Even celebrities can’t outrun their crimes. From Ted Kennedy’s dash from
the scene to Amy Locane’s ill-fated decision, these and more chilling
chronicles reveal celebrities who made headlines for more than just their talents.
The 1960s were filled with tragedy for the Kennedy political dynasty.
Following the assassinations of his older brothers John and Robert, Ted Kennedy was
representing Massachusetts in the United States Senate.
Everything changed on the night of July 18, 1969,
when the car he was driving accidentally veered off the Dike Bridge on the island
of Chappaquiddick near Martha's Vineyard. It flipped over and landed upside down in a
pond. Kennedy was able to free himself, but his 28-year-old passenger Mary Jo Kopechne drowned.
What happened next has been the subject of much speculation for years. Kennedy returned
to his hotel room and didn't notify authorities until nine hours later. Because of the delay,
police were unable to determine whether he was intoxicated while behind the wheel.
As a result, he never faced any manslaughter charges. Ultimately,
he pleaded guilty to a single charge of leaving the scene of an accident.
He received a two-month suspended sentence and was temporarily prohibited from driving.
While it will never be known what exactly happened on that bridge, what eventually became
apparent was that any presidential ambitions Kennedy had also died on that fateful night.
"I pray that I can have the courage to make the right decision."
The cinematic work of John Huston speaks for itself. During a career spanning five decades,
he directed such classics as The Maltese Falcon and The African Queen. He was
also an actor with more than 50 screen credits under his belt, most notably 1974's Chinatown.
But back in 1933, a 26-year-old Huston was involved in a fatal car accident,
as his car struck a pedestrian as she crossed the street. As reported by The New York Times,
the woman was killed when the force of impact sent her body sailing more
than 30 feet through the air. Huston was placed on trial for her death,
but witnesses confirmed that the car had not been moving excessively fast. Ultimately,
the jury determined that the death was an accident, and Huston was found not guilty.
But whether or not Huston was even behind the wheel in the first place has become something of
a Hollywood mystery. A longstanding rumor contends that the driver was actually movie star Clark
Gable, with legendary Hollywood fixer Eddie Mannix handsomely paying off Huston to take the fall.
Decades before becoming First Lady, Laura Bush found herself at the center
of tragedy. During the 2000 presidential campaign of her husband George W. Bush,
reports surfaced of a 1963 car accident in which a 17-year-old Laura ran a stop sign
and hit another car, killing that vehicle's driver, a 17-year-old named Michael Douglas.
In her 2010 memoir Spoken from the Heart, Bush wrote of being unable to overcome the
guilt she continued to carry with her throughout her life, particularly for
not attending the funeral or reaching out to the Douglas' parents. As she put it,
"I lost my faith that November, lost it for many, many years."
In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, Bush's former classmate Raymond "Scooter"
Jenkins recalled that her fellow students felt sympathy for her and Douglas' friends
and family, and that everyone was simply saddened by what occurred. As he put it,
"We knew she took it hard. She really was devastated by that as most kids would
be. It was something everybody wished hadn't happened for both him and her."
"And I learned the hard way that there are those kind of tragedies that you
can't do anything about ever, that you can't change, no matter how much you might want to."
Felicia Pearson is familiar to fans of the HBO crime drama The Wire for her breakout
performance as Snoop. But becoming an actor wasn't really an ambition for her while she
was growing up in foster care in Baltimore as the child of two drug addicts. When she
was cast on the show, she brought no shortage of authenticity to the role
of a cold-hearted assassin working for a drug kingpin. That's because when she was just 14,
she was convicted of second-degree murder for the shooting death of 15-year-old Okia Toomer.
Pearson was ultimately released from state prison after spending six and a half years behind bars.
Despite her unexpected acting career, Pearson never managed to fully escape her criminal
past. In 2011, she was one of more than 60 people arrested in a sprawling law enforcement sweep,
involving both state and federal agencies to bring down a massive drug ring.
She pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to sell heroin. She was sentenced to a seven-year
prison term. However, all but the five months she'd already served while awaiting trial were
suspended. In 2021, it was reported that a TV series about Pearson's life was in the works.
Rapper Gucci Mane is one of hip-hop's hottest stars, but his life could've
turned out very differently due to his role in a 2005 shooting. He'd reportedly dropped
by a friend's apartment when several armed men burst in. A scuffle ensued and shots were fired,
leading the gunmen to beat a hasty retreat. One of those men, Henry Lee Clark III,
was found dead several days later, and Gucci was then charged with murder.
The rapper confirmed that he shot at the men, but he insisted he'd acted out
of self-defense. When an eyewitness came forward to support his claims,
the prosecution's murder case was scuttled. According to Gucci's attorney Dennis Scheib,
"There wasn't enough evidence to meet the elements of murder [...] It was going to
be either a robbery, an aggravated assault or a murder. [Mane] had a right to defend himself."
Ultimately, all charges were dropped. While Gucci didn't do any time, he wasn't completely
unscathed. In a 2017 interview with ESPN's Highly Questionable, he admitted that he struggled with
post-traumatic stress disorder, which he believed led to some questionable behavior.
"I felt like that it was inevitable that I was going to hurt somebody,
and I was going to end up going to prison or something like that."
For decades, Death Row Records co-founder Marion "Suge" Knight was one of the most powerful men in
hip hop. But reports of his violent, gangster-like behavior were all too frequent. They included
claims that he pistol-whipped two rappers for not showing him enough respect, that he forced
a promoter to drink his urine, and that he dangled Vanilla Ice over a balcony during a dispute.
Ultimately, it was an incident of road rage in 2015 that sealed Knight's fate. A disagreement
with two associates ended with the mogul driving over them with his vehicle, leaving one injured
and the other dead. Knight was arrested, charged with murder, attempted murder, and hit and run.
In 2018, he entered a plea of no contest to charges of voluntary manslaughter,
with his lawyers claiming that he was acting in self-defense. He was ultimately sentenced
to 28 years behind bars. At the sentencing, the daughter of the
man he killed called him "a disgusting, selfish disgrace to the human species."
In March 2023, TMZ reported that a still imprisoned Knight and his
brother Brian Brown were angling to tell his life story in a TV series.
In February 2015, Caitlyn Jenner was driving on the Pacific Coast Highway
in Malibu. Her car rear-ended a Lexus that had stopped behind another car,
with enough force to send the Lexus smashing into the car ahead. It was then propelled into
oncoming traffic and struck by a massive Hummer. Passenger Kim Howe was pronounced dead at the
scene. Jenner blamed the accident on paparazzi that had been following her as she drove.
Authorities didn't press any criminal charges, determining that they were unable to prove that
Jenner was negligent. Jenner did, however, face civil lawsuits from the other people
involved in the accident, as Howe's stepchildren filed a wrongful death suit. According to TMZ,
Jenner settled that suit for a modest amount that was paid by her insurance company,
due to questions of the plaintiffs' legal standing as stepchildren. Meanwhile,
the driver of another vehicle also sued, and Jenner ultimately ended that lawsuit
with an $800,000 settlement, and this time, she paid it herself.
"Something like this, a tragedy like this,
you'll never get over it. You just learn to live with it the best you possibly can."
Luther Vandross first made his mark as a background singer on David Bowie's soul-infused
Young Americans album before launching his own successful solo career. He was at the peak of his
popularity in early 1986 when he was involved in a horrific car accident in Los Angeles.
As reported by the Associated Press, Vandross drove into oncoming traffic
and hit two other cars. The passenger in Vandross' car, his friend Lawrence Salvemini,
was killed. Police estimated that the singer had been driving 50 miles per hour,
15 above the speed limit. He was charged with misdemeanor manslaughter and reckless driving.
Vandross entered a plea of no contest. As jury selection was underway at the
start of the trial, he struck a plea deal with prosecutors by pledging to
donate the proceeds of a benefit concert to a scholarship fund in
Salvemini's memory. The deputy city attorney was satisfied with the outcome, as he said,
"I'm just hoping that he is a compassionate man and realizes the gravity of what he did."
Vandross died in 2005 at the age of 54, in the midst of preparing for a comeback.
In 2012, Aaron Hernandez was one of the NFL's best players, having just signed a $41 million contract
with the New England Patriots. At the same time, a police investigation into an unsolved double
homicide began leading to Hernandez. In 2013, he was arrested and charged with the murder
in the shooting death of semi-pro football player Odin Lloyd. Hours after his arrest, he was cut by
the Patriots, and he was subsequently indicted on six counts, including first-degree murder.
In 2014, while imprisoned on that murder charge, Hernandez was then also charged
with the shooting deaths of Daniel de Abreu and Safiro Furtado. Meanwhile,
police identified Hernandez as a person of interest in another crime,
the double murder of two men in Gainesville, Florida. In 2015, Hernandez was found guilty
of Lloyd's murder. He was subsequently found not guilty of the double murders.
In April 2017, Hernandez was found dead in his prison cell, having hung himself with a sheet.
He was only 27. The autopsy revealed that he'd suffered from the most severe case of chronic
traumatic encephalopathy [en-sef-uh-LOP-uh-thee] ever witnessed in someone of his age.
"This would be the first case we've ever seen of that kind of damage."
Hernandez's story formed the basis of two different true-crime docuseries,
Oxygen's Aaron Hernandez Uncovered and Netflix's Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez.
Actor Amy Locane is best known for portraying Sandy Harling during the first season of Melrose
Place, with her notable big screen credits including Cry-Baby and School Ties. On June 27,
2010, she made the ill-fated decision to get behind the wheel after downing
several drinks. Her impairment led her to lose control of her vehicle
where she slammed into another car and killed the passenger, Helene Seeman.
Locane was arrested and ultimately convicted of second-degree vehicular homicide,
with the jury learning that her blood-alcohol level was three times
the legal limit at the time of the accident. She received a three-year
prison sentence. Assistant prosecutor Matthew Murphy told the Associated Press,
"There were no winners declared by the verdict. There are only losers. A husband lost his dear
wife; his two children lost their mother; and Helene's mother lost her daughter."
When Locane was released in 2015, she faced the uphill battle of being an ex-con attempting to
get her life back on track. But then in 2016 Seeman's family won an appeal on the grounds
that the initial sentence had been too lenient. Locane was then sentenced to another eight years,
in addition to another 18 months for an entirely new charge that had been added, fourth-degree
assault by auto. Locane was sent back to prison, with no eligibility for parole until 2024.
If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues,
help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).