Crime Wave

Karyn probably took eighty-one Desoxyns inside forty-eight hours. She might have built up a tolerance. The collective dose might not have fazed her. It might have caused dizziness and heart cramps.

Hathaway and Rubin revised their statements three years after the fact. Rubin recalled minute details out of nowhere. Hathaway altered the whole tone of his first statement.

Doc Kade was dead now. He did an autopsy shortly after his Kupcinet job. He allegedly told a colleague, “At least I didn’t break the hyoid bone on this one!”

Kade had an erratic reputation. Some cops braced him on the hyoid bone back in ’66. He stuck to his original statement.

He filed his initial report on 12/1/63. He noted a hemorrhage inside the throat. It buttressed his alleged finding on the hyoid bone.

Forensic glitches. Inconsistent statements. Advanced decomposition and incomplete toxology. Screwed-up witnesses in a screwed-up milieu. Exponential possibilities resultant.

Kari’s puzzle to ponder. Her world to explore.

I juxtaposed Karyn and Kari. I melded their features and framed a tight close-up. I captioned it while the image held.

Karyn owned a gene for survival. She didn’t get the chance to outgrow her silly flicking dreams.

December 1998

HUSH-HUSH

L.A. TIMES, JUNE 5, 1998:

TURNER-STOMPANATO LOVE LETTERS TO BE AUCTIONED

Smith & Kleindeinst, the Beverly Hills auctioneers, announced today that they will sell the late actress Lana Turner’s love letters to reputed hoodlum Johnny Stompanato at their August 16 auction in Century City. A Smith & Kleindeinst spokesman said that the letters were consigned to them by a source who prefers to remain anonymous. There are a total of 14 letters, dated between October 9, 1957, and March 12, 1958. They will be sold as a block purchase.

The Turner-Stompanato liaison occupies a prominent place in Los Angeles criminal history. Their violent relationship culminated on the evening of April 4, 1958, when Cheryl Crane, Miss Turner’s 14-year-old daughter by the late restaurateur Steve Crane, came to her mother’s aid and stabbed Stompanato to death. No criminal charges were filed against Miss Crane. She was sent to a youth treatment facility for psychiatric evaluation and care.

The Smith & Kleindeinst spokesman said that bidding for the letters will most likely begin in the “mid-six-figure” range.

THE ADVOCATE, JUNE 6, 1998:

SCANDAL-SHEET WRITER IN CRITICAL CONDITION

Daniel “Danny” Getchell, 68, editor-in-chief and head writer for the infamous Hush-Hush scandal magazine of the I950s and early 1960s, was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center last week. An undisclosed source at the center revealed that Getchellis in the “final, deadly throes” of a “severe brain tumor.”

Hush-Hush and the other scandal sheets of the era–Confidential, Whisper, Rave, Lowdown, and Tattle–waged a collective smear campaign against gays and lesbians and accomplished it with vicious outing tactics. Innuendo and intimidation were their most commonly applied methods, and their goal was titillation at any human price. The scandal sheets destroyed the lives of many gay and lesbian Americans, and Hush-Hush was arguably the worst of the lot.

Benjamin Luboff, ex-Whisper writer and author of the mea culpa memoir Scandal-Rag Scourge, described Danny Getchell as “viciously single-minded in his fast-buck pursuit of naming homosexual names” and “pathologically driven by a sadistic urge to out gays.” When asked to comment on Getchell’s hospitalization, Luboff replied, “What can I say? I wish no person– straight or gay–a painfully protracted death, but the world will be a better place without Danny Getchell.”

A hospital source said that Getchell is under intensive around-the-clock care and would not be able to answer a list of questions submitted by The Advocate.

Cheryl Crane did not shank Johnny Stompanato, and I don’t have a fucking brain tumor. And I always gave the fags Ifragged a chance to buy their stories back.

And you won’t believe the shit I’ve got on Ben Luboff

The brain-tumor bit is a smoke screen smoked by a hosp ital flack. I’m ensconced in a secret Cedars ward built from an old bomb shelter I’m sunk subterranean with sixty-three male patients and sixteen doctors set to vanquish our virus. They’ll hypocritically ignore the Hippocratic oath and sell their cure exclusively to the rich. I’m selling everything I own to buy bed space at twenty grand a day.