A rising starlet. An assassinated president. And a mysterious phone call predicting his death.
The unsolved murder of 22-year-old Hollywood actress Karyn Kupcinet – and its apparent links to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination – has haunted investigators and fueled conspiracy theories for six decades.
Kupcinet was found strangled to death just days after the president’s public execution – and an eerie phone call she reportedly made warning of his impending death minutes before he was killed.
The strange call and the events surrounding it have taken on a life of their own, and were mentioned in the 888-page Warren Commission Report released in 1964 that concluded that JFK’s identified killer Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
So how was an exotic-looking, 5’6″ brunette starlet – who had roles in popular early 60s TV shows such as Perry Mason, Hawaiian Eye, and The Donna Reed Show and was featured in the 1961 Jerry Lewis film, The Ladies Man – able to forewarn about the assassination in a phone conversation, as was claimed? And was she murdered because of her knowledge?
According to authorities, Kupcinet, the daughter of famed Chicago Sun-Times gossip columnist Irv ‘Kup’ Kupcinet – known to have close professional ties to organized crime figures as well as politicians and Hollywood celebrities – was strangled at her West Hollywood home by an unknown assailant on Thanksgiving Day on November 28, 1963, six days after Kennedy’s killing.
Police believed she was murdered shortly after midnight, and that she might have known her killer, as there was no evidence of forced entry.
But it wasn’t until two days later, November 30, that her nude body was discovered by close friends, actor Mark Goddard and his wife, Marcia, who had been asked to look after Kupcinet by her parents when she first moved to Hollywood.
The unsolved murder of a young, up and coming Hollywood actress has long been linked to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963
Karyn Kupcinet, 22, was murdered at her West Hollywood home on November 28, 1963, six days after President Kennedy’s death
Her body was sprawled on a sofa, lying face down in her darkened apartment, a block from the Sunset Strip. There was no evidence of a struggle, except for an overturned lamp.
The television was on at a low volume, and there was a partially consumed cup of coffee along with a bowl of cigarettes.
Because she was known to struggle with her weight, for which she took diet pills, it was first believed that Kupcinet had overdosed or committed suicide.
But the case later became a homicide investigation after the medical examiner discovered that her hyoid bone in her neck was broken, and ruled the cause of death as asphyxiation due to manual strangulation.
According to reports, Kupcinet had been despondent over her recent split with actor boyfriend Andrew Prine. She had hoped to marry him but he had cooled on her.
Prine had starred in the Academy Award-winning 1962 film The Miracle Worker and, like Kupcinet, had appeared in popular TV shows of the era – Bonanza, Cannon, The Fugitive, and others.
On the day Kennedy was killed, Prine would later reveal that he called her to see how she was feeling, knowing how upset she would be about the assassination.
To escape all the depressing news from Dallas, they drove to Palm Springs for the day, along with friends, actor Earl Holliman and Holliman’s then-girlfriend.
At the time of her death, Kupcinet she was romantically linked to actor Andrew Pine (pictured) – who briefly became a suspect in her murder
On the day the president was killed, Pine later revealed that he went to see Kupcinet and they drove to Palm Springs
Kupcinet and Prine had met about a year before her death, on the set of the TV series Wide Country.
For a time, Prine, who was recently divorced, would be considered a suspect in her murder because of their rollercoaster relationship.
But he was ruled out as a suspect after passing a polygraph test, and had an airtight alibi corroborated by witnesses.
Another suspect was the brother of actress Hope Lang, David Lang, who surfaced in the case because he had jokingly told someone that he had murdered Kupcinet.
He was dropped as a suspect after police noted that he had been out on a date the night of the murder, reportedly with the actress Natalie Wood.
Investigators were said to have interviewed some 400 people and administered a dozen polygraphs, but her killer was never found.
A $5,000 reward was offered by Kupcinet’s parents, but no one ever claimed it.
At one point, Irv Kupcinet called FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to seek help from agents in finding the killer. But Hoover declined the request, saying it was a local case and the bureau had no jurisdiction.
Lee Harvey Oswald was identified and apprehended as the perpetrator who shot Kennedy and a Dallas police officer dead on November 22, 1963. Despite his conviction, conspiracy theorists have questioned whether he acted alone
Just two days later, Oswald was shot at by nightclub owner Jack Ruby as he was being transferred from the Dallas police headquarters
Journalist Penn Jones Jr. claimed that Irv Kupcinet had learned of the planned assassination from Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby and had told his daughter. (Pictured: Jack Ruby’s mugshot after murdering Oswald)
For years after Kupcinet’s murder, her name would resurface in connection with JFK’s assassination.
In 1967, journalist and critic of the Warren Commission Report, W. Penn Jones Jr., published, Forgive My Grief, in which he cited a wire report that a woman in the area of Oxnard, California, some 60 miles from Los Angeles, placed a phone call warning Kennedy would be killed.
Jones identified the female caller as Karyn Kupcinet.
According to a report, telephone operators heard a whisper: ‘The President is going to die at 10:10am.’
The woman went on to mention the Supreme Court and the government ‘going up in flames’, adding, ‘the government takes over everything.’
Almost half an hour later, Kennedy was shot in Dallas at 12:30pm local time. The operators reported the phone call to the FBI and it was included in the Warren Commission papers.
Jones claimed that Kupcinet’s Chicago columnist father Irv Kupcinet had learned of the planned assassination from Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby and had told his daughter.
The veteran columnist – who died in November 2003 at age 91 – was believed to have known Ruby back in the 1940s when he owned a club in the Windy City.
Ruby famously killed Oswald two days after the president’s assassination on live television.
Kupcinet’s father, famed Chicago Sun-Times gossip columnist Irv ‘Kup’ Kupcinet (pictured) was known to have connections to the mob and some theorized he had known about plans to assassinate President Kennedy
Kupcinet’s father was connected to mob boss Sam Giancana (pictured). Giancana was reportedly a source for Irv Kupcinet
Irv Kupcinet would deny that he or his daughter had prior knowledge of the assassination, but his long association with Ruby – along with ties to Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana and LA-based mob lawyer Sidney Korshak – fueled speculation.
Giancana himself was shot to death at his suburban Chicago home in June 1975, shortly before he was due to testify before Congress about CIA plots to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro in 1961.
Theories and interest surrounding Kupcinet’s unsolved murder persist to this day.
Some believe that she was killed as a warning to her father to keep his mouth shut about what he might have learned from Ruby or Giancana regarding JFK’s assassination.
Another theory was that the mob was behind Kennedy’s murder as retaliation for the administration’s crackdown on organized crime, led by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy at the time.
More recently, the late president’s nephew, current Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has also asked for a reopening of the investigation into the assassination, contending that there was ‘overwhelming evidence…beyond a reasonable doubt’ that the CIA was involved in his uncle’s murder.
But his theory has long been debunked.
Earlier this year, at Kennedy’s behest and others, President Trump ordered the release of some 60,000 pages of previously classified assassination files.
Kupcinet’s murder has never been solved, but some believe she was killed to silence her father
But the documents showed no such link, as Kennedy believes, to the nation’s spy agency, leaving the lone gunman theory that ex-Marine sharpshooter Lee Harvey Oswald, 24, was the sole assassin of the beloved 46-year-old president, father of Caroline and John Jr.
And there was no mention in the newly released documents about Kupcinet’s murder, or the eerie telephone call predicting the president’s death.
As one knowledgeable source told Daily Mail: ‘It’s all a mystery that never will be solved.’
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .