Random Famous Deaths That Were Never Investigated (14 items)

• 

  (#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.
• 

  (#6) George Reeves

  • Dec. at 45 (1914-1959)

  Television's original Superman, George Reeves had fallen on hard times after the show ended and was having financial and career difficulties. In 1959, after a drunken argument with friends, including his fiancée, Reeves went upstairs in his house and shot himself in the head. The death was quickly ruled a suicide, but a number of circumstantial details led to a conspiracy theory: that Reeves was murdered by one of his houseguests.

  The LAPD claimed the gun was too thickly oiled to find fingerprints, and gunshot residue testing wasn't typically done then. Beyond that, Reeves's mother refused to believe that her son killed himself, and many of the people in Reeves's orbit believed that he'd been killed by an ex-girlfriend named Toni Mannix, the wife of an MGM big shot. None of these theories were seriously investigated, and Reeves's death has officially remained a suicide.
• 

  (#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. 
• 

  (#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.
• 

  (#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.
• 

  (#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.

New Random Displays    Display All By Ranking