You're listening to the Mind over Murder podcast. My name is Bill Thomas.
I'm a writer, consulting producer, and now podcaster. I am now trying
to use my experience as the brother of a murder victim to help other victims
of violent crime. I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway murders,
and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilly. My name is Kristin Dilly. I'm a writer, a researcher,
a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the social media
manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner in
crime, Bill Thomas. You're listening to the Mind over Murder podcast. My
name is Bill Thomas. I'm a writer, consulting producer, and now podcaster.
I am now trying to use my experience as the brother of a murder
victim to help other victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book on
the unsolved Colonial park and I'm a co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook
group together with Kristin Dilly. My name is Kristin Dilly. I'm a writer,
a researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as
the social media manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with
my partner in crime, Bill Thomas. Welcome to Mind Ever Murderer. I'm
Kristin Dilly and I'm Bill Thomas, and we're joined today by author Casey Sherman
here to talk to us about his new book, A Murderer in Hollywood,
The untold story of Tinseltown's most shocking crime. Casey, thanks for joining us
again. Well, thanks for having me back as always a pleasure. So
we wanted to start with an important question. Asey, this February thirteenth release
day. Is this because you're an incurable romantic and you've convinced your publisher that
coming out the day before Alentine's Day? Is there anything more romantic Bill than
murder in Hollywood to talk about over a candlelight dinner with your significant other.
But it's funny you mentioned that the probably is some type of marketing decision around
that, because the thirteenth of February, where publishing is concerned, books come
out in certain times of the month or certain times of season, so the
winter books are really most of the release dates are around February thirteenth, and
I do think they it is because people are going out and they're buying things,
and they're looking for gifts. So the publishers are smart. If your
loved ones the gift of murder this Valentine's Day, hell yeah, it's just
so romantic, especially this story. It's romance off the charts. Before we
jump into talking about your newest book, take a minute and just remind our
listeners a little bit about your relationship with the true crime space, especially about
your connection to the Boston Strangler case. I appreciate that Kristen the Murder in
Hollywood. This new book is my sixteenth book. I've been writing true crime
for over twenty years. Just celebrated my twentieth anniversary, as I should say,
as a published author, and I do call myself an accidental author.
I never believed of the writing books one day, but that is until I
was thrust into the spotlight because of my work on the Boston Strangler case.
Now this wasn't just something I picked out of thin air as a personal crusade
for me. Really, my aunt was the youngest and final victim of that
notorious nineteen sixties murder spree. So I investigated the case, or kind of
reopened it. In the late eighties early nineteen nineties, wrote my first book,
Arose from Mary Mary being my aunt Mary Sullivan's name, and it became
a surprise bestseller, and then I thought, geez, I can do this.
There are other stories that are worth telling. And now sixteen books later,
here we are. We don't want to do an exhaustive bibliography, but
do you give us just a brief friend in about your most recent book,
which we understand is also being turned into a series by Amazon. Yeah,
I've been I've had the real gift from Hollywood that producers look at my work
and they see it easily adaptable because I write in a visual way. So
I wrote Boston Strong, which became Patriots Day with Mark Wahlberg, a coast
guard rescue story called The Finest Hours, which became a big Disney movie with
Chris Pine and Casey Affleck and Helta. So Helltown is a book about a
cerial murder case, and you guys had me on last year to discuss it,
and now that's being adapted into an eight part limited series for Amazon Studios,
and it's going to star Oscar Isaac as our protagonist, fellow writer Kurt
Vonnegut that I hope many in your audience remember Kurt investigated a serial murder case
back in the nineteen sixties on Cape Cot and it was one of the most
vicious murder cases in the history of crime in my opinion. So we're really
looking forward to the series. In this next book, Murder in Hollywood is
also in development, is a feature film now as well. How much of
a role do you play Casey as the author of the original material when it's
being adapted for something like an eight part limited series. That's a great question.
Bill. Earlier in my career, say with Patriots, Dad, I
didn't really have a role. I was able to review the scripts and for
authenticity purposes, but I didn't have any essay over casting or anything like that.
They'd let me know that Mark Wahlberg had been cast in the lead,
etc. But I didn't have a seat at the table. You only get
that when you become an executive producer or a producer on the project, which
I am for. Healtown that entire creative process from a collaborative standpoint has been
amazing because I've been working with some of the best creative minds in Hollywood,
starting with Team Downey. That's Robert Downey Junior and his wife Susan. They
are my co producers on the project. Our director is Edward Berger, who
won a slew of Oscars for All Quiet on the Western Front last year,
and we picked up ed. Everybody in Hollywood wanted to work with him,
but his new Oscar winning movie he hadn't come out yet. Sometimes luck plays
a role in this, and it's all about bringing the best people to the
project and letting them take their own journey with it. I wrote always the
source material, but as the screenwriters are going to take it in sometimes a
unique and different direction, and I'm okay with that as long as it really
grips me. And it does Kasi. How do you decide on your subjects
for your books? Do they do the subject pick you? Or do you
go in search of topics? Is there a master list somewhere of here's all
the things I'd like to cover and you're just taking them off one by one.
Yeah, I've got a master list in my head. And sometimes these
stories take years to develop, so I'll have to find another project in the
meantime, and this book we're talking about today a murder in Hollywood. My
agent, Peter Steinberg at UTA United Talent, gave me this idea after Helltown.
My publisher, Source Books, was looking for another big book from me,
meaning something that would incorporate the themes of a particular era and the names
of some of the most prominent people of that era. And he sent me
probably a list of four to five different news articles to take a look at.
And I came upon this article with regard to Lana Turner back in the
nineteen fifties, and I had heard the story about how she was involved with
a very salacious and sensational murder by nineteen fifty eight. Didn't really give it
much thought, but I thought, Okay, La Confidential is one of my
favorite books, and certainly one of my favorite films too. Yeah, excellent
bill. And I'm a big sucker for Raymond Chandler in all the La Noir
books and films of the nineteen forties and fifties, and I would love to
add to that large cannon in any way, shape or form. So I
told my agent. I said, I'm going to take a look at this,
give me a week. And I started to dig into the story and
I realized the story hasn't been told in its breath for sixty years, and
there's so much material that people don't even know about that I have been able
to dig out, and I'm very proud of it. While we're on the
LA Confidential tip for one second, I would probably say, if that's not
my favorite film of all time, it's top five. We over the holidays,
we saw a wonderful holiday movie, Christmas Movie with Jamie Cromwell. James
Cromwell. Yeah. He had been on the board of sag Aftra and I
was the executive director, so I had a chance to spend some time with
him. I was told that her, am, he's a very intimidating guy,
even though he's a lovely guy. He's six' six, right,
And I thought, geez, how do I deal with this guy? But
he ended up being such a great, rounded, thoughtful, kind man.
And then I heard from other people on the staff that if he likes you,
he'll let you call him Jamie. And then at some point when we'd
work together a few months, he said to me Bill, call me Jamie,
and I thought, I've a when you call. When you mentioned Jamie
Crimewell, I said, jeez, he really has to know this guy.
Good for you, Bill. But that film and that book two of my
favorites. And there is a scene, if you recalling La Confidential, where
Bud White Russell Crow's character takes Guy Pears into the Cafe Formosa and there one
of them goes up to the booth where a lot of Turner and Johnny stopping
out are sitting and there's a little scene there. So I thought, that's
a unique way into this story. And quite frankly, I thought there'd be
much more about this crime in not only filmography, but books have been written,
but there really wasn't. No people have mentioned it. So it was
a blank canvas for me to paint on over the past year and dig into
all of the different details and nuances that I was looking to explore with this,
because it wasn't really only a story about Lana Turner, but it was
a story as well, a murder in Hollywood, about the rise of organized
crime in Hollywood, which I was really fascinated by. I was so pleasantly
surprised with the whole untold story because you feel like everything about Hollywood is known,
and this actually was a story that I wasn't familiar with either. It's
interesting that I looked at it as the Lana Turner's story, but I wanted
to really focus on the rise of Hollywood, the studio system, and these
young actors and actresses coinciding with the rise of organized crime. I looked at
Lana Turner and her horizon, then I looked at La Gangster a gang Boss
Mickey Cohen in his Rise, and they were pretty similar in terms of Tommy
both taking over Hollywood in different ways, shapes or forms. And I would
say that for the gangsters, you know what they're all about, and it's
fascinating to explore that mindset. With the studios, it's a little more sinister,
in my opinion, where you have these very well respected Hollywood producers who
were preying on these young actors and actresses. And the Harvey Weinstein story didn't
come out of thin air. It was born into Hollywood back in the twenties,
thirties, forties, and ultimately the fifties. This is the sort of
thing that I would love to be able to offer to my students in my
film class as this is some of the fallout of the studio system because we've
been talking about it. Given the current politics in my school district, I'm
not going to be able to keep this on my shelf, unfortunately, but
it is very interesting and so as I was reading this, I was sitting
there going, this is definitely a story of that era, but it is
a story for the twenty first century and the Me Too movement. You mentioned
Harvey Weinstein a couple of minutes ago, and what I was really interested in
is the fact that you have shown a light on the abuse of women in
Hollywood starting from very early on. What do you think are some of the
ways that Hollywood has changed as a result of that Me Too movement and what
are some of the ways that it hasn't. That's a great question, Chris.
Then I think that my goal was to provide some agency for Wana Turner
in the book, really or her power back, and I think the female
actors in Hollywood now are starting to get that power back and really starting to
make decisions for the industry where they were always on the sideline or isolated,
even the most paid actresses over the past twenty years or Julia Roberts here,
Jennifer Lawrence is they never really had a creative seat at the table, which
is ridiculous, Steven think about. But there was this mindset that goes all
the way back to the nineteen twenties in Hollywood, where Hollywood was a man's
world for a long time. And there are so many celebrities that we've in
and out of the pages of a Murder in Hollywood, from Sean Connery to
Marilyn Monroe. Judy Garland Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, who died tragically
in her late forties, and everybody looked at her and said, oh,
what a tragic story that was. She became an alcoholic and a drug addict.
She didn't just become that. The studios had put her on drugs when
she was a young teenager, when she was almost a pre teen. They
had fed these young actors and phetamines to keep them working for seventy hours a
week to crank out movie after movie. And these kids persisted on chicken broth
and cigarettes. That was their diet along with these pills. It's surprising that
there weren't more Judy Garlands in the world than there was even Lana Turner.
When I was doing a little bit of research to get ready for today,
I had forgotten that she died of throat cancer. I know, even going
back to my parents' generation. We were talking recently about the fact that so
many adults when I was a kid, so many adults used to smoke cigarettes.
But then it would be endemic in a place like Hollywood, and like
you say, surviving on broth and cigarettes and drugs and alcohol. Yeah,
and these kids were thirteen years old at the time. And yeah, it's
funny you mentioned that. Bill. My wife and I just saw Maestro the
other day with Bradley Cooper about Letter Bernstein, and I had to go outside
and breathe some fresh air because of all this smoking in the film. I
was, I can breathe. And again, it was a short time ago
when we all grew up in that type of environment with our parents and grandparents.
And here you have Hollywood where they're putting these young actors on the fast
track when they're so young. Alana Turner has got one of the greatest introductions
to Hollywood in history. She's the original Discovery story. She was discovered sitting
at a soda fountain in Hollywood. That was her, and that led to
thousands, if not a million, starlets or would be starlets making their way
to Hollywood in the subsequent decades, sitting on a stool at a soda fountain,
waiting to be discovered. But that's she was just a kid at Hollywood
High School. She had moved to Hollywood from San Francisco because her own father
was murdered when she was quite young. And I started the book with a
chapter to explain why she was always drawn to dark men in her life.
I think that's what she was plagued by much of her life until she decided
to get her power back. A lot of people are probably familiar with the
name Lenna Turner, but I think there may be some people who are not
familiar with the name Johnny Stompinado, and I certainly was not. Can you
just give us a quick rundown? Who is Johnny Stompanado? Yeah, that's
a great question. Christ And for those who don't know, what was Marilyn
Monroe Before Marilyn Monroe, Lano owned Hollywood. Marilyn Monroe adored and idolized Lana
and actually took her whole image from Lana Turner dyed her hair platinum blonde,
and Lana was in her mid thirties by the time Maryland came around and passed
the baton of Hollywood Superstar to Marilyn Monroe. So a lot of Turner was
huge in Hollywood and certainly is in Hollywood history. Johnny Stompanado was a World
War Two veteran bad guy who grew up in the Woodstock, Illinois and made
his way to Hollywood and wanted to get on the fast track with organized crime.
And he was a jigglow in his first days in Hollywood, which a
lot of people were at that time praying on men and women, which is
what Johnny did. And suddenly young crime boss named Mickey Cohen took Johnny under
his wing. Mickey liked Johnny because Johnny was a combat vet and Johnny knew
his way around weapons, and Johnny was pretty smart and pretty tough. Johnny
started to really have an influence on Mickey Cohen and his criminal activities. And
Mickey Cohen's interesting because for much of the book of Murder in Hollywood, the
reader is going to be reading about these shooting attacks on Sunset Boulevard right in
the middle of broad daylight or bombing attempts at Mickey Cohen's home in Brentwood,
a block from where OJ Simpson eventually lived. Hollywood was under attack by organized
crime in the glory days of Hollywood, and people don't realize that. And
as Mickey got a little older, he wanted to probably get away from the
gangster violence, so to speak. So he and Johnny started to extort Hollywood
starts, putting them into compromising positions, and that's how this affair with Lana
Turner started. Were you able to spend some time in Los Angeles doing research
for the book? You're based in Massachusetts, do you end up making trips
out there to just refamiliarize yourself with the lay of the land. Yeah,
Bill. As a writer, for me, you have to look, touch
and feel it. I can't write about something unless I've seen it. I
did spend quite some time out in Los Angeles and Hollywood going over the ghosts
of Lana Turner and Mickey Cohen, walking up Sunset Boulevard and recognizing where Mickey
Cohen's headquarters once was, where all of the nightclubs that he had owned,
and there that street is so famous, so you can recognize where these places
were, and I certainly did that. I went to Lana Turner's home in
Beverly Hills, where the culmination of this story takes place, and this story
ultimately is it's a collision course between Hollywood glamour and gangsterism that ended up in
a bloodstained bedroom in Beverly Hills. How do you gain access to someone's home
like that. I couldn't walk the grid there. I've done that in the
past. I gained access to Whitey Bulger's apartment in Santa Monica a few years
ago when I wrote my book Hunting Weddy. But now that Lana's home is
in private hands, going up and knocking on the door probably would have freaked
somebody out, and I didn't want to do, but just to familiarize myself
with the street, with the home standing across the street, and I'm sure
they realized that this is an infamous home in Hollywood, and a lot of
people got at it and take photos. I was no different from any other
tourists doing the same thing. But I also had the knowledge of everything that
I had learned up to that point to allow me to picture what it must
have been like on good Friday nineteen fifty eight when there was a swarm of
police cars in front of that beautiful mansion in Beverly Hills, wondering what the
hell happened inside. What kind of media and archival records were available to you?
Did you have to foil anything or all of this available? All of
it's available if you just know where to look. The LA Times was a
great resource. The Los Angeles Police Department was a great resource. Beverly Hills
Police Department was a great resource. There is a you can use now for
journalists and writers called newspapers dot com, and it's a subscription. But if
you buy the subscription and that's a nominal fee, but you can go all
the way back to the eighteen hundreds and start digging through every newspaper article that
has been digitized. And I was shocked at how many newspaper articles there were,
not only about a lot of Turner, I knew that, but about
Mickey Cohen at the time, and about Johnny Stampanado. He didn't just come
out of thin air. He'd been written about and reported on in Hollywood for
almost a decade before he'd even met Lana Turner. So does that mean that
Johnny Stoppanado in praying on both women and men, is he bisexual himsel,
Yeah, he never looked at I don't think he ever looked at himself that
way. He looked at this was the price of doing business in Hollywood.
By write about Johnny having alliances with Liberaci, merv Griffin and again back in
the nineteen fifties, these gay actors and gay celebrities, they had to stay
in the closet, and the only way that they could have that type of
companionship they were looking for were to get into business with people. Johnny Stompanaut
and Johnny Stompanato recognized that, and he knew that the only way to get
into Hollywood was to use his body both as a weapon and as a tool
for sex. So really he's a hustler more than anything else in terms of
that's how we started Bill's relationship. He started as a hustler. I think
he morphed into a gangster under Mickey, and then I think he became a
hustler at the end of his life as he was trying to hustle Lana Turner
out of millions of dollars that she was worth at the time you're listening to
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As always, thanks for your support. Now back to mindover Murder.
Were you able to interview Lana Turner's out of Cheryl Crane for this book?
Now, what I was told was Cheryl is I think she's almost ninety now
and in a pretty affirm I don't think she's in good health. But I
did read her book Detour, which goes into at length her childhood, and
it's a very tragic childhood. I think I don't think we see I too.
I in terms of what happened in the bedroom in nineteen fifty eight,
And I do think I've got my heart breaks for Cheryl Krane, and I
think she spent her whole life trying to protect her mother, and I think
Lana spent her whole life trying to protect Cheryl. So it was a symbiotic
relationship. So do you regard Johnny Stampinato's murder as a case of self defense
as they claim? I would say that it was about time for Lana to
take her life back. Now, I take the reader in a murder for
Hollywood, in murder in Hollywood, rather through her life and through all the
bad decisions that she had made regarding men in her life and men that abused
her physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, and ultimately she couldn't make it
anymore. And when Johnny Stompanado got extremely violent against her and then threatened the
life of Lana's mother and Cheryl, who was fourteen years old at the time,
Lana decided to take her future in her own hands and kill Johnny STOMPANAO.
That's what I believe, and I think that's what the evidence in the
case dictates. And I think it would have been justifiable homicide because he was
going to kill her at some point and she just was a little quicker than
he was. This was really high profile case back then. How did the
media treat the major players in this case? You read all of the newspaper
reporting. What was the media like toward Lana and toward Jonny. Well,
it's a great question, Christen, because Lana for sixty years has been looked
at as a fem fatality by Hollywood. What this book does is it elevates
her to a rightful position as a feminist icon. I think that anytime a
crime like that happens, the focus immediately is on the alleged perpetrator, and
I think the media dragged Lana through the bushes, if you will, and
really cast the negative eye on her, which is one of the reasons why
decision was made not necessarily by Lana, but by her attorney at the time,
the Hollywood fixer named Jerry Geeseler, who was basically the Johnny Cochran of
the nineteen fifties who it was the first call she made after the knife had
gone into Johnny's torso and he's lying dead on her bedroom floor. She calls
the lawyer before she calls police. The lawyer gets there, and the crime
scene is manipulated for the next hour, and then a narrative is created.
Who wielded the knife? Was it Lana? If it was Lana's going to
go to trial, and there's a likelihood that Lana could get the death pendant,
which was very real in nineteen fifty eight. But if we put the
knife in the fourteen year old daughter's hand, now we can look at a
justifiable homicide case. Because an all male jury, Remember guys, jury's were
all male in nineteen fifty eight, an all male jury, many of those
men would have daughters that they would be sympathetic for. And I think that
there would be a lot of sympathy and empathy for Cheryl. I don't think
there would have been for Lana if she was facing the same charges. Cheryl's
a lovely fourteen year old girl, but she really is a girl. So
it's a lot easier to dismiss people's darkest thoughts about what happened that night because
there's a kid involved. That's right, And I think, as I said,
nobody could imagine that a child would be put into prison, or a
child who would be allowed to stand trial as an adult. That just didn't
happen back in nineteen fifty eight, especially in Hollywood. The tables would have
been turned that had Lana done that. But the interesting thing reading the book
or what I found in my research is Lana was eventually sued by the Stampanado
family for wrongful death, and she settled the case before without going to trial.
So what does that tell me? That tells me that Lana did not
want this to go to civil trial because there's no statute of limitation on murder
and she could have been put on trial eventually for Johnny Stamponano's death and she
avoided that at all costs. One of the disconnects for me, Casey is
we talked about the studio system and how they controlled these actors and actresses,
particularly when they were younger. How does a situation like this develop where Lana
Turner is unfortunately involved in all of these abusive relationships and there's so much negative
energy surrounding her. I feel like there's a disconnect between the studio system and
then all the terrible things that were happening in Lana's life. Would they not
able to protect their stars from some of this stuff. It's a great question
Bill. Not only were they not able to protect their stars, they were
I would say there was culpability on the studio side because Lana Turner had a
morality law with the studio MGM at the time. If she was in a
relationship with someone, she would have to marry that person. First of all,
she couldn't just have a boyfriend because that was not looked at in the
right way in nineteen fifty eight. And then she was stuck in a loveless,
violent marriage until that marriage ended, until she divorced whomever she was with
at that time. And one of the shocking things I found out in my
research going through FBI case files was that they had a case. Jade Goarhover
had a full file on Lana Turner, and there is an episode in the
book where an FBI agent follows Lana to New York City and Lana was dating
an African American jazz musician at the time. Somehow that agent gets that information
to Jay Edgarhoover. Jed Goarhover calls up Louis B. Mayor at MGM and
says, the Queen of Hollywood, which is what Lana was at the time
is dating an African American the Alana almost lost her job at the studio just
for that. So these actors were under incredible pressure at the time to paint
what we would call a wholesome picture of the movie industry. But it was
really anything but for anyone who isn't clear on the concept of morality clause.
And I had to explain that to my film class, and we were talking
about the studio system. Was a morality clause something that applied equally to male
and female stars or would it mainly have been female stars that had a morality
clause added to their contract. That is a great question, Kristen, Well,
you look at the morality clauses of male stars, and I mentioned this
in the book. Lana Turner is a teenager. Lana Turner is a minor,
but the studio is demanding that she escort their male adult stars, including
a future president named Ronald Reagan, to the regular And so you have these
adult stars that are in their late twenties, thirties, even forties, squaring
around these underage female starlets and nobody that's an eye, which is what made
me sick as I was writing this, but I wanted to again lift the
veil of the toxic masculinity that Hollywood had at the time and probably still has.
I was reading the scene about Errol Flynn and his yacht and I just
had to put the book down for a little bit. I absolutely could not
believe some of the hijinks that were going on with the biggest stars in Hollywood
at that point. It really was just sick. Name some of them was
Robin Hood. He was the biggest action star, really the first action star
in Hollywood history, and he was basically a serial rapist of young women and
he actually eventually went to trial for that. So again, the studios looked
the other way while these older actors were preying on these young stars. You're
a dad, and you're a dad of teenage daughters now but now in the
twenties. But yes, in writing something like this, do you find yourself
talking to your daughters about this? You're looking at this from a twenty twenty
four lens. Yeah, But at the same time, this stuff still goes
on. As Kristin mentioned the me Too movement a few minutes ago, do
you find yourself discussing these things with your daughters? Oh? I think you
have to. And I have these conversations with my wife as well, but
with our daughters. They're now getting into the workplace for the first time,
they're leaving college, and it's a whole different world out there. Hopefully the
world is a lot better now than it was even a few years ago.
But they have to know that these things are real, and these demons exist
in every way, shape or form in every industry they're out there. Do
you think Hollywood has made enough changes as a result of the me Too movement?
Has Hollywood come a good distance since what happened with Lana Turner? Are
they just hiding it better? They probably just that's a great question. I
don't know that would be a question for a female actor to answer. I
can't put myself in the issues. I knew what it was like as I
wrote about it. I hope Hollywood's come a great deal further from Lana's time,
and especially from this awakening that's happened over the past few years. But
Hollywood cyclical, and these bad characters always somehow get second chances. Not the
Harvey Weinstein's because he's in jail, but some of these other people that weren't
brought to justice or trial. They still have their careers in Hollywood, and
they go into what they call Hollywood jail for a couple of years, and
then they come out and people forget what they had done. You have to
google. Thank god there's the internet now, because you can read up very
quickly on their litany of offenses. This story is so amazing, and I'm
thrilled that you've written the book as a result, because it does shine a
spotlight on something that I think had been somewhat forgotten. What I don't quite
get is this obviously was a very high profile story back in nineteen fifty eight
when it happened, Yet it's seems to have been forgotten. Is it just
the passage of time, or is there some other reason why the Landa Turner
Johnny Stamponado's story hasn't been more top of mind. That's a great question,
Bill. I think if we're talking about if this was Marilyn Monroe now,
it probably would have been a story that immediately was recognizable to the masses.
But I think that Hollywood always goes on to the next project right after the
Lana Turner scandal. Hollywood has been right for scandal for the last sixty years,
whether it's Helter Skelter or the oj Simpson case, or what's happening in
Hollywood right now, the producer's son who was accused of murdering his wife.
So there are always scandals in Hollywood. This was certainly the biggest at the
time, and probably the biggest I would say over a span of maybe a
couple of decades, because it was so sensational and Lana was the biggest actor
in Hollywood at the time. Imagine Margot Robbie, for example, if this
had happened to her yesterday, That's what it would be like. Lona was
as big as star, if not bigger than Margot Robbie in nineteen fifty eight.
I know that when you go into each book project, you're going into
it to write an excellent book. But is there anything else aside from a
great true crime story that you're hoping the reader will get out of a murder
in Hollywood? Yeah, I would say that. I call myself an archaeologist
of words. I get excited when I learned something that's new that I don't
know, and I can't wait to write about it in a way that makes
it entertaining and informative for the reader. As I said, I think my
goal here is to examine the toxic masculinity of Hollywood, to show the reader
how Hollywood began and grew over several decades. It wasn't all of these beautiful
sachronesque Hollywood movies that they were churning out. There was darkness behind the screen,
and that darkness bled onto the streets of Sunset Boulevard with a crime wave
that was unsurpassed in many ways some of the gangster episodes that I write about
in Murder in Hollywood. I was really shocked to know that these things actually
happened in a place that everybody is either seen on television or film or who
have been there. Some of your most popular books have had a Massachusetts theme
or have a connection to Cape cod where you're from. This seems like a
very deliberate shift away from East Coast themes to West Coast themes. So is
that a conscious decision on your part? I would say it was a subconscious
decision. It probably wasn't. I didn't lead with that, but it was
on my mind. I wanted to break out of the regionality of some of
the books that I've been writing most recently, because they all have a New
England or a Boston bent if you will. Good story is a good story
no matter where you find it. So I'm always looking for stories that speak
to me anywhere. It just so happens that New England is such a great
place for these stories organically come up. But Hollywood is I'm out there,
if not several times a year as much as I can, so I'm very
familiar with that topography and that geography, and I understand the streets there as
well as I do Boston. Does your wife lobby for Tahiti or some other
really wonderful location for and I wish, Yeah, she wants me to just
she likes me to stay home, don't go too far. And I get
it. There's a certain risk involved with some of the books that I write.
With the Murder of Hollywood, the great thing is everybody was long gone
by the time Casey Sherman knocked on Lana's door in Beverly Hills, So I
was able to write this with through the prism of history and get the story.
I think the reporters in nineteen fifty eight we're trying to outdo each other
with sensational reporting and headlines, but they weren't seeing what the story was.
And when I looked at it from a thirty thousand foot level, I was
able to see where the pieces fit for the first time. People didn't realize
that Lana and Johnny Stompanado didn't just fall in love. This was an extortion
plot from day one, and poor Lana it was being victimized yet again and
decided once Johnny Stompanado after a very violent beating that he gave her on Oscar
night when she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, the biggest night of her
professional career, and she does not invite Johnny to the Oscars. Instead,
she takes her daughter and her mother, and when she gets back to her
hotel room or her bungalow late at night, of course, Johnny has found
his way in there and he's waiting for her and gives her the beating of
her life. And she knew at that point there was no other way to
rid herself of this man. If she tried to leave him, he'd kill
her. If she tried to leave him, he'd kill her daughter and her
mother, So she had to protect her family. At all costs, and
I think that's what she did. You had spoken earlier about feeling like you
wanted to make sure that Lana Turner had her agency back and her voice back.
Do you feel like you accomplished that for her? I hope so,
I'd like to think so. I think the way I ended the book because
Lana had a career much longer than nineteen fifty eight, but I wanted to
end it with a very triumphant moment for not only Lana, but for her
daughter and her mother. And it was amazing to me that Lana outlasted all
of her enemies and so she I think she does get her voice back,
her agency back, and I hope with this book, or reputation back as
well. The book is a murder in Hollywood, the untold story of Tinseltown's
most shocking crime. What's next on the agenda for you, mister Sherman.
I know you're always working, Yeah, so I have just I'm completing my
seventeenth book as we speak. It's called Deadly Depths and it's another New England
story, but it's a story that made national headlines back in twenty sixteen when
a young man with Aspergers syndrome, took his mother on a deep sea fishing
trip off the coast of Rhode Island, and she never came up. She
never came back, and he was later discovered by on a life raft after
seven days at sea by a Chinese cargo ship. Right, there is a
story that's worth telling, but turns out years prior to that episode, this
young man was also accused of murdering his multimillionaire grandfather in his bed in Connecticut.
So this really makes the Murdo's story. Look, this is the Murdo
story on steroids. Yeah really, I will say that. Of course,
I always come into these projects with my eyes wide open and the story is
not what I thought it was going into it. And that's what I love
about the work I do. I love to be changed and turned around by
the facts and the evidence. And I can't wait to get this story out
there as well. Wow, So when will Deadly Depths come out? If
all goes according to plan twenty twenty five or yeah, twenty twenty five,
we're going to let a murder in Hollywood breathe this year. Same publisher.
I've got a great relationship with Source Books. They've been my They were my
publisher for Helltown and they're like family to me. So we're looking at twenty
twin Me five for Deadly Debts, and then I've got a few other ideas
kicking around my head right now. And are we going to see you at
Crime Con again in June. We've got a really fast turnaround on crime Con
this year, good time. So I'm talking to my marketing team at Source
Books right now just about that. So if they're there and they have a
presence, then I'm sure they're going to want me there. Yeah, in
Nashville, right, Yeah, Nashville. Well, we'll be there with bells
on, so we hope to be there too. And the book A Murder
in Hollywood, the owntelled story of Tinseltown's most shocking crime, is available February
thirteenth, wherever books are sold. Casey, thank you so much for joining
us today. We appreciate it. Thank you guys, always a pleasure.
I appreciate it. That's going to do it for this episode of Mind Never
Murder. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time.
Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and Another Dog Productions. Our
executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley. Our logo art is by Pamela
Arnois. Our theme music is by Kevin McLeod. Mind Over Murder is distributed
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Thomas five six. Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder.