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Hell and Gone Murder Line: Karyn Kupcinet · Hell and Gone: Murder Line

0:08
Speaker 1: School of Humans on November thirtieth, nineteen sixty three, just
0:15
Speaker 1: eight days after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
0:20
Speaker 1: Across the country, in Los Angeles, friends of a twenty
0:23
Speaker 1: three year old actress named Karen Kupsine were getting concerned.
0:27
Speaker 1: Mark Goddard and his wife Marcia had not heard from
0:30
Speaker 1: Karen since Wednesday, November twenty seventh, the night before Thanksgiving.
0:34
Speaker 1: On that night, Karen came to dinner at their house
0:37
Speaker 1: on Coldwater Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills. Karen had been
0:42
Speaker 1: depressed lately. Her relationship with her actor boyfriend Andrew Prine
0:47
Speaker 1: was more off again than on again, and on top
0:49
Speaker 1: of that, she was dealing with all the pressures of
0:51
Speaker 1: trying to make it on her own in Hollywood. She
0:54
Speaker 1: was supposed to get to their house to eat at
0:56
Speaker 1: six thirty, but arrived an hour late. She got there
0:59
Speaker 1: at seven thirty. When she did get to their house,
1:02
Speaker 1: she was acting strangely. They later told police. She barely
1:06
Speaker 1: touched her food and was acting like she was under
1:09
Speaker 1: the influence. Marcia told police that Karen's quote lips seemed numb,
1:15
Speaker 1: her voice was funny, she moved her head at odd
1:17
Speaker 1: angles end quote. Karen didn't eat much that night, but
1:22
Speaker 1: she told Mark and Marcia a very strange story. She
1:27
Speaker 1: said there had been a baby left on her doorstep
1:29
Speaker 1: earlier that day. She said she had to call the
1:32
Speaker 1: police and that they came and took the baby away.
1:35
Speaker 1: Karen seemed pretty distraught by this, and Mark and Marcia
1:38
Speaker 1: weren't quite sure what was going on with her, but
1:41
Speaker 1: they knew that she had been having a lot of
1:43
Speaker 1: issues lately. Karen was always worried about her weight, she
1:47
Speaker 1: had been addicted to diet pills, and she'd been dealing
1:50
Speaker 1: with the loss of this relationship. They put her in
1:53
Speaker 1: a taxi at eight thirty pm that night. Marcia asked
1:57
Speaker 1: Karen to call when she got home, but Karen never did.
2:00
Speaker 1: They didn't hear from her. They weren't overly concerned at first.
2:03
Speaker 1: They figured she probably went home and got so much
2:06
Speaker 1: needed sleep. But by the thirtieth and this is the
2:09
Speaker 1: way that Mark Goddard talked about it on the E
2:12
Speaker 1: Hollywood story that was done later about this case. He
2:15
Speaker 1: said they were going through their morning routine, he was shaving.
2:18
Speaker 1: He and Marcia started to chat and they said, you know,
2:21
Speaker 1: we're concerned. We haven't heard from Karen in a couple days,
2:24
Speaker 1: so by that evening they decided to take a drive
2:26
Speaker 1: to Karen's apartment in West Hollywood, located at twelve twenty
2:30
Speaker 1: seven and a half North Sweetsir Avenue. Mark Goddard told
2:34
Speaker 1: the show they drove up and parked. He said he
2:37
Speaker 1: went to the door alone and saw that it was
2:40
Speaker 1: open and started to get kind of a funny feeling,
2:42
Speaker 1: so he went back to the car and asked Marcia
2:45
Speaker 1: to come inside with him. The door is unlocked, so
2:48
Speaker 1: they opened it and walked into Karen's living room. It
2:51
Speaker 1: was dark. They saw her lying on the couch, face down,
2:54
Speaker 1: with the TV playing at low volume. There was a
2:58
Speaker 1: glass container that had spilled a lot of cigarettes out
3:01
Speaker 1: onto the floor. Marcia approached Karen. Karen was naked, and
3:05
Speaker 1: at first Marcia thought maybe she was just passed out,
3:09
Speaker 1: but when she touched her and rolled Karen over, she
3:12
Speaker 1: could see immediately Karen had been dead for quite some time.
3:17
Speaker 1: They started screaming for help, and pretty soon Karen's West
3:21
Speaker 1: Hollywood apartment was a crime scene. At first, everyone thought
3:26
Speaker 1: Karen must have died from an accidental overdose or maybe
3:29
Speaker 1: even taken her own life. They found Karen's diary entries,
3:34
Speaker 1: some of which were seriously disturbing, but the autopsy concluded
3:38
Speaker 1: this had been a homicide, that Karen had been strangled.
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Speaker 1: Cause of death was manual strangulation. Manner of death homicide.
3:48
Speaker 1: What happened after hours in that West Hollywood apartment. I
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Speaker 1: lived in Los Angeles for several years near where Karen lived,
3:56
Speaker 1: and this is one of those old Hollywood cases that
3:58
Speaker 1: has always fascinated me. It has so many elements. There's
4:04
Speaker 1: a broken relationship, stalking, Hollywood glamour, and even a suggested
4:08
Speaker 1: connection to the assassination of JFK. But really, after you
4:13
Speaker 1: get through the conspiracy theories and all of the Hollywood stuff,
4:16
Speaker 1: at heart, it's really a story about a young woman,
4:20
Speaker 1: a young woman who went out to Hollywood in search
4:22
Speaker 1: of her dreams, and this was how it ended. I'm
4:26
Speaker 1: Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Over the
4:31
Speaker 1: past five years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone,
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Speaker 1: I have learned that there is no such thing as
4:36
Speaker 1: a small town where murder never happens. I have received
4:40
Speaker 1: hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking
4:44
Speaker 1: for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families,
4:47
Speaker 1: and their communities. If you have a case you'd like
4:50
Speaker 1: me and my team to look into, you can reach
4:52
Speaker 1: out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at
4:55
Speaker 1: six seven eight seven four four six ' one four five.
4:59
Speaker 1: That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five.
5:03
Speaker 1: This is Helen Gone Line. After Mark and his wife
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Speaker 1: found Karen's body, the police came to the address in
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Speaker 1: West Hollywood and started processing the crime scene. They called
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Speaker 1: Karen's parents immediately. They knew this would be big news
6:03
Speaker 1: because Karen's parents were power or Karen cupson It was
6:08
Speaker 1: born and raised in Chicago. She grew up there, the
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Speaker 1: daughter of Essi and IRV Cupsonate. Her father, Irv was
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Speaker 1: a legendary gossip columnist for the Chicago Sun Times and
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Speaker 1: Again for people who grew up later and might not
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Speaker 1: realize this, gossip columns had so much power. Back in
6:25
Speaker 1: the day. There was no social media, no influencers. Hollywood
6:29
Speaker 1: figures still had a lot of mystery, so one of
6:32
Speaker 1: the only ways to get access to them was by
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Speaker 1: reading about them in the gossip columns. IRV Cupsonate was
6:39
Speaker 1: known as a friendly columnist. Celebrities and their publicists loved
6:45
Speaker 1: IRV because he could get their clients a lot of
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Speaker 1: favorable coverage, favorable mentions, and what they called back then,
6:51
Speaker 1: a lot of columnages, meaning a lot of press. For
6:54
Speaker 1: those of you out there who do read those columns,
6:56
Speaker 1: IRV reminds me a little bit of columnists like Liz
6:59
Speaker 1: Smith in New York City who wrote for The Post.
7:02
Speaker 1: IRV was old school. He had lots of access to
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Speaker 1: old Hollywood celebrities loved him. People like Joan Crawford and
7:10
Speaker 1: Don Rickles would come for dinner parties in their Chicago apartment.
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Speaker 1: So Karen grew up in this environment, seeing all the
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Speaker 1: glamour of Hollywood. This job gave IRV access to a
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Speaker 1: lot of Chicago's elite, including reportedly some people who had
7:26
Speaker 1: connections to the Mob, which we'll get into a little
7:28
Speaker 1: bit later. So Karen decided at a very young age
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Speaker 1: that she wanted to be an actress. Really, what she
7:33
Speaker 1: meant was she wanted to be a star, and Karen
7:36
Speaker 1: was talented. Her mom Essie, encouraged her to act and
7:40
Speaker 1: pushed her to do commercials and school plays. At the
7:43
Speaker 1: age of thirteen, Karen got a role as understudy to
7:46
Speaker 1: the lead actress in a play called Anniversary Waltz. Karen
7:50
Speaker 1: moved to New York in nineteen fifty nine and tried
7:53
Speaker 1: to get some roles on Broadway, but it was hard.
7:55
Speaker 1: She was nineteen. She was auditioning a lot, and she
7:58
Speaker 1: wrote in her diary later that she felt like because
8:01
Speaker 1: of her last name, producers were just humoring her and
8:04
Speaker 1: being polite. She felt like she wasn't getting there, she
8:08
Speaker 1: wasn't achieving her dreams on her own merit, and that
8:10
Speaker 1: really depressed her, and that's when she started to develop
8:14
Speaker 1: this obsession with her way. She developed a pretty serious
8:17
Speaker 1: eating disorder. And back then, I don't want to sound cold,
8:20
Speaker 1: but there was just not as much information around as
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Speaker 1: there is now. According to a lot of people at
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Speaker 1: the time, if you wanted to be skinny and work
8:29
Speaker 1: and be an actress, that was just kind of the
8:30
Speaker 1: cost of doing business. You had to be skinny. So
8:35
Speaker 1: when there were things like diet pill abuse, a lot
8:38
Speaker 1: of casting directors and even friends and family tended to
8:40
Speaker 1: look the other way. Karen gave herself a stage name,
8:45
Speaker 1: Lynn Rogers, but eventually she went back to Cups. In it,
8:48
Speaker 1: she became Karen cupson it, and Karen finally got a break.
8:52
Speaker 1: Jerry Lee Lewis gave her a part in his movie
8:55
Speaker 1: The Ladies Man. Karen moved to Los Angeles, but she
8:59
Speaker 1: found that Hollywood was even more difficult than Broadway. Now,
9:03
Speaker 1: one of the things I'm always interested in when I
9:05
Speaker 1: look into a case like this. Obviously, it's been covered
9:08
Speaker 1: a lot before, and I've talked a lot about how
9:11
Speaker 1: shows like Dateline tend to just give the synopsis of
9:13
Speaker 1: the case when there's a lot more going on behind
9:15
Speaker 1: the scenes. It's the same with the e Hollywood story
9:18
Speaker 1: on this case. In my opinion, the show was pretty thorough.
9:21
Speaker 1: It had interviews with Andrew Prine and with Karen's parents,
9:24
Speaker 1: But I started thinking to myself, I bet you in
9:26
Speaker 1: exchange for that cooperation, this is going to be a
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Speaker 1: pretty sanitized and edited version of what happened to Karen, which,
9:33
Speaker 1: from what I read later, it was Karen did have
9:37
Speaker 1: some support in Hollywood. She was living with her grandmother,
9:41
Speaker 1: but she was not happy with her looks. She got
9:43
Speaker 1: plastic surgery on her chin and later had a nose job,
9:47
Speaker 1: and sometimes she would get a boost, like when one
9:50
Speaker 1: of Elizabeth Taylor's ex husband's Eddie Fisher, told her she
9:54
Speaker 1: was pretty. She wrote in her diary that she was
9:56
Speaker 1: just thrilled. Finally she felt pretty, but her emotional state
10:01
Speaker 1: seemed to be completely ruled by what men thought of
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Speaker 1: her looks. Karen was getting parts in TV series, but
10:09
Speaker 1: she kept taking more and more pills, so many, according
10:12
Speaker 1: to her mother, she kept them hidden in a laundry hamper.
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Speaker 1: Her friends back this up. They said if she gained
10:18
Speaker 1: even one or two pounds, she would start taking more
10:21
Speaker 1: and more diet pills. Back then, these pills were basically
10:24
Speaker 1: like speed and they were very addictive. Karen kept diaries
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Speaker 1: of her weight. She yo yoed from around one hundred
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Speaker 1: and seventeen to just over one hundred and thirty pounds,
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Speaker 1: still very small for her height, which was around five
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Speaker 1: six and the fact that this made her feel so
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Speaker 1: ugly is what makes these diary entries so heartbreaking. Nineteen
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Speaker 1: sixty three was a year of pretty big change for Karen.
10:47
Speaker 1: She had been working on a TV show when it
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Speaker 1: was canceled. Her grandmother found out about the pills she'd
10:52
Speaker 1: been taking and moved out. Now Karen was on her own,
10:55
Speaker 1: she moved into her own place, the apartment on North Sweetzer.
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Speaker 1: She got a theater role. She was playing Annie Sullivan
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Speaker 1: in The Miracle Worker, the Helen Keller story in a
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Speaker 1: local theater, and she got a bit part on the
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Speaker 1: TV series Perry Mason. She also started dating a twenty
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Speaker 1: seven year old actor named Andrew Prine. He was handsome
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Speaker 1: and at first she was totally smitten, but from what
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Speaker 1: her friend said, as well as her diary entries, it
11:20
Speaker 1: soon became very clear she was way more into the
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Speaker 1: relationship than he was. She wanted to be exclusive, she
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Speaker 1: was in love with him. He made it very clear
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Speaker 1: that for him she was just an option. He was
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Speaker 1: dating other women. He was very much a ladies man
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Speaker 1: and he didn't want to change. This made Karen very distraught.
11:38
Speaker 1: When he would date other women. She would really obsess
11:41
Speaker 1: over it. She would go to the same parties he
11:43
Speaker 1: was at and watch him with these women and then
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Speaker 1: just get extremely upset, and it would send her into
11:47
Speaker 1: this downward spiral. In summer of nineteen sixty three, she
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Speaker 1: got pregnant with Andrew's baby. Mark Goddard and his wife
11:55
Speaker 1: ended up taking Karen down to Tijuana, Mexico to get
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Speaker 1: an illegal abortion. This was very traumatic for Karen. Afterwards,
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Speaker 1: she wrote in her diary that Andrew was nice to her,
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Speaker 1: gave her soup, took care of her, but then pretty
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Speaker 1: soon he was back to his old ways. He was
12:13
Speaker 1: going out with other women. Back to the crime scene. Now, naturally,
12:17
Speaker 1: as police are looking around, they are finding out about
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Speaker 1: this history with Andrew. They want to talk to Andrew,
12:23
Speaker 1: but there are signs there may have been other people
12:26
Speaker 1: in Karen's apartment as well. According to the medical examiner,
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Speaker 1: Karen had been dead for a couple of days, probably
12:34
Speaker 1: since a late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. This
12:37
Speaker 1: was also backed up by the fact that Mark and
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Speaker 1: Marsha found newspapers and magazines that had built up outside
12:43
Speaker 1: Karen's door. In the living room, police noticed a coke
12:47
Speaker 1: closet door was open in the northeast corner of the
12:50
Speaker 1: living room. Drawers in the bedroom were open, things were
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Speaker 1: thrown around. It was a mess in there. The bed
12:56
Speaker 1: covers were rumpled and twin beds were shoved together. Outside
13:01
Speaker 1: the bedroom, there was a pair of women's shoes and
13:03
Speaker 1: a teddy bear. Karen's red bathroom was on an overstuffed
13:08
Speaker 1: chair on the east side of the living room. There
13:10
Speaker 1: was a lot of expensive stuff in the closet, including
13:13
Speaker 1: Karen's mink s dole. None of it had been touched,
13:15
Speaker 1: so the motive did not appear to be robbery. There
13:18
Speaker 1: was also a coffee pot on the floor. Things were
13:21
Speaker 1: really thrown around in the living room and in the bedroom.
13:24
Speaker 1: The only neat area was the bathroom. They found a
13:27
Speaker 1: lot of prescription drugs, according to the police report. They
13:31
Speaker 1: found thirteen bottles of pills, including Desoxen, a diet pill,
13:36
Speaker 1: and there were a lot of them. They also found
13:38
Speaker 1: something called Milltown, which apparently she mentioned to Mark and
13:42
Speaker 1: marshas she had taken the night she had dinner with them. Now,
13:45
Speaker 1: I had never heard of Milltown, but actually it has
13:47
Speaker 1: an interesting history. It's a tranquilizer that became a big
13:50
Speaker 1: drug in Hollywood because it relaxed you without knocking you out.
13:55
Speaker 1: It was a relaxer rather than a sedative. According to
13:58
Speaker 1: a report by the CBC, by nineteen fifty six, one
14:02
Speaker 1: in twenty Americans had tried Milltown drugs like took over
14:06
Speaker 1: later and Milltown kind of faded away. They found something else,
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Speaker 1: three coffee cups and an empty cake box with a
14:14
Speaker 1: serving knife on top of it, so it looked like
14:17
Speaker 1: Karen had been entertaining shortly before she died. So who
14:22
Speaker 1: was she having coffee with so much later? And this
14:26
Speaker 1: story is one of those that's a little bit stranger
14:28
Speaker 1: than fiction, and it is a real Hollywood story. The
14:30
Speaker 1: author James Elroy actually became involved in the case. He
14:35
Speaker 1: started working with Karen's niece. He wrote about the case
14:38
Speaker 1: in his book which was published in the late nineties
14:40
Speaker 1: called Crime Wave. And in that book, James Elroy pointed
14:44
Speaker 1: out detectives found a book open in Karen's living room.
14:48
Speaker 1: It was open to a page that talked about dancing
14:51
Speaker 1: in the nude and how that helped you lose your inhibitions. Now,
14:54
Speaker 1: according to James Elroy, even early in the investigation, some
14:58
Speaker 1: of the detectives weren't completely convinced this was a murder.
15:02
Speaker 1: They thought she might have had some kind of accident.
15:04
Speaker 1: The con Harold Cade, who did the examination and who
15:08
Speaker 1: stated the manner of death was manual strangulation, based that
15:12
Speaker 1: largely on the fact that Karen's hyoid bone was broken.
15:16
Speaker 1: But there were some limitations to the forensics, especially back then,
15:20
Speaker 1: her face was too decomposed to see if there were
15:22
Speaker 1: any other signs of trauma, and apparently they did not
15:27
Speaker 1: test for the prescription drugs that were in Karen's system
15:29
Speaker 1: to see how much was there. On the other hand,
15:33
Speaker 1: if this had been some kind of attempted suicide, there
15:36
Speaker 1: wasn't an obvious pill that would have caused that. Most
15:39
Speaker 1: of the pills from her Milltown prescription were still in
15:42
Speaker 1: the bottle, and the diet pills she was taking she
15:46
Speaker 1: had an extreme tolerance to that drug. She had been
15:48
Speaker 1: taking it for a while. The headlines read stranger killed
15:53
Speaker 1: actress on coast. They found Karen's diary in that living room. Later.
15:59
Speaker 1: Karen's niece would share portions of this diary with James Elroy.
16:03
Speaker 1: The entries are heartbreaking. Karen wrote, quote, I'm not good.
16:08
Speaker 1: I'm really not that pretty. My figure's fat and will
16:11
Speaker 1: never be the way my mother wants it. I won't
16:13
Speaker 1: let it be what she wants. How stupid I want
16:16
Speaker 1: to be slim? Why must I be so alone? Have
16:19
Speaker 1: I fallen that short of my ideal? Why does my
16:21
Speaker 1: image of me have to be so esthetic and perfect?
16:24
Speaker 1: What's the use of living with nothing to believe? To
16:26
Speaker 1: have faith in? Where's the security or habit or order.
16:30
Speaker 1: What good is that going to do? My Andy? What
16:34
Speaker 1: happens to me or my Andy? Why doesn't he want me?
16:37
Speaker 1: End quote now. Of course police wanted to talk to
16:41
Speaker 1: Andrew Prine. He and Karen had obviously had a volatile relationship.
16:48
Speaker 1: Andrews said the last time he saw Karen was the
16:50
Speaker 1: weekend before she died. He said that they had gone
16:53
Speaker 1: with some friends to Palm Springs and had a good time.
16:57
Speaker 1: The last time he saw her was when he dropped
16:59
Speaker 1: her off after they got back to la He said
17:02
Speaker 1: that he did talk to Karen on Wednesday night, the
17:04
Speaker 1: night she had dinner with a god Dards. He said
17:06
Speaker 1: they talked on the phone at about six pm. That
17:09
Speaker 1: he had taken an actress on a date after that
17:11
Speaker 1: to see the movie a street car named Desire. He
17:13
Speaker 1: said he dropped his date off and went home. Then.
17:16
Speaker 1: Andrews said he called Karen sometime between around eleven thirty
17:20
Speaker 1: and midnight. At that time, Andrews said Karen told him
17:25
Speaker 1: the same story she told the Goddards, the weird story
17:27
Speaker 1: about the baby. She said police had come and taken
17:29
Speaker 1: the baby away. Police were later able to confirm that
17:33
Speaker 1: this story was not true. It was something that Karen
17:36
Speaker 1: had made up. There was no baby, there was no
17:39
Speaker 1: report of a baby. It was just something that she
17:41
Speaker 1: invented and no one really knows why. Police also tracked
17:46
Speaker 1: down the two men who said they were the ones
17:49
Speaker 1: who had been at Karen's house having coffee and cake
17:51
Speaker 1: that night. They were a twenty two year old freelance
17:54
Speaker 1: writer named Edward Stephen Rubin and another actor friend of Karen's,
17:58
Speaker 1: Robert Hathaway. So the story Edward Ruben told police was
18:03
Speaker 1: that he walked to Karen's house and got there at
18:06
Speaker 1: around eight thirty. This would have been when she was
18:08
Speaker 1: just getting home from the Goddards. He said they hung
18:10
Speaker 1: out for a while and talked, and eventually Karen got
18:13
Speaker 1: kind of antsy, so around nine thirty pm she went
18:16
Speaker 1: out for a short walk. While she was out, she
18:19
Speaker 1: ran into Robert Hathaway and brought him back up to
18:21
Speaker 1: the apartment. At that point, Edward said all three of
18:24
Speaker 1: them had cake and coffee, which would explain the cups
18:27
Speaker 1: and serving knife and the empty cake plate. Edward said
18:30
Speaker 1: that at some point Karen fell asleep on the couch
18:32
Speaker 1: while watching TV. He said eventually she got up and
18:35
Speaker 1: went into her bedroom. He said he followed her back
18:38
Speaker 1: there and watched her get into bed. Then he said
18:41
Speaker 1: he went back in the living room. He and Robert
18:43
Speaker 1: kept talking and at around eleven to fifteen pm, after
18:46
Speaker 1: the Danny Kay show, they left. Now, they both told
18:50
Speaker 1: police that after they left, they made sure the door
18:53
Speaker 1: was locked behind them. Another strange part of the story
18:57
Speaker 1: is that all three of these guys, Edward, Robert, and
19:01
Speaker 1: Andrew Prine knew each other. Andrew Prine had been these
19:05
Speaker 1: guys next door neighbor in Beverly Hills, and he still
19:08
Speaker 1: lived right next to Edward Ruben. So they said after
19:12
Speaker 1: they got home, Andrew Prime came over and they all
19:15
Speaker 1: hung out and talked until pretty late after three am.
19:18
Speaker 1: Apparently this wasn't uncommon because at the time, they told police,
19:21
Speaker 1: Andrew came over and hung out a lot. Police asked
19:25
Speaker 1: both of them about their relationship with Karen. They said
19:27
Speaker 1: they never hit on Karen, never hooked up with Karen,
19:30
Speaker 1: they were just friends. Now, there were some contradictions in
19:34
Speaker 1: these guys statements because Edward Reuben's story was different from
19:38
Speaker 1: what Andrew told police. Remember, Andrew had told police that
19:42
Speaker 1: he took an actress on a date on Wednesday night,
19:46
Speaker 1: and then he said he went straight home and called Karen. Meanwhile,
19:49
Speaker 1: Edward Rubin says Andrew came over to his house. He
19:53
Speaker 1: said he'd talked to him till late at night, and
19:55
Speaker 1: he also said Andrew had told him he went to
19:57
Speaker 1: the rodeo that night and stopped by another bar. So
20:00
Speaker 1: when police confronted Edward Rubin about this, he said he
20:03
Speaker 1: might have had his dates wrong. It might have been
20:05
Speaker 1: and Tuesday night when Andrew came over to talk to them.
20:09
Speaker 1: Andrew confirmed this. He said it had been Tuesday when
20:11
Speaker 1: he went over to spend time with those guys. And
20:14
Speaker 1: police also contacted the actress whom Andrew had taken out
20:17
Speaker 1: on Wednesday, and she backed up his story as well.
20:21
Speaker 1: So now the police were kind of stuck. They had
20:24
Speaker 1: a few inconsistencies in these guys' stories, but they did
20:28
Speaker 1: seem to have alibis and there was no clear motive.
20:31
Speaker 1: Police also figured out Karen did have a criminal record.
20:34
Speaker 1: She had been arrested for shoplifting at one point and
20:36
Speaker 1: got probation and fines. The police were also canvassing nearby buildings.
20:41
Speaker 1: No one had heard any screams or anything else. That
20:44
Speaker 1: was out of the ordinary. Then they talked to Karen's
20:47
Speaker 1: downstairs neighbor, a guy named David Lang. Now this is
20:51
Speaker 1: where things get a little strange, because a woman told
20:54
Speaker 1: police that David Lange had told her that on Friday,
20:59
Speaker 1: which would have been November twenty ninth, the day before
21:01
Speaker 1: Karen's body was discovered, he went up to her apartment
21:04
Speaker 1: after midnight. He said, he turned the door knob and
21:07
Speaker 1: the door was unlocked, but he didn't go in. David,
21:12
Speaker 1: who was a twenty seven year old TV writer, apparently
21:14
Speaker 1: had a little bit of a reputation around the building.
21:17
Speaker 1: Some people said he would get drunk and show up
21:19
Speaker 1: in other people's apartments uninvited, so when police heard about this,
21:23
Speaker 1: they definitely wanted to talk more to David. This same
21:27
Speaker 1: person told police that David had called her and told
21:30
Speaker 1: her that he killed Karen. But when police talked to David,
21:34
Speaker 1: he claimed he had been just kidding about that comment
21:37
Speaker 1: because there was so much press around the case. He
21:39
Speaker 1: made a joke, he said about being some kind of
21:41
Speaker 1: a strangler. He said he had no issue with Karen
21:45
Speaker 1: and that he did not knock on the door on
21:46
Speaker 1: Friday night. Police talked to him again. He admitted he
21:49
Speaker 1: did try Karen's door on that night at around twelve
21:52
Speaker 1: thirty am, but he said he never went in. I
21:57
Speaker 1: have a couple questions here because if these two guys,
22:00
Speaker 1: Edward and Robert are telling the truth, if they locked
22:03
Speaker 1: the door when they left and then lay David tried
22:06
Speaker 1: the door and it was unlocked, and we know it
22:08
Speaker 1: was unlocked by the time Mark and Marsha got there.
22:11
Speaker 1: Did someone else try the door and then Karen let
22:13
Speaker 1: them in? There was no sign a forest entry. Could
22:17
Speaker 1: one of those guys be lying about the door being locked?
22:20
Speaker 1: Did they remember it wrong? Or did Karen let someone
22:24
Speaker 1: else in that night? Police asked David Lang about his
22:28
Speaker 1: alibi on the night Karen was killed. Of course, again
22:30
Speaker 1: this is a Hollywood story. David Lang actually had dinner
22:34
Speaker 1: at Natalie Wood's house that night. He said that he
22:37
Speaker 1: went home, smoked some pot, and woke up late the
22:39
Speaker 1: next morning. David's light detector test had been inconclusive, but
22:44
Speaker 1: that wasn't proof, and police didn't really have any physical
22:47
Speaker 1: evidence to work with. They were looking at possible motives.
22:50
Speaker 1: Could this have been a lover's quarrel between Andrew Prine
22:54
Speaker 1: and Karen. They talked to Andrew Prine's ex girlfriends, who
22:58
Speaker 1: all said he was a really sweet guy, and he
23:00
Speaker 1: told police he had nothing against Karen. He wasn't upset
23:03
Speaker 1: with her. He was hoping to stay friends with with her,
23:05
Speaker 1: maybe friends with benefits. Why would he kill her? Police
23:08
Speaker 1: asked him if he knew of anyone who had a
23:11
Speaker 1: problem with Karen, and he said yes. He said someone
23:15
Speaker 1: had been stalking him and stalking Karen. He showed the
23:19
Speaker 1: police letters he had received. Someone was sending him crazy messages.
23:24
Speaker 1: They were cut in paste from different magazines. They looked
23:26
Speaker 1: like ransom letters, and the sender wrote things like want
23:31
Speaker 1: your hot body, the devil must kill you. Other messages
23:35
Speaker 1: were saying that Andrew was going to die. They were scary,
23:39
Speaker 1: they were threatening. And Andrew said he also got a
23:42
Speaker 1: lot of hang up calls. He said he and Karen
23:45
Speaker 1: had been terrified of whoever was sending these letters. Police
23:49
Speaker 1: found some of the cut and paste letters in Karen's
23:51
Speaker 1: living room, similar to the ones Andrew described. They took
23:54
Speaker 1: them in for forensic testing, and when they dusted for Prince,
23:59
Speaker 1: they found fingerprints. All of them were Karen's, which meant
24:04
Speaker 1: that Karen had been the one sending the letters to
24:06
Speaker 1: herself and to Andrew. The whole stalking thing had been
24:11
Speaker 1: a lie. Andrew Prine's mind was blown when he found
24:16
Speaker 1: out there was no mysterious stalker. Karen had been stalking
24:19
Speaker 1: herself and him. There was more evidence of this in
24:23
Speaker 1: Karen's diary. She wrote that a few weeks before she
24:25
Speaker 1: was found dead, she hid in the bushes at Andrew's
24:28
Speaker 1: house and even crawled in through a window and spent
24:31
Speaker 1: hours crouched in the dark in his attic. It's worth
24:34
Speaker 1: mentioning here. I know that she was having mental issues,
24:37
Speaker 1: and I sympathize, but if this were reversed, I feel
24:40
Speaker 1: like the police may have taken this a lot more seriously.
24:43
Speaker 1: This must have been terrifying, and there is no excuse
24:46
Speaker 1: for it. I can't imagine anything scarier than going home
24:49
Speaker 1: and someone hiding in my attic. But Karen was young
24:53
Speaker 1: and hurting and vulnerable. It's so sad to me, by
24:57
Speaker 1: the way that in all of these La noir style
24:59
Speaker 1: articles about her, it's all about her being a nude
25:02
Speaker 1: body found on a sofa. It's almost like she's some
25:04
Speaker 1: kind of movie and not a person. As much as
25:08
Speaker 1: I love James Elroy's fiction, it's a little tough for
25:11
Speaker 1: me to listen to his podcast on this case. For
25:13
Speaker 1: that reason, nothing happened on Karen's case for months, then
25:19
Speaker 1: years it went cold. Detectives were suspicious about certain elements
25:25
Speaker 1: of Andrew Prine and David Lang stories, but there was
25:27
Speaker 1: no physical evidence and no proof. Then three years later,
25:32
Speaker 1: something strange happened. Edward Ruben called police and said he
25:36
Speaker 1: wanted to revise his statement. Suddenly he was remembering a
25:41
Speaker 1: lot more details, supposedly. Now, I don't know how likely
25:44
Speaker 1: it is that you suddenly remember events three years later
25:47
Speaker 1: that you couldn't remember a couple of days after the murder,
25:50
Speaker 1: but that's what happened. He told police that he and
25:55
Speaker 1: Robert Hathaway had gone to a bar called the rain
25:58
Speaker 1: Check Room on Santa Monica Boulevard after they left Karen's.
26:01
Speaker 1: He said Robert had left by himself, and afterwards Edward
26:05
Speaker 1: had met two women. He said the two women drove
26:08
Speaker 1: him home and he kind of hit on one of them.
26:11
Speaker 1: She turned him down. He couldn't remember their names. Detectives
26:14
Speaker 1: could not find the women, and so they couldn't really
26:17
Speaker 1: verify this story. Police called Robert Hathaway to ask him
26:21
Speaker 1: about Edward Ruben's revised statement, and he said that was
26:24
Speaker 1: not true. They never went to that bar, they never
26:26
Speaker 1: met two women. So again police have conflicting statements, but
26:31
Speaker 1: no way to check some of these details, and again
26:33
Speaker 1: it seemed like another dead end. After working on the
26:37
Speaker 1: case with Karen's niece, James Elroy developed his own theory.
26:42
Speaker 1: He said that he believed that book, the one that
26:45
Speaker 1: had been open at the crime scene to the page
26:47
Speaker 1: about nude dancing, was potentially crucial. His theory was that
26:53
Speaker 1: Karen was on a lot of pills, dancing naked and
26:56
Speaker 1: somehow fell and hit her head in a weird way,
26:59
Speaker 1: either on a chair or a coffee table, and broke
27:02
Speaker 1: her hyoid bone. Then somehow crawled back up on the
27:05
Speaker 1: sofa and that's how she died. That it wasn't really murdered.
27:09
Speaker 1: He also proposed the possibility that the coroner, Harold kid
27:14
Speaker 1: might have made a mistake. James Elroy claimed that the
27:17
Speaker 1: coroner had a bad reputation. He believed that Harold Kay
27:20
Speaker 1: could have broken the hyoid bone accidentally himself and not
27:24
Speaker 1: admitted to it. Police did ask the coroner about this
27:27
Speaker 1: a few years later, in nineteen sixty six. At the time,
27:30
Speaker 1: Harold Cade stuck to his story. He said the hyoid
27:33
Speaker 1: bone was broken at the scene, and he also pointed
27:36
Speaker 1: to some other evidence. On the autopsy report, there was
27:38
Speaker 1: hemorrhaging in Karen's throat that seemed to back up his
27:42
Speaker 1: theory of strangulation. It's just a guess, but in my opinion,
27:47
Speaker 1: James Elroy's theory of her dancing and breaking her hyoid bone,
27:51
Speaker 1: it's possible, but in my opinion, not likely. And I
27:55
Speaker 1: don't think she intentionally committed suicide because yes, there were
27:59
Speaker 1: disturbing entries in Karen's diary, but there was no clear
28:02
Speaker 1: suicide note. She had been making those entries for months.
28:05
Speaker 1: And also, the main reason I don't think she intentionally
28:08
Speaker 1: took her own life is because this was a woman
28:11
Speaker 1: who had a lot of self loathing about her body.
28:14
Speaker 1: So in my opinion, there is no way she would
28:18
Speaker 1: have ever taken her own life and allowed herself to
28:20
Speaker 1: be found naked. Over the years, a lot of people
28:23
Speaker 1: had theories about who killed Karen, some a little wilder
28:26
Speaker 1: than others. In nineteen sixty seven, a book came out
28:29
Speaker 1: by a researcher named Pan Jones. He said the Associated
28:33
Speaker 1: Press had had a wire story about a woman who
28:35
Speaker 1: called two minutes before JFK was assassinated. This caller apparently
28:39
Speaker 1: was in Oxnard, California, that's around an hour and a
28:42
Speaker 1: half's drive from LA and said the president was going
28:45
Speaker 1: to be shot. So Penn Jones claimed that Karen's father,
28:50
Speaker 1: IRV knew Jack Ruby, the man who killed JFK's assassin,
28:54
Speaker 1: Lee Harvey Oswald, and IRV knew about the assassination, that
28:58
Speaker 1: he told his daughter Karen about it, and that she
29:00
Speaker 1: wanted to warn the president. Basically, this researcher said Karen's
29:05
Speaker 1: death was a mob hit. This has been floating around
29:08
Speaker 1: on web slus and other boards for years and there's
29:10
Speaker 1: just no evidence of this. First of all, Karen was
29:13
Speaker 1: with her friends in Palm Springs. She never said anything
29:16
Speaker 1: about any danger to the president. Much later, the Ventura
29:19
Speaker 1: County Star did its own investigation after some of the
29:23
Speaker 1: FBI documents were declassified. They found that the operators gave
29:27
Speaker 1: a description of the caller's voice, apparently it did not
29:30
Speaker 1: match Karen's, and that these operators believed that this caller
29:34
Speaker 1: was mentally disturbed. Also, Karen did not drive, She took
29:38
Speaker 1: cabs everywhere. How did she get to Oxnart. It's really
29:41
Speaker 1: far fetched and in my opinion, just a red herring
29:43
Speaker 1: that takes away from the investigation. In nineteen eighty eight,
29:48
Speaker 1: IRV Cupsonate published a memoir. He revealed he and his
29:51
Speaker 1: wife Essie, believed Andrew Prine did not kill Karen. RV
29:56
Speaker 1: seemed to be more focused on David Lane. IRV Cupsonate
30:00
Speaker 1: died in two thousand and two, and his funeral was
30:03
Speaker 1: a big deal. Hollywood star and the Mayor of Chicago attended.
30:07
Speaker 1: His wife, Essie, had died a couple years earlier. It
30:10
Speaker 1: was clear that one of Irv's biggest regrets was that
30:14
Speaker 1: his daughter Karen's murder had never been solved. He really
30:17
Speaker 1: believed the police did not take the investigation seriously enough.
30:21
Speaker 1: Andrew Prine went on to act in other films. He
30:24
Speaker 1: has also passed away. David Lang seemed to kind of
30:27
Speaker 1: fall off the radar for a while. He did work
30:29
Speaker 1: on the movie Clute and a couple of other movies.
30:32
Speaker 1: According to his IMDb page. He died in two thousand
30:35
Speaker 1: and six. Some people have wondered by the way, if
30:39
Speaker 1: Robert Hathaway was in the apartment at all that night,
30:41
Speaker 1: because when police dusted for fingerprints, they only found Edward
30:46
Speaker 1: Ruben's fingerprints. So I wonder, is it possible that only
30:49
Speaker 1: Edward Ruben was there, and that Robert Hathaway his friend,
30:52
Speaker 1: gave him an alibi for that night so he wouldn't
30:54
Speaker 1: get in trouble. But if that's true, why were there
30:58
Speaker 1: three cups of coffee out? It's weird that their stories
31:04
Speaker 1: didn't match, And I wonder why police didn't push all
31:06
Speaker 1: of these guys a lot harder. I keep coming back
31:10
Speaker 1: to a couple of details, the unlocked door and that
31:13
Speaker 1: red bathrobe which Mark and Marsha Goddard said looked like
31:16
Speaker 1: it had been removed and kind of thrown on the chair.
31:18
Speaker 1: Now again, Edward and Robert could be lying about locking
31:21
Speaker 1: that door behind them. But if they're telling the truth,
31:26
Speaker 1: and if David is telling the truth about the door
31:28
Speaker 1: being unlocked when he twisted the knob, the evidence points
31:31
Speaker 1: to Karen being in a super depressed state, watching TV
31:35
Speaker 1: or maybe in bed, and then someone knocking on the
31:38
Speaker 1: door and her going to open that door. Maybe she
31:41
Speaker 1: threw the robe on the chair because she thought it
31:43
Speaker 1: was Andy showing up. They had just talked on the phone.
31:46
Speaker 1: Maybe she opened the door and it was someone else,
31:50
Speaker 1: someone she didn't expect. Karen Cupson. It's case is still
31:55
Speaker 1: officially open, and a lot of people ask me why
31:58
Speaker 1: I would cover this. Almost everyone related to this case
32:03
Speaker 1: has passed away. But I wanted to cover this case
32:06
Speaker 1: because there's still one person in this whose name we
32:09
Speaker 1: don't have, and that is the actress who supposedly went
32:13
Speaker 1: out with Andrew Prine on that Wednesday night. If she
32:17
Speaker 1: is still around, I would love to find her because
32:20
Speaker 1: I think she could help answer some questions. And to me,
32:24
Speaker 1: every time I hear about this case, I hear the
32:26
Speaker 1: same thing. I hear, this is a Hollywood story, it's
32:28
Speaker 1: a cautionary tale. To me, it's much more universal, Karen Cupson,
32:32
Speaker 1: It was much more than West Hollywood case file number
32:35
Speaker 1: Z nine six one sixty five to one. This was
32:38
Speaker 1: a young woman with hopes and dreams. She was living
32:41
Speaker 1: alone for the first time in her life. She loved
32:43
Speaker 1: a guy who didn't really love her back. I really
32:46
Speaker 1: believe if she'd had some time, she probably would have
32:49
Speaker 1: gotten her shit together. She might have made it in Hollywood.
32:51
Speaker 1: She might have quit Hollywood had a family followed another dream.
32:56
Speaker 1: She had family at home who loved her and stood
32:59
Speaker 1: behind her. She had friends. We've all done some crazy
33:01
Speaker 1: things when we're young and in love, and I believe
33:03
Speaker 1: she probably would have moved past all that. Unfortunately she
33:07
Speaker 1: never got that chance. The tragedy of this story is
33:12
Speaker 1: that Karen was so obsessed with fame and she finally
33:16
Speaker 1: got it, but she didn't really make headlines until it
33:19
Speaker 1: was her obituary. Helen Gone Murder Line is a production
33:29
Speaker 1: of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and
33:31
Speaker 1: narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts.
33:35
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance. Music
33:39
Speaker 1: contributed by Ben Sale. This episode was scored and mixed
33:42
Speaker 1: by Noah Kamer. Executive producers of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr,
33:47
Speaker 1: and Elsie Crowley. Listen to Helen Gone ad free by
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Speaker 1: subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts.
33:54
Speaker 1: You can follow the show on Instagram at Helen Gonepod.
33:57
Speaker 1: If you have a case you'd like me and my
33:59
Speaker 1: team to look into, you can reach out to us
34:01
Speaker 1: at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight
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