Deaths that were never investigated almost always have involved mysterious circumstances, multiple theories, a lack of motive, and conspiracies. Many involve people in the entertainment industry, who died randomly of bizarre causes, or committed suicide despite having the world at their feet - and a lot of enemies.
While some of these un-investigated deaths are well-known, others have been confined to the Hollywood history books. There was the two-time Oscar nominee who was shot down during World War II, and whose records are still classified. There was also the actor who made dozens of films and was found dead of a suicide - despite being tied up and drawn all over. Yet another death not investigated was the rock star on the rise who was believed to have killed himself, except he'd been beaten up first.
Here are some deaths whose causes have never satisfactorily been investigated, or who had investigations re-opened only to find nothing new.
Famous Deaths That Were Never Investigated,
Albert Dekker
A character actor with over 70 film appearances, Dekker also served a term in the California State Assembly, and was blacklisted for a time due to his denunciation of Joe McCarthy. By 1968, his career was on the decline, and after being missing for a few days, he was found dead in his LA apartment by his fiancée.
Dekker was discovered naked, kneeling in his bathtub, bound by chains and leather thongs, with a noose tightly wrapped around his neck and looped around the curtain rod. He was also blindfolded with a scarf, handcuffed, had a ball gag in his mouth, and hypodermic needles sticking out of each arm. To add insult to the death, his body was defiled by someone who wrote homophobic slurs on it with red lipstick, and there were signs that he'd had money and camera equipment stolen.
Despite the fact that many of these actions would have been impossible to perform alone, Dekker's death was ruled a suicide - a conclusion so absurd both the press and the coroner rejected it. Due to the sordid, possibly homosexual nature of the crime, no further investigation was done, and it was written off as an accidental death from auto-erotic asphyxiation.
Bobby Fuller
In 1966, rocker Bobby Fuller was riding high from the success of his first Top 10 hit, "I Fought the Law." It would also be his last, as he was found dead in his car in LA on July 18 of that year. A cursory examination was done, and concluded Fuller had killed himself by pouring gasoline on himself and sitting in a hot, sealed car. But the autopsy also showed signs that Fuller was beaten, and the boxes for both "accident" and "suicide" were checked on his intake form.
While some theories have put forth that Fuller was killed by the mob, Charles Manson, or the LAPD, a 2015 book put the blame on a much more plausible idea: LA's longtime police chief William Parker had died a few days earlier, and in the chaos that followed, a minor rock musician's death simply wasn't given the thorough investigation it merited. The case has never been re-opened, and likely never will.
Bob Crane
The former Hogan's Heroes star died one of the strangest and most sordid deaths in Hollywood history, bludgeoned to death with an unknown implement and strangled in an apartment in Scottsdale, AZ. The local police were unprepared to handle such a high-profile murder, and were only led to the main suspect through Crane's extensive collection of homemade porn.
That suspect, electronics sales manager John Henry Carpenter, had helped Crane set up his elaborate taping system, and was the only real suspect. But the Scottsdale police couldn't build a case against him, and the crime sat cold for 12 years, until it was reopened in 1990, and Carpenter was arrested in 1992. He was acquitted and died in 1996. The case hasn't been investigated since and remains unsolved.
Brittany Murphy
Murphy died in December 2009 of what the Los Angeles County Coroner's office determined was heart failure brought on by pneumonia. A number of conspiracy theories sprouted up in the wake of her death, blaming it on everything from toxic mold to a Homeland Security hit. But four years later, a laboratory analysis requested by her father showed signs of heavy metal poisoning, and he sued the County to reopen the investigation. They never did. In June 2016, author Bryn Curt James published A Case For Murder: Brittany Murphy Files. In the wake of the book's publication, several people who worked with Murphy attested to her poor health in the weeks before her death, a refutation of James's thesis. The case remains one of the biggest mysteries in recent Hollywood history.
George Reeves
Television's original Superman, Reeves had fallen on hard times after the show ended, and was having financial and career difficulties. In 1959, after a drunken argument with friends, including his fiancée, Reeves went upstairs in his house, and shot himself in the head. The death was quickly ruled a suicide, but a number of circumstantial details led to a conspiracy theory: that Reeves was murdered by one of his houseguests.
The LAPD claimed the gun was too thickly oiled to find fingerprints, and gunshot residue testing wasn't typically done then. Beyond that, Reeves's mother refused to believe that her son killed himself, and many of the people in Reeves's orbit believed that he'd been killed by an ex-girlfriend named Toni Mannix, the wife of an MGM big shot. None of these theories were seriously investigated, and Reeves's death has officially remained a suicide.
Jimi Hendrix
The final day in the life of Jimi Hendrix was so shrouded in mystery and inconsistency that it spawned decades of alternative theories. The autopsy showed that he died of vomit inhalation due to an overdose of various drugs, but his companion the day he died in London gave numerous versions of what happened when she found him that morning, several of which directly contradicted each other. Twenty-two years after Hendrix died, a former girlfriend petitioned Scotland Yard to re-open the case.
British detectives made inquiries, but declined to open a new investigation, and the official verdict of the coroner was left open, meaning it can't be determined if the death was an accident or suicide.
Leslie Howard
Best known for playing Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind, English actor Howard was a two-time Academy Award Nominee for Best Actor. In 1943, Howard was on a flight from Lisbon, Portugal back to the UK that was shot down by a flight of German bombers over the Bay of Biscay between Spain and France.
While the flight was a known civilian plane flying over undisputed water, the German planes went out of their normal operating path to shoot it down - leading to theories that Howard was targeted as a high-profile passenger whose death would demoralize England. Another theory held that German intelligence believed Winston Churchill himself was on the flight, because Howard's manager was with Howard and the two men looked similar. Other theories state that British intelligence cracked a German plan to shoot down Howard's plane thinking it was Churchill's, and allowed the flight to go ahead, for fear the Germans would discover their codes had been broken.
With the war raging, it was impossible to conduct a thorough investigation of the attack. As Foreign Office files related to Howard's death are still classified, it's fallen to journalists to try to piece together what happened.
Paul Walker
Walker's death in a one-car crash in 2013 was immediately determined to be an accident caused by out of control speeding, with no drugs or alcohol involved. But as with many other celebrity deaths, a conspiracy theory that Walker was murdered soon arose - an act related to aid money meant to go to the Philippines. This theory wasn't taken seriously by police and was never investigated.
Tennessee Williams
The great playwright died in New York City in 1983 under circumstances so strange it took multiple examinations to figure out what happened - and even now, the sequence of events that led to his death has gaps. Williams died in August of that year, having choked on the plastic cap from a bottle of eye drops that he'd put in his mouth for some reason.
The initial determination for the death was natural causes, but this verdict was changed when the bottle cap was found in his larynx. Chemical testing was done on the body, and it took months for an amended coroner's report to be released; said report revealed the presence of barbiturates in Williams's system. Speculation was that the Seconal he was taking suppressed his gag reflex, leading him to choke, but even now, what happened isn't clear.
William Desmond Taylor
Irish-born director and actor Taylor made dozens of films in the nascent Hollywood film industry, gaining a reputation as one of the best and most prolific. But he was found shot dead in his Hollywood bungalow in 1922, and what followed was an investigation that was botched at every turn. Even before police arrived, a man stepped forward claiming to be a doctor, who declared Taylor died of a stomach hemorrhage.
It took the body being rolled over to reveal a bullet hole in his back. Robbery was ruled out as a motive, as Taylor still had cash and a diamond ring on his person. Key evidence was either lost or stolen. With little to go on, the sensationalist press and the LAPD spewed a dozen names out as suspects, fingering spurned actresses, film executives, an "Oriental love cult," and mob hitmen.
After 20 years, the DA of the time ordered the case be filed away and the files then vanished. Finally, in 1964, a bit actress confessed on her death bed that she shot and killed Taylor, even though she'd never met him and had no reason to do so. The confession was followed by a string of gibberish, and it's likely she was suffering from dementia.
The case was never solved, and was one of many deaths and scandals that nearly brought down the film industry in the '20s.