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Speaker 6: Murder The most shocking killers in true crime history and
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Speaker 6: The Night Stalker DTK. Every week another fascinating author talking
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Speaker 6: True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 5: Good evening. From the outside. Hollywood starlet Lana Turner seemed
Speaker 5: to have it all. A thriving film career, a beautiful daughter,
Speaker 5: and the kind of fame and fortune that most people
Speaker 5: could only dream of. When the famous fem fetale began
Speaker 5: dating mobster Johnny Stopponado, thug for the infamous West Coast
Speaker 5: mob boss Mickey Cohen, her personal life became violent and unpredictable.
Speaker 5: Lana's teenage daughter, Cheryl, watched her beloved mother's life deteriorate
Speaker 5: as Stoppinado's intense jealousy took over. Eventually, the physical and
Speaker 5: emotional abuse became too much to bear, and Lana attempted
Speaker 5: to break it off with Johnny with disastrous consequences. The
Speaker 5: details of what happened that faithful night remained foggy, but
Speaker 5: it ended in a series of frantic phone calls and
Speaker 5: Stoppinado dead on Lana's bedroom floor, with Cheryl claiming to
Speaker 5: have plunged a knife into his abdomen in an attempt
Speaker 5: to protect her mother. The subsequent murder trial made for
Speaker 5: the biggest headlines of the year, its drama eclipsing every
Speaker 5: Hollywood movie. New York Times best selling author Casey Sherman
Speaker 5: pulls back Tinseltown's velvet curtain to reveal the dark underbelly
Speaker 5: of celebrity, rife with toxic masculinity and casual violence against women,
Speaker 5: and tells the story of Lana Turner and her daughter,
Speaker 5: who finally stood up to the abuse that plagued their
Speaker 5: family for years. A Murder in Hollywood transports us back
Speaker 5: to the golden age of film and illuminates one of
Speaker 5: the twentieth century's most notorious true crime tales. The book
Speaker 5: that we're featuring this evening is A Murder in Hollywood,
Speaker 5: the untold story of Tinseltown's most shocking crime. With my
Speaker 5: special guest, investigative journalist and author Ksey Sherman. Good evening,
Speaker 5: and welcome back to the program. Thank you very much
Speaker 5: for this inding you, Casey Sherman.
Speaker 4: Hey, good evening, thanks for having me.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much, and congratulations on your latest book,
Speaker 5: A Murder in Hollywood.
Speaker 4: Well, I appreciate that this is my seventeenth book, so
Speaker 4: been at this for a long time, for about twenty
Speaker 4: years now. I'm very excited to launch this book out
Speaker 4: into the world.
Speaker 5: Fantastic. Let's get right to this incredible story as you
Speaker 5: do in the right in the beginning, you introduce Virgil
Speaker 5: Turner and Mildred Turner, and you talk about Virgil Turner
Speaker 5: and in a hotel room is alias Ernie Johnson. Explain
Speaker 5: this story as you do right in the beginning of
Speaker 5: A Murder in Hollywood.
Speaker 4: I'll talk a little bit about it, so you know.
Speaker 4: The reason why I went so far back in Lana
Speaker 4: Turner's life is because I think it really impacted our
Speaker 4: decision making throughout the course of her life. Right, And
Speaker 4: Alana was always attracted to dark men, and and I
Speaker 4: think that goes back to her father, Virgil Turner, who
Speaker 4: was a bit of a hustler. He was a World
Speaker 4: War One veteran, kind of in and out of jobs,
Speaker 4: move the family around a bit. Finally they get to
Speaker 4: San Francisco and a little Onna Turner all she wants
Speaker 4: for her birthday is a red bicycle, and Virgil really
Speaker 4: doesn't have any money to pay for it, but he's
Speaker 4: a gambler and he thinks he can make some quick
Speaker 4: cash on the side, and he gets involved in an
Speaker 4: after hours card game that doesn't go well for Virgil.
Speaker 4: He wins the card game, but is robbed and beaten
Speaker 4: to death and it is a still an unsolved homicide.
Speaker 4: In twenty twenty four, tell us.
Speaker 5: About his wife Mildred and what happens after his death
Speaker 5: and this foster care foster mother Julia islam.
Speaker 4: Sure, well, I think that you know, Mildred is certainly
Speaker 4: somebody that's struggling to raise young daughter on her own,
Speaker 4: gets in a bit of trouble and has to pass
Speaker 4: her daughter off to a pretty domineering foster mother. Early
Speaker 4: in Lana Turner's life, and Lana Turner isn't greeted with
Speaker 4: adulation or love and affection. Instead, she's forced to work
Speaker 4: for her foster family doing the laundry, kind of a
Speaker 4: Cinderella type of situation there for Lana. So she's got
Speaker 4: a very fragmented family life from the very beginning. Like
Speaker 4: I said, I think it leads to some of the
Speaker 4: decisions that she makes over the course of her life
Speaker 4: and career.
Speaker 5: You write it's a dramatic scene that her stepmother that
Speaker 5: would routinely beat her takes her to San Francisco, and
Speaker 5: that's when she discovers that the person you write that
Speaker 5: the only person that she ever loved and ever loved
Speaker 5: her she found out about her her father's death.
Speaker 4: Correct. That was I had the benefit of a lot
Speaker 4: of letters that Lana had written over the course of
Speaker 4: her life. She also wrote her own autobiography where she
Speaker 4: was I would say, very open to these experiences, and
Speaker 4: especially those early on in her life. So you know,
Speaker 4: I was able to paint a picture for the reader
Speaker 4: about a very troubled young girl looking for love and
Speaker 4: safety and quite frankly never found.
Speaker 5: Her name was Julia Jean Turner, and everyone called her Judy.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about now, Mickey Cohen Meyer, Harris, Mickey Cohen
Speaker 5: and his turn in Brooklyn in Boyle Heights.
Speaker 4: Sure, and I'm glad you mentioned that, because you know,
Speaker 4: a murder in Hollywood really focuses on the ascension of
Speaker 4: Hollywood movie star Banna Turner and a Hollywood gangster, Mickey Cohen,
Speaker 4: both were kind of rising through the ranks almost at
Speaker 4: the same time. Mickey Cohen was born in Brooklyn, New York.
Speaker 4: His family immigrated from Ukraine. His father died very early on.
Speaker 4: I think Mickey was still a toddler at the time,
Speaker 4: so his mother moved the family all the way to
Speaker 4: the West Coast and ultimately settled in Boyle Heights, which
Speaker 4: was a Jewish enclave at the time in the early
Speaker 4: nineteen twenties. So Mickey Cohen grows up working in his
Speaker 4: mother's grocery store. His mother is making cash on the
Speaker 4: side with an illegal still, so right there. Mickey is
Speaker 4: getting a taste of the criminal life very early on
Speaker 4: in his career and gets in some trouble, some skirmishes
Speaker 4: as a young boy, ultimately gets thrown into reform school
Speaker 4: and makes a decision that he's never going to break right. Instead,
Speaker 4: Mickey is going to try to build a career for
Speaker 4: himself in organized crime, which is what he does.
Speaker 5: He's a pretty small guy and he's on probation from
Speaker 5: reform school you're right, and he has to meet with
Speaker 5: a counselor once a week, and the person that's assigned
Speaker 5: him is a person named Abe Roth, a boxing referee,
Speaker 5: tell us about this influence on his early life.
Speaker 4: Sure, Abe recognized right away that although Mickey was small,
Speaker 4: he was vicious, intenacious, and incredibly tough. So Abe Roth
Speaker 4: tried to change Mickey's life if you will, get him
Speaker 4: into boxing. And Mickey was a flyweight at the time.
Speaker 4: And Mickey fought in cigarette smoked halls throughout Los Angeles
Speaker 4: and did pretty well in the rink. And you know,
Speaker 4: the skills that he used sparring with sparring partners, he
Speaker 4: was able to utilize on the streets, taking over street
Speaker 4: corners because the street corners of Los Angeles and I
Speaker 4: think every major city at that time were very valuable
Speaker 4: for newspaper hawkers. You know something we don't really understand today,
Speaker 4: but back in the day, there were you know, young
Speaker 4: kids on every street corner selling copies of the daily
Speaker 4: and evening news, and that's how they made their living.
Speaker 4: And Mickey certainly controlled great deal of property because he
Speaker 4: was so tough and was able to knock these kids
Speaker 4: off of their their stoop a little bit.
Speaker 5: His reputation made it all the way to Al scarface
Speaker 5: Capone hearing about him. How does he make it to
Speaker 5: meeting as you write, his charismatic, murderous father figure al Capone.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Mickey bounces around a little bit. He leaves Los Angeles,
Speaker 4: he wants to He's furthering his education, right then, So
Speaker 4: by doing that, he's learning from the best gangsters. And
Speaker 4: quite frankly, Los Angeles wasn't very organized in terms of
Speaker 4: organized crime when Mickey was a young youngster and a teenager.
Speaker 4: So he went to Cleveland, you know, became a ruffian
Speaker 4: and a bank robber, then migrated over to New York City,
Speaker 4: was tutored and mentored by Onny Madden, for example, and
Speaker 4: then eventually, you know, gets to the big time, which
Speaker 4: is Chicago, which is controlled by Al Capone, and Mickey
Speaker 4: Cohen meets Al and really sees a father figure in
Speaker 4: Al that he never had himself, and really tries to
Speaker 4: mimic and copy Al's entire life, how he dresses, how
Speaker 4: tough he is, how vicious he can be. And Mickey
Speaker 4: learned a lot from al Capone.
Speaker 5: You're right that. At the same time, Judy Turner and
Speaker 5: Mildred moved from northern California because the doctor had told
Speaker 5: her that she had contracted desert rheumatism, and so they
Speaker 5: went to he recommended that they go to Los Angeles.
Speaker 5: Or They moved to Los Angeles in nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 5: and she had a friend there named Gladys Taylor the
Speaker 5: place to stay while she looked for a job, and
Speaker 5: soon Mildred found a job at a beauty Salon tell
Speaker 5: us about their life in Los Angeles, Judy and Mildred, Well.
Speaker 4: I mean it's a kind of a fairy tale come true.
Speaker 4: Miller and Lana. They catch a ride to Los Angeles,
Speaker 4: and I write about how arduous that journey was. And
Speaker 4: they're really dumped out onto Hollywood Boulevard, and you know,
Speaker 4: Banna is a child or you know, a preteen and
Speaker 4: sees these big, big buildings, sees the Hollywood Land Sign
Speaker 4: and really becomes odd and infatuated with the you know,
Speaker 4: the city of make belief. And Mildred had a friend
Speaker 4: who was able to provide them a place to stay.
Speaker 4: So Mildred goes to work and enrolls Judy at Hollywood
Speaker 4: High School with some of the biggest young stars of
Speaker 4: the day. And Judy never thought she would have a
Speaker 4: career in entertainment. She wanted to be a fashion designer.
Speaker 4: She loved clothes, and I think she bonded with her
Speaker 4: mother by pouring over these magazines that they couldn't afford,
Speaker 4: looking at the latest styles of the day. And that
Speaker 4: was really how Lana felt like her life was going
Speaker 4: to go until she he just decided to take some change,
Speaker 4: go across the street from Hollywood High School and find
Speaker 4: herself on a stool that Cherries ice cream parlor.
Speaker 5: Yes you say, October nineteen thirty six, she made a
Speaker 5: decision that would change your life forever. There was at
Speaker 5: this ice cream parlor a man named mister Wilkerson, and
Speaker 5: he was staring at her. What happens with the soda
Speaker 5: jerk and mister Wilkinson and Judy.
Speaker 4: Well, Wilkerson was the publisher of the Hollywood Reporter and
Speaker 4: a real creepy guy. So the soda jerk sees Wilkinson
Speaker 4: staring at this, you know, fifteen year old girl, pretty
Speaker 4: much sexualizing her. Judy's a little afraid of the attention,
Speaker 4: but the soda jerk says, oh, it's okay. He's a
Speaker 4: big wig in this town, and Wilkerson identifies himself and
Speaker 4: hands Judy his business card. Now it's an encounter that
Speaker 4: not only changes Lana's life forever, but changes the lives
Speaker 4: of hundreds, if not thousands, of young girls who later
Speaker 4: read about Judy's discovery, Lana Turner's discovery and cobbled together
Speaker 4: what money they had got bus Fair got trained, Fair
Speaker 4: made it out to Los Angeles and sat on ice
Speaker 4: cream parlor stools, hoping to be discovered like Lana Turner was.
Speaker 5: What does he say to her and what is her
Speaker 5: response for his initial interest in her?
Speaker 4: Well, I think she you know, he obviously sees her
Speaker 4: as somebody who's a little older than her years and
Speaker 4: asks if she ever thought of acting before. She said no,
Speaker 4: And but she did promise that she would give his
Speaker 4: business card to her mother and their mother's friend roommate
Speaker 4: at the time, And I don't think Judy really thought
Speaker 4: much of it. She finished her Coca Cola and went
Speaker 4: back to Hollywood High School. But later on in the
Speaker 4: day she handed the business card to the woman that
Speaker 4: was allowing them a place to stay, and the woman
Speaker 4: recognized the name right away and said, we've got to
Speaker 4: we're going to meet this guy because it could be
Speaker 4: your big break. You could be a Hollywood star, and
Speaker 4: that's what happens.
Speaker 5: Yeah, tell us what she hears immediately though from this
Speaker 5: Henry Wilson a talent scout these he's a naive girl.
Speaker 4: Again, you're talking about all these predators, Dan that were
Speaker 4: taking advantage of young women and men in Hollywood at
Speaker 4: the time, And I think this is something I want
Speaker 4: the readers to take a look at when they read
Speaker 4: the book. So I'm just going to summarize it this
Speaker 4: way for you. That Judy felt incredibly sexualized. And I
Speaker 4: think you know, when she was fifteen years old, before
Speaker 4: she even lost her virginity, she really lost her innocence
Speaker 4: to the Hollywood system.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you talk about that. Initially she was asked that
Speaker 5: she had any acting experience whatsoever, and she had absolutely none,
Speaker 5: but that was not really the point. And her very
Speaker 5: first film work really capitalized on her physique and nothing
Speaker 5: else didn't.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's correct. I don't think they were you know,
Speaker 4: the movie producers could care less you know what her
Speaker 4: you know, acting chops were. This is the day of
Speaker 4: the studio player in Hollywood, so they could teach her
Speaker 4: how to act, but the physicality they couldn't teach. You know,
Speaker 4: she either had it or she didn't. And I would say,
Speaker 4: fortunately for Lana, or maybe unfortunately for Lana, she was
Speaker 4: she had matured, you know, much earlier than in her
Speaker 4: fifteen years. So in her first film, the director, you know,
Speaker 4: puts her right in a tight fitting sweater and just
Speaker 4: has her walk by the camera and sexualizes her with
Speaker 4: a lens, and you know, she becomes the quote unquote
Speaker 4: sweater girl. That's how she is really discovered, and that's
Speaker 4: what she's called. After her first very small film role, she.
Speaker 5: Meets the cream of the crop and Hollywood stars, and
Speaker 5: you say, at the time a much different attitude. This
Speaker 5: is fifty sixty years before the me Too movement even
Speaker 5: is born. But she ascends the the latter in Hollywood
Speaker 5: as a starlet very very quickly by virtue of meeting
Speaker 5: all of the Hollywood stars at that time.
Speaker 4: Sure, and I think that when I was really startled
Speaker 4: by when I researched the book, it was the double
Speaker 4: standard that was going on in Hollywood at that time
Speaker 4: in the thirties and forties, and certainly it still exists
Speaker 4: to a degree today. But Lana and her, you know,
Speaker 4: fellow young actors, you know, Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, you know,
Speaker 4: they were all basically tortured by the movie studios, forced
Speaker 4: to work seventy hour work weeks, fed amphetamines to keep
Speaker 4: them working, put on diets of chicken broth and cigarettes
Speaker 4: to keep them slim. So people were you know, they
Speaker 4: shake their head and wonder how Judy Garland really kind
Speaker 4: of fell off the rails in her nineteen forties while
Speaker 4: she was hooked on drugs by the studio producers when
Speaker 4: she was a preteen, you know, working on Wizard of Oz.
Speaker 4: So you know, there's blood on the hands of a
Speaker 4: lot of Hollywood executives that I certainly explore in the book.
Speaker 4: And then you've got you know, these actors at the time,
Speaker 4: and we talk about the double standard. So one of
Speaker 4: many examples that I use in the book is a
Speaker 4: young Ronald Reagan. When I say young, he's twenty seven,
Speaker 4: twenty eight years old, and he is just blossoming as
Speaker 4: MGM's next big star, and in order to do that,
Speaker 4: he has to be seen every red carpet in Hollywood.
Speaker 4: So the studio fixes him up with fifteen year old
Speaker 4: Lana Turner, and nobody beats an eye at the age difference.
Speaker 4: It was shocking to me that, you know, this adult
Speaker 4: who would later become President of the United States was
Speaker 4: seducing a child and nobody cared.
Speaker 5: We didn't talk about that striking scene that relates to
Speaker 5: that where she tells this very first agent that she
Speaker 5: is only fifteen. He says, don't ever say that.
Speaker 4: Don't ever say that again. Exactly. Age is not your
Speaker 4: friend in Hollywood. You're always lying about it. You're always
Speaker 4: telling people you're older than you are or younger than
Speaker 4: you are. And Lana learned that very early in her career.
Speaker 5: Now, despite not having any acting experience, she rises and
Speaker 5: ascends in movie making in Hollywood and grabs some very
Speaker 5: prestigious and serious roles.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I mean she she had it. You know,
Speaker 4: the acting certainly would come, but I think that she
Speaker 4: just really jumped out of a screen. And I think,
Speaker 4: you know, young women wanted to be Lana Turner, and
Speaker 4: every young man wanted to, you know, ate or marry
Speaker 4: Lana Turner. So she was certainly building a career while
Speaker 4: the reigning Queen of MGM, Joan Crawford was looking over
Speaker 4: her shoulder, wondering when her you know, young upstart rival
Speaker 4: but try to take the throne.
Speaker 5: You write about Lana and her active friends and Louis B.
Speaker 5: Mayer from MGM, and also the role of the newspapers themselves,
Speaker 5: the gossip columnists. Tell us a little bit about all
Speaker 5: of these acts do is together and what Louie B.
Speaker 5: Mayor would like to see and what the media is
Speaker 5: enjoying seeing from Lanta and their friends.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, you know, Louis B. Mayor was producing family
Speaker 4: friendly entertainment, especially you know, the Mickey Rooney film series
Speaker 4: Andy Hardy, which you know, Lana had several different roles
Speaker 4: over the course of that film. Theories about a young
Speaker 4: kid in a very small town in America just going
Speaker 4: through life and learning about love. But the reality of
Speaker 4: growing up hard and fast than Hollywood was much different.
Speaker 4: All these young actors had a lot of money. They
Speaker 4: purchased cars, They were partying non stop at all the
Speaker 4: nightclubs because they had to have some type of outlet.
Speaker 4: They were working always seventy hours a week, so when
Speaker 4: they had a break in that work schedule, they tried
Speaker 4: to let loose and you know, and they were wild
Speaker 4: when they were young.
Speaker 5: You write about this intersection between Hollywood glamour and gangsterism
Speaker 5: as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I think that's something that you know, the
Speaker 4: ecosystem in Hollywood depended on the movie industry and it
Speaker 4: also depended on mobsters, and I think there was such
Speaker 4: a real unique cross section between, you know, the two
Speaker 4: so called industries that you don't really see in other
Speaker 4: major cities Chicago, New York. You know, the business people
Speaker 4: certainly didn't align themselves, at least publicly with organized crime.
Speaker 4: But in Hollywood, you know, the mobsters were as famous
Speaker 4: as the movie stars. And I think that these gangsters,
Speaker 4: whether it be Mickey Cohen or his other mentor you know,
Speaker 4: Benjamin Bugsy Siegel, you know, they ran the town. And
Speaker 4: they did so because they were opening up nightclubs and
Speaker 4: gambling dens, and the movie studio bosses were you know,
Speaker 4: hardcore gamblers that were losing hundreds of thousands of dollars
Speaker 4: at the betting tables, which meant that, you know, organized
Speaker 4: crime was taking its control over the movie industry.
Speaker 5: Now, Bugsy is has aspirations in the movies as well,
Speaker 5: not only with this casino, but he has serious movie
Speaker 5: aspirations based on his looks. So tell us a little
Speaker 5: bit about Bugsy Siegel and those aspirations.
Speaker 4: Sure, you know, Bugsy Siegel was sent west by the
Speaker 4: outfit to gain control over a very loosely connected organized
Speaker 4: crime landscape in Los Angeles, and Bugsy did that. He
Speaker 4: was brutal and took over all the wiring services, built
Speaker 4: up a nice, steady, major income for himself. But he
Speaker 4: was seduced by Hollywood glamour. He was an attractive guy,
Speaker 4: as you know. One of his best friends was the
Speaker 4: actor Frederick marsh and he saw that, you know, these
Speaker 4: actors were playing gangsters on the big screen, and Bugsy said,
Speaker 4: I can do that as well. So Bugsy was trying
Speaker 4: to kind of move, you know, away from organized crime,
Speaker 4: legitimize himself and become a major player in Hollywood. He
Speaker 4: had dalliances with Lana and several other actresses. As I said,
Speaker 4: they all were interconnected. You know.
Speaker 5: During that time, you introduced a central figure, this Jerry Geisler, attorney.
Speaker 5: He was known as a fixer to the stars. Tell
Speaker 5: us about this, how he intersects with all of these
Speaker 5: characters in Hollywood.
Speaker 4: Giesler, Jerry Goesler, that's I pronounced it. Gesler was a
Speaker 4: lawyer who represented people like Bugsy Siegel and other mobsters,
Speaker 4: and also represented actress like Errol Flynn and Robert Mitcham
Speaker 4: who are getting constantly placed behind bars for cannabis use
Speaker 4: for statutory rape. In regard to Errol Flynn. So imagine
Speaker 4: you know Johnny Cochrane neoj Simpson days, Jerry Giesler was
Speaker 4: the Johnny Cochrane of the forties and fifties, or I
Speaker 4: should say Johnny Cochran was the Jerry Geesler of the
Speaker 4: nineteen nineties.
Speaker 5: Now tell us about Nicky Collen and and Bugsy and
Speaker 5: also this Greg Boutzer as well from MGM and Lana.
Speaker 4: Sure, I mean I think that you know, they all
Speaker 4: converged together. Boutzer was a lawyer as well and one
Speaker 4: of Lana's closest confidants, and she didn't have many, so
Speaker 4: they were always kind of in and out of each
Speaker 4: other's lives. I would ask that your listeners go pick
Speaker 4: up the book and learn a little bit more about that.
Speaker 5: Let's get to Lana's rise and some of the husbands
Speaker 5: that she encounters along the way in this rise.
Speaker 4: Sure, well, you know, as Lana was getting more famous.
Speaker 4: Certainly she was somebody that was sought after by many
Speaker 4: of Hollywood's biggest names. You know, her first husband was
Speaker 4: Already Shaw, you know, band leader, a very famous band
Speaker 4: leader you know at the time, basically if you know
Speaker 4: the Ed Sharon if you will, of the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 4: The two of them met on the set of a movie.
Speaker 4: And you know, one of the things that I always
Speaker 4: struck me with Lana is yes, you know she was
Speaker 4: married several times. But again the double standard. If Lana
Speaker 4: liked somebody man, she would have to marry that person
Speaker 4: as opposed to just you know, having her or having
Speaker 4: him in her life because of the societal more is
Speaker 4: at the time. So Lana was still young, nineteen years
Speaker 4: old when she marries Artie Shaw, and it's a whirlwind romance.
Speaker 4: Lana really doesn't know what she's doing, didn't even tell
Speaker 4: her mother that this was happening, and then gets stuck
Speaker 4: in a very psychologically damaging relationship and physically damaging relationship
Speaker 4: with Ardishah.
Speaker 5: Now you're right about Lana meeting Bugsy Siegel and her
Speaker 5: attraction to him, and why.
Speaker 4: Well, as I've been saying, Dan, you know, she was
Speaker 4: always attracted to the dark side. You know, Bugsy Siegel
Speaker 4: reminded Lana of her father, you know, young, physically fit,
Speaker 4: handsome and a little dangerous. And I think that Lana
Speaker 4: was seduced by that. She did not have strong male
Speaker 4: presence in her life, and unfortunately that led her to
Speaker 4: make bad decisions.
Speaker 5: Now with MGM. Louis B. Mayor is really trying to
Speaker 5: control Lana and the publicity that she has with her
Speaker 5: associations with these men, especially men like Mickey Cohen and
Speaker 5: Bugsy Siegel and the association with the mob.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you know, Lana had a morality morals
Speaker 4: clause in a contract. And the example, you know, I
Speaker 4: think really strikes me most here is that going through
Speaker 4: all the FBI dossier's and files on Lana Turner, you know,
Speaker 4: I stumbled across the story event Lana had been dating
Speaker 4: an African American jazz player in New York City, and
Speaker 4: which was also you know, a big no no in
Speaker 4: the nineteen forties for sure, you know, dating somebody outside
Speaker 4: your race, so to speak, was certainly frowned upon, and
Speaker 4: Lana and her male friend were kicked out of most
Speaker 4: tells in New York because they had requirements that you know,
Speaker 4: whites and blacks couldn't be seen together. And the FBI
Speaker 4: director Jay Garoover himself puts together a dossier on Lana
Speaker 4: and sends it right to the studio boss himself, and
Speaker 4: Lana almost lost her job because of who she was
Speaker 4: attracted to and who she wanted to be with. I
Speaker 4: think that's very sad.
Speaker 5: You right about meeting Howard Hughes and dating him in
Speaker 5: the relationship that they form, even though they weren't much
Speaker 5: of a good fit together. And then you talk about
Speaker 5: Lana meeting Steve Crane. Tell us a little bit about
Speaker 5: this meeting and what it produces a little while later.
Speaker 4: Sure, Steve Crane was young, handsome guy, and you know,
Speaker 4: told Lana that he was the heir of a large
Speaker 4: tobacco fortune from the Midwest and Indiana. And again Lana
Speaker 4: did not know otherwise there was no internet, you know,
Speaker 4: back in the nineteen forties. So Lana took Steve Crane
Speaker 4: at face value and married him, married him twice. Actually
Speaker 4: in anybody that wants to learn that story can read
Speaker 4: the book. And Lana is you know, finally realizes that
Speaker 4: Steve Crane is a liar when they both go back
Speaker 4: to Crane's hometown in Indiana in a limousine that Lana's
Speaker 4: paying for, and you know, Lana realizes that Crane, you know,
Speaker 4: doesn't have two Nichols to rub together. His tobacco fortune
Speaker 4: was really just a pool haul, you know, po dunk
Speaker 4: Town in Indiana. And again it was another male in
Speaker 4: her life taking complete advantage of what she was willing
Speaker 4: to get.
Speaker 5: You had about this dramatic scene in the book where
Speaker 5: the baby in nineteen forty three July almost dies. Cheryl
Speaker 5: almost dies, and there's a situation where Lana has to
Speaker 5: make a decision voiced by the doctors.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I'm gonna let your readers dive into that,
Speaker 4: but what I will say about that is that Lana
Speaker 4: and Steve Crane did have a daughter, Cheryl. It was
Speaker 4: a very difficult delivery for Lana. Cheryl almost and in fact,
Speaker 4: Cheryl was immediately taken to a children's hospital after Lana
Speaker 4: had delivered her, so Lana did not see her for
Speaker 4: several days after the delivery, but ultimately was able to
Speaker 4: bring her her daughter home, and it would be the
Speaker 4: only child that Lana Turner ever had.
Speaker 5: You talk about this important movie The Postman Always Rings Twice,
Speaker 5: big box office movie for MGM and for Landa Turner
Speaker 5: as well, and just been edited or worked on for
Speaker 5: a few years, so it passed the Hollywood production code.
Speaker 5: Tell us a little bit about well, The Postman Always
Speaker 5: Rings Twice.
Speaker 4: Well, it's the biggest role in Laana Turner's career opposite
Speaker 4: John Garfield. It's a gritty film noir based on a
Speaker 4: pulp fiction novel, and it was incredibly steamy. In fact,
Speaker 4: you know, Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lang, you know, remade
Speaker 4: that film in the late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 4: so for you know, the time in the nineteen forties
Speaker 4: when this came out, it was incredibly sensational, and you know,
Speaker 4: the way around the sensors at the time was always
Speaker 4: to outfit Laana with angelic dresses and materials. She was
Speaker 4: always dressed in white, which was considered virginal by the
Speaker 4: sensors at the time, even though she was at shorts
Speaker 4: on and a very low cut gloves. The fact that
Speaker 4: you know, the costume designer addressed her in white was
Speaker 4: allowed the director to you know, get around some of
Speaker 4: the censorship issues at the time. This as an opportunity
Speaker 4: to stop for these messages.
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Speaker 5: You talk and write about extensively about Bugsy Siegel taking
Speaker 5: over the Flamingo and the problems he has and eventually
Speaker 5: that he is wanted by the syndicate to be taken
Speaker 5: out and he is killed, and so you talk about that.
Speaker 5: Mickey Cohen, after this is suspected of having something to
Speaker 5: do with this. Tell us what happens in Mickey Cohen's life.
Speaker 5: You write about Elizabeth Short.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Mickey Cohens certainly met a lot of people during
Speaker 4: his career. You know, he loved Bugsy Siegel, but I
Speaker 4: think the evidence points to Mickey probably having something to
Speaker 4: do with Bugsy's assassination. You know, Bugsy had overspent on
Speaker 4: the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas and the syndicate, you know,
Speaker 4: run by Charles Lucky Luciana and Meyer Lansky, both childhood
Speaker 4: friends of Buggsy Siegel. You know, there was a price
Speaker 4: that had to be paid, and that was death. So
Speaker 4: Buggsy Seagull gets assassinated, you know, in his rented Beverly
Speaker 4: Hills home, you know, and it's one of the most
Speaker 4: sensational organized crime robouts in history, and that created a
Speaker 4: void in Hollywood in terms of who was going to
Speaker 4: take over the rackets in Los Angeles. And you know,
Speaker 4: the former flyweight boxer Mickey Cohen decided that it was
Speaker 4: going to be him, and he does so in a
Speaker 4: very bloody and violent way.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: One of the things that struck Median was, you know,
Speaker 4: all of these very sensational gangland shootings and bombings. It's
Speaker 4: hard to believe it actually happened. You know, these are
Speaker 4: the things you only see in films, but it actually
Speaker 4: happened in the you know, nineteen forties, in early nineteen
Speaker 4: fifties in Hollywood, and you know Mickey was at the
Speaker 4: center of everything. Now you mentioned Elizabeth Short. Elizabeth is
Speaker 4: a you know, a better known nickname. Unfortunately for her,
Speaker 4: she's now known as the Black Dolly murdered victim who
Speaker 4: was found basically he cut up in an LA park.
Speaker 4: And Mickey Cohen, you know, knew Elizabeth Short because as
Speaker 4: big as Hollywood looked on the outside, it's a pretty
Speaker 4: small town once you got there, and I think you
Speaker 4: you know, people were bumping into each other on both
Speaker 4: sides of the law quite a bit.
Speaker 5: You're right about the merging bloody rivalry between Jack the
Speaker 5: Dragma and Mickey Cohen. And then where Mickey Cohen is
Speaker 5: hitting the Shoulberry's wounded, and you introduce Johnny Stoppanado.
Speaker 4: That's right. You know, Mickey survives an assassination attempt from
Speaker 4: one of Jack Dragna's henchmen, and I write about that
Speaker 4: in the book because you know, right in the middle
Speaker 4: of the Sunset Strip is wild shooting happens. And Johnny
Speaker 4: Stompanado is a young combat veteran from the Midwest, from Illinois,
Speaker 4: and he's trying to get his leg up an organized
Speaker 4: crime in La in Hollywood. He comes out to Los
Speaker 4: Angeles works as a bit of a hustler, almost like
Speaker 4: you know, Virgil Turner had done several years before Alana's father.
Speaker 4: So Johnny Stampanado is seducing people of both sexes, whether
Speaker 4: it's merv Griffin and Liberaci to entertainers who had to
Speaker 4: live closeted lives at the time, or some be actress
Speaker 4: that Johnny thought he could take advantage of. You know,
Speaker 4: that was his day job. His night job was to
Speaker 4: follow Mickey Cohen around and see if he could break
Speaker 4: into Mickey Cohen's gang. And that's what Johnny Stampanado does.
Speaker 4: Nicky Cohen recognizes, you know, his craftiness right away, his
Speaker 4: toughness right away, and basically adopts Johnny Stampanado much like
Speaker 4: Buggsy Siegel had adopted Mickey, you know, years prior.
Speaker 5: You write also about Lanta Turner's incredible wedding to Henry J. Topping,
Speaker 5: co owner of the Yankees, and her first night premiere
Speaker 5: and that was her first date.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was her first date. And again I think
Speaker 4: that you know, the readers of A Murder in Hollywood
Speaker 4: are going to stumble upon you know a lot of
Speaker 4: these figures. Topping was an heir of a tin fortune
Speaker 4: from you know, Connecticut in New York. Certainly you know
Speaker 4: he had millions of dollars at his disposal, and I
Speaker 4: think he once told Lana or somebody else that his
Speaker 4: grandfather had built the fortune and it was his job
Speaker 4: and his cousin's jobs to spend it. So this guy
Speaker 4: was kind of a playboy. Lana was trying to break
Speaker 4: away from the Hollywood system and wanted to get out
Speaker 4: of her contract at MGM, but she also wanted security
Speaker 4: for her and her young daughter Cheryl, and Bob Topping,
Speaker 4: at least on the outside, could provide that. But once
Speaker 4: Lana married Topping, she realized that this was another man
Speaker 4: who was going to take advantage of her financially, sexually,
Speaker 4: and psychologically.
Speaker 5: Tell us about just a little bit about her depression
Speaker 5: and the suicide attempt.
Speaker 4: Well, you know again, I want the readers to read
Speaker 4: that because I think it's a turning point in Lana's life.
Speaker 4: She didn't feel like she could go on anymore, and
Speaker 4: unfortunately she made a bad decision, but her life was saved.
Speaker 4: A story was covered up in the press. Young daughter
Speaker 4: didn't even know about it. There's a film that Lana
Speaker 4: made during that time where she had to wear these
Speaker 4: you know, custom jewelry bracelets over her wrists to hide
Speaker 4: the slits in her wrists. But her doctor basically shook her,
Speaker 4: shook her awake and said, you know, you're giving up,
Speaker 4: you know, an incredible life. You're going to stick it
Speaker 4: out for your daughter. And that's what Lana tried to do.
Speaker 5: To talk about the next bow this Lex Barker and
Speaker 5: all of these men. They did hit her and beat her,
Speaker 5: abuse her. But now we get to these abusers going
Speaker 5: after Cheryl and Lex Barker.
Speaker 4: Well, Lex Barker, for those who may remember him or not,
Speaker 4: he was basically Tarzan on the big screen after Johnny Weismuler,
Speaker 4: you know, made several films as Tarzan. He was young, fit, handsome,
Speaker 4: everything that Lana was certainly attracted to. They got married
Speaker 4: because they had to, you know, back at that time.
Speaker 4: Now we're talking about the you know, mid nineteen fifth,
Speaker 4: but Barker had a dark secret. Barker was a pedophile.
Speaker 4: Barker targeted Cheryl, Lana's daughter, and over the course of
Speaker 4: several years, sexually assaulted her and Cheryl always kept it
Speaker 4: a secret because Cheryl Barker had basically convinced her that
Speaker 4: both were engaged in this illicit activity and that little
Speaker 4: Cheryl would be sent to juvenile hall if she ever
Speaker 4: told anybody.
Speaker 5: Yeah, she doesn't wait for any explanation from him and
Speaker 5: kicks him out and then still meets a person named
Speaker 5: John Steele. Tell us about this meeting, Well.
Speaker 4: John Steele is John Stoppanado. Now, again this goes back
Speaker 4: to lack of internet back in the nineteen fifties, and
Speaker 4: Alana did not know who John Steele was. Probably should
Speaker 4: have because Johnny Stoppanado's photograph was in all of the
Speaker 4: Hollywood rags at the time running around with Mickey Cohen.
Speaker 4: But John Steele just starts to pound her with messages
Speaker 4: with flowers. It's really unusual. And you know what I
Speaker 4: found with this book of Murder in Hollywood was that,
Speaker 4: you know, this relationship in romance was anything but organic.
Speaker 4: You know, Mickey Cohen had survived several assassination attempts, he
Speaker 4: had survived prison for tax evasion. He gets back to
Speaker 4: Hollywood and wants to steer clear of the violence, but
Speaker 4: he still wants to make a buck By, you know,
Speaker 4: exploiting people around him. So he uses Johnny Stompanado almost
Speaker 4: as a as bait for reverse honeytrap, meaning that stopping
Speaker 4: Outo because he's handsome and charismatic, would come on to
Speaker 4: women and men, put them in compromising positions that Mickey
Speaker 4: and his gang could film and then extort them and
Speaker 4: take them for all they were worth. And that's how
Speaker 4: the relationship with a lot of Turnery started.
Speaker 5: You right about this plan because Colin knew that Atlanta
Speaker 5: was dropped by MGM and saw her as vulnerable.
Speaker 4: Yes, she saw her as vulnerable. You know, Lonna was
Speaker 4: at a crossroads in her life. She was aging out
Speaker 4: of the big star roles because she was in her
Speaker 4: late thirties and she had passed the baton really to
Speaker 4: Marilyn Monroe and others. You know, Lana Turner was the
Speaker 4: Marilyn Monroe before Maryland. Marilyn basically copied her entire look
Speaker 4: from her hero Lana Turner. But this is where I
Speaker 4: think Lana really doesn't get the credit she deserves because
Speaker 4: knowing that she's aging out, much like Joan Crawford aged
Speaker 4: out and was a which is allowed Lana Turner to
Speaker 4: ascend to the throne. Lana was doing the same thing.
Speaker 4: But Lana wanted to gain some power outside the studio system,
Speaker 4: so she created her own production company. And in the
Speaker 4: nineteen fifties that just didn't happen, especially amongst female actors,
Speaker 4: and she was really looking to take control of her life.
Speaker 5: What was Johnny Stoppanado trying to do originally with Mickey Cohen,
Speaker 5: but once he said he fell for her Orlando, what
Speaker 5: was he attempting to do in his life?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Johnny stamp and I don't wanted power. He didn't
Speaker 4: want to just be used by Mickey Cohen, you know,
Speaker 4: to get some money from Lana Turner. He saw moves
Speaker 4: that Lana was making in Hollywood, and Johnny Stompanado kind
Speaker 4: of reminds me of that character Chili Palmer, who the
Speaker 4: gangster comes from New York and goes to la and
Speaker 4: becomes a movie producer. That was certainly what Johnny Stampanada
Speaker 4: wanted to do. He began acquiring film projects that he
Speaker 4: was hoping to produce through Lana's company. But Lana was
Speaker 4: really getting tired of Johnny because Johnny was incredibly vicious
Speaker 4: physically beat her. You know, mercilessly, and she was looking
Speaker 4: for ways to break it off and certainly didn't want
Speaker 4: Johnny producing films under her production be inner because you know,
Speaker 4: the studios would look at him and say, Okay, that's
Speaker 4: Mickey Cohen's thug. This is just a front for the mob,
Speaker 4: and Lana Turner didn't want that to happen.
Speaker 5: He was a controlling figure, but he also was interfering
Speaker 5: majorly in her work and saw that she was starring
Speaker 5: with a young Sean Connery. So there was some incredible
Speaker 5: scenes at the movie lot involving Stopponado and Sean Connery.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you know, talk about life being stranger
Speaker 4: than fiction. Lonna Turner started and produced her first film,
Speaker 4: another time, in another place. She shot it on location
Speaker 4: in England, where the story takes place, and she cast
Speaker 4: a relative unknown Sean Connery as her young love interest.
Speaker 4: And this was an opportunity for Lanna to get away
Speaker 4: from Hollywood, to get away from Johnny Stompanado. Johnny Stompanado,
Speaker 4: you know, somehow got a passport under an assumed name
Speaker 4: and made his way to England to you know, be
Speaker 4: controlling of Lana. And the first few days that Lana's
Speaker 4: reunited with Johnny. She's just trying to keep him happy
Speaker 4: while trying to keep her production on schedule and on budget.
Speaker 4: But Johnny is a jealous, vicious guy, and Johnny sees
Speaker 4: these love scenes between Lana and Sean Connery and one
Speaker 4: point confronts the couple as they're walking off the set
Speaker 4: and Johnny Stompanado has got a gun. It's got a
Speaker 4: revolver and he whips it out and shoves it toward
Speaker 4: John Connery. Sean Connery doesn't blink. John Connery actually fists
Speaker 4: Johnny's arm and knocks him out cold. You know, it
Speaker 4: was a stunt that you would see in a James
Speaker 4: Bond movie. Chan Connery really did it, and you know,
Speaker 4: beat Johnny Stompanado up and get him off the film set.
Speaker 5: She is desperate to do something, so she she speaks
Speaker 5: with del Armstrong and he tells her that what she
Speaker 5: should do is have him deported. And so you you
Speaker 5: write about this extraordinary scene in this in this book
Speaker 5: about the phone call that she makes. Del Armstrong is
Speaker 5: there in Scotland yard. But then Johnny Stoppanado somehow, here's
Speaker 5: the conversation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's on the other he's on the other line,
Speaker 4: and again, I guess you know, back in those days,
Speaker 4: you could easily listen into these conversations. And as del
Speaker 4: Armstrong was Anna Turna's best friend and associate producer on
Speaker 4: the film, was talking to Scotland Yard told him that
Speaker 4: Johnny Stampanado had illegally gotten himself into the country of
Speaker 4: a gun and that was enough for Scotland Yard to
Speaker 4: escort Johnny Stampanado to the airport and get him out
Speaker 4: of the country. In Lana was able to finish the
Speaker 4: film and hope that Johnny was out of her life forever,
Speaker 4: but he was. Yeah.
Speaker 5: See, she plans a trip to Mexico and because there's
Speaker 5: this no way he could find out, and then she
Speaker 5: has to make a stop along the way and tell
Speaker 5: us about Johnny stopping that.
Speaker 4: Well, a very chilling moment, you know, in Lana's life,
Speaker 4: where she thinks she's getting away from her tormentor and
Speaker 4: he meets her in Copenhagen where she's getting a flight
Speaker 4: from Copenhagen to Mexico, and Johnny has also booked a
Speaker 4: flight on that same plane to Acapoco with Lana, and
Speaker 4: Alana realizes right there, she's never going to get rid
Speaker 4: of Johnny Stampanado. So the two wind up in Mexico,
Speaker 4: where all Alanna wants to do is relax from this
Speaker 4: arduous film shoot. And there's Johnny Stompanado, who's threatening her,
Speaker 4: is very jealous of your combinations in Acapoco, gets himself
Speaker 4: a gun somewhere in town, you know, beats Lana, abuses her,
Speaker 4: and Lana decides at that point the only way to
Speaker 4: stem the abuse is to just give herself to Johnny Stampanado,
Speaker 4: which is what she does for the remainder of the trip.
Speaker 4: She tries to keep him happy, she tries to keep him,
Speaker 4: you know, sexually satisfied and emotionally stimulated. And you know,
Speaker 4: while she's in Acapolco, she gets a call from del
Speaker 4: Armstrong telling her that she's been nominated for Best Actress
Speaker 4: for a film called Peyton Place, which is another major
Speaker 4: milestone in Lana's life because again, she had never been
Speaker 4: considered a very strong actress. People thought that her looks
Speaker 4: were the most important thing for her big screen image.
Speaker 4: But she played a matronly character in this film, and
Speaker 4: she doesn't have a lot of screen time in it.
Speaker 4: But she was really emotionally connected to the character and
Speaker 4: was nominated for Best Actress. So Lana flies back to
Speaker 4: La Johnny's. On the flight, there's a very famous image
Speaker 4: of Johnny, Lana, and Cheryl on the tarmac at the
Speaker 4: airport in Los Angeles. And Johnny has been trying to
Speaker 4: tell everybody that he's Lana's guy. He's been feeding gossip
Speaker 4: columnists all these ridiculous stories about how much they're you know,
Speaker 4: and love they are. And Lana, you know, immediately tells
Speaker 4: anybody with an earshot that she's not connected to Johnny Stampanado,
Speaker 4: that they're just friends. And then she you know, adds
Speaker 4: salt to the wound. She does not invite him to
Speaker 4: the oscars. Instead, she takes her mother, Mildred, and her
Speaker 4: daughter Cheryl, and Johnny is ready to explode.
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Speaker 5: Well, we didn't mention that is just before this, or
Speaker 5: around this time, or previous to this, Johnny Stoppanado is
Speaker 5: making some very specific threats regarding Landa Turner's career.
Speaker 4: Well as Johnny Stampanado is beating Lana Turner. You know
Speaker 4: she's used to the physical abuse. You know she can
Speaker 4: cover up the bruises with makeup work, so she thinks
Speaker 4: she can't. But Johnny Stompanado goes one step further, threatens
Speaker 4: to cut her face with a knife, which would ruin
Speaker 4: her career, and then threatens to not only kill La,
Speaker 4: but to kill our mother Mildred and her daughter Cheryl.
Speaker 4: And I think that was the moment Lana's life where
Speaker 4: she knew that there was no way they couldntinue in
Speaker 4: this relationship, and the only way to break up this
Speaker 4: relationship was that if Johnny Stompanato was no longer.
Speaker 5: There, you say no longer there, so does she speak
Speaker 5: with Cheryl, her daughter, about the situation that she finds
Speaker 5: herself in.
Speaker 4: She does, she wants to break it off with Johnny,
Speaker 4: and I think that all culminates on Oscar Night, where
Speaker 4: it's the greatest night of Lana's professional career. She doesn't
Speaker 4: win Best Actress, but she feels like she's owned the night,
Speaker 4: and she is spends the night dancing with her daughter,
Speaker 4: pop knobbing with Sean Connery and Cary Grant, And when
Speaker 4: she gets to her rented bungalow at the end of
Speaker 4: the evening, she puts Cheryl to bed and she gets
Speaker 4: into her bedroom and in the darkness there's Johnny Stoppanado
Speaker 4: sitting on a chair smoking a cigarette and he's enraged.
Speaker 4: And over the course of the next hours, Lana's greatest
Speaker 4: night turns into her worst night, and she is beaten
Speaker 4: within an inch of her life. Cheryl can hear the
Speaker 4: abuse coming from the other room, doesn't know whether to
Speaker 4: call the police or not, so she doesn't. And I
Speaker 4: think at that moment, you know, Lana the next day
Speaker 4: realizes I'm going to kill Johnny Stampanao.
Speaker 5: You talk about that. After this killing, she made four
Speaker 5: phone calls. Tell us about the four phone calls, and
Speaker 5: Jerry Giesler.
Speaker 4: Yes, you know. Once Johnny Stampanado is found dead in
Speaker 4: the master bedroom suite of Lana's rented home at seven
Speaker 4: thirty North Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills, Lana doesn't call
Speaker 4: the police. She calls a doctor just to make sure
Speaker 4: that Johnny's dead. She calls her mother, she calls Stephen Crane,
Speaker 4: Cheryl's father, and she calls a fixer, Gary Gesler. So,
Speaker 4: Jerry Giesler arrives at the crime scene in the rain
Speaker 4: and decides to orchestrate crime scene because you can imagine
Speaker 4: that Johnny Stampanado was stabbed in the app him in
Speaker 4: with an eight inch blade. That results in a very
Speaker 4: bloody crime scene. Now I've studied all the crime scene
Speaker 4: photos in the Lata Turner case. The crime scene is pristine.
Speaker 4: You can't find blood anywhere. And I think that the
Speaker 4: precious time between Gieslow's arrival and when that police show up,
Speaker 4: the crime scene is scrubbed. Linen's are taking off the bed.
Speaker 4: Nobody could find the you know, the comforter or bed
Speaker 4: sheet that Johnny may have been lying on at the time,
Speaker 4: the bathroom is scrubbed, the walls look wet, and Johnny
Speaker 4: is lying on a white carpet, almost like he's been
Speaker 4: positioned there. And when police arrive, you know, Giesla is
Speaker 4: going to make a decision. And I think he had
Speaker 4: already walked Lana and her young fourteen year old daughter
Speaker 4: through this. Now he looks at Johnny lying dead, and
Speaker 4: he sees premeditation because of the abusive relationship and the
Speaker 4: fact that Lana Turner had purchased a knife the day
Speaker 4: before the fatal stabbing. Now, if Lana is charged with
Speaker 4: this murder, should be charged with first degree homicide, which
Speaker 4: could result in life in prisonment, can also result in death.
Speaker 4: The death penalty was quite real in nineteen fifty eight,
Speaker 4: and looking at primarily male jury, the likelihood is stop
Speaker 4: or Lana Turner rather would have been convicted. So what
Speaker 4: I think Geesler did, and I think the evidence backs
Speaker 4: it up, is that he took the knife of Lana's
Speaker 4: hands and placed the knife into the hands of fourteen
Speaker 4: year old Cheryl and told Cheryl, you're going to take
Speaker 4: responsibility for this stabbing. You were breaking up a vicious
Speaker 4: rote with between your mother and Johnny, you didn't think
Speaker 4: it was going to go that far, and he walked
Speaker 4: into your knife. You didn't plunge it at him, He
Speaker 4: merely walked into it. So that was the story that
Speaker 4: Geesler embedded into the brains of Lana and Cheryl. That's
Speaker 4: the story they told police that night. It was a
Speaker 4: huge gamble because there was no guarantee that Cheryl would
Speaker 4: not be charged with first degree office in it. And
Speaker 4: over the course of the next several days and weeks,
Speaker 4: the case suddenly goes into the court of law, where
Speaker 4: the story kind of awesomes from there.
Speaker 5: What does Mickey Cohen when he hears news of the
Speaker 5: murder of his friend, his good friend, Johnny Stoppanado. What
Speaker 5: does Mickey Cohen think? And then what does Mickey Cohen say?
Speaker 4: Mickey Cohen chriss bullshit. Doesn't believe for a minute young
Speaker 4: girl like Cheryl Crane could sneak up on veteran combat
Speaker 4: at like Johnny Stompanada, who fought against Japanese from World
Speaker 4: War Two and kill it. It makes sense to Mickey,
Speaker 4: and Mickey didn't believe it, and I don't think a
Speaker 4: lot of people in Hollywood believed it at the time,
Speaker 4: and Mickey, you know, spent the next several days and
Speaker 4: weeks trying to hunt down Lana Turner for revenge. It
Speaker 4: put his goons on Lana Turner's trail, and these goons
Speaker 4: had weapons. These goons had bottles of acid or if
Speaker 4: they saw Lana Turner, they were going to splash acid
Speaker 4: in her face and ruin her career. Micky Cohen wanted
Speaker 4: revenging retribution against the woman he believed killed his friend
Speaker 4: in underling Johnny Stampanado.
Speaker 5: What I wanted to say that was very very interesting
Speaker 5: at the time. I'm the way police handled and conducted
Speaker 5: themselves in investigations that Jerry Giesler was able to basically
Speaker 5: answered the questions that would have been put forth to
Speaker 5: Cheryl and Lanta when they were speaking to police. Initially.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a different era where you know, the
Speaker 4: lawyers had much more control over the crime scenes than
Speaker 4: you know some of them do now. So the Beverly
Speaker 4: Hills Police Department and not talking the laped talking about
Speaker 4: Beverly Hills, and they weren't, you know, necessarily used to
Speaker 4: murder cases like this, So they listened to a very
Speaker 4: respectable lawyer like Jerry Geesler and he laid out the store.
Speaker 4: It was Cheryl, not Lana, and Cheryl was brought to
Speaker 4: the precinct that night, but shocked Lona. She didn't think
Speaker 4: she would her daughter would be placed behind bars, but
Speaker 4: she was and then sent to juvenile hall while this
Speaker 4: case kind of unraveled around her. And while Cheryl is
Speaker 4: at juvenile hall waiting to see what her future would bring,
Speaker 4: you know, Lana is ordered to testify at the official
Speaker 4: inquest into the murder or into the fatal stabbing in
Speaker 4: Los Angeles, and it became to me Lana's greatest performance
Speaker 4: because over a course of I think two hours, you know,
Speaker 4: Lana recounted everything that Jerry Geesler had told her and
Speaker 4: wanted her to send.
Speaker 5: Tell us about the media account and coverage of this
Speaker 5: sensational inquest.
Speaker 4: It was incredibly sensational, the biggest scandal to rock Hollywood
Speaker 4: in the first fifty years of the movie industry. So
Speaker 4: you can imagine reporters and camera people of television and
Speaker 4: print descended on Los Angeles from all over the world
Speaker 4: to capture this real life drama and that's what they did. So,
Speaker 4: you know, going back and reading all the transcripts and
Speaker 4: seeing what was said in court, not only by Lana,
Speaker 4: but Mickey Cohen was also asked to testify and pleaded
Speaker 4: the fifth because he thought that people in law enforcement
Speaker 4: would pin the murder on him. So there's a you know,
Speaker 4: a circus element in the atmosphere around the court during
Speaker 4: Lana's testimony that I'd described in detail, and a murder
Speaker 4: in Hollywood.
Speaker 5: You say that the jury deliberated for twenty three minutes
Speaker 5: after this inquest, after Lana had successfully testified on behalf
Speaker 5: of her daughter, tell us what the verdict was.
Speaker 4: Well, verdict was that that was justifiable homicide, meaning the
Speaker 4: jurists believed what Lana had told them, because why wouldn't you.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is before people trusted police, people trusted lawyers.
Speaker 4: And Lana was left scott free, but her daughter was
Speaker 4: still in protective custody and eventually her daughter was released.
Speaker 4: But well, really, what strikes me now, Dan, is that
Speaker 4: Johnny's family doesn't believe the official version of the story either.
Speaker 4: Carmine Stompanado believes that it was Lata who killed his brother,
Speaker 4: and so the family files a wrongful death suit against Laana,
Speaker 4: which would lead to a civil trial which could ultimately
Speaker 4: lead to criminal charges, and Lana does not want that
Speaker 4: to happen. And as they're going through depositions in the
Speaker 4: civil case, lawyers for the Stoppanado family very well you know,
Speaker 4: healed lawyers realize that the stories that Cheryl and Lana
Speaker 4: and even Steve Crane, Cheryl's father, they're not matching up.
Speaker 4: They're not as tight as they were at the inquiry
Speaker 4: back in April nineteen fifty eight. So this opens up
Speaker 4: Lana to a great vulnerability because if they're able to
Speaker 4: pin this killing on Lana Turner in a civil trial,
Speaker 4: that could lead to reopening the case and putting Lana
Speaker 4: on trial for her life. So Lana settles the case
Speaker 4: and it goes away.
Speaker 5: Originally that lawsuit was for a then it was reduced
Speaker 5: to be more successful, potentially for five hundred thousand. What
Speaker 5: was the final tally.
Speaker 4: I think it was about twenty grand And I don't
Speaker 4: think it was the money that the Stampanado family cared about.
Speaker 4: It was somebody taking responsibility for the killing of their
Speaker 4: loved him. They loved Johnny Stampanado, even though Johnny Stampanado
Speaker 4: was ultimately evil and abusive and incredibly violent. They didn't
Speaker 4: see that side of Johnny, but a lot of certainly,
Speaker 4: as you do.
Speaker 5: At the end of this book, you tell us a
Speaker 5: little bit about the fate of Lana in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 5: tell us a little bit about just the rest of
Speaker 5: her life.
Speaker 4: Well, I think you know she What I love about
Speaker 4: you know this story is she outlives all of our adversaries.
Speaker 4: Johnny's dead, you know, Mickey Cohen goes back to prison
Speaker 4: where he's beaten and you know, suffers from mental and
Speaker 4: physical injuries for the rest of his short life. Afterwards,
Speaker 4: Ana is able to resume her career, which to me
Speaker 4: was pretty amazing. So the book ends at a very
Speaker 4: triumphant moment in Lana's life with her daughter. And I'm
Speaker 4: just going to leave it there, Dan, because i want
Speaker 4: the readers to read that. I don't want to give
Speaker 4: too much away. But I do feel like Lana rightfully
Speaker 4: is elevated in my book of Murder in Hollywood to
Speaker 4: a position as really a feminist icon, in a pioneer
Speaker 4: to the Me Too movement.
Speaker 5: Yes, and you also talk about Cheryl and her fate,
Speaker 5: but we will leave that for the reader. But just
Speaker 5: to say that she was not negatively affected, and we
Speaker 5: could say I.
Speaker 4: Think they had a complex relationship for the rest of
Speaker 4: Lana's life. I also think that Cheryl told the story
Speaker 4: exactly how Jery Giesler told it to her in in
Speaker 4: a long effort to protect her mother. Because there's no
Speaker 4: statute of limitation on murder dan, so at any time
Speaker 4: in the sixties or seventies or even eighties, Lana Turner
Speaker 4: could have been put on trial for Johnny Stoppanao's murder.
Speaker 4: And I think Cheryl, who had suffered and you know,
Speaker 4: were covered and survived abuse, still loved her mother a
Speaker 4: great deal and did so to protect her.
Speaker 5: You right, the Atlanta Turner was the stuff that dreams
Speaker 5: are made of, Hollywood dreams, and you say those dreams
Speaker 5: were shattered in the early spring of nineteen fifty eight
Speaker 5: in explosion of violence that screenwriters at the time would
Speaker 5: not even dare to imagine.
Speaker 4: I think that sums up the story pretty succudly. Dad.
Speaker 4: You know, I've been an investigative journalist for thirty years,
Speaker 4: covered you know, many sensational cases, but you know, the
Speaker 4: story has kind of stayed with me a little bit,
Speaker 4: and I hope that readers or today's generation finds Lana
Speaker 4: Turner because she's all been forgotten by history, and this
Speaker 4: is reintroduced to her, not as a femme fatal, not
Speaker 4: as a villain in Hollywood history. But as I said,
Speaker 4: somebody you know a herold if you will, I hope
Speaker 4: that today's generation goes back in five Turner through the
Speaker 4: pages of this book. Lana Turner had been all but
Speaker 4: forgotten by Hollywood, or at least remembered as a fem
Speaker 4: fatal or a villain in Hollywood history. But I don't
Speaker 4: think she is at all. I think that a lot
Speaker 4: of people at det a gratitude to want to turn
Speaker 4: what she'd gone through and then what she had to
Speaker 4: do to save her family, save her career, and ultimately
Speaker 4: save her life.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, I'm going to thank you very much, Casey Sherman
Speaker 5: for coming on and talking about your latest a murder
Speaker 5: in Hollywood, the untold story of Tinseltown's.
Speaker 4: Most shocking crime.
Speaker 5: For those people that might want to take a work
Speaker 5: that you rather work, can you tell us about social
Speaker 5: media and and or your website.
Speaker 4: Sure, folks can find me on Instagram, which is Casey
Speaker 4: Sherman writes c A s E Y s H E
Speaker 4: R m A N or on x slash Twitter kcy
Speaker 4: Sherman one two three, and or just you know, go
Speaker 4: to your nearest bookstore find a Murdered Hollywood or any
Speaker 4: of my other books. Many of them have already been
Speaker 4: adapted into major motion pictures, and we're certainly hoping for
Speaker 4: the same thing with this project.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much for this interview, and you have
Speaker 5: a great evening and good night, all right, thanks to