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Copyright

Contents

Author's Note

Al Adamson

Gwili Andre

Peter Arne

Arthur Ashe

William Burke

Susan Cabot

Ronni Chasen

Lana Clarkson

Christine Chubbuck

Kurt Cobain

Cristie Schoen Codd

Tommy Cooper

Mary Ann Cotton

Dimebag Darrell

James Dean

Kristian Digby

Diana Dors

R. Budd Dwyer

Chris Farley

Albert Fish

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Caroline Flack

Erin Fleming

Ian Fleming

John Wayne Gacy

James Gandolfini

Peaches Geldof

Jade Goody

Owen Hart

Eddie Hassell

Christa Helm

Myra Hindley

Adolf Hitler

H. H. Holmes

Whitney Houston

Rock Hudson

David Huffman

Steve Irwin

Martin Luther King, Jr

Sonny Liston

Danny Lockin

Jayne Mansfield

Jenny Maxwell

Freddie Mills

Ashleigh Aston Moore

Tommy Morrison

Enriqueta Martí

Benito Mussolini

Dennis Nilsen

Amanda Peterson

Brad Renfro

Natasha Richardson

Boris Sagal

Rod Serling

Harold Shipman

Paul Walker

Shane Warne

Jack Wild

Aileen Wuornos

Paula Yates

References

AUTHOR'S NOTE

A list of references used in the research for this book can be found at the conclusion of the final entry. Though there is dark material in this book I have strived to be sensitive and tactful in writing about the various (and often tragic) cases we will encounter. I have written crime and celebrity books before and hope that my experience in such matters makes this an interesting and balanced read.

AL ADAMSON

Al Adamson was born on July the 25th, 1929, in Hollywood, California. He was a writer/producer/director of cheap but cheerful exploitation films in the 1960s and 1970s. He was responsible for strange cultish obscurities like Psycho A Go-Go (later worked into Blood of Ghastly Horror), Satan's Sadists, Horror of the Blood Monsters, Dracula Vs. Frankenstein (which was clearly ahead of its time given that films like Freddy Vs. Jason and Alien v Predator came decades later!), and Five Bloody Graves.

Adamson's film career was a long way from mainstream Hollywood and strictly bargain basement but he was never short of a few marketing gimmicks. His 1978 film Death Dimension (a.k.a. Freeze Bomb) featured no less than two former James Bond franchise stars in George Lazenby and Harold Sakata. Adamson also directed two kung fu films featuring Enter the Dragon star Jim Kelly. Adamson's 1983 film Lost featured the last ever performance by Sandra Dee.

The grade Z drive-in pictures of Adamson featured biker chicks, gore, nudity, and low-budget fun for those with a sweet tooth for trashy tongue-in-cheek schlock, car chases, explosions, action, kung fu, and horror. Adamson was described by some as something akin to a modern day Ed Wood. Sometimes he would even get the rights to an existing picture (like a western for example) and throw in a load of new scenes chock full of gore and sex. Adamson was never going to win an Oscar but he was inventive and very hard-working and his films were entertaining enough taken on their own terms. He also made uncredited appearances in many of his movies.

Adamson even filmed some of his movies at the ranch where the Charlie Manson cult lived. He also made some softcore erotic films in the 1970s to make ends meet and bring in some extra cash. You could probably describe Adamson as a grindhouse legend of sorts. The decline of the drive-in market probably affected Adamson's stock-in-trade and by the 1990s he was more or less retired. By now he was in his sixties and divided his time between his homes in California and Nevada. Adamson wasn't super rich but he had a modest nest egg and two homes so he wasn't doing too badly all things considered.

Somewhat vulnerable and lonely from the recent death of his wife (and frequent leading lady) Regina Carro, Adamson became friendly with a 50-year-old builder named Fred Fulford. Fulford became a live in contractor helping out with renovations at the house Adamson had in California. Though he had no way of knowing it, Adamson's decision to hire Fulford as a contractor would cost him his life. Fulford would be responsible for Adamson's macabre death - the director meeting a fate rather akin to a character in one of his films.

Adamson was by all accounts an affable and decent person and didn't deserve what fate had in store for him.

In 1995, Adamson was reported missing by his brother and friends after they didn't see him for weeks. This was all very suspicious and unusual as far as they were concerned. It was very out of character for Al to suddenly go away without telling anyone. His brother felt sure that Al wouldn't have gone on a vacation or trip without informing him first so he naturally became worried. The chief suspect in Al's disappearance was obviously going to be a certain Fred Fulford. Fulford had spent a lot of time with Al lately and more or less lived at the house. If anyone knew what had happened to Al it was surely going to be Fred Fulford.

When it transpired that Fulford had gone away too this case suddenly became even more suspicious. Eventually it was decided to search Al's home for signs of any clues that might potentially explain what had happened to him and why he had apparently vanished without trace. It was during this search that a grisly and tragic discovery was made. The 66 year-old Adamson was found dead and buried in cement where a jacuzzi had been. No prizes for guessing who the prime suspect in this case was now. It was probably not going to take a genius lawyer to convict Fulford.

Fred Fulford was (no surprise here) later tried and convicted of the murder of Al Adamson. Deputy District Attorney Paul Vinegrad maintained, based on pathology results, that Fulford had bashed in Adamson’s skull with a blunt heavy object and then dumped his body in the jacuzzi pit and poured a huge amount of cement over the crime scene. "This really is an overwhelming case of guilt," Vinegrad said. Given that Fulford was being employed to make renovations to the home he must have had plenty of cement on hand for this ghastly attempt to hid Al's body.

The court case established that Adamson and Fulford had a financial agreement. They were going to sell the house after Fulford had completed all the repairs and renovations and then split the money from the sale of the property. It appears then that there was some sort of disagreement or money related argument which made Fulford blow a fuse and kill Adamson. After the murder, Fulford had fled to Florida. He was even brazen enough to have Adamson's cars shipped over - whereupon he sold them.

Fulford preposterously claimed at the trial that he had no idea Adamson had been murdered and had assumed his employer's disappearance was due to the fact that Al had taken a vacation. Fulford then claimed that he had been framed for the murder but this was patently a desperate untruth. Fulford's unconvincing and fantastical pleas of innocence, predictably, did not stand up to much scrutiny in court and he was sentenced to a 25-years-to-life term in prison in 2000. There was a lengthy delay in getting an actual trial on this case because it took some time to extradite Fulford from Florida.

Fred Fulford has come up for parole a few times but the parole board has so far denied his request to be released. Adamson, a kind and well liked character, had clearly made a terrible error of judgment when he became friends with Fulford and entered into a business arrangement with him. Perhaps Fulford, clearly a disturbed and dangerous individual, hid his dark side well. The end result was tragic.

One darkly ironic thing about this case is that, before his death, Adamson had planned to return to filmmaking and even had an unproduced horror script about a man who is murdered and buried in his own house over a financial dispute. In 2020 it was announced that a special box-set featuring many of Al Adamson's old films would be released. It's just a shame that Al didn't live to see this happen.

GWILI ANDRE

Gwili Andre was born Guri Anderson on February the 4th, 1908 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Andre became a famous model in Europe and graced many magazine covers. While many people lived on the breadline in those dark days she earned $25,000 a year during the Depression and was much in demand. Her potential seemed unlimited. Gwili then moved to the United States where her statuesque blonde good looks earned her a film contract with RKO. In those days (and maybe it hasn't changed so much even now) studios would discover an attractive young woman and then try to mould her into an actress. While this sometimes worked surprisingly well there are plenty of failures too. When it came to Hollywood, Gwili Andre was destined to become what you might describe as a failed experiment.

Andre was compared to Garbo and Marlene Dietrich and featured in many gossip and entertainment articles. At one point she is alleged to have dated Howard Hughes. The stars seemed to have aligned for Gwili Andre and she was tipped to become a huge movie star. There was only one small problem. Gwili Andre couldn't act to save her life. Her early films roles were pre-code movies Roar of the Dragon, Secrets of the French Police, and No Other Woman. Andre certainly looked the part of a film star but there was something missing. She lacked the screen presence and natural relaxed charisma and wit of the great Hollywood female actors. She made the dialogue sound flat. Gwili Andre always looked and sounded like she was reading her lines off cue cards.

Critics were harsh on Gwili Andre's acting talents and described her performances as lifeless and wooden. The columnist Frank Morris would later write - 'I have to think hard to recall the names of any of the other actresses who were foisted on the screen as Greta Garbo imitators. One of them, nevertheless, was Gwili Andre. Miss Andre was a fashion model, and she photographed to perfection. As her studio groomed her for stardom, the fan magazines and the newspapers blossomed with pictures of her. There was a more than ordinary interest in Miss Andre. Alas, in her first picture she proved to be such a stiff, colorless and completely talentless performer that she disappeared almost overnight.'

With her Hollywood career stuck in neutral and going nowhere fast, Andre concentrated on being a model and took a break from films. She also got married during this period and had a son. Gwili Andre would only make two more films in the end. Her last credit was a supporting role in the 1942 crime drama The Falcon's Brother. She hadn't got any better when it came to the mysterious craft of thesping. Gwili still delivered her dialogue in a robotic and disinterested fashion and clearly did not have the acting chops to be anything other than a minor background player. This realisation must have been tough for Andre to cope with given the fact that she had been groomed for Hollywood stardom.

By now her window of opportunity when it came to movies had all but shut. Her limited acting ability meant that Hollywood had more or less washed its hands of Gwili Andre and moved onto new stars. There were no shortage of new beautiful blondes in Hollywood who aspired to be an actress so Gwili Andre became yesterday's news. Andre moved back to Denmark at one point and also got divorced. She is said to have become an alcoholic. In the end she decided to go back to the United States. She lived in New York at first but then (inevitably perhaps) made her way to California. Gwili Andre still had dreams of becoming a film star in Hollywood but these dreams were now unrealistic. Gwili was like a washed up boxer who still deludes himself that he could get his old title back.

On February the 5th, 1959, Gwili Andre died in a fire at her Venice Beach home. She was 52. The legend goes that, in a bizarre suicide ritual, she was found sprawled on the bedroom floor of her apartment, burned to a crisp in a funeral pyre she had made out of her old publicity clippings. After years of desperately trying to resurrect her career Gwili Andre had given up and allegedly taken her life in a most theatrical fashion. Whether or not this story is true or an urban myth is open to question. Investigators and neighbours found a scrapbook Gwili Andre had kept of her career as a model actually survived the flames. It seems apparent though that she was always wistful about the fact that she never quite managed to become a movie star. Her ashes were later buried at Søndermark Cemetery in Copenhagen.

PETER ARNE

Peter Arne was an English actor who was born in British Malaya (Malaysia). Although he never become tremendously famous, Arne was one of those actors where you'd probably recognise his face even if you didn't know what his name was. He settled in Britain after serving in the RAF during the war. After establishing himself on the stage he became a prolific film and television actor. Arne would often play shifty crisp sounding villains or suave foreign characters. In the 1960s he appeared in popular TV shows like Danger Man, The Saint, The Champions and The Avengers. In 1968 he played Captain of Bomburst in the children's film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and also had a role in Khartoum. His other film roles included The Cockleshell Heroes and Ice Cold in Alex. Arne was all over the place. You've probably watched him in dozens of things without ever knowing what his name was in real life.

In the next decade Arne appeared in many more films - including Straw Dogs, The Return of the Pink Panther, Agatha, and When Eight Bells Toll. Despite appearing in big movies, Arne was always more of a background actor and more than willing to supplement his income with television work. He even took a part in the infamously bad soap opera Triangle. Triangle was a BBC soap set aboard a North Sea ferry that sailed from Felixstowe to Gothenburg and Gothenburg to Amsterdam. The show was openly mocked by critics but actually ran for three seasons. Trivia you'll never need - one of the regulars in Triangle was Jonathan Scott-Taylor. Scott-Taylor was the kid who played Damien Thorn in Damien: Omen II.

Despite his dalliance with Triangle, Peter Arne was still picking up plenty of film work in the 1980s though and appeared in Victor Victoria, Trail of the Pink Panther, and Curse of the Pink Panther - all for the director Blake Edwards. He was happy and content in real life too. Arne had a Knightsbridge flat near Harrods and a country house in Devon. He was popular socially and attended many parties. Arne was said to be a great storyteller so he was a popular party guest. He was gay but because he moved in theatrical circles this was never much of a problem for him.

On the 1st of August 1983, Arne, who had agreed to play a part in a forthcoming episode of Doctor Who, was sorting out his costume at the BBC studio. Later that day he went back to his flat where something very odd and tragic obviously happened. Arne was later found beaten to death in the hallway of his ground-floor flat. He was 62 years old. It was a violent death and must have been vey shocking for his neighbours when they found out. The neighbours had earlier reported hearing a commotion and noises suggesting a struggle of some sort was taking in Arne's flat.

Peter Arne was bludgeoned to death with a log from his fire and also a stool. It was a brutal and deadly attack. Because there was no sign of any forced entry the police obviously deduced that Arne must have known the killer and willingly let the suspect into the flat. That deduction proved to be on the money. Peter Arne did indeed know the person who killed him. The main suspect was a homeless man who lived rough nearby. Arne obviously knew this man because he used to give him some food from time to time.

A few days later an Italian man named Giuseppe Perusi was found dead in the River Thames. His death was ruled a suicide. Perusi was the homeless man whom Arne had sometimes given some food to. The official verdict is that Perusi, for reasons best known to himself (or maybe due to the fact he was mentally unstable), had murdered Arne and then drowned himself. It could be that the two men argued over something. At the time the gossip in the tabloids was that Arne's sexuality may have been a factor in his death although what exactly they meant by that is open to question. It seemed a trifle distasteful to say the least to speculate in this way.

There is still though a certain degree of mystery surrounding the death of Peter Arne. We simply don't know what really happened on that fateful and tragic afternoon. Arne was a remarkably prolific and versatile sort of actor who never was never short of work. His strange and violent death was a tragic last act in his life. Who knows, if he hadn't been murdered, maybe Peter Arne would eventually have found a role that finally made him a household name.

ARTHUR ASHE

Arthur Ashe was born July 10, 1943, in Richmond, Virginia. Ashe began playing tennis at the age of seven and was the first black player selected to the United States Davis Cup team and the only black man ever to win the singles title at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open. Ashe was truly a trailblazer. He was also an intelligent and sensitive man who elicited great admiration and respect in anyone who came into contact with him.

Ashe joined the United States Army on August 4, 1966. He completed his basic training in Washington and was later commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Adjutant General Corps. He was assigned to the United States Military Academy at West Point. He ran a tennis program while in the armed forces and then embarked on a remarkable career in the sport when he left. Ashe was a natural athlete and in tennis found something he was amazingly gifted in.

It was definitely not easy for Arthur Ashe on the tennis circuit in the early days. Tennis, at the time, was still seen as a rather white and snooty country club sort of game and there was plenty of ingrained prejudice. "Get the n***** off the court,” one white patron infamously shouted in March 1969 while Ashe was practicing at a country club in St. Petersburg, Florida. This was the sort of stuff Arthur Ashe had to put up with as her carved out a remarkable tennis career. This was also the sort of stuff that the Williams sisters (Serena and Venus) later had to put up with too when they started. Their father Richard withdrew Venus and Serena from a tennis academy when they were youngsters because of the casual prejudice he had detected. Richard Williams coached them himself - with great success.

Tiger Woods also had similar experiences on his path to fame. The world of golf had never really experienced a black golfer becoming its main star and best player before. Tiger had to endure some unfortunate snobbery and casual racism on his path to superstardom. After winning the 1997 Masters Tournament, Woods had to put up with a silly comment from Fuzzy Zoeller, who won this championship in 1979. Zoeller responded to Tiger's win by stating - "That little boy is driving well and he's putting well. He's doing everything it takes to win. So you know what you guys do when he gets in here. You pat him on the back and say congratulations and enjoy it and tell him not serve fried chicken next year. Got it." Tiger has said that he experienced much snootiness and racism at gold clubs when he was making his way as a golfer.

Arthur Ashe used his fame as a tennis player to campaign for civil rights and social justice. In 1973, Ashe went to the apartheid state of South Africa (which Arthur Ashe was naturally a vocal critic of and helped to exclude from the Davis Cup in 1970) to play in the national tennis championship there. Black civil rights leaders and celebrities in the United States had urged Ashe not to go but Arthur believed that the sight of a free and successful black man playing tennis in competition with whites (and beating them too) would offer hope to black people in South Africa. The gamble of Arthur Ashe worked. He was an inspiration to all the black people in South Africa who saw him. Arthur Ashe showed them that anything was possible.

Ashe supported the founding of the Association of Tennis Professionals and went on to become its elected president in 1974. After retiring from playing in 1980, he became captain of the U.S. Davis Cup team - a position he held from 1981 to 1985. Ashe underwent heart bypass operations in 1979 and 1983 - a bad heart was something that, sadly, ran in the family. In April 1992 he revealed that he had become infected with the virus that causes AIDS, most likely through a tainted blood transfusion received during one of those heart operations. He spent the rest of his life campaigning to raise more awareness for the disease. "If I were to say, God, why me? about the bad things," said Arthur Ashe, "then I should have said, God, why me? about the good things that happened in my life."

Arthur Ashe passed away in 1993 at the age of 49. It was a great shock that this incredible man had been taken so early. He was a thoughtful, intelligent person who impressed all that came into contact with him. And he was a terrific tennis player too and someone who battled prejudice and snobbery to take his rightful place in the sporting history books. Donald Dell, a close friend of Arthur Ashe, said - "Arthur Ashe has a quiet exterior but underneath lies someone who is very forceful, always changing, ever different, always a leader. He believes in striving for excellence by example, not by what he says, but what he does."

WILLIAM BURKE

William Burke and William Hare were two men from the north of Ireland who became infamous for their macabre activities in Edinburgh in 1827 and 1828. These two men became close friends when they moved to Scotland to work on a canal. Burke abandoned his family when he left Ireland and lived in Scotland with his mistress Helen McDougal. Hare lived very close by and ran a boarding house with Margaret Laird. Hare and Laird were not officially married but most people presumed they were man and wife.

At the end of 1827, one of the residents of the boarding house died of old age and Burke and Hare came up with a ghoulish way to recoup the money the old man owed in rent. They took the body to Edinburgh University where anatomy lecturer Professor Robert Knox was more than happy to take it off their hands. At the time there were strict laws about using corpses for medical research and training. Medical schools and universities could only use the corpses of prisoners, street orphans, or suicides in such research. As a consequence of this there was a shortage of cadavers for medical students and professionals to train and teach with.

Professor Robert Knox paid Burke and Hare seven pounds for the corpse of the boarding resident and the two men quickly deduced they might have stumbled across a lucrative - if grim - new business idea. Early in the new year, another resident of the boarding began to show signs of illness and Burke and Hare took great interest because they anticipated having another corpse to sell to Knox. They weren't willing to wait and decided to hasten the poorly man's departure from this mortal coil by suffocating him. They chose this method of murder because it left the corpse undamaged. A corpse with no injuries was more highly prized by medical schools and universities.

After selling the corpse of this second man to the university, Burke and Hare were rather frustrated by the good health of other residents in the boarding house. They decided to take matters into their own hands and began luring people to the boarding house so that they could kill them and sell the body. The greed and ruthlessness of these men was apparent when they killed an elderly woman and her blind grandson. It is believed that Burke and Hare killed around sixteen people in all although the true figure is felt by most to have probably been higher than this. They received between seven and ten pounds for the corpses they sold to the university.

The two men got so greedy and desperate for corpses in the end they even killed a relative of Burke's mistress Helen McDougal. Street prostitutes were among their victims because these were easy targets and not always likely to be missed by anyone or even reported as missing. Problems arose for this wicked duo though when medical students at the university began to recognise some of the corpses they were using in their training and studies. These included a few prostitutes and also a children's entertainer named James Wilson. By this stage there was also friction between Burke and Hare. Burke began to suspect that Hare was not sharing the money fairly and maybe even killing people alone for extra profits. As a consequence of this he started taking in lodgers of his own to kill!

The last victim was Marjory Campbell Docherty. Her body was stored at Burke's house but it was discovered by other lodgers named James and Ann Gray. Helen McDougal tried to bribe the Grays into keeping silent but they declined this offer and went to the police. Burke and Hare, along with Helen and Margaret Laird, were all arrested. Amazingly, Hare was offered immunity to testify against Burke because the prosecution didn't feel they had a huge amount of evidence. This brought protests from the family of victim James Wilson. At the trial, Hare tried to give the impression that he'd had nothing to do with the murders and that William Burke was the driving force behind them.

Helen McDougal was released at the end of the trial while Margaret Laird served a short prison sentence. These two women were despised by the public and had to slip into obscurity for their own safety. William Burke was hanged at Lawnmarket on the 28th of January 1929. The judge ordered that his body should be donated to medical science and publicly dissected. You might say the judge thought of this as cosmic karma. Burke's skeleton is now on display at Surgeon’s Hall in Edinburgh. William Hare was released in February 1829. He fled to England and essentially vanished. Professor Robert Knox was rather disgraced by his association with Burke and Hare and was more or less drummed out of the university and the medical establishment in Scotland. He never spoke about the case and eventually opened a medical practice far away in London.

SUSAN CABOT

Susan Cabot was born Harriet Pearl Shapiro in 1927. In the forties and fifties she was a glamourous and busy actress and had a contract with Universal at one point. She was probably best known for making a number of Westerns and she appeared in movies with the likes of Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Charles Bronson and Humphrey Bogart. Dark-haired and elegant - not to mention amazingly photographic - Cabot was romantically linked to King Hussein of Jordan and seemed to be on course to be a big star. In the 1950s though her star began to wane and she slid inexorably down the Hollywood pecking order. That's the way it occasionally goes in the film industry. Sometimes you are hot one minute and yesterday's news the next. You go from rising star to has-been in the blink of an eye.

Cabot ending up making a number of low-budget films for Roger Corman - the most famous of which was The Wasp Woman. She didn't have much enthusiasm for life as a B movie star

and yearned to go back to the stage so that she could be taken more seriously. In 1964, Cabot had a son named Timothy Roman. She was married twice but ended up a single mother. She did some potato chip commercials to make ends meet in this decade. Behind the scenes Susan Cabot was a deeply troubled woman. Her mother had ended up in a mental institution and Susan Cabot spent much of her childhood in foster homes. It was later revealed that she had suffered sexual abuse in some of these foster homes and this awful experience left her with lifelong mental scars which affected her stability.

Susan Cabot eventually became elusive looking after her son. Those who lived near her said she was a quiet woman who rarely spoke to anyone if she could help it. Many said that Susan was a recluse. She made a TV appearance in 1970 but for all intents and purposes she was retired. Her house was said to full of squalor, rotting food, and dirt (though some contend this detail was exaggerated in court). Cabot was clearly someone who could barely look after herself - let alone a child. Mother and son were said to be inseparable and were never seen apart. Neighbours later said that they thought Susan Cabot was a bit weird to say the least.

Cabot's son had dwarfism and it is said that she gave him dodgy drugs in a desperate (and futile) attempt to make him taller. These drugs may have affected Timothy's mental health. Susan Cabot herself was suicidal and very unstable by now. They lived in the Encino area of Los Angeles. In 1986, 23 year-old Timothy bludgeoned his 59 year-old mother to death with a dumbbell. Timothy told the police that a ninja had entered the house and knocked him out. When he woke up he found his mother dead. You didn't need to be Columbo to work out that this was not what really happened. It is rather unlikely that a deadly ninja would be employed to target a former B movie actress and her dwarf son!

At the actual trial, Timothy said that he had been awoken by his mother screaming and she had attacked him with a dumbbell and a scalpel. He had seized the dumbbell and hit her to protect himself. Then he'd made up the story about the ninja in a desperate attempt to disguise what really happened. No one could ever really deduce what exactly happened when Susan Cabot died but it was apparent that mother and son had an increasingly obstreperous and unhinged relationship. Things obviously came to some crazy head the night that Susan died.

Susan Cabot was said to be increasingly paranoid and troubled by the time of her death. Her mood swings made her unpredictable and potentially violent. Timothy's evidence concerning his

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