Murders, Conspiracies and Unsolved Deaths There have been a lot of mysterious deaths of famous people. Some have been investigated tirelessly and yet no solution to what happened was ever found. Take the case of Edgar Allan Poe. He died on October 7, 1849. Poe died on his way to Philadelphia for an editing job. He had gone to a doctor the week before and the doctor advised him not to travel. Poe took a cane sword with him on his trip. Some say he took it by mistake and it belonged to the doctor he had seen. Four days before his trip he was found at a voting location. The interesting part of this is it was known as a place where people were drugged and taken there to vote. His obituary was written by an enemy of his who wouldn’t even put his real name to it. After Poe died and was laid out, people were taking pieces of his hair as souvenirs. He was originally buried in an unmarked grave. A medium in the 1860s wrote poetry stating he was written by Poe during contacts with his spirit. One of the most mysterious deaths of this century was the death of Marilyn Monroe. Just about everyone knows she was having an affair with President John Kennedy and later with his brother Robert Kennedy. She was said to have died of a drug overdose in 1962. The conspiracy theory is Marilyn learned too many damaging things from both Kennedys and had to be eliminated. It has been said she took an accidental overdose of pills and yet there were signs she took over 60 pills. In 1983 the case was reopened and there was an inquest. The original coroner published his memoirs and said her stomach was empty. She had a bruise on her back but it was indicated it was accidental. Another famous death or should I say disappearance of the 20th century was Jimmy Hoffa who just about everyone thinks was killed in 1975. Hoffa was the President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a labor union from 1958 to 1971. It has been said he was involved with organized crime while the head of the union and the connection continued until his death. He had been convicted of jury tampering, attempted bribery and fraud in 1964. In 1967 he was imprisoned and sentenced to 13 years. In 1971 he resigned as the union president and was pardoned by President Richard Nixon. After he vanished in 1975 he wasn’t declared legally dead until 1982. Robert Kennedy was determined to convict Hoffa. The theory is the mob decided Hoffa was a danger to them and eliminated him. The joke at the time was they threw him into one of the hamburger machines at McDonalds. Bob Crane was a famous television star in the 1960s. He stared in a successful comedy named Hogan’s Heroes. He began his career as a radio personality on both the east coast and west coast of the United States. When Hogan’s Heroes ended Crane was not happy with the roles being offered to him so he began to appear at dinner theatres, some appearances at different events and occasional parts in movies. He finally got a new show on NBC called The Bob Crane Show. It was cancelled after only 13 episodes. He was in a play in 1978 called Beginner’s Luck when he was found in his room beaten to death. Crane had been beaten with some sort of blunt weapon. No one was ever sure what it was or who did the crime. The best guess by investigators was Crane had been beaten to death with a camera tripod. Since Crane had been murdered in Scottsdale, the small police department had no homicide division. There was no evidence of forced entry and few clues. Nothing of value was taken. A man named John Henry Carpenter had been a suspect, but the County Attorney declined to charge him even though it was said several blood smears had been found which were of the type of Bob Crane’s blood. The problem was there was no DNA testing at the time so there was really no way to say for sure it was Crane’s blood. Crane had met Carpenter through a mutual friend Richard Dawson who can be seen on old reruns of game shows on the Game Show Channel. Brandon Lee was the son of the famous Bruce Lee who was considered by many to be the greatest martial artist who ever lived. He had left college to become an actor. He appeared in Kung Fu: The Movie which appeared on television. He went on to make three action movies, Laser Mission, Showdown in Little Tokyo and Rapid Fire. He was then offered what is considered his biggest film break, a film called The Crow, which was based on the comic books by James O’Barr. While shooting the movie, perhaps shooting is the wrong word to use in this case, he was shot by an actor who thought he was using a prop gun from the prop department. His father Bruce Lee had died from a brain edema which was said to have been a reaction to pain medication. Many people at the time thought Bruce Lee had been killed by the Chinese mob for not giving them part of his salary. When Brandon Lee died they thought the mob did this too as revenge on Bruce Lee’s family. Tupac Shakur was famous on the music scene. He was a rapper and an actor. When people in the 1990s heard the term gangsta-rap they thought of him. He has sold over 75 million albums and he became one of the top selling artists of all times. On September 7, 1996 Tupac was at a Mike Tyson fight with a friend when he got into a brawl with a member of the Crips gang. The friend had affiliations with a rival gang known as the Bloods. Later while Tupac was in his car a man in the street fired 13 shots at the car Tupac was in with his friend. Tupac was hit 3 times and died on September 14, 1996. The gunman was never found. It is believed this was a gang rivalry. There have been a lot of people who died who may have been victims of a conspiracy or who died without knowing who killed them. Then there are those who just disappeared and may or may not have been victims of foul play. Sometimes using today’s DNA methods lets us find a murderer which could not have been found years ago, before the procedure was invented. There have even been some murders solved from before DNA testing, because we had DNA evidence and took advantage of it. |
