65 years ago, on the night of April 4, 1958, a crime shocked the Beverly Hills police and soon made the pages of every newspaper in the world because it involved one of the biggest stars in Hollywood history: Lana Tuner. The actress had moved into the house on North Bedford Drive a few weeks before. On the second floor of the house, there was the body of her boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato. He was stabbed and died almost instantly. The murder would already generate immediate gossip, but the question was “who” killed him: none other than Lana’s daughter, Cheryl Crane, a girl just 14 years old.

Lana was known as a ‘sex symbol’ since her teenage years when she made her film debut. Among her more recent successes in the late 1950s, she starred in films where she played the dissatisfied murderous wife in The Postman Always Rings Twice and was nominated for an Oscar for best actress for her role as the repressed store owner in Peyton Place. But for many, her greatest role in life was marked by that tragic April night.

Lana’s relationship with Johnny Stompanato was marked by lies, blackmail, and violence. The boyfriend was associated with mobster Mickey Cohen, for whom he was a ‘security guard’. He entered the actress’ life posing as a fan and businessman and, according to her, the truth only came out “too late”, when she was already in love. From then on, she tried to move away, but she always took him back. At some point, he began to physically abuse her, sometimes in front of her daughter, Cheryl. However, something was definitive Easter in 1958.

There were only three people in the house and the public did not believe that a teenage girl could have the strength to stab a man who was twice her size. Therefore, the theory immediately began to circulate that Lana was using her underage daughter to escape justice, a version that just doesn’t irritate Cheryl more than the one that the motivation would have been jealousy between the girl and her boyfriend. In Lana and Cheryl’s versions, everything was simpler, which is why it was so tragic.

Somehow, the actress found herself more emboldened to confront Stompanato, who was hyper-possessive with frequent bouts of violent rage, threatening to release intimate photos of the two (which Lana claims were taken with her unconscious) and even cutting her face with a razor. This threat, according to her biography, was the last straw to break up with him. That night, Lana expected the worst and warned her daughter, “I’m breaking up with him tonight, honey. It’s going to be a difficult night. Are you prepared for this?” And it was really violent, with him cursing her, shaking her, and threatening her again with cuts and beatings. More so, she said she would kill her, as well as Cheryl and her grandmother, Mildred. The argument was happening in the bedroom, but the girl heard everything from the first floor, apprehensive about how the confrontation would end. At some point, she grabbed a knife from the kitchen and went up to her mother’s bedroom door.


According to Lana’s account, Stompanato slowly came to terms with the fact that the case was over and was gathering his things to leave. She would have heard her daughter outside and asked her to go to her room. And then everything went quickly. The actress went to the door, with her boyfriend behind her. Cheryl entered. “I really thought she hit him in the stomach. They came together and separated. I never saw a blade,” she testified. Shocked, he would have just asked “What did you do”? before falling dead to the ground.

Conspiracy fans use the following steps as proof of Lana’s guilt: Cheryl called her father, Stephen Crane, and the actress called a super-criminal lawyer. When the police arrived, the two were already ‘protected’. The trial stopped the cinema capital and even had the testimony of mobster Mickey Cohen, who planted the gossip that Cheryl killed him for another reason: “The girl was in love with him. There was jealousy between her and her mother. He was a gentleman. That’s more than the rest of you Hollywood is,” he declared.

The 12-member jury quickly reached a unanimous verdict of justifiable homicide, but from then on, Lana and Cheryl’s lives never surpassed the crime. Books like Stranger in the Mirror, by Sidney Sheldon, alluding to the incident, insinuated what many still believe to be true: It was Lana who stabbed Stompanato and Cheryl took the blame. There was no use in the court case or Lana or Cheryl’s own biographies to put an end to the theory. What also didn’t help was the fact that Cheryl revealed that she experienced sexual abuse both by her mother’s ex-husband, actor Lex Baxter, better known as Tarzan on TV, and by Stompanato.

Lana’s image, after the crime, never regained its previous image, as alongside Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, she was marked by the version of the irascible diva, hedonistic if without moral sensitivity”, exposing the daughter to situations of abuse and failing to provide help. Unsurprisingly, Cheryl Crane made two suicide attempts, rebelled, and had drug and drinking problems. Homosexual, something her mother had difficulty accepting, Cheryl found peace with her partner to this day, former model Joyce LeRoy, now Josh LeRoy.

Lana Turner passed away in 1995, due to throat cancer. Of all the films she participated in, it was precisely the personal drama that was the most memorable fact of her career in Hollywood. Cheryl’s book, Detour, was even discussed as the basis for a film with actresses such as Madonna, Melissa Gilbert, or Justine Bateman considered to play her with Kathleen Turner, Glenn Close, Dyan Cannon, and Candice Bergen considered to play Lana. It never got off the ground. But soon that will change.

In October 2023, screenwriter Terence Winter, considered a master of the gangster genre and author of Boardwalk Empire, teamed up with producer Rachel Winter (Dallas Buyers Club) to adapt A Murder in Hollywood: The Untold Story of Tinseltown’s Most Shocking Crime for the movie theater. The book written by Casey Sherman depicts “the deadly love affair between screen legend Lana Turner and her gangster boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato” and is supposed to reach the stores in February 2024. In other words, we will talk a lot more about the “paragraph” that Cheryl has complained about for 65 years. Yes, she knows that whenever they talk about her or her mother, there is mention of the crime. How to avoid it?

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