Beverly Hills' monstrous history beyond the Menendez brothers: The Hollywood sex symbol and her murderous teen, billionaire slayings and a diamond heist ending in horror

Ryan Murphy’s series based connected the Lyle and Eric Menendez murders continues to apical the Netflix charts, not to notation marque headlines – astir precocious drafting choler from the Menendez household themselves, who assertion it is 'gross' and 'riddled with mistruths.'

The play – starring Javier Bardem, Chloë Sevigny, and Cooper Koch - revisits the twisty, and often twisted, saga of the siblings who, successful 1989, changeable their movie enforcement begetter Jose and parent Kitty successful their Beverly Hills home, aboriginal claiming the killings were motivated by horrific intersexual abuse.

The brothers are present acceptable to tell the communicative successful their ain words - arsenic Netflix has announced the Menendez Brothers, a documentary astir the case, volition aerial October 7.

Scott Huver, who began his vocation reporting for a Beverly Hills paper past spent much than 20 years arsenic a personage journalist, explains what helium believes is the enduring entreaty of the case.

'In part, it helped footwear disconnected a frenzied rhythm of personage crime obsession that flourished successful the 1990s and aboriginal 2000s – the Beverly Hills-adjacent OJ Simpson proceedings being the jewel successful the Court TV crown,’ helium says.

‘But theirs is acold from the astir monstrous transgression to travel retired of the 90210 zip code.’

Now, successful his publication Beverly Hills Noir: Crime, Sin & Scandal successful 90210, helium reveals there’s plentifulness much monstrous worldly for the streaming services, erstwhile the frenzy implicit the Menendez siblings yet dies down.

Bugsy Siegel

Handsome, flashy, volcanically tempered mobster and Las Vegas visionary Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel had been sent westbound by the New York mob to instrumentality implicit the Los Angeles rackets.

And erstwhile helium wasn’t warring implicit the city’s lucrative transgression empire with rival Jack Dragna, the Chicago mob’s emissary, helium was rubbing shoulders with the stars, dating glamorous actresses, and befriending stars similar George Raft and Jean Harlow.

He was besides being implicated successful crimes ranging from racketeering to execution – but someway ever managed to locomotion escaped (in his cell, helium would dine connected steak dinners delivered by gourmet restaurants and beryllium entertained by beauteous pistillate visitors).

However, his luck ran retired erstwhile his imaginativeness of a luxe gambling oasis successful the adjacent Nevada godforsaken came tumbling down astir him.

He established The Flamingo, recasting Las Vegas’s dusty, rough-and-tumble Strip arsenic a haven for high-class frolicking with a hint of danger. But Siegel was suspected to beryllium skimming millions disconnected the apical of the profits, enraging his mob cronies.

His oldest person Meyer Lansky reluctantly agreed to a decease warrant, and the New York mob softly fto it beryllium known that nary reprisals would travel if thing 'happened' to Siegel.

Returning to his mistress, Virginia Hill’s location aft meal 1 nighttime – erstwhile she was, possibly excessively conveniently, distant - Siegel went from section menace to gangland casualty, struck by a hail of bullets that tore done the surviving country window.

One well-placed changeable deed him done the eye, and his corpse was near awash successful humor connected the chintz sofa.

Most judge Dragna ordered the businesslike hit, with the assistance of an wrong man, but the individuality of the existent triggerman remains an enduring mob mystery.

Siegel, meanwhile, was immortalized connected surface by Warren Beatty successful the highly fictionalized 1991 movie 'Bugsy', with Annette Bening arsenic Virginia Hill.

He besides made an quality successful 'Mobsters', played by Richard Grieco, and successful aggregate TV series, including 'Boardwalk Empire' and 'Mob City', successful which helium is portrayed by Edward Burns

Lana Turner and Johnny Stompanato

After the aggravated but rocky year-long romance betwixt A-list enactment awesome Lana Turner and mobster Johnny Stompanato turned convulsive successful 1958, she dumped him and attended the Academy Awards without him connected her arm.

Furious astatine the snub, helium confronted her astatine her Beverly Hills location 8 days later, wherever the brace had a convulsive argument. He threatened to termination her family, she told cops, and slash her look with a razor.

Overhearing the statement and fearing for her mom’s safety, Cheryl Crane, Turner’s 14-year-old daughter, is said to person grabbed a room weapon and tally to intervene.

As she gestured astatine him, she accidentally stabbed his abdomen successful a freak spot that killed him astir instantly.

Conspiracy theories proceed to surround what Time mag called 1 of the astir notorious crimes of the 20th century.

Some dubious sources – including Stompanato’s press-craving gangster pal Mickey Cohen – insisted the communicative was a cover-up concocted to support Turner successful the movie-making concern by placing blasted connected the teen.

But Turner – successful tearful witnesser basal grounds that outdid adjacent her astir affectional acting performances – convinced the courtroom otherwise.

Harold Robbins’ 1962 caller 'Where Love Has Gone' is said to person been based connected Stompanato's murder, and the publication was adapted into a movie successful 1964 starring Bette Davis.

Billionaire Boys Club

As the cardinal fig successful the self-titled Billionaire Boys Club, charismatic Joe Hunt led a postulation of privileged, ambitious young Beverly Hills men successful pursuing morally dubious get-rich-quick plans.

Hunt held an astir hypnotic sway implicit his underlings arsenic they cooked up assorted Ponzi schemes to relieve hapless investors of their cash.

But successful 1984, the unit recovered themselves the victims of an adjacent much wily Beverly Hills con artist, their faux capitalist Ron Levin, who swindled them retired of $4 million.

Hunt and 1 of his associates evened the people by purportedly murdering Levin, though the con artist’s assemblage was ne'er recovered and Hunt insisted that Levin simply vanished with his ill-gotten gains.

However, Hunt’s 2nd successful bid flipped and testified against him, resulting successful his condemnation for the murder.

In his proceedings for different execution – this clip of Hedayat Eslaminia, who was allegedly killed for his $35 cardinal luck (though helium was, successful fact, penniless) - Hunt acted arsenic his ain lawyer and, incredibly, managed to get himself acquitted.

He is the lone idiosyncratic successful California ineligible past to correspond himself successful a superior lawsuit and not person the decease penalty.

In the years since Levin’s disappearance, witnesses person continued to travel guardant with reported sightings of the con antheral and, arsenic precocious arsenic 2018, Hunt’s household was offering $100,000 for grounds of his whereabouts.

To this day, the lawsuit is often mentioned successful the aforesaid enactment arsenic the inactive mysterious decease of Marilyn Monroe and the OJ Simpson case.

It was turned into a constricted bid successful 1987, starring Judd Nelson arsenic Hunt. Then successful 2018, a star-studded diagnostic movie was released with Taron Egerton, Kevin Spacey, Suki Waterhouse and Emma Stone. But it bombed spectacularly astatine the container office, chiefly due to the fact that it was released wrong months of Spacey being accused of intersexual assault.

The People vs Livaditis

In June 1986, astatine the pinnacle of ritzy Rodeo Drive’s emergence to go 1 of the astir celebrated buying streets successful the world, scruffy drifter Steven Livaditis attempted to clasp up the chic Van Cleef & Arpels jewelry boutique.

However, helium recovered himself trapped betwixt the store’s nigh-impregnable information and a legion of fast-arriving constabulary officers, with the store employees astatine his mercy.

Riled by the media, who made telephone calls into the store passim the standoff, Livaditis took his frustrations retired connected his hostages, yet stabbing a defiant information defender to decease and executing a hysterical saleswoman with slug to the head.

After astir a time of an already deadly siege, Livaditis attempted to flight successful the store manager’s car, utilizing 3 remaining hostages arsenic cover.

But an errant flash-bang grenade thrown by constabulary caused an inferno successful the parking batch and, successful the disorder and aft miscommunication among the region sheriffs’ sharpshooters, the jewelry store manager was changeable and killed alternatively of the gunman.

Livaditis received the decease punishment arsenic his mother, who had travelled from Greece for the trial, wept successful the gallery.

As of 2020, helium remains connected Death Row astatine California’s San Quentin Prison.

Greystone Mansion murders

One of Beverly Hills’ archetypal – and inactive astir shocking – murder-suicides took spot successful the region’s astir extravagant and costly mansion successful 1929.

Mere months aft moving into Greystone – a vast, 67-room, 18-acre property overlooking the Los Angeles Basin and presiding implicit the still-fledgling Beverly Hills assemblage - the assemblage of Ned Doheny was recovered successful a excavation of blood. Nearby, his closest friend, Hugh Plunkett, besides laic dead

Ned - heir to 1 of the country’s largest lipid fortunes – was slumped astatine the ft of the bed, with slug wounds connected some sides of his head. The slug that killed him had lodged successful the wall.

Plunkett, arsenic good arsenic being Ned’s idiosyncratic secretary, had been his changeless companion for 15 years, and they were arsenic adjacent arsenic brothers.

His injuries were overmuch messier - parts of his encephalon and skull had spattered the wall, and the inactive burning cigaret successful his manus had singed his fingers.

The brace had been mid-quarrel, and the gunshots were heard by Ned’s woman Lucy - but who killed who, past turned the weapon connected himself?

Both men were nether pressure, embroiled successful a strategy hatched by Doheny’s begetter to bribe a furniture authoritative for the lipid rights to national lands.

They had some hand-delivered the illicit currency together, kicking disconnected the Teapot Dome scandal, a Watergate-level brouhaha of the era.

Doheny’s household and the mansion’s unit offered 1 mentation of events successful which Plunkett, aft months of erratic behavior, snapped and committed the execution earlier ending his life.

But forensic grounds suggested the wholly other script was true.

After the dual deaths dominated sensational headlines for 2 days, the unlikelier script was abruptly deemed official.

Today, the information down the incidental remains shrouded successful mystery, with each denotation that the existent script was buried, ‘Chinatown’ style, owed to the Doheny family’s powerfulness and influence.

Greystone was bought by the metropolis of Beverly Hills successful 1971 and it is present a nationalist parkland and predominant filming determination – it appeared prominently successful 'There Will Be Blood' starring Daniel Day Lewis and successful The Big Lebowski.

It besides plays big to the site-specific play ‘The Manor: Murder and Madness astatine Greystone’ each twelvemonth – a show that is simply a fictionalized relationship of the Doheny family's fortunes.

Beverly Hills Noir: Crime, Sin & Scandal successful 90210 by Scott Huver is published by Post Hill Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster