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Discover the bizarre and unexpected intersections between famous faces and infamous serial killers. From close calls and chilling encounters to indirect links and unsettling stories, these chilling tales reveal how some celebrities have been tangentially connected to some of history's most notorious criminals. Get ready for a wild ride through Hollywood's eerie connections that will leave you questioning the line between fame and infamy.
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00:00Can you just say Helen touch me?
00:01Yes, you may.
00:05Dead man walking!
00:06Welcome to Ms. Mojo, and today we're discussing the weird, twisted, and incredibly random
00:11connections between notorious serial killers and beloved celebrities.
00:15I'm alright, Jessica, but I can't say the same for him.
00:19Well done, Ms. McGill!
00:23Dick Van Dyke and Randall Woodfield.
00:25He played football in college, he was drafted by the Green Bay Packers.
00:30He spent a lifetime of playing football and basketball and baseball.
00:33Once his nascent career as an NFL player ended due to his erratic and violent behavior, Randall
00:39Woodfield began a crime spree that ended with his 1981 arrest.
00:42Although he was later convicted for only one of his crimes, he's linked to a series of
00:47murders, assaults, and robberies that occurred along Interstate 5 in both Oregon and California.
00:52The prosecutor in his case was Marion County District Attorney Chris Van Dyke.
00:56The tape really became an important kind of badge on all the cases and something that
01:02kind of pulled them together and knitted these cases together.
01:05He was the son of none other than Dick Van Dyke of film and TV fame.
01:09Beloved for his boundless energy and charisma, it's hard to imagine that his son was the one
01:13responsible for trying the case against such a brutal and merciless figure.
01:17One of the noteworthy things about this case, which makes it so extraordinary unusual, was
01:25just how unlikely a suspect, Randy Woodfield, appeared at first blush.
01:31Debbie Harry and Ted Bundy.
01:39In the early 1970s, the punk band Blondie was years away from success.
01:44Frontwoman Debbie Harry was eking out a living as a singer in the mean streets of New York
01:48when she couldn't have a cab.
01:50Finally, I just, you know, this guy kept circling around and asked me if I wanted a ride.
01:54He asked me about three times.
01:56So finally I said, yeah, okay, I'm just going straight across to a party, you know, if you'd
02:00like to come to the party.
02:02A handsome man in a beat up stripped out picked her up.
02:05Immediately, she realized something was wrong.
02:17She made a daring escape from his moving car, but didn't put together that it was Bundy
02:22until after his execution nearly two decades later.
02:25Although people familiar with the case don't doubt Harry's story, there's skepticism
02:28that the man was actually Bundy.
02:30Due to Bundy's inconsistent narration of his own life, it's possible if not likely.
02:34However, a similar looking man with a similar M.O. might be just as terrifying.
02:39So it ended for Ted Bundy.
02:41Ten years, 28 confessions, millions in Florida's legal battle to end his life.
02:47Bryan Cranston and Clifton Bloomfield.
02:49You're not some hardened criminal, Walt.
02:52You are in over your head.
02:54That's what we tell them.
02:55That's the truth.
02:56No, it's not the truth.
02:57Of course it is.
02:58The award-winning star of Breaking Bad and Malcolm in the Middle has had not one, but
03:03two brushes with notorious serial killers.
03:05He's one of the many celebrities who came into brief contact with Charles Manson in the
03:0860s.
03:09While he actually saw Manson during a horse riding session at Manson's Spahn Ranch compound
03:14in 1968, his link to an infamous New Mexico background actor isn't quite as straightforward.
03:19Clinton Bloomfield murdered five people between 2005 and 2008.
03:23Today, Bloomfield asked a judge to rescind his plea deal so he can go to trial.
03:27But Attorney General Hector Balbetis is fighting that and says Bloomfield is a serial killer
03:32who terrorized families and needs to stay locked up.
03:35Between his crimes, he booked some extra roles, claiming that one of his last jobs was an extra
03:39on Breaking Bad.
03:41Although it's never been corroborated, it did put Cranston's serial killer connection count
03:45at two, which is still kind of a lot.
03:47And then suddenly, you'll hear the scrape of a footstep behind you, but before you can
03:54even turn around.
03:57Matthew McConaughey and Edward Harold Bell.
03:59Let me tell you this, the older you do get, the more rules are gonna try to get you to
04:04follow.
04:05You just gotta keep living, man.
04:07L-I-V-I-N.
04:09In a way, the Dazed and Confused star is partially responsible for apprehending a notorious murderer.
04:14Every week for over a decade, America sat down to watch Unsolved Mysteries, hosted by Robert
04:19Stack.
04:19The show presented dramatizations of real unsolved cases.
04:23In 1992, many got their first look at Matthew McConaughey.
04:26Honey, look at that man out there.
04:29Look what he is doing, Larry.
04:32What you're about to see is a mother's worst nightmare.
04:35In his first screen role, he played Larry Dickens, one of the last victims of serial killer
04:40and predator Edward Harold Bell.
04:41After the episode aired, Bell was apprehended when a viewer recognized him and called in a tip.
04:46One of our viewers was stunned to realize that a man he had recently conducted business with
04:50in Panama City, Panama was none other than the fugitive killer Edward Harold Bell.
04:56Bell's self-confessed long and horrible criminal history came to an end with his 1993 conviction.
05:01Bell died in prison in 2019.
05:03Peter Lorre and the Hillside Strangler.
05:06Is there, Mr. Spade, as the newspapers imply a certain relationship between that unfortunate
05:11happening and the death a little later of the man Thursby?
05:15The famed German actor saved his daughter's life from beyond the grave.
05:19The actor had passed away over a decade before his daughter's 1977 run-in with the Hillside Strangler.
05:25The Strangler was actually two men, cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono Jr.
05:29Police focused on Bianchi only after he was arrested last January for the murder of two college students in Washington
05:35State.
05:36What the police did not know was that there is not one Strangler but two.
05:41Their habit of posing as police officers and asking for their next victim's ID turned out to be Catherine Lorre
05:46Baker's salvation.
05:47Recognizing her surname, they realized she was the daughter of famed German actor Peter Lorre.
05:52Both were fans of his work.
05:53They also were aware that a victim being a celebrity's child would draw too much media attention and so they
05:58let her go.
05:59She was none the wiser until Bianchi and Buono's arrest nearly two years later.
06:03His cousin Angelo Buono appeared in court on November the 16th 1981.
06:09At the time it was the longest trial in US criminal history.
06:14Lisa Rinna and the Trailside Killer.
06:15She's a soap opera star, a real housewife, and a traitor.
06:19Lisa Rinna's memoir was sure to be full of juicy stories.
06:21You've always been very open and honest, never holding back, even to your detriment.
06:26Yes, to my detriment, of course.
06:28And in an industry that isn't always so authentic.
06:32But one such story readers probably didn't expect was the harrowing account of her mother's escape from a predator and
06:37serial killer.
06:38Lois D'Andrade was David Carpenter's co-worker, and when he asked her to drive her home, she reluctantly agreed.
06:44As they were driving, he stopped stuttering.
06:47And she was like, OK, I'm sunk.
06:50Something's not right.
06:51And she said, David, what's going on?
06:54Only the intervention of a military policeman saved her.
06:57Despite being convicted for the attack, he was out of prison by 1969.
07:01He gets a plea bargain, I believe, for six years and goes to prison for six years and then gets
07:07out.
07:07And that's when he did all the hillside murders.
07:11Carpenter added to his predatory crimes by beginning a murder spree.
07:15He was convicted for the last time in 1988.
07:17He had two death row sentences.
07:19And now that we're not a death row state anymore, they've taken him off of death row.
07:24But he's still alive.
07:25He's still in jail alive.
07:27Ashton Kutcher at Michael Gargiulo.
07:28Michael Gargiulo showed no emotion as a Los Angeles jury found him guilty of murder and burglary in connection with
07:35the deaths of women in 2001 and 2005.
07:38In 2019, the long awaited trial of the Hollywood Ripper began.
07:42One of the witnesses was a famous face who had unknowingly crossed paths with him 18 years before.
07:47In 2001, Ashton Kutcher arrived at the home of Ashley Ellerin for a date.
07:51Unfortunately, he was several hours late.
07:54When Ellerin never answered the door, he figured she was angry and had left.
07:57Investigators believe Gargiulo attacked the fashion student from behind when she got out of her shower.
08:03Kutcher testified he left when Ellerin didn't answer her door.
08:06Kutcher learned of her murder the next day and contacted homicide detectives.
08:10Years later, he was put on the stand as a witness.
08:12Michael Gargiulo was arrested as early as 2008, but it took years to put the case together to convict him.
08:18He was convicted and received a death sentence after his 2019 trial.
08:22An emotional day in an L.A. courtroom.
08:24Victims' families and the lone survivor of the so-called Hollywood Ripper came face to face with him as he
08:31was sentenced to death.
08:32Sean Penn and Richard Ramirez.
08:33What have you been arrested for?
08:36You ever been arrested before?
08:38Ben?
08:38Danny!
08:39Where's your car?
08:40Never been arrested before in L.A.?
08:42Between 1984 and 1985, the Los Angeles metro area was in the throes of fear over the violent Night Stalker
08:48murders.
08:49Richard Ramirez was finally apprehended in August 1985.
08:53In 2015, Sean Penn claimed that during a month-long jail term in 1987, he was in a cell close
08:58to Ramirez.
09:00Down here on Boche Street, L.A. County Jail, in a cell kind of across from him.
09:08Learning that Ramirez wanted his autograph, Penn says he accepted a note from the murderer only to write back exactly
09:13what he thought of the Night Killer and his crimes.
09:15Telling the story to Loyola Marymount University's School of Film and TV, he revealed that the note, his only proof
09:21of the interaction, was lost in a fire at his home in 2007.
09:24And, uh, they gave it to him. And then, uh, and then my house burned down years later, and that
09:32damn thing of his burned with it, so I don't have it.
09:35Oh, wow.
09:35Burt Reynolds and Vaughn Greenwood.
09:37There was a man called, I'm gonna, I'm gonna condense this story real fast, there was a man called the
09:42Skid Row Slasher.
09:44Oh!
09:44Who had killed...
09:45Oh, I had forgotten.
09:46They...
09:47In 1975, the Skid Row Slasher had reportedly been in the neighborhood of prolific actor Burt Reynolds and randomly decided
09:53to pay him a visit.
09:54Reynolds was out with friend Dinah Shore at the time.
09:57When he returned, the murderer was standing with a machete wearing Reynolds' clothes.
10:01He left, having attacked Reynolds' neighbor, killing one.
10:04But I didn't come home.
10:05So he got bored waiting in the closet.
10:07And he went up to the house above me and killed one guy and cut the other guy real bad.
10:13The police were able to identify Vaughn Greenwood as the Skid Row Slasher based on items left on the hill
10:18near his house.
10:19Retelling the story to longtime friend Dinah Shore, he tells her that if he hadn't been with her the night
10:23of the murder,
10:24he might have been another of Greenwood's victims himself.
10:27If I hadn't been with you, I would have come home probably at nine.
10:32See?
10:33And he would have been there, and I'd have my shoes pointed at me right now.
10:46Before we continue, check out the single from Sound Mojo's album Balance.
10:50Classical music reimagined as rock, hard rock, and metal.
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10:56Marchant calls, rise and ruin, night and noon, all are prisoners of the need.
11:11Angela Lansbury and Charles Manson.
11:13I will go with you to Washington.
11:15Tomorrow, if you like, and I will show you documented proof that this man stands for evil.
11:20That he is evil.
11:221960s Hollywood was a mix of old and new, hippies and established stars.
11:25An aspiring musician Charles Manson was trying to break in.
11:28Record producer Terry Melcher, actress Candace Bergen, Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, and Danny Trejo all had run-ins
11:35with him.
11:35But the wildest Manson connection may be the legendary Angela Lansbury.
11:39The snow was very plentiful, and crumbs were very few, when a weather-beaten sorrow threw.
11:47The future Murder, She Wrote star noticed her young daughter Deidre was hanging around some odd young delinquents.
11:53Fearing the worst, she and husband Peter Shaw packed up the family and moved to Ireland.
11:58That was a prescient decision.
12:00Deidre and her friends were in the orbit of Charles Manson.
12:02About two years later, the so-called family committed the heinous Tate LaBianca murders.
12:07Uh, you are...
12:09I'm the devil.
12:11And I'm here to do the devil's business.
12:14Which of these killer connections had you never heard before?
12:17Tell us in the comments.
12:18Is Ryan or Dennis Williams?
12:24Cont hyvä, travel a Twitch.
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