TCM had some movies this past weekend that I had never seen, and it was worth noting that Steve Cochran and Virginia Mayo were in two of them together. My wife and I began discussing the career of Steve Cochran and it was her opinion (or at least a fuzzy memory of hers) that he had been murdered. I suggested that it may have been Steve Brodie instead. Her reply was that she wasn’t at all familiar with Brodie so that couldn’t be the one she was thinking of.
I checked IMDB for both actors and found that Cochran had a sudden lung infection while on his boat near Guatemala. No murder. I then wanted to see if the word “murdered” appeared in the bios of other stars but ran into the problem that the search didn’t limit the murder to the star in question and that if any word in the bio (or trivia) was “murdered” the search regarded that as a hit. Same problem with “homicide.”
Other searches on Google and Yahoo! have left me dissatisfied that a comprehensive list exists as such. So I thought we might as well do one here.
A few stars/celebrities that I can think of who were murdered:
Sal Mineo
Bob Crane
John Lennon
Sharon Tate
Marvin Gaye
Tupac Shakur
Phil Hartman
Jaco Pastorius
One list I encountered included people like Jeffrey Dahmer. I don’t regard Dahmer as a celebrity, nor do I want to include politicians and leaders of countries. That would be too big a list. Mostly just entertainers and such.
Thomas Ince (possibly). He was a well-known movie director and producer in his time. The official cause of death was heart failure, but there are rumors that he was shot which have not been debunked, even by Snopes.
Thelma Todd (maybe). Her death was ruled a suicide, but there are doubts.
John Wilkes Booth. He was a successful actor, and he was shot even though the soldiers had been ordered not to.
No, not really. Some, like Aaliyah and Lisa Lopes, died in plane and car accidents. Easy-E died from AIDS complications. Big Pun and Buffy “The Human Beat Box” died of heart attacks. ODB O.D.'d.
The notoriously murdered are:
Biggie Smalls.
Tupac.
Jam Master Jay.
… and that’s about it.
There are some minor rappers who have died in shootouts:
Souljah Slim
Camoflauge
Bugz, from D-12
The perception that rappers are always being shot and killed is way, way overblown.
Øystein Aarseth
David “Stringbean” Akeman
Judith Barsi
Alan Berg
Big L (Lamont Coleman)
Marc Blitzstein
Francis Boggs
Buck Naked and the Bare Bottom Boys
Bugz
Susan Cabot
Lana Clarkson
Sam Cooke
Tara Correa-McMullen
Bob Crane
Dimebag Darrell
Dominique Dunne
Marvin Gaye
Dora Gerson
Theo van Gogh (film director)
Anna Guarini
Phil Hartman
Al Jackson
Jam Master Jay
Victor Kilian
August von Kotzebue
Vijaya Kumaratunga
Karyn Kupcinet
John Lennon
Mac Dre
Michel Velleman
Sal Mineo
Haing S. Ngor
The Notorious B.I.G.
Ramón Novarro
Felix Pappalardi
Nasrat Parsa
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Merlin Santana
Rebecca Schaeffer
Selena
Tupac Shakur
Soulja Slim
Paco Stanley
Dorothy Stratten
Igor Talkov
Sharon Tate
William Desmond Taylor
Peter Tosh
Luis Vigoreaux
Mia Zapata
Zapp (band)
That looks like an excellent summary of names already mentioned.
Anybody else?
I wouldn’t object to that idea of listing people who became “celebrities” because of or after their murders.
Cases in point would include the others in the Sharon Tate house. Jay Sebring was already a well-known hair stylist to the stars, and Abigail Folger may have been well-known, too.
