Category: This and That

Karyn Kupcinet’s Former Apartment

Back in June, while reading Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s fabulous book Killing Kennedy, I was reminded of an unsolved death tied to the former president that took place in November 1963 in West Hollywood – the murder of 22-year-old actress Karyn Kupcinet in her Monterey Village apartment on North Sweetzer Avenue. Figuring that the place would fit in perfectly with my Haunted Hollywood theme, I ran right out to stalk it shortly thereafter.

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Karyn Kupcinet was born Roberta Lynn Kupcinet on March 6th, 1941 in Chicago, Illinois. The only daughter of Chicago Sun-Times gossip columnist Irv Kupcinet and his wife, Essee, Karyn lived a life of privilege. There were cracks in the surface, though. Essee, a perennial stage-mom, started molding Karyn to be a star from the get-go. The youngster landed her first role at the age of 13. It was around that same time that Essee began encouraging Karyn to take diet pills. (Nice woman.) It was a habit she would continue for the rest of her life. Karyn eventually headed east to New York to try her hand at Broadway. While living in the Big Apple, she underwent several plastic surgery procedures and began abusing prescription drugs. In 1960, she moved to Hollywood (initially to an apartment on Hollywood Boulevard and then to the one at Monterey Village, where fellow stalker E.J., of The Movieland Directory website, tells me Cary Grant and Randolph Scott once lived) and landed her first onscreen appearance in the Jerry Lewis film The Ladies Man. She went on to win more bit roles in The Donna Reed Show, Hawaiian Eye, Perry Mason, and The Wide Country. It was during the filming of The Wide Country that Karyn met and began a relationship with actor Andrew Prine. When Prine broke things off in July 1963, the raven-haired starlet went a little cray and began spying on him and his new girlfriend. She also sent him threatening notes constructed from words and letters that she had cut out of magazines.

On November 27th, Karyn had dinner at the Beverly Hills home of actor Mark Goddard and his wife, Marcia Rogers Goddard, who were close with her parents. After the meal, Karyn returned to her apartment (you can see her exact unit on the Find a Death website here) and was visited by her friends Edward Rubin and Robert Hathaway. Robert was one of Prine’s roommates. (I know, sounds suspect, right?) At some point, Karyn went to sleep in her bedroom and Robert and Edward continued to watch TV. They left about 11:15 p.m., locking the door behind them.

On November 30th, the Goddards, worried that they hadn’t heard from Karyn for several days, went to her place to check on her. They discovered the starlet lying nude on her living room couch, dead. Several prescription bottles were found inside the apartment, as well as an odd note that reportedly read, “I’m no good. I’m not really that pretty. My figure’s fat and will never be the way my mother wants it. I won’t let it be what she wants. . . . What happens to me – or my Andy? Why doesn’t he want me?” And while Mark and Marcia initially assumed that Karyn had overdosed, her passing was officially ruled a homicide. Due to the broken hyoid bone in her throat, the coroner listed the cause of death as strangulation. And here’s where things get really strange.

President Kennedy had been assassinated the week prior and around that same time an AP news story was published stating that on November 22nd, a woman most likely in the Oxnard-Camarillo area had dialed a telephone operator and proclaimed that JFK was about to be shot. Twenty minutes later, he was. While police investigated, the woman was never found. Then, in the 1967 book Forgive my Grief II, author Penn Jones claimed that the caller was Karyn. Irv had ties to several mafia figures including Jack Ruby and Penn believed that Jack had told Irv about the assassination prior to it happening. Irv then told Karen and Karen called not the police, but a random telephone operator. Penn asserts that Karyn was killed by the mob a few days later in retaliation for that phone call. Yeah, sounds pretty far-fetched to me, too.

There are also those who believe that Karyn’s death was the result of a much less sinister occurrence. Prolific crime fiction writer James Ellroy is one of them. In a February 2011 Pittsburg Post-Gazette article, he is quoted as saying, “People love to think something is inherently more dramatic, more secret, crazier, uglier, more vicious and vile. People love the inside scoop and will deny all the facts even when they are hit directly over the head with them. It’s a very, very, very common phenomenon to ascribe more intrigue to a prosaic event than the prosaic event truly demands.” Ellroy maintains that Karyn fell down and hit her neck on a coffee table while “dancing around, bombed out of her mind.” Scott Michaels, of the Find a Death website, disagrees with that assertion, saying, “Another theory held by exactly one individual, writer James Ellroy, is that Karyn was stoned to the gills, danced alone naked in the apartment, fell or hit her neck on an object and fell face down on the couch and died. He bases his theory on the fact that a book on the benefits of naked dancing was found in the apartment and the coroner may have been a drunk prone to mistakes. Thanks for playing Ellroy – we have some lovely parting gifts for all of our contestants . . . “ LOL Whatever the true story may be, Karyn’s death remains unsolved and the L.A.P.D. considers it an open case to this day.

On a side-note – I would like to wish my friend Melissa a big CONGRATULATIONS on her upcoming nuptials! She is getting married tomorrow and is having a movie-themed wedding. The event is even being held in a theatre – a woman after my own heart, I swear! As part of the décor, Melissa and her betrothed re-created several movie posters that are going to be hung on the walls. How incredibly cute is that? Pictured below are a few of their poster re-creations. LOVE IT!

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Karyn Kupcinet’s former apartment is located at 1227 1/2 North Sweetzer Avenue, in the Monterey Village complex, in West Hollywood.

October 18, 2013
Evergreen Memorial Park & Crematory

A couple of months ago, while doing research on locations for my Haunted Hollywood postings, I came across some online images of Evergreen Memorial Park & Crematory in Boyle Heights and practically started drooling over the place’s fabulously haunting chapel. Then when I learned that the cemetery had been featured in the 1980 horror classic A Nightmare on Elm Street, I decided that I just had to stalk it and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there.

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Evergreen Memorial Park was originally established on August 23rd, 1877. It was Los Angeles’ first private cemetery and is one of the oldest surviving and largest graveyards in the city. During its early years, the property was a beautiful site and boasted meandering pathways, sprawling lawns and over 2,000 trees, with varieties including palm, wisteria, willow, and pine.

The 67-acre cemetery is home to over 300,000 departed souls, many of whom figured prominently in the City of Angels’ founding. Just a few of the notables buried at Evergreen include oil baron Charles Canfield, Ralphs founder George Ralph, Our Gang’s Matthew Beard, Church of Christ founder Charles Price Jones, former slave-turned-entrepreneur Bridget “Biddy” Mason, Robinsons-May department store founder Joe Winchester Robinson, the Penguin’s Jesse Belvin (who co-wrote the song “Earth Angel”), the Coasters’ Bobby Nunn, and Isaac Lankershim and his son-in-law, Isaac Newton Van Nuys, who together founded both the cities of Van Nuys and North Hollywood. The gravesite of Susanna Lankershim, Isaac’s wife, is pictured below.

Evergreen Memorial Park is also notable for never having banned African Americans from being buried there.

As you can see below, the site is, unfortunately, in a rather sad state today, marred by acres of dead grass;

churned-up dirt;

and toppled headstones. According to this website, several grave markers have even gone missing over the years.

The place does boast some pretty nice views of downtown Los Angeles, though.

And the Gothic-style chapel, which was originally constructed by architects Declez and Gilbert in 1882, is still eerily enchanting.

Especially with those vines creeping up the side of the entrance.

Evergreen Memorial Park & Crematory has been used in several productions over the years, but its most notable appearance was in A Nightmare on Elm Street, in which it was the funeral site for Rod Lane (Jsu Garcia).

Rod’s gravesite in the movie was situated in Section I of Evergreen, behind the real life graves of Louise Minier and Belle Kuster.

In the 1985 drama Mask, Evergreen was both where Red (Harry Carey Jr.) was buried (with his motorcycle!) . . .

. . . and where Roy L. ‘Rocky’ Dennis (Eric Stoltz) was laid to rest.

In the Season 4 episode of Criminal Minds titled “Brothers in Arms,” Evergreen was where Officer Mark Cunningham (Shane Conrad) was buried.

Some websites have claimed that Evergreen Memorial Park was where Hector Lopez (Wilfredo Hernandez) lived in the 1986 flick 8 Million Ways to Die, but I believe that to be incorrect. Not much of the cemetery is shown in the flick, but what is shown does not resemble Evergreen.

According to IMDB, Evergreen appeared in the Season 2 episode of Criminal Minds titled “Sex, Birth, Death,” but I scanned through the episode and did not see the cemetery pop up anywhere. IMDB also states that the graveyard was featured in the Season 3 episode of Baretta titled “The Ninja,” 1983’s Mausoleum, 1992’s Samurai Vampire Bikes from Hell (and yes, that is a real movie!), and 1993’s Blood In, Blood Out, but I was unfortunately not able to find copies of those productions with which to verify that.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Evergreen Memorial Park & Crematory is located at 204 North Evergreen Avenue in Boyle Heights. The gravesite that was used in A Nightmare on Elm Street can be found in Section I behind the real life graves of Louise Minier and Belle Kuster, and is denoted with an orange X in the aerial view below.

October 17, 2013
The Former Site of Mulholland Farm

Another locale that fellow stalker E.J., of The Movieland Directory, mentioned in Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites was the spot where Mulholland Farm – the former home of actor Errol Flynn – once stood. And while I knew next to nothing about Flynn at the time I read the book, the blurb caught my eye due to a macabre practical joke that was allegedly played at the property involving John Barrymore (grandfather of Drew), which I thought would interest my friend Ashley, of The Drewseum website. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the place way back in mid-February while the two of us were in L.A. for a weekend visit.

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The Tasmanian-born Flynn, who became an overnight sensation and Hollywood’s original bad boy after playing a swashbuckler in 1935’s Captain Blood, purchased an 11. 5-acre plot of land hidden away at the top of a ravine off of Mulholland Drive in 1941 and proceeded to build a two-story, country-style home there. He dubbed the $125,000 property, which he helped design, “Mulholland Farm.” The residence was a virtual den of iniquity, boasting a black marble pool, a tennis court, a barn, circular stables, a casino, a master bedroom with a mirrored ceiling, an obscene mural involving fish genitalia that ran behind a set of humongous fish tanks that lined the walls of his den, and a bar that covered a secret passageway leading to a hidden viewing area overlooking the women’s guest bathroom. The estate became a popular party pad (for obvious reasons) and such luminaries as Charlie Chaplin, Jack Warner, Mickey Rooney, Tyrone Power, and Flynn’s longtime friend and drinking buddy John Barrymore all hung out on the premises. There were also plenty of female visitors. Just a few of the starlets Flynn “entertained” at the home include Hedy Lamarr, Ann Sheridan, Linda Christian, Ida Lupino, Faith Domergue, and Dorothy Lamour. It should come as no surprise that the phrase “In like Flynn” came about thanks to the actor and his propensity for getting women into bed.

Flynn loved practical jokes and legend has it that, on May 29th, 1942, several of his drinking buddies pulled a whopper on him at the Farm. As the story goes, on the night that John Barrymore passed away, Flynn’s friends bribed a mortuary worker to let them “borrow” the corpse for a few hours. They drove it to Flynn’s house where they propped Barrymore up in a chair with a cocktail in his hand. When Errol returned to the Farm later that night after several hours spent drinking, he walked in to find the dead actor sitting in his living room. Of the event, Flynn wrote in his autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, “My God, the light went on and I stared into the face of Barrymore! His eyes were closed, and he looked puffed, white, bloodless. They hadn’t embalmed him yet. I let out a delirious scream.” With friends like that, who needs enemies? Flynn took the experience in stride, though, offering the pranksters a drink and cordially refusing to help them return the body to the funeral home. And while several sources claim that the Barrymore anecdote is pure fiction, it sure makes for one heck of a story!

In 1953, Flynn left Mulholland Farm and moved to Europe in order to avoid paying back taxes to the government and alimony to two ex-wives. At some point thereafter, he lost the property to his first wife, Lili Damita. She sold off some of the acreage, on which new homes were eventually built (one of which, at 7740 Mulholland Drive, is the dwelling featured in the photographs that appear in this post, but more on that later). In 1959, Errol’s former residence and the surrounding 7.5 acres of land were purchased by gospel singer Stuart Hamblen and his wife, Suzy. They lived there for the next twenty years. And while the couple reported no strange goings-on, when pop star Ricky Nelson purchased the site in 1980, his family witnessed all sorts of odd behavior, leading them to believe that the pad was haunted by Errol. I’d venture to guess, though, that it was Barrymore’s ghost who had come back to terrorize the place. Sadly, in 1988, Mulholland Farm was sold to a real estate developer who bulldozed Errol’s former residence and subdivided the remaining land. Helen Hunt purchased one of the parcels (at 3100 Torreyson Place) in 1997 and proceeded to build a mansion on it. She never lived there, though, and in 2002 sold the estate to none other than Justin Timberlake for $8.2 million.

The address of Mulholland Farm during Flynn’s tenure there was 7740 Mulholland Drive, as you can see in this 1942 newspaper article. At the time, his was the only house in the vicinity. (The 11.5 acres that comprised the Farm are roughly denoted by the orange circle below.)

Today, there are seven different residences located on those 11.5 acres. The house which now stands at 7740 Mulholland Drive, on what looks to have been some sort of horse riding arena in Flynn’s day, was built in 1967 on a parcel of land that had been sold off by Lili Damita.

You can watch a video about Mulholland Farm by clicking below. And you can click here to purchase a book written about the property titled Errol Flynn Slept Here.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to E.J., of The Movieland Directory, for writing about this location in his book Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Mulholland Farm, Errol Flynn’s one-time home, was formerly located at 7740 Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills.

October 16, 2013
The Spot Where the Black Dahlia’s Body Was Found

One Haunted Hollywood locale that I had wanted to stalk pretty much ever since first moving to Southern California in 2000 was the spot where the dismembered body of Elizabeth Short, aka the “Black Dahlia,” was found on the morning of January 15th, 1947. Over six decades later and the case is still one of the most well-known, talked-about and sinister unsolved murders in the history of the City of Angels. I avoided the location for over thirteen years, though, because, for some reason, I had it in my head that the area was dangerous (which, as it turns out, could not have been further from the truth). But when I saw the site detailed in the The Crime Issue of Los Angeles magazine this past July, I decided that I had to bite the bullet and finally dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there just a few days later.

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Elizabeth Short was born in Hyde Park, Massachusetts on July 29th, 1924. In 1946, after years spent adrift in the Bay State, as well as Illinois and Florida, Beth, as she liked to be called, headed west to California to make a go of it in Hollywood. Her tenure there, which not much is known about, was not successful or long, and Elizabeth spent most of her time waiting tables and moving from boarding house to boarding house. As I mentioned in my July 2008 post about the Millennium Biltmore Hotel, the wanna-be starlet was last seen by a doorman on January 9th, 1947 as she walked out of the property’s east doors and made her way south down Olive Avenue. Six days later, her naked body, which had been cut in two, was spotted lying face-up in a vacant field by a housewife named Betty Bersinger. At first, Betty thought the lifeless figure was a broken store mannequin. When she realized the form was actually a dead body, she rushed to a nearby residence and called the police.

The responding detectives were shocked at the heinousness of the crime. Elizabeth’s body had been severed at the waist, then thoroughly cleaned and all of her blood drained. There were three-inch gashes on each side of her mouth, one breast was slashed open, rope marks marred her wrists and ankles, and a section of flesh had been removed from her thigh and then inserted into her body. No blood or other evidence was found at the scene, though, leading police to believe that she was killed and mutilated elsewhere. Newspaper reporters helped obtain Short’s fingerprints, which were then sent to the FBI in Washington, D.C., and thanks to an underage drinking arrest in Santa Barbara and an army base mailroom job application, she was identified quickly. When a photograph of the 22-year-old beauty was released to the press, Short became a media sensation. Her exotic nickname – which she was given thanks to her raven-colored hair and penchant for wearing black – only fueled the frenzy.

Upon seeing her picture in the paper, an acquaintance named Robert “Red” Manley came forward saying that, on January 9th, Elizabeth had asked him to take her to the Biltmore to meet her sister from Berkeley, whom she was going to move in with. Walter first helped her check her luggage at a bus station and then drove her to the hotel. He left her in the Biltmore lobby at 6:30 p.m. According to hotel employees, Elizabeth subsequently paced the lobby for several hours before departing. What happened from that time to when her body was found six days later is a mystery. (Walter was initially considered a suspect in the murder, but was absolved after passing a lie detector test.) In a very odd twist, on January 24th, a package was mailed to the Los Angeles Examiner containing several of Short’s belongings, including photographs, her birth certificate , her social security card, and her address book. Gasoline had been used to wipe the package clean of any identifying fingerprints. Then, the following day, Elizabeth’s purse and one high heel were found in a dumpster a few miles from where her body was dropped. According to the TruTV website, the killer later sent 13 letters to the police and the media. And while more than thirty people supposedly confessed to the crime, it was never solved. The case of the Black Dahlia murder remains open to this day.

The vacant lot where Elizabeth’s body was found is now a jarringly normal neighborhood of one-story tract homes. And while there seems to be quite a bit of confusion online as to the exact spot where Short was dropped, according to the coroner’s inquest, the site was 54 feet north of the fire hydrant located in front of 3831 South Norton Avenue.

I counted off 54 feet north from the fire hydrant and wound up at the spot pictured below. Elizabeth’s body was found on the patch of grass behind me, in what is now the front yard of the house located at 3825 South Norton Avenue.

The exact spot, denoted with an orange X in the image below, is situated on private property, which is why I did not pose there. You can check out a picture taken of the crime scene on the day that Elizabeth’s body was discovered as compared with a current photo of the area on Flickr here.

The site is also a filming location. Scott Michaels, of the Find a Death website, took Bridget Marquardt, Holly Madison, and Kendra Wilkinson there – in a purple hearse! – during a private Dearly Departed tour in the Season 2 episode of The Girls Next Door titled “Girls Will Be Ghouls.”

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Elizabeth Short’s, aka the Black Dahlia’s, body was found on South Norton Avenue halfway between West 39th and Coliseum Streets in the Leimert Park area of Los Angeles. The exact spot, according to the coroner’s inquest, was 54 feet north and a few feet west of the fire hydrant located in front of the house at 3831 South Norton Avenue, which puts her death site in the northeast corner of the front yard of the house at 3825 South Norton Avenue.

October 15, 2013
Larry Edmunds’ Former House

Just a few doors north of Peg Entwistle’s former residence (which I blogged about on Friday) is the guesthouse where iconic bookseller Larry Edmunds committed suicide in 1941. I was absolutely shocked to come across the location in Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites, which was written by fellow stalker E.J. of The Movieland Directory, because at the time I was under the impression that Edmunds was still alive. Ever since moving to SoCal, I had been a regular patron of Larry Edmunds Bookshop, which was founded way back in 1938 (yes, I really should have realized its namesake was most likely no longer living ). The bookstore/memorabilia boutique is one of my favorite places in L.A. and is the preeminent spot to procure any tome, memento or trinket at all related to Hollywood and its history – stuff like lobby cards, headshots, movie posters, and fan magazine back issues can all be found there. Even Barbara Stanwyck’s The Night Walker script was being sold at Larry’s back in 2011. So I was absolutely gobsmacked to learn that the shop’s founder had not only passed on, but had killed himself over seven decades ago, and I decided right then and there to include his former home in my Haunted Hollywood postings.

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Larry Edmunds was born Lawrence O’Connell Edmunds in North Carolina on March 13th, 1906. He migrated to Hollywood at some point and landed a job working for bookseller Stanley Rose. He then branched out on his own in 1938 and opened his namesake bookshop at 1603 North Cahuenga Boulevard. And while the place did not specialize in movie-related publications at the time, it became a huge hit with the Hollywood set and Larry struck up a friendship with several of his famous patrons, including W.C. Fields, Basil Rathbone, William Faulkner, and John, Ethel and Lionel Barrymore. Rumor has it that he became more than friends with a few starlets, as well, such as Mary Astor, Marlene Dietrich and Paulette Goddard. Sadly, mental illness and alcoholism got ahold of Edmunds and in February 1941, while living in a guest house behind the property pictured below, he stuck his head in his gas stove, killing himself. He was 34.

In Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites, E.J. writes, “His suicide note explained that when he found himself cutting off the heads of the little men that were crawling through the walls to kill him, he realized he was seriously disturbed and had to kill himself.” Ya think? Edmunds willed his store to an employee named Milt Luboviski. It was Milt’s wife, Git, who had the idea to turn the place into the movieland mecca that it is today. The shop has moved twice since then – first to 6658 Hollywood Boulevard in 1955 and then to its current location at 6644 Hollywood Boulevard in 1990. When Git decided to retire in 2007, she sold the site to longtime employee Jeffrey Mantor. He continues to run it today.

According to Zillow, the property where Edmunds last lived consists of two 1925 bungalows on an “over-sized lot.” The front house features two bedrooms, one bath, a living room, a dining room, a fireplace, hardwood flooring, an updated kitchen, an enclosed sun porch, a separate laundry room, an outdoor patio, and a garden. The rear house, where Larry resided, is a one-bedroom, one-bath unit with a living room, a den, and an updated kitchen (thank God!). Sadly, the back dwelling is not visible from the road, but I did manage to dig up the MLS photos pictured below.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to E.J., of The Movieland Directory, for writing about this location in his book Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Larry Edmunds’ former house is located at 2470 ½ North Beachwood Drive in Hollywood. Peg Entwistle’s former home (which I blogged about here) is located just a few doors south at 2428 North Beachwood. Larry Edmunds Bookshop is located at 6644 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. You can visit the store’s official website here.

October 14, 2013
Peg Entwistle’s Former House

Another location that I learned about thanks to the fabulous Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites book, which was penned by fellow stalker E.J. of The Movieland Directory, was the one-time Beachwood Drive home of Peg Entwistle, the tragic blonde actress who only achieved fame after her 1932 suicide, in which she jumped to her death from the Hollywood Sign. And while I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to stalk the residence just a few days after reading about it, I figured it would be the perfect spot to feature in my Haunted Hollywood postings and held off on blogging about it until now.

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Peg was born Lillian Millicent Entwistle across the pond in London, England in 1908. After her mother passed away suddenly when Entwistle was about eight, she and her father, Robert, packed up and moved to New York in the hopes of starting a new life. While there, Robert remarried and had two sons. Tragically, he was killed about six years later by a hit-and-run driver while walking home from work. Peg’s brothers were then sent to California to live with their uncle, Harold Entwistle, while Peg stayed behind to try her turn at acting. She quickly secured a role in a Broadway production of Hamlet and garnered favorable reviews. It was not long before the petite beauty was acting steadily, earning parts in over ten different Broadway productions. Sadly, most were flops. In 1927, Peg met actor Robert Keith and the two were later married. The union was quickly dissolved, though, when Entwistle discovered that Keith had not only been married previously, but had a son (Family Affairs’ Brian Keith, who also later committed suicide, as did his daughter, Daisy).

In 1931, Peg heard Hollywood calling and moved to the West Coast, originally renting a room at the Hollywood Studio Club. She instantly won a role in the short-lived play The Mad Hopes, which also featured Humphrey Bogart and The Wizard of Oz’s Billie Burke. Stardom was almost within reach shortly thereafter when she landed a part in RKO’s Thirteen Women, but, sadly, when the movie premiered in 1932, it was lambasted by critics and the studio subsequently re-edited it, cutting Peg’s role almost entirely. RKO cancelled her contract just a few weeks later and the actress was forced to move into her uncle’s house at 2428 North Beachwood Drive in Hollywood. Peg then made plans to return to New York and the Great White Way, but, unfortunately, could not come up with the necessary train fare. Times were dire.

On the evening of Friday, September 16th, 1932, Peg informed Harold that she was heading to a local drugstore. Instead, she walked a mile and a half up Beachwood Drive to the Hollywood Sign (which then spelled out “Hollywoodland”), climbed up a maintenance ladder to the top of the 50-foot-tall letter H, and jumped to her death. She was 24. The following morning, her clothing and purse were discovered by a hiker. Inside the purse, was a letter that read, “I am afraid I am a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this a long time ago, it would have saved a lot of pain. P.E.” (The image below is a screen capture taken from an E! Mysteries & Scandals episode about Entwistle. I am unsure if the letter pictured is Peg’s actual letter or a facsimile.) The hiker gathered the clothes and purse and dropped them on the steps of the Hollywood Police Station anonymously. The next day, detectives located Peg’s remains. Investigators were unable to identify her, so they published the suicide note in the Los Angeles Times in the hopes that someone would recognize the handwriting. Harold did, called the police and later identified the body. Peg was cremated and subsequently interred at the Oak Hill Cemetery in Glendale, Ohio.

Supposedly, a letter from the Beverly Hills Playhouse offering Peg the lead part in a play arrived at Harold’s house shortly following her death. The role? A beautiful woman who commits suicide. I am fairly certain that is just Hollywood lore, though – an anecdote dreamed up to make Peg’s story all the more tragic (especially being that, according to Wikipedia, the Beverly Hills Playhouse was not founded until 1954, over two full decades after Entwistle’s suicide).

Harold’s tiny bungalow, which was originally built in 1913, boasts three bedrooms, one bath, 1,650 square feet of living space, and a 0.16-acre plot of land. The property last sold for $35,000 in November 1974. Zillow estimates its worth today at $980,000. Not a bad return on an investment!

Pictured below is the view from the front of Peg’s former home. I cannot tell you how haunting it was to be standing in front of the residence with the Hollywood Sign looming over us.

You can watch the E! Mysteries & Scandals episode about Peg by clicking below.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to E.J., of The Movieland Directory, for writing about this location in his book Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Peg Entwistle’s former home is located at 2428 North Beachwood Drive in Hollywood.

October 11, 2013
Ray Combs’ Former House

One Haunted Hollywood location that I learned about back in January thanks to the fabulous book Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites, which was written by fellow stalker E.J. of The Movieland Directory, was the Glendale-area home where former Family Feud host Ray Combs was taken into custody shortly before his 1996 suicide. I was an avid watcher of the Feud during my teenage years and remember being heartbroken upon learning of Ray’s death, so I was, of course, immediately intrigued. I ran right out to stalk the residence just a few days later and have been absolutely itching to blog about it ever since. So here goes.

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Ray Combs was born Raymond Neil Combs Jr. in Hamilton, Ohio on April 3rd, 1956. He met his future high school sweetheart/wife, Debra, in the first grade. During his senior year at Garfield High, Ray was class president, a Boys State representative and the lead in the school play. Talk about most likely to succeed! After graduating in 1974, he received a nomination to West Point, but turned it down to instead embark on a two-year Mormon mission in Arizona. Upon his return, he married Debra and became a furniture salesman in Indianapolis. The job didn’t float his boat, though, and in 1982 he packed up his family and moved to Hollywood with stars in his eyes. He quickly gained success, winning an L.A. stand-up competition in 1984 and then an appearance on The Tonight Show in 1986, after which he received a standing ovation. Following that performance, he was offered a job hosting The Family Feud. Ray and Debra subsequently purchased a two-story, six-bedroom, two-bath, 1,987-square-foot home located at 1318 Sonora Avenue in Glendale in 1988. The dwelling, which sits on 0.26 acres, was originally built in 1925 and boasts a swimming pool and spa.

In early 1994, due to poor ratings, producers decided to let Ray go and bring back former Feud host Richard Dawson. Click below to watch Ray’s final appearance on Family Feud, in which a contestant fails to earn a single point during the Fast Money round, causing the comedian to say, “You know, I’ve done this show for six years and this could be the first time that I had a person that actually got no points and I think it’s a damn fine way to go out. Thought I was a loser till you walked up here and you made me feel like a man.” Then when the credits start to roll, Ray bolts from the stage, leaving the winning family cheering by themselves.

This clip is also amazing, by the way.

As is this one. But now I’m really getting off topic.

1994 was not kind to Combs. Besides losing his hosting gig and almost-$1-million-a-year paycheck, the comedian was in a car accident in July that rendered him temporarily paralyzed and left him with lingering spinal pain. Sadly, 1995 was no better. His family home of over 11 years in Ohio was foreclosed upon and he and his wife also separated and filed for divorce. Ray subsequently moved into an apartment in North Hollywood, while Debra and the couple’s six children remained at the Glendale residence.

According to the Find a Death website, on the night of May 31st, 1996, Ray telephoned Debra from his apartment and informed her that he had swallowed some pills. She called 911 and Ray was taken to Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank (which I blogged about here). He contacted Debra again early the next morning informing her that he was being released and that he needed a ride home. During the drive, Ray became agitated that Debra wanted to take him to her place and wound up jumping out of the car – barefoot – and running onto the Ventura Freeway where a passerby picked him up. According to the Los Angeles Times, he was then taken to a friend’s residence and appeared to be “in a rage.” He told the friend that he was going to his family’s home “to hurt his wife and destroy the place.” His friend called the police and notified them of Ray’s plans. Detectives then made their way to Debra’s house, where they found Combs destroying furniture and bashing his head against walls. The comedian was again taken to a hospital, this time Glendale Adventist Medical Center, where he was placed on a 72-hour suicide watch. It did no good. In the early hours of June 2nd, Combs tied his bed sheets together and hung himself from a rod in the closet in his room. He was found by a hospital orderly at 4:10 a.m., dead at the age of 40.

At the time of his death, Ray had accumulated a debt of $500,000 (not including the $470,000 mortgage on the Glendale home), largely amassed from the failure of two shuttered comedy clubs he had owned in Ohio. According to an October 1996 People magazine article, the Glendale property was foreclosed upon shortly thereafter and Ray’s family subsequently moved into a two-bedroom rental. During that time, Johnny Carson, the man largely credited with giving Ray his big break, sent Debra a check for $25,000 along with a handwritten note that said, “I understand you are having some problems. I hope this will ease the burden.” Unfortunately, I could find no information on the Combs family whereabouts today.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to E.J., of The Movieland Directory, for writing about this location in his book Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Ray Combs’ former home is located at 1318 Sonora Avenue near the Kenneth Village area of Glendale.

October 10, 2013
The Cecil Hotel

Los Angeles magazine’s The Crime Issue had me absolutely drooling when I received it back in July, especially Steve Erickson’s article “Sleep Tight,” which detailed the bizarre 2013 death of 21-year-old Canadian tourist Elisa Lam at the Cecil Hotel in downtown L.A. I was glued to every single word Erickson wrote and, upon finishing the article, immediately headed to my computer to find out more information about the case, which is easily one of the most haunting and peculiar ever to touch the City of Angels. Then, when I came across the insanely eerie surveillance footage of Lam in the hotel’s elevator – the last images taken of the young woman alive – I knew I had to cover the place during my Haunted Hollywood postings and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk it just a few days later.

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The Cecil Hotel was constructed sometime during the 1920s (there are varying reports online stating that it opened in 1924, 1925 and 1927 and I am unsure of which year is correct). The fifteen-floor property was originally billed as an upscale hotel for business travelers, but when the Great Depression hit just a few years after its founding, the Cecil’s business took a severe downturn. By the 1950s, the site had become a sanctum for transients and criminals and was eventually converted into a Single Room Occupancy (SRO) establishment, offering rooms with shared bathrooms to long-term residents at low rates.

In May 2007, the structure was purchased for $28.5 million by a development company who had plans to turn it back into a hotel. Renovations were started in which the lobby was restored to its original grandeur (the result was fabulous as you will see at the end of this post) and three floors of rooms converted into a modernized “boutique hotel/youth hostel hybrid.” Sadly though, the city stepped in and halted the project mid-way through, claiming that the property was a “residential hotel” and that the owners would have to find replacement housing for any displaced occupants. Lawsuits followed and the Cecil wound up being turned back over to the lender. It is unclear as to what is to become of the locale in the future, but at the present time the site offers both long-term and short-term accommodations, and a rather odd dichotomy.

Despite the partial renovation and grandness of the lobby, seediness still dogs the Cecil. A 2008 Los Angeles Times article states, “Fresh Monet, Picasso and Kandinsky posters hang on the vivid yellow, red and blue walls next to the elevators on each floor. But around the corner, reality hits: The rooms are small, bugs scamper across the floors and in the dim hallways, one sometimes encounters guests who have been using drugs or alcohol.” Steve Erickson actually spent the night at the hotel before penning his “Sleep Tight” article. (Um, no thank you!) Upon checking in, he snagged his neighbor’s DO NOT DISTURB sign to hang on his own door because, as he says, “When someone knocks on your door at the Cecil, it isn’t room service.” When he returned to his room after a dinner at Cole’s restaurant (which I blogged about here) a few hours later, the sign was gone – stolen by another wary hotel guest. Erickson describes the property as such, “If you aren’t at the Cecil to hide, or to look for the city you’ve occupied but never known, you’re probably a foreign traveler stranded by expectations, inconsolable for a glimpse of Hollywood or the beach that the travel guide promised is only ‘minutes away.’ The Cecil hasn’t been minutes away from anything worth being minutes away from for decades.” Yeah, I’d say that pretty much sums the place up.

The Cecil has had numerous brushes with darkness over its eighty-plus-year history. In 1985, Richard Ramirez, aka the Night Stalker, lived on the hotel’s top floor in a $14-a-night room. Austrian journalist/serial killer Jack Unterweger moved into the property in 1991 in what many believe was an homage to Ramirez. He killed three prostitutes during his tenure there. The structure has also been the site of at least three suicides and one unsolved murder. Its most bizarre incidence of the macabre, though, has to be the disappearance and death of Elisa Lam.

Lam, who was traveling alone, checked into the Cecil Hotel on January 27th, 2013 while on a California holiday. She spoke with her family back in Vancouver daily during the trip. Then, on January 31st, she vanished without a trace. Detectives investigating the case were at a loss until they asked to see the hotel’s surveillance videos, on which was footage of Elisa acting extremely strangely in the Cecil’s elevator the night of her disappearance. In the video, which you can watch by clicking below, the young woman, seemingly both petrified and playful, is shown haphazardly pushing buttons for every floor, hiding in a corner, jumping in and out of the elevator, speaking to someone real or imagined just out of the camera’s view, and inexplicably flailing her arms and hands about. The feed is honestly one of the most haunting things I’ve ever watched in my life!

Lam’s body was not found until almost three weeks later, when, on February 19th, a maintenance worker headed to the Cecil’s roof to check the water tanks after several guests complained of low water pressure in their rooms. He discovered Lam’s naked body at the bottom of one of the property’s four 8-foot tall, 4-foot wide tanks. (And yes, hotel guests had been bathing in, brushing their teeth with, and drinking the water from that tank while Lam’s body was decomposing. Talk about an absolute nightmare! The incident triggered some rather humorous Yelp reviews, though, including the admonition, “Worst. Swimming. Pool. Ever.”) Despite the eerie video and mystery surrounding her disappearance, the coroner’s report ruled Lam’s death an “accidental drowning” and listed her bi-polar disorder as a contributing factor. Um, what now? Detectives were unable to explain how the young woman entered the roof area, which can only be accessed with a key, although they speculated that she climbed there via a fire escape. But did she do so naked? If not, then where are her clothes? And how does one theorize a tiny woman scaling an 8-foot tall water tank, opening the lid, climbing inside, and then shutting the lid back over herself ALL ON HER OWN? Accidental drowning, my foot! While the case is now closed, I have a feeling that the mystery surrounding it will never quiet.

Besides being the site of real life horror, the Cecil hotel is also a filming location. In 1977, the structure was where a taxi cab driver named Lawson (James Sutorius) killed a prostitute (Juno Dawson) in the Season 5 episode of Kojak titled “A Strange Kind of Love.” As you can see below, the exterior of the hotel looked quite a bit different back then.

Although the “Cecil” sidewalk sign (which you can see a photograph of here) still looks the same.

The interior of the property seen in Kojak bears no resemblance whatsoever to the interior of the Cecil hotel today. As you will see in a minute, the new owners did one heck of a remodel!

Fellow stalker Walter also informed me that in 1978 the exterior of the Cecil appeared in the background of the Season 4 episode of The Rockford Files titled “Dwarf in a Helium Hat.” Thanks, Walter!

The property has also been used in no less than three episodes of the television series Castle. It first popped up in 2009 in the Season 2 episode titled “When the Bough Breaks” as the supposed fancy New York building where Dr. Cameron Talbot (Reed Diamond) lived. Only the interior of the lobby area was used in the filming. (Like I said, the renovation was really quite spectacular.)

That same year, a bike messenger was struck by a hit-and-run driver in front of the Cecil in the Season 2 episode of Castle titled “Kill the Messenger.”

In 2011, the site popped up once again in the Season 3 episode of Castle titled “Nikki Heat,” as the supposed New York-area Beaumont Hotel. And while IMDB also states that the property appeared in the Season 1 episode of Baretta titled “The Half-Million Dollar Baby,” I was unable to find a copy of the episode with which to verify that claim.

On a Halloween side-note – this past Saturday I attended the bachelorette party for Miss Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog, which took place at Disneyland, my favorite place in the entire world. I just about died upon arriving at the park’s gates and seeing the decorations pictured below. Halloween and Disneyland together was almost more excitement than this stalker could handle!

Check out the autumn leaves used as a bow in Minnie’s hair.

For those who have never been, Disneyland is an absolutely magical place during Halloween. Who am I kidding? Disneyland is an absolutely magical place any time of year, but it is especially so during Halloween.

Um, LOVE IT!

Add to that the fact that a Starbucks FINALLY opened inside the park – right on Main Street – and my head was about to explode! As my mom said, now Disneyland truly IS the Happiest Place on Earth.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Cecil Hotel is located at 640 South Main Street in downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the property’s official website here.

October 9, 2013
Rockhaven Sanitarium

Back in early September, while doing research on filming locations in Montrose, I came across this 2011 Crescenta Valley Weekly article about a vacant former mental institution named Rockhaven Sanitarium. My interest was immediately piqued, of course (y’all know how much this stalker LOVES herself some abandoned properties), and I thought the site would fit in perfectly with my Haunted Hollywood postings – especially once I discovered that none other than Gladys Baker Eley, mother of Miss Marilyn Monroe, called the place home for almost a decade and a half. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk it while the two of us were in L.A. last month.

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Rockhaven Sanitarium, which was also known as the Screen Actors Sanitarium, was originally founded in January 1923 by a nurse named Agnes Richards. After witnessing firsthand the poor treatment of the mentally ill while working in both San Bernardino’s Patton State Hospital and the Los Angeles County General Hospital (which is ironically where Gladys Baker gave birth to Norma Jean on June 1st, 1926), Richards decided to open her own “secluded sanctuary” to treat ailing women with dignity in a home-like setting. She leased a two-story building with a stone façade (hence the name “Rockhaven”) on Honolulu Avenue in Montrose for $125 a month and took in six patients, whom she called “residents.” By the next year, the number of residents had grown to 24.

To house the growing number of residents, Richards began purchasing neighboring homes, as well as constructing new buildings on adjacent vacant land. She also eventually bought the original stone dwelling. By 1940, the expanded site, which was one of California’s first private mental health institutions, consisted of 15 Craftsman and Spanish Revival-style buildings, 12 lots of land totaling 3.3 acres, facilities to treat over one hundred patients, a small hospital, a dining hall, and a professional kitchen. The gorgeous grounds, which won a landscaping award in 1966, featured gardens, towering oak trees, grottos, ponds, flowerbeds, fountains, shaded patios, statuaries, and meandering footpaths. Richards believed that beautiful surroundings were necessary to the healing process and Rockhaven was nothing if not idyllic.

As depicted in the documentary “Rockhaven: A Sanctuary from Glendale’s Past,” which won a Los Angeles Area Emmy Award, the sanitarium was not your typical mental health facility. Thanks to the fact that residents were taken on regular excursions, rooms were decorated by interior designers, holidays were celebrated, and patients allowed to wear their normal clothing, Rockhaven was a place where troubled souls could lead normal, even happy lives.

As Richards began to gradually withdraw from running Rockhaven in 1956, her granddaughter, Patricia Traviss, took over daily operations. Patricia continued to run the facility until 2001, when she retired and sold it to the Ararat Home of Los Angeles. Ararat transformed the property into a nursing home, but, claiming it was too difficult to maintain, wound up closing its doors in 2006. In a bit of a macabre twist, when Rockhaven was shuttered, for whatever reason, many patients’ belongings were left behind as if their owners were planning to return – clothes remained hanging in closets, greeting cards and flowers stood on shelves, and framed photos lingered on nightstands. When the city of Glendale purchased the site for $8.25 million in April 2008, they gathered together all of the lost belongings and put them into storage for safe keeping. And while there were originally plans to turn the historic location into a community center and public park, when the economy took a downturn, that project had to be put on hold. The future of Rockhaven is, sadly, now up in the air. In the meantime, the city, the Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley and the Friends of Rockhaven maintain and care for the location.

Due to its bucolic quality, several notables sought treatment at Rockhaven including Billie Burke (aka Glinda from The Wizard of Oz), bandleader Babe Egan, dancer Marion Rose, Broadway actress Peggy Fears, Clark Gable’s first wife, Josephine Dillon, and, as I mentioned earlier, Gladys Baker. (It has been said that actress Frances Farmer also spent some time at Rockhaven, but I believe that claim to be just a rumor.)

Gladys was admitted to Rockhaven Sanitarium on February 9, 1953. She remained there for the next 14 years, thanks to a $5,000-a-year trust fund that Marilyn had set up for her. During her tenure there, Gladys attempted suicide several times and even escaped from the facility in 1963, by tying bed sheets together, climbing out of an 18-inch closet window and scaling a fence. She then walked 15 miles to Lakeview Terrace Baptist Church in Pacoima, where she was found the following day. During yet another eventful escape, Gladys somehow or another got married!

In 1967, Gladys was released to her daughter Berniece Baker Miracle, Marilyn’s half-sister, who lived in Florida. She passed away in Gainesville 17 years later, on March 11, 1984, at the age of 81.

You can check out a video of Gladys taken during her later years by clicking below. It is absolutely eerie not only how closely she resembled her famous daughter, but also to catch a glimpse of what Marilyn would most likely have looked like as an elderly woman.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Rockhaven Sanitarium, the former home of Marilyn Monroe’s mother, Gladys Baker, is located at 2713 Honolulu Avenue in Montrose.

October 8, 2013
The Former Menendez Family Home

Just around the corner from Vincente Minnelli’s former abandoned mansion (which I blogged about yesterday) is the palatial Elm Drive residence where on August 20th, 1989, brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez (then 22- and 19-years-old, respectively) shot and killed their parents, entertainment company executive Jose and housewife Mary Louise, aka “Kitty.” (I honestly cannot believe that the murders took place in 1989! I would have guessed them to have occurred far more recently.) The case that followed would become one of the most-famous and most-watched of the century, rivaled only by that of O.J. Simpson – which is ironic, but more on that later. I first became interested in the Elm Drive house earlier this year while reading the book You’ll Never Make Love in This Town Again, one of the chapters of which was written by actress Robin Greer whose husband, businessman Mark Slotkin, custom-built the property.

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The Mediterranean-style home was originally constructed in 1927, but was completely redesigned by Slotkin in 1974 and became his and Robin’s primary residence. Slotkin’s rebuild featured six bedrooms, eight baths, 9,063 square feet of living space, a pool, a tennis court, and a two-story guest house with its own sitting room, full bath, bedroom, and two-car garage. And here’s where the irony comes in. Greer and Slotkin were longtime friends of O.J. Simpson’s, and Robin reportedly hosted Nicole Brown Simpson’s baby shower, when she was pregnant with Sydney, at the Elm Drive manse in 1985. How’s that for eerie? Robin even states in You’ll Never Make Love in This Town Again that Nicole named Sydney after Robin’s character on Ryan’s Hope. In October 1988, after Mark and Robin decided to divorce, the estate was put on the market and sold to the Menendez family. They would live in it for less than a year. (Ironically enough, Robin was also at the center of a very interesting – and heartbreaking – Los Angeles Times story about an autograph collector’s unsuccessful quest that caught my eye this past July.)

On the evening of August 20th, 1989, Erik and Lyle murdered their parents with shotguns while the couple sat on the couch in their den watching The Spy Who Loved Me. Jose was shot five times, Kitty nine. The brothers, feigning grief, claimed that the killings had most likely been conducted by the mob. Their strange behavior was a red flag to investigators, though. Just three days after the murders, Lyle and Erik began blowing through their inheritance, going on extensive shopping sprees and ultimately spending over $1 million in six months time. Their purchases included a $64,000 Porsche, a Rolex watch, $40,000 worth of clothing, and, oddest of all, one of Lyle’s favorite restaurants in Princeton, Chuck’s Spring Street Café. Erik wound up confessing the crime to his therapist, L. Jerome Oziel, quite fittingly on Halloween day 1989. When Lyle found out, he became infuriated and threatened Oziel. The therapist taped some later conversations with the brothers and Oziel’s mistress informed police of the recordings in March 1990. The brothers were arrested that same month and charged with multiple murder for financial gain. The first trial, in 1994, resulted in hung juries, but they were both convicted and given life sentences during their retrial in 1996.

The Elm Drive house has been sold twice since the murders – first in 1993 to mystery television writer William Link and then in 2001 to a telecommunications executive named Sam Delug. Thinking about a normal family living their day-to-day life on the premises, I am reminded of the following quote by crime novelist Denise Hamilton from her article “Bringing Out the Dead” which was printed in the July 2013 issue of Los Angeles magazine: “And I wondered, Do bricks and mortar retain memories of crimes committed in airless rooms? Can violence sear a pattern into walls that no layers of paint can cover? Is this small patch of earth forever cursed?” Thankfully though, it looks like the macabre history of the house has not prevented Mr. Delug from celebrating Halloween, as you can see in this photograph on the Find a Death website.

Some sort of construction took place at the residence in 2002 (as you can also see on Find a Death) and the interior was reportedly gutted, but the exterior still looks pretty much exactly the same today as it did when Jose and Kitty owned it. Oddly enough, though, a gate that used to surround the property was taken down during the remodel. With a dwelling as notorious as this one, you’d think the owners would have wanted to put a fence up, not take one down!

And while there are rumors that Elton John, Michael Jackson, Prince, and members of the band U2 all rented the mansion at different points in time, being that Mark Slotkin sold it directly to Jose and Kitty, I do not see how that could be possible – unless, of course, they were tenants prior to the home’s 1974 rebuild.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Menendez Brothers’ former house is located at 722 North Elm Drive in Beverly Hills.

October 3, 2013