Random Famous Deaths That Were Never Investigated (14 items)

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  (#3) Paul Walker

  • Dec. at 40 (1973-2013)

  Walker's death in a one-car crash in 2013 was immediately determined to be an accident caused by out of control speeding, with no drugs or alcohol involved. But as with many other celebrity deaths, a conspiracy theory that Walker was murdered soon arose - an act related to aid money meant to go to the Philippines.

  This theory wasn't taken seriously by police and was never investigated.
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  (#8) Albert Dekker

  • Dec. at 62 (1905-1968)

  A character actor with over 70 film appearances, Albert Dekker also served a term in the California State Assembly and was blacklisted for a time due to his denunciation of Joe McCarthy. By 1968, his career was on the decline, and after being missing for a few days, he was found dead in his LA apartment by his fiancée.

  Dekker was discovered naked, kneeling in his bathtub, bound by chains and leather thongs, with a noose tightly wrapped around his neck and looped around the curtain rod. He was also blindfolded with a scarf, handcuffed, had a ball gag in his mouth, and hypodermic needles sticking out of each arm. To add insult to the death, his body was defiled by someone who wrote homophobic slurs on it with lipstick, and camera equipment was missing.

  Despite the fact that many of these actions would have been impossible to perform alone, Dekker's death was ruled a suicide - a conclusion so absurd that both the press and the coroner rejected it. Due to the sordid, possibly sexual nature of the crime, no further investigation was done, and it was written off as an accidental death from auto-erotic asphyxiation.
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  (#7) Bobby Fuller

  • Dec. at 23 (1942-1966)

  In 1966, rocker Bobby Fuller was riding high from the success of his first Top 10 hit, "I Fought the Law." It would also be his last, as he was found dead in a car in LA on July 18 of that year. A cursory examination was done and concluded Fuller had killed himself by pouring gasoline on himself and sitting in a hot, sealed car. But the autopsy also showed signs that Fuller was beaten, and the boxes for both "accident" and "suicide" were checked on his intake form.

  While some theories have put forth that Fuller was killed by the mob, Charles Manson, or the LAPD, a 2015 book put the blame on a much more plausible idea: LA's longtime police chief William Parker had died a few days earlier, and in the chaos that followed, a minor rock musician's death simply wasn't given the thorough investigation it merited. The case has never been reopened and likely never will.
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  (#10) William Desmond Taylor

  • Dec. at 49 (1872-1922)

  Irish-born director and actor William Desmond Taylor made dozens of films in the nascent Hollywood film industry, gaining a reputation as one of the best and most prolific. But he was found shot dead in his Hollywood bungalow in 1922.

  It took the body being rolled over to reveal a bullet hole in his back. Key evidence was either lost or stolen. With little to go on, the sensationalist press and the LAPD spewed a dozen names out as suspects, fingering spurned actors, film executives, a cult, and mob hitmen.

  After 20 years, the DA of the time ordered the case be filed away and the files then vanished. Finally, in 1964, a bit actor confessed on her deathbed that she shot and killed Taylor. The confession was followed by a string of gibberish, and it's likely she was suffering from dementia.

  The case was never solved, and was one of many deaths and scandals that nearly brought down the film industry in the '20s.
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  (#5) Leslie Howard

  • Dec. at 50 (1893-1943)

  Best known for playing Ashley in Gone with the Wind, English actor Howard was a two-time Academy Award nominee for Best Actor. In 1943, Howard was on a flight from Lisbon, Portugal, back to the UK that was shot down by a flight of German bombers over the Bay of Biscay.

  While the flight was a known civilian plane flying over undisputed water, the German planes went out of their normal operating path to shoot it down - leading to theories that Howard was targeted as a high-profile passenger whose death would demoralize England. Another theory held that German intelligence believed Winston Churchill himself was on the flight because Howard's manager was with Howard and the two men looked similar. Other theories state that British intelligence cracked a German plan to shoot down Howard's plane thinking it was Churchill's and allowed the flight to go ahead for fear the Germans would discover their codes had been broken.

  With the war raging, it was impossible to conduct a thorough investigation of the attack. As Foreign Office files related to Howard's death are still classified, it's fallen to journalists to try to piece together what happened.
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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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