THE FRANK CRISTI MURDER HOUSE

Actor Frank R. Christi, best known for his gangster-style roles in The Don Is Dead and numerous TV shows, was shot to death on July 9, 1982, at his home at 6969 Woodrow Wilson Drive in Los Angeles, CA. He was ambushed in his driveway just after midnight, and investigators later suspected the killing was tied to a lover’s jealous husband. For years the case remained unsolved, with suspects only named more than a decade later.

He appeared in the films, "The Story Of Pretty Boy Floyd" (1974), "The Don Is Dead" (1973), "Hit!" (1973), "Terminal Island" (1973), and "The Steagle" (1971). He also made guest appearances on the television shows, "Charlie's Angels," "The Rockford Files," "Baretta," "The Incredible Hulk," "Serpico," "The Blue Knight," "Cannon," "The Invisible Man," "Mannix," "Kojak," "Mission Impossible," "The F.B.I.," "Batman," and "The Adventures Of Wild Bill Hickok."

According to Zillow this House is currently for sale.

In California, sellers are required by law to disclose any death that occurred on a property within the past three years, after that, buyers may never know unless they ask. Tragic events like this remind us why it’s important to research a property’s history...

THE TRAGIC LIFE OF NICK REINER

Nick Reiner’s story begins in the glow of Hollywood privilege. Born in 1993 to acclaimed director Rob Reiner and photographer Michele Singer Reiner, his childhood was surrounded by cinematic legends and red-carpet glamour. But behind the scenes, Nick’s life was unraveling. By the age of fifteen, he had entered his first rehab program, marking the start of a long and painful battle with addiction.

What followed were years of chaos. Nick cycled through more than a dozen treatment centers, often rejecting his parents’ pleas for help. His addiction drove him to the streets, where he spent nights homeless in places like Maine, New Jersey, and Texas. He later admitted that during those dark years, survival was pure luck. “I could’ve died,” he said, reflecting on the razor-thin line between life and death that defined his existence.

In 2015, Nick tried to transform his suffering into art. He co-wrote Being Charlie, a semi-autobiographical film directed by his father. The story mirrored his own struggles—a young man spiraling through addiction and failed rehabs. For a brief moment, the project brought father and son closer, bridging years of emotional distance. Yet even as the film offered hope, the underlying pain remained unresolved. Rob and Michele spoke candidly about their frustration with rehab programs, admitting they clung to professionals’ advice even when Nick insisted it wasn’t working.

Then came the unimaginable. On December 14, 2025, Rob and Michele were found brutally murdered in their Brentwood home. Their throats had been slashed in what police described as a horrific scene. Hours later, Nick was arrested and booked on a felony charge, with bail set at four million dollars. The LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division launched an investigation that stunned Hollywood and left friends and family reeling. Reports suggest their daughter, Romy, discovered the bodies—a detail that adds another layer of heartbreak to an already devastating tragedy.

Nick Reiner’s life reads like a modern Greek tragedy: a privileged beginning overshadowed by addiction, years of homelessness and despair, a fleeting redemption through art, and finally, a catastrophic collapse that shattered his family. It is a story of wealth and fame, but also of vulnerability, broken systems, and unanswered cries for help. In the end, Nick’s torment consumed not only himself but the very people who loved him most...

THE MURDER OF JONATHAN HOSS: POTENTIONAL HATE CRIME?

The husband of slain “King of the Hill” star Jonathan Joss has claimed his killer cackled and spewed a gay slur moments after allegedly shooting the voice actor in the head.

Joss, 59, was gunned down near his San Antonio, Texas, home Sunday night in an attack that his spouse alleges was carried out by a homophobic neighbor.

“Everything was really close range. It was in the head,” Tristan Kern de Gonzales told the Press of the moment the actor was fatally shot.

“While I’m holding him, [the suspect] has the gun pointed over me, and he’s laughing, saying, ‘Oh, you love him? Joto,'” de Gonzales alleged.

“‘Joto’ is Spanish for f—t. I never knew the word until I came to Texas, and then I heard it a lot.”

The suspect, Sigfredo Ceja Alvarez, 56, was arrested a block away and has since been charged with murder.

Cops, however, said the initial probe had found “no evidence” that indicated Joss was killed due to his “sexual orientation.”

“We take such allegations very seriously and have thoroughly reviewed all available information. Should any new evidence come to light, we will charge the suspect accordingly,” San Antonio police said in a statement.Sigfredo Ceja Alvarez was arrested and charged with the murder of Jonathan Joss on June 2, 2025.

It comes after the husband claimed the alleged killer had approached the pair after they stopped by to check the mail at Joss’ home, which had been heavily damaged during a January fire that claimed the lives of their three dogs.

The husband said the couple had just found the bones of their dead pet dog displayed on the property — causing them both “severe emotional distress.”

“We began yelling and crying in response to the pain of what we saw,” de Gonzales said in a social media post.

“While we were doing this a man approached us. He started yelling violent homophobic slurs at us. He then raised a gun from his lap and fired.”

The husband said the couple had just found the bones of their dead pet dog displayed on the property — causing them both “severe emotional distress.”Facebook/Tristan Kern de Gonzales

Joss — best known for voicing John Redcorn on the bawdy cartoon comedy — was struck by the gunfire and killed. He also appeared on the NBC comedy "Parks And Recreation".

“He was murdered by someone who could not stand the sight of two men loving each other,” Joss’ husband said.

HOLLYWOOD SCANDALS: THE DEATH OF PAUL BERN

Before she died at the very young age of 26, actress Jean Harlow had already lived quite a life of scandal and intrigue. Her first marriage, which began when she was only 16, lasted just two short years. Her second marriage to MGM producer Paul Bern also ended in tragedy. Two months after marrying Jean Harlow, on September 5, Bern was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head in their home on Easton Drive in Beverly Hills, California.The coroner ruled his death a suicide.

Police discovered a note at the scene that read as follows:

"Dearest Dear,
Unfortuately  this is the only way to make good the frightful wrong I have done you and to wipe out my abject humiliation, I Love you.
Paul
You understand that last night was only a comedy"

Authorities viewed this as a suicide note signed by BernTo the police, and before a grand jury, Harlow's only statement was that she "knew nothing". Harlow was made an executor of her husband's estate by the Californian judge. Harlow never publicly spoke on the matter. She died of renal failure (caused by a childhood bout of scarlet fever) in June 1937 at the age of 26.

Two thousand people attended Bern's funeral, held on September 9, 1932, at the Grace Chapel at Inglewood Park Cemetery.Conrad Nagel delivered the eulogy. Bern was cremated, and his ashes were interred in the Golden West Mausoleum at Inglewood Park Cemetery.

In 1990, film producer Samuel Marx, a friend and MGM colleague of both Bern and Irving Thalberg, published a book giving a different version of Bern's death. Marx, at the time MGM's story editor (the head of the screenwriting department), said he had gone to Bern's house in the early morning of September 5, 1932, before the police were notified of the body's discovery, and had seen Thalberg tampering with the evidence. The next day, he had been among the studio executives who were told by Louis B. Mayer that the case would have to be ruled "suicide because of impotence" in order to avoid a scandal which would have finished Harlow's film career. Marx, after reviewing the evidence, concluded that Bern was murdered by his abandoned common-law wife Dorothy Millette, who then committed suicide by drowning, jumping overboard from the Delta King on the way from San Francisco to Sacramento, California...

FRANK ROSOLINO: TROMBONIST AND TROUBLED SOUL

Even though I am a music lover, I also like to dig into the history of the music as well as the stories of the musicans. Sadly, not everything I dig up is happy, feel good facts. The story of Frank Rosolino is especially troubling. Rosolino was born in Detroit, Michigan, United States, He performed with the big bands of Bob Chester, Glen Gray, Tony Pastor, Herbie Fields, Gene Krupa, and Stan Kenton. After a period with Kenton he settled in Los Angeles, where he performed with Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All-Stars (1954–1960) in Hermosa Beach.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, between nightclub engagements, Rosolino was active in many Los Angeles recording studios where he performed with such notables as Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Tony Bennett, Peggy Lee, Mel Tormé, Michel Legrand, and Quincy Jones. In the mid-to-late 1960s he and fellow trombonist Mike Barone, billed as "Trombones Unlimited," recorded for Liberty Records several albums of pop-style arrangements of current hits, such as the 1968 album Grazing in the Grass. He can also be seen performing with Shelly Manne's group in the film I Want to Live! (1958) starring Susan Hayward, and also in Sweet Smell of Success (1957) with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis. He was a regular on The Steve Allen Show and a guest artist on The Tonight Show and The Merv Griffin Show. Rosolino was a talented vocalist, renowned for his wild form of scat-singing, notably on Gene Krupa's hit record, "Lemon Drop".

During the 1970s, Rosolino performed and toured with Quincy Jones and the Grammy Award winning group Supersax.

That article, headed The Joker: Frank Rosolino appeared in Gene Lees' 1988 collection of essays and reminiscences Meet Me at Jim and Andy's: Jazz Musicians and Their World.

Lees noted an incident when he and his wife were traveling by bus to Denver after an enjoyable weekend of music in Colorado Springs. Rosolino and the woman he was living with, Diane, were in the seat behind them . . . and Rosolino – whose third wife and mother to their two sons had committed suicide – was talking about “killing himself and taking the two boys with him, since he could not bear the thought of leaving them behind in this world”, writes Lees.

The following day everything was fine however, Rosolino joking around in the airport, and in good spirits they flew back to LA. That was the last time Lees saw Frank Rosolino.

The following morning the joker was on the morning news. On his return, Diane went to a club but Rosolino had gone home to be with his sons aged seven and nine. When she returned home in the early hours she saw a flash of light in the boys' bedroom and as she went into the house heard a gunshot, “the one Frank put into his brain”.

He had shot his two sons as they lay sleeping and then – with no significant amounts of drugs or booze in his body – put the gun to his own head.

One of the boys died instantly, the seven-year old lingered in a coma and when he recovered he was blind.

No one will ever know what switch got flicked in Frank Rosolino's brain during those quiet hours he was at home in Van Nuys with his sleeping sons. But most agree it was as unexpected as it was unthinkable. I have a hard time listening to Frank Rosolino now...

WAS MICKEY ROONEY MURDERED?

Mickey Rooney's family at war as his last wife accuses his stepson of faking his will - then KILLING him (and in final indignity, star's body will be exhumed) Eighth wife of the star, who died ten years ago alleges her stepson changed Rooney's will then poisoned him

Janice Rooney has filed court documents making the claims - with her other son Chris backing her case

They allege Mark Aber first faked the will - or forced Rooney to sign it - and poisoned him. Mother and son claim Mark had literature about poisoning and autopsies delivered to him They are poised to have body exhumed for new autopsy in hope of proving their case - but estate only amounts to $18,000

Mickey Rooney's stepson has been accused by his own mother - the star's eighth wife - of faking his will then poisoning him. A new lawsuit filed by Jan, the actor's widow, accuses Mark Aber of killing him.  Rooney died in April 2014, after nine decades in the Hollywood spotlight. Despite being at one time cinema's highest-earning star, he left just $18,000. Now a simmering feud between his widow and her stepson, who was Rooney's carer in his final years, has exploded into a court battle. It will also see Rooney's body exhumed for a fresh autopsy, in an attempt to prove Jan Rooney's claim that he was poisoned. Relatives have not stopped fighting since the actor died at the age of 93.

But this is a new low between the two camps - Jan and Chris versus Mark and Charlene, who looked after Rooney in the final few years of his life. Mickey's natural children are also against Mark and Charlene.

As early as 2015, Rooney's daughters Kelly and Kerry claimed that their father had been poisoned and demanded that the body should be exhumed for an autopsy.

As Rooney lay in his coffin, Kelly even clipped several strands of hair from her father's corpse, believing they would be the key forensic proof that will confirm he was poisoned, but she hasn't been able to afford for it to be examined. Nor had they the cash to hire an attorney to take on the case against the will.

A family source revealed Chris Aber and mom Jan believe Rooney was poisoned by Mark, who even had literature about how to poison someone and information on autopsies delivered in the post. Claims over the will lie at the heart of the dispute...

THE MURDER OF DANNY LOCKLIN

One of the most brutal  murders in Hollywood and Broadway history was that of the talented Danny Lockin who played the role of “Barnaby” in both the Broadway and movie version of “Hello Dolly” at the age of 34.

In 1965 Danny Lockin replaced Jerry Dodge in the role of Barnaby Tucker in Hello, Dolly! and went across the United States on six traveling productions. Several actresses playing Dolly Levi he performed with included: Betty Grable, Ginger Rogers, Eve Arden, Dorothy Lamour and Anne Russell. He remained in the role for the movie version of Hello, Dolly! after enduring an audition and 13 callbacks before finally getting the role. When filming for movie ended, Lockin continued the role on Broadway again where he worked with both Ethel Merman and Phyllis Diller until it closed on Dec. 27, 1970. One of the actresses that Lockin had mixed feelings about was Carol Channing as Dolly, about whom he once said: “Carol Channing is rather disconcerting. You’ll notice her looking at you with those big baby-stare eyes. Then eventually it dawns on you that the person behind those eyes is, in show business terms, about 200 years old.” He also later expressed unhappiness with the way audiences reacted to Merman in the role of Dolly Levi, and how this changed the show. “She wasn’t Dolly up there, she was Ethel Merman in Dolly clothes. … The audiences came, of course; they came to see the Ethel Merman version. But it wasn’t Hello, Dolly! any more, it was her show. … Channing or Streisand, they were part of a cast, trying to act out a character. But with Ethel Merman—and not just her fault, with the audience, she was such an institution—the rest of us felt like just her chorus boys or her chorus line.

On the night of August 21, 1977 Danny Lockin went to a bar The Mug, in Garden Grove, California. He left the bar with a slight, 34-year-old unemployed medical clerk, Charles Leslie Hopkins (who already had a police record and was on probation at the time). Several hours later, Hopkins called police to say that a man had entered his apartment and tried to rob him. Upon arrival, police found Lockin’s body on the floor of Hopkin’s apartment. He had been stabbed ovwe 100 times, and bled to death. Lockin’s body had also been mutilated after death. Hopkins claimed he had no idea how the dead body got in his apartment.

Hopkins was arrested immediately.

Police found a book of pornographic pictures in Hopkins’ apartment which showed various embarrassing acts. Prosecutors initially intended to seek a first degree murder conviction, and to use the book to prove that Hopkins had planned the murder. Hopkins’ trial began in May 1978, but endured a two-month delay. During the delay, the Supreme Court of the United States held in United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1 (1977), that police may not engage in warrantless searches of an individual’s property in the absence of an exigency. On July 31, the trial court ruled the pornographic book inadmissible as evidence. On August 8, the trial court judge held that the death penalty could not be applied to Hopkins due to lack of evidence of premeditation.

On September 28, 1978, Hopkins was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to a three-year prison term. Since the court was permitted to consider suppressed evidence if the evidence was not seized merely to obtain a lengthier prison sentence and it did not “shock the conscience of the court,” the trial judge increased Hopkins’ sentence from the usual three years to four years. Hopkin’s was released in just over two years. Many believe that due to the “homosexual nature” of the case and societal prejudice at the time, justice was not served. After being released from prison, Hopkins married. It has been reported that Hopkins “died an unusually slow and painful death from cancer.”

Danny Lockin was buried in Westminster Memorial Park cemetery in Orange County. His grave is in Block 29, Section 219, Grave 4 with a simple stone that calls him “Beloved Son”...

THE MURDER OF CAROLE LANDIS

Here is a very interesting article written by Carole Landis' niece Tammy Powell. It poses an interesting alternate idea that Carole did not commit suicide. I have tried to get hold of Tammy Powell, but I have had little luck. If anyone knows of how to get in touch with her, let me know...

My beautiful Aunt Carole died in 1948 when she was only 29. The official story is that she committed suicide because her married boyfriend Rex Harrison would not marry her. I want you to know that my family has NEVER believed that it was a suicide. We are 100% convinced that Rex Harrison is to blame for her death. My grandmother Dorothy begged the police to investigate more but they refused. Desperate to find answers she hired a private detective. All he could tell her was that people were paid off and evidence was destroyed. The only person brave enough to come forward was Carole's secretary Nan Stuart who knew there was a cover-up.

We know that many things were taken from the house and that the lights in the bathroom were suspiciously turned off. Then there was a mysterious 2nd note which was never really explained. There are theories about what may have happened the night she died. Maybe Rex put secanol in Carole's food or drink without her knowing about. He knew about her past "suicide attempts" and thought no one would find it odd. He had been in the house a lot so he knew where the pills were. Another possibility is that Carole did threaten to kill herself as a dramatic gesture...something she had done in the past to get attention. She took the pills then called Rex to save her. He found her and instead of calling a doctor he just let her die.

One of the myths that has circled around and then seems to bounce here and there and becomes such a focus is that Carole was manic depressive. I find it hard to believe she was. Yes, she had made a few attention grabbing suicide attempts but in those cases she would take aspirin and was always near someone who she knew would save her. I think this part of her personality came from her childhood. When she didn't get her way she threw a tantrum and she would get what she wanted. She was determined at such a young age and it might not have been the right way but it sure worked. She was a smart woman and knew how to make things go her way. Everyone has something they do to ensure themselves that they get what they want. We all choose our methods even if it's not always the smartest thing to do.

Another issue I have is this...if she was so depressed to attempt to kill herself or planned it then why would she go on a BIG shopping spree and plan a 4th of July party with her friends? I know from research that she wasn't broke - she had work coming up and was getting a big check from the sale of her house. She was smart enough to know that she shouldn't keep spending if she didn't have money. Also when she had a party she really knew how to do it right!!! She would put out a "feast to feed a village" (my grandmother's words) and she would be dressed up and would be the best hostess and always wanted everyone to enjoy and have fun.

She was in a bubbly and radiant mood that 4th of July weekend. Not one friend said that she was down and depressed. She even said she had "never been happier". Now, if she had stayed in the house, secluded herself from friends, and put on a fake smile it would be a different story. She was a great actress but by no means could you pull it off that well. Her friends would have known and at some point she would have shown her true emotions to someone. That night she was set on telling Rex that he need to keep his word to leave his wife or they were done. She wanted to have a normal relationship - marriage and children. I think that's what he promised her.

She even had her friends leave that evening because they knew he was coming over. If she was so down then she could have just had him come over without anyone knowing it and then proceeded to take her life. The real interesting thing is that from my training with suicide counseling I learned this - someone who really wants to take their life NEVER tells anyone about it. Yes, some leave a note explaining why but they don't reach out to anyone while they are doing it. Most who have called for help usually say they NEVER really wanted to in the first place. Carole just wasn't in the mind frame what so ever of someone who was going to do it.

We know she made a phone call to her close friend Marguerite around midnight. IF she was taking pills at that time and really wanted to die she wouldn't have made the call. And it probably wasn't one of her "attention grabbers" due to the fact that she didn't call anyone else. Or maybe she did call Rex and she thought he was coming to the house to save her but he didn't. The fact that REX was the last to see her and the first to find her body is the key! There are many unanswered questions but all the facts we know about that night make him look very guilty. Aunt Carole's death has haunted my family for over 60 years and knowing Rex Harrison never paid for what he did only makes it worse. We may never know the entire truth about her death but will continue to investigate as much as we can. Carole didn't want to be remembered as a pathetic woman who died on the bathroom floor ... she deserves better.

Before you believe Carole committed suicide consider the following...

1) Carole was very happy in the weeks before her death. She was going back to England to make a movie and had many plans for the future. Her maid Fannie said she was "happy as a lark" the day before her death.

2) Carole's other suicide attempts were never serious since she always made sure she was saved by friends. The "suicide note" that was found was undated so it could have been written any time. As a Catholic Carole believed she would go to Hell if she killed herself.

3) Rex was the last person to see Carole alive and the first one to see her dead. When Rex came to the house he told her maid Fannie that he thought Carole was dead. This was BEFORE they went upstairs and found the body!

4) After Rex found Carole's body in the bathroom he said he felt a pulse BUT instead of calling for the doctor or getting Carole help he just left the house. Where did he go?

5) Rex LIED to the police about his love affair with Carole saying they were just friends. He committed perjury when he testified they were not having an affair.

6) Several people saw a second note in the house but it mysteriously disappeared. We now know that Lilli Palmer paid a police officer $500 to destroy it. What did the note say?

7) When Carole's family arrived at the house it was a mess with drawers and cabinets open and papers thrown all over. Some of Carole's photo albums and personal diaries were missing. Did Rex try to get rid of evidence?

8) For years after Carole died newspapers reported there new clues in the case but the police continued to ignore the evidence. Then in the early 1950s Carole's police file mysteriously disappeared. Did someone pay the police to "lose" the file?

Carole's father Alfred Ridste never believed she killed herself. He said there were "secret pictures" that would prove she was murdered. Alfred also said that he found a book in Carole's bedroom that had an imprint showing that a letter had been removed from it. Here is a letter Alfred wrote in 1948 ..

SOURCE

THE TRAGEDY OF BARBARA THOMASON ROONEY

Carolyn Mitchell was one of those girls who seemed destined to make headlines. And did she ever.

Born with stars in her eyes in Phoenix in 1937, she moved to Los Angeles as a teenager.

While still in high school in Inglewood, the curvy teen adopted a new name, Barbara Thomason, and began entering bathing suit beauty contests from Hermosa Beach to Palisades Park.

She got her first headline after a Santa Monica pageant in June 1954: “Blonde, 17, Chosen Muscle Beach Queen.” She was described as “a bouncy, blue-eyed blonde in a white bathing suit,” with hourglass measurements recorded down to the half-inch.

Thomason won a roomful of beach beauty trophies, and that led to pin-up modeling. But she dreamed of acting.

In 1955, she made her screen debut (as Carolyn Mitchell) in an episode of “Crossroads,” an ABC morality-play series.

A few years later, she won a small part in the biker flick “Dragstrip Riot,” with Fay Wray. Next came a marquee-topping role in Roger Corman’s cult film “Cry Baby Killer,” the debut of co-star Jack Nicholson.

As those two B-movies flickered on silver screens, Thomason/Mitchell made another headline, on Aug. 12, 1958: “Starlet Takes Sleeping Pills at Mickey Rooney’s Home.”

Red Doff, Rooney’s flack, said he had a perfectly reasonable explanation — even if it wasn’t.
Barbara Thomason passed out at Mickey Rooney's home in August 1958 after taking too many sleeping pills. They were married by the end of the year.

Thomason accidentally took some pills, he said. After she got woozy, she was stripped naked and dunked in Rooney’s pool by pals trying to revive her. Later they dumped her at a hospital, where she recovered.

And no one was surprised when Thomason became Mrs. Rooney No. 5 in a secret service in Mexico on Dec. 1, 1958.

The bride was 21, the groom 38.

The union wasn’t legal since Rooney’s fourth divorce wasn’t yet inked, but they fixed that detail with a do-over ceremony five months later in L.A.

Thomason gave up her budding career to become a full-time mommy. She delivered four babies in exactly four years, beginning with Kelly Ann on Sept. 13, 1959, and ending with Kimmy Sue on Sept. 13, 1963, with two in between.

Whatever joy the children brought was tempered by Rooney’s financial swoon. He was broke, despite earning $12 million in hundreds of film roles over 35 years. He went bankrupt in 1962 as Uncle Sam dunned him for $100,000 in back taxes.

When she married a movie star, Thomason must have expected a glamorous life. Instead, she was awash in diapers and on a tight budget, keenly aware that her husband had resumed another chronic bad habit: philandering.

In 1965, Rooney traveled to the Philippines to film Ambush Bay, a war drama costarring Hugh O’Brian. While Rooney was away, Thomason got cozy with a muscular young actor, a Yugoslav émigré named Milos Milosevic.

As their affair began, Milosevic’s movie career was taking off. He had a bit part in the “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” and he played the title demon in “Incubus,” the William Shatner horror film done in the Esperanto language.

Rooney returned from the Philippines in November 1965 to discover that the demon had moved in while he was gone. Rooney retreated to a hotel and filed for divorce. Barbara had second thoughts when she learned that he wanted custody of their children.

The couple met on Jan. 30, 1966, in a hospital room where Rooney was being treated for an intestinal bug. Thomason swore she would dump Milosevic, and Rooney surprised everyone by agreeing to reconcile. Barbara then had to break the news to Milosevic, who was still shacked up in the Rooneys’ Brentwood home. The Yugoslav was known for a volcanic temper, and no one expected him to leave his lover meekly. But friends who accompanied Thomason home said Milosevic seemed to take the news calmly. They went into the master bedroom together at about 8:30 that night.

The next day, when Thomason didn’t respond to knocks on the locked bedroom door, her friend Wilma Catania used a screwdriver to break in. On the floor in the master bath, Milosevic was sprawled atop his lover. Thomason had been shot under the chin, Milosevic in the temple. Police judged it a murder-suicide at Milosevic’s hand, using a .38 pistol that Rooney kept for protection.

No one could explain why the shots were not heard, even though her children and a maid were in bedrooms just down the hall.

The tragedy created Thomason’s curtain-closer headline: “MICKEY ROONEY’S WIFE NO. 5 SLAIN.”

Her children were raised by Barbara’s mother. Rooney married three more times before he died in 2014 at the age of 93, and he never spoke of the murder. The tragedy is of course that Barbara was killed so young, but another tragedy is she is barely remembered at all...

THE MURDER OF MARLIYN MONROE

A new book is reporting that Marilyn Monroe’s death on August 4, 1962 was not a suicide but a murder orchestrated by Bobby Kennedy to silence her as she was about to reveal all the dirty Kennedy family secrets she kept logged in a little red diary. 

And Bobby did not act alone. He had co-conspirators in her murder - his brother-in-law, actor Peter Lawford, and Marilyn’s psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson who gave the star a fatal injection of pentobarbital to the heart. 

Those are the explosive allegations detailed in a blockbuster new book by writers Jay Margolis, a long-time investigative reporter and Monroe expert, and Richard Buskin, a New York Times bestselling author of 30 non- fiction books. 

The volume - The Murder of Marilyn Monroe: Case Closed - claims to blow the lid off the world’s most notorious and talked-about celebrity death through eyewitness testimony and interviews,  MailOnline can exclusively reveal.

‘Bobby Kennedy was determined to shut her up, regardless of the consequences’, Peter Lawford later revealed, according to the authors, feeling wracked with guilt over the star’s murder. ‘It was the craziest thing he ever did – and I was crazy enough to let it happen’.

It was a murder allegedly witnessed by ambulance attendant James C. Hall, who arrived at the film star's home and saw Monroe’s psychiatrist Dr. Greenson inject Marilyn directly into her heart with undiluted pentobarbital, brutally breaking a rib with the needle. 

He was set up by Bobby to ‘take care’ of Marilyn.  

Bobby Kennedy got involved in a messy sexual affair with Marilyn in the summer of 1962 when he was sent out to Los Angeles by his brother Jack to convince the screen goddess to stop calling the President at the White House. The President was not going to divorce Jackie and marry her. But Bobby fell under her spell and slipped into the bedroom with Marilyn.

‘It wasn’t Bobby’s intention, but that evening they became lovers and spent the night in our guest bedroom’, Peter Lawford later revealed.

Bobby made his final visit to Monroe’s Brentwood house on the afternoon of August 4, 1962 with Lawford who went outside to have a glass of champagne poolside while Bobby talked with her.

Marilyn’s neighbors saw Bobby leave and re-enter later that evening with one of his two long-time personal bodyguards from the LAPD’s notorious Gangster Squad who performed illegal activities for the LAPD off the books.

One of the bodyguards shot Marilyn in the armpit with intramuscular pentobarbital (Nembutal) to calm her down – after she was thrown to the floor by Bobby, who made this statement to the doctor in what the authors claim was a deposition confirming he and Lawford were at the house. 

While she was stunned, Bobby and Lawford rummaged through the house in search of the little red diary.

The Nembutal injection wasn’t strong enough to calm her down for long ‘so the two LAPD Gangster Squad partners held her down, stripped her clothes off, and gave her an enema filled with broken-down pills containing anywhere from thirteen to nineteen Nembutals and seventeen chloral hydrates’. 

This did the trick. Back to the search for the red diary.

Kennedy, Lawford, and the two bodyguards left the scene at 10.30pm and the incessant barking of Marilyn’s white maltese terrier, Maf, aroused suspicion of her housekeeper Eunice Murray and Murray’s son, Norman Jefferies who came over to find out what was going on. 

They discovered Monroe lying across the bed with her head hanging over the edge in the guest cottage and called an ambulance. Mrs. Murray suspected it was an overdose.

Peter Lawford had apparently returned to the scene, along with LA Police Sargeant Marvin Iannone, who had been stationed at Monroe’s house on orders from Bobby and always worked the detail on Lawford’s beach house when the Attorney General was in town.

Private detective Fred Otash, who had bugged Marilyn's house on a request from Lawford who liked to listen to kinky tapes, heard Iannone and Lawford talking on tape at 11.55pm that night, he later revealed.

Life Magazine photojournalist Leigh Wiener bribed the county morgue staff with a bottle of whiskey to get inside and photograph Monroe hours after her death. Her body showed cyanosis, blue or purple coloration of the skin which is consistent with needle injection. 'You'll see little streaks of blue running through the body..That's how Monroe looked to me when I saw her', he said. 

Chief William Parker, the police chief in LA, liked Bobby Kennedy and his stance on organized crime as well as his embrace of the same Catholic faith. So he refused to assign a full-time detective team to the Monroe case, initiating a shocking cover-up.

Syndicated Hollywood columnist May Mann, who interviewed and wrote about stars for several decades, was reporting on what she considered an inept probe into Monroe’s untimely death when she received a call from the Chief Parker. 

'He said it would be bad for my health if I kept writing stories like that’, she stated. 

The case turned cold.

Detective Mike Rothmiller wrote ‘it was this unit [the OCID] which had undertaken the clandestine probe of Monroe’s death. They had the power to ruin lives and reputations – or to safeguard. This is precisely what they did with the Monroe investigation …they protected the name of the Kennedy dynasty’.

Lady May Lawford, Peter’s mother, confirmed years later that Bobby had been in town the night of Marilyn's death. His helicopter had been parked at the beach in front of Peter’s house despite his denial.

PI Fred Otash confirmed that the FBI and the CIA had bugged Marilyn’s home and it was an FBI agent who reported to J. Edgar Hoover that Bobby had been inside the house along with the two Bobby knew that Hoover knew.

Hoover’s teenage neighbor Anthony Calomaris came forward years later and stated that Hoover had told him Monroe was murdered but he didn’t want to arrest Bobby. He used knowledge of the murder to blackmail the Attorney General to secure his own position as head of the FBI.

Marilyn Monroe's death was ultimately ruled a suicide by the authorities.

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• The Murder of Marilyn Monroe: Case Closed by Jay Margolis and Richard Buskin and published by Skyhorse Publishing is available at Amazon as of June 3...

SOURCE