The
Victim:
Karyn Kupcinet
was born in 1941 in Chicago, Illinois to a famous columnist father and a
socialite mother named Essie who would never qualify as mother of the year. Essie
Kupcinet valued fame and being on the A-List more than anything else, and was
determined that her only daughter would achieve the fame that had eluded her in
her own career as a dancer. Although Karyn has kindly been described as lacking
any real talent, Essie groomed Karyn for fame her entire life, a short 23 years
wrought with addictions and bad choices.
To make sure
that her daughter kept a fame-worthy figure, Karyn’s mother began giving her
diet pills at roughly 13 years old, which in 1954 was essentially speed.
Between 1955 and 1960, while still a minor, Karyn moved to New York to try acting
on Broadway, underwent several cosmetic surgeries to improve her looks, and
became addicted to prescription painkillers. Karyn had her chin, nose, ears,
and eyes done all before she was 20 years old, which reportedly dulled her face
and limited her acting abilities even further.
In 1960, Karyn
abandoned the stage and moved to Hollywood, where she got bit parts in movies
and television shows. She began dating an actor named Andrew Prine, When Karyn’s
histrionics and addictions and inappropriate behavior became too much and
Andrew ended the relationship. Karyn stalked him for months, busting into his
home during dinner parties, watching outside his house for hours, and hiding in
his attic. According to journals found after her death, this behavior went on
for months. She then cut words out of magazines and assembled them into letter
form like you’d see in a B movie about a kidnapping. Her last day on Earth she
called Prine twice telling him a wild story that someone had left a baby in a
basket on her doorstep and pleading for him to come over. People like to
speculate that lie was borne out of regret over an abortion she had
traveled to Mexico for a year prior, but I imagine it was just a badly adjusted
woman with too many chemicals in her system.
The
Death:
The
Suspects:
Andrew Prine ran with a
group of friends, many of whom associated with Karyn as well. Andrew, you will
recall, was Karyn’s former beau that she had a hard time getting over. Andrew’s
roommate was Robert Hathaway, Robert and a man named Edward Rubin claimed they
visited Karyn that Wednesday evening, had some drinks and watched television.
Andrew had a second roommate named William Mamches who reported that he hadn’t
seen Karyn in weeks. They said that at some point Karyn claimed she was tired
and went to bed. They finished the program they were watching, turned off the
television, and left. Around midnight a phone call was made between Karyn and
Andrew. The final member of Prine’s posse was Karyn’s downstairs neighbor,
named David Lange. David Lange wasn’t a celebrity himself, but had a famous
sister and was dating actress Natalie Wood, who would herself die under mysterious
circumstances years later. David and Natalie returned from a date around
midnight. David had a serious drinking problem and was likely passed out
shortly after returning home. He claims he heard and saw nothing out of the
ordinary that night. Prine, Rubin, and Hathaway are alibi for one another,
claiming they all spent the evening having cocktails and watching a film after
Prine spoke on the phone to Karyn.
Karyn’s
downstairs neighbor, David, was questioned at length by police because of his
alcohol addiction, his history of walking into the wrong apartment when
inebriated, and the fact that he made jokes about having been the one to kill
Karyn. Irv and Essie, Karyn’s parents, went to their graves fully believing
that Prine was somehow responsible, but there was never evidence there. Prine
had a role on Six Feet Under, one of my favorite shows, and I always give him
the side eye when he appears onscreen.
The
Crackpot Theories:
November of 1963 was an
infamous and tragic month in American History. The Friday before Karyn lost her
own life, the shocked nation mourned the assassination of President John F
Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. Twenty minutes before the president was shot, a woman
called a phone operator in southern California screaming that the president was
about to be killed. The police investigated and attempted to locate the caller,
but never did. Someone at some point linked the two murders together, claiming
that Irv Kupcinet had mob ties who told him of their plans in advance, which
would mean one of Chicago’s most beloved newspaper columnists just knew about a
pending murder of the president and not only failed to alert authorities, but
casually mentioned it to his amphetamine abusing daughter, who flipped out
about it twenty minutes before it happened. Kup not only denied the story but
expressed how offensive he found it to be.
James Ellroy is
arguably one of the world’s premiere not-true crime writers, known for books
and movies like L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia. I like to think Mr.
Ellroy would hate me because I’m verbose and somewhat liberal, two things he is
definitely not. Perhaps Mr. Ellroy’s greatest work of fiction is his imagined
explanation for the death of Karyn Kupcinet. In the scenario he envisions,
post-phone call Karyn is drunk and high and dancing naked in her apartment. She
stumbles and falls, hitting straight across her neck on the edge of a table
with enough force to bruise the surrounding tissue and fracture her hyoid bone,
then rises, rights herself just long enough to make it to the couch where she
falls face down and perishes. He based his theory off of the fact that there
was a book about the benefit of naked dance in Karyn’s apartment and explains
the lack of evidence by saying that the coroner was an alcoholic.
My
Conclusion:
I first read about Karyn’s
murder as a kid in a book about unsolved murders related to Chicago. When I
revisited it as an adult I want to say that not only was her death tragic,
Karyn’s life was tragic. Her mother pushed her to be perfect and famous. She
had multiple surgeries to make her more attractive before her body was likely
done growing. She paired off with a man-about-town who didn’t seem to treat her
that well and didn’t do her the favor of giving her a clean break. She was
dependent on substances that she likely abused as a form of self-medication.
And then, barely in her twenties, her life was over, with no chance of finding
her happily ever after. But who killed her? DNA technology was still more than
20 years away from making headlines, and all the likely suspects save one gave
alibis for the others. Alibis that, in time, proved to be flimsy and
remembered differently by all parties involved. We will never know who the murderer was,
but I’d like to hear your theories anyway.
