Random Famous Deaths That Were Never Investigated (14 items)

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  (#13) Paul Bern

  • Dec. at 42 (1889-1932)

  Bern was a German-American writer and director active in the '20s and '30s whose most notable act was launching the career of Jean Harlow. The two were married in 1932, but only two months later, Bern was found dead in their Beverly Hills home, shot through the head and drenched in Harlow's perfume.

  Police found a note that implied Bern killed himself due to impotence and Harlow swore to a grand jury that she "knew nothing." The matter was dropped, and it wasn't until 1960 that the public really got interested in it, due to an article in Playboy. That led to the Los Angeles DA briefly reopening the case before closing it again and calling the article's writer an unreliable source. Interest in the death piqued again in 1990 when a producer wrote a book alleging Bern was murdered by his common-law wife with whom he'd broken up to marry Harlow. This accusation has also not been investigated.
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  (#11) Peter Tosh

  • Dec. at 42 (1944-1987)

  Reggae star Peter Tosh was shot dead in a 1987 home invasion by a group of men who attempted to rob and extort Tosh for money. When Tosh claimed he didn't have money at home, the group's leader, Dennis Lobban, is alleged to have panicked and shot Tosh in the head at point-blank range, then opened fire on a group of Tosh's friends approaching the house.

  Lobban was found guilty of triple murder in a closed trial but has always proclaimed his innocence. The other two men were never named or investigated.
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  (#14) Thomas H. Ince

  • Dec. at 44 (1880-1924)

  Thomas H. Ince revolutionized the nascent film industry, founding the first modern film studio and creating the "assembly line" process used to create and edit films - a process still used today. He's credited as acting in, producing, writing, or directing over 600 silent movies - and essentially invented the genre of the Western. To celebrate his 44th birthday, Ince went out on William Randolph Hearst's yacht. Four days later, he was dead.

  A cursory investigation found that Ince had died of heart failure, but the Los Angeles press immediately sensationalized the death, proclaiming that Hearst shot Ince on the yacht. Rumors shot through Hollywood, fueled by misinformation and the fervent gossip of the era. Additionally, no autopsy was done, and Ince was quickly cremated. Virtually no investigation was ever performed and the heart failure verdict was accepted by the mainstream press.
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  (#9) Bob Crane

  • Dec. at 49 (1928-1978)

  The former Hogan's Heroes star died one of the strangest and most sordid deaths in Hollywood history, bludgeoned to death with an unknown implement and strangled in an apartment in Scottsdale, AZ. The local police were unprepared to handle such a high-profile murder and were only led to the main suspect through Crane's extensive collection of homemade porn.

  That suspect, electronics sales manager John Henry Carpenter, had helped Crane set up his elaborate taping system, and was the only real suspect. But the Scottsdale police couldn't build a case against him, and the crime sat cold, until it was reopened in the 1990s and Carpenter was arrested in 1994. He was acquitted and died in 1998. The case hasn't been investigated since and remains unsolved.
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  (#4) Tennessee Williams

  • Dec. at 72 (1911-1983)

  The great playwright died in New York City in 1983 under circumstances so strange that it took multiple examinations to figure out what happened - and even now, the sequence of events that led to his death has gaps. Williams died in February of that year, having choked on the plastic cap from a bottle of eye drops that he'd put in his mouth for some reason.

  The initial determination for the death was natural causes, but this verdict was changed when the bottle cap was found in his larynx. Chemical testing was done on the body, and it took months for an amended coroner's report to be released; said report revealed the presence of barbiturates in Williams's system. 
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  (#2) Jimi Hendrix

  • Dec. at 27 (1942-1970)

  The final day in the life of Jimi Hendrix was so shrouded in mystery and inconsistency that it spawned decades of alternative theories.

  The autopsy showed that he died of vomit inhalation due to an overdose of various drugs, but his companion the day he died in London gave numerous versions of what happened when she found him that morning, several of which directly contradicted each other.

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