One of the most horrific crimes in the glamorous world of Hollywood took place in 1958, when the daughter of the once-established sex bomb star Lana Turner stabbed her boyfriend.
The glamor and magic of the life of the absolute blonde of American cinema was destroyed in one day, when her name was playing on the front pages for something completely different from what she was used to.
An MGM star for 18 years, Lana Turner was a big name in classic Hollywood, playing in cloth and glass later as one of the heavyweights of the American show. In a career that lasted almost fifty years, the beauty actress managed the unthinkable: to start as a pin-up girl, a blonde sex bomb of the time, and end up as a serious dramatic actress.
In the 1940s and 1950s, she was also one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood (total salaries over $ 50 million!), Giving her extra-cinematic adventures work in a number of scandalous newspapers.
Enzeni of first size, next to Clark Gable usually, she transformed into one of the first femme fatale of Hollywood, living the acting apotheosis and the artistic triumph ook a few times in her life. At the same time, her countless romances, ephemeral relationships and marriages provided her with plenty of material to be constantly in the press.
Only that all this was to be overshadowed by that incident of 1958 that drove the newspapers crazy again and made people not get tired of reading about the family tragedy.
But what happened that night at Turner's house? And why does it continue to be one of the most special stories in Hollywood, which never leaves the wells and does not grow old no matter how many years pass?
Cheryl Christina Crane was the only child of the glamorous diva, the fruit of her second marriage to the then actor and later restaurant Steve Crane. She was born in 1943, when her mother was already at the height of her fame, but her parents divorced only the following year.
The little one grew up with her mom, or rather at her mom's mansion in Los Angeles without her, since the star was constantly absent due to her filming obligations. "Famous from birth and ridiculously spoiled," Cheryl described her childhood years later.
And, as she said, she felt powerless to win the love and attention of her mom, who starred from one movie to another and changed partners like shirts. In an interview with People magazine in 1988, Crane confessed that she used to drill into Turner's closet to "inhale her perfume" so much that she missed her mom.
In the same interview revealed that every time he went to hug her, the star pushed her away so as not to spoil her meticulous appearance: "My sweet, wool", he told her, "you will spoil my lipstick".
But the little one would soon be on the front page as well, when she stabbed her mom's lover that fateful night of April 4, 1958…
They called him Johnny Stompanato and he was not just anyone. The famous Marine of World War II was transformed in the 1950s into the leader of the famous gangster Mickey Cohen and the eponymous mafia union!
Having fought in the Pacific theater, he had converted to Islam so that he could marry in 1946 his first wife, a Turkala. Returning to the US, she left her husband and child and moved to the sunny Los Angeles.
Life and state as he was, it would not take him long to invade the underworld of the city and re-emerge as Mickey's bodyguard but also bravo for his illegal intentions. By the end of the decade, the ubiquitous Stompanato had also entered into relationships with the Hollywood lifestyle.
The same Frank Sinatra had asked in 1948 the "godfather" Cohen to tell his boss to stop beating Ava Gardner! But he did not succeed, Mickey told Sinatra to return to his wife and child, as he never interfered in his husbands' love affairs.
Stompanato eventually remarried an actress, who divorced him when he was interrogated for the murder of a gangster enemy. In the early 1950s, he married a director of 20th Century Fox, as he was now dreaming of an acting career.
The marriage did not work out, they divorced two years later, he went into and out of detention several times, but was never convicted, and in 1957 he met Lana Turner, who had just divorced her fifth husband. Worse still, MGM had not renewed its contract following a series of commercial failures.
In the rough presentation and the bloody CV, the actress found the man who would help her overcome the obstacles of her life. He, in recognition of their relationship, never took out of his wrist the all-gold "identity" that she had given him as a gift and wrote "Lanita" on the back.
The gangster flirted with the actress, sending her flowers on plates, gifts with the sack, and even gold watches with her initials carved. He was already known for his heavy cortege, as he had done in a number of divas of the time, among them the Anita Ekberg, Za Za Gabor and Ava Gardner! However, Diana succeeded with Turner, whom she aroused her curiosity and they started dating.
As for the little daughter, she described him as "a second-class movie beauty, strong-willed and sweet-spoken; he spoke with short sentences to cover up poor grammar knowledge. ».
The relationship between the two lovers was passionate and stormy, often leading to Homeric quarrels and public manifestations of jealousy and anger. He was deadly jealous of her and Turner's ephemeral romance with him Sean Connery in 1957 made him pick them up, fly to England in September, invade the shooting studio and stick the pistol to Connery's temple!
Undaunted, the Scotsman disarmed him with a handle and handed him over to Scotland Yard, which eventually deported him from Great Britain. In fact, after Stompanato's death, it was circulated in the mafia circles of Los Angeles that Connery would still have something to do with his death, forcing the actor to disappear for a short time…
Returning to 14-year-old Crane, no one believed that a teenage girl could have killed a man. And yet, this is exactly what happened that night of April 4, 1958, when the little girl fatally stabbed her mother's lover inside the Beverly Hills mansion.
"I went upstairs to do some homework and my mom came and said, '' I'm going to ask John to leave. "I do not want you to come down, but if you hear us arguing, it will be for that very reason," Cheryl herself recalled the verse in a 2009 TV interview.
So she was in her room upstairs when she actually heard the couple fighting. She continued to do her homework until she at least heard her lover threaten her mom with distorting her and destroying her family, killing her, her daughter and her mother.
"I ran up the stairs and went to the kitchen. I do not know what I was looking for, but I found a knife ", he remembers things that night," I ran up again, the door opened wide and my mom was there looking at me. And John was coming over me. "I took a step out of the door and it literally fell on the knife."
Stompanato was fatally stabbed in the abdomen by a sharp object, the medical examiner said, and police found the crime weapon, a kitchen knife. "I wanted to protect my mom, I was the only one there and I had to do something," the little girl said at the time.
Crane confessed from the first moment that she was responsible for Stompanato's death, that very night, explaining that all she wanted was to save her mom from the worst. The violent lover had once again laid his hand on Turner, something that was one of the little guilty secrets of Hollywood.
Crane spent three weeks in a rehab center until the causes of the incident were clarified: "I did not lawyer, I had no one to talk about me. My mother and father were already in court for my custody. "I knew nothing," Crane said in the same television interview in 2009.
One week after the murder, Turner was called to testify about what happened that fateful night. According to the "Los Angeles Times", which had an entire report, the diva revealed her partner's violent behavior, calling him also "super-possessive". He even said that at some point he had threatened her that "I will scratch you a little to get a taste of pain".
A few days earlier, Turner had gone to their ceremony Oscar (March 26, 1958) with a candidacy for a golden statuette, but went alone. Outraged, Stompanato waited for her to return to her home, where he attacked and physically abused her.
For the moment, the diva stated that she did not manage to stop her daughter from getting involved in the quarrel: "I swear, everything happened so fast; I honestly believed that she had hit him in the stomach. This is what I remember, they came close and then they broke up. I never saw the blade. " She realized that her partner had only been hit when she saw the blood on his white shirt.
After its testimony, the 12-member pre-investigation committee unanimously concluded that the use of deadly force was justified here. Crane was released without going to court. Her custody was finally attributed to Turner, following the request of the little one.
Not immediately, of course, as Cheryl lived her own adventures. California social services initially removed her from her parents, eventually placing her in a girls' school for "psychiatric treatment" in March 1960.
Six weeks later, Cheryl and two classmates climbed the fence and broke it, but were caught and returned to school. Five weeks later, she broke it again and arrived at her grandmother's house in Beverly Hills, where she was arrested again. She left the special school in January 1961, when Turner took full custody.
Only now was she afraid for her daughter, she was afraid she might be suffering from the traumatic event, so she sent her to a Connecticut school. With the consent of her new husband.
Of course, the press loved the case. More than 100 journalists attended the trial on April 12, 1958, which took four hours to testify and 4 minutes to sit without charge.
As for the family of the unfortunate lover, he sued Turner claiming $ 750.000 in damages. Stompanato's son finally settled out of court in 1962 for $ 20.000.
A significant portion of the press spoke of Turner's testimony in court about the "representation of her life", as many held her responsible for the murder. Crane broke her silence in 1988, writing her autobiography and revealing what happened that night. Where she was hinted that Stompanato was sexually abusing her, as was her mom's fourth husband, actor Lex Barker.
However, the demons haunted Crane throughout her life, making two suicide attempts. At 76 today and openly gay, she has been married since 2014 to her sweetheart and has been working as a real estate agent for years.
Crane struggled with drugs for years, but found true love in one person model. He met them at a party Marlon Brando and have been together for life for 45 years. They now live in San Francisco.
As for her star mom, she continued her long career in Hollywood and her special love life, leaving the world in 1995, at the age of 74, with her seventh husband by her side.