30 Mysterious Celebrity Deaths That More People Should Be Talking About

1. Edgar Allen Poe. Died mysteriously at the age of 40. Went missing when traveling from Virginia to New York city, then was found in a bad state in a bar in Baltimore a week later, filthy, uncharacteristically wearing a really shabby mismatched outfit of someone else’s clothes, which was weird as he was very particular about wearing very smart tailored clothes. He was apparently ranting and raving unintelligibly. His personal physician arrived shortly after he was found, and took him to a poor house hospital and had him locked in a barred room, and barred any visitors from seeing him. Poe died mysteriously a few days later, apparently yelling the name ‘Reynold’ over and over, although his physician was the only person to see him in the days before his death, and his accounts of what happened kept changing, including the dates of Poe’s discovery, death and last words. His death certificate also went missing.

His arch nemesis and biggest critic, named Rufus Grisworld, somehow managed to become executor of Poe’s estate and money. Griswold basically made it his primary aim in life to destroy Poe’s reputation, and wrote a memoir about him funded by Poe’s money, and described him as a ‘depraved, arrogant drug addled madman’.

Its been suggested Poe was the victim of an election fraud racket, called ‘cooping’ where people would be ‘shanghied’ or kidnapped and drugged, forced to wear disguises and vote for a specific presidential candidate. There was an election the day before his reappearance, but Poe was a famous local celebrity, at the time of his death, so it has been suggested he would have been too well known in the area for a cooping to take place.

Poe was slandered by the temperance movement at the time, who claimed that Poe died of alcohol consumption, but his physician said he had smelled no alcohol on him or his clothes, and remained in a delirious raving state for days. Others suggested he had overdosed on opium, but numerous close friends revealed Poe was not a habitual drug user and hadn’t used opium for years.

2. Brandon Lee (Bruce Lee’s son) was gunned down on a movie set because someone replaced the blanks with real bullets.

3. Natalie Wood. I think Christopher Walken and her husband at the time, Robert Wagner, who were with her on the night she died, have some explaining to do. Nobody can seem to get their story straight, and there seems to be A LOT of smoke.

“During the making of the film Brainstorm, Wood drowned at age 43 while on a weekend boat trip to Catalina Island on board Wagner’s yacht, Splendour. Many of the circumstances surrounding her drowning are unknown; it was never determined how she entered the water. She was with her husband Robert Wagner, Brainstorm co-star Christopher Walken, and Splendour’s captain, Dennis Davern, on the evening of November 28, 1981. Wood’s body was recovered by authorities at 8:00 a.m. on November 29, one mile away from the boat, with a small Valiant-brand inflatable dinghy, found beached nearby. According to Wagner, when he went to bed, Wood was not there. The autopsy report revealed that Wood had bruises on her body and arms as well as an abrasion on her left cheek.”

“After a 30-year hiatus, the case was reopened in November 2011 after Davern publicly stated that he had lied to police during the initial investigation and that Wood and Wagner had an argument that evening. He alleged that Wood had been flirting with Walken, that Wagner was jealous and enraged, and that following Wood’s disappearance, Wagner had kept Davern from turning on the search lights and notifying authorities. According to Davern, Wagner was responsible for Wood’s death. Walken hired a lawyer, cooperated with the investigation, and was not considered a suspect by authorities.”

“In February 2018, Wagner was named a person of interest in the investigation into Wood’s death. He has denied any involvement.”

4. Princess Diana. The theories range from the Royal Family killing her on purpose to her actually dying in a car crash. It is very mysterious and suspicious. After all, people say she was alive after the crash and it took around 30 minutes for her to be loaded into an ambulance.

5. Harold Holt went for a swim never came back also has a swimming centre names after him.

6. Bobby Fuller (famous for the first big recording of I Fought the Law), was called a suicide or an accident, but the autopsy report literally had question marks on it.

7. King Ludwig II of Bavaria.

Shortly after he was deposed, his body and the body of his psychiatrist were found in shallow water with their head and shoulders exposed in a Lake Starnberg near the castle where he was residing at the time. The two had gone for a walk and disappeared. Ludwig was known to be fairly athletic and a strong swimmer. There was no water in their lungs. The doctor’s body showed signs of trauma to the head and strangulation on the neck. Ludwig’s watch had been broken and stopped about a half hour after he was last seen. Ludwig’s death was ruled a suicide although there wasn’t really a theory as to how he did it and no indication he was suicidal.

8. Bollywood actress Sri Devi. When they first announced her death they said it was cardiac arrest, then they revealed she was found dead in the bathtub and that she likely drowned. It was very strange because there wasn’t that much alcohol found in her system and it would have been very difficult for her to just drown in that size bathtub. She didn’t hit her head, or anything like that. Plus the fact that they first announced it was cardiac arrest made it seem like they were covering it up.

I’ll have to look up what happened to those other two actresses. Bollywood is such a corrupt business with connections to the underworld.

9. Marilyn Monroe.

Legend has it that in the late 80s Warner Bros. hired David Lynch and Mark Frost to develop a film based on the last few days of Marilyn Monroe, but the project was dropped because the two were convinced that the government murdered her. The two bonded over this belief and later developed Twin Peaks together.

10. Vincent Van Gogh. Yeah it’s super easy to just assume he committed suicide considering he’s threatened it before and the fact that he was certifiably insane and he had a predilection for getting drunk off lamp kerosene and eating paint which his doctors assumed was a suicide attempt. However, he was shot in the stomach (99% of gun suicides are aimed at the temple or through the mouth) at an angle that would have been hard for him to do himself and it wasn’t at point blank range. He had never used a gun before, never had a use for a gun, and would not know how to work one, let alone the older model that was the suspected weapon. Even when he did threaten suicide previously he always mentioned drowning as his preferred method. One story of why he borrowed the gun was so he could shoot at the crows in the field he liked painting but he loved birds and found crows to be especially interesting and would never shoot at them or find them to be a nuisance. They never found any of his painting supplies where he supposedly tried to kill himself. In fact they never found his supplies anywhere. If he did shoot himself in the field, when he realized he didn’t die he would have had to walk back to his hotel along a busy street where someone would have seen the poor dude bleeding from the torso. When he did make it back to his hotel room someone asked him what had happened and he said something along the lines of, “I guess I’ve wounded myself.” But who would have shot him, you ask? René Secrétan. René was a 16 year old boy, who by his own admission, bullied Vincent and was most likely the most current owner of the gun. He took the gun everywhere and said that it shot erratically due to it being older. He liked showing off the gun and shooting at things as he pleased. He claimed Vincent stole the gun from him and did the deed in the field. Let it be known that the Secrétan family beat feet back home to Paris immediately after the shooting before too many questions were posed. Why didn’t Vincent blame him if that was the case? Vincent welcomed death at that point. He had mentioned in a letter that if death came upon him he would welcome it and not fight it. He was worried about losing his relationship and financial support of his brother Theo now that Theo had a baby and a wife to support. He basically decided to be a martyr rather than indict a kid that probably didn’t mean to shoot him even if said kid was mean to him. No one is gonna read this shit but if you do, thanks for coming to my TED talk. Read “Van Gogh: the Life” by Gregory White and Steven Naifeh for more.

11. Louis Le Prince. Disappeared from a train on his way back to Paris. His body, nor his suitcase, were ever found. His suitcase is thought to have contained plans for the first movie camera which he was weeks away from exhibiting. Many believe that his death was linked to Thomas Edison, who later tried to monopolize the industry with a gangster-like hold that almost killed cinema.

12. Singer Elliot smith supposedly committed suicide by stabbing himself in the heart with a kitchen knife after an argument with his girlfriend, Jennifer Chiba. His girlfriend was supposedly in the bathroom at the time of the incident. His friends say he was in good spirits and about to release what would be his final album. The coroners report said it could potentially have been homicide, he was stabbed twice and there were none of the hesitation wounds that are common with this type of suicide. His girlfriend removed the knife and did not cooperate with the investigation. It’s a situation where the facts could look the same whether it was suicide or murder.

13. James Brown. No one knows if his body is actually in the crypt where it is supposed to be. There is a vial of his blood from the night he died that is meant to contain traces of a drug that was put into his blood stream but it has been in a queue to be tested for years. The woman who is suspected of administering the drug that killed him confessed to a friend she did it but then took it all back and called it a dream. A duffel bag was then found with clothes covered in the drug (think it was PCP or something) that killed him and matched the description of the dream. And this is before you get to all the shady shit that James Brown got up to when he was alive including possibly arranging the murder of his wife and running some sort of small league mafia. He tried to get out of the control of his agent and family members a couple of months before he died and they took over control of the estate. Multiple people who have tried to question the official story have been threatened, including the reporter.

14. Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the Diesel engine.

On the evening of 29 September 1913, Diesel boarded the GER steamer SS Dresden in Antwerp on his way to a meeting of the Consolidated Diesel Manufacturing company in London, England. He took dinner on board the ship and then retired to his cabin at about 10 p.m., leaving word to be called the next morning at 6:15 a.m.; but he was never seen alive again. In the morning his cabin was empty and his bed had not been slept in, although his nightshirt was neatly laid out and his watch had been left where it could be seen from the bed. His hat and neatly folded overcoat were discovered beneath the afterdeck railing.

15. Sonny Liston, the former boxing heavyweight champ who was dethroned by Ali. Has a very mysterious life in general. His birth date was unknown so they’re not even sure how old he was. A boxer he was supposed to fight, Chuvalo, said he was dead in December 1970 when his body wasn’t even found until january 5, 1971. He was a heroin addict and they found heroin on him when they found him, but no needles or anything for him to inject with. Plus the amount in his body was thought to not be enough to cause an OD. However, some people close to him said he had a fear of needles, including his doctor, who said he would do anything to avoid taking shots.

Of course, many think he was murdered. Theories range that he was a debt collector who tried to ask for too much pay, that he was murdered by drug dealers, that he wasn’t paid for an alleged dive he took in the second Ali fight (and that when he threatened to go public about it he was killed), or that he was killed for not taking a dive against Chuck Wepner who he had fought a few months earlier.

Liston had well known underworld connections, and like I said earlier some suspected the second fight he took a dive against Ali.

16. Rik Mayall. British comedian. He had a doctor check him over days before he died and he was told that he was absolutely healthy, but died of a massive heart attack. Suspiciously, he had a quad bike accident about ten years before this. The brakes were suspected to blame but no one knows. Coincidentally Mayall worked (predominantly) for the BBC that had suppressed pedophile stories from surfacing for the best part of 40 years until the death of prolific pedophile Jimmy savile….

17. Glenn Miller. A superstar big band leader in the 30s and 40s. In 1944 he’s flying from England to Paris to entertain troops there and his plane disappears, presumed crashed. There’s a lot of speculation about how this happened though. One recent theory is that an Allied flight returning from a bombing run dropped its excess ordinance too close to Miller’s plane and caused it to crash.

18. Robert Johnson He’s a popular Blues singer from the 20s that is still listened to til this day. Mysteriously died at the age of 29. Nobody knows what happened. However, there were theories after his death that he sold his soul to the devil. And that’s supposedly how he got so good in that much time.

William Desmond Taylor Silent-film director that directed tons of films. He was popular during his time and was considered a leading figure. He even made a film that would become the movie that represents Paramount. However, one day, when his coiffure came in to make him breakfast, he found Taylor dead on the floor. When they moved his body, they found a pool of blood. And a 9 caliber bullet was found in his back. Til this day, we don’t know who shot him. And we’ll most likely never will.

Elizabeth Short Silent film actor. One day, when a mom was walking with her child, she thought she saw a mannequin wrapped in a white sheet on the sidewalk. When she went to talk a closer look, she realized it was a dead body. The body of Elizabeth Short. She had cuts on her body and limbs. And her wrists were slit. Nobody knows what happened to her before she died. And nobody knows who killed her.

19. An odd one, he is only a celebrity because his death is so shrouded in mystery, but the Somerton Man. Man found dead on a beach in South Australia – nobody knows who he is, he had some very strange clues in his clothes – all code words and secret societies. Talk of being a spy. 70 years later forensic types are still trying to get to the bottom of it all.

20. Heath Ledger’s death was pretty strange. I remember when it first happened that there was a lot of backpedalling and changing of what actually happened. Some were saying suicide, others accidental overdose, and finally I think the last and “official” story was that he was prescribed medications by different physicians that happened to have death as a side effect when mixed.

21. Ben and Honey Sherman, founder of Apotex the largest drug manufacture in Canada that revolutionized medicine in Canada. They were found hanging by their swimming pool discovered by the real estate agent who was showing the home to potential buyers. There were no traces of forced entry or tracks of a murderer. It was initially deemed a suicide but the family does not believe there were any motive for suicide. It’s been over a year and there’s still not much in leads to figuring out what happened.

22. Casey Kasem. So much drama there. His golddigging wife literally had him buried in Iceland. Why Iceland?

23. Dorothy Kilgallen. A major voice of the 40s-60s. She held a permanent spot on America’s Longest Running Contest show, Who’s line? She was an extremely well credited writer, investigator and just an all around badass. She died in 1965 of by a fatal combination of alcohol and barbitutes. Which is just the beginning of why this was strange. Barbitutes were a popular medication in the 50s-60s to aid in sleep. Dorothy had been taking barbitutes for years prior to her death, understood their effects, and definitely knew not to mix them with Alcohol. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Dorothy was in the middle of writing a book based on her investigation of the JFK assassination. She notified her friends and family not a week earlier about how she had a found a major find and couldn’t wait to share it with them… She never had the chance to tell them and there was speculation that her research had vanished. Dorothy was found dead in the bed of a guest bedroom within her apartment. A bedroom she claimed she would never step in after discovering her husband had an affair in that room a couple years prior, and she definitely wouldn’t be found in the bed. On top of all of this Dorothy had died in the afternoon which is not a time she would have taken her sleep medication and she was found in her day clothes, with a book in her hand. However, yes, however once again, her more than necessary reading glasses were downstairs, so she probably could not read the book she was found to be holding. There’s a lot of strange stuff here, especially with her mob connections and connection to the Kennedy family.

24. Senator Paul Wellstone. At a meeting full of war veterans in Willmar, Minn., days before his death, Wellstone told attendees that Cheney told him, “If you vote against the war in Iraq, the Bush administration will do whatever is necessary to get you. There will be severe ramifications for you and the state of Minnesota.”

Wellstone cast his vote for his conscience and against the Iraq measure, the lone Democrat involved in a tough 2002 election campaign to do so. And a few weeks later on Oct. 25, as he appeared to be winning his re-election bid, Wellstone, his wife, Sheila, his daughter, Marcia Markuson, three campaign staffers, and two pilots died in a plane crash in Minnesota.

25. George Reeves. The original Superman. “Committed suicide” but missed his own head a time or two. There was a movie about the whole thing staring Ben Affleck.

26. Shelly Miscavige! I know we don’t actually know if she’d dead but I really feel they’ve done something awful to her.

27. Jill Dando. A lot of speculation about whether she was assassinated because she knew too much about goings on at the BBC, before the Savile stuff came to light.

28. Johnny Gosch – although they are not 100% certain he’s dead.. His disappearance has all kinds of theories and later sightings. Case isn’t closed yet and it’s been almost 37 years now.

29. I was always curious about the guitarist from Manic Street Preachers, Richey Edwards. He disappeared in 1995 and has never been found. It was speculated he committed suicide in a way where the body would never be found, but I like to think he’s out there somewhere.

30. Bobby Kennedy is an interesting case. We know exactly who killed him – his assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, did it in front of hundreds of witnesses and was caught red-handed.

What we don’t know is why. While Sirhan originally claimed that he killed RFK due to the latter’s support of Israel, he has changed his story several times throughout the years, sometimes claiming he was drunk, other times that he had been hypnotized, and even professing to have no recollection of the incident. The last has been cited as the main reason he hasn’t been paroled – due to his insistence that he doesn’t remember killing RFK, parole boards have felt that he isn’t expressing adequate remorse for his crime.