Random Most Macabre Sights At Dearly Departed Tours And Museum (15 items)

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  (#14) Marilyn Monroe

  • Actor

  Marilyn’s Hollywood Tour takes tourists across Los Angeles, from the institution where she watched the lights of the RKO building to the home where she passed from an overdose. Monroe's body was found on August 5, 1962, at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, a hacienda-style 4-bedroom home that's guarded with a large gate. 

  The book Cursum Perficio: Marilyn Monroe's Brentwood Hacienda states that Monroe called the house a "fortress where I can feel safe from the world."
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  (#9) Albert Dekker

  Albert Dekker is best known for appearing in East of Eden and The Wild Bunch, but his passing in 1968 made him an unfortunate part of Hollywood history. On May 5 of that year, his fiancée, Love Boat creator Jeraldine Saunders, found Dekker bound and gagged in his bathtub, his body covered in cryptic phrases. 

  The Tragical History Tour takes curious viewers by the home and explains Dekker's demise. Once, the woman who owned the house even let a tour come in and look around. Company owner Scott Michaels told LA Mag: 

  Once we went to the location... The woman who lives there now let us into her apartment for 50 bucks. Later we saw her on a reality show, chewing her own hair. I love LA.
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  (#7) Pieces Of Sharon Tate’s Fireplace

  Demolished in 1994, the home on Cielo Drive where Sharon Tate and her friends spent their final night figures prominently in dark Los Angeles lore. The Helter Skelter Tour takes customers on a drive through Los Angeles, and up to where Tate briefly lived with her husband, director Roman Polanski. At the end of the trip, everyone gets a piece of the home's fireplace, which Dearly Departed founder Scott Michaels took from the rubble after the house was destroyed. 

  Michaels said: 

  I can practically reassemble Sharon Tate’s fireplace. I don’t ‘get’ stamp or coin collecting. This is my thing. People who understand this type of history really get it. People who don’t, really don’t. 
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  (#5) Jayne Mansfield

  • Actor

  The most popular artifact at Dearly Departed's museum is the Buick Electra in which Hollywood star Jayne Mansfield met her end. She and her boyfriend were driving the car one night in 1967 when they collided with a tractor-trailer.

  It was reported that Mansfield's head was removed, although that's an urban legend - her wig was mistaken for her head in press photos. The owner of the museum was offered a chance to take the car off the hands of its private owner, and he jumped at the chance to claim it. The purchase of the car is what inspired him to move into a larger space.
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  (#3) Nicole Brown Simpson

  One stop on the Tragical History Tour takes customers past the redone Brentwood condo where Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were slain on the night of June 12, 1994.

  One visitor wrote on Trip Advisor that while on the tour, they learned that Nicole and OJ Simpson once visited the Menendez residence for an event.
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  (#11) Rock Hudson

  On October 2, 1985, actor Rock Hudson passed from AIDS-related complications while in hospice care in his home in Beverly Hills. His passing brought new visibility to the disease.

  The Dearly Departed Museum has Hudson's Rolodex, featuring the full names, numbers, and addresses of all the actor's associates; they also have the bed in which he passed.

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