A. P. Younger -- Thanks, Fido

In Hollywood since the mid-to-late teens, Younger either contributed the story, adapted, or wrote more than 50 films.  These included Fair and Warmer (1919), Desperate Youth (1921), The Torrent (1924, also directed), The Devil's Cargo (1925), In Old Kentucky (1927), and Five and Ten (1933).  At the height of his career as a scenarist-screenwriter for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Younger was earning $1,500 a week plus bonuses.  In the late evening of November 29, 1931 (according to Younger's stepson, Frank Deering), the 41-year-old screenwriter was awakened from sleep by a dog barking in the back yard of his luxurious home at 145 South Beachwood Avenue in Los Angeles.  Fearing a prowler, Younger found his .38-caliber automatic pistol and went into the bathroom to examine the weapon.  The gun accidentally discharged, fatally striking him in the right temple.  Younger died soon afterward at the Georgia Street Receiving Hospital.

Initial police reports differed from Deering's account.  According to the investigating officer's report:  "Younger stood in front of a mirror in the bathroom, held the gun in his right hand and shot himself in the right temple."  Forensics confirmed that the gun had been placed tightly against his head when fired.  An investigation conducted for the coroner's jury uncovered two possible motives that supported a ruling of suicide.  Although Younger had $30,000 in the bank, his lucrative contract with MGM had been terminated the week before his death.  That same week, Younger had been arrested during a police liquor raid at his home.  The screenwriter's death was officially ruled a suicide.

Brian O'Hara -- Ferry Cross the Styx

Born in the depressed Dingle area of Liverpool on March 12, 1941, O'Hara and school friend Billy Hatton taught themselves skiffle and rock 'n' roll songs in the mid-fifties.  After performing around Liverpool dance halls and coffee clubs as the Two Jays, they added rhythm guitarist/singer Mike Millward and drummer Brian Redman to become the Four Jays in the early sixties.  In 1962 they placed tenth in a poll of local groups in Mersey Beat.  Changing their name to Fourmost, the group (now with drummer Dave Lovelady) attracted the attention of Beatles manager Brian Epstein.  After refusing Epstein's repeated request to turn professional, Fourmost finally accepted in 1963 when they saw the success of The Beatles.

Fourmost

 Produced by Beatles super-producer George Martin, Fourmost scored several U.K. chart successes including the John Lennon-penned tune "Hello Little Girl" (No. 9), Lennon and McCartney's "I'm in Love" (No. 17), and "A Little Loving" (1964, No. 6).  In 1965 the group released their only album, First and Fourmost, a collection of country, comedy, and rock 'n' roll songs.  Fourmost were part of a long-running variety show at the London Palladium and appeared in two 1965 British films, Pop Gear and Ferry Cross the Mersey.  Ultimately giving up trying to make the charts, Fourmost settled into the well-paying world of cabaret.  The band fragmented in 1978 with several members forming Clouds.  O'Hara continued as Fourmost with three local musicians, but sold them the name after a few years when he left to set up a used car business.

On June 27, 1999, the 58-year-old former musician was found hanged at his home in Smithdown Road in the Wavetree area of Liverpool.  Terence O'Hara, the dead man's brother, told an inquest that he found the guitarist in his underpants and shirt hanging from a ligature in an attic stairwell.  In the absence of a suicide note, authorities estimated that O'Hara had been in that position for a number of days.  According to his brother, O'Hara had financial worries.

Steve Wolf -- Death of a Concert Promoter

Wolf was in his early twenties when he joined former disc jockey and television game show host Bob Eubanks in Concert Associates, a hugely successful concert promotion business based in Southern California.  Though best-known for hosting The Newlywed Game on ABC, Eubanks was a rock concert pioneer who promoted the Beatles show at the Hollywood Bowl in 1964.  When Eubanks left Concert Associates, Wolf and fellow 24-year-old Jim Rissmiller teamed to promote some of the most notable concerts in Los Angeles including the Diana Ross and the Supremes show that sold out the 18,700 seat Forum in Inglewood, California.  The pair later sold the company to Filmways and, reconstituted as Wolf & Rissmiller, became the biggest rock concert promotion firm in California, and one of the largest in the United States, promoting appearances of the Rolling Stones, Cream, and Aerosmith.  Most recently in November 1977, the duo promoted the Los Angeles Philharmonic's "Star Wars Suite" at the Hollywood Bowl.  Producing some 130 concerts a year, Wolf & Rissmiller grossed around $6 million annually.

At approximately 6:00 A.M. on November 21, 1977, the 34-year-old concert promoter was shot to death in the bedroom of his luxury home on Mulholland Drive above Stone Canyon Reservoir in Los Angeles.  Awakened by the sound of a break in, Wolf left his bed and apparently confronted the intruders, possibly as many as four, who had entered the residence through a side door.  Wolf's fiancee, 30-year-old public relations consultant Linda Grey, was also in the home, but did not witness the shooting.  Stolen were two valuable cameras, a wristwatch, and diamond jewelry.  Wolf died three hours later on the operating table at Riverside Hospital in North Hollywood.  That night, a concert by the popular band Chicago promoted by Wolf & Rissmiller played the Forum.  Two days after the murder, Jim Rissmiller offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the identity of the killer(s).  As detectives continued their investigation, Linda Grey filed a million dollar palimony suit in July 1978 claiming she and Wolf had lived as husband and wife during the eleven months they were together.  According to Grey, she gave up her career as an entertainment publicist on Wolf's promise he would support her for the rest of her life.  The disposition of the case is not known.

More than a year after the concert promoter's murder, authorities caught a break when a 17-year-old in jail on an unrelated burglary charge bragged to another inmate about the killing.  Police arrested the juvenile on December 27, 1978, but did not release his name to the public until after a judge ruled in 1979 that the suspect, Keith Cook, could be tried as an adult.  On April 24, 1979, Cook pleaded out to second-degree murder and was sentenced to seven years.  Cook admitted to being one of the four men who invaded Wolf's home, but denied being the triggerman.  To date, no one else has been arrested for Wolf's murder.

Joseph Massengale -- The Last Roundup

Massengale performed rodeo and cowboy stunts in the films The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973), The Frisco Kid (1979), Tom Horn (1979), and Stir Crazy (1980).  On television, the stuntman was seen in two made-for-television movies (The Gambler, 1980; The Gambler II, 1983), and on episodes of Little House on the Prairie, How the West was Won, and Father Murphy.  Massengale, 36, and his wife, actress Kathleen O'Haco, were estranged and living apart when he phoned her from his Burbank, California, apartment on the afternoon of December 17, 1983, to plead for a reconciliation.  During the course of the conversation, he threatened to kill himself if O'Haco would not return to him.  Having heard similar threats before, the actress did not take Massengale seriously until she heard a gunshot over the line.  Police found Massengale, still clutching the telephone in his left hand, dead from a bullet wound to his right temple inflicted by a 9mm automatic handgun.

Lotus Moore -- Songbird with a Sore Throat

Long familiar to patrons of San Francisco's Tivoli Theatre as a musical comedy ingenue and previously as a leading member of the Jim Post beauty chorus, Moore was working in the "City by the Bay" as a cabaret entertainer at the Black Cat cafe at Eddy and Mason streets.  Shortly before 7:00 A.M. on February 21, 1913, the semi-conscious woman was found writhing in agony in the rooms she shared at 1149 Divisadero Street with her mother and a 4-year-old daughter from a failed marriage.  Clutched in Moore's hand was an empty bottle of cresoline that she used regularly as a throat balm.  Moore was dead on arrival at Emergency Hospital.  Accident or suicide?  Three weeks before the popular entertainer had been severely burned about the face when an antiphlogistine preparation she was heating for throat trouble exploded.  The suicide theory advanced by the coroner that explained Moore's self-destruction as a reaction to her failing voice and lost beauty was discounted by her most intimate friends, who noted that she had fully recovered from the accident and was in excellent spirits.

Leonard Morris -- The Jealous Electrician

Spurned by Edith Creighton (real name Edith Simmons), part of a vaudeville act with her three sisters, stage electrician and former film projectionist Leonard Morris, 37, shot her to death inside a store in Theatrical City, New Jersey, near New Brunswick on July 17, 1917, before taking his own life.  Creighton was in the store with her 6-year-old son when her rejected suitor entered, produced a pistol wrapped in a handkerchief from his pocket, then fired two shots as she fled from the rear of the store into a back yard.  Morris pursued and, following Creighton back into the store, fired a lethal shot into her head.  Declaring, "I am going to finish myself," the insanely jealous electrician fired once into his own head and fell beside Creighton's body.  Morris died half an hour later as a doctor tried to remove him by stretcher to St. Peter's Hospital.  Months prior to the murder-suicide Morris had become enamored with the performer after she moved into a rooming house where he resided.

George W. Hill -- The Lone Wolf

George William Hill (born in Douglass, Kansas, on April 25, 1895) broke into pictures in 1908 as a prop boy for D.W. Griffith at the Fine Arts Studio.  Evincing an interest in photography, he graduated to the position of first cameraman and shot several films in the teens including The Sea Wolf (1913), Burning the Daylight (1914), Buckshot John (1915), Polly of the Circus (1917), and Turning the Tables (1919).  From the early twenties Hill turned to direction and made several well regarded films for MGM including Tell it to the Marines (1926), The Cossacks (1928), his 1930 masterpiece The Big House, and the classic comedy Min and Bill (1930) starring Wallace Beery and Marie Dressler.  In January 1930, the director married Frances Marion, his longtime scriptwriting collaborator, but the union ended in October 1933 amid charges of Hill's cruelty.  Despite their estrangement, the pair continued to be amicable and were working together on the script of the MGM vehicle The Good Earth, which Hill was set to direct.

While preparing for the film in June 1934, Hill was seriously injured in a car accident when he swerved to avoid a group of children running onto Venice Boulevard.  The director crashed into a telephone pole, crushing his chest and breaking several ribs.  In constant physical pain following the accident, the man known to his friends as "the lone wolf" became even more withdrawn, morose, and moody.  In the late afternoon of August 10, 1934, Hill returned to his spacious South Beach home at 5109 Ocean Front in Venice, California, after vacationing for several days at his cabin at Lake Arrowhead.  To his valet, the 39-year-old director entrusted a tin box containing a .45-caliber pistol (a memento from Hill's days as a captain in the photographic division of the Signal Corps during World War I) with the instruction to "put it away."  Hill then left and spent several hours with ex-wife Marion and studio officials on the MGM lot in a story conference concerning The Good Earth.

Shortly after 9:00 P.M., Hill returned home and phoned his valet to ask where he had placed the box containing the pistol.  At 7:35 A.M. the next morning, the valet arrived at Hill's home to find the pajama-clad body of his employer dead in the second floor master bedroom clutching a pistol in his right hand.  Sometime during the hours before, or, shortly after midnight, Hill had fired a practice shot into the ceiling, before laying in bed, placing the gun in his mouth, and pulling the trigger.  The bullet, passing through the director's skull, lodged in the headboard of the bed.  While Hill left no note, he had drawn up a will days before the suicide in which he directed that his body be cremated immediately after the death certificate had been signed.  By 4:00 P.M. the day he was found, Hill's body was cremated.  Authorities speculated that Hill had either taken his life because of the car accident or his divorce from Frances Marion, or both.

Katherine Donley -- In a Worse State

The wife of Robert Donley, former chief announcer at Pittsburgh radio station WCAE and currently with WINS in New York, was slowly driven mad by her husband's application for divorce in April 1945.  In court papers the announcer charged his 44-year-old wife with "cruel and barbarous treatment and with endangering his life with indignities."  On November 7, 1945, the distraught woman checked into a 12th floor room of the William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh with her 8-year-old son, James Patrick.  Donley tossed the boy out of the bedroom window and then plunged after him.  Their shattered bodies were found 15 feet apart in a light well on the hotel's marquee three floors above street level.  In two notes addressed to the dead woman's brother found in the room, Donley accused the 24-year-old announcer of being more interested in his career than family.  One read:  "My nervous system is completely shattered and I can't see my way -- the financial insecurity and the worry and hurt over [son] Pat's predicament.  His father hasn't inquired about him since last spring and saw him only once in the fall though we were 20 minutes by subway from where he was.  Pat is bewildered, unsure, and afraid and I know I can't help him understand because I am in a worse state."

Lillian Held -- Bury Me Next to Mom

Known outside show business as Lillian Bachman, the wife of a Manchester, New Hampshire, cigar manufacturer, the 41-year-old singer-actress was formerly married to actor Frederick Russell.  On the vaudeville circuit the duo were billed "Held and Russell."  On July 31, 1920, Held's body was found across the bed of her room at 358 West Fifty-eighth Street in New York City.  The windows were sealed and illuminating gas had flooded the room for hours.  Several weeks before, Held had rented the room in the company of a man, signing the register as "Mr. and Mrs. Von Holding."  The man, whose name was withheld, was later identified as a well-known musical director.  In a brief note written on the back of a photograph of her deceased first husband, Russell, Held blamed the musical director for her death and requested to be buried by the side of her mother and her former vaudeville partner.  In a separate note, Held identified the musical director by name and mentioned that he had threatened her life a few days before.

John Arcady -- They Don't Carry Much Money

"It was a senseless, horrible thing that happened.  They don't carry much money," said the owner of Cincinnati's Towne Taxi regarding the murder of driver John Arcady.  On September 27, 1999, the 49-year-old's body was found slumped over the wheel of his idling cab at 4802 Winneste Avenue in the Cincinnati suburb of Winton Terrace.  Killed instantly by a single gunshot wound to the back of the head, Arcady still had a toothpick in the corner of his mouth and a foot on the brake.  Arcady, a former touring drummer with the groups the Platters, Los Bravos, and the Hager Twins, often drove double shifts to support himself while drumming for the Queen City-based Mary Ann Kindel Band.

Denise Lipscomb

Lemar Goss

Andrea Goss

Police, acting on eyewitness accounts, searched for three blacks seen fleeing the scene.  A few days later, brother and sister Lemar Goss, 19, Andrea Goss, 18, and their relative Denise Lipscomb, 26, were arrested and charged with aggravated murder during the commission of a robbery.  Another suspect, Sion Graham, 21, was later arrested and charged with complicity in supplying the gun to Lipscomb, and in driving the getaway car.  On the night of the murder, Arcady picked up the trio and drove them to a spot near Lipscomb's apartment where the woman shot him in the head during a robbery attempt.  In exchange for their testimony against Lipscomb, the Goss siblings pleaded guilty to reduced charges of robbery and involuntary manslaughter, and were sentenced to terms of 23 years each.  In October 2000, Lipscomb was found guilty of aggravated murder, but avoided the death penalty when a jury recommended life in prison without the possibility of parole for at least 43 years.  Lipscomb will be 69 years old before her first parole hearing.  Sion Graham, Lipscomb's boyfriend, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and to using a gun to commit aggravated robbery, and received a 23 year prison sentence.  Lemar Goss (Inmate No. A401712) is currently incarcerated at the Belmont Correctional Institution in St. Clairsville, Ohio while his sister, Andrea (Inmate No. W045814), and Denise Lipscomb (Inmate No. W048598) are both serving their sentences at the Dayton Correctional Institution.

Thomas Stewart Lee -- Climb Every Mountain

Pellissier Building

The wealthy son of automobile and communications magnate Don Lee, "Tommy" Lee was a pioneer in bringing television to Southern California.  In 1931 he built the first transmitter in Los Angeles and later moved it in 1939 to the top of Mt. Lee in the Hollywood Hills.  Known today as station KTSL, for years it was known only by its call numbers, W6XAO.  In another first, Lee received the initial permit in the Southland for full commercialization of television programs starting July 1, 1941.  As a result of a vertebra injury sustained in an automobile accident, Lee was declared mentally incompetent in a medical hearing on August 27, 1948.  Ironically, the court-appointed guardian picked to oversee Lee's estimated $9,500,000 estate, Lewis Allen Weiss, a board member of the Don Lee Broadcasting System, would later commit suicide on June 15, 1953 via the gunshot route.  Less than a year after being declared incompetent, Lee's petition to terminate his guardianship was denied by a judge who personally interviewed him at a Pasadena sanitarium.  On January 13, 1950, Lee flew in his private plane from Palm Springs to Los Angeles for a dental appointment in the Pellissier Building on 3780 Wilshire Boulevard.  While his nurse and pilot parked the car, the 43 year old entered the building alone, made his way to the 12th floor, and after smoking part of a cigarette, jumped out of a fire escape window.

Kenneth Bruce Jones -- Three's a Crowd in Big D

Jones, 32, a member of the Dallas, Texas, branch of the Screen Actors Guild, appeared in television commercials and several local stage productions.  On September 20, 1977, ten days before the air date of the ABC made-for-television movie The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald in which he played a policeman, Jones phoned a friend at 2:00 A.M. to report, "I've done it.  I have killed Myra and her blond-headed lover.  Call the police because by the time they get here I'll be dead."  Dallas police rushed to the apartment at 6402 Melody Lane of Jones; ex-wife, Myra Emmanuelli, and kicking in the front door, found Jones lying dead a few feet inside in a hallway.  The gun he used to shoot himself in the mouth was still clasped in his left hand.  The nude bodies of Emmanuelli and her lover, 27-year-old local business executive Michael L. Crim, were found in a bedroom.  The woman sustained gunshots to the face and chest with Crim dead from a head wound.  The next day, the secretary Jones dated found a "farewell letter" from him in a satchel on her doorstep.

Angelo Torres -- Death of a Drummer

 

Bronx Zoo, a four man rock group co-founded in 1988 by drummer Angelo Torres in Belleville, Illinois, was just beginning to attract national attention.  The group recorded their debut album, Lustful Thinking, in New York City in June 1990, and had opened for Blue Oyster Cult, Head East, the Romantics, and Gary Richrath, lead guitarist for R.E.O. Speedwagon.  Following successful dates at L.A.'s Whisky A-Go-Go and City Lights in Dallas, the group's manager predicted Bronx Zoo was "on the very edge" of making it big.  If so, the 26-year-old drummer was not fated to make the trip.  Just before midnight on November 12, 1992, Torres argued with the owner of a well-known crack house in Centreville, Illinois.  The drummer walked to a nearby liquor store in East St. Louis and encountered Alphonso "Capone" Fuller, a 21-year-old two-time convicted felon currently on probation from Menard Correctional Center on a weapons charge, and three of his cronies.  A heated dispute between the men over a car the drummer allegedly swapped Fuller for drugs culminated in the men beating the drummer and forcing him into the trunk of a car.  Fuller and friends drove the car back to the crack house where "Capone" picked up a 9mm automatic pistol.  Cruising for a couple of hours, Fuller stopped the car around 3:30 A.M. in the 100 block of 80th Street in a residential section of Centreville.  According to Delando Bell, 19, one of the abductors in the car who later cut a deal with prosecutors in exchange for his testimony, Fuller lifted Torres from the trunk and pointed the weapon at him.  When the gun jammed, Torres turned and ran making it about 150 feet before the pursuing Fuller brought him down with two rounds.  Fuller's gun jammed again, but he managed to finish the execution-style killing with a fatal chest shot delivered from less than two feet away.  Torres died two hours later in St. Mary's Hospital in East St. Louis.  Arrested days after the crime, Fuller was charged with first-degree murder while his three accomplices pleaded guilty to lesser charges ranging from unlawful restraint, concealing a homicide, and kidnapping, in exchange for their testimony against the triggerman.  Fuller was convicted of the Torres murder in a three-day trial in July 1993 and sentenced to 60 years in prison.  Inmate No. B20288 is, as of June 2014, incarcerated at the Pinckneyville Correctional Center in Pinckneyville, Illinois.  Alphonso "Capone" Fuller is eligible for parole in March 2023.

Paul Kelly -- Slide, Kelly, Slide (Part II)

On April 20, 1927, a grand jury indicted Paul Kelly for the first-degree murder of Ray Raymond.  In between fainting spells, Dorothy Mackaye testified she precipitated the fatal meeting between the two men by informing Kelly her husband had accused them of adultery.  Continuing to insist that their relationship was purely "platonic," Kelly had angrily phoned the man and stormed over to the house on Cheremoya Drive.  The next day, a coroner's inquest sought to fix responsibility for Raymond's death and, more importantly, determine whether Dr. Sullivan and Mackaye had made attempts to conceal the true facts of the case.  The doctor insisted that in the absence of information regarding the fight between the two men, he told the autopsy surgeon A.F. Wagner that the bruises on the dead man's body had been the result of a drunken fall from his bed.  Days later, Sullivan and Mackaye were indicted by a county grand jury on charges of "compounding a felony" and with being "accessories after the fact" in an alleged plot to cover-up the details surrounding the beating death of Ray Raymond.  The jury interpreted the doctor's "rather high" fee of $500 paid by the grieving widow as an attempt to conceal Raymond's condition and cause of death.  Both remained free on $5,000 cash bond each while the L.A. District Attorney's office built a murder case against Paul Kelly.

Jury selection began in Los Angeles on May 5, 1927, with eight women and four men seated to determine the young actor's fate.  When the court was not in session, the jury was "locked down" in a downtown motel to prevent possible intimidation.  Although Kelly maintained his innocence (insisting Raymond died of acute alcoholism, not the beating), he faced an uphill battle against a mountain of damning evidence.  Autopsy surgeon A.F. Wagner testified Raymond died of a subdural hemorrhage caused by nothing else than the result of a violent kick or blows, not the drunken fall suggested by the defense.  Charlotte Ethel Lee, the prosecution's star witness, was unshakeable in describing Kelly as the aggressor in his confrontation with the "almost helpless" song-and-dance man.  Further, during the time Raymond was on the road touring Mackaye spent many nights away from the house.  According to Lee, she often located her absent employer by phoning Kelly's apartment the next morning.  In riveting testimony, Dorothy Mackaye continued to assert her relationship with Kelly was chaste and platonic.  Though present at Kelly's apartment at the time he placed a phone call, Mackaye insisted she did not know it was to her husband, nor did she have any idea where the actor went when he angrily left his apartment.  The prosecution next produced its "trump" evidence -- love letters and telegrams from Kelly to Mackaye to establish a motive for the premeditated attack.  In the letters, Kelly often referred to Mackaye as "my wife" while others were written in a lover's code deciphered by the embarrassed actress for the jury.  In one letter dated March 20, 1927, Kelly wrote to Mackaye:  "Darling Mine:  Oh, I am so terribly in love with you -- so terribly -- I am miserable here without you -- I love you -- love you -- love you."  While Mackaye admitted to often speaking of marriage with Kelly while her husband was on the road, she did so only in a "kidding way."  The final nail in the defense's case came when Kelly's Japanese houseboy, Teno Yobu, was called by the prosecution to corroborate parts of Charlotte Ethel Lee's testimony.  Known as "Jungles," Yobu stated he served gin drinks on at least half a dozen occasions to Mackaye and Kelly in the actor's apartment,  Mackaye sometimes spent the night there and Jungles saw them together in Kelly's bedroom in the morning.  When the houseboy was present, the pair often resorted to a "love language" (perhaps Pig Latin) to disguise what they were saying.  According to Yobu, Kelly had at least two gin drinks prior to leaving the apartment to confront Raymond.  Kelly's appearance on the stand was almost anti-climactic.  The actor admitted to slapping Raymond twice for vilely insinuating that he had an improper relationship with Mackaye and was forced to defend himself when the smaller entertainer unexpectedly attacked him.

On May 25, 1927, the jury returned after two days of deliberation to find Kelly guilty of the lesser crime of manslaughter.  Sentenced to 1 to 10 years in prison, the actor initially vowed to appeal, but soon told his attorney he would "take his punishment like a man and then begin life anew when society's debt had been paid."  Transported to San Quentin on July 2, 1927, to serve his posted 5 year sentence, Inmate No. 43,814 became a trusty in the prison library and took voice culture lessons to prepare for a post-prison career in talking pictures.  His lover, Dorothy Mackaye, and Dr. Walter Sullivan still faced separate trials for covering up the facts of Raymond's death.  On June 29, 1927, a jury needed less than three hours to find the actress guilty.  Mackaye was sentenced to a year in San Quentin, her lover's new address.  Her appeal denied, Mackaye did her time operating a sewing machine.  She was released for "good behavior" on January 1, 1929, after serving only 8 months.  The actress drew on her time in prison to co-write with Carlton Miles the play Women in Prison.  The play served as the basis for the 1933 Warner Bros. film, Ladies They Talk About, starring Barbara Stanwyck.  The studio remade the film as Lady Gangster in 1942 with Faye Emerson in the title role.  And what of Dr. Sullivan?  He was the only "winner" in the ordeal.  On October 28, 1927, the case against the Hollywood physician was dismissed after the D.A.'s office determined the evidence against him was "too thin" to win a conviction.

 On the strength of his "excellent behavior," Paul Kelly won parole from San Quentin on August 2, 1929, after serving two years and one month of his manslaughter conviction.  "I'm going straight to New York," Kelly told reporters.  "I'm headed straight for the comeback trail.  I've got a job with the New Century Play Company in New York and I'm going to hit it hard."  The job, apparently, was as a clerk for the company.  On Broadway, however, Kelly earned the dubious distinction of being the lowest-salaried leading man ever to appear in a show on the Great White Way.  As a parolee, the actor was limited under California law to earn no more than $30 a week, the salary he was paid in February 1930 to work in the Nine Fifteen Revue.  On a happier note, Paul Kelly and Dorothy Mackaye married in February 1931 and remained together until she was killed in a car crash near their Northridge, California ranch in 1940.  The actor returned to an uncharacteristically forgiving Hollywood in 1932 and worked nonstop amassing credits in some 88 films often in supporting roles in "A" and "B" features as well as the occasional lead in programmers.  Kelly's post-conviction films include Broadway Thru a Keyhole (1933), The Song and Dance Man (1936), The Roaring Twenties (1939), Not a Ladies' Man (1942), The Glass Alibi (1946), Crossfire (1947), The Painted Hills (1951), The Square Jungle (1956), and his final film, Curfew Breakers (1957).  In a filmic act of self-expiation smacking of gimmick casting, Kelly appeared as Warden Clinton D. Duffy in the 1954 production of Duffy of San Quentin, a chronicle of the maximum security prison where the actor spent 25 months of his life in the late 1920s.  Kelly also found time to appear onstage (winning a Tony Award as Best Actor in 1948 for Command Decision) and in television series guest shots.  On November 6, 1956, the 57-year-old actor suffered a fatal heart attack in his Los Angeles home at 1148 Club View Drive shortly after returning from casting his vote at the polls.  The "actor Hollywood forgave" is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

Photo by A.J. Marik

 Recommended Reading

"Kelly, Guilty, Asks New Trial."  Los Angeles Times, May 26, 1927, sec. A, p. 1.

"Kelly is Indicted for Raymond Death."  The New York Times, April 21, 1927, p. 29.

"Platonic Friendship Given Blame for Tragedy in Hollywood."  Los Angeles Times, April 20, 1927, sec. A, p. 2.

Paul Kelly -- Slide, Kelly, Slide (Part 1)

Hollywood, as witnessed by its treatment of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and others who have fallen from grace, is not usually the most forgiving of places.  Yet, even Tinseltown can occasionally be moved by a tragic love story.  Paul Michael Kelly (born August 9, 1899, in Brooklyn, New York) first appeared onstage in 1907 at the age of eight in A Grand Army Man and continued to perform in stock companies for many years.  Signed by the New York-based Vitagraph studio, Kelly appeared in juvenile roles in several silent shorts, before logging his first adult lead in the 1919 feature Anne of Green Gables directed by future murder victim William Desmond Taylor.  Kelly's other feature films of the period include Uncle Sam of Freedom Ridge (1920) and The Great Adventure (1921).  In 1917, Kelly met the Scottish-born actress Dorothy Mackaye while both were appearing in legitimate stage roles in New York City.  The friendship remained strong even after Mackaye married song-and-dance man Ray Raymond, then her castmate in the Big Apple production of Blue Eyes in 1921.  Ironically, prior to leaving the New York stage to try his hand in Hollywood, Kelly appeared in a stage production that strangely presaged the impending tragedy.  In August 1925, the actor portrayed "Charlie Watts" in The Sea Woman.  The character, a combination rum runner and lady killer, conspires with a woman to deceive another man.  In early 1926, Kelly arrived in Hollywood to appear in the feature film, The New Klondike.  The athletic actor next appeared in the 1927 baseball film Slide, Kelly, Slide, though not in the title role.  That "Kelly" was actor William Haines whose career would abruptly end in 1936 amid a homosexual scandal.  Another cast member, Karl Dane, would commit suicide on April 14, 1934.  For Paul Kelly, his role as a baseball player in the film would later serve only to underscore in the public mind his physical superiority over the man he would be tried for killing.

Dorothy Mackaye

 Raymond and wife Dorothy Mackaye were based in Los Angeles when Kelly arrived to break into motion pictures.  Raymond, often on the road in various musical productions, never had to worry that his wife was neglected.  Kelly and Mackaye were seemingly inseparable and were often seen at gin parties and taking long car rides together.  Weeks before the tragedy, Raymond drunkenly ordered Kelly out of his house and told his wife to end her relationship with the actor.  Mackaye insisted that nothing unseemly was happening between them and flatly refused to end the friendship.  When the song-and-dance man left on tour with the musical Castles in the Air, Mackaye and Kelly continued seeing one another.

On Saturday, April 16, 1927, an exhausted Ray Raymond arrived at his home at 2261 Cheremoya Drive in Hollywood following an all night train trip from San Francisco where several hours earlier he had concluded the final performance in Castles in the Air.  The 33-year-old performer immediately resumed arguing with Mackaye about her 26-year-old "friend" and she left the house on the pretext of shopping for Easter supplies.  Mackaye drove across town with a friend to Paul Kelly's apartment where she downed at least two gin fizzes.  Mackaye informed her ardent admirer that Raymond had baldly accused them of having an affair.  Paul Kelly, enraged and most likely inebriated, angrily phoned Raymond at 7:00 P.M. and told him he was coming over to discuss the matter.  Charlotte Ethel Lee, the Raymond's black maid and the only witness (besides the couple's 4 1/2-year-old daughter, Valerie) to the incident told police in her statement:

Ray Raymond

"I knew he was talking to Paul Kelly, and I heard Mr. Raymond say, "All right, come on over."  He told me Paul was coming.  Five minutes later Paul knocked at the door.  Paul spoke up right away, "I understand you have been saying things about me."  He was very angry.  Mr. Raymond told him to sit down with him on the davenport.  Mr. Raymond then said something to Paul and he struck Mr. Raymond on the jaw.  "Where is Mrs. Raymond?"  Mr. Paul asked.  "I don't know," Paul replied.  "Yes, you do," said Mr. Raymond.  Then Paul struck him again.  Mr. Raymond remonstrated.  He said:  "I haven't eaten.  I'm a wreck and I can't fight.  I'm thirty pounds underweight and have been drinking."  "That's your alibi," Paul cried.  Paul hit Mr. Raymond three or four times and knocked him down.  I went to the kitchen.  I begged Paul not to hit Mr. Raymond again.  Then Mr. Raymond called him.  "I'll beat you," Paul said.  He then hit him three or four times.  This was in the dining-room.  Mr. Raymond got up and Kelly grabbed him and put one hand behind his neck and beat him with the other, and then threw him on the couch.  He fell to the floor.  "I'm a man and can't take a blow, but I'll fight you," Mr. Raymond said.  Kelly keep knocking him down as he got to his feet.  His face was cut and bleeding.  Finally, with one crushing blow Paul knocked Raymond out."

Kelly left the scene, returned to his apartment, and related the events of the violent confrontation to Mackaye.  Raymond was at home nursing his blackened eye and other injuries when Perry Askom, a friend and fellow-cast member of Castles in the Air, accompanied by his wife dropped in on him moments after the beating.  Askom later related to police that Raymond told him, "Kelly came over and beat (me) up and that (I) never had a chance."  Charlotte Ethel Lee would concur in her police statement noting that the 5'6",  140 pound Raymond was little more than a "punching bag" for the younger, more athletic 6'0, 190 pound Kelly.  The Askoms left shortly after Mackaye returned home.  The next morning at 6:00 A.M., Raymond was found by housekeeper Lee lying flat on his back on the bedroom floor near the side of the bed unconscious, breathing unnaturally, and "frothing at the mouth."  Dr. Walter Sullivan was called, examined the song-and-dance man, and ordered him rushed to the Queen of Angels Hospital.  According to published reports, Mackaye continued to visit Kelly in his apartment up to the moment her husband died without regaining consciousness at 5:20 A.M. on April 19, 1927 -- two days after the altercation with the actor.  Dr. Sullivan, paid $500 by Mackaye for his two day treatment of Raymond, was poised to sign a death certificate stating the man had died of "natural causes" when the coroner, demanding an autopsy, hurriedly reclaimed the body from the mortuary.  The autopsy confirmed that Raymond had sustained a bad beating at the hands of the younger man.  Raymond suffered two fractured ribs, cuts on his forehead, a damaged left eye, bruises on his chest, shoulder, arms, and shins, and a serious head injury resulting in a hemorrhage covering the right portion of the brain.  The cause of death was officially listed as hypostatic pneumonia following an extensive subdural hemorrhage on the right side of the brain.  Dr. Sullivan's supposed ignorance of the fact that Raymond had been in a fight prior to his death opened the medical man up to allegations that the exorbitant $500 fee he received from Mackaye made him a co-conspirator in trying to cover up the facts of his patient's death.

Charles Jackson -- Memory Strikes Out

Since first attracting attention in 1889 in the role of the "Jockey" in the Neil Burgess comedy The County Fair, Jackson had been a mainstay of New York theatre.  Suddenly unemployed in 1907, the actor languished for eight months before landing the part of  "Lew Ellinger," the chief comedy role in The Witching Hour, in January 1908.  Although the managers of the show advanced Jackson money for living expenses, friends noticed that he was still depressed.  On the evening of January 10, 1908, a dejected looking Jackson was spotted by an acquaintance sitting alone in a corner of the smoking room of the Lamb's Club.  Asked what was wrong, the 45-year-old actor responded, "It's no use.  I can't remember the cues of the lines, and I'm done for.  If I fall down on this it means the end, and I guess the only thing for me to do is to shoot myself."  The next morning, a maid at the Hotel Gerard on West Forty-fourth Street discovered Jackson's body hanging by a trunk strap from a water pipe in the top of a closet in his room.  Pages filled with jumbled handwritten lines from the script Jackson had been unable to memorize were found littering the floor.

Jack Ronald Merker -- The Voice Stilled

Merker enjoyed a long and distinguished career in San Diego, California, radio as an executive producer at KNSD/Channel 39, program director at both KOGO/AM 600 and KSDO/AM 1130, and as an on-air broadcast news personality.  Colleagues credited him with making radio news in the area more lively and competitive as well as for launching the talk show career host of Michael Reagan, son of former President Ronald Reagan.  In 1996, the openly gay Merker produced a radio show about AIDS that was honored with the New York International Radio Award.  He served as the county's director of media and public relations until ill health in 1999 prompted him to retire to the desert community of Palm Springs, California.  The 63-year-old former radio executive was staying at the home of a friend in Palm Springs when he was last seen leaving a local bar on November 28 or 29, 2001, with a man later identified as Erick Lavonne Wright (reported in the press as "Erik Levaughan Wright"), a 22-year-old resident of nearby Rancho Mirage.  Days later on December 1, a real estate agent showing the home of Merker's friend to a prospective buyer discovered the radio man's body tossed into a laundry room.  Merker, bound and gagged, had died of "compression of the neck."  Prime suspect Erick Wright proved easy for Palm springs authorities to find.  The day prior to the shocking discovery of Merker's body, Wright had been arrested by local police for the recent robbing and repeated stabbing of a motorist who had given him a ride.  At trial, Wright admitted choking Merker, but only to disable him after the elderly man became violent during their sexual encounter.  The prosecution maintained Wright deliberately killed Merker to get money for drugs.  Found guilty of second-degree murder on January 6, 2004, he was subsequently sentenced to a prison term of 15 years to life.  As of May 2014, Erick Lavonne Wright, Inmate #V26049, is incarcerated at the Chuckawalla Valley State Prison in Blythe, California.

Cavlar -- Fish and More, More, More

Leval (Cavlar) Lyde, a resident of the rough Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, honed his rap skills while serving time on an assault and weapons charge in the Arthur Kill Correctional Facility on Staten Island.  Released in the early 2000s, the aspiring rapper became associated with the independent label Earthquake Camp Records and the "Step Your Game Up" underground DVDs which featured interviews and videos with top hip-hop stars.  In 2004, he toured with Lil Jon and the Ying Yang Twins and was featured on WBLS' Wendy Williams Show.  Interestingly, Cavlar frequently appeared on homemade underground "beef" videos in which rappers engaged in a particularly noxious variation of the dozens in which threats are rapped to beat, rob, and kill one another.  Readily accessible on YouTube, one Cavlar video features the rapper and rival Uncle Murder in a heated exchange.  Whether such viral showdowns factored in the father of three's violent death on March 25, 2008, in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, is pure speculation.  According to differing press reports, the 36-year-old Cavlar, a regular at Fish & Crustaceons Quality Seafood, left the restaurant around 5:00 P.M. eating a sandwich and was shot once in the chest as he walked to his parked car.  Another account had the rapper engaged in a confrontation on the street with a gunman and two of his friends who all fled after the shooting.  Cavlar died at Brooklyn Hospital Center.  One anonymous web poster to the "Save Brooklyn Now" blog wrote, "[Cavlar] ran across the same type of individual that he himself was and he got caught with a sandwich instead of a gun in his hand.  Don't get it twisted, it could easily have been the other three people who approached him that could've been left on the ground."  Tragically, Nancy Williams, a 27-year-old mother of three, was fatally shot on March 30, 2008, while handing out "In Remembrance of Cavlar" buttons at a makeshift memorial and Irish wake for the murdered rapper in an outside courtyard in his Bed-Stuy neighborhood.  The woman was struck when a lone gunman aimlessly fired 12 shots from an automatic weapon through the yards behind the Bedford Stuyvesant Garden Houses, a housing complex, into the public gathering.  To date, no arrests have been made in either case.

Gavin Blair McElroy -- The Vacant House

In 1918 McElroy, a former engineer on the Pennsylvania Railroad, formed a company with partner Kenneth S. Fitzpatrick.  Fitzpatrick-McElroy started out as a booking agency for chorus girls and singers in small theatres, eventually expanding into a 32 theatre operation in Illinois, northern Indiana, and Michigan.  Twelve years later, the 51-year-old Chicago-based theatre magnate was reputedly worth $6 million and (rebounding from a divorce) set to marry a 25 year old.

On January 10, 1930, while his business partner was out of town, McElroy instructed his chauffeur to drive him to the vacant house of a friend.  The driver stayed outside in the car, but left after a five-hour wait, figuring that his employer had fallen asleep.  Some time later, a 10-year-old boy shoveling snow discovered the front door of the house open and notified the janitor.  McElroy, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, was found in the living room partially lying under a phonograph.  A note addressed to the dead man's business partner "Fitz" found stuck inside McElroy's hatband read:  "Take insurance and pay Blue Lagoon and Tebbe.  They have been too good to us to pass them by.  Good-by."  Letters in McElroy's pockets revealed that he owed more than $91,000, although a coroner's jury later concluded that loneliness, not financial worries, prompted the seemingly wealthy businessman to kill himself.

Natel King -- "Blood Does Flow..." (Pt. II)

Nearly three weeks passed before King's badly decomposed body was found on March 23, 2004, dumped in a heavily wooded ravine near the Schuykill River in Whitemarsh County, a short drive from Frederick's basement studio.  Naked except for two white socks, the model bore extensive stab wound to her neck and face as well as defensive wounds to her hands.  More disturbing, King was gagged with a leather type dog-collar with a pink rubber ball in the center.  The model's body was wrapped in a bloodied drape (a type often used as a background in a photo studio) and the makeshift burial shroud had been secured with duct tape.  Other bondage paraphernalia located near the body seemed to match devices featured in the photos of King taken by Frederick and Mitkus.  Shortly after the grisly discovery, the 46-year-old photographer was arrested and charged with first-degree murder after DNA tests revealed large traces of King's blood in his studio.  Also found in the studio was a handwritten poem that read, "Cut with a knife, blood does flow/You may bleed out, death coming on slow...."  Mitkus was also arrested and preliminarily charged with lying to authorities and hindering apprehension.
 

In February 2005, Frederick cut a deal with the prosecution that allowed him to plead guilty to charges of third-degree murder (requires intent to kill with malice, but no specific or planned intent to kill), possession of an instrument of crime (the Colt hunting knife), unsworn falsification (lying to authorities), abuse of a corpse, and criminal conspiracy in exchange for the possibility of parole in the very remote future.  In his confession, Frederick admitted killing King because of a dispute over the $900.00 modeling fee.  According to the photographer, King became angry when he told the model that he did not have her entire fee.  King allegedly picked up the hunting knife used as a prop in the bondage shoot and began threatening him.  The pair wrestled, the photographer managed to disarm King, and stabbed her with such force that the blade passed through her neck.  While he was upstairs wiping the blood from his hands, Mitkus was downstairs cleaning up the crime scene with bleach.  According to Frederick's statement, Mitkus admitted to him that she had twice stabbed the woman's lifeless body while he was upstairs.  The couple rolled "Taylor Summer" into the backdrop screen, placed the bundle into the back of Frederick's car, and the photographer dumped the body alone.  Unexplained in Frederick's account was how King managed to argue with him while the bondage gag (bearing a telltale knife slit) was obviously in her mouth both pre and post-mortem.  In a statement designed to still criticism that the deal was far too favorable to the confessed killer, Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor said, "I don't believe the part about her grabbing the knife, but we have separated [Frederick] from the public and he will be spending a long time in prison."  In July 2005, Anthony Joseph Frederick was sentenced to a prison term of 51 years.  He will be 71 after serving the minimum 24 years of his sentence before becoming eligible for parole consideration.  Mitkus pleaded out to lying to detectives, tampering with evidence (cleaning up the crime scene), and the abuse of a corpse.  Sentenced to 23 months incarceration, she was eligible for release after serving just six months.  As of May 2014, Frederick (Inmate #GC8554) was serving his time at the State Correctional Institution - Mahanoy in Frackville, Pennsylvania.