The Mysterious death of
actress Thelma Alice Todd
- ACCIDENT, SUICIDE, OR MURDER? –
Hollywood has had a devastating past, one that has left bloodstains all over its lens. It is known for its horrific murders – no re-dos, no fake blood, no stunt doubles, just the terror of a murderer hidden backstage.
Thelma Alice Todd, a famous actress in the 30s, died mysteriously at the age of 29. Unfortunately, her death was overlooked and considered a simple accident or a suicidal act, in spite of the evidence pointing to a possible murder. In this article, we will be analyzing every single clue and trying to solve a mystery as old as time, in the style of the likes of Miss Marple and her friend, Poirot.
To begin with, we should know something about the victim, so let's take a look at a city called Lawrence, in Massachusetts, the place where Thelma Todd was born years ago, in 1906. There all of Todd's dreams about her future teaching career started taking shape. Little did she know that her life was about to change in 1925 when she won Miss Massachusetts. At that time, Paramount Pictures had signed a one-year-long contract with her, which was enough for Thelma Alice Todd to build herself an entire cinematic career. She is best known for working with Laurel and Hardy in the roles of Stan and Bran, the Marx brothers, and the comedies produced by Half Roach. Her life seemed perfect in those moments. A small-town girl turned Hollywood star. A fate most people aspired to. Well, things were a lot different in reality.
Acting had made Todd addicted to diet pills because of a contract that forced her to remain the same weight she had been when she signed it. If Thelma were to break this contract, her career would have ended and she would have been slowly but surely forgotten.
Unfortunately, Thelma had much more than this to endure. She was almost put on the blacklist for refusing to ”amuse” various producers at parties in order to obtain certain roles. She was well aware of the fact that everyone valued her physique more than her
acting and she was annoyed by that. She also had the chance to speak on this, saying that ”building on beauty... seems to me the worst thing that any girl can do”. Thus, acting, a field considered by many as easy, brought Thelma fame as well as many, many problems.
Speaking about more important matters regarding her death, we should take into account her marriage to the agent Pat DiCicco between 1932 and 1934. Pat was known to be violent, addicted to alcohol, and a member of the Italian mafia. When Todd filed for divorce, she publicly mentioned that her decision came as a result of her mental and physical abuses.
In 1934, Thelma had opened a successful restaurant in Malibu called ”Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Cafe”, alongside the director and producer Roland West and his wife Jewel Carmen. An important detail is that Todd and West were having an affair at the time, an affair that Carmen had known about. Before focusing on Thelma's last moments alive, we should take into consideration the fact that she was living in a flat above her restaurant and that West also used to sleep there from time to time, even though Carmen lived only 450 meters away.
Now that we know so many important details about her life, we can dive into the last moment Thelma Alice Todd was seen alive, more precisely the night of 14 December 1935.
Todd had just been to a party thrown in her honour at Café Trocadero, a popular nightclub. She seemed to be having a lot of fun, having more alcohol than she should have. Before leaving the party, West had asked Thelma to be home by 2 in the morning. Thelma, known to be a ”party animal”, asked her manager, Sid Grauman, to call West at 1:50 am and tell him that she would be going home soon, in reality staying until 3:15 am.
An important detail: the actress had promised some of her friends that she would give them free food the next day.
Going back to what happened that night, Todd's chauffeur, Ernest Peters, said he had dropped the actress off at her restaurant somewhere between 3 and 4:20 am.
The next day, Thelma's friends came to the restaurants for the free food they had been promised. They said they had not seen the actress that day.
On the 16th of December, at 10:30 in the morning, Todd's housemaid, Mae Whitehead, found the actress dead in one of Roland West and his wife's cars. The victim's head was leaning on the steering wheel and her nose was broken. She was wearing her party clothes and her hair was in mint condition.
During the autopsy, it was discovered that she had a carbon monoxide percentage of 75-85% in her blood. The battery of the car had died and it had run out of gas. here's where things start getting interesting. Was it an accident, murder, or suicide?
. Theory no. 1: Thelma's death was an accident
It seems very easy to blame it all on an accident, but, at the same time, this theory leaves us with many questions. So, according to this, the victim had got out of the car and tried to get into the flat but discovered she didn’t have the keys. She needed a place to stay until sunrise, so she chose the garage. She got there, closed the door and, because of the cold, she started the car. Shortly, she had fainted, intoxicated with carbon monoxide, her head falling on the wheel and, thus, breaking her nose. Well, it's much more complicated than that. What if I told you that the victim had the key to the backdoor of the flat? Do you still think she would’ve walked all the way to the garage just to stay in her car? You'd probably say it was because of the alcohol. I get it, but I've got proof that will make you doubt it.
Further investigations showed that there were no marks on the victim's shoes pointing to her having walked 450 m. Aside from this, her hair was perfectly done, whereas the wind had been very strong that night. So how could our victim have walked that distance without leaving any marks on her shoes? Exactly! She couldn’t have. This brings us closer to the idea of murder.
. Theory no. 2: Thelma had ended her own life
The idea came to court after acquaintances claimed that Todd had a passion for cars. They thought it was impossible for her death to have been a simple accident.
I doubt that people actually believe this theory. Even if Todd had killed herself, she still wouldn’t have been able to get to the garage without getting her shoes dirty.
And besides, the actress's life at that moment was at its peak. She had a successful restaurant, had found a boyfriend, and was going to star in a new movie. Her car was full of Christmas presents for her loved ones, and her recent behavior had shown no clue that the victim had any problems.
. Theory no. 3: Thelma had been killed
Now that we are convinced we are dealing with a murder, we should take into consideration some interesting clues. One of them is that the victim's body bore no sign that could prove that she had tried to get out of the car. Hence the hypothesis that Thelma had been hit in the face before she was in the car and left unconscious, which is why her nose was broken. Then the killer got her in the car and started the engine, leaving Todd to die from carbon monoxide.
We have four suspects on the list: Roland West, Pat DiCicco, Jewel Carmen, and an unknown person.
ROLAND WEST - a great director and filmmaker who spent his time with two women, one of whom was Thelma. Before giving incriminating details, we should give the suspect the right to defend himself and see what he had to say in court. As we learned above, West had left the party before Todd. In his statement, he said that when Sid called him around 2:05, he was closing the restaurant with the manager.
At 3 in the morning, he took his dog out. He was aware that the actress was still at the party.
Knowing her very well, he had to have known that Todd had consumed a considerable amount of alcohol.
After finishing the night walk with his canine friend, he went to bed in Thelma's apartment. Around 3:15 he fell asleep, being woken up at 3:30 by someone trying to enter the apartment. He assume it was Thelma and lay down again before his sleep was interrupted once more by the sound of tap water. He didn't get out of bed this time either. It wasn't until morning that he checked his room, finding the bedding disturbed.
He had spent the rest of the day at the restaurant with his mother. He met Thelma's friends who had come for food. West said he found the actress's behavior strange. It was not characteristic of Todd to disappear for a whole day and not to meet her friends. Now, no one knows if his statement was true or not. Since he had spent the night alone, there was no witness to prove that this was the case. However, we have some clues that make him look suspicious.
In the past, West had punished Thelma for her disobedience. He himself admitted that one night he had locked the apartment door and left Todd to sleep outside because she had come home late and consumed alcohol. The actress had to break the window to enter. He and Todd might have had an argument in front of the restaurant after the driver had left. He probably hit her, knocking her unconscious. He took her to the garage and left her in the car as punishment. He thought it would be cold by morning, so he started the vehicle's engine. This theory emerged after West's death, when he declared, in his last moments of life, that he was responsible for the actress's death and that everything had been an accident.
It seems plausible, but we have no way of knowing if his testimony was, indeed, true or if he was trying to defend someone else.
JEWEL CARMEN - a well-known actress and the director with whom Todd had an affair's wife. She was also in charge of the restaurant, and, before Thelma's death, there was news that Todd and Jewel had argued over the amount of money earned from the place. In conclusion, Thelma had stolen her husband and taken over the business.
A very suspicious thing is the fact that she changed her statement countless times, constantly changing the moment she had last seen the victim.
If we assume that Jewel had killed Todd, then we'd have to think that she was the one who had broken into her apartment to give West the impression that the victim had arrived home. And if Thelma's hair and makeup had been compromised while she was trying to get her in the car, she could have arranged them and given the impression that Todd hadn't been assaulted.
PAT DICICCO
It is impossible for a member of the Italian mafia, known to be aggressive and whose image was compromised after the divorce, not to be on this list. What really puts him here, in addition to his history, is the interaction he and the victim had had at Cafe Trocadero. The people present that night had confessed that the two had quarreled, but it did not seem to be serious.
On December 16, 1934, he flew to New York, at exactly the same time as the victim's body was found. However, Pat had argued in court that he did not even know that his ex-wife had died before being notified by a lawyer.
A MEMBER OF THE MAFIA OR A STALKER
This theory is much more complicated and full of secrets. No matter how many inquiries are made on the subject, no one could say exactly whether the mafia or a stalker was to blame for what happened, because the police did not pay enough attention 86 years ago. However, let's look into the few details we have.
Before she was killed, Todd had received death threats from strangers. They specified that if she did not offer a certain amount of money, someone in San Francisco would "take care of her." The actress had been so scared that she had told the police and the press. She had also taken a picture of herself,
a dog, and a pistol to make it clear to strangers that she would not get caught so easily.
The police tried to resolve the situation by finding the address from which the letters had been sent, namely a building in New York. Authorities had charged a man in the complex. He had 10 children and a lot of debt.
Soon, the police realized that the man found was not the one they wanted. After several investigations, another man admitted to having sent the letters and to being in love with Thelma. The police had done nothing further.
Alex Honey, the waiter who served Thelma at Cafe Trocadero, had also received threats after the actress's death. He was told that if he testified, his life would be considerably shortened. Alex had enlisted the help of the police and participated in the trial. Unfortunately, he didn't say anything that could put anyone in an incriminating light.
We might think that the suspect or suspects in this theory would have poisoned Thelma. It is likely that the victim became unconscious due to unknown substances and that someone moved her to West's garage.
In her autopsy, it was noted that Thelma had died of carbon monoxide and other unknown sources. To this day, it has not been discovered what the coroner considered to be an unknown source...
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editorial: Andreea Seba
graphic design: Bianca Constantin,
Anastasia Chivu
translation: Clara Pistol
DP (desktop publishing): Andreea Seba
