STARS DEATHS THAT ARE STILL UNSOLVED

CHRISTA HELM

Tall, blonde and gorgeous, Christa Helm could count only bit

parts on Wonder Woman and Starsky and Hutch as her high

points. But she excelled at parties and in bedrooms in the

Hollywood Hills, where she consorted with the likes of

Warren Beatty, Mick Jagger, Joe Namath, and the Shah of Iran

among others. Helm kept details of her trysts in her “sex”

diary and that is why after she was found stabbed and

bludgeoned to death one night in 1977 on a street in

West Hollywood, police suspected she had been killed

because of what she knew.

VIRGINIA RAPPE

Virginia Rappe was an American model and silent-film

actress in the early days of the twentieth century. The

circumstances of her death in 1921 became a Hollywood

scandal and were covered widely by the media at the time.

During a party on Labour Day, September 5, 1921, she was

in a hotel room with fellow silent-film actor Roscoe “Fatty”

Arbuckle in San Francisco. Rappe allegedly suffered a

trauma and died on September 9 from a ruptured bladder

and secondary peritonitis. Arbuckle was charged with her

murder. Some believed he squashed her with his weight

while raping her, others believe he raped her with a foreign

object, causing peritonitis. Unfortunately, we will probably

never know what happened that night.

JONBENET RAMSEY

JonBenet Patricia Ramsey was a six-year-old American girl who

was murdered in her home in Boulder, Colorado, in 1996. Police

found her body in the basement of the family home about

eight hours after she was reported missing. She had been struck

on the head and strangled. The case remains unsolved, even

after several grand jury hearings, and it continues to

generate public and media interest.

NATALIE WOOD

During the making of her last film Brainstorm, Wood drowned

while on a weekend boat trip to Santa Catalina Island, in

California, with her husband Robert Wagner, Brainstorm co-star

Christopher Walken, and the boat’s captain, Dennis Davern.

Many facts surrounding her drowning are unknown, because

no one admitted seeing how she entered the water. Authorities

discovered Wood’s body at 8 a.m. on November 29^th, 1981, a

mile away from the boat, and a small inflatable dinghy beached

nearby. According to Wagner, when he went to bed, Wood

was not there. The autopsy report revealed Wood had bruises

on her body and arms as well as an abrasion on her left cheek

that made many fans believe she was murdered by her

jealous husband.

JIMMY HOFFA

Jimmy Hoffa, a notorious gangster and labour union president,

had one of the most mysterious deaths of the twentieth century.

He was last seen in the parking lot of a restaurant in Bloomfield

Township, Michigan, in 1975 while waiting to meet with a local

mobster and a union leader from New Jersey to settle a feud.

However, the mobsters never showed up. Hoffa’s car was found

in the parking lot the next day, but there were no clues as to

what happened to him. He was finally declared legally dead in

1982, though his body was never recovered and

speculations as to what happened abound to this day.

BRUCE LEE

On July 20^th, 1973, Bruce had a headache and was given a

prescription for Equagesic. After taking it, he lapsed into a

coma and could not be revived. A coroner’s inquest

determined he had a severe allergic reaction to one of the

ingredients in the painkiller. This reaction caused an increase

in the cerebrospinal fluid in the brain, and he died the same

day at age thirty-two while filming Enter The Dragon. However,

many conspiracy theorists and fans were not convinced by the

explanation and claim to this day that Lee was murdered either

by the Triads (a Chinese transnational organized crime

organization based in Hong Kong), or that he died from a

Dim Mak (a “death strike”) he received from his master as

a young man, a Shaolin monk.

PRINCESS DIANA

There’s a question shadowing Diana’s death since 1997:

Did she die in a car accident while running from aggressive

paparazzi, or did the Royal Family stage the accident to

keep her from marrying Muslim billionaire Dodi Al-Fayed and

having his baby? The world will never know, unless results

of the newly opened investigation reveal interesting details

around this tragedy.

MARILYN MONROE

Marilyn Monroe was found dead on August 5^th, 1962, in the

bedroom of her Brentwood home by her psychiatrist,

Dr. Ralph Greenson. She was thirty-six. Her death was

determined to have been caused by a barbiturate overdose

and was ruled a probable suicide. However, there are many

theories that claim she may have been murdered, with many

of these involving President John F. Kennedy and his

brother Robert.