Crime Wave Part 10

"Really MAD at the Son of a b.i.t.c.h. For the first time, I really dislike Andy. He shows no consideration or understanding & he humiliates me." 8/18/63: "How dare he not make one concession or show any feelings?"

8/20/63: "So humiliated by Andy's lack of interest." 8/27/63: "Feel like I'm about to explode!" 8/28/63: "Eating too much!"

Karyn stepped up her social contacts. Karyn moved to the Monterey Village Apartments. A heat wave scorched L.A. Karyn got a shot on Perry Mason.

10/29/63:.

"Andy acting ugly. Complete indifference. Scene at his house. I'm hysterical."

11/1/63: "No Andy--spyed on him." 11/2/63: "Went to his house--selfish, independent, inconsiderate & thoughtless. Never gives & unpenetrable." 11/4/63: "I hid in attic; then sat outside in cold for 2 or 3 hours. Wish I were dead." 1 1/8/63: "Dr. Kroger-- cried in his office." 11/9/63: "Eating all day & night." 11/10/63: "Can't stand it--I'm losing reality." 11/11/63: "Call Andy--s.e.x." 11/15/63: "2:00 P.M.--Kroger. Happy & up. Wore pink skirt-- Admiring looks."

11/22/63: "President a.s.sa.s.sinated."

11/23/63: "Palm Springs."

11/25/63: "Ate to oblivion."

11/27 or 28: DEAD.

The datebook ended five weeks short of New Year's. A sheet was clipped to the back.

Karyn jotted down some book tides. They were psychoa.n.a.lytic texts.

Beside them: A list of all the men she'd slept with.

3.Karyn Redux They entombed her in a Jewish cemetery. They honored her with cla.s.sy endowments.

Two Karyn Kupcinet Theaters. A Karyn Kupcinet Gallery. A Karyn Kupcinet Scholars.h.i.+p.

Kup and Essee kept her name out there. No one knows how they defined her death and rush to self-destruct. No one knows how many what-ifs and might-have-beens they indulged over c.o.c.ktails.

Karyn died moments after a freeze-frame. The camera's in tight. She's all pa.s.sion and disorder. A close-up sends out an implication: She could go anywhere now.

It might be true. It might be a wishful conceit. She left a list of books and a list of men as her last will and testament. It might have marked a step toward self-knowledge. It might have been a Band-Aid to cover her wounds until her s.h.i.+theel lover called. She had a fierce heart and no will to moral judgment. Her compulsive componentry was common to young women. She carried her own strain of a plague. It hadn't been identified yet. The time impinged her. Her shrink cosigned her rebop and tapped Kup's bankbook. She didn't get the gender-role thing. She didn't know that women took it up the shorts systematically. She didn't know that the precept could spark a will to change. She had the juice to grasp the concept. She might have found the guts to go with it and burned her old life to the ground. She was just a kid. She didn't know s.h.i.+t from s.h.i.+nola. She labored under a shroud. She thought s...o...b..z was real.

It was the Kupcinet family blessing and curse. It started with Kup. He pa.s.sed it on to Karyn and Jerry.

Jerry turned 19 the month Karyn died. He loved the visual arts. He wanted to forge a Kupcinet life on the other side of the camera.

He went to Bradley U and Columbia of Chicago. He studied photography. He graduated and shot pix for Playboy. He shot stills for the Chicago stage run of Hair.

He became a TV cameraman and director. He directed segments of A.M. Chicago and Good Morning America. He married a woman named Sue Levine. They had a son and a daughter.

Jerry got a gig on The Richard Simmons Show. He moved his family out to L.A. It was '8 1. His daughter was nine years old. Her name was Karyn Ann Kupcinet.

Essee called it reincarnation. Kup said he almost agreed. The blessing and curse hit a third generation.

Karyn Two didn't look like Karyn. It was all inside. The Karyns bubbled and churned. They lived to please and lived to perform. Essee pushed Karyn Two the same way she pushed Karyn. She pushed her to act and stay thin.

Karyn Two went to Parker School in Chicago. She hung out at the Karyn Kupcinet Gallery. She pretended that they named the place after her.

She knew her Aunt Karyn died young. She knew somebody killed her. n.o.body fed her more details. She felt no urge to learn more.

Jerry moved his brood out to L.A. Karyn Two grew up on Karyn's old turf.

She gained weight and lost weight. Food was a punishment. Food was a reward.

She went out on kid auditions. She got a few TV and stage parts. She played Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker. She was a high-school freshman then.

She kept a journal. She wrote a play called The Porcelain Doll. It was all about a weight-obsessed girl. She writes her thoughts in a journal. She dies young. Her best friend finds the journal and reads it.

Karyn Two acted. Karyn Two gained and lost weight. Karyn Two had a nice boyfriend.

The boyfriend went to the Film Academy library. They kept files on professional performers. He asked to see the file on Karyn Two. The clerk gave him the file on Karyn.

The file freaked him out. He skimmed it and called Karyn Two. She went to the library and read the file cover to cover.

She copied down most of the data. She studied it. She flew to Chicago and looked through Karyn's belongings. Kup and Essee kept twelve boxes.

Karyn Two dug through them. She read Karyn's datebooks. She read fan-mag stories on Andy Prine. She started writing journal entries to her aunt.

She caught the psychic-twin bit full-on. She caught the ugly belief in appearances that took Karyn down and tossed it straight back at herself. She saw herself as Kaiyn reborn. She got stone flicking obsessed.

She reread Karyn's datebooks. She ran "what-if" and "mighthave-been" riffs. She dreamt about Andy Prine.

She loves him. She trusts him. He loves her. He does not act like a s.h.i.+theel or a killer.

The dreams drove her crazy. Maybe Karyn sent them. Maybe she wanted to absolve Andy. Maybe she was glad that he killed her. Her life was horrible. Maybe death was a treat.

She finished high school. She went to UCLA. She auditioned. She got commercial gigs and guest shots on soaps. Rejections killed her. She felt like the '62 Karyn. Her OBSESSION ate her alive.

She wrote to a dead woman. She reread her last words and h.o.a.rded the details of her life. She kept Karyn's purse. She fondled her wallet and dried-out cigarettes.

She was born in '71. She never knew her aunt. She knew she had her mad blood in her veins.

She turned 20. She got a steady gig on The Young and the Restless. She played a pregnant crackhead. She had ratted hair and wore ripped jeans. She cried on cue every day. They shot the show at Beverly and Fairfax. The Monterey Village Apartments stood a mile or so northwest. Andy Prine's ex-wife worked on the show.

Karen Two loved the work. She loved the whirl that went with it.

Parties and clubs. Access to exciting people. Accommodators and sycophants. Insider status in an insider town. Limos and drugs. Weak, s.e.xy men. Kup's World--updated and revised for a youth market.

She fell into it. It subsumed her dialogue with a dead woman and thinned out her mad blood.

The pace kept her weight down. Cocaine helped. Hallucinogens undermined her monomania.

She ran through soft and self-obsessed men. "Actors." "Musicians." Studs who ran long on looks and "Potential." Her affairs burned out in similar patterns. The studs revealed themselves fast. Karyn Two possessed good antennae. She majored in Karyn One and minored in Andy Prine and David Lange. She started to put it all together. She built a generational thesis. She connected the dots back to 1963.

It came to her siow. The L.A. scene tempted and diverted her. She put it together over good time.

Mad blood shared. Gifts locked within. Pj.'s and the Crescendo. The Rainbow and the Roxy. Desoxyn and hallucinogens. Weak men and skinny bodies to make them love you. Would-be actors and actors. The actors' psyche as defined by some actorsavant: "My only regret in life is that I'm not somebody else."

She put it together siow. Andy Prine types distracted her. She put it together over good time. She made the connections and sealed and severed the bond all in one go.

She walked.

4.Reopening Karyn Two went by "Kari" now. She was four years out of L.A.

She married a stable guy named Brad. She owned a candle store in Chicago. She put down her bad L.A. habits. She surmounted her eating disorder and maintained a stable and slender weight.

Karyn saved her. The obsession still owned her. She flew out to L.A. to see the murder file.

She spent a week at the Homicide Bureau. She went through the file. Sergeant Bill Stoner studied it with her. Stoner retired in '94. He spent fourteen years at Sheriff's Homicide. He remained on the active Reserve.

Kari wanted to rework the case herself. The file provided her with insights and data on the key players. She wanted to find them and interview them.

I met Bill and Kari for dinner. We hogged a booth at the Pacific Dining Car. We discussed the case for three hours.

The consensus at Sheriff's Homicide: Andy Prine and David Lange remained viable suspects--if it was a homicide to begin with.

Karyn probably took eighty-one Desoxyns inside forty-eight hours. She might have built up a tolerance. The collective dose might not have fazed her. It might have caused dizziness and heart cramps.

Hathaway and Rubin revised their statements three years after the fact. Rubin recalled minute details out of nowhere. Hathaway altered the whole tone of his first statement.

Doc Kade was dead now. He did an autopsy shortly after his Kupcinet job. He allegedly told a colleague, "At least I didn't break the hyoid bone on this one!"

Kade had an erratic reputation. Some cops braced him on the hyoid bone back in '66. He stuck to his original statement.

He filed his initial report on 12/1/63. He noted a hemorrhage inside the throat. It b.u.t.tressed his alleged finding on the hyoid bone.

Forensic glitches. Inconsistent statements. Advanced decomposition and incomplete toxology. Screwed-up witnesses in a screwed-up milieu. Exponential possibilities resultant.

Kari's puzzle to ponder. Her world to explore.

I juxtaposed Karyn and Kari. I melded their features and framed a tight close-up. I captioned it while the image held.

Karyn owned a gene for survival. She didn't get the chance to outgrow her silly flicking dreams.

December 1998HUSH-HUSH.

L.A. TIMES, JUNE 5, 1998:.

TURNER-STOMPANATO LOVE LETTERS TO BE AUCTIONED.

Smith & Kleindeinst, the Beverly Hills auctioneers, announced today that they will sell the late actress Lana Turner's love letters to reputed hoodlum Johnny Stompanato at their August 16 auction in Century City. A Smith & Kleindeinst spokesman said that the letters were consigned to them by a source who prefers to remain anonymous. There are a total of 14 letters, dated between October 9, 1957, and March 12, 1958. They will be sold as a block purchase.

The Turner-Stompanato liaison occupies a prominent place in Los Angeles criminal history. Their violent relations.h.i.+p culminated on the evening of April 4, 1958, when Cheryl Crane, Miss Turner's 14-year-old daughter by the late restaurateur Steve Crane, came to her mother's aid and stabbed Stompanato to death. No criminal charges were filed against Miss Crane. She was sent to a youth treatment facility for psychiatric evaluation and care.

The Smith & Kleindeinst spokesman said that bidding for the letters will most likely begin in the "mid-six-figure" range.

THE ADVOCATE, JUNE 6, 1998:.

SCANDAL-SHEET WRITER IN CRITICAL CONDITION.

Daniel "Danny" Getch.e.l.l, 68, editor-in-chief and head writer for the infamous Hush-Hush scandal magazine of the I950s and early 1960s, was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center last week. An undisclosed source at the center revealed that Getch.e.l.lis in the "final, deadly throes" of a "severe brain tumor."

Hush-Hush and the other scandal sheets of the era--Confidential, Whisper, Rave, Lowdown, and Tattle--waged a collective smear campaign against gays and lesbians and accomplished it with vicious outing tactics. Innuendo and intimidation were their most commonly applied methods, and their goal was t.i.tillation at any human price. The scandal sheets destroyed the lives of many gay and lesbian Americans, and Hush-Hush was arguably the worst of the lot.

Benjamin Luboff, ex-Whisper writer and author of the mea culpa memoir Scandal-Rag Scourge, described Danny Getch.e.l.l as "viciously single-minded in his fast-buck pursuit of naming h.o.m.os.e.xual names" and "pathologically driven by a s.a.d.i.s.tic urge to out gays." When asked to comment on Getch.e.l.l's hospitalization, Luboff replied, "What can I say? I wish no person-- straight or gay--a painfully protracted death, but the world will be a better place without Danny Getch.e.l.l."

A hospital source said that Getch.e.l.l is under intensive around-the-clock care and would not be able to answer a list of questions submitted by The Advocate.

Cheryl Crane did not shank Johnny Stompanato, and I don't have a f.u.c.king brain tumor. And I always gave the f.a.gs Ifragged a chance to buy their stories back.

And you won't believe the s.h.i.+t I've got on Ben Luboff The brain-tumor bit is a smoke screen smoked by a hosp ital flack. I'm ensconced in a secret Cedars ward built from an old bomb shelter I'm sunk subterranean with sixty-three male patients and sixteen doctors set to vanquish our virus. They'll hypocritically ignore the Hippocratic oath and sell their cure exclusively to the rich. I'm selling everything I own to buy bed s.p.a.ce at twenty grand a day.

I've got AIDS. The worst thing about having it is having it. The fact that people think you're af.a.g runs a close second.

I'm not a f.a.g. I'm a junkie with a 40-year-old monkey on my back.

Reliable rejuvenations ruined me. I periodically purge myputrefied system with black-market blood transfusions. I bought some Desert Storm surplus blood back in '91. It dried out my s.e.x drive, downsized my redblood count, and devastatingly deep -sixed me into total devolution.

Or somebody poisoned me on purpose.

Maybe a minor miscreant I maligned in May '6i. Possibly a punk I pilloried as purple-tinged a loooong time ago. Perhaps a perpetrator with a perfect sense ofpoetic justice.

I'm pulsatingly paranoid now. I'm a hemophiliac h.o.m.ophobe and a crucifiable Christian abed at the Gay Roman Inn.

I see six of my scandal-rag scapegoats hooked up to hydration machines. They strategically strafe me with hate in their eyes. They huddle within hailing and hurting range and haunt me as I hatch this harangue in the Hush-Hush style.

I've got a sharp s.h.i.+v shoved under my bed. I've got the guardedly gayfriendly tale that you're about to get. I'll pander to pederastic pride or hurl some hurt in the spirit of the Hush-Hush holocaust.

The gonif three gurneys down is staring straight through me. I can't place him in my backlog of blackmail and bad juju. I'm going to cut him out of my thoughts and concentrate on my story while I can still alliterate alluringly.

I.

The debilitating dirt drought of Spring, '58.

It hindered, hampered, and hog-tied Hush-Hush. It forced us to print presumption as veracity verified. It forced me to misconstrue old morgue memos and pa.s.s them off as fresh scandal s.k.a.n.k.

JACKIE GLEASON FIGHTS FOOD FIXATION AT FAT FARM OUTSIDE PHILLY! JOHNNIE RAY MAULED IN MEN'S-ROOM MISADVENTURE! STARLETS STATE STEVE COCHRAN TOPS TAPE AS TINSELTOWN'S MR. KINGSIZE.

b.u.m bits and rumor retreads. Libelous liabilities and lightning rods to la.s.so lewd litigation. Unprovable a.s.sertions to attract unremitting heat in an unenlightened climate.

Maureen O'Hara keestered Confidential last year. The mag maligned her and said she groped a guy at Grauman's c.h.i.n.k. She sued successfully. Confidential detailed Dorothy Dandridge's dipso descent. She sued successfully. Monkey see, monkey do: A chain of chimps sued Hush-Hush. Our current courtroom count stands at o-and- 3. We're mainlining monetary liens and moving toward Bankrupt Boulevard and Moribund Mesa. We're taking it up the a.s.s bad.

We've dramatically downscaled our dimensions. We moved into a dumpy building down from the downtown dog pound. The doped-out dentist down the hail drives my new crew crazy. I cut my old crew loose to cover court costs and slapped up some fresh slaves from the Salvation Army. They're all dry drunks with the s.h.i.+mmy-s.h.i.+mmy shakes. Dental-drill noise drips through the walls and drills its way under their skin. They drop type trays and drizzle glue all over my pasteup plates.

Our circulation has circled down to the scandal-rag cellar. Whisper was whispered to top our toll by ten figures per month. Ben Luboff scammed s.k.a.n.k for Whisper. I hated him. I owed his bookie brother two big on Basilio-Robinson. Ben bought bonus buzz-dirt off me and bought down my debts with his brother sometimes. I hated to humble Hush-Hush and humiliate myself-- but I had to now.