Mysterious celebrity deaths

Hollywood is the place where movie stars are made. People travel in droves to make it big in the movie business. But most people who pursue stardom have little or no chance of ever becoming a household name. If lucky, they find a few roles as an extra.

The land of make believe also has a dark side. Unfortunately, drug and alcohol addictions are also part of the fabric woven into the Hollywood machine. For instance, there is the infamous “27 Club.” Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain are two legendary rockers who joined the club and never made it to blow out the candles on their 28th birthday cakes.

There also seems to be a fascination with dead celebrities. Every year, we are reminded of how Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson make more money dead than most of us living people do at our jobs. Both men have been dead for years, but their estates continue generating revenue.

There are many celebrities who live to be in their 80s and 90s and are fortunate enough to spend their last days at home with family. But there are many others who are more known for how they died than their movie careers. Some of them died under mysterious circumstances. So did they die naturally, commit suicide or did someone else take their lives?

George Reeves: He appeared in the Adventures of Superman during the early 1950s. Reeves found himself involved with a gold digger named Leonore Lemmon. After the couple was seen engaged in a heated argument, Reeves would soon end up dead. On June 16, 1959, Los Angeles Police officers arrived at 1579 Benedict Canyon Drive. They found the actor deceased in his bedroom with a bullet to his head. His death was ruled as a suicide. Although many people who knew Reeves believe he was murdered, his official cause of death remains as a suicide.

Johnny Stompanato: So this guy wasn’t a celebrity. He was a mobster. He became romantically involved with a famous actress named Lana Turner. She had appeared in Peyton Place and other popular movies. The relationship between the mobster and actress was volatile. He had physically abused Turner often. Apparently, things ended on April 4, 1958, when the former U.S. Marine ended up dead from being stabbed to death.

Cheryl Crane, the teenage daughter of Turner, claimed she stabbed Stompanato to death to protect her mother. A jury sympathized with the teenager and set her free. So did Crane kill the mobster? Rumors surface that Turner killed her lover and let her daughter take the blame. Crane has always denied this. Did she kill Stompanato or was it her mother? Crane has never changed her story.

Adrienne Shelly: Shelly was a writer and producer. She wrote, directed and appeared in a movie titled Waitress. She had a loving husband and a young daughter whom she loved. On November 1, 2006, her husband found her deceased in her work studio apartment. Allegedly, she had hanged herself from a shower rod in her bathroom. Although her death was ruled as a suicide, her family didn’t believe it. Her husband convinced authorities to look more into his wife’s death. His assessment of his wife was correct.

Police would charge an immigrant construction worker named Diego Pillco with killing Shelly. She had approached Pillco about making too much noise. After she threatened to call the police on him, he retaliated by killing her and then hanging her to make it appear as a suicide. Pillco claimed he killed her because he feared deportation. He received a twenty-five-year sentence on March 13, 2008. After completing his sentence, he will be deported.

There are many other Hollywood unusual deaths, but I found these three stories interesting because people still continue discussing these cases.