CA CA - Karyn Kupcinet, 22, West Hollywood, 28 Nov 1963

[Kathy C]

You ask a lot of good questions, Richard. What puzzles me as much as her manner of death is why her dad didn't lean hard on LE to keep digging until no stone was unturned. Why didn't he have another autopsy done by a different doctor? He was rich and he had connections. I don't understand why he gave up so easily. Maybe he did keep the pressure on and just kept quiet about it...I don't know.

What happened here was tragic. Walter Winchell, whose career had hit the skids, went out to LA to solve the Karyn Kupcinet murder, which he was sure would win him a Pulitzer Prize. I have not read his report, but it concerned Prine's ex-wife, actress Sharon Farrell. She said Prine was no good. That she had heard a rumor about him having strangled a cat. (He grew up on a farm, if that adds a liklihood to this allegation.) She said when he took off, she never saw her cat again. They were married for 2 months and she began an affair with Vince Edwards (Ben Casey). Prine was asking for alimony. Karyn caught Vince on his set one day and tricked him into taking a subpeona for his appearance in court.

In those days Vince carried real clout. He had her thrown out of the studio. When she died, he too was questioned, but not seriously.

Anyway, the police asked Irv to get Winchell off their backs. He was hindering rather than helping. Irv later wished he had hired a private investigator.

About her committing suicide, why would she take off her bathrobe and lay down naked to die?

Kathy C

 

[Stella]

She may not have worn the robe for days. And it sounds weird, someone commiting suicide in their bathrobe. There was a book open in the living room with a chapter on dancing nude so maybe that is why she wasn't wearing the robe. She could've lost her balance and tripped. As I said, there are all kinds of possibilities as to her manner of death.

 

[Kathy C]

She may not have worn the robe for days. And it sounds weird, someone commiting suicide in their bathrobe. There was a book open in the living room with a chapter on dancing nude so maybe that is why she wasn't wearing the robe. She could've lost her balance and tripped. As I said, there are all kinds of possibilities as to her manner of death.

The book that laid open with "lose your inhibitions, dance around naked like a wood nymph" was never stated as being in her living room. After the terrible day she had, she wasn't dancing around. She studied at the Actors' Studio and an actor has to free herself from inhibitions in order to act truthfully onstage.

Her mother was a dancer and a dance teacher. I'm sure Karyn knew how to dance. I just wonder about the 2 men who visited her that night. How did they describe her residence? Was the house messy, with closets open and clothing hanging out of drawers and on the floror? Was her bed pulled apart? These 2 could have told a lot about her that night.

Kathy C

 

[Richard]

The concept of "Mysterious and Suspicious Deaths" is part of Kennedy Assassination Lore. It is a theme which has been picked up and repeated time and again by various Conspiracy buffs and in several books on the subject.

The premise is that there were a lot of people who were in some way connected with the Assassination or with the death of Oswald, or with a later cover-up who died mysteriously or under suspicious circumstances within a short period following the events in Dallas in November 1963.

A man named Penn Jones,Jr., a newspaper editor for the Midlothian Mirror, a small town weekly paper of Midlothian, Texas was the origionator of the Mysterious Deaths List. He deeply believed in the innocence of Lee Harvey Oswald and set out to prove that a conspiracy was responsible for Kennedy's assassination.

In 1966, Jones began self-publishing the first of four volumes of a a book titled "Forgive My Grief". In the series he stated that a number of people who were connected with the assassination soon began to die "mysterious" deaths. At the top of his list was the name of Karyn Kupcinet.

The list was picked up by other conspiracy theorists and reprinted with additions over the years. I have found reference to it in the following books, to name a few:
High Treason by Robert Groden and Harrison Liningstone (1989)
Crossfire by Jim Marrs (1989)
The Killing of a President by Robert Groden (1993)
Case Closed by Gerald Posner (1993)
Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi (2007)

This list grew over time to include 101 or 104 individuals and the deaths stretched from 1963 thru 1984. Now over half of those deaths were due to heart attacks or cancer or other natural causes. Many others while possibly violent deaths, were not mysterious but rather common auto accidents, or other explainable mishaps. While some persons on the list were in fact connected with the events of November 1963, there was no real direct connection for most.

Early in 1967, the London Sunday Times featured the origional list by Penn Jones and stated that chances were "100 Trillion to one" for all the people on the list to have died within 3 years after the assassination. This gave the list and the concept a big boost. Later, however, the Times backed off their estimate. Later estimates were that such a list of deaths were well within the norm of one to one odds.

More recent criticism of the validity of such a list to prove a conspiracy is that it is flawed in many ways, both in origional inclusion of some names and in concluding that it is proof of a conspiracy.

All that aside, How did Karyn Kupcinet's name get included at the top of the list?

Karyn was aparently murdered in her own apartment in Hollywood, CA on or about 28 November 1963, six days after the murder of President Kennedy on 22 November 1963 in Dallas, Texas.

It has been reported that a telephone operator in Los Angeles overheard an unknown/ unidentified woman stating that President Kennedy was going to be killed about 10 or 20 minutes before he actually was shot. Penn Jones somehow concluded that the unknown woman was Karyn Kupcinet, but never stated how he knew this.

Later others picked up Jones' list and included incorrect information such as mispelling her name as "Karen" and stating that her father was a childhood friend of Jack Ruby, and that she died TWO days after Kennedy. Most of the time not much more than her name and the fact that she was murdered can be found in these books. None of them provide any solid evidence linking Karyn to Kennedy's assassination.

In spite of all that, Karyn's death is still listed as an Unsolved Murder. Could Penn Jones' unnamed tipster have been someone who wanted to cover up the real reason behind Karyn's death?

 

[Richard]

Karyn Kupcinet

Two men occupy a booth at the Pacific Dining Car in L.A. The younger one appears gaunt and steely-eyed behind reading glasses. The older man has graying hair, a gray mustache, and a weariness that also somehow seems gray. The two men talk of murder. They glance about the restaurant occasionally as if expecting someone.

The scene better written might open a James Ellroy hardboiled crime novel. In fact, the bespectacled man is Ellroy himself, and his guest is retired Sheriff’s Homicide Sergeant Bill Stoner. The third party who arrives does not fit so well with the rough-edged atmosphere.

Kari Kupcinet, a pretty actress in her twenties, greets them with an ebullient burst of gratitude. Her conversation continues with a contagious energy marked by heartfelt peaks and valleys. She talks of murder. ''

Stoner opens a file . . . .

In 1961, Karyn Kupcinet was a pretty actress in her twenties. She had left her famous family in Chicago and moved to Los Angeles. She had guest starred on several T.V. shows, including Perry Mason, and appeared in a Jerry Lewis film called The Ladies Man. She had a promising future. Some might label her situation typical for a young and beautiful actress: she was talented and all screwed up.

She was also, however, smart enough to sense the menace in the Hollywood merry-go-round. Unfortunately, she did not get off in time. At least that’s the portrait of her offered in James Ellroy’s 1998 article “Glamour Jungle.”

He doesn’t mention the theories about the connection between Karyn Kupcinet’s murder and President Kennedy’s assassination. He need not. Her story, particularly told in such fearless prose, stands on its own. In present context, of course, the J.F.K. link must be addressed: Karyn Kupcinet leads off the list of so-called “mystery deaths” befalling those who may have had information about a conspiracy.

Her place there evidently originated with pioneering conspiracy theorist Penn Jones, Jr., and a wire story about a bizarre phone call. A telephone operator reported that twenty minutes before the assassination, an agitated female, probably coming through due to a crossed circuit, foretold that the President would be killed. The signal came from fifty miles north of Los Angeles.

Eight days later, friends found Karyn Kupcinet dead, and the coroner ruled murder by strangulation. Jones connected the dots. He drew a line from the origin of the mysterious phone call to the apartment where the young actress was slain. He made the connection because of their fifty-mile proximity.

Jones drew another line from Karyn to her father. Mention the name “Kup” to a native Chicagoan and expect to get an earful of tales from the city’s golden era. Irv Kupcinet earned the nickname “Mr. Chicago” as he penned “Kup’s Column” for the Chicago Sun-Times, hosted talk shows on local T.V., and announced Bears games. His career stretched back into the 30’s and into every aspect of the city’s culture. He gained the admiration and trust of people on the streets, in the penthouses, and in City Hall. The Chicago mob overlapped all three spheres, and Kup didn’t discriminate. “He treated them in his usual manner,” notes Carol Felsenthal, “a ‘Hi, buddy,’ a slap on the back, and an expectation that they, like anyone else, would be a source of tips [for Kup’s Column]” ...

It is, then, obvious--and perhaps unremarkable--that Kup knew Jack Ruby. Jones and later conspiracy theorists suggest that Karyn learned of the impending assassination from her father. She made the phone call in a desperate attempt to save the President. The mob silenced her.

John McAdams has a write-up on his Kennedy Assassination Home Page that offers a compelling critique of this scenario. Despite sober correctives like McAdams’s and the sheer level of conjecture involved in connecting her murder to the assassination, Karyn Kupcinet’s name continues to appear atop the list of suspicious deaths printed in books and scrolled on documentaries.

Some researchers who do not think she made the phone call still wonder if the actress was murdered to send a message to her father. A ‘blogger known as “Witness” reports that Irv Kupcinet contacted Chicago gangster “Red” Dorfman and asked a few too many questions about Ruby shooting Oswald. The murder of his daughter would ultimately dissuade Kup from any further investigation.

Another wrinkle rolls Karyn into the scandal surrounding L.B.J. aide Bobby Baker by tying her to Mary Jo Kopechne based on the claim that the two women attended Wellesley together. They did not. Karyn did attend Pine Manor Junior College, then in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and would later pad her resume with references to Wellesley, but it is unclear if she ever met Kopechne.

Irv Kupcinet would not be happy with the way his daughter’s name continues to circulate in such contexts. When on the heels of Stone’s J.F.K.The Today Show did a segment on the mystery deaths and listed Karyn as the first, Kup used his column to excoriate them.

His granddaughter Kari does not feel that kind of pain when she hears her aunt mentioned as part of a Kennedy conspiracy cover-up. She tends to laugh. Above all, she is glad that Karyn’s murder has not been forgotten, for she has nursed over the years a sense of deep connection to her aunt. Karyn’s ghost, one can tell, is never far from Kari. Kari grew up in L.A., always wanted to be an actress, and heard constantly from her grandmother Essee, “You’re just like Cookie.”

Cookie was the family’s nickname for Karyn. Despite these parallels, Kari did not begin chasing her aunt’s ghost until she turned 17 and stumbled upon the Film Academy’s Karyn Kupcinet file. She wound up in Chicago where her grandparents turned her loose with the twelve boxes of their daughter’s belongings they kept.

Kari saw obvious parallels between herself and her aunt. These continued to grow as she took a role in 1991 on The Young and the Restless and found herself in the same shallow Hollywood milieu that had driven her aunt to despair. As Ellroy puts it, “She caught the psychic-twin bit full-on....

Kari’s story, however, has a happy ending because she learned from Karyn’s. Based upon the misery she found in her aunt’s diaries, Kari made changes in her own life. Again in Ellroy’s words, “She put down her bad L.A. habits” (p. 92). She has, in fact, gone on to become a successful business woman in Chicago. Her latest venture is a lingerie and erotica store just for women called G Boutique.....

Reflecting today on Karyn’s role in her life, Kari admits, “I was completely obsessed for a long time, but not nuts, just younger then.” Although she has made her peace with Karyn’s ghost, her nights are still occasionally troubled by the unanswered question of what befell the beloved aunt whom fate never let her meet.

The mystery explains her entrance into the Pacific Dining Car to meet with a veteran detective and famous writer. The two offer her the chance to review her aunt’s cold case file. Kari jumps at it. She learns that Ellroy and several cops who worked the case thought Karyn had not been murdered but that her death resulted from an overdose of prescription pills.

The finding that she was strangled came from a coroner with a dubious reputation. A rumor, which he denies, has him joking with a colleague during a subsequent autopsy, “At least I didn’t break the hyoid bone on this one!” (qtd. p. 92).Kari does not agree with Ellroy’s view. Her suspicions fall on one of the case’s original suspects who is still alive.

She also expresses mixed feelings about the tone of Ellroy’s “Glamour Jungle.”Even so, she remains deeply grateful to James Ellroy for helping her research the case and for the way his interest in it keeps Karyn in the public eye. “I believe he really cares,” she concludes.
Sources: Ellroy, James. “Glamour Jungle.” Crime Wave. New York: Vintage, 1999.

Felsenthal, Carol. “The Lost World of Kup.” Chicago Magazine June 2004.

<http://carolfelsenthal.com/PDFs/TheLostWorldofKup.pdf>.

Kupcinet, Kari. Telephone Interview. 2 January 2006.

McAdams, John. “Dead in the Wake of the Kennedy Assassination: Hollywood Homicide.” Accessed 17 December 2005

<http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/kupcinet.htm>.

Witness. “Karyn Kupcinet and the Bobby Baker Scandal.” Posted 11 Dec. 2005

<http://thecloakofdarkness.blogspot.com/>.


Source:

Zapruder’s Step-Children: The Most Fascinating People in J.F.K. Assassination Lore by Paul Fecteau

LINK:

http://www.washburn.edu/faculty/pfecteau/zap.htm

 

[Richard]

Bumping up. This case may never be solved at this late date, but it is a fascinating one with many possibilities. Has any one heard anything new?

 

[Winward1]

Irv Kupcinet was pretty lightweight, if you're going to call him a "reporter." He was highly successful and well known, but sort of a local Larry King, handling the Hollywood types and giving them cushy interviews. I don't consider that reporting. He had a show and a column, and he reported Hollywood P.R. I can't image anyone would have wanted to hurt his kid, or him for who he was or what he did. The timing of her death is interesting, but if she was down or even suicidal, it was a tough time to be down. The country had spent much of the prior week watching JFKs funeral, widow and newly fatherless kids. Perhaps that pushed her over the edge.

 

[Kathy C]

Irv Kupcinet was pretty lightweight, if you're going to call him a "reporter." He was highly successful and well known, but sort of a local Larry King, handling the Hollywood types and giving them cushy interviews. I don't consider that reporting. He had a show and a column, and he reported Hollywood P.R. I can't image anyone would have wanted to hurt his kid, or him for who he was or what he did. The timing of her death is interesting, but if she was down or even suicidal, it was a tough time to be down. The country had spent much of the prior week watching JFKs funeral, widow and newly fatherless kids. Perhaps that pushed her over the edge.

Irv was no lightweight. He considered himself a serious reporter. Irv was a Zionist. He had a night time talk show in which people from all walks of life discussed whatever. The show would start at midnight and end when they ran out of conversation. Later it became an hour-and-a-half show and then an hour long. Called Kup's Show. He interviewed Elijah Mohammed. All kinds of people. I wouldn't compare him to Larry King. Larry hardly does any research -- his staff does. King throws easy questions at his celeb guests, that's why when there's a scandal, they go right to him.

Because of connections to JFK researchers, I was able to talk to Cyril Wecht about Karyn Kupcinet. I had sent him material on the matter. He phoned me and told me he couldn't call it -- because she was decomposed and her coroner had a fetish for strangled women. Two women he did were exhumed and found they died of other causes than strangulation. This came to court 3 years after Karyn's autopsy by him. Also, co-workers said he was often drunk and one-time bragged, "At least I didn't break the hyoid bone on that one." The California authorities said they had no money left to exhume other women he claimed were strangled. And Karyn was buried in Illinois. This had to get back to the Kupcinets. You couldn't stand 10 feet away and suggest it was a possible suicide. Till his dying day Irv claimed it was a murder, not suicide.

So even the esteemed Cyril Wecht couldn't figure it out. When I die, the first question I'm going to ask God will be: Who killed Karyn Kupcinet?

Kathy C

 

[Winward1]

I have no doubt Kup considered himself a serious reporter, and I remember his show. One of my parents worked at his paper and I talked with him about a story late in his career.

Yet, he was a columnist and in his column ALWAYS led with celebrity and fame over all else (I'm sure doing a local show he may not have been able to get a Hollywood A lister on every week. But that's clearly what he preferred to cover.)

That said, he considered himself a serious reporter. I considered him an entertainment columnist and don't think serious print journalists (i.e. real reporters) would have considered Kup a serious reporter. They would have said his forte was fluff.

 

[Richard]

Bumping this thread up.

Although there is some controversy as to when Karyn began her acting career and whether or not she appeared on screen under the name "Tammy Windsor", most agree that she began appearing in credits under her own name of Karyn Kupcinet in 1961. That was 50 years ago.

Has anyone heard more about Karyn's story lately? Has a book on her life and death been published yet?

 

[Richard]

I recently saw Karyn Kupcinet's name listed along with a lot of other older unsolved murder cases in an appendix to Steve Hodel's book: "Black Dahlia Avenger".

He does not explain anywhere in the book why he lists her as a possible victim of a suspected serial killer who began a series of murders in the 1940's.

 

[STANDREID]

Is there any evidence that Kup knew Jack Ruby? I know that Ruby was originally from Chicago and both were Jewish (there are 10s of thousands of Jews in Chicago) but JR was a low tier mob associate, not someone famous. I'm pretty sure Ruby knew who Kup was but I'm not so sure that the opposite follows.

 

[Dreamnine]

I think the accidental death theory is the most likely.

But we'll probably never know for sure.

 

[Winward1]

Her father had a TV show on here that was broadcast Saturday nights in the mid 1960s. It is widely reported that Chuck Percy watched it the evening before his daughter was murdered in their home.

 

[Richard]

Irv Kupcinet, Karyn's father, had been in Los Angles, California for some time by 1963.

He did a review on Bob Newhart, a quote of which appeared in 1960 on Bob's very first comedy album, "The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart". "Kup" very accurately predicted big things for the (then) unknown standup comedian.

 

[Richard]

This month marks 50 years since the death of Karyn Kupcinet.

While I personally think that her death being linked to the Kennedy Assassination is a stretch, her death remains a mystery.

 

[Veidt]

I only just began reading this thread but I have to ask, what was Irv Kupcinet's personality like (beyond what's been said in the first post)?

Somehow I have a hard time imagining that someone would kill his daughter as a warning for him to keep quiet. IMO someone who lost his child would be more likely to feel like they have less to lose by speaking out and do so. That's just what I think, it is of course possible that he feared for the safety of other members of the family or his own. I think it would make more sense for someone who wanted him to keep quiet to send threats, maybe even spook him with a deliberately failed close call but not actually kill his daughter. :twocents:

 

[chlban]

Having, once upon a time, been a die hard JFk Conspiracy believer the so called connection between Karyns death and the assasination is not new. However the conspiracy buffs have tried to tie so many "mysterious" deaths to the assasination it simply reached lunatic proportions.

She obviously did not not make the so called phone call about JFK's assasination. If she had it seems she would have mentioned it agin the days after the assasination when that was virtually all anyone was talking about (the assasination of course, not the imaginary phone call).

I think it is likely that she died accidentally as a result of taking too many pills and then possibly injuring herself. Maybe she was strangled, but I think there is enough doubt about that to discard it as any kind of proof.

Whatever happened to her, I am quite certain it had absolutley nothing to do with JFK.

 

[Dreamnine]

Yes, I think it most likely an accident, drink/drugs and a fall.

 

[mysterymike]

I know on that one episode of Andy Griffith it has Karyn in the credits, but the actress on the show looks nothing like the photos of Karyn I have seen. I don't think it's really Karyn on Andy Griffith.