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

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  (#1) Donald "Shorty" Shea

  Donald "Shorty" Shea was an occasional stunt performer and full-time ranch hand on Spahn Ranch, the home of the Manson family. According to most accounts, Shea never got along with the group and especially despised Charles Manson. After the Manson Family was taken in on charges related to auto theft on August 16, 1969, Manson believed it was Shea who tipped off the police. 

  After they were released, Manson and some of the members of the Family took Shea for a drive where they took his life, allegedly cutting his body into multiple pieces. Nearly a decade later, a Manson Family member drew a map for the police to Shea's remains. A portion of those remains is now encased in a casket in the Artifact Museum of Dearly Departed Tours. 
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  (#2) Sharon Tate

  • Actor

  No macabre trip through Los Angeles would be complete without a visit to the site of Sharon Tate's former home on Cielo Drive. The house - or rather the place where it once stood - where Tate and her friends met an untimely end at the hands of Tex Watson and members of the Manson Family is one of the many harrowing stops on the Helter Skelter Tour. 

  The tour is guided by Manson aficionados who know the case and its surrounding story well.
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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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  (#4) Ken Weatherwax

  When Ken Weatherwax, the former child actor who portrayed Pugsley Addams in the ABC television series The Addams Family passed in 2014, he was working as a grip and set builder. Because there were no royalties to be made from his time on the classic gothic sitcom, his family didn't have the money to pay for a memorial service. 

  Scott Michaels, the owner of Dearly Departed Tours, launched a successful crowdfunding campaign to help the Weatherwax family pay for funeral expenses. Michaels told LA Weekly that the family was "overwhelmed" by the support they received, which culminated in Michaels hosting a Halloween memorial service at Valhalla Cemetery in North Hollywood. The museum was given Weatherwax's remains as a gift. 
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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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  (#6) Black Dahlia

  • Film subject

  Elizabeth Short, better known as the Black Dahlia, stars in one of the most fascinating stories of the 20th century. Short moved to Los Angeles in 1943 with dreams of becoming a star. She mostly worked odd modeling jobs, and only achieved worldwide fame following her bizarre passing.

  After moving to Miami, then San Diego, Short returned to Los Angeles, where she stayed at the Biltmore Hotel for a few days in January 1947 before going missing on January 8, 1947. She was found a week later in an empty lot, severed at the waist. 

  The Black Dahlia Mystery Tour takes tourists across Los Angeles to the haunts where Short hung out and the lot where she was found. They even offer some theories on who could have committed the horrific act.
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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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  (#8) Charles Manson

  • Band/Musician

  The Manson Family is a grim part of the DNA of Los Angeles, and the Dearly Departed Museum has a collection of strange and harrowing ephemera from the cult that ended the free love era. Not only do they have their Helter Skelter Tour, but they also have an entire collection of Manson-related items. 

  Some of the more significant pieces in the Manson collection are a funeral pamphlet and flower from the open casket service prior to Charles Manson's cremation. The pamphlet features two quotes from the Bible, John 15:13 and Philippians 4:13. Dearly Departed founder Scott Michaels hasn't publicly stated who donated the pamphlet and flower.  
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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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  (#10) Michu Meszaros

  You may not recognize Mihaly Meszaros's name, but it's likely that you've seen his work. He appeared in the first season of the '80s sitcom ALF in costume as the furry cat-eating alien, and he was a member of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus as the former smallest man in the world, standing at 2'9". 

  His remains were installed within the Dearly Departed museum in October 2018 along with a key to the city of Hawthrone, where Meszaros lived for a number of years. The museum also has a replica of the "Michu Lane" street sign that was awarded to him.
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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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  (#12) The Viper Room

  This stop on the Tragical History Tour takes curious onlookers to the Viper Room, the club where River Phoenix spent his final moments. Tourists can even see the pay phone where Joaquin Phoenix called 911 on October 31, 1993.

  Phoenix passed from an overdose shortly after stopping by the club. His girlfriend, Samantha Mathis, says they were only stopping by to say hello to some people but ended up sticking around because some of Phoenix's friends wanted him to sit in with their band. 
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  (#13) Mae West

  • Actor

  On June 25, 2016, the Dearly Departed Museum welcomed Mae West - or rather her dentures. West's false teeth are kept in their own glass case atop a purple velvet pedestal. Accompanying the teeth is a dental X-ray belonging to the star. 

  It's not clear how the museum came to possess West's false teeth, but they're a fascinating addition to the rest of their items, especially considering how the actor characterized her own appearance. West once tapped her teeth and told Angelica Huston:

  See - they’re mine… I have no face lifts… it’s all mine. There’s no change in me. I wrote this book about it... I eat the right foods, exercise, take care of myself.
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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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  (#15) Divine

  • Actor

  Before filming a guest spot on Married with Children on May 7, 1988, Divine - drag queen extraordinaire and creative partner to John Waters - passed in his sleep from an enlarged heart in Room 261 of the Regency Hotel in Los Angeles, CA. The door stayed in the hotel for nearly another two decades until the building was demolished. 

  If you see the door in person, you'll see a plaque with some information about Divine's passing and the date of the Regency's demise - December 2007. Lisa Burks, Walter Acuna, and Brian Eilander are thanked on the door’s plaque, though it’s unclear if they handed over the door or simply facilitated the door’s movement from hotel to showroom. 

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