Hollywood - California - News - Stars Homes - Tours - Hotels - Restaurants - Murders

1956 – Mrs. Shirley Gerstel, 33, was bound, gagged, brutally beaten, and subjected to unspeakable indignities in her $50,000 home at 2880 Durand Drive in February, 1956. She told police that the wild-eyed attacker was the same man who scratched her arm with a broken beer bottle, tore her blouse, and banged her head on the floor several weeks earlier. Police said that she was beaten and jabbed with a stick which had been made into a weapon of torture by adding a nail on the end of it. Police said that she was slugged on the head by an unknown assailant wielding a pogo stick belonging to one of her five children. Found scrawled across her stomach, written with a ballpoint pen, were the words: "You can't kick me and get away with it, you ----." Men working nearby, gave a description of a man seen around the house. He was about 25, tall and slim, with dirty blond hair, bad teeth and horn rimmed glasses. Two weeks later, after a full investigation, police were convinced that her stories were unfounded. They said that Mrs. Gerstel, wife of a Beverly Hills dentist, recently underwent brain surgery that had left her in a physical condition in which she actually believed the attacks had taken place. They said that no complaint would be made against her for making a false police report.

1952 – On May 20, 1952, Hollywood detectives were faced with a death mystery that could have come right off the pages of a dime novel. They said that the death of Jack Johnson, a 35-year-old salesman could have come from natural causes. And on the other hand, they were not sure. Because, when Johnson arrived at his hotel at 6141 Franklin Ave., a few minutes after midnight in a taxicab – he was dead. The night clerk told police a cab driver came into the lobby and said he and another man were bringing Johnson home. The cabbie said that Johnson had passed out and his friend was seeing that he got to his hotel room. The night clerk went ahead to turn back the covers. But when no one came upstairs within a few minutes, he returned to the lobby. There, slumped on a divan, was Johnson. He was dead. Police later learned that Johnson's wife, Helen Layman Johnson, 28, a blond night-club singer, was missing and was looking for her for questioning about the death of her husband,.

1930 – On March 24, 1930, book-keeper William Burkhart, 24, knocked on a door in a court at 6742 Franklin Place in Hollywood where he had just rented an apartment, and asked help for carrying his wife, whom he said was drunk, from his car into his apartment. James Thompson, a resident of the court attempted to help Burkhart, but became suspicious when he noticed that the girl's body was cold and had blood on her clothes, He called police. Police found the body of Ann McKnight Burkhart, 22, a dancer and film extra, in the car. She lay on her back with arms outstretched toward the court. There were bloodstains on the seat cushions and two .38-caliber bullets in the car, Bloodstains found in the bungalow showed that the body had been taken there from the car then dragged out again. She had been shot three times in the back, and two in the chest. When arrested, Burkhart had a .38-caliber revolver in his hip pocket, with blood on the handle.
Whatever Happened to Him? In July, 1930, Burkhart was convicted of murder and given the death sentence.

1927 – At midnight on June 9, 1927, actress Doris Williams, 21, also known as Doris Dore, was attacked here in her apartment at 1924 Argyle by an assailant who carved the letter "K" on different parts of her body. She told police that a gorilla-like individual broke into her apartment and attempted to attack her and when she hit him, he overpowered her and carved her with what she thought was a safety-razor blade. She fainted, and when she came to 30 minutes later, she was lying in a pool of blood. Police said that the wounds looked like they may have been made with a pin, needle, or a pen knife. The cuts and scratches would not disfigure her, she said. After several days of investigating , police suspected that she had made the story up but they were unable to prove it.

1946 – Blonde, blue-eyed dancer and model, Rae Randall, 24, was living at 6513 Bella Vista Way in June, 1946, when she was savagely beaten by brass polisher, William Talbert, 25, of 2255 Cahuenga after resisting his advances in an isolated spot in the Hollywood Hills. She suffered two black eyes, split and puffed lips, a possible broken right jaw and a fractured knee. The beating, she said, happened after a round of night-clubbing with Talbert and another couple on the Sunset Strip. .

1941 – Larry Edmunds owned a book shop in Hollywood in the 1930s from which he sold books and pornography from a suitcase to the writers in the studios. One of his customers, director Billy Wilder said Edmunds was a homosexual. Edmunds’ business partner said Edmunds loved women and called him “Hollywood’s greatest seducer.” Edmunds, who also loved books and booze, had great charm, and was a hypnotic conversationalist. He became friends with John Barrymore, W.C. Fields, and writer Thomas Wolfe. They said that he never stalked women - they stalked him.

Reportedly, he seduced 75 per cent of the secretaries in the studios. He did it in their apartments, on the beach, and in the Hollywood Hills. He did it with Dolores Del Rio, Margo, Ann Harding, Mary Astor, Margaret Sullivan, Paulette Goddard, Marlene Dietrich, Myrna Loy, Lupe Velez and others. In 1940, Edmunds began to drink heavily. He was in and out of drying hospitals and sanitariums.
One day in 1941, when he did not show up at his book store for two days, his partner went to Edmunds’ home at 2472 Beachwood Dr. (small house in back) and found the 35-year-old lying dead on the kitchen floor – he had stuck his head in the gas oven. A suicide note explained the holes gashed in the walls. He had made the holes with a hunting knife, because he was chopping off the heads of the little men that were creeping out of the walls. He realized that he was a hopeless case, and decided to take his own life.

Among his effects found in the small house were six diaphragms, each one with the name of a different woman. Two were famous actresses, a female screenwriter, two were wives of famous stars, and one was the wife of a screenwriter. Also found were all the novels of his old friend, writer, Thomas Wolfe, in which Wolfe had written long personal expressions of his love for Larry Edmunds in the books blank pages.
Where Are They Now? Edmunds is buried in Greensboro, North Carolina. Wolfe, 38, died after brain surgery in 1938 and is buried in Riverside Cemetery in Asheville, North Carolina.

1923 – When Universal Studio cowboy star Art Acord left his wife and home at 1624 N. Courtney Avenue in March, 1923, his wife, Edna Mae told reporters that it was the last time he will leave it, as she was not going to let him return. "I made Art Acord what he is today," she said. "When we were married in 1919, his worldly possessions consisted of the Army uniform in which he was discharged. This house is mine, it was a wedding gift from my father." In September, 1924, Edna Mae filed suit for divorce, charging Accord with desertion, failure to provide and associating with actress Louise Lorraine. Art and Louise were married in 1925 and divorced in 1929. His career came to an end with the coming of sound. In 1931,
Where Are They Now? Acord, an alcoholic, was found dead in a Chihuahua, Mexico hotel room – he had killed himself with cyanide at age 41. Hehad been working in Mexico as a miner. Although his death was listed as a suicide, many of his friends said that he had been murdered by a Mexican politician who had caught Acord having an affair with his wife. Acord is buried in Forest Lawn Glendale in the Vale of Memory, L-2608. His star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is located at 1709 Vine Street. Louise Lorraine died in 1981 in New York, at age 79, and is buried in Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills in section Enduring Faith, L-1559, G-2. Her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is located at 6541 Hollywood Blvd.

1922 – Actress Mary Miles Minter, 20, rented a furnished home at 2183 Argyle, in December 1922, less than year after her lover William Desmond Taylor was murdered. She moved in with her chauffeur and colored maid who lived in rooms on the lower floor of the hillside home. From the porch at night, she could see Los Angeles and its lights that glittered like gems at the feet of a queen. While here she became frightened several times at being there with only her servants, so she had friends move in with her until she moved out on June 10, 1923.

In the later part of June, 1923, actress Sigrid Holmquist, 23, a close friend of Minter’s, rented the home. In July, Miss Holmquist invited six close friends for dinner here in the home. Just after dinner, while the guests were on the porch, a shot rang out and a bullet whistled past the guests and knicked one man in the hand. Mary, who had spent the afternoon at the house but left before dinner, was believed to have been the target.
Miss Holmquist later told police that "We had just finished dinner. When one of the men stepped out on the porch to admire the view over the city. I was almost behind him, when suddenly, bang, there was a shot. The bullet whistled right by me. My friend held up his right hand, the bullet had cut a groove on his wrist and began to bleed. Then we all ran out of the house and down the hill." The flash of the gun was seen by the man who was hit by the bullet. It came from a spot where there was much shrubbery. No trace of the shooter was ever found.

      Miss Holmquist and her guests believed that the bullet was meant for Mary Miles Minter as Holmquist resembled Miss Minter in the half light that streamed from the dining room windows onto the upper porch overlooking the Valley. Holmquist had just stepped through the French doors to the porch at the same instant of the shot.
      A few nights after the shooting, Miss Holmquist was awakened by a flashlight beam that was aimed through the French doors of the lower porch flashing upon the ceilings and walls of the bedrooms. She jumped out of bed and called her servants who looked for the intruder but found nothing. The bedroom was the same one used by Mary Miles Minter when she occupied the house.
Where Are They Now?  Minter’s last film was The Trail of the Lonesome Pine in 1923. In her later years Mary became a recluse, developing diabetes and a severe weight problem. She died on August 4, 1984 in Santa Monica at age 82. Cremated, her ashes were scattered at sea. (It was this writer's good fortune to have visited with Mary (Mrs. O'Hildebrandt) several times in her home in Santa Monica in 1983).
      Holmquist known as the Swedish "Mary Pickford" came to Hollywood in 1920, but retired from films in 1925. Leaving Hollywood, she moved to London, England, with her first husband, a banker. In 1936, she was reported to be out of work and penniless, but by 1941, she had re-married and resettled in Sydney, Australia, a successful business woman.
Holmquist died in Sydney on July 9, 1970 at age 71. She was cremated.

1932 – Threats of death from a mysterious fortune-teller against young girls to compel them to carry out their contracts in a sensational Hollywood “love market" were revealed on March 5, 1932, following the arrest of a millionaire oil and real estate promoter and the jailing of another man and an actress on attack charges. John P. Mills, wealthy 40-year-old broker of 569 North Rossmore Avenue, was arrested on two counts of asserted attack on Clarice Tauper, a 16-year-old school girl at a fashionable downtown Los Angeles hotel on December 20 and 30, 1930. Also arrested were Olive Clark Day 34, a dancer and sometime actress, and William Jobelmann, 38. Day was arrested in a cheap hotel at 1026 W. Sixth Street. The three operated the "love market" in Hollywood where approximately 100 young girls were card-indexed as prospective "companions" to wealthy men.

In a luxuriously equipped studio in Miss Day's home at 2575 Glen Green in Hollywood, they operated a clearing-house, producing 16-year-old girls as companions to wealthy men for a consideration. (Miss Day was the same Dorothy Clark who accused actor Herbert Rawlinson of assaulting her in 1922). The studio was equipped with a luxurious and soft-draped bedroom, completely furnished with furniture of futuristic design - secluded and sound-proof. Near the head of the bed, was a secret door through which one could enter noiselessly, and about the room were peeping holes through-out, which the occupants could be seen. It was in this connection that the death threats of the mysterious fortune teller was said to have frightened the girls into obedience.

Jobelman made contacts with young girls, 16, 17, and 18, but not above 30, and induced the girls to have interviews with Miss Day for prospective employment. Once a girl had signified her willingness to list her name at the studio, her measurements, complextion, age, color of eyes, whether a blond, brunette or auburn haired, and all other personal details including her innocence or experience were taken and listed in the files. After a sensational trail, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Buron Fitts, dropped rape charges against oilman Mills, but he convicted Miss Day, who was sent to prison for two years.
Whatever Happened to Them? Fitts, 78, shot himself to death on March 29, 1973 in the driveway of his home in Three Rivers, California. He is buried in Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills in Lincoln Terrace, Lot 4215. Nothing was heard from Day after her release from prison.

1949 – Stripteaser Lili St. Cyr and her husband, dancer-actor, Paul Valentine were living at 2639 N. Canyon Drive, in 1949 when Valentine filed for divorce. He told the judge "That everybody in the country could see more of her than I could. The only way I could see her was to get her an engagement in our home. And when she was here she was antisocial. She would not listen to the radio unless it was Jack Benny. My friends were not welcome at our home. She would lock herself in her room until his guests left." Under a property settlement, Lili got the title to the house if she kept up the payments and Valentine could live here for two years. On October 30, 1958, Lili tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide in the house by taking sleeping pills. She was living here in August, 1963 with her husband MGM special effects man, Joseph Zomar, when burglars broke in the house and stole $10,000 of her possessions including a fur coat and two wigs.
Where Are They Now? Lili died alone and forgotten in her Hollywood apartment in 1999 at age 80. Cremated, the location of her ashes are unknown. Her last years were spent with her cats in mysterious seclusion. Valentine died in 2006 at age 87.

1932 – On April 12, 1932, actor Monty Banks asked police to search for his wife, actress Gladys Frazin, 32, who he said had been missing from their apartment at 1919 Argyle Avenue for almost a week. He said she left home about 1 a.m. without leaving an explanation. On April 16, Banks filed suit for divorce. After testifying in court on April, 29 that Gladys would disappear for several days at a time, and often would come home drunk and that she treated him abusively, the judge granted the divorce. When Banks sailed from New York for Europe a week later, he waved goodbye to Gladys who was standing on the pier. Before sailing time, she had given him a bunch of gardenias.
Where Are They Now? On March 9, 1939, Gladys jumped to her death from a sixth-floor bedroom of her parents' apartment in New York. She was 38. A note to her parents said she "could not suffer any longer." Banks died of a heart attack in Italy in 1950 at age 53, and is buried in Italy.