Christopher Walken was one of the last people to see Natalie Wood alive .
1.Marilyn Monroeis probably one of the most famous untimely celebrity deaths, and her last night is shrouded in mystery. Herlast knownphone call was with actor Peter Lawford, who was a brother-in-law to Robert and John F. Kennedy, as he had married their sister, Pat Kennedy. He stated she ended the call with, “Say goodbye to Pat, say goodbye to Jack, and say goodbye to yourself, because you’re a nice guy.” Jack was in reference to then-PresidentJFK.
There were longstandingrumorsof an affair between JFK and Monroe, as well as Robert F. Kennedy and Monroe. There are also rumors that Robert F. Kennedyvisitedher that night, though this was denied by the Kennedys. Her housekeeper, Eunice Murray, who was there all day and night and was the one to find her dead, laterclaimedRobert had visited and they’d fought.
When Murray found Marilyn dead around 3:30 a.m., she was reportedlyholdingher phone, and then-LA chief of detectives Thad Brown reportedlyclaimedshe was found with a crumpled up piece of paper with the number for the White House on it.
Besides her connections to the Kennedys, there were other suspicious details around Monroe’s death. Murray initiallycalledMonroe’s psychiatrist, Dr. Greenson, who called the doctor who had prescribed the pills, Dr. Engelberg, before calling the police. The police did not arrive for close to an hour after Murray initially saw Monroe’s body. Lawford laterclaimedthat he’d heard about her death at 1:30 a.m. The wife of Monroe’s press relations manager Arthur Jacobsalsolater claimed that her husband had received the call that Marilyn was dead at 10:30.
2.Natalie Wood, who starred in a number of films includingWest Side Story, Rebel Without a Cause, andGypsy,also died under extremely mysterious circumstances. The 43-year-old waswithher husband Robert Wagner on his boat on a weekend vacation from filmingBrainstormwhen she drowned. According to Wagner himself (though he initially denied this), he and Woodargued,and then he went to bed without her. The next morning, her body was found a mile away.
Wood had beendrinking,and it’s possible her death was an accident, but she was found withbruisesthat could mean she was attacked. Nearby witnesses hadhearda woman scream. The captain of the boat, Dennis Davern,allegedly drunkenly confessed toWood’s sister years later that he’d seen Wagner push Wood, who then fell overboard, and that Wagner refused to rescue her…though this is unconfirmed.
Who else was on the boat that night?BrainstormcostarChristopher Walken. He had reportedly alsoarguedwith Wagner, and Wagner was (according to Davern)angryNatalie had invited him.
3.When Sharon Tate and her friends were murdered by members of the Manson family, Tatereportedlybegged that she be kept hostage instead until her baby could be born (she was eight and a half months pregnant), then be killed afterwards, so that her child could live. Her offer was refused and she was killed — but the coroner has stated she wasstill alivewhen she was hung, making her the last victim still alive.
The word “PIG” was written on the door in Tate’s blood — in fact, her husband, Roman Polanski,hadphotographer Julian Wasser take a photo taken of him next to the door, and take Polaroids to give to a psychic — the psychic reportedlystolethe polaroids and sold them to a tabloid. The door was laterauctionedofffor $127K.
4.Brittany Murphydiedof pneumonia in 2009, just before Christmas. Iron deficiency anemia and multiple drug intoxication (OTC medication and her prescribed medications) also contributed. And under six months later, her husband Simon Monjackdiedof pneumonia and anemia in the same house. Monjack’s mother later claimed there was severe mold in the house that caused Monjack to hallucinate.
According to Monjack, Murphyhatedthe house and thought it was “unlucky.” Britney Spears had previously owned the home and reportedly left the house due to bad spirits, according to her former makeup artist.
It’slikelyMurphy would’ve survived if she’d sought medical care in the days prior, though according to Monjack, Murphyknewshe was dying and didn’t seek care. The HBO documentary,What Happened, Brittany Murphy?,alleges that it was Monjack’s controlling behavior that was to blame for Murphy not getting medical attention.
5.It wasoriginally believedthat Bruce Lee’s death from brain swelling was caused by an allergic reaction to the painkiller Equagesic, which he took after a headache — however, several months earlier, he’dactuallyalmost died from brain swelling. In that incident, the brain swellingseemedto have been caused by heat stroke — Lee had a reduced ability to deal with heat because he’d had his sweat glands removed from his armpits so that he wouldn’t have sweaty pits onscreen. So, essentially, his later death may have been caused by pressure to appear perfect onscreen.
In another creepy detail, after Leediedbefore filming completed on his filmGame of Death, the film was reworked with a new plot to make use of the footage Lee had shot for the original version. In this new version, Lee’s character faked his own death. Thefuneral scenefor his character made use of the actor’s funeral footage — meaning his corpse was actually used in the film.
6.OJ Simpson is best known today for the murder trial of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ron Goldman. One of the most memorable pieces of evidence in Simpson’s defense was the fact that the gloves from the crime scene did not fit him when he tried them on for the jury. At the time, the prosecutionarguedthat the blood had caused the gloves to shrink and that the rubber gloves OJ had to wear under the gloves meant they wouldn’t go over his fingers as well.
But Mike Gilbert, Simpson’s former sports agent, more recently offered another explanation in the documentary,O.J.: Made in America. He claimedthattwo weeks prior to the infamous glove moment, Simpson had stopped taking his arthritis medication, meaning his hands were swollen in court.
Speaking of OJ, just a month before the murders, he hadcompletedfilming the pilot forFrogmen.After the murders, the series was obviously not picked up, and the pilot never aired. But footage from the pilot was actuallysubmittedas evidence in OJ’s murder trial (though it didn’t end up being used). The reason? OJ’s charactershowedproficiency in knife combat, and Simpson reportedly received military training for the role.
Also, Simpson’s costar Todd Allen had once accompanied OJ to Ross Cutlery between shooting. Ross Cutlery is thesuspected sourceof the murder weapon, which was never discovered.
Another detail: Sydney and Justin, OJ and Nicole’s two children, were in the housesleepingduring the murder. Also, Simpsoncontinuedto have split custody of the children after the murder, despite the fact that he’d been accused of murdering their mother.
There are multiple records of domestic abuse between OJ and Nicole. Policehadresponded to nine domestic abuse calls during their marriage. Police records showed that Brown had previouslytold policein 1989 that OJ was going to kill her after sustaining injuries from him, after which time he was sentenced to community service, probation, and fines. The two stayed together after the incident, but Nicolefiledfor divorce in 1992.
A worker from Sojourn House, which was dedicated to helping domestic abuse survivors,believedshe had talked to Nicole in the days leading up to the murder, and that Nicole had said she was afraid her ex-husband, a celebrity, would kill her if he found her with another man, and that she was being stalked. A set of Nicole’s spare keys had alsoreportedlygone missingin the weeks prior and were later found with OJ.
7.In 2001, when Ashton Kutcher was 23, heplanneda date with 22-year-old fashion student Ashley Ellerin. He wassupposedto meet her at 8 p.m. for dinner and drinks but ended up getting there around 10:30 or 10:45, having gotten distracted watching the Grammy Awards at Kristy Swanson‘s house. When he arrived at Ellerin’s house, she did not come to the door, which was locked. “I assumed she had left for the night and I was late and she was upset," Kutcher said. “I just assumed she had gone out with her friend and bailed.”
Since the lights were on, Kutcher looked through the window and saw “what [he] thought was a red wine spilled on the carpet.” But he said, “That wasn’t alarming because I went to her house party [days before] and it was like a college party. I didn’t think much about it.” He left, and Ellerin was found stabbed to death the next day. The “Hollywood Ripper,” Michael Gargiulo, was foundguiltyfor her murder.
8.Jim Carrey’s ex-girlfriend, Cathriona White,diedby suicide in 2015, only a week after their breakup. She addressed her suicide note to him. She had overdosed on pills prescribed to an “Arthur King,” and there were texts on her phone from Carrey asking about where some of his prescription pills had gone, leading investigators to conclude “it appears likely that the bottles for ‘Arthur King’ found on her bedside table were the prescriptions [Carrey] was referring to.”
Her estranged husband, Mark Burton, latersuedCarrey for providing the drugs. In his wrongful death suit, he included a note White had written on her iPad two years prior, which accused Carrey of giving her herpes*, introducing her to drugs, and subjecting her to mental abuse. Carrey counter-sued,denyingall allegations,andthe lawsuit against him was dismissed.
9.After Mark David Chapman shot and killed John Lennon, he sat down andbegan readingfromThe Catcher in the Rye, which he later claimed to havemotivatedthe shooting. In fact, he had previously attempted to change his name to Holden Caulfield (the name of the book’s protagonist).
Speaking of Chapman — he’d hadother targetsin mind should he fail to find access to Lennon. They included Johnny Carson, Elizabeth Taylor, Paul McCartney, George C. Scott, George Ariyoshi, and Ronald Reagan (who was president at the time).
10.In a strange connection, John Hinckley Jr — who was alsoobsessedwithThe Catcher in the Rye —tried to murder Reagan a year later. He was also obsessed withTaxi Driver— he had seen the movie as manyas18 times, and it influenced the murder so much that Hinckley and the jury actually watched it during his trial. In particular, he was obsessed with Jodie Foster, who played a child prostitute in the film.
Hinckleyhadbeen stalking Foster, leaving letters at her door and calling her. By shooting Reagan, he hoped to win her love, as revealed in a final letter he never sent her. After the shooting, this embroiled Foster in a media frenzy. There was also a copycat stalker who decided not to shoot her because she was “too pretty.”
The screenwriter of the film lateradmittedthat Hinckley had mailed him letters trying to get in contact with Jodie, and that he’d had his secretary throw them away, telling her “they don’t exist” and lying to the FBI. When he heard the news that Reagan had been shot, he said he immediately knew it was “one of theTaxi Driverkids” — aka, young men who had identified with the protagonist of the film.
11.Six weeks before Michael Jackson’s death, Dr. Conrad Murray (who would later be convicted of his manslaughter)recordedJackson slurring his words as he talked about plans to create a children’s hospital with the money from his upcoming tour. “I love them,” Jackson said of children around the world. “I love them because I didn’t have a childhood. I had no childhood. I feel their pain. I feel their hurt. I can deal with it. … I hurt, you know, I hurt.” The recording was played during Murray’s trial, withnoexplanation for why Murray made the recording). The judge in the case decided that the recording wascreatedto blackmail Jackson.
Just before Murray realized Jackson was unresponsive, he hademailedan insurance broker to assure them reports of Jackson’s ill health were “fallacious.” Murray was alsopossiblyon thephonewith his girlfriend at the time he realized Jackson had stopped breathing, though he had alleged he went to the bathroom and came back to find Jackson not breathing.
And finally, let’s end on a few details that are really just coincidences, but still pretty freaky:
12.Josh Ryan Evans died on the exact same day his character Timmydiedon the soap operaPassions. After he’d appeared on the show for three years, his character was killed off — and the same day the episode aired, Evans unexpectedly died in real life. Timmy was actually supposed to be resurrected — Evans was only meant to take a few weeks off for filming. However, while seeking treatment for a congenital heart condition during the break, he died. He was only 20 years old.
13.Actor Tyrone Powersuffereda heart attack on the set ofSolomon and Sheba. He died before making it to the hospital, still in his costume. What’s creepy about it? Well, his father (also named Tyrone Power) had alsodied(in the arms of his son) during an on-set heart attack while he was shootingThe Miracle Man.
14.Judith Eva Barsi, the child actor who most famously voiced Ducky inLand Before Time, wasmurdered by her fatherat the age of 10. He also murdered his wife, Judith’s mother, before killing himself. Eerily, Judith had previously played a child murdered by her father — who also killed the character’s mother — inFatal Vision.
15.Tara Correa-McMullen, an up-and-coming actor who appeared on shows likeZoey 101,diedin a potentially gang-related drive-by shooting at age 16 in 2005. Friends said that she had recently been hanging out with a “bad crowd” but had been trying to get her life back on track. Eerily, Correa-McMullen was best known for playing a former gang member onJudging Amy.Her character was trying to turn her life around after involvement in a drive-by shooting, but ultimately failed and was killed in jail.
16.And finally, inHeathers, two of the actors later had untimely deaths that seemed predicted by their characters. Peter (Jeremy Applegate) prays he won’t kill himself — the actor laterdied by suicide. Kim Walker — who had the iconic line, “Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?” — died of abrain tumor.
