Embarrassing family scandal ends in murder. The above crime scene drawing shows murder victim Ned Doheny, Jr. in the bedroom of his Los Angeles mansion after being killed by a gunshot to the head, along with a superimposition of where police imagine he was just before he was shot. From the above angle the event looks clinical, but a reverse view reveals an unholy mess, with Doheny's face and robe drenched in blood, and a dark pool spread across the carpet. Out of sight in the hall leading to the bedroom is the body of Hugh Plunkett, Doheny's presumed murderer, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. For a time this was the most famous crime in L.A. history. Doheny was the son of oil tycoon E.L Doheny, who was in trouble for passing bribes to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall. The investigation and legal circus, known as the Teapot Dome scandal, had ensnared not just the senior Doheny but Doheny Jr. and Plunkett. They had both been indicted for conveying the dirty money from Doheny Sr. to Secretary Fall.
Realistically speaking, there was no serious threat of the Dohenys going to jail. But working class Hugh Plunkett was not a tycoon nor a tycoon's son, which meant for him the possibility of incarceration was real. When Jr. was offered immunity and Plunkett was not, their close friendship began to fray. Plunkett's growing instability spawned attempts to get him into a mental facility—whether to save his mind or save him from testifying remains a subject of debate—but it never happend. Todayin 1929 he visited the Doheny mansion to talk with his pal Ned and hours later the result is what you see in the crime scene photos. There's much more to the case—rumors of a sexual relationship between Doheny Jr. and Plunkett, rumors that Doheny Sr. pulled the trigger on both men, etc.—but we'll leave all that aside. The truly interested can find at least a dozen websites that dig into every aspect of the case. We just wanted to show you the photo-illustration, which is yet another police photo from the University of Southern California digital archive.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1939—Batman Debuts
In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale. 1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results
British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves. 1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule's main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule's descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission. 1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot.
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