L.A. Zine Fest

L.A. Zine Fest was a blast. I brought 200 copies of Dead in Hollywood with me and I sold out! How did that even happen?!?! A big thank you to everyone who stopped by our table and a humongous thank you to the good folks at L.A. Zine Fest. I am overwhelmed by the support! Tabling at LA Zine Fest was a goal of mine when I started Dead in Hollywood exactly one year ago and I did it! I'm feeling so inspired. I can't wait to see where the next year takes us!

River 4 Ever

River Phoenix (Dead in Hollywood - Issue #4)

On Halloween Eve in 1993, River Phoenix joins his friends at Johnny Depp's Viper Room (8852 Sunset Blvd.) Phoenix makes his way to the club's restroom around 1AM to do some drugs with several of his drug dealer friends, when one of them would offer him a hit of heroin. It was pure-grade Persion brown. Almost immediately after snorting the heroin, Phoenix begins trembling and shaking violently. He then turns to one of his friends and vomits. Another of his friends decides that it's a good idea to give him a valium to calm him down." 

Dead in Hollywood: Stalked (Issue 7)

Grab a copy - or three - of Dead in Hollywood: Stalked in our store (link above) or stop by LA Zine Fest this Sunday and pick up some copies! 

Three women stalked to their deaths.

In 1985, 18 year-old Rebecca Schaefer wakes up in her West Hollywood apartment to the news that 13-year-old peace activist, Samantha Smith, has died in the Bar Harbor Airlines Flight 1808 plane crash. Schaefer could not have known that this tragedy will lead to her untimely death in 1989.

On October 30, 1982, Dominique Dunne is strangled by her ex-boyfriend, John Sweeney, in the driveway of her West Hollywood home. She lapses into a coma and never regains consciousness. Dunne dies five days later. Sweeney is convicted of voluntary manslaughter in Dunne's death and serves three and a half years in prison. Dunne is 22 years old when she dies.

Former Los Angeles Raiders cheerleader, Linda Sobek, turns to a career in modeling and has moderate success posing semi-nude in magazines like “Truckin’.” In November of 1995, it looks like Sobeck’s luck is about to change for the better. Aspiring photographer, Charles Rathbun, on assignment for “Autoweek,” contacts Sobek from a payphone and asks her if she will pose for an upcoming issue. A month earlier, Sobek had given Rathbun her business card at an automotive show in Las Vegas and tells him… to keep her in mind for modeling jobs.

 

 

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Battle of North Hollywood (Issue #7)

This past Saturday we found ourselves in North Hollywood.  We stopped to pay our respects to the Bank of America on Laurel Canyon. It was the scene of one of the longest and bloodiest shootouts in American police history - changing forever how police dealt with bank robberies. I didn't know much about the North Hollywood Shootout - aka the Battle of North Hollywood - when I started researching the heist for issue #7.5 of Dead in Hollywood. The story is insane. I found myself staying up till 3AM watching the helicopter footage of the siege online.  Get a copy of the zine above in the store. 

The Body Model: Linda Sobek

Linda Sobek hits her stride as a “body model,” specializing in swimwear layouts, calendars, beer posters, and car magazines. She poses for Playboy and the Fredrick’s of Hollywood catalogue. “Linda was making it really big, staying really busy,” says L.A. calendar producer Roy Morales - theres such a thing as a calendar producer? Sobek lands a small part on the TV show “Married with Children.” She's hoping it’ll be her big break. Aside from her looks, Sobek's success is owed in big part to her dedication and professionalism. It is precisely because of Sobek’s reputation for being responsible and level-headed that her family begins to suspect that she might be in danger when she misses her costume fitting for "Married with Children.” Linda's story will be chronicled in the upcoming issue of Dead in Hollywood: Stalked.

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Heather O'Rourke (December 27, 1975 / February 1, 1988)

O'Rourke plays Carol Anne in the horror film "Poltergeist" (1982). She utters the movie's most famous line: "They're here!" She reprises the role in the second and third installments. In February 1988 she dies at the age of 12 of cardiac arrest and septic shock caused by a misdiagnosed intestinal stenosis. The Poltergeist Curse strikes again...

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Stalked! Dominique Dunne (November 23, 1959 / November 4, 1982)

I walk home from work past the street where Dominique Dunne lived - Rangely Ave. in West Hollywood. Dunne was strangled to death in the driveway of this home by her ex-boyfriend John Thomas Sweeney who served less than 4 years for her murder. I think about Dunne every time I pass by and since I started working on the next issue of Dead in Hollywood it has become a particularly poignant part of my walk. “Stalked" follows the lives of Dunne, actress Rebecca Schaeffer, and cheerleader/model Linda Sobek. All three women are stalked to their death by deranged men with criminal records. In death, these women are responsible for new laws that are put in place to protect stalking and domestic violence victims. 

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Margot Kidder (October 17, 1948 / May 13, 2018)

Margot Kidder (October 17, 1948 – May 13, 2018) rises to fame in 1978 for her role as Lois Lane in the “Superman” film series, alongside Christopher Reeve. Kidder says of her friendship with Reeves, "When you're strapped to someone hanging from the ceiling for months and months, you get pretty darned close.” Kidder also appears in two of my all time favorite horror movies "Black Christmas" and “The Amityville Horror.” Later in life, Kidder is known for her battle with mental illness. She is diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which is the cause of a widely publicized manic episode in April 1996. Kidder had been working on an autobiography when a virus causes her computer to crash. She loses three years’ worth of drafts. She flies to LA and has her computer examined by a data retrieval company, who are unable to retrieve the files. Kidder then enters a manic state and disappears for four days. She is found in a backyard by a homeowner and is taken by the LAPD to Olive View Medical Center in a distressed state, the caps on her teeth having been knocked out during a rape attempt. Her cause of death has not been disclosed.

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Joan Crawford (March 23, 1904 / May 10, 1977)

The American Film Institute ranks Crawford tenth on its list of the greatest female stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema. Crawford becomes one of Hollywood's most prominent movie stars and one of the highest-paid women in America, but her films begin losing money and, by the end of the 1930s, she was labelled "box office poison." But she makes a major comeback in 1945 by starring in "Mildred Pierce," for which she wins the Academy Award for Best Actress - Crawford feigns illness before the 1946 Academy Award ceremony and accepts her Oscar in her bed, inviting the press to come into her bedroom to photograph her. In 1955, Crawford becomes involved with the Pepsi-Cola Company through her marriage to company Chairman Alfred Steele. After his death in 1959, Crawford is elected to fill his vacancy on the board of directors, serving until she is forcibly retired in 1973 - "Don't fuck with me fellas."  Crawford marries four times. Her first three marriages end in divorce; the last ends with the death of husband Alfred Steele. She adopts five children, one of whom was reclaimed by his birth mother - California law prevented her from adopting within the state so she arranges the first adoption through an agency in Las Vegas. Crawford's relationships with her two elder children, Christina and Christopher, are acrimonious. Crawford disinherited the two, and, after Crawford's death, Christina writes a well-known "tell-all" memoir titled Mommie Dearest (1978) that forever tarnishes Crawford's legacy. On May 8, 1977, Crawford gives away her beloved Shih Tzu, "Princess Lotus Blossom," being too weak to care for her. Crawford dies two days later at her New York apartment of a heart attack.

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