(January 24, 1943 – August 9, 1969)

Sharon Marie Tate was a actress who played small television roles before
appearing in several films during the 1960s. She received positive reviews
for her performances and was hailed as one of Hollywood’s most promising
newcomers. She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for her role in
Valley of the Dolls (1967). Tate was seen regularly in fashion magazines as
a model and cover girl. She was married to film director Roman Polanski in
1968 and was eight and a half months pregnant when she and the unborn
child were gruesomely murdered in her home, along with four others by 
followers of Charles Manson.

The coroner’s report for Tate noted that she had been stabbed sixteen
times. The murders committed by the Manson “Family” have been
described by social commentators as one of the defining moments of
the 1960s. Manson is currently incarcerated at Corcoran Prison in Kings
County, California. 

Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski on their wedding day

Charles Manson

Manson is now 76 years old

 
                     (August 6, 1917 – July 1, 1997)

Robert Charles Durman Mitchum was a film actor, author, composer and
singer who is #23 on the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest male
American screen legends of all time. He appeared in Charles Laughton’s
only film as director, The Night of the Hunter (1955). Mitchum also starred
in Thunder Road (1958), Cape Fear (1962), and the Howard Hawks western
El Dorado (1966). Robert Mitchum recorded a song he had written for the
film Thunder Road, titled “The Ballad of Thunder Road”. The country-styled
song became a modest hit for Mitchum, reaching #69 on the Billboard Pop
Singles Chart.

Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter

Robert Mitchum from Cape Fear

John Wayne (left) with Robert Mitchum in El Dorado

Michael Connell Biehn is best known for his roles in James Cameron’s science
fiction action films The Terminator (1984) as Kyle Reese, Aliens (1986) as Cpl.
Dwayne Hicks, and The Abyss (1989) as Lt. Coffey. He also had a role in the film Tombstone (1993). Biehn was also in the cast of the Emmy Award-winning NBC
television series Hill Street Blues which aired from 1981 to 1987.  

Michael Biehn in Aliens

Former Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa disappeared at, or sometime after,
2:45 pm on July 30, 1975, from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox Restaurant
in Bloomfield Township, a suburb of Detroit. He reportedly was to meet there with
two Mafia leaders. Hoffa’s wife contacted police to report him missing when he
failed to return home that evening. When police arrived at the restaurant, they
discovered Hoffa’s car, but there was no sign of Hoffa himself.

An extensive investigation into his disappearance by several law enforcement
agency’s, including the FBI, began immediately, and continued over the next
several years. The investigations failed to learn anything of Hoffa’s fate and
he was declared legally dead in 1982, the seventh anniversary of his
disappearance.

1992 DVD

     
                      (June 22, 1903 – July 22, 1934)

John Dillinger was a gangster and bank-robber in the Depression-era. He
was charged with, but never convicted of, the murder of an East Chicago
police officer. This was his only alleged kill. His gang robbed two dozen
banks and four police stations. Dillinger escaped from jail twice. On July
22, 1934 the police and Division of Investigation closed in on the Biograph
Theater (photo below). Federal agents, led by Melvin Purvis, moved to
arrest him as he left the theater. He pulled a weapon and attempted to flee
but was shot three times and quickly died from his wounds. Dillinger’s body
was displayed to the public at the county morgue after his death.

 
The Biograph Theater shortly after Dillinger’s death.  (FBI photo)
 

Dillinger was buried at Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis. His gravestone
has had to be replaced several times because of vandalism by people
chipping off pieces as souvenirs.