The brutal slaying of Sharon Tate in the summer of '69 sent Hollywood's elite and powerful into paranoia. Stars carried guns, bosses treated overworked and beleaguered employees with kid-gloved respect, and movie magnates left town for well-timed impromptu vacations. The days between the August 9 killings and the November arrest of the Manson clan were like no other Hollywood has ever seen -- until now.
The monstrous murder of master PR agent Ronni Chasen has put Hollywood's hard-boiled honchos back to the business of watching their own backs. Since the Tuesday murder, florists have been busy filling orders for banquets of bouquets to some of Tinseltown's toniest and most lionized offices. Everyone is paranoid.
Mysterious murders are nothing new to Hollywood. Thomas Ince, William Desmond Taylor, Thelma Todd, Sal Mineo, and Bob Crane are among the thousands of unsolved American slayings. Time and circumstance has relegated those injustices to the back burner, but the Chasen slaying is destined to live on as legendary long after the case goes stone cold.
I live in Beverly Hills. My back gate opens up to Whittier Drive. Had I not dined on too many martinis at the Polo Lounge on Tuesday night, my routine would have found me up and active near my open kitchen window. Surely I would have heard the five shots that tore into my enclave's sense of security. I may have been Lindsay-Lohan-passed-out that night, but all week the shots' bang-bang-bang-bang-bang aftermath has been evident to me across Beverly Hills. Police are knocking on doors looking for surveillance video, pulling over large numbers of vehicles - especially taxicabs, and combing for clues that are buried in a killer's conscience.
Within a Little League pitch of where Chasen's car came to rest on Whittier drive, two more of Beverly Hills' most bloody and catastrophic events occurred. Just across the street and slightly to the left of the Chasen crash is the home where Bugsy Siegel was murdered as he sat reading his newspaper in the living room. Siegel was fired on nine times through the window of the mansion. His assassin was never caught. Just across the street and to the right of where Chasen was found dead from five bullet wounds to the chest, is the home where Howard Hughes crashed his XF-11 in 1946. Hughes was aiming for an emergency landing at the Los Angeles Country Club, but fell short, coming to a fiery wreck on Whittier Drive. The northern edge of Whittier Drive is a Beverly Hills Bermuda Triangle of calamity right on the edge of dreamland.
Since the death of Michael Jackson (a scant quarter mile from where Chasen's car came to rest) star tour vans have barraged the rented house where he took the fatal dose. Now, for at least the near-term, there is a new ghoulishness in town. The Chasen murder has taken the conscientiousness of tourists, regular citizens, and movie moguls hostage. The murmur of a biopic has agents checking their client rosters for a star to play the 64 year-old PR doyenne as the whodunit aspect simultaneously leaves everyone checking their enemies list.
Crime and violence has always been a cold, hard fact of human existence. War turns moral norms upside down; murder becomes a job, and the killer conduit for the rage of the people. If we are to continue to overpopulate at current rates, we must be prepared for stress and anger directed towards another individual or country.
Whether it's Vermont-Slauson, Watts, Camden NJ, Detroit, or Beverly Hills, selfishness or injustice towards another and the anger desperation breeds will continue to come to rest on all our front yards until we evolve or humanity becomes extinct.
For Hollywood, the violence against Ronni Chasen came too close, too hard, and too shocking to ever fade anything but black.
You can follow Tom's Twitter at TheGregoryWay
it would have gotten the proper response it deserves.
and " Humanity becomes extinct " Talk about a drama queen. Other than that, this is
destined to become another great Hollywood story. For those of us that live in the real world.
by
Osama bin Laden
NOTE: Osama bin Laden has prepared this speech that will interrupt and replace President Barack Hussein Obama’s next address. Forty million television viewers will see Osama bin Laden’s image superimposed over the President and hear the following speech. It has been obtained by an Iraqi double agent working for the CIA. He is now safely in the Federal Witness Protection program.
OSAMA: My fellow freedom fighters and American invaders. Let me begin by saying the reports on my illness, injuries and death have been highly exaggerated. I am very much alive and proud of the havoc and destruction al Qaeda has created, far exceeding my wildest expectations. Certainly, American infidels shuddered over the shocking and awesome attacks on 9/11. That was your wakeup call and we are doing better as you well know.
Here is my game plan, revealed only because although there will be more surprises, this one is already operational. Briefly, al Qaeda die-hards have quietly infiltrated various businesses, industries and government jobs in over two-thousand cities and towns. Our cells wisely took the required loyalty oaths and joined every patriotic organization in the community.
Secret sabotage is commencing nicely. For example, elevators are mysteriously getting stuck between floors, clerks in stores insult customers, bus drivers slam their doors on senior citizens, potholes are everywhere and streets littered with refuse.
What's a 'tastemaker..."
If they want to see real violence they can drive a few miles to Compton or East LA where the people live with it every single day. I have a hard time mustering the outrage Gregory tries for here when murder is a just another fact of life for millions in that city.
.this was a sister, an aunt, a friend to many people. its a yawn to you. A hardworking successful person shouldnt be mourned? nice.