Background
On April 4, 1958, at age 14, Cheryl Crane stabbed her mother"s boyfriend Johnny Stompanato to death. The killing was ruled a justifiable homicide: Crane was deemed to have been protecting her mother.
On April 4, 1958, at age 14, Cheryl Crane stabbed her mother"s boyfriend Johnny Stompanato to death. The killing was ruled a justifiable homicide: Crane was deemed to have been protecting her mother.
Stompanato was well-known to have been abusive, extremely jealous of Turner and had previously pointed a gun at actor Sean Connery, her co-star in Another Time, Another Place, only to have Connery take the gun from him, beat him and force him from the movie set. Following Stompanato"s death, Crane was made a ward of the State of California. and was placed in the El Retiro School for Girls in Sylmar, Los Angeles, for "psychiatric therapy" in March 1960. Six weeks later she and two other girls climbed a 10-foot wall and fled.
They were eventually returned to the school after Cheryl telephoned her father, restaurateur Steven Crane.
Five weeks later, Cheryl again fled the campus with two other girls. In 1969, Crane was detained by the Los Angeles Police Department when three half-grown marijuana plants were discovered in the back seat of her car.
In her autobiography, Detour: a Hollywood Tragedy – My Life With Lana Turner, My Mother (1988), Crane discussed the Stompanato killing publicly for the first time and admitted to the stabbing. Years later, Cheryl publicly revealed that she had told her mother she was a lesbian and that Turner had taken the news well.
Crane has written a mystery novel titled The Bad Always Die Twice, published in 2011.