famous murder sites – IAMNOTASTALKER

October 12, 2012September 29, 2017

The Home Where Marvin Gaye Was Killed

Way back in January, while on a stalking adventure with Mike, from MovieShotsLA, he took me by the West Adams-area home where, on April 1st, 1984, singer Marvin Gaye Jr. was shot and killed by his father, Marvin Gay Sr. (and no, gay is not a typo – Marvin Jr. added an e to his surname early on in his career). Mike thought the location would fit in perfectly with my annual Haunted Hollywood theme and, while I adamantly agreed, that unfortunately meant that I had to wait over ten months to blog about the place. So without further ado, here goes . . . finally!

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Marvin Gaye Jr.’s former home, which was originally built in 1905, was designed by Sumner Hunt, who also designed the Thomas W. Phillips residence, aka The People Under the Stairs house, that I blogged about yesterday. Marvin Jr., who had found massive success thanks to such hits as “Let’s Get It On”, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”, “What’s Going On”, and “Sexual Healing”, purchased the large Tudor-style dwelling in 1975 for $30,500, but, due to issues with drugs and a dire financial situation, wound up having to quit-claim the property to his parents just a year and a half later.

As the story goes, in late 1983, Marvin Jr. moved back into the home following the end of his U.S. tour. The singer was not in good shape. At the time, he was suffering from extreme depression, cocaine addiction, suicidal tendencies, and severe paranoia. Convinced that someone was trying to kill him, he had even taken to wearing a bulletproof vest when not onstage. And, according to this article, at one press conference he announced that he had been poisoned by an unknown individual and then later saved by an antidote potion that had been created by comedian Dick Gregory. Um, OK.

At about 11 a.m. on April 1st, 1984, Marvin Jr. got into an argument with his father, who was a Pentecostal minister and with whom he had always had a stormy relationship, in an upstairs bedroom of the house. The argument quickly escalated and got physical, resulting in Marvin Sr. grabbing a .38-caliber pistol and shooting his son twice in the chest.

In a very odd move, Marvin Sr. then walked downstairs, opened the front door, tossed the gun onto the lawn, sat on the porch, and waited for the police to arrive. There is a conflicting report making the rounds online that Marvin Sr.’s wife, Alberta Gay, was the one who actually threw the gun onto the lawn from an upstairs window. I am unsure which version of the story is true, but, either way, when the police did arrive, Marvin Sr. was waiting for them on the porch. He was arrested and later charged with murder. Marvin Jr. was taken to California Hospital Medical Center (located at 1401 South Grand Avenue), where he was pronounced dead at 1:01 p.m. – one day before his 45th birthday.

Due to the fact that he had suffered massive bruising from the altercation with his son, Marvin Sr. was allowed to plead no-contest to voluntary manslaughter and received only five years probation for the crime. Alberta moved out of the house during the trial and subsequently sued her husband for divorce. She passed away in 1987. That same year, Marvin Jr.’s sisters deeded the property to the Marvin P. Gaye Jr. Memorial Foundation, which wound up selling it to new owners in 1988. And while Wikipedia states that Marvin Sr. lived at the West Adams residence for a time briefly following his trial, I am not sure if that information is correct.

Marvin Gaye’s former home boasts 5 bedrooms, 2 baths, 5,352 square feet, and a 0.48-acre plot of land. The front door happened to be open while we were stalking the place, so we got a tiny peek at the interior.

The property also boasts a huge detached two-car garage with an upstairs guest house that Marvin Jr.’s brother Frankie and his wife, Irene, lived in at the time of the killing.

Fellow stalker Scott Michaels, from the FindADeath website, did a fabulous write-up on Marvin’s killing and also posted a photograph of the home taken shortly afterwards in which you can see that it still looks EXACTLY the same today as it did in 1984. Aside from a change in the trim’s paint color and a different style of fence, the residence is pretty much identical to its 1984 self. Absolutely amazing! You can check out another 1984 photograph of the house here. And while a January 1998 Los Angeles Magazine article stated that devoted fans still showed up to the residence annually on Marvin Jr.’s birthday to hold candlelight vigils for the fallen singer, I am unsure if those vigils still take place to this day.

You can check out a video that Scott Michaels took inside of the home by clicking below.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for telling me about this location. Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The home where Marvin Gaye was killed is located at 2101 South Gramercy Place in the West Adams District of Los Angeles.

October 17, 2011September 29, 2017

George Reeves’ Former Home

Another location that has long been woven into the fabric of Hollywood lore is George Reeves’ former Benedict Canyon bungalow, where in the early morning hours of June 16th, 1958 the Adventures of Superman star was found dead from a single gunshot wound to the head. The events surrounding his death have been the subject of much conjecture ever since. Did the 45-year-old actor commit suicide (as was the official finding), was his death accidental, or was he murdered by his vengeful ex-lover or her jealous husband? Conspiracy theories abound and Reeves’ death has remained the stuff of Hollywood legend for over five decades since. His passing even became the subject of the 2006 biographical docudrama Hollywoodland, in which Ben Affleck plays the Pasadena-bred television star. For whatever reason, though, in my ten-plus years of living in Los Angeles, I had yet to stalk the former Superman’s home. So I figured this was the perfect time to do so and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there last weekend.

George Reeve’s former residence is rather small, especially by Hollywood standards. The brown-shingled bungalow, which was built in 1947, boasts 2 bedrooms, 3 baths, and 1,717 square feet. It was purchased for the actor at a cost of $12,000 by his longtime lover, MGM Vice-President E.J. Mannix’s wife Toni Lanier, whom the actor had broken up with shorty before his death. Reeves’ new girlfriend, who had since moved in, was a New York socialite named Leonore Lemmon, with whom he was rumored to be engaged. On the night of June 15th, 1959, Reeves and Lemmon went out to dinner and the two reportedly drank a great deal. When they returned home, they continued to kick back the alcohol until around 12:30 p.m., at which point Reeves retired to his bedroom. Lemmon stayed awake and about thirty minutes later three friends dropped by for a visit. Shortly after their arrival, Reeves came downstairs to hang out with the group and then once again retired to his room at around 1:20. A few minutes later a shot was heard and the foursome ran upstairs. The actor was discovered laying face up on his bed, naked, with a single gunshot wound to his right temple and a .30 caliber Luger on the floor in between his lifeless feet. Television’s beloved Superman was dead at the tender age of 45. Reeves was dressed in one of his character’s Clark Kent suits for the funeral, which took place two weeks later, on June 30th, 1959. His body was later cremated and interred at the Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena, which I blogged about during my Haunted Hollywood theme last year.

Reeves’ death was quickly ruled a suicide, but some facts of the case appear to be murky at best. For instance, Lemmon and her friends pulled a Conrad Murray by failing to call the police until about thirty minutes after discovering the body, and each seemed to have a differing account of the evening due to their inebriated states. Reeves himself was also severely under the influence, with a blood alcohol level of .27 and, because the actor had long enjoyed playing with unloaded weapons, it was thought possible he accidentally shot himself while doing so. It was also widely believed that Toni, to whom Reeves bequeathed his entire estate, may have shot him in a jealous rage after hearing news of his engagement, or that her husband, E.J. Mannix, who had ties to the mob, had him “whacked” due to the affair. Whatever the case may be, no charges were ever filed and Reeves’ death remains one of the most talked about Hollywood scandals to this day.

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Amazingly, George Reeves shot part of a Kellogg’s Corn Flakes commercial (the cereal company was the sponsor of Adventures of Superman) inside of his actual Benedict Canyon home. The areas which appeared in the commercial include the den;

the master bedroom (where the actor died);

the kitchen;

and the backyard. According to Jim Nolt’s fabulous Superman-themed The Adventures Continue website, the house has remained largely unchanged since the time Reeves lived there over fifty years ago.

George Reeves’ Kellogg’s Corn Flakes Commercial–Filmed in his Home

You can watch George Reeves’ Kellogg’s Corn Flakes commercial by clicking above.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: George Reeves’ former home is located at 1579 Benedict Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills.

October 14, 2011September 29, 2017

Lana Turner’s Former House -The Johnny Stompanato Murder Site

My grandma, who loves reading Hollywood biographies just as much as I do, recently gifted me with a book about the life of legendary film idol Lana Turner, authored by the star’s only daughter, Cheryl Crane. The ginormous tome, which must weigh at least twenty pounds (not kidding!), is named LANA: The Memories, the Myths, the Movies and, prior to reading it, I knew virtually nothing about the 1950s screen siren. Well, aside, of course, from the fact that she had been embroiled in one of the largest scandals ever to rock Tinseltown – the murder of smalltime gangster Johnny Stompanato, which took place inside of Lana’s rented Beverly Hills manse. So after finishing the book several weeks ago, I decided that the timing could not have been more perfect for me to do some stalking of Lana’s former residence and blog about it during my Haunted Hollywood month.

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Lana rented the large Colonial-style house pictured above in the Spring of 1958, shortly after returning to Los Angeles from England where she had been filming Another Time, Another Place with actor Sean Connery. The 6-bedroom, 6-bath, 6,769-square-foot home had originally been built in 1930 for Gone with the Wind actress Laura Hope Crews. At the time she moved in, Lana had been embroiled in a year-long turbulent romance with Johnny Stompanato, a womanizer who was best known for being mobster Mickey Cohen’s bodyguard. Lana had reportedly been trying to break up with Stompanato for several weeks, all to no avail. On the night of April 4th, 1958, only three days after she had moved into the residence, Lana had once again thrown in the towel on the relationship. After hearing the news, Johnny threatened to cut up Lana’s face and harm both her mother, “Gran”, and 14-year-old Cheryl, who had just returned home from boarding school. In the book, Cheryl describes what happened next as follows: “After John arrived, I sat in my bedroom writing a term paper while I heard his vicious threats carry through the house. In a panic I ran downstairs and into the kitchen, where on the sink counter lay one of the knives Mother had bought earlier in the day. The thought of scaring him away flashed into my mind. I went back up the stairs to Mother’s bedroom and stood outside of her door for a few moments as Stompanato continued threatening to disfigure her. Suddenly Mother threw open the door. John came up from behind, his arm raised as if to strike. I took a step forward and he ran on the knife in my hands. Stompanato looked at me and said, ‘My God, Cheryl, what have you done?’ before falling to the floor. He was dead within moments.”

Cheryl was taken to juvenile hall shortly after the killing and a coroner’s inquest was opened just a few days later, during which Lana testified. The coroner’s jury, who deliberated for a scant 20 minutes, ending up ruling Johnny’s death a justifiable homicide, acquitting Cheryl of all charges. And while theories abound that Lana was actually the one who did the stabbing and used her daughter as a scapegoat in order to avoid jail time and career ruin, legendary author James Ellroy thinks otherwise. In a February 2011 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, he said, “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." The world will perhaps never know the exact truth about what happened at 730 North Roxbury Drive on the evening of April 4th, 1958, but I find it absolutely amazing that people are still enthralled with the murder more than five decades later.

According to Cheryl, Lana’s bedroom, where the murder took place, was located on the second floor of the home on the far left-hand side. Lana moved out of the house immediately following the events of April 4th, 1958, only living on the premises a grand total of a few days. According to my buddy E.J. over at The Movieland Directory website, actress Virginia Bruce also once lived in the home, as did host Merv Griffin.

Cheryl Crane on the Johnny Stompanato Murder

You can watch an interview with Cheryl, in which she talks about the murder, by clicking above.

Big THANK YOU to my grandma for giving me LANA: The Memories, the Myths, the Movies, without which I would not have had most of the information with which to write this post.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Lana Turner’s former house, where Johnny Stompanato’s murder took place, is located at 730 North Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills.

August 29, 2011August 28, 2011

Vitello’s Italian Restaurant from “The Deep End of the Ocean”

A couple of weeks ago, after doing some stalking in Beverly Hills, the Grim Cheaper and I decided to head over to the Valley to grab dinner at one of our very favorite eateries in all of Los Angeles – Vitello’s Italian Restaurant in Studio City. And even though I have blogged about the place twice before – first in June of 2008 and then again later that November – due to the fact that it is set to undergo an extensive – and when I say extensive, I mean extensive – renovation and remodel in the near future, I figured that it was most definitely worthy of a re-post.

Vitello’s was originally opened by Sal Vitello, a native New York baker, in 1964. Ironically enough, at the time the place was not an Italian restaurant, but a modest subway sandwich shop which featured fresh, homemade bread. In 1977, Sal sold his little eatery to brothers Joe and Steve Restivo, Sicilian natives who migrated to Los Angeles via Chicago. The brothers added down-home, hearty Italian-style staples to the Vitello’s menu, quickly turning the restaurant into a Los Angeles institution.

Thanks to its proximity to the many area movie studios, along with its fabulous fare, it was not long before Hollywood took notice of Vitello’s. As you can see above, the restaurant’s main entrance is literally covered with autographed headshots. Just a few of the stars who have been spotted dining at Vitello’s over the years include Frank Sinatra, Sally Kellerman, Ana Ortiz, Tony Danza, Jason Alexander (the one from Seinfeld, not Britney Spears’ ex-husband Winking smile ), Life Goes On’s Chris Burke, Candice Bergen, Melissa Joan Hart, Frankie Muniz, Michael Landon, Joanna Kerns, Dom DeLuise, Rick Fox, Scott Baio, Tom Smothers, and Wilford Brimley.

The restaurant’s most famous celebrity guest, though, has to be actor Robert Blake, who used to be a regular patron of the eatery, dining there at least three times a week. On the evening of May 4, 2001, Blake notoriously grabbed dinner there with his then-wife, Bonnie Lee Bakley, in a booth that, according to the above photograph, was located in the bar area.

The actual bar area is pictured above. Shortly after the couple finished their meal, Bonnie was shot and killed just around the corner from the restaurant. And while Blake claimed that at the time of the shooting he had been walking back to the restaurant to retrieve a gun he had inexplicably left behind in his booth, he was arrested and charged with Bakley’s murder on April 18, 2002. He was then acquitted of those charges in March of 2005, but a few months later was found liable for Bakley’s wrongful death in a civil court. Unlike was the case with Brentwood’s Mezzaluna Restaurant, where Nicole Brown Simpson ate her last meal and which closed shortly thereafter, Vitello’s association with the crime only seemed to further the eatery’s fame and made the place even more of a Valley hot spot.

In 2005, Joe and Steve Restivo, seeking retirement, sold Vitello’s to Matt Epstein, a Sherman Oaks real estate agent who had been a regular patron of the restaurant since childhood. And while Epstein kept the menu and décor largely the same for quite some time, earlier this year he brought in a new chef, Tonino Cardia, and completely revamped the menu. And I am very sad to report that it is not nearly as good as it used to be. Gone are the vast majority of the hearty Vitello’s staples that the GC and I had come to know and love and the few items that the new menu did retain have been completed made over. The chicken marsala – which used to be my favorite entree – is a lackluster version of its former self and Vitello’s famous garlic bread now tastes much like the kind that can be purchased in the frozen food aisle of your local supermarket. Such an incredible shame!

There are also plans in the works to gut the interior of the restaurant and give it a completely new look. Even the famous Vitello’s wall mural will be coming down, as will the vintage leather booths. The new design will apparently feature French doors in the entryway and a huge olive tree in the middle of the dining room. And while it all sounds lovely, I am of the mantra that “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it”. Vitello’s has been a veritable Los Angeles institution for decades, always packed to the gills whenever we have dined there. It is widely noted that 59% of new restaurants close within three years of their opening, so for an eatery that has remained successful for over thirty-four years, you have to wonder why the owners would change a thing! It is such a shame! And while the super-nice manager came over to speak with us after we had expressed our disappointment with the new fare and even offered to comp our meal (which we turned down – we were not looking for a free meal, but just wanted to voice our opinion that the former cuisine was one hundred times better than the current), I am sad to say that I do not think we will ever be dining at Vitello’s again – the food was that bad!

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Besides being a celebrity hangout, our super-nice waitress also informed us that Vitello’s has been used as a filming location! Ironically enough, it stood in for two different locations in the 1999 movie The Deep End of the Ocean. The interior very briefly appeared as the supposed Madison, Wisconsin-area Italian restaurant where Pat Cappadora (aka Treat Williams) worked towards the beginning of the flick.

And the exterior later popped us as Cappadora’s, the supposed Chicago-area restaurant that Pat founded with his father, Angelo (aka Tony Musante), in the middle of the movie.

And while the interior was (I think) just a set, with its orange-toned walls, painted murals, and brickwork, it very closely resembles the real life interior of Vitello’s. Our waitress also informed us that the restaurant will be featured in an upcoming episode of Whitney, the yet-to-be released television series which stars Chelsea-Lately-regular Whitney Cummings.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Vitello’s Restaurant, from The Deep End of the Ocean, is located at 4349 Tujunga Avenue in Studio City. You can visit Vitello’s official website here.

January 26, 2011June 9, 2021

The Los Feliz “Murder House”

I can honestly say that out of all of the locations that I have ever stalked in my entire life, the subject of today’s post is hands down the most perplexing and mind-boggling! Last week, when I called up Mike, from MovieShotsLA, to tell him that Geoff, from the 90210locations website, had tracked down the residence belonging to Donna Martin (aka Tori Spelling) during Season One of Beverly Hills, 90210, he fell silent with shock. As it turns out there is another very famous, or perhaps very infamous, property located just up the road from Donna’s house and it is a property that Mike has actually been to countless times in the past. He then proceeded to tell me about the Los Feliz “Murder House”, or “Murder Mansion” as it is also sometimes called, which I had never before heard of. And, let me tell you, once Mike filled me in on the story of the home I was literally up ALL NIGHT reading articles on the subject and I also immediately ran right out to see the place in person the very next day.

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The story – and it is absolutely fascinating – is as follows . . . On the night of December 6, 1959, Dr. Harold Perelson, a wealthy Inglewood heart specialist, bludgeoned his wife, Lillian, to death with a ball-peen hammer and severely beat his 18-year-old daughter, Judye, while his other two children slept soundly in their bedrooms. Judye survived the beating and ran down the hillside to a neighbor’s home at 2471 Glendower Place to call for help. In the meantime, the two younger children awoke and asked their father about the screaming. Harold told them that they had been having a nightmare and to go back to sleep. He then took a cocktail of pills, killing himself instantly. The police arrived shortly thereafter and took all three Perelson children into custody. The mansion was locked up and the children were sent to live with relatives back east. The motive behind the brutal murder/suicide was never completely known, although some speculate that the Perelsons were in financial trouble. But here’s where the story gets weird.

About a year after the murder/suicide, the Perelson’s 5,050-square-foot, Spanish Revival-style mansion was purchased by Emily and Julian Enriquez via a probate auction. And while the couple, who lived in Lincoln Heights at the time, visited the mansion on occasion and even stored some of their possessions there, for reasons that remain unclear they never inhabited the property, nor did they ever move the Perelson’s belongings out! To this day, over five decades later, the mansion remains in almost the exact same state it was in on the night of December 6, 1959! According to a February 6, 2009 Los Angeles Times article written about the case, not only is the Perelson’s furniture still as it was on that evening, but their Christmas gifts remain sitting on the kitchen table, as if someone was interrupted mid-wrap, and their Christmas tree still stands in the living room!! I’m not making this up! Even stranger still is the fact that even though Emily and Julian have since passed away and their son has owned the property since 1994, it still remains in its December 1959 state. The Los Angeles Times article reports that numerous buyers have contacted Rudy wanting to purchase the home, but that, for whatever reason, he refuses to sell.

The mansion, which was built in 1925 and was quite beautiful in its day, boasts four master bedrooms, three bathrooms, a conservatory, maid’s quarters, a 20-foot by 36-foot ballroom, sweeping views of Los Angeles, and sits on over half an acre of land. Sadly though, the house has fallen into severe disrepair during the past fifty-plus years that it has remained vacant. As you can see in the above photographs, the driveway is severely cracked and the mailbox is almost completely toppled over. Neighbors do what they can to keep the grounds in order and a burglar alarm has recently been installed to keep trespassers out, but other than that the house remains frozen in time and most believe that it will eventually have to be torn down. Ron Shinkman, of The Irony Supplement Blog, wrote a very interesting post on the Perelson mansion back in early 2009 and actually managed to snap a few photographs of the interior of the property, in which some of the Perelson’s former furniture and even one of the children’s former board games are visible. Personally I think there has to be something more to the story and that perhaps the Enriquez family knew the Perelsons and had a personal reason for leaving the house in its 1959 state, but the truth of the matter is that we will most likely never know the whole story.

Another famous property, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis house, is located directly behind the Perelson mansion and is denoted with the pink arrow in the above photograph. The house, which I have yet to blog about, is one of the most famous properties in the entire world, architecturally speaking, and has appeared in such films as 1959’s House on Haunted Hill, The Day of the Locust, Blade Runner, and Rush Hour.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for telling me about this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The former Perelson mansion, aka the “Los Feliz Murder House”, is located at 2475 Glendower Place, just off of Glendower Avenue, in Los Feliz. Donna Martin’s house from the first season of Beverly Hills, 90210 is located at 2405 Glendower Avenue and the Ennis house is located at 2607 Glendower Avenue.

November 25, 2008February 13, 2009

A Drink with the Dearly Departed

This past Saturday night, thanks to E.J. over at The Movieland Directory who made the introduction, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, his fiance, my boyfriend, and I met up with Scott Michaels, creator and founder of both the Find-A-Death website and the Dearly Departed Tour Company. Scott’s tours and website both focus on famous Hollywood death and scandal locations. (The bathroom stop on his tour is the very same bathroom where George Michael was caught with his pants down a few years back! LOL) You might remember Scott from a Season 2 episode of The Girls Next Door, entitled “Girls Will Be Ghouls”. In the episode, Bridget arranged to take the girls on Scott’s Dearly Departed tour right around Halloween. Ever since viewing that episode I have wanted to take the tour for myself, but have yet to get around to it. So I was especially excited to meet up with Scott this weekend! Besides The Girls Next Door, Scott has also been featured in the book “1,000 Places to See Before You Die” and on E!’s 20 Most Horrifying Hollywood Murders special.

Scott suggested we meet up for drinks at Vitello’s Restaurant in Studio City. Quite a fitting locale to meet up with the man who calls himself the “Director of Undertakings”, dontcha think? 🙂 For those not in the know, Vitello’s is the restaurant where Robert Blake’s wife Bonnie Lee Bakley ate her final meal before being murdered in her car which was parked just a block and a half away. At the time of her murder, Blake claims he had run back to Vitello’s to supposedly search for his lost gun. Nice alibi! I’ve eaten at Vitello’s a few times and it is a GREAT restaurant. One of my faves in all of L.A. And we had a blast hanging out with Scott. It was very cool to chat with him about Hollywood history and scandal locations.

After drinks, as morbid as it may sound, I asked Scott if he wouldn’t mind showing us the exact spot where Bonnie Lee Bakley’s murder took place. I knew it was just a block and a half away from Vitello’s, but I was never sure of the exact location. So after we finished our drinks, Scott led us over to the spot. It was very cool to be given a little mini-tour and history of the murder from the founder of Dearly Departed and Find-A-Death himself! : ) And now, I really can’t wait to take his tour! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Vitello’s Restaurant is located at 4349 Tujunga Avenue in Studio City. Bonnie Lee Bakley’s murder site is located a block and a half from the restaurant, just off the corner of Kraft Avenue and Woodbridge Street. Look for the large green electrical box on Woodbridge, just east of where it meets Kraft. Bonnie’s car was parked just in front of it when she was killed. You can visit the Dearly Departed website to book a tour with Scott here. Tickets run from $35 to $50, depending on the tour.