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Hi listeners. It's Carter Roy Happy America 250. If you want to binge all four parts of our limited series about the crimes that built America, ad free, subscribe to Crime House Plus. With Crime House plus, you'll get all four episodes right now instead of waiting. You'll also get every episode of Murder True Crime Stories and the rest of the Crime House shows ad free and released early. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, tap Try free at the top of this show's page. This is Crime House. A second chance is a powerful thing. After a setback, a failure, or years of being overlooked, the opportunity to come back and prove yourself can feel like a gift, like the universe lining up to say, this is your moment. But sometimes you can be standing right at the edge of that comeback, close enough to taste it, when something completely random takes it all away. That's what happened to sal mineo. By February 1976, the former teen idol had spent more than a decade fighting to get back on top. Now, at 37 years old, he was finally on the verge of getting there. He had a hit play, a movie deal in his pocket, and every reason to believe the best was still ahead of him. But on a quiet Thursday night, everything he had spent 20 years chasing was gone in the blink of an eye. Sal's second act was over before it started. People's lives are like a story. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end, but you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon, and. And we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy, and this is True Crime Stories, a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes come out every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, with Friday's episodes covering the cases that deserve a deeper look. Thank you for being part of the Crime House community. Please rate, review and follow the show and for early ad free access to every episode, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. This is the second of two episodes on the 1976 murder of actor Sal Mineo. The last time we followed Sal from the Bronx to Broadway and finally to Hollywood, where he booked the role of a lifetime in Rebel Without a Cause opposite James Dean and Natalie Wood. Today, I'll trace Sal's rise to teen stardom and the long, painful decline that followed. By the mid-1970s, he was broke and forgotten, but on the verge of a comeback that everyone could feel coming. Then, a Chance encounter outside his apartment building changed everything. What happened next would baffle the LA County Sheriff's Department for two years and shape the way Sal would be remembered for decades to come. All that and more coming up. By the spring of 1955, 16 year old Sal Mineo had finished filming his breakout role as Plato in Rebel Without a Cause. The two months on set had been the best of his life. He'd gotten close to the film's star, James Dean, and the two of them had already started planning future projects together. When Rebel wrapped in late May, Sal flew home to the Bronx for what was supposed to be a quiet summer. After everything that had just happened, it was time to recharge. The only work he did was taking acting lessons with his old coach. Otherwise, he stayed close to home, hanging out with his siblings, helping his mom around the house, trying to wrap his head around it all. He'd left the Bronx as a Broadway kid playing a crown prince. He'd come back as a movie actor with credits opposite James Dean. The money was a whole new experience, too. Sal had been working since he was 11, but his family had always been careful with their spending. Now, with Rebel in the bank, the Mineos could finally afford to splurge a little. Sal bought himself a speedboat, the first big purchase he'd ever made just for himself. His parents took the rest of his earnings and used them to buy his older brother Mike a car. Sal didn't argue. After everything Mike had given up, losing his shot at Six Bridges to Cross. Watching the family rally around Sal's career instead of his a car felt like the least Sal could do. After a few months of lying low, Sal flew back to Hollywood in August for his next role. It was a small part in a movie called Giants, but the cast was stacked. Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean. Sal was thrilled to be back on the same lot as James again, even though they didn't actually share any scenes in the film. By late September, Sal was back in New York. Rebel Without a Cause was about to premiere the and he and Natalie were doing press together to promote it. James had stayed behind in California. He was a serious car guy and was driving his new Porsche up to Salinas for a race that weekend. On September 30, 1955, Sal and Natalie went to see a play together. They were sitting in the lobby waiting for the curtain to go up when somebody walked over and told them the news. James Dean was dead. He had been driving his Porsche up Highway 466 on his way to the race in Salinas when another car pulled across the road in front of him. The crash was horrific. By the time anyone could get to him, James was gone. He was 24 years old. Sal couldn't process it.
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He'd just been with James a few weeks earlier on the giant set, joking around between takes. They'd talked about working together again, about the next project, about the rest of their lives. The grief hit Sal hard. For weeks afterward, he barely got out of bed. What finally pulled him out was the one thing that had always saved him. Work. He took every TV gig he could find, just to have somewhere to be and something to do. A few weeks later, Rebel Without a Cause premiered. Sal sat in the theater watching the friend he'd just buried come back to life on screen. The whole experience was as bittersweet as you'd expect. Critics were divided on the film overall, but they were unanimous on 1 the three young leads were extraordinary. Sal, Natalie, and James all got rave reviews, but James would never read any of them. Then, In February of 1956, the call came. Sal had been nominated for an Academy Award for best Supporting actor. He was 17 years old, one of the youngest nominees ever in that category. Nobody had expected it. Warner Brothers had been pushing James and Natalie for nominations all season, and Sal figured he was an afterthought. He was thrilled to be in the running, but he was certain he wasn't going to win. And he didn't. The Oscar went to Jack Lemmon for Mr. Roberts, but Sal didn't really mind. He'd attended the ceremony with his mother on his arm, and he'd even gotten to present an award that night. He figured there'd be time enough for a win later. He had no idea how fast everything was about to hit. That spring, Sal was filming on location in New York City for a movie called Somebody Up There Likes Me, playing opposite Paul Newman. Fans followed the production all over the city. Sal didn't mind, but he was much more interested in studying Newman. He'd watch the older actor between takes, taking mental notes. Newman had a quiet intensity Sal had been trying to develop in his own performances. His. And working alongside him was its own kind of education. A few weeks later, Sal's new movie, Crime in the Streets, was about to premiere. The studio advertised that he'd be signing autographs and thousands of fans showed up. Not hundreds, thousands. They came with gifts, they came with flowers, they came with handmade signs and tear streaked faces. The line stretched around the block. Sal had to be escorted to and from the theater by security. When the press had a name for what was happening, they called it Miniomania. Sal was suddenly a full blown teen idol. And the fan letters started arriving by the bagful. There were so many that answering them became his mom Josephine's full time job. Movie stars Parade magazine named Sal the most exciting bachelor of the year. He couldn't go anywhere without getting recognized. The press needed a nickname for the new heartthrob and they grabbed one from his role in Crime in the Streets. The Switchblade Kid. It stuck. By the fall of 1956, Sal was the Switchblade Kid in every fan magazine in America. And that November Giant finally premiered. Josephine used some of Sal's money to fly herself, his sister Serena, his brother Victor and a handful of other family members out to Los Angeles for the world premiere. It was a huge night. The kind of moment the Mineos had spent their whole lives working toward. And Sal wasn't done yet. But he was ready to to try something new. The next year, he decided to try his hand at music. He'd grown up loving Fred Astaire and now he wanted to find out if he could be a singer too. So he recorded a single called Start Movin in My Direction and it climbed all the way to number nine on the Billboard chart. It sold over a million copies and earned earned Sal a gold record. He toured the country performing it, sang it on TV variety shows. And for a brief stretch, Sal Mineo wasn't just an actor. He was a pop star. Off camera, he was building a real life Hollywood social life too. Sal had been spending time at the Pasadena Playhouse, the famous training ground for young actors. And he'd fallen in with a tight little circle. James Dean had been part of the group before he died and the others, Natalie Wood, Nick Adams from Rebel were still in it. Sal was the youngest of the bunch and the others took him under their wing. Natalie once described him as puppy like, sensitive, eager to please. Certain that everyone loved him as much as he loved them. He was also still working with his mother as his manager was. Josephine had complete control of Sal's finances and she gave him an allowance of about $20 a week to live on. That's a little over $200 today. It was an unusual setup for a 17 year old movie star making real money. But it was how the Mineos had always operated. Family came first. Trust the people who'd raised you. By the end of the decade, Salad appeared in over two dozen films and the studios couldn't put him in projects fast enough. He played a Young Sue Warrior in the Disney adventure Tonka. He starred as the legendary jazz drummer in the Gene Krupa story and took real drum lessons so he could actually play the parts on screen, not just mime them in between. He kept doing variations of the troubled teen role from Rebel just to keep that typecasting machine fed. Sal knew he was getting boxed in. He'd say later that the studios couldn't see him as anything other than the Switchblade Kid, even though he was capable of so much more. But he was also being honest about why he kept saying yes. Sal later said, quote, for a while, I did blame Hollywood, but the truth is I knew what I was doing. I was enjoying myself, I was making money. Then in 1960 came the role that would mark the absolute peak of his career. A Holocaust survivor named Dov Landau in Otto Preminger's Exodus. It was the most demanding role Sal had ever attempted. Dov was a young Jewish man who'd survived the camps, made it to British controlled Palestine and joined the underground resistance. Sal poured himself into the part, researching, studying, working on his accent. The performance won him a Golden Globe. It also earned him a second Academy Award nomination, his second nod at 22. It also brought a young English actress named Jill Hayworth into his life. Jill was just 14 when they started filming and Sal was 21. They played young lovers in the film and their on screen chemistry carried over to real life. In 1960, barely anyone batted an eye at the relationship and within a year, they were engaged. For a while, it really seemed like Sal had everything. He was 22, a two time Oscar nominee, dating one of the most beautiful young actresses in Hollywood and one of the highest paid stars under 25 in the country. The Bronx kid had made it, but Sal didn't realize how quickly all of that could disappear. On this show, we're always digging for the truth. Yet modern healthcare remains one of the greatest mysteries of all. Everyone deserves real medical support. And. And that's why I want to talk about Mochi Health. Mochi is a nationwide platform that's bringing humanity and transparency back to healthcare by treating your unique biology. Not a fad. They've already helped 400,000 members lose over £5 million. And while they lead the way in weight loss, Mochi is now a full scale Marketplace for over 120 treatments ranging from hair and skincare to longevity, mental health and specialized men's and women's health. After you complete an eligibility form, you'll receive a telehealth evaluation with a partnered provider on Mochi's platform to build a plan personalized for your specific body and goals. You'll have 24. 7 access to your provider and specialized medications from a network of licensed pharmacies delivered right to your door. No waiting rooms or hidden fees. You just pay for your membership and your medication. It's personalized care that actually treats you like a human being. Stop leaving your health a up to an algorithm. Go to joinmochi.com hi listeners, it's Carter Roy, host of Murder True Crime Stories. I wanted to let you know that Crime House plus and Murder True Crime Stories are celebrating America's 250th by dropping a four part limited series on the crimes that built America. These are the crimes and cases that gave us Miranda rights, sparked criminal profiling and a murder that built America's missing children movement. Follow Murder True Crime Stories for a new episode every Monday leading up to July 4th, where you can binge all of them right now ad free with Crime House Plus. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, tap try free at the top of this show's page.
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By 1961, 22 year old Sal Mineo was at the very top of Hollywood. He had two Oscar nominations, a gold record, a beautiful fiance, and a list of producers who wanted him in their next film. There was no reason to think the ride was anywhere near over. Then later that year, Sal auditioned for one of the biggest movies of the year, Lawrence of Arabia, and didn't get the part. He believed his role in Exodus had hurt his chances. Lawrence. Lawrence was filming in Jordan and Sal felt the production didn't want a star associated with that material on their set. It was a frustrating rejection, but he tried not to dwell on it. He moved on to his next project, the Longest Day, where he played a paratrooper in the Normandy invasion. It was a big production with a huge ensemble cast, but Sal's part was small. He died in the first half of the movie. Then the next role got smaller, and the one after that. By the mid-1960s, Sal was watching his entire career fall apart in slow motion. And he had no idea why. He later said, one minute it seemed I had more movie offers than I could handle. The next, no one wanted me. It was disorienting. Sal had been a star for so long that he'd never had to think about how careers ended. He assumed his would just keep going. Now the phone barely rang, and when it did, it was for a cameo on some TV show. Sal was suddenly working one day guest spots for a fraction of what he used to make in a week. Part of it was the simple math of being a former teen idol. Sal was no longer the wide eyed kid who'd worked with James Dean. He was a grown man pushing 25, with the same baby face and the same Bronx accent he'd had at 16. And Hollywood didn't quite know what to do with him. Part of it was the era. The 1960s brought in a new kind of leading man. Taller, blonder, more conventionally masculine. Sal didn't fit the mold and he knew it. But there was another factor at play too, one that nobody said out loud at the time. Rumors had started circulating about Sal's private life sometime in the early 1960s. Sal's engagement to Jill Hayworth ended. Years later, the truth came out. Jill had walked in on Sal in bed with another man. The two of them stayed close for the rest of Sal's life. According to people who knew them both, what Jill and Sal had was real. She loved him and he loved Her. She just couldn't be in a relationship with someone who was also seeing men. Sal still cared so deeply about Jill that when she briefly dated television producer Aaron Spelling, who was 22 years older than her, he was furious. One night, he ran into the two of them at a private Beverly Hills club, walked over and punched Spelling in the face. He yelled, do you know how old she is? What are you doing with her at your age? Yes, it was a bold thing to say for a man whose own relationship with Jill had started when she was 14 and he was 21. But Sal didn't see it that way. And in that moment, he didn't care about the optics. He cared about Jill. But punching a producer at a Beverly Hills club didn't exactly help his reputation. Especially because after Jill, Sal stopped pretending he had relationships with both men and women. And by the late 1960s, he wasn't hiding it anymore, at least not in his personal life. The gossip spread through Hollywood whether he liked it or not, and the leading man roles fully dried up. In 1965, he played a stalker in a thriller called who Killed Teddy Bear? The performance got great reviews, but it also typecast him all over again, this time as a deranged criminal. After that, the offers tilted heavily toward villains and creeps, and Sal was desperate for a way out. At one point around 1971, he heard that Francis Ford Coppola was casting the Godfather and might be looking at him for the role of Fredo Corleone. Sal drove to Coppola's house and literally camped out on his front lawn for days, hoping for a chance to audition. He obviously didn't get the part. It went to a relatively unknown actor named John Gazelle. So at that point, Sal decided to do something nobody else in Hollywood was willing to. In 1969, he directed a Los Angeles production of a play called Fortune in Men's Eyes. It was a brutal drama about a young man's experience in a men's prison with explicit gay themes that no major studio at the time would have touched. The lead role went to a young actor named Don Johnson, years before Miami Vice would make him famous. It was a bold project for 1969. The Stonewall Riots had just happened in New York. That same year. American attitudes about homosexuality were barely starting to shift, and Sal was making theater that didn't apologize for any of it. The Los Angeles run got positive reviews, but the New York run got panned for being too explicit, and the project ended on a sour note. Sal was deeply proud of it anyway. He'd loved directing too. And around the same time he started writing his own screenplay. The project he hoped to eventually direct as a feature film. For now though, he kept working as an actor. He had TV guest spots on Columbo, the Patty Duke Show, SWAT and a 1971 part as a chimpanzee scientist named Dr. Milo in Escape from the Planet of the Apes. That ended up being his last theatrical movie. The man who'd been an a Tony winning play at 12 and a two time Oscar nominee at 22 was now playing a chimp in a sequel to a sequel. It was a long way down from where he'd started, but Sal didn't really see it that way. He'd always loved acting itself, regardless of how the gigs looked from the outside and privately. By the early 1970s, his life had actually started getting better. In 1972, Sal sat down for an interview with a writer named Bose Hadley and laid it all on the table. He talked about his career, about Hollywood, about being typecast, and then he openly talked about being bisexual. Sal said, quote, what's wrong with being bi? Maybe most people are. Deep down. He explained that the rumors had always treated his sexuality like some terrible secret, when really plenty of actors were exactly like him. He said everyone's supposed to be bi. Starting way back with Gary Cooper and on through Brando and Cliff and Dean and Newman. It was a remarkable interview for an actor to give in 1972. Most of his peers were terrified of being outed, but Sal seemed almost relieved to be done with a pretense. His family was less relieved. The Mineos were Italian, Catholic, working class, Bronx. And within that world, having a gay brother was a real shame. Some of his siblings refused to discuss the interview at all. His older brother Mike was especially upset. But Sal had made his peace with himself. That was what mattered to him. He'd also found someone. His name was Courtney Burr iii, an aspiring actor about a decade younger than sal. And the two of them had been together since around 1970. And by all accounts, Courtney was the love of Sal's life. They lived together in West Hollywood. Their friends adored them as a couple. Even Jill Hayworth, Sal's ex fiance, would later say she believed Courtney was the most important person Sal Sal ever had. Sal and Courtney had what people now call an open relationship. They were committed to each other, but they didn't require monogamy. That kind of arrangement was Fairly common in 1970s West Hollywood. Stonewall had just happened a few years earlier and gay culture was finally coming out of the underground. There Was a real sense of freedom in those circles, and Sal and Courtney made the most of it. Still, there was no question that Courtney was his rock. But while his personal life was steadier than it had been in years, Sal's finances were a complete wreck. The film offers had basically stopped coming. The TV work, guest spots on shows like Hawaii Five o and Harry o Weren't paying enough to cover what he owed. He had no bank account in his own name, no real assets. Even the furniture in his apartment was rented. His mom wasn't in charge of his finances anymore. His agent, Tom Corman, had been managing his money for years by then, paying him a small allowance so creditors couldn't touch the rest. The apartment in west Hollywood was even in Courtney's name because Sal couldn't qualify for a lease. And then in 1975, things got even worse. A Texas man called Ernest crises had filed a slander lawsuit against Sal. He claimed Sal had said something defamatory about him in public. The exact details of the dispute aren't well documented, but what's clear is that the case went to trial and Sal lost. The court awarded cross freezes $30,000 in damages. For most working actors, $30,000 in 1975 would have been a lot of money. For Sal, it was a death sentence. He didn't have $30,000. He didn't have $300. Sal is 36 years old, living in his boyfriend's apartment, scraping by on tv. Bit part with a Texas court order he couldn't pay. 20 years out from his Oscar nominations, this was the lowest point of his career. But late that fall, he got a phone call that changed everything. A San Francisco theater company offered him the role of Vito in a new comedy called P.S. your Cat is dead. Vito was a a bisexual cat burglar who broke into a depressed actor's apartment on New year's Eve. He got caught, was tied to the kitchen sink and pulled into a long, very funny conversation that changed both their lives. It was a meaty part, funny, vulnerable, sexy, and unmistakably queer. The play opened in November of 1975 at the Montgomery play playhouse and ran through January. The reviews were glowing, the shows sold out night after night, and Sal could feel the momentum building. People in the industry were calling again. People were paying attention. At one point during the run, Sal actually collapsed on stage from sheer exhaustion. He was working that hard. When the producers told him they wanted to take the show to Los Angeles for a second run, Sal jumped at the opportunity. After more than a decade of struggling this was his comeback. He had no way of knowing he'd never make it to opening night. Do you love your pets? Do you love suspense?
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In late January 1976, 37 year old Sal Mineo flew back to Los Angeles, riding high off the success of P.S. your cat is Dead. Sal had less than a month to get everything ready. Rehearsals at the Westwood Playhouse started immediately. But the comeback came with complications. His co star from San Francisco couldn't make the move, so they recast the part. And the new actor wasn't quite clicking with Sal the way the old one had. Sal got along with everybody, but on stage, chemistry isn't something you can fake. He was working overtime to make the new pairing feel as alive as the original. And then on January 21st, Sal's old foe, Ernest Croesus filed a claim with the LA County Recorder's office, looking to collect on that $30,000 judgment. Sal's agent, Tom Corman, tried to explain to Croesus that he'd be trying to squeeze blood from a stone, that Sal genuinely didn't have the money. But Croesus wasn't backing off. The threat was now hanging over Sal every day. He pushed all of it down and focused on the Play. Then on February 11, 1976, Sal got the best news he'd had in years. Remember that screenplay he'd been writing now for over a decade? A producer who'd been quietly shopping it around for months had finally landed a deal. MGM was on board to produce and distribute, with Sal attached to direct. His lifelong dream of directing his own movie was actually happening. He went to bed that night feeling on top of the world. The morning of February 12 started with a phone call from Courtney, who was flying in from New York the next afternoon. They'd planned to spend the entire LA run together, but Courtney had to push the trip back to the 16th. Sal told him not to worry, he was rehearsing all the time anyway. They talked for a while, said their I love yous and ended the call. From there, Sal kept the phone going. He wanted to Personally invite people to opening night. Liza Minnelli, a few other Hollywood friends he'd known for years. He spent most of the afternoon making calls, working through his contact list one name at a time. He was supposed to meet a friend named Michael Mason for dinner before rehearsal that night, but Mason had to cancel last minute. Sal told him it was fine. He'd just go to the theater early and run lines on his own. Rehearsal lasted until about 9. Sal said goodnight to his cast on his way out and told them he'd see them tomorrow. He was hungry. He'd skipped dinner because of the cancellation. So he stopped at a convenience store on the way home and grabbed a pack of cigarettes and a couple of Hostess cupcakes. Not exactly a feast, but it was what he had cash for. He pulled into the carport behind his West Hollywood apartment around 9:30pm the walkway from the carport to the building was dark, but he'd done it a thousand times. He was looking for his keys when somebody stepped out of the shadows. Sal screamed for help. The neighbors heard him. A man named Raymond Evans came running from his apartment. By the time he got to Sal, the attacker was gone and Sal was on the ground bleeding heavily. Raymond tried mouth to mouth, but it was already too late. Sal had taken a single stab wound to the chest and the blade had gone straight into his heart. At 9:55pm, paramedics pronounced 37 year old SAL Mineo dead. The news of Sal's death hit Hollywood hard. His old friends Natalie Wood, Yul Brynner, Liza Minnelli were devastated. The story dominated entertainment headlines for weeks. For older fans, it was the second time in 20 years they'd lost one of the rebel kids. First James Dean, now Sal. Of the three, only Natalie was left. The investigation began that same night. Sal's apartment was technically in an unincorporated part of West Hollywood, which meant the case fell to the LA County Sheriff's Department rather than the lapd. Detectives questioned the witnesses at the scene. Two men had seen someone running from the alley. A young white man, slender, with long hair. He'd sprinted toward a small yellow car, jumped in and sped away with the headlights off. They started building suspect sketches and canvassing the neighborhood. Sal's wallet was still on him, with 21 cash inside. That seemed to rule out robbery, at least at first. So detectives started looking at other angles. Maybe it was a contract hit. Maybe it was personal. The Croesus lawsuit was an obvious place to start. A man with a $30,000 judgment Sal couldn't pay had just filed to collect and three weeks later, Sal was dead. Detectives looked into Croesus hard but they couldn't find any evidence linking him to the murder. And Croesus himself denied any involvement. The contract hit angle eventually fizzled out. Then when they searched Sal's apartment, they found something that pointed the investigation somewhere new gay magazines and a pair of leather pants in the closet. For them that was enough to change the direction of the entire investigation. Detectives became convinced Sal had been killed by a jealous ex lover, a sex worker or someone he'd brought home. And angered, they followed those threads for months. None of them led anywhere. Meanwhile, Sal's body was flown back to New York. His funeral was held on February 17 at Most Holy Trinity Church in Mamaroneck. The same church where they'd buried his father three years earlier. Around 250 mourners showed up. Sal was laid to rest at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York. Courtney was iced out of most of the proceedings. Sal's family had taken control and they were determined to scrub any evidence of his sexuality from the record. They wouldn't let Courtney into the apartment. Some of Sal's brothers reported reportedly went in first and burned Courtney's letters to Sal along with anything else that might suggest the truth about who Sal had really been. Sal's older brother Mike went out of his way to talk to the press. He insisted over and over that Sal had never been anything but heterosexual. The family had been embarrassed by the Hadley interview four years earlier. And now the idea that Sal have been killed in some kind of homosexual incident was unbearable to them. So they pushed back hard in public. There's a strange irony in that. Because his family's campaign to bury the truth actually ended up serving the investigation. It pushed detectives to look past the gay angle, which was the wrong thread to pull anyway. In April of 1960, 1977, about 14 months after Sal's murder, a 19 year old man named Lionel Ray Williams was arrested in Los Angeles for outstanding traffic violations. While processing him, authorities discovered he was also wanted in Michigan for forgery. He was extradited and sentenced to eight months in prison. But before he left la, he Williams had been bragging to his friends, to his cellmates, to anyone who would listen about killing Sal Mineo. At first detectives didn't believe him. He'd actually come to them voluntarily back in 1976 with a story about the Bloods committing the murder over a drug deal. And his mother had given him an alibi for the night in question. They'd written him off. Off as a Clout chaser. But the bragging continued. A woman named Mary Ann Newsome told detectives Williams had come to her apartment in late 1976 and confessed that he'd killed some famous guy in West Hollywood. Then his wife, Teresa Williams, came forward. She told detectives that Lionel had come home that night of the murder covered in blood. According to her, she'd actually given him the money to buy the hunting knife herself. And later, when a news report about Sal's death came out on tv, Lionel had pointed at the screen and said, that's the dude I killed. But the identification didn't quite line up. Every witness from that night had described a white man with long hair. Williams was a black man who at the time wore his hair in an afro. But as the detectives dug deeper, the picture got more complicated. It turned out that at the time of the killing, Williams had been wearing his hair straightened and dyed to a light shade of brown. He was also light skinned. And with that in mind, detectives eventually pieced together what they thought probably happened in the alley. A white bystander had heard Sal's screams and chased after Williams, but didn't catch him. Detectives theorized that the witnesses had seen that man running, not the killer. Plus the medical examiner had also taken a cast of Sal's stab wound and it matched the hunting knife Teresa had told them about. In June of 1977, with Williams in a Michigan jail, detectives got a 30 day warrant to bug his cell. Williams had already been bragging to anyone who'd listen about killing Sal. They were betting he'd keep talking and that this time they'd have it on tape. They filled 88 tapes. Williams talked constantly, but he never said the words on any of them. What they got instead was better. A corrections officer named Ronald Peake overheard Williams tell another inmate he'd stabbed Mineo. That was live testimony from a law enforcement officer and it would hold up in court. Meanwhile, back in la, they were building the physical case. They discovered that Williams had borrowed a yellow 1971 Dodge Colt from the local dealership the day of the murder. It was close enough to a Toyota that the witnesses had mixed it up. In January of 1978, Lionel Williams was extradited back to Los Angeles to face charges. After a year of pre trial motions and delays, his trial finally began on January 9, 1971. Day before what would have been Sal's 40th birthday. Williams was represented by a court appointed attorney in front of Judge Ronnie Lee Martin. A deputy DA named Michael Genalyn was leading the prosecution. He pushed for first degree premeditated murder. Alongside the murder charge, prosecutors had stacked 1010 separate counts of robbery against Williams. These were for an unrelated string of holdups he'd committed across LA in the months around Sal's killing. Their theory was that Sal's murder was more of the same. Williams had been waiting in the carport to rob whoever pulled in next. When Sal screamed, Williams panicked, stabbed him and ran without taking the a thing. He didn't know who Sal was at all. But the case was almost entirely circumstantial. There was no murder weapon. There was no fingerprint evidence linking Williams to the scene. Because of that, the prosecution leaned heavily on the rented yellow Dodge Colt, Teresa's testimony and the jailhouse confessions. Ronald Peake's account of what what he'd overheard in that Michigan jail cell was one of the strongest pieces they had. The prosecution also showed the jury that old photo of Williams with straightened, dyed hair. They argued that the white man witnesses saw fleeing was a bystander who'd chased the real killer, not the killer himself. The jury deliberated for a full week. On March 16, 1979, Lionel Williams was convicted of second degree murder and ten counts of robbery. The jury hadn't been convinced the killing was premeditated, so they'd brought the murder charge down a notch. He was sentenced to 51 years to life. After more than a year of chasing theories about Sal's sexuality, his finances, contract hits, jealousy, ex lovers. None of it had anything to do with why he died. Sal Mineo was killed in a random street robbery by a man who didn't even recognize him. Three years and a month after his death, his family finally had something close to an answer. Lionel Williams was paroled in 1990 and has always maintained his innocence. In 2024, a documentary called Unseen Innocence revisited the case. And a petition has since been filed under California's Racial justice act challenging the conviction. When Sal's estate was finally settled, it was worth $14,000. His debts were three times that. After everything was paid, his mom Josephine, inherited a single check for $1,549. It wasn't much, not for someone who'd been in a Tony winning Broadway play at 12, an Oscar nominee at 17, a teen idol at 18, and a two time Academy Award nominee at 22. Sal had bought his family a house. He put his siblings through school. He'd sent thousands of dollars home over the years to make sure his mother was taken care of. But the cruelest part of it all was the timing. Sal Mino died With a hit play moving to Los Angeles, an MGM movie deal in his pocket, and the love of his life on a flight to come see him, he was this close to the comeback he'd spent 20 years chasing. He just never got to take the bow. But Sal's career was only one part of what he left behind. His performance as Plato in Rebel Without a Cause is now widely recognized as one of the first portrayals of a gay teenager in American film. His decision to direct fortune in men's eyes in 1969 broke ground for queer theater in Los angeles. And in 1972, when he sat down with Bo Hadley and talked openly about his bisexuality, he became one of the first major American actors to do that. On the record, Sal didn't live long enough to see how much that all mattered. But for an entire generation of artists who came after him, actors, directors, writers, the path he carved out was the one they walked in that way, Sal Mineo got his comeback after all. Just not the one he was expecting. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Carter Roy and this is Mercury Murder True Crime Stories. Come back next time for the story of a new murder and all the people it affected. Murder True Crime Stories is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media, rimehouse on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review and follow Murder True Crime Stories wherever you at your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference and to enhance your Murder True Crime Stories listening experience, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode early and ad free. We'll be back on Friday. True Crime Stories is hosted by me, Carter Roy and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by by the Murder True Crime Stories team Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benidon, Natalie Przofsky, Alyssa Fox, Megan Hannam, Cassidy Dillon and Russell Nash. Thank you for listening.