Title: It Happened in Hollywood (1973) 6.9 /10. Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Get the latest news on celebrity scandals, engagements, and divorces! Check out our breaking stories on Hollywood’s hottest stars!
What Really Happened the Night Hollywood Power Publicist Ronni Chasen Was Killed? Six years ago, Hollywood learned that Ronni Chasen, one of its grande dame film publicists, had been gunned down while driving along a leafy stretch of Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills just after midnight. W Hollywood hotel for the premiere of Burlesque. Chasen represented producer Donald De Line and lighting designer Peggy Eisenhauer as well as songwriter Diane Warren, whose tune, . It was so not anything out of the ordinary. Just like a hundred other nights. It was the crucial period before Golden Globe ballots were to be sent out at the beginning of December. This much is clear: At about 1. Sunset to make the turn south on to Whittier Drive, a residential street where homes cost as much as $2. According to the autopsy report, two bullets hit her chest without causing immediate catastrophic damage. Another hit her right upper arm. A fourth, the most rapidly fatal, entered through her right shoulder and struck her heart. No shell casings, live rounds or weapon were recovered at the intersection. Despite her dire injuries, Chasen glided one- fourth of a mile down curving Whittier Drive before the Mercedes knocked over a concrete light pole, crushing the front right end of the vehicle and deploying the driver- side airbag. A couple driving past found her within minutes, followed by Beverly Hills Police Department patrol officers, who'd been alerted to the sound of gunfire by neighbors. Police files indicate officers found Chasen slumped forward with blood dripping from her nose, a gurgling sound emanating from her mouth, eyes wide open but not blinking. They were unable to locate her pulse. She was transported to nearby Cedars- Sinai Medical Center and pronounced dead at 1: 1. In the following days, nobody knew who had done it or why it happened. Rumors spread of dark links to gambling debts, art deals and shady film finance. Even former LAPD Chief William Bratton, then working in private security, got into the guessing game, speculating everything from road rage to a random drive- by. Her Prada purse sat on the passenger seat amid glass shards and nail polish bottles. Paperwork on the floor indicated more hustling to be done for the ongoing awards season: pursuing coverage with NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' composer contributions to The Social Network. An examination of this material and other evidence by THR raises questions about the department's core findings. This reporting appears to leave in doubt whether the department — which never was required to present evidence to a prosecutor, much less amass proof to demonstrate it had fingered the right culprit beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury — knows how the murder was committed and whether multiple individuals were potentially involved. Despite the BHPD's assurances, justice may not have been attained. No known evidence places Smith at the scene. Or backs up a robbery motive. Or confirms that he didn't have assistance. The Tomatometer rating – based on the published opinions of hundreds of film and television critics – is a trusted measurement of movie and TV programming quality for millions of moviegoers. The release of Suicide Squad confirms a cinematic trend: all of our heroes are antiheroes and all of our baddies have been humanised. It’s time for the return of some proper bogeymen Peter Bradshaw’s 10 favourite screen. What Happened in Hollywood? Evaluating the Need for Affordable Housing in Transit and Redevelopment Areas Ballistics don't prove he shot her. The department has publicly offered only that this African- American man, with a prior record for robbery in the area, was known to be in financial straits before he raised the suspicions of an America's Most Wanted tipster (who speaks for the first time, under his real name, to THR). While BHPD leadership has changed since 2. Faced with questions for this report, the department would not address its effort to pursue Chasen's killer or how it closed the case on Smith, a man whom their detectives were unable to apprehend before he committed suicide in front of them. It's just one more mystery, as no information about the handling of that event has been released, either. The BHPD has few chances to practice its homicide investigation skills, as murders rarely occur in its jurisdiction. There have been none since 2. Chasen's death. All were solved (two were straightforward spousal in- home killings), except for the 2. Mark Ruffalo's brother Scott, a local hairdresser. Gerstenfeld, chair of criminal justice at California State University, Stanislaus. BHPD held a news conference in front of its headquarters. Chief David Snowden announced the department had that day received a preliminary ballistics result from the L. A. Sheriff's County Department Firearms Section crime lab indicating a match between Smith's weapon and the one used in Chasen's killing. The BHPD would not seek such potentially relevant evidence until the following March. The assembled reporters expressed skepticism that Smith, an ex- convict with a record for robbery whose mode of transport was known to be a bicycle, could have acted alone and peppered the chief and detective with an onslaught of questions about motive and method. Again, the firearm that was used to commit suicide in Harold Martin Smith was the same firearm that was used to kill Ronni Chasen. There is no definite ballistics match in the released files, only an inconclusive report that states the . Multiple experts who were shown the report came to similar conclusions. THR's study of the materials offers other windows into the handling of the investigation, including the fact that there's no record in the released files that her car was dusted for fingerprints on its passenger side (the direction from which the shots came). The BHPD and its current chief, Sandra Spagnoli, who started in March and was the subject of a gauzy Vogue profile in August, declined to respond to nearly two dozen questions regarding the department's work on the case. These included whether Snowden may have misinformed the public about ballistics findings, whether the department collected video footage that might establish Smith's presence in the vicinity on the night of the murder and why several of Chasen's friends and associates, some of whom were with her that night, never were interviewed by police. Lt. Lincoln Hoshino, a BHPD spokesman, reiterates: . We have no plans to ever reopen it. Our evidence, including ballistics, matched. It was convincing and conclusive. Some decisions, such as not fully fingerprinting the vehicle, were inexplicable. After closely examining the case documents, he raised substantive questions about whether the BHPD had been sloppy in the way it collected and managed evidence: . This isn't a little shoplifting. This has to have all of your undivided attention. Williams Jr., a retired LAPD homicide detective often called to testify about police procedure, questioned the apparent absence of video footage . You have a black man, supposedly on a bike, in the middle of the night. He'd be stopped 1. He would've stood out like a sore thumb. He initially sparked to the case when he saw it on cable TV news broadcasts because he also often took Whittier as a shortcut (before Waze, it was a relative secret). His interest would pique when he ran up against resistance when he filed — first as little more than a lark — a routine Public Records Act request related to the case, including for Chasen's autopsy, which had been on a special indefinite hold. When the BHPD declined to turn anything over, a documentary project was born. Eventually, Katzenbach sued the department in late 2. Los Angeles Superior Court for full access to the murder file in his pursuit of making his planned Chasen project 6: 3. Whittier. He argued that the department forfeited its standard right to nondisclosure when Snowden allowed BHPD senior forensic specialist Clark Fogg, who worked on the case, to draw from the materials for his own 2. Beverly Hills Confidential, which contended that continued questions about the crime were driven by . In his comments from the bench, the judge all but suggested he refile. To avoid another lawsuit, BHPD attorney T. Peter Pierce turned over a portion of the requested documentation in November 2. Snowden retired. It numbered 1. He shared all of this material with THR. Fogg's book presumably was written with access to the full file.)The filmmaker, in Chrome Hearts sweatshirts and worn- in Converse, has waged his war against the BHPD from a raisin farm four hours away in Madera, an agricultural community near Fresno. He rents his place — a 1. Chihuahua named Hitchcock and Bear, a lab- terrier mix — from the owner of one of the regional auto dealerships who's kept him flush enough in direct- mail advertising work to pursue filmmaking. It went nowhere, and he spent years on another true- life passion project: excavating the real story behind the legendary 1. Amityville mass killings on Long Island, obscured for decades by a murk of horror film exploitation. While directing the resulting documentary, Shattered Hopes, which aired in 2. Reelz, he discovered the second gun belonging to the convicted murderer in that case, Ronald De. Feo — missing for four decades — by hiring a water- surveying firm to dredge a portion of a nearby canal he'd pinpointed based on an old crime scene photograph. In January, he's debuting Titanic: Sinking the Myths on Reelz, which questions century- old assumptions about how exactly the ship struck the iceberg and who should be assigned blame (White Star Line owner J. P. Morgan comes in for a drubbing). He earned $4. 28,3. Katzenbach is way off on the wrong trail. It appears that there's room for doubt that Harold Smith is the perpetrator. She was raised in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx and the Washington Heights section of Manhattan before moving to L. A. She could hold the whole equation in her head. The firm began specializing in handling Oscar campaigns for studios. When she died, clients had netted at least 1. No Country for Old Men, Slumdog Millionaire and The Hurt Locker. She thought it could affect your work, that people wouldn't hire you. She was unapologetically pushy, whether over the phone or buttonholing on red carpets in her trademark cream- colored Armani suits.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2017
Categories |