Celebrities often meet countless people during their rise to fame, and sometimes, those encounters take a dark and unexpected turn. It’s almost inevitable that a few unsavory characters might cross their paths. But some stars have had more than just a passing glance with individuals who went on to commit terrible crimes.
Here are ten bizarre connections between famous individuals and notorious murderers.
10. Peter Lorre and the Hillside Stranglers
Even from beyond the grave, Peter Lorre inadvertently played a role in saving his daughter’s life. Decades after Lorre portrayed a child stalker in the film M (1931), real serial killers terrorized Los Angeles. The infamous duo, Angelo J. Buono and Kenneth A. Bianchi, known as the Hillside Stranglers, kidnapped, raped, and murdered ten women in 1970s Hollywood.
One night in 1977, Catharine Lorre Baker, Peter Lorre’s daughter, hitched a ride with Buono and Bianchi. The murderous pair intended to make her their eleventh victim until she revealed who her father was.
Baker carried a photo of herself as a young girl with her father. Recognizing the actor instantly, the two men, being avid movie fans, started gushing about their love for films like Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon.
Out of respect for Peter Lorre’s filmography, or perhaps to avoid a high-profile victim, Buono and Bianchi released Baker solely because of that picture.
9. Mark Jackson and the Menendez Brothers
In 1989, Lyle and Erik Menendez had everything they could dream of. After their parents’ death, they were flush with cash from an insurance payout. The small detail that they were, in fact, responsible for those deaths was just a minor issue to them.
During a months-long spending spree, the brothers blew nearly $700,000 on flashy items like jewelry, clothes, and cars. As big basketball fans, they attended a New York Knicks game to see Patrick Ewing play alongside teammate Mark Jackson.
A photographer snapped a picture of Jackson in mid-action during the game, and the Menendez brothers can be seen in the background as spectators.
At the time, nobody knew the context of the shot, which later became associated with Mark Jackson’s NBA Hoops trading card. Decades later, Lyle Menendez confirmed that he and his brother were in the stands that day.
8. Alan Alda and Edward Edwards
The premise of To Tell the Truth is simple: don’t lie. However, Edward Edwards didn’t live by the rules. Edwards had issues starting from a young age. After his mother’s suicide, he developed personality problems, and his teenage years were filled with minor robberies and juvenile detention stints.
In 1955, Edwards was arrested for a break-in but managed to escape prison. The following year, his armed robberies landed him on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. While in Leavenworth prison, he purportedly became a model inmate.
By the 1970s, Edwards’s remarkable transformation made him a minor celebrity on the lecture circuit. Producers of the game show To Tell the Truth invited Edwards to appear on a 1972 episode. The panel consisted of celebrities Gene Rayburn, Kitty Carlisle, Alan Alda, and Peggy Cass. Only Cass and Rayburn identified the real Edward Edwards among the imposters, but nobody knew his sinister truth.
In reality, Edwards never reformed. Between 1977 and 1996, he murdered at least five people, with the total believed to be much higher. Some investigators have even tried to (rather tenuously) connect Edwards to famous unsolved crimes such as the Zodiac killings and the murder of JonBenét Ramsey as well as the West Memphis Three case.
7. Jeremy Bulloch and Mark Twitchell
Boba Fett, the bounty hunter in Star Wars, wasn’t very effective. Han Solo escaping your clutches isn’t a good look. But being outwitted by a gawky movie nerd is even worse.
Mark Twitchell was obsessed with fiction. He modeled his modus operandi after Dexter Morgan, the forensic detective turned vigilante serial killer from the TV show Dexter. An enthusiastic cosplayer, Twitchell posed as Dexter Morgan on Facebook and acted like a creep.
Twitchell turned this mindset into the amateur movie House of Cards. The movie centered on a murderer who lures married men into a torture chamber using dating sites.
Twitchell tried recreating this idea twice in real life. Gilles Tetreault, his first intended victim, escaped his studio. Johnny Altinger was not so lucky.
After his arrest for the Altinger murder, Twitchell told police officers that he was an avid filmmaker and the bloody torture instruments were merely props for an upcoming movie, which they probably weren’t.
Twitchell proved his credentials by mentioning he had directed the fan project Star Wars: Secrets of the Rebellion. Despite being an amateur production, he managed to get Jeremy Bulloch to reprise his role as Boba Fett.
The gesture was rather pointless, considering Boba Fett’s face is hidden behind Mandalorian armor, and Twitchell said he preferred the prequel films.
6. Tom Petty and Mark Rogowski
Hundreds of skateboarders idolized Mark Rogowski. But within a decade, they all loathed him. That kind of descent can only be described as a free fall.
Along with other prominent skateboarders like Tony Hawk and Steve Caballero, Rogowski helped transform extreme sports into a national phenomenon in the 1980s. Rogowski even made a cameo outside his niche world.
In the music video for Tom Petty’s signature song, “Free Fallin’,” Rogowski skates a half-pipe while his girlfriend, Brandi McClain, watches on. The song details a relationship falling apart, a situation that Rogowski could relate to.
Shortly after appearing in the video for the aptly titled song, Rogowski experienced his own free fall. In West Germany, he fell from a hotel window. Surviving the fall inspired him to convert to evangelical Christianity.
The newfound religion and occasional violent outbursts ended Rogowski and McClain’s relationship. Unable to move on, he became obsessed with McClain. On March 20, 1991, mutual friend Jessica Bergsten reached out to Rogowski. He decided to get revenge on McClain by raping and killing one of her friends.
5. Richard Linklater and Bernhardt Tiede II
Richard Linklater had already directed Dazed and Confused and School of Rock. But in 2011, he began trying to get a man released from prison. A greater achievement, arguably.
Bernie Tiede is not an innocent man. He openly admits to shooting his 81-year-old lover, Marjorie Nugent, and stuffing her remains in a freezer…yikes!
Linklater took up the case because of the cycle of abuse that led Tiede to violence. After discovering new evidence of Tiede’s psychological issues, Linklater and others petitioned the judge to reduce Tiede’s sentence and set him free.
From 2014 to 2016, Tiede’s freedom between trials came with the condition that he had to move in with Linklater, who had made Tiede’s story into the 2011 black comedy Bernie. Tiede moved into a garage apartment behind Linklater’s house in Austin.
The story doesn’t have the wacky sitcom ending you might expect. After a jury reheard Tiede’s case, they decided that the evidence did not exculpate him, and his sentence was extended from 50 years to 99 years or life.
4. Groucho Marx and Eugene Leroy
Before Groucho, there was Julius Marx. He barely had facial hair when Eugene Leroy discovered the future comedy legend. As a member of the Leroy Trio, Leroy gave a teenage Marx his first job in vaudeville. Eugene Leroy’s gimmick was singing songs in drag with Marx as backup.
Marx first experienced the harshness of entertainment when Leroy took all the act’s profits and abandoned the 14-year-old in Denver, Colorado. Despite spurring the comedian’s career along, Marx resented Leroy as a person, and he was a good judge of character.
Years later, an unclaimed trunk arrived at Grand Central Station, where it sat for a month before anyone opened it. Inside was the disemboweled body of Leroy’s wife, Katherine Leroy Jackson.
The package was mailed to Jackson’s secret boyfriend. She had bet her life that Leroy would never find out about the affair and lost that bet. Eugene Leroy was never seen again.
3. Ashton Kutcher and Michael Gargiulo
Ashton Kutcher was ready for his date with Ashley Ellerin. They were planning to go to a Grammy Awards after-party. When he knocked on her door, there was no answer.
Peeking through the curtains, he saw red stains on the carpet, and he thought that it was spilled wine from an earlier party and that she had left without him. It never occurred to Kutcher that he had stumbled upon a murder scene.
Between 2001 and 2008, Michael Gargiulo (aka the “Hollywood Ripper”) killed two women and attempted to murder another one. Speculative estimates put the total victim count closer to ten. Gargiulo was also charged with the 1993 murder of then-18-year-old Tricia Pacaccio.
In California, Kutcher’s testimony helped the prosecutor’s case. In May 2019, Gargiulo was convicted of all counts charged. Legal nuances have delayed his sentencing.
It’s possible that Kutcher could have stopped Gargiulo earlier. Gargiulo’s timeline that night has never been firmly established, so it is likely he was still in the house when the actor stopped by.
2. Abraham Lincoln and the Donner Party
Almost two centuries after the incident, it is still hard to fault the Donner Party. Facing an unbearable winter and a dwindling food supply, the doomed expedition resorted to cannibalism.
Faced with almost certain death, the party only killed when they thought it was necessary, hoping to save their families. But there was one exception.
Murder was the best thing to ever happen to James Reed. Before the caravan took a disastrous wrong turn down the mountain, Reed stabbed John Snyder over the way he had abused Reed’s cattle.
Reed avoided the calamitous fate of his fellow pioneers by killing Snyder. As punishment, the group banished Reed, but he outlived most of the convoy. Aware that the trip was taking longer than expected, he sent out a rescue mission to save the remaining members.
Before heading west, Reed had formed a friendship with Abraham Lincoln during the Black Hawk War. Reed tried to convince the young lawyer to leave Illinois. Earlier, Lincoln had helped Reed recoup his losses from some ruinous business ventures. Reed wanted to pay Lincoln back by giving him some of the land purchased in California.
Lincoln was all set to go until his wife, Mary Todd, persuaded him not to. If he had tagged along with his old acquaintance, the future president could have easily died on the mountain pass.
1. Wilbur Wright and Oliver Crook Haugh
It might have been an accident or the first sign of Oliver Crook Haugh’s sociopathy. But nobody could have predicted the circuitous impact of an errant hockey stick on history.
Around 1885, Oliver Haugh’s worst sin was terrorizing his neighborhood as a bully. During one of the local hockey games, the young Haugh struck a teenage Wilbur Wright.
Haugh’s stick hit Wright’s jaw with such force that the future aviator needed false teeth. Wright had to put aside his plans for Yale while recovering from his injuries. He stayed in Dayton to tend to his dying mother and work with his brother Orville.
To distract himself from his and his mother’s poor health, Wilbur became a voracious reader. He developed his fascination with aeronautics, which culminated in the pioneering 1903 flight at Kitty Hawk.
Haugh has a far less glorious place in history. In cocaine-addled visions, he dreamed of creating a new race of humans by eliminating the infirm. He went to medical school to help develop his new society.
At the Cincinnati Medical College, Haugh fell in love with Anna Margaret Eckley. After they married, she routinely tried to leave him, citing his violent and adulterous streaks.
It’s possible that Haugh married up to nine other women while still married to Eckley. Regardless, he seemed to leave a trail of bodies, especially those of his patients, wherever he went. In Cleveland, Haugh was arrested and jailed for disorderly conduct while living with another woman.
When he was released, Eckley wanted nothing more to do with him. Haugh returned to Dayton and moved in with his family, but his parents cut him out of their will. Haugh threatened them with harm if they didn’t put his name back in their will.
On November 5, 1905, he burned down his parents’ home with his family trapped inside, and Haugh’s name was connected to additional suspicious deaths.
In total, Haugh likely killed at least 13 people. Ultimately, his violence had far-reaching consequences on society in ways he never intended.
What do you think about these bizarre celebrity connections? Leave your comment below!
