Out of Frame: Lana Turner & Johnny Stompanato (ft. Hollywood Crime Scene)

Lana Turner made a name for herself as one of Hollywood’s most sought after femme fatales in films like ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’, but her personal life may have been more scandalous than anything she portrayed on screen. Turner was a true rags to riches story - complete with an iconic discovery at a soda shop counter - but her life was an extremely difficult one, full of married men, debauchery, and abuse. However it was her relationship with mobster Johnny Stompanato that would haunt her - and her daughter - for the rest of their lives. This week, Lizzie is joined by Desi and Rachel from Hollywood Crime Scene to break down one of Old Hollywood’s most infamous homicides. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Winterbauer?

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• 0:31Lizzie Bassett?

  12 celebrities, one Don, and cold, hard cash. From the producers of The Traitors comes The Mob, a new Hulu original series coming to Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ on October 26. In this unique new reality competition show hosted by the iconic Parker Posey, 12 celebrity contestants are about to become members of a powerful family. For two weeks in a lavish Italian villa, they'll shake down and hustle to win a share of up to $250,000. And every good mob needs a Don. Whoever they choose to lead them will have absolute power deciding who stays and who gets taken out. Who makes money? And who walks away with nothing? In a game of power where loyalty and trust are the currency, will the most powerful

• 1:16Lizzie Bassett?

  reality contestant in TV history be able to keep the family happy? And if they're overthrown by the mob, who will step up and become the new Don? Let the games begin. Watch the new Hulu original series, The Mob, premiering October 26 on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

• 1:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone one with a plot as crazy as the real-life crime that we're going to be talking about today. Was it a crime? I don't know. Maybe that's part of the conversation that we can have. When we were covering The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I very briefly recounted a story about Sean Connery involving one of his earliest co-stars, Lana Turner. And I asked you, listeners, if you would be interested in a deeper dive into Lana and the very infamous case that she is associated with. And we got a resounding yes. So that episode is finally here.

• 2:41Lizzie Bassett?

  And we have some very special guests who are going to help me dive into this. Expert witnesses, if you will. We have Rachel Fisher and Desi Jeditkin from the podcast Hollywood Crime Scene, which is great if you enjoy What Went Wrong, especially if you've enjoyed some of these out-of-frame episodes, which this will be. You will definitely enjoy their show. So welcome, Rachel and Desi. Hi.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Hi, Lizzie. Thanks for having us.

• 3:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Of course. I'm very excited to talk about this. You covered this case back in 2018 on your show, is that right?

• 3:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was an early episode for us.

• 3:15Lizzie Bassett?

  I want to say it was a Mother's Day episode.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  Is that right?

• 3:19Lizzie Bassett?

  I think so.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  We used to be a lot more out of pocket in the early days of Hollywood Crime Scene.

• 3:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, I really enjoyed it, and I thought that you all would be great to come on and talk about this because it is a very interesting case, especially when you dive into Lana's history and backstory. But before we get there, can you tell listeners a little bit about your show?

• 3:40Speaker 02

  Sure. Hollywood Crime Scene is a podcast where we discuss all things Hollywood, Los Angeles, celebrity scandals, crimes, weird pop culture. We even go into the paranormal because Hollywood is very haunted.

• 3:58Speaker 03

  We talk a lot about history. We also have some crossover with you. We do go into behind the scenes of movies. We've done a few of those episodes. And we also do crimes that inspired movies as well. So we'll kind of look at how it differed from the original material or the truth of this story and how the fictional movie came out. So we'll go into that as well.

• 4:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Love that.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, some of my favorite episodes have been our movie versus reality, like our four-part epic Titanic series.

• 4:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Ooh, amazing. I haven't listened to that yet. I will have to. Titanic itself, the behind the scenes, James Cameron, is he a criminal? I don't know. I love him. He's terrifying.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Well, we talked about it.

• 4:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Great. Okay, then I will definitely listen. Okay, so we have a lot to go through, so I do want to get started. I will do a trigger warning here at the top. We are going to be talking briefly, although it will be included, about sexual assault. And obviously, because of the nature of this case, we will be discussing murder or justifiable homicide. But it is a death. So let's jump right in. What is both of your experience with Lana Turner? Have you watched any of her movies? Are you familiar with at least like what she looks like or anything?

• 5:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, she's in one of my all-time favorite movies, Imitation of Life. So I kind of knew her from her really melodramatic roles. Obviously, I've seen A Postman Always Rings Twice. So I probably have seen sort of her bigger iconic movies. And we've discussed this on our show, but we were both kind of Hollywood Babylon girls growing up, so I knew about the crime as well. I think that's definitely part of her whole deal. Like, if you know her, you probably know about this incident because it was a major crime. Like, I mean, probably one of the first big Hollywood murders. So yeah, that's my kind of experience with her.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, like Desi said, I loved the book Hollywood Babylon when I was a kid. And I watched a lot of black and white movies. I still love them to this day. So obviously, I saw Lana Turner movies. Our love of old Hollywood definitely informed starting our podcast in general.

• 6:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Hollywood's full of crime. That is one thing that we've definitely learned. Same, you know, I think I was most familiar with her, unfortunately, just through this crime. And I was not particularly familiar with a lot of her films. I did watch a few. Postman Always Rings Twice is probably one of her most famous performances. I know it was one of her favorites as well. So listeners, if you want a reference point, that's a good one, especially because she plays what would become the classic film noir femme fatale in that. Interesting adaptation, the things that they chose to change from the book to the screen, but we don't have time to get into that here. All right, so let's dive in. So on February 8, 1921, in Wallace, Idaho, a little girl named Julia Jean was born to John Virgil Turner and his wife Mildred. Now Julia would go by the nickname Judy for now, until she would, of course, later change

• 6:45Lizzie Bassett?

  her name to Lana. We are getting ahead of ourselves. For the purposes of simplifying today's story, I'm gonna call her Lana from here on out because it would get very confusing. John had met Mildred after returning from World War I. He'd traveled west looking for mining work and met Mildred, who was then 16, out dancing. Lana, aka Julia, was born just one year later. After Lana arrived, John opened a dry cleaning shop, but the business went belly up and he returned to mining. So her family was really quite, quite poor when she was growing up. But according to her own memoir, she had very happy memories of both of her parents. Although, when she was six, they packed up everything they owned into a car and headed to San Francisco. Eventually, they landed in Stockton, California.

• 7:28Lizzie Bassett?

  And in this very small Stockton house, Lana would frequently hear strange, unknown voices drifting up from the basement. And she finally insisted that her father explain what was going on, so he took her downstairs. And there she saw a copper vat with rubber tubing coming out of it. And he said, "Don't you dare tell anybody." Obviously, she was too young to know what this is, but what do you think her dad was up to in the basement?

• 7:52Speaker 02

  Making meth.

• 7:54Lizzie Bassett?

  He was making the 20s version of meth.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  Yes, he was making moonshine.

• 7:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. They didn't have Sudafed available. Yes, he was operating a moonshine still. And again, she was just a kid. She did not realize how illegal this was, so she did tell a friend, who of course told their parents. And sure enough, the cops showed up and arrested her father. Now, he thankfully was released with just a fine and a slap on the wrist, but he did bail shortly thereafter. Mildred told her daughter that he had to go traveling to sell insurance and also, I guess, stop infinitely for cigarettes along the way because she and John had separated, although they'd never officially divorced, as far as I know. Mildred had a very difficult time making enough money for herself and her daughter to survive on. At times, they literally lived off of crackers and milk.

• 8:40Lizzie Bassett?

  I think this is really important to remember as we get into Lana's activities later and her life that, you know, come off as very extravagant and glamorous, that this is where she came from.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:52Lizzie Bassett?

  John did stop in to say, "Hi, kid," every once in a while. And when Judy was nine years old, he was in town, thanks to a traveling craps game that was taking place in the basement of the San Francisco Chronicle, which is wild. He was a gambler, essentially a professional gambler. And I don't want to paint him in the worst possible light. He did love his kid. In fact, he actually won pretty big at this craps game and told everyone there that he was going to use the winnings to buy his daughter a bicycle. And then he stuffed all the money in his left sock and he headed out. Lana never got that bicycle because the next morning, he was found dead.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 9:27Lizzie Bassett?

  He had been bludgeoned to death with a blackjack, and sure enough, his left sock was empty.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Damn, I don't remember any of this from our episode. I don't remember what we talked about.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  You know why? Because early on, we didn't go into the backstory as much as we do now.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're right.

• 9:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Your episode was great because it focused a lot more on the actual crime than we will talk about that quite a bit here. But I think what I'm going to do a little bit more is kind of go into like her history and sort of the Hollywood side of it as well.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 9:56Lizzie Bassett?

  So your episode is a great companion piece to this. Now, no one was ever charged for his murder, but she later said, quote, "I know that my father's sweetness and gaiety, his warmth and his tragedy have never been far from me. That and a sense of loss and of growing up too fast." Now, I should mention, our main sources for today are Lana, the lady, the legend, the truth, which is the title of her autobiography. Good for you, Lana. Detour: A Hollywood Tragedy, which is the memoir that Sheryl Crane, her daughter, wrote, which is really excellent. 48 Hours Presents: Vanity Fair Hollywood Scandal. And then a couple of other Vanity Fair articles, as well as many other interviews and retrospectives.

• 10:36Chris Winterbauer?

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• 13:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, naturally, this really shook up the whole family. Mildred felt like she was not able to care for Lana appropriately at this point. Remember, Mildred is very young. She's 17 years older than Lana. So she sent her to board with a Catholic family, but as things in Lana's life have a way of doing, that situation turned abusive pretty quickly. The mother in the family would reportedly abuse Lana when chores weren't done to her liking. Turner later said of this time, quote, "I was a scullery maid, a cheap Cinderella with no hope of a pumpkin."

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 14:25Lizzie Bassett?

  She's got some great quotes, quite a way with words. So as soon as Mildred discovered what was happening to Lana at the home, she yanked her out and did her best as a single mom. I actually think your use of this as a Mother's Day episode was appropriate.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  There's a lot of mommy stuff happening. It's very complex.

• 14:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure.

• 14:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Listen, you could have done mommy dearest and you didn't. So I think that, you know...

• 14:48Speaker 02

  We did that later.

• 14:50Lizzie Bassett?

  For a different Mother's Day.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, because I think we did that in 2019. That might have been around Mother's Day. I'm not sure. It would have been very on the nose. I don't remember.

• 14:59Lizzie Bassett?

  I like it. I watched it with my mom, so there you go.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 15:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 15:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:04Lizzie Bassett?

  So the two would often escape to the movies, which inspired Mildred to frequently jazz up the very few dresses she owned. This rubbed off on Lana, who would study Vogue and etiquette books. I mean, they were dirt poor, but they looked great.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  That's all that matters.

• 15:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, well, they did what they could. Being a single mom during the Great Depression took an enormous toll on Mildred's health. She did develop a pretty severe respiratory illness, and a doctor told her her best bet was to... What did they always tell you to do back in the day when you...

• 15:31Speaker 02

  Smoke.

• 15:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, yeah.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  Or move to a drier climate.

• 15:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  You know what? I'm an idiot because my great-grandfather literally moved to Los Angeles for the climate. That's just what they did.

• 15:45Lizzie Bassett?

  They literally were like, "Try your best in Los Angeles. Good luck."

• 15:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:49Lizzie Bassett?

  That is exactly what they told her to do. So in 1936, Lana and Mildred landed in LA. They were staying with Mildred's friend, and Lana was enrolled at Hollywood High.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  And that's where my great-grandpa went.

• 15:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Really?

• 16:00Speaker 02

  Yes. They just dropped all the kids, the sick kids. They'd moved from, you know, wherever, Ohio, Montana, and they just drop them right off at Hollywood High. Colds were cured.

• 16:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Yep. It is dry. Or it used to be. Now it's humid and horrible. So she didn't really care for schoolwork, though, and she frequently cut class, which is what she was doing on the day that she was sitting at a soda counter at the Top Hat Cafe when she noticed a guy staring at her. He got up, he came over, and said he was W.R. Wilkerson, founder and publisher of The Hollywood Reporter. And then, of course, he asked her if she'd like to be in the pictures, to which she was like, "Literally never crossed my mind." She said, "I have to go ask my mom." Her mom did eventually say yes.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Billy Wilkerson, by the way, total scumbag.

• 16:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, I believe... Who... He's staring at young girls at the soda counter. What are you doing at the soda counter in the first place, sir? You're a grown man. Her mom did say yes, and Wilkerson followed through and connected Lana, at this point still Judy, with actor-turned-agent Zepo Mark. Now, he asked her how old she was. She said 15. And what do you think he said to that?

• 17:05Speaker 02

  Yippee.

• 17:06Speaker 03

  Close enough.

• 17:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Close enough is almost right. He said, "In Hollywood, you should never say that again." He said, "From here on out, you're 18."

• 17:13Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 17:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Yikes. So with zero acting training, she nabbed her first actual role in They Won't Forget, directed by Mervyn LaRoy. But before the movie came out, Mervyn was like, "You need a new name." And so she's like, "How about Judy Jean?" And he's like, "No, no, no. Your last name is fine. It's your first name that's hot trash." And so he opened up a book of names, started looking under the letter L. And then, as she wrote in her memoir, quote, "Out of nowhere, a name came into my head as clearly as though God had decided to speak to me." Of course, Lana Turner had officially arrived. I gotta say, she nailed it.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  It's a good name.

• 17:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Really good. And I like that she picked it.

• 17:53Speaker 03

  One thing that always made me laugh was that her name, whatever, I guess she was going by Judy, wasn't considered cool enough or glamorous enough, but that's what they gave Judy Garland, because her name is Frances.

• 18:03Lizzie Bassett?

  I know. But you know what's funny? My daughter's middle name is Frances. I actually love that name. And my granny was Frances. But they were almost contemporaries, I believe. Lana Turner may have been slightly older, but not much. And it's interesting, because Judy Garland was seen as sort of like the ugly duckling of MGM when they were there pretty much simultaneously, I believe. And Lana, obviously, was trotted out as this sex symbol. Hollywood didn't treat either particularly well.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  No.

• 18:30Speaker 03

  No.

• 18:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, her part in the movie was very small, but much to Lana's surprise, a whole bunch of the marketing was focused on her thanks to her sweater. Do you all remember this?

• 18:40Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:41Lizzie Bassett?

  So by the standards of the time, it was a pretty tight sweater, I guess. And I guess there was a very specific and gross reason for this. In the film, Lana plays a young woman whose murder sparks the trial that the film follows. It all takes place in the deep south. Basically, a lawyer, I believe played by Claude Rains, decides to target a man from the north as the main suspect, since that might boost his career more. It's based on a novel that was loosely based on the real Leo Frank case. But the thing is, in the book, it's pretty clear that the woman was sexually assaulted before being killed.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, thanks to the Hays Production Code, which we've talked about quite a bit on the show, they could not explicitly say that. So here is what director Mervyn LaRoy said instead, quote, "It was very important that the girl in our story have what they call flesh impact. She had to make it look like it was a sex murder. You'll notice we never use the word rape in the screenplay. We couldn't say things like that in those days. I figured that a tight sweater on a beautiful young girl would convey to the audience everything we couldn't say outright." Did it, Mervyn?

• 19:42Speaker 03

  Yikes.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  I don't know about that.

• 19:47Speaker 03

  That's disgusting.

• 19:48Lizzie Bassett?

  And it gets grosser. Much to Lana's surprise, Warner Brothers started pushing her in that tight sweater skirt and heels as the publicity image to promote the film. And then both the press and public started calling her "The Sweater Girl," a phrase that stuck to Lana for years and actually became such a staple in popular culture. There was a movie called Sweater Girl in 1942. It's a comedy.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 20:11Speaker 03

  Oh, my God. Wow.

• 20:13Lizzie Bassett?

  It is bizarre that that's connected to this movie, which is about her, like, brutal murder.

• 20:18Speaker 03

  Or that they're marketing it with her sexuality is crazy.

• 20:21Lizzie Bassett?

  It's really strange. It's very strange.

• 20:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:25Lizzie Bassett?

  So LaRoy continued to cast Turner, and when he left for MGM, he took her with him. And reportedly, he was somewhat protective of her, so she was at least temporarily shielded from some of Hollywood's top-notch predators, but that didn't last very long. Her star was on the rise, and as LA came out of the Great Depression, she was really living it up out on the town. And wouldn't you, after this life?

• 20:46Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 20:49Lizzie Bassett?

  But her personal life started to make MGM very nervous. One day, notorious creepo Louis B. Mayer called both Lana and her mother into his office, where he begged Lana, with tears in his eyes, to please calm down. But then he reportedly jumped up and said, "The only thing she cares about is this," pointing down at, I believe, his genitals.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  Gross. No, no one cares about your genitals, Louis B. Mayer.

• 21:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Put them away. Mildred, her mother, was understandably horrified and yanked Lana out of his office ASAP. Then Lana starred opposite bandleader Artie Shaw in Calling Dr. Kildare, These Glamorous Girls, and Dancing Coed. I believe those were all in the same year. She'd also done at least one Andy Hardy movie with Mickey Rooney, but she super did not get along with Artie Shaw. She actually told the press she thought he was the most egotistical person she'd ever met. Lana, trust your instincts. But she didn't. A few months later, they met again. She was heartbroken, having just learned that one of her first loves, Greg Boutsour, was seeing other women, and Artie managed to paint a very different picture of himself this time. He took her out to dinner, spun her the story of a stable life, marriage,

• 21:56Lizzie Bassett?

  and a family. And do you know what happened next? The next day?

• 22:00Speaker 03

  They got married.

• 22:02Lizzie Bassett?

  They got married, as one does. They flew to Las Vegas and got married, but surprise, surprise, he was, in fact, controlling and abusive, and the marriage lasted about four months. Unfortunately, Lana had gotten pregnant, which she only discovered after they had separated, but not legally divorced. She turned to her talent agent for advice, and he was swift to remind her about MGM's morals clause, which forbade having children outside of wedlock. So she had two options. She could get back together with Artie, or she could end the pregnancy. And she chose the latter, which really wrecked her emotionally.

• 22:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, in 1941, she landed one of her biggest roles yet in Ziegfeld Girl, which was the first time she was really starting to be taken seriously as an actress. But MGM just kind of kept trotting her out as their go-to sex symbol and not really thinking of her for meteor roles, which really frustrated her. That same year, at 20 years old, she starred opposite Clark Gable in Honky Tonk. They were a huge financial hit together. They churned out three more films over the next, I believe, decade. Meanwhile, Lana hit it off with another guy named Steve Crane. They met at a Hollywood nightclub called Mocombo that had real parrots and cockatoos inside. That's how you know your date's legit.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  I mean, this was a hot club.

• 23:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Like, it does sound kind of awesome, I have to say.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  We always want to go to these places. We're always like, oh, bring it back.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is one of the clubs on our list is the Mocombo, obviously Coconut Grove. Billy Wilkerson actually owned some of these clubs.

• 23:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Interesting. Well, that's seems like a way to feed a lot of his own publications as well. Great.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 23:39Lizzie Bassett?

  So Steve said that he worked in the tobacco business and that he was fresh off of a divorce, but he was open to love. And so naturally, what happened next, guys?

• 23:48Speaker 03

  They got married.

• 23:49Lizzie Bassett?

  They got married. They jetted off to Las Vegas and got married. Lana, stop, stop doing this.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  She's one of the original lovers of marriage. She had a ton of marriages.

• 24:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, Lana, you gotta stop.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  It's hard to watch.

• 24:04Lizzie Bassett?

  It is hard to watch. There was, however, one little tiny problem, which is that old Steve Parrot Crane was not actually legally divorced from his wife.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  Uh-oh.

• 24:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Even worse, the terms of his pending separation stated that he could not remarry for at least one full year following the divorce, which was a pretty big problem for MGM's big star. But not to worry, Crane explained, they could fix it, or rather Lana could fix it with money. And she was already bankrolling a lot at this point. She was pissed, and she even accused Crane and his ex-wife of setting her up, which is not out of the realm of possibility. But just as she was about to escape another shitty relationship, she discovered she was again pregnant. This time, though, she said, F you all, I'm keeping the baby, and I'm still ditching the man. And the pregnancy was extremely difficult because of RH incompatibility. So Lana was RH negative, and the child was RH positive, and this can cause the mother's body to basically attack the fetal blood cells.

• 25:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:01Lizzie Bassett?

  It was made more difficult by the fact that Crane really desperately wanted her to take him back and wanted to have a family, and so he would not leave her alone. Louis B. Mayer, of course, kindly reminded her that an unmarried pregnant actress was box office poison and demanded that she marry Crane, but she stuck to her ground. She said no. However, mid-pregnancy, she found out that Steve Crane was on suicide watch after having swallowed an entire bottle of barbiturates. So she immediately went to see him. She did agree to marry him, and on Valentine's Day of 1943, they made it actually official and legally binding this time. They did get married. In July of that same year, Lana's water broke, and she labored for 18 hours, during which time her husband got bored and left to watch a boxing game.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  Come on, Steve.

• 25:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Isn't 18 hours a little long, though?

• 25:47Speaker 02

  It's long, but you know what? I'm the one pushing. You're just sitting there.

• 25:53Lizzie Bassett?

  My husband's listening to this call. If he had left when I was in labor, I would have somehow gotten up off that table, epidural be damned, and killed him.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 26:02Lizzie Bassett?

  So Lana gave birth to her daughter Cheryl alone.

• 26:05Speaker 03

  My god.

• 26:06Lizzie Bassett?

  And just to keep things interesting, shortly after Cheryl was born, another woman showed up claiming to be Crane's side piece, and we do not know whether or not that was true. I do want to specify. But Lana was like, I have had enough, and she filed for divorce.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  I would have kicked that woman in the face.

• 26:23Lizzie Bassett?

  The woman?

• 26:23Speaker 02

  Like you said, epidural be damned. Well, I would have kicked both of them, because it's rude. Because how dare you come by my hospital bed? Like, yes, you want to blame the man for having the affair.

• 26:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, and we also don't know if he did. It's not hard to believe, but we don't know what that woman's motivations were. Lana was a star at this point, and as we will learn, she was quite a target for money schemes.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah.

• 26:47Lizzie Bassett?

  So as her personal life was crumbling, her professional life was full steam ahead, because in 1946, she starred in The Postman Always Rings Twice, which we mentioned. It was one of her favorite roles. It proved to be both a critical and commercial hit. And the amount of work that she was getting did take a toll, though, on her ability to be there for Cheryl in her early years. She really wasn't around. It was very hard for her, being a single mother working, and I think she did come to regret this decision. Lana's fame was also bringing more and more unsavory characters into her life. She and her mother Mildred were the targets of an extortion case at one point, which did prompt Lama to, prompt Lama, which did prompt Lana to buy a gun. However, the unsavoryest character of all was working his way up the ranks of LA's criminal underworld. So let's talk about

• 27:32Lizzie Bassett?

  old Johnny Stompanato, which, as you all pointed out, is his real name. That is not a nickname.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  It's an incredible name. I mean, if you get that name, you kind of have to be like a mob guy, right?

• 27:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, his family wasn't. His father was Johnny Stompanato Sr., and he was, by all accounts, a nice guy.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  Well, I'm just saying, it's like.

• 27:55Speaker 03

  It does sound like it's from a novel or something, where someone's coming up with it, yeah.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  It's a parody name. It is like, it's so over the top. He's stomping people out. Stompanato.

• 28:07Lizzie Bassett?

  He did. So he was born in Woodstock, Illinois, the youngest of four children. His mother did very sadly die shortly after he was born. His father was from Italy, and the Stompanato family were actually very well-liked in the area, which I think was unusual for Italian immigrants at the time. His father had overcome a lot of stereotypes. I should say, they were very liked, except for Johnny Jr., who neighbors reportedly called the devil behind his back.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 28:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, this was not new for him. He was sent away to military school in Missouri after getting not one but two girls pregnant. He did serve in the Marines and traveled to China, where he met a Turkish woman who had been actually raised in China. She was named Sarah. They fell in love. Stompanato converted to Islam in order to marry her. He moved back to the US with her. He did show signs of PTSD. Again, he already had issues before. I'm sure it was not good, whatever happened to him when he was in the Marines. And he was, of course, itching to travel again. Sarah got pregnant. She had their child. Johnny showed very little interest in the kid, though, running off to Hollywood shortly after he was born to pursue a dream of making it in some capacity. I don't really

• 29:13Lizzie Bassett?

  know as what. However, it turned out that cross-country travel and a whole new life are pretty expensive. So Stompanato turned into a con man. Now, somehow, he managed to cross paths with Sir Charles Hubbard, an heir to a massive English fortune. Hubbard was looking for investments, and Stompanato managed to winkle $85,000 out of Hubbard.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  What?

• 29:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, over the course of two years, which he used to buy his way into the hangouts of the rich and famous. Now, later, he would tell the IRS, I just borrowed the money. But everybody was pretty sure he'd blackmailed Hubbard. This is the thing about Johnny Stompanato, is I think it's very easy to write him off as just like a brute. This guy was smart. This guy was smart. He was obviously very charming, given the people that he ends up being involved with. He's scary.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  He's dangerous.

• 30:03Lizzie Bassett?

  He's very dangerous, yes.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Because you don't expect it, because you think he's a brute.

• 30:07Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right. And he's very handsome, too.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  He's doing stuff.

• 30:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah. Yes, he's a mover. Now, when the Hubbard tap ran dry, Stompanato turned into, I believe, a bit of a gigolo, a casual gigolo.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  This guy would have loved being an influencer. Like, why wasn't this guy? If he was around in 2026.

• 30:26Lizzie Bassett?

  He would have thrived.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  He would have had like some very grifty businesses, hustles going on online.

• 30:33Lizzie Bassett?

  To sell you, certainly.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 30:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Now, he hung out in fancy lounges and even worked as a bouncer in a nightclub owned by Mickey Cohen. So, who was Mickey Cohen? He worked under Bugsy Siegel, mob boss who created Las Vegas. Cohen stepped up and took over Siegel's operation after he was killed and naturally needed some extra muscle behind him during such a tumultuous time. So this is when Johnny Stompanato stepped in as essentially Mickey Cohen's bodyguard.

• 30:59Speaker 02

  Stompanato comes in, he's like, alright, the hottest gangster in America is dead.

• 31:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  Now it's my turn. I'm gonna pick up where Bugsy Siegel left off. I'm gonna rub elbows with the Hollywood elite. And now it's my turn to be the hot guy.

• 31:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, Stompanato was very, very focused on Hollywood, as we'll learn Mickey Cohen was too. And like, we know Mickey Cohen, obviously, we know Frank Sinatra was, you know, involved in all of this. A lot of people in Hollywood did have connections to the mob. But it is interesting how much Stompanato in particular, like, really did have a fascination with Hollywood.

• 31:38Speaker 03

  Well, I think because Mickey Cohen wasn't hot.

• 31:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 31:41Speaker 03

  So he had only one way he could kind of be involved with Hollywood. But I think Johnny Stompanato actually thought he was like a star.

• 31:48Lizzie Bassett?

  He was hot.

• 31:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I think that he kind of felt like, hey, I could also do this, right?

• 31:53Lizzie Bassett?

  You're right. Mickey Cohen was not hot. I just looked at a picture of him.

• 31:57Speaker 03

  I mean, no offense.

• 31:59Lizzie Bassett?

  I'll say offense, but he wasn't a notoriously great guy.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  No, he's a bad guy and he, he looks like a bad guy, like.

• 32:06Lizzie Bassett?

  He does look like it. He's got a great suit, but yeah, he looks like a bad guy.

• 32:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:09Lizzie Bassett?

  He was a bad guy.

• 32:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure.

• 32:11Lizzie Bassett?

  So, this gig also, though, dried up when the feds, of course, nailed Cohen for tax evasion and threw him in jail for five years. So Johnny jumped from gig to gig until he finally realized, to your exact point, that the easiest way for him to make money was to prey on wealthy women, because he's very hot. So, speaking of, Lana Turner also owed the IRS an enormous amount of money in back taxes, but that did not stop her from tripping the light fantastique all over town. Eventually, she decided to marry again, this time to Henry J. Topping Jr., heir to a tin plate and steel fortune. And this time, she wanted to do it big. No more flying to Las Vegas. But when Louis B. Mayer received an invite to her big fancy engagement party,

• 32:51Lizzie Bassett?

  you'd think he'd be thrilled, but you'd be wrong, because Henry Topping was also still married to his wife.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  Come on.

• 32:59Lizzie Bassett?

  And at this point, MGM literally had a clause in her contract that said, no more married men. Lana caught a stop, so she did cancel the engagement party, but she was getting pretty tired of Louis B. Mayer interfering in her personal life. She signed on to play the Comtesse de Winter in The Three Musketeers, but she was pretty pissed to learn that she'd basically been demoted, so she quit. And MGM was like, well, you're gonna have to repay $400,000 in pre-production costs. But she held out, insisting, if you make the role bigger, I will rejoin the production, which they did. Now, she went ahead and got married to Topping, but that whole situation was absolutely shredded by the media. She got pregnant. Sadly, it was a stillborn baby and her marriage to Topping disintegrated.

• 33:44Lizzie Bassett?

  She hired a P I. who confirmed that he was cheating on her. At this point, she attempted suicide. It's very sad. She was saved by her manager, who stopped by to do a wellness check. And the next day, newspapers ran with the headline, Lana suffers slashed wrist in shower fall.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  God. This is how they used to write about horrific incidents.

• 34:06Lizzie Bassett?

  They were vicious, but also looking at things like the Perez Hilton era of, you know, it's different, but it's the same, you know? I hope they're better, but I don't know.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  I mean, yes, obviously, the Perez Hilton and the TMZ, but this would be in like, the LA Times. They would run a headline like that, where it was just very non-delicate language.

• 34:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, 100%. So obviously, the marriage to Topping also fell apart and ended. She was back to work only a few days after this attempt on The Merry Widow. She followed that up with Vincent Minnelli's The Bad and the Beautiful, which was nominated for six Academy Awards, although zero of those nominations went to Lana. She was reportedly devastated about this and again, wound up with yet another garbage abusive man, Lex Barker, AKA TV's Tarzan. Now, according to Cheryl, he repeatedly assaulted her, and again, she was a child at this point, without Lana's knowledge. When Lana did find out, she immediately ordered him out of the house and divorced him. But again, they didn't report this to the police and it, as far as we know, it comes down to her wanting to avoid bad publicity,

• 35:09Lizzie Bassett?

  which is gonna happen again and again here, and it's never worth it to not report this stuff. Meanwhile, Johnny Stompanato, now going by the alias John Steele, had racked up several Hollywood girlfriends and a couple of wives who had bankrolled him.

• 35:26Speaker 02

  Sounds like a porn star name.

• 35:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, well, that's intentional, for sure. He set his sights on Ava Gardner, who was still with Frank Sinatra at the time and was a friend of Lana Turner's. Sinatra found out what was happening and hit up the recently paroled Mickey Cohen to do something about it. But much to his surprise, Cohen was like, uh, no, my loyalty is to Johnny Stompanato.

• 35:47Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 35:48Lizzie Bassett?

  This was because, you guys nailed this, Cohen needed Stompanato. He had tried to get back into nightclubs after being released from prison, but he couldn't get a liquor license as a felon. So, the two had been luring Hollywood A-listers into compromising positions and blackmailing them. Reportedly, among their victims were Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, and Spencer Tracy.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 36:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. And then, news broke that MGM was not renewing Lana Turner's contract after 18 years, and she was devastated. But Cohen and Stompanato saw an opportunity. They came up with a classic honey trap plan. Arrange a sexual encounter, secretly film it, and then use the footage to extort Lana. While filming her next movie, John Steele, AKA Stompanato, started calling Lana incessantly. She didn't know him, she didn't know who he was, and told the operators to screen her calls, but he wouldn't stop. He sent bouquets of flowers, reportedly so many they couldn't even fit in her dressing room. And he was like, uh, we have a mutual friend. And she agreed to meet him. Lana? Lana? Don't. Now, this is my favorite fact I learned in the entire episode.

• 36:56Lizzie Bassett?

  When they met, he showed up carrying a silver platter of her favorite dish, which was, I shit you not, vermicelli with clam sauce.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  Vermicelli?

• 37:05Lizzie Bassett?

  I cannot imagine the most sexy romantic gesture being showing up with a pile of pasta and clams. Now, I like linguine and clam sauce as much as the next girl, but like, it's clams on a silver platter. And she was like, absolutely, A plus, John Steele.

• 37:19Speaker 03

  I mean, she doesn't really have a lot of great guys to kind of like, you know, leave an impression. So this probably really stood out, the fact that he even gave her anything, like.

• 37:27Lizzie Bassett?

  I know, but it's clams.

• 37:29Speaker 03

  It is sad, but.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  Maybe strawberries would have been? I mean, it's a cliche, but would that have been better on a silver platter? Piece of pie?

• 37:39Lizzie Bassett?

  You know what? Maybe I'm wrong. Clam sauce is delicious, so she might have had a point, but.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  I like clam sauce too. I don't know.

• 37:46Speaker 03

  I think another pasta might have been better.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  What's wrong with linguine? It's a classic for a reason.

• 37:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's linguine and clam sauce. Come on, guys. So, he showered her with gifts, pretty much all of which were bankrolled by Mickey Cohen, obviously secretly. And she felt like she'd never been treated this way before, and the two started going out all over town. Now, you would think that surely someone would have recognized him as Mickey Cohen's bodyguard and like, number two, especially since at this point, he'd blackmailed a large portion of Hollywood. But he solved that problem just by threatening anybody who might recognize him. And that worked on almost everyone, with one exception, Mickey Rooney.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  Mickey Rooney.

• 38:24Speaker 03

  Oh, God.

• 38:25Lizzie Bassett?

  You know what? Mickey Rooney took a lot of shit in our Breakfast at Tiffany's episode, deservedly so, but I'm glad to see him get some redemption here. He was good friends with Lana Turner, and he evidently didn't care that Stompanato was threatening everyone. He was going to tell Lana Turner who she was really dating, and so he did. He went to her apartment and he warned her that John Steele was not his real name. It was Johnny Stompanato, and he told her, he is not just involved with the mob, he works for Mickey Cohen. Now, Lana did reportedly try to end the relationship at this point, but Stompanato pursued her relentlessly. She wrote in her memoir, quote, "His consuming passion was strangely exciting. Call it forbidden fruit or whatever, but this attraction was very deep, maybe something sick within me. And my dangerous captivation went far beyond lovemaking.

• 39:10Lizzie Bassett?

  In fact, the sex was nothing special. People have analyzed my attraction to John by pointing out that my father was an occasional gambler and that he was murdered. The connection seems obvious enough, but I can't say for sure that it's valid."

• 39:20Speaker 02

  The sex wasn't even good?

• 39:22Lizzie Bassett?

  That's the most disappointing part of that. I don't know. I get what she's saying. There's like, and I appreciate that she's acknowledging that she was taking him back over and over again. There was a toxic cycle happening here.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah. Anyone who's been in any kind of domestic abusive relationship knows. I mean, you take him back, you take him back, and you take him back.

• 39:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  Even when it makes zero sense. It's a hallmark.

• 39:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Of course. And it didn't take long for Stompanato to turn violent. One night, he climbed up her fire escape, broke in and assaulted her. And again, she was too scared to call the police for fear that the bad P R. would impact her casting in a new film.

• 40:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, by this point, it seems like Stompanato had pretty much done away with the initial plans to extort Turner, because he saw her as a ticket out of the mob and into a legitimate Hollywood career. And also, like, I do think they were pretty entangled with each other.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:17Lizzie Bassett?

  There was no way he was gonna let her go, even though the more she learned about who he really was, the more she did seem to try and distance herself, although again, she was taking him back over and over.

• 40:25Speaker 03

  Well, it's also scary, I think, to be with someone in the mob.

• 40:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, 100%.

• 40:30Speaker 03

  Beyond just an abusive relationship, this guy has connections that could really.

• 40:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 40:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it's like a multiple reasons why.

• 40:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah. It's, I mean, it is the toxic relationship of it all. It's that cycle. It's the fact that there is something, you know, where I think she was also pursuing him because of kind of like, the excitement of that, which sounds, I'm not blaming her at all. But then on top of that, 100%, she's scared of him, she's scared of the people that he is associated with, like, absolutely. But then also, she's in a very bad position, because she doesn't want anybody to know that she is with him anymore.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Because of the, everybody else knows that he's with the mob.

• 41:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Today's episode is sponsored by Mars. You might not realize it, but Mars is behind so many of your favorite Halloween treats. And I'm not just talking about your candy bowl. Yes, Mars makes iconic candies like M&Ms, Snickers, Starburst, my personal favorite, and Skittles. But they also have salty snacks, easy to make meal options, and even treats for your pets. There's something for everyone to enjoy this spooky season. David and I are too old to trick or treat, so we've been getting creative with our Halloween movie night spreads for our friends. I put together a char bootery board with some classic sweets like Rice Krispie treats and peanut butter M&Ms. And because I'm a salty girl, I added some Pringles and my all time favorite snack, Cheez-It crackers. Scary delicious. For Halloween night, I'm making a spooky seven layer dip using Ben's Original Ready Rice because there is nothing that my kid loves more than a rice and bean dip. And don't think I forgot about our dog Q.

• 41:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Mars knows he needs a celebration too, so I put together a special Halloween treat jar packed with Greenie's Original Pumpkin Spice Dental Chews and Pedigree Tasty Biscuits. He's agreed to share with the neighbors because he's a very good boy. Find Mars products in a retailer near you or on Instagram at Mars Global, M-A-R-S-G-L-O-B-A-L, where you can shop everyday favorites and limited time Halloween offerings.

• 42:18Speaker 04

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• 42:32Speaker 05

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• 42:57Lizzie Bassett?

  So she started her own production company around this time, which did keep her too busy to notice that Stompanato seems to have taken an unusual interest in her 14 year old daughter Cheryl. He apparently bought her her own horse, also paid for by Mickey Cohen. Lana's production company Lantern Productions launched in 1957, and it was a big deal since it was headed not only by an actor, but obviously a woman. She loved it. She worked really hard to develop new projects, all while Stompanato was constantly sending her screenplays that he could help her produce. And she was like, no, no, thank you. Her first project would be Another Time, Another Place. It was going to shoot in London and Lana helped cast a young, unknown Scottish actor, also model, truck driver, and lifeguard as her love interest in the film. Who was it?

• 43:42Speaker 02

  Sean Connery.

• 43:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Sean Connery, yes. She jetted off to England to film and unfortunately Johnny Stompanato followed her. Now, she did eventually tell him he needed to stay away from the set, but he refused and was also getting pissier and pissier about her rejecting his pitches. He kept showing up and one day while Lana and Sean were filming a love scene, he overheard a P A say, it looks like those two have had plenty of practice. And I think also he was like convinced from the beginning that they were having an affair. By the time the scene wrapped, Lana and Sean walked off set and were met with an enraged Stompanato who screamed, you keep away from her and pointed a gun at Sean Connery's chest.

• 44:21Lizzie Bassett?

  And Sean Connery, who is also a piece of shit himself, but in a legendary move, he grabbed Stompanato's wrist, twisted his arm behind his back, disarmed him, spun him around, and punched him in the face.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  This is when Sean Connery famously said, stay in your lane, Stompanato.

• 44:41Lizzie Bassett?

  I mean, it's, it is an incredible move.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Security guards had to break up the fight. Stompanato like runs off set embarrassed and then Lana Turner goes and reports him to the Scotland Yard and gets him deported. Incredibly embarrassing. Now, she was understandably concerned that he would retaliate and that he may hurt her mother or her daughter, since he had threatened to do both at this point and would continue to threaten. When the film wrapped, she decided to take a trip to Mexico, keeping the details of her itinerary completely under wraps. And yet somehow Johnny Stompanato still found her and forced his way onto the trip where he continued to emotionally and physically abuse her, as well as threatening her with a gun that he purchased on the trip, which he initially said he got to protect himself from the iguanas.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  Iguanas?

• 45:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  Do you need a gun for that?

• 45:29Lizzie Bassett?

  That wasn't the best excuse, you know, of like why you need to buy that. It's not, you could have done better.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  I think iguanas are cute.

• 45:35Lizzie Bassett?

  They're not notoriously fast or aggressive, so.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  No.

• 45:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Whatever. He wasn't fooling anyone, but she had a very brief, happy moment when she learned that she'd been nominated for an Oscar for Peyton Place. That was dampened though by Stompanato insisting that he be her date to the ceremony. And she was like, no way. She said she could not be seen with him because of his mob connections, especially not at the Oscars. He was so mad that at one point, leading up to the ceremony, he reportedly held a razor to her face and threatened to disfigure her. Still, she did not give in and instead took her daughter to the ceremony, where she did lose to Joanne Woodward. Now, up until this point, she had kept the physical abuse a secret, but it all bubbled up and she told her mother everything. And this is not hearsay, by the way. Her mother called the Beverly Hills Police Chief, who knew exactly who Johnny Stompanato

• 46:23Lizzie Bassett?

  was, and he basically said, listen, I believe you, but it needs to be Lana who files the complaint herself and she should do it ASAP. She did not. On Good Friday, April 4th, 1958, Stompanato had been following Lana around for the day and he was at her house on North Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills, when she learned from one of his former classmates that he had also lied to her about his age. He was not 43, as he had said, he was more like 30 and Lana at this point was 37. So I think this was a major like ego blow. She'd had it. It became a massive fight in which she said, we are completely done for good. No take backs. This is it. The fight escalated and Lana went upstairs to her room, trying to get away from him.

• 47:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, what happened next has a few different versions, but it is agreed that Stompanato followed her into her bedroom where the fight continued. Her daughter Cheryl was also in the house. Just a few minutes later, Johnny Stompanato was dead. But before we talk about how that may or may not have happened, let's talk about what Lana did do right after, or what we know at least. Four calls went out from her house. We believe the first to her mother, the second to her personal doctor, John McDonald, the third to Steve Crane, though I believe this call was made by Cheryl, and finally to an attorney named Jerry Geisler, who had quite the history of defending Hollywood actors on trial, including Errol Flynn and Charlie Chaplin. Geisler arrived on the scene and called up a P I named Fred Otash.

• 47:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Meanwhile, Lana's personal doctor, John McDonald, declared Stompanato dead. Now, two hours after the incident had happened, police officers arrived on the scene. And when they did, they found a couple of odd things. One, there was almost no blood on the rug where the body lay. His body also looked like it may have been moved. The bathroom walls were damp, as though they may have been scrubbed, and there were no identifiable fingerprints on the knife. So let's talk about what is said to have happened in those two hours. The leading version of events, supported by both Lana Turner's memoir and Cheryl Crane's memoir, as well as their testimony, both on the scene and later during the coroner's inquest, is Cheryl, Turner's 14 year old daughter, had heard the fight getting worse

• 48:32Lizzie Bassett?

  and became genuinely afraid that Stompanato might hurt or kill her mother, that she heard a direct threat. She ran to the kitchen, got a knife, ran upstairs. According to Cheryl's memoir, quote, "The door flew open. Mother stood there, her hand on the knob. He was coming at her from behind, his arm raised to strike. I took a step forward and lifted the weapon. He ran on the blade. It went in. For three ghastly heartbeats, our bodies fused. He looked straight at me, unblinking, and said, my God, Cheryl, what have you done?" According to Lana's memoir, quote, "What she saw was me sitting on the pink marble counter and John coming toward me, his arm upraised with something in his hand. She didn't grasp the fact that he was carrying clothing on hangers over his shoulder, just that upraised, threatening hand and what appeared to be some kind of weapon.

• 49:16Lizzie Bassett?

  And he was right in front of the door, his body unprotected. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cheryl make a sudden movement. Her right arm had shot out and caught John in the stomach. I thought she'd punched him. There was a strange little moment locked in time as each stood looking at the other." So when police arrived, Cheryl was booked and held on suspicion of attempted murder. And by the next day, the news hit the stands and it was huge. Lana spent the next day talking to police and lawyers. Cheryl was taken to juvenile hall. Mickey Cohen, who identified the body, told a reporter, quote, "Johnny's been around for a long time, but if what they tell me is true, he made no effort to dodge the knife. It just doesn't gel with me. When I heard how Johnny was killed, cold chills went through me. It's a fantastic way for a man like Stompanato to die."

• 50:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Cohen also slipped Lana Turner's love letters to Stompanato to the press, which ran all over the front page the day after the murder. It should be noted that these letters were noted missing from Stompanato's apartment by a maid, and the place had been broken into. Mr. Cohen, of course, denied anything to do with that.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 50:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, he said Stompanato had given him the letters, you know, before somehow, and that he was only releasing them to show how in love the two of them were. But it's like, no, that's you were doing everything you could to obviously make her look terrible. It didn't work, by the way.

• 50:32Speaker 02

  That's great, because this is a classic tactic to paint, oh, because the victim in the domestic abuse situation sometimes said they loved her abuser.

• 50:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  And this is also why, at least in my case, why women don't come forward. One of the many reasons why, because it's like, well, I always took him back. I wrote him love letters. I professed my love to him. If he was so bad, why would I do that?

• 51:03Lizzie Bassett?

  And honestly, I've been saying over the course of this episode, like, you know, she was taking him back. I'm doing that, I think, subconsciously, because I know we will get comments of people saying, like, you are so on her side of this. You know, she was also into him. They were together. And so I'm like, well, you know, I probably should have mentioned that. But it's like, yes, she did. But to your point, this was obviously a vicious cycle. There is zero question that he was abusing her physically and emotionally. Like, we know that. That is a fact.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  Right. And it's like, thankfully nowadays, we have so much more knowledge about what abusive relationships look like and how they function and how victims sometimes react. We have a better understanding of like, there are no perfect victims, and it doesn't make the abuse any less. But there still is people out there, unfortunately, who will blame the victim and say, well, why did you go back to him? Why did you go back to him? Or why did you say, it's, you know, you said you loved him?

• 52:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. And that's totally what he was trying to do here. It's kind of a miracle it didn't quite work the way that he wanted it to.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  I'm shocked it didn't work back then. And so that is good.

• 52:13Lizzie Bassett?

  It is. I mean, it ends up turning on her eventually. But the initial response to this, I think, actually was not as negative towards her. But this is also, like, to your point, it's exactly why she didn't report a lot of this stuff, is because she didn't want the PR that inevitably would have come her way, and as we will see, does come her way eventually.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  Right.

• 52:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Lana hid out away from the press until the coroner's inquest, which was set for a week after the stabbing took place. Cheryl stayed in Juvenile Hall while it was being decided if she would stand trial for murder. But they did know she would not face the death penalty, which California did and does have, even though executions are currently paused, because she was only 14 years old. Now, could either of you explain what a coroner's inquest is? Because I actually didn't fully understand this.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  Yes. They have like a separate inquiry with the coroner, the medical examination. They explain the cause of death, the manner, what happened.

• 53:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. So it is, I believe it takes place when there is question around what exactly happened in terms of the death and like whether it, it's kind of in cases like this where it's very uncertain as to like what actually happened. It's sort of a-

• 53:21Speaker 02

  Is it a homicide? Is it self-defense?

• 53:24Speaker 03

  Right. Not everything gets an inquest like that.

• 53:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Right. And also, not everything goes to trial. So like, part of what they're trying to decide here is like, does this go to trial? I believe a coroner's inquest is a public fact-finding legal inquiry. It's to determine how someone died and when.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  And whether or not that merits a criminal case.

• 53:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly. Not every state has these, I don't think, but California does. And they do sometimes have juries, as this one did. The coroner's inquest was a total media circus with everyone trying to catch a glimpse of Lana Turner. Cheryl was excused from testifying. She did submit a statement, which was read out. That's because she's a minor. Lana, however, testified for over an hour. You can see pictures of her on the stand. She's obviously very upset. Her testimony matched her daughter's statement. It also matched the statements that they gave at the time of the crime. She wrote in her 1982 memoir, quote, "It was a humiliating ordeal to explain on the witness stand what I barely understood myself, to confess before the cameras that strange helplessness that bound me to John for so long."

• 54:26Lizzie Bassett?

  But she did, she did it. Like, I, I do have to say, I respect Lana Turner for the way that she got up there and really put it all out.

• 54:35Speaker 02

  It's very brave.

• 54:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  I can't imagine being a victim of abuse on a witness stand and having the defense attorney tear you apart to shreds.

• 54:46Lizzie Bassett?

  The thing is, it's, it's her daughter. And I think that, at the end of the day, she did, at this point at least, put her daughter over everything else, even though obviously there were situations earlier where she didn't handle that well, like in terms of not reporting Lex Barker. But-

• 55:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 55:02Lizzie Bassett?

  She does what she can here.

• 55:03Speaker 03

  Right.

• 55:04Lizzie Bassett?

  After only 25 minutes, the jury returned and did declare it justifiable homicide.

• 55:09Speaker 02

  It was.

• 55:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 55:10Speaker 02

  He had it coming, just like the song says.

• 55:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. But, I mean, also, like, if what they're saying is true, then he was threatening her mother, and he was, he was scary. And like-

• 55:22Speaker 02

  He could have killed her.

• 55:24Lizzie Bassett?

  100%. He probably would have killed her. I mean, that's-

• 55:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Maybe not in that moment, but anyway.

• 55:29Speaker 02

  He would have eventually.

• 55:31Lizzie Bassett?

  At some point.

• 55:32Speaker 02

  Like statistically-

• 55:34Lizzie Bassett?

  I believe that as well.

• 55:35Speaker 02

  He would have eventually. So the daughter was protecting someone from being killed.

• 55:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Now, for Lana and Cheryl, this was hardly the end of the ordeal, because not everyone bought that this was so cut and dry, especially not a journalist named Casey Sherman, who wrote a book about it titled A Murder in Hollywood. And he proposed that it was not Cheryl, but Lana, who had murdered Stompanato. And he was hardly alone.

• 56:00Speaker 02

  Who cares?

• 56:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, I guess because they're, they're saying there was a bit of a switch them up.

• 56:05Speaker 02

  Right. I understand that, oh, they're scheming and stuff. But I would just be like, dude, who fucking cares at this point?

• 56:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, Stompanato's mob contacts cared. They said they had a hard time believing that their sort of ultimate tough guy had been taken down by a 14-year-old girl.

• 56:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:20Lizzie Bassett?

  His brother also demanded a full investigation, including a lie detector test for Lana. I don't believe they ever did that. Also, rumors swirled throughout Hollywood that maybe Lana had done it, and she'd done it because she discovered Stompanato had been abusing Cheryl. Or even worse, she'd done it because she was jealous of Cheryl's supposed relationship with Stompanato.

• 56:38Speaker 02

  Come on.

• 56:39Lizzie Bassett?

  It's all so gross. And I believe eventually Fred Otash, the P.I., who was on the scene, made some very salacious comments, claiming that he may have helped cover up the murder and move the body and the knife afterwards. And Lana did commit it. Now, I'm not saying there aren't some strange inconsistencies about the crime scene and what they found. I don't know. We'll, we'll get to what we all think in a minute, but- According to Esther Williams, a champion swimmer, who of course became one of MGM's biggest stars, she had a dressing room next to Lana Turner. She said, quote, "We all heard the different versions of the murder. It was the number one topic of conversation in 1958. No one will ever know the entire truth. The bottom line is, there have always been cover-ups here, because Hollywood protects its own." But Casey Sherman's theory was at least not one of the more salacious one.

• 57:22Lizzie Bassett?

  He did theorize that Lana had killed Stompanato in self-defense, and in order to protect her family, specifically her mother and her daughter. He goes on to suggest that that fourth phone call to Jerry Geisler is the critical one, that he could have advised her that she may face the death penalty if convicted of murder, and that the prosecutor would certainly look at all their previous fights as motivation for premeditation. So perhaps Geisler rallied Cheryl, Lana, and Mildred, and I guess in this scenario, also Lana's personal doctor, because they were all there, and devised an airtight plan that Cheryl would take the blame, because they knew she would not face the death penalty and would almost certainly get off for justifiable homicide.

• 57:58Speaker 02

  I don't believe this at all, because I don't believe for a second that Lana Turner would make her daughter take the fall for something like this.

• 58:06Lizzie Bassett?

  That's the thing.

• 58:08Speaker 02

  I just, there's no world where she would do that.

• 58:11Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree with you. Cheryl has, of course, vehemently denied this. She told CBS's 48 Hours, quote, "What mother would do this to her child, to make her child live through her life, knowing that she's killed somebody and have to live with it? Who would do that? Not my mother, not the woman I know." I agree. There's no way. There's no way. Especially because it's not a guarantee that she would get off or that this wouldn't go to trial. I don't believe that she would do that.

• 58:36Speaker 02

  To put your kid through a trial for a crime you know that you committed?

• 58:41Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 58:41Speaker 02

  There's no way. She was not a bad mother.

• 58:46Speaker 02

  I mean, she was not a bad mother. I mean, emotionally, she's not like she does have an immense amount of love for her daughter.

• 58:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, I agree with you.

• 58:55Speaker 02

  Like she did Lana Turner make a lot of bad choices? Absolutely. She made a lot of bad choices.

• 59:01Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't think this is one of them.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  But I just knowing what we know about her relationship with Cheryl, I don't think that that would happen.

• 59:09Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree with you. I think it's completely unbelievable.

• 59:11Speaker 03

  I'd buy it more if they said Lana's mother did it.

• 59:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 59:15Speaker 03

  To get her off. That would be a more believable, but I guess they couldn't. I think part of the problem is, and I guess Esther Williams kind of touches on this, there clearly was a commiseration between the fixers and the studios and whatever, the doctors and lawyers making a plan of what they were going to say. And I think that's led to a lot of people thinking something bigger happened than maybe what actually happened.

• 59:38Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm with you. I think Cheryl did it. And one of the big reasons that I think that is the case is that third phone call to Steve Crane. The fact that she called her dad immediately and also that he showed up immediately because he came, not just to whisk her away, but to find out what was going on. That says to me that she was likely involved, especially because he was in a custody battle with Lana Turner at the time. They were not on good terms. And I don't know, like if Lana Turner did it and then she like comes up with a plan and goes to get her daughter and is starting to fill her daughter in and like, here's what we have to do. That doesn't make sense to me that your daughter runs out of the room and calls her dad. Like I

• 1:00:19Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:00:19Lizzie Bassett?

  This is a knee jerk response.

• 1:00:21Speaker 02

  Also, just the murder itself. It makes sense that Johnny Stompanato would have been caught off guard by

• 1:00:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Right, it's weird.

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  14 year old daughter. Like he would have been on the defensive and possibly able to dodge a knife if Lana Turner was holding a knife because they were already fighting.

• 1:00:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  But it just makes sense to me, logistically, like if she comes up and surprises him.

• 1:00:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Right. I'm not even going to speculate. It's possible that it happened slightly differently than the way that they told the story, given the fact that, you know, it did seem like his body may have been moved, et cetera. That's fine. I understand that, but I think she did it. I think she did it because she was afraid he was going to kill her mom.

• 1:01:01Speaker 03

  And I support her. Yeah.

• 1:01:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Following Stompanato's death, the press really, at this point, started to turn on Lana. The LA Times ran a piece saying Cheryl isn't the juvenile delinquent Lana is. Steve Crane and Lana Turner were, as I said, involved in a fierce custody battle. Cheryl was temporarily handed over to Mildred's care during this time. Stompanato's ex-wife, Sarah, the first one, filed a wrongful death suit against Lana Turner and Stephen Crane, seeking over $750,000 in damages. And according to CBS's 48 Hours, Eric Root, Lana's hairdresser, many years later, drunkenly told a friend that Lana had told him she'd killed Stompanato. Quote, "If I die before you, I want you to tell the world." Cheryl pushed back and said, "You're just milking your ties to Lana for attention."

• 1:01:46Lizzie Bassett?

  And to push book sales, if someone's selling a book, let's not believe what they're spilling at that point. The scandal would of course follow them for the rest of their lives. Cheryl struggled massively with what she and Lana referred to as, quote, "the paragraph", AKA the paragraph in every single article about either of them that always referenced the Stompanato death. She battled depression, drug and alcohol abuse, and survived two suicide attempts. But thankfully, things did start to turn around for Cheryl when she began working for her father at his hugely popular restaurant, The Luau. She would eventually become VP of his hospitality company. She did also rebuild her relationship with Lana Turner, which had become quite fractured, understandably, after this. The two became close friends again by the early 80s and remained so until Turner's death.

• 1:02:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Cheryl was with her when Lana died. Cheryl came out as a lesbian, actually, I believe, when she was quite young, a teenager, which both Lana Turner and Stephen Crane reportedly were very accepting of, which was quite unusual. She's been with her longtime partner and wife, Josh Leroy, for many, many years.

• 1:02:49Lizzie Bassett?

  And when Lana Turner died in 1995 of throat cancer at age 75, every obituary did indeed contain the paragraph. But the LA Times noted that, interestingly, the unpleasant publicity did not affect Ms. Turner's career. That's true. She went on to have some of her biggest roles after this. And the obituary ends with a quote from Lana Turner, and so will we. She said, quote, "I would like to think that in some small way I have helped to preserve the glamour and beauty and mystery of the movie industry."

• 1:03:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, maybe not in the ways that you had hoped, but, but yes, you did. So we'll end it there. Any final thoughts on this?

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  Great retelling of the story. Obviously, like we mentioned up top, we didn't use to do as deep of dives in our earlier episodes. So it was really interesting to hear about Lana's upbringing. It really definitely helped put into context what her life looked like as an adult.

• 1:03:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, why she keeps falling for these guys.

• 1:03:46Speaker 02

  And her choices and, and her money issues. And so that was interesting. I still, my opinions about this case haven't changed. I still think it was justified. He was, he was going to kill her mother.

• 1:04:01Speaker 03

  I think it's an interesting look at it, the way crime sort of affects everyone who's sort of, you know, looking at it from the outside. And it still happens today where it's like, you almost want it to be something bigger than it was. Kind of, I'm thinking of like the Lindsay Clancy, like a lot of the online sleuths right now. They don't want it to be the basic story of what happened, which is like an everyday tragedy. They want it to be a conspiracy. And it's like, it's already so tragic. Like we don't really need to make it worse than it is. But it's like this human nature aspect of it that just wants it to be something else. And I think that's kind of an early case that sort of, you know, is still happening today

• 1:04:43Speaker 03

  in these crime cases that kind of take over the public consciousness.

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  It's kind of disturbing.

• 1:04:49Speaker 03

  It is disturbing.

• 1:04:50Speaker 02

  You're right. And Lindsay Clancy, that case is a perfect analogy of like an example of what's happening right now. I mean, there's a ton of conspiracy around that case. And like you said, it's like, we see this tendency, like we see it a lot because we're privy to everybody's opinions now because of social media where it's like, no, it's not always. Sometimes it's Occam's razor. Like it's sometimes it's just the thing. And the thing is upsetting enough and tragic enough. There doesn't have to be some big conspiracy. Like that's just what happened.

• 1:05:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  And we have, we've definitely done quite a few cases where the, the crimes ended up having a lot of conspiracy around them. And we've concluded that like, no, what happened is what happened.

• 1:05:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's like with Marilyn Monroe. Unfortunately, I, I think what happened is what happened and it's sad. And it's not to say that there weren't people who were culpable, but

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  I don't either.

• 1:05:46Lizzie Bassett?

  there was a CIA cover up of her death. No.

• 1:05:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I think what I said earlier about the studios always meddling no matter what, creates this illusion that maybe something else is being covered up, when it really was just their MO for any case involving a celebrity to come in and kind of make it a little tidier than it was, and maybe just planning out what everyone was going to say.

• 1:06:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:06:08Speaker 03

  Even when it's a truthful statement, they probably wanted everyone to be on the same page because as we all know, in a traumatic situation, you might not remember things exactly the same way.

• 1:06:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:06:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:19Lizzie Bassett?

  In fact, you usually don't. Yeah.

• 1:06:22Lizzie Bassett?

  All right. Well, thank you both so much for joining me for today's episode. Where can listeners find you?

• 1:06:29Speaker 02

  You can find us anywhere. You listen to podcasts, Hollywood Crime Scene. And you can also find us on tour currently. We're going to be in Austin and Atlanta next. And then after that, Philly and New York. So you can find the link to all those dates in our Instagram bio if you want to see us live.

• 1:06:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it.

• 1:06:54Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  Thanks for having us.

• 1:06:57Speaker 06

  What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom Podcast, presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Post-production and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched by Laura Woods and edited by H. Conley.