue.  Van Alstyne walked up to their table, produced a pistol, and fired five shots instantly killing Marian and wounding her brother.  He shot himself in the chest, but survived.  The performer pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years to life imprisonment on April 13, 1923.  Three days later, Van Alstyne hanged himself with a belt from his bunk in the Tombs.

Mildred O'Keefe -- Black Bottomed Out

A Ziegfeld Follies dancer, the St. Paul, Minnesota, native performed on the New York stage in Rio Rita (1927) and with the Marx Brothers in Animal Crackers (1928).  O'Keefe toured in Monte Carlo and Paris where she was credited with being among the first dancers to introduce the Black Bottom dance to the continent.  O'Keefe was working as saleswoman in the gown department of New York City's Saks Fifth Avenue when she suffered a nervous breakdown in 1936.  The 32-year-old former dancer returned to Minnesota and was visiting relatives in Minneapolis when she checked into the West Hotel as "M. Brown" on October 8, 1936.  Two days later, O'Keefe's body was found in her room next to a pound can of potassium cyanide from which a teaspoon had been taken and dissolved into a nearby glass of water.  An unsigned note expressed regret and said, "You will be better off without me."

Jack Thompson -- The East River "Floater"

Hobbled by a career-ending injury to a tendon in his right leg, the popular 32-year-old musical comedy and vaudeville dancer in shows like Peggy Ann and A Connecticut Yankee announced his decision to kill himself at a party in his Manhattan Towers apartment on the night of November 3, 1931.  No one took the threat seriously and Thompson was permitted to leave the apartment.  The dancer remained missing until December 5, 1931 when a badly decomposed body was fished out of the East River.  A former roommate recognized the expensive imported shoes on the corpse's feet as those of the dancer.  Ironically, the "floater" was not positively identified until the surgeon who performed the unsuccessful surgery on Thompson's tendon confirmed the position of the scar on the body's right leg.

Frank Messenger -- A Not so Merry Xmas

Messenger served as an assistant director on the 1920 Universal film The Virgin of Stamboul before moving to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the early thirties.  While continuing to assistant direct at MGM (Eskimo, 1934), Messenger became widely known as a production (or unit) manager for his work on Maytime (1937), Rosalie (1937), and his final film, Northwest Passage, released in 1940 after his death.  On December 19, 1939, the 48-year-old production manager was helping his wife, Dorothy, decorate the Christmas tree in their home at 6617 Maryland Drive in Hollywood when he suddenly left the room, went to the garage, and fatally shot himself in the head with a pistol.  Messenger, according to authorities, had been unemployed for several months.

Lester Renaudin -- The Downhearted Emcee

Renaudin, a 21-year-old emcee at the Club Plantation in New Orleans, was married to his childhood sweetheart, Mary Lee Roberts, a 19-year-old dancer at the Club Avalon in Metairie Ridge, Louisiana, for two years when their recent estrangement exploded into a murder-suicide on January 26, 1933.  Shortly before midnight, Renaudin waited in his car outside the Club Avalon for Roberts to report to work.  When she arrived, he invited her into the car to talk.  Minutes later, Renaudin pulled out a revolver, shot her through the heart, then fired a bullet into his brain.  Roberts continued to scream, "Please don't let me die," until expiring (with her husband) en route to the hospital.  A letter addressed to his father found on the dead emcee read:  "I can't possibly live without Mary Lee and can do anything living with her.  She is the only girl that could ever enter my life.  I suppose I am crazy -- I must be to do a thing like this.  I would have gone crazy before the day was over.  I never was happy in my life, so don't worry, my poor, good, sweet family.  I loved you more than I could ever express.  I would write more, but you know how I feel.  Your downhearted son, Lester."

T. D. Crittenden -- In the Line of Duty

Born in Oakland, California, on September 27, 1878, the character actor appeared in several silent films (Jewel, 1915; Love Never Dies, 1916; Polly Put the Kettle On, 1917; The Devil's Wheel, 1918; The Hottentot, 1922; The Fast Worker, 1924) under the names "T.D." and "Dwight" Crittenden (Crittendon).  Long retired from acting, the 60 year old was a deputy city marshal in Los Angeles when he was killed in the line of duty in that city on February 17, 1938.  Crittenden and his partner, Leon W. Romer, 60, were serving a $67.50 eviction notice on George Farley, a 57-year-old black laborer, when the man fired a large caliber rifle through the door of the small frame house at 1741 East 23rd Street.  The bullet struck Romer full in the chest killing him instantly.  A retreating Crittenden was able to gain the street before he was dropped by a bullet in the head.  Summoned by neighbors, police surrounded the house and for an hour pumped volleys of bullets and tear gas into the structure.  Detectives cautiously entered the home to find Farley slumped on his face in a rear room severely wounded five times in the thighs, arms, and chest.  The laborer survived, and was convicted on two counts of manslaughter in June 1938.  Farley, unsuccessful in his insanity defense, was ordered to serve to consecutive 5 to 10 year terms in San Quentin.

Kitty Melrose -- Soon Forgotten

Adelphi Theatre

Kitty Melrose (real name Agnes Butterfield) last appeared onstage in The Quaker Girl during the early teens at the Adelphi Theatre in London.  On June 13, 1912, the actress (age unknown) was found dead lying on her back with her head in a gas oven in her flat in St. Stephen's mansions, Smith-square, Westminster.  Three months earlier, she had attempted to take her life with an overdose of veronal.  Brought to self-destruction by her former lover's refusal to go against his family and marry her, Melrose left the man two letters.  In one she wrote:  "Eddie, my dear one, I cannot bear any more, and everyone has told me you won't, and have done with me.  I am heartbroken, and cannot bear any more. Please forgive me, but I know as you do not love me, you will soon forget me.  All my love, and good luck to you.  Your Kit."  And in a postscript:  "It was wrong for every one to keep you from me.  It has made it too impossible.  I cannot fight alone, but I did believe in you, and did not think you would fail me.  But God's will.  I know you thought you were doing right. -- K."  In the other:  "Eddie -- By leaving me alone you thought you were doing right, but it was all wrong and cruel.  God forgive you, as I hope he will forgive me. -- Kit."