The dark story behind the bright lights of Tinseltown
From the outside, Hollywood starlet Lana Turner seemed to have it all—a thriving film career, a beautiful daughter, and the kind of fame and fortune that most people could only dream of. But when the famous femme fatale began dating mobster Johnny Stompanato, thug for the infamous West Coast mob boss Mickey Cohen, her personal life became violent and unpredictable. Lana’s teenage daughter, Cheryl, watched her beloved mother’s life deteriorate as Stompanato’s intense jealousy took over. Eventually, the physical and emotional abuse became too much to bear, and Lana attempted to break it off with Johnny—with disastrous consequences. The details of what happened that fateful night remain foggy, but it ended in a series of frantic phone calls and Stompanato dead on Lana’s bedroom floor, with Cheryl claiming to have plunged a knife into his abdomen in an attempt to protect her mother. The subsequent investigation made for the biggest headlines of the year, its drama eclipsing every Hollywood movie.
New York Times bestselling author Casey Sherman pulls back Tinseltown’s velvet curtain to reveal the dark underbelly of celebrity, rife with toxic masculinity and casual violence against women, and tells the story of Lana Turner and her daughter, who finally stood up to the abuse that plagued their family for years. A Murder in Hollywood transports us back to the golden age of film and illuminates one of the twentieth century’s most notorious true crime tales.
“A must-read for fans of true crime and Hollywood history, A Murder in Hollywood never disappoints! Casey Sherman deftly serves just the right mix of glamour, glitz, and grit to keep the reader turning pages. It’s a stunner from start to finish.”—Kristin Dilley, cohost of the Mind over Murder podcast
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Casey Sherman is considered one of America’s preeminent true-crime authors and investigative journalists. His books include The Ice Bucket Challenge; The Finest Hours, coauthored with Michael J. Tougias and made into a major motion picture by Walt Disney Pictures; Animal: The Bloody Rise and Fall of the Mob’s Most Feared Assassin; Search for the Strangler; and Bad Blood. He has been a finalist for the Massachusetts Book of the Year honors and the New Hampshire Literary Awards nonfiction prize. He has been a featured guest on NBC’s Today and Dateline; CBS’s The Early Show, 48 Hours, and the CBS Evening News; ABC World News Tonight, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Discovery, The History Channel, A&E, The Travel Channel, and The View.