9 Celebrities Who Died In Strange, Mysterious Ways

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It's always been fascinating to me how, as a celebrity or public figure, you can live your whole life under the microscope of fame...only for your death to be shrouded in mystery, and — in some cases — still unsolved decades later. Or, like others, you become famous because of your death, only reaching the goal of celebrity when you're no longer able to bask in it.
Recently, I came across a thread on Reddit where u/the_last_lemurian asked people to share celebrity deaths that were so mysterious, people spent literal hours thinking about them. Based on their suggestions, I spent hours going down rabbit holes myself, summarizing these cases of strange, mysterious, or unsolved celebrity deaths that I, too, cannot get out of my head now. Here are nine of the strangest, most fascinating, and most-suggested celebrity deaths they shared:
George Reeves (1914–1959). Reeves, best known for playing the titular character in Adventures of Superman, died on June 16 from a gunshot wound to the head. Officially, it was ruled as a suicide, but in conjunction with a lack of evidence, suspicious circumstances, and contradictory witness reports, his friend Rory Calhoun reportedly said, "No one in Hollywood believed the suicide story."
On the night of his death, Reeves and his fiancé, Leonore Lemmon, had been out drinking, and Reeves went to bed as Lemmon invited friends over. Reeves was said to have come downstairs to ask the group to quiet down, and as he left, Lemmon reportedly joked that he was "going upstairs to shoot himself." The group heard a noise coming from upstairs but didn't immediately check it. Here is where the inconsistencies begin. Despite the apparent suicide, no fingerprints — not even Reeves's — were found on the gun, and Reeves didn't have gunpowder on his hands. Additionally, Lemmon and her friends only reported hearing one bang, but there were three bullets found at the scene, as well as a casing whose placement wasn't consistent with a suicide.
Pictured: Lenore Lemmon (left)
Despite the ruling, three main theories came to be: that Reeves was depressed about a lack of roles post-Superman and killed himself, that it was a drunken accident and Lemmon killed him, and that it was a planned murder in relation to an affair he had reportedly had with actor Toni Mannix.
"The fact that he played such a beloved character like Superman but was found dead under such mysterious circumstances makes you wonder if it really was a suicide or if it was something more sinister. Like, imagine if tomorrow they found Chris Evans dead by a gun that doesn't have his fingerprints on it, with no gunshot residue on his hands, and it's just ruled a suicide? That would be wild."—sun4restYou can read more about his death here.
Natalie Wood (1938–1981). On Nov. 30, 1981, Wood's body was found off the coast of Santa Catalina Island, where she'd been vacationing with her husband, Robert Wagner, her Brainstorm costar Christopher Walken, and friend/captain, Dennis Davern, on a yacht. The West Side Story actor — who was said to be "famously terrified of dark water," was found floating about 200m away from a motorized dinghy in the early hours of the morning.
Initially, reports assumed the death was accidental; however, the story got much more complicated over the years as stories and timelines changed with new information. Per Wagner's memoir, Pieces of My Heart, he claims he, Wood, and Walken returned to the boat that night at around 10 after wining and dining on land. Witnesses said the trio was visibly intoxicated. Back on the boat, Davern said Wagner smashed a bottle in front of Wood and Walken "out of the clear blue," asking, "What are you tryin' to do, f--- my wife?" The Rebel Without a Cause actor reportedly left and went to her room, with her husband following, where they began arguing.
Davern claimed it sounded as though it could be physical, and said they continued out on the back of the boat. This information came years after Wood's death. Davern shared this with investigators in 2011, which reopened the case and brought Wagner back into question. In 2012, her cause of death was amended from accidental drowning to "drowning and other undetermined factors." Nonetheless, after years of additional investigation, Wagner was cleared, and the case was left open and unsolved.
Pictured: Wagner (left) and Wood (right)Suggested by: Toxicity246"Christopher Walken KNOWS SOMETHING."—Longjumping-Ant-77"[The boat] was around 60 feet, and on a boat that size, you can hear everything that is going on. A huge fight would have been heard, as would have the sudden silence of the fight ending. Robert's actions seem very suspicious. But we will never know, unless Christopher talks, which he won't."—NoneThere's so much information and speculation around this case that it truly could be its own article and is by no means all covered in this brief summary. If you'd like to read more about it, you can start here and here.
Brittany Murphy (1977–2009). On Dec. 20, 2009, the 32-year-old Uptown Girls star collapsed on her bathroom floor and just hours later, was pronounced dead at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in LA. Her coroner's report later showed pneumonia as her cause of death, and listed anemia and multiple drug intoxication as "contributing factors."
Following her death, both her mother and her husband, Simon Monjack, made a rather strange appearance together on Larry King Live. Further, Murphy had lived with the two of them while she was alive, and they continued to live together in her home after her death. This, fueled by Monjack's criminal history and track record of abusive behavior toward his exes, created tons of conspiracy theories around what actually happened to the Clueless star.
A majority of theories surrounding her death center around some kind of poisoning, be it accidentally from mold or intentionally by her mother or husband (often suggested to be linked to a desire for Murphy's wealth or an alleged affair between the two). Theories only grew wilder when, less than six months after Murphy's death, her husband died of the same causes.
Suggested by: bluntbiz and Dougalface. You can read more about her death here.
Michael Rockefeller (1938-????). At 23 years old, Rockefeller disappeared while traveling to Dutch New Guinea (now West Papua). The son of the then-New York City governor had been traveling for seven months already when his boat capsized, sending him and his travel companion René Wassing into the Betsj River. While two others they traveled with — who were native to the region and familiar with the hostility of the river — made it to shore to find aid, Rockefeller and Wassing stayed atop the overturned boat.
Rockefeller was reportedly worried they would float into the open ocean with even less of a chance of survival, so he attached a make-shift flotation device to his belt and jumped in. The swim to shore was estimated to be somewhere between three and ten miles. Wassing stayed behind and was rescued the following morning by search parties. Rockefeller...vanished. Two weeks' worth of search parties scoured the region, though he was never found, dead or alive.
Pictured: Wassing
This disappearance, of course, created a breeding ground for theories as to how specifically he met his demise. Some are simple and straightforward, like drowning. Others suggest Rockefeller abandoned society and joined the Asmat tribe that called the region home, claiming to have photographic evidence of a white man amongst them. Others, however, believe Rockefeller sought help from the Otsjanep (a subgroup of the Asmats) when he reached land and was ultimately killed and eaten by them.
You can read more about his disappearance here.Suggested by: laufsteakmodel
Elizabeth Short (1924–1947). Also posthumously known as "The Black Dahlia," Short was a 22-year-old aspiring actress when her body was found on a "barely developed" Los Angeles street, naked, bloodless, sliced in half, and positioned like a mannequin. Per BBC, "she had been mutilated, her intestines removed, and her mouth slashed from ear to ear." Her case, unfortunately, remains unsolved to this day.
There are tons of theories involving Short's death, which range greatly due to the sheer lack of information. The FBI speculates that her killer might've worked in or studied medicine, given the precision of her dissection, and students at USC Medical School at the time were looked into. For similar reasons, they also could've been a butcher, though neither lane led them anywhere in the end. In what they hoped would be a breakthrough, investigators got an anonymous letter from the potential murderer with fingerprints on it, though they weren't a match to any in their database at the time.
Suggested by: robj57You can read more about her murder here.
Elliott Smith (1969–2003). On Oct. 21, 2003, Smith and his girlfriend, Jennifer Chiba, were fighting in their LA apartment when he threatened to kill himself. This wasn't something out of the blue for Smith, and so Chiba reportedly locked herself in the bathroom in the heat of their fight...until she heard a scream. She unlocked the door to find a kitchen knife lodged in his chest, stabbing him right in the heart. He died just 20 minutes after arriving at the hospital.
While an apparent suicide note reading "I'm sorry, love, Elliott. God forgive me." was found on a sticky note, Smith's death was still considered suspicious for many reasons, and investigators struggled with whether to rule it a suicide or a murder. First and foremost, a stab to the heart is one of the rarest and most painful ways to commit suicide, though that didn't make it impossible for him to have done so. What was unusual, however, was that Smith had no "hesitation wounds," or initial, shallower cuts typically inflicted before the final wound, and had small, potential self-defense wounds. Further, Chiba had reportedly removed the knife from his body and, though she personally denied this, it was reported that she refused to speak to detectives initially.
While some may blame his suicide on his drug addiction or depression, Smith was reportedly doing well in the time leading up to his death and had been clean. No substances aside from his prescribed medications for depression and ADHD were found in his system at the time of his death. That's not to say his lifelong depression — which, along with his addiction, were often topics of his music — couldn't have played a major role in his potential suicide.Additionally, some friends and colleagues of Smith claimed that his relationship with Chiba was nowhere near as peaceful as others had made it out to be, reporting constant fighting, breaking up, and tense feelings between the two (and Chiba's band) as collaborators. Others, however, disagreed.Despite countless theories, as of 2003 the case remains open with the LAPD.Suggested by Zukez, interprime, and obi-sean. You can read more about it here.
Anton Yelchin (1989–2016). The Star Trek actor died in June of 2016 in a freak accident in which he was pinned between his fence and mailbox on his Los Angeles property by his 2015 Jeep Cherokee. The car had been recalled just months earlier for having confusing gear shifters that had, on more than one occasion, caused the vehicle to roll off. This, too, was believed to have been the cause of his death. Per the lawsuit, he "was crushed and lingered alive for some time, trapped and suffocating until his death."
Suggested by: DaveDavidsen. You can read more about his death here.
Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962). The 36-year-old Hollywood icon's death in August of 1962 is shrouded in mystery and conspiracy, even all these decades later. This, of course, includes the events leading up to her death. Per a 1962 Los Angeles Times article, the Gentlemen Prefer Blondes star's psychiatrist broke into her room at 3:30 in the morning and found her naked, facedown, and "clutching a telephone receiver" in bed. She had reportedly already been dead for somewhere between six to eight hours due to an "apparent overdose of sleeping pills," and investigators were uncertain whether it was accidental or a suicide.
A second timeline of events was proposed in the documentary The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes, based on "hundreds of interviews," aimed to get to the bottom of inconsistencies in the original story. It suggested that — per the word of several paramedics and the wife of Monroe's PR manager — it was actually known that Monroe was unwell hours earlier (10:30 p.m. the night before), and that she was taken in the ambulance alive and died on the way to the hospital.
Regardless, the reason for her death — and whether it was accidental, a suicide, or a staged homicide — remains a mystery. There are probably hundreds of conspiracy theories surrounding the nature of it all, from her romantic entanglements with JFK and Robert Kennedy to CIA involvement over fear of her harboring Communist connections.
"She had been sleeping with some very elite people, who knew some very elite information."—prettyvoidofevilYou can read more about her death here, as well as the aforementioned documentary here.
And finally, Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849). On the 27th of September, Poe left Richmond, Virginia, for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for an editing job. Only...he never made it there. Nor was he seen in New York, where he lived. He wasn't found at all, in fact, for almost a week. When the legendary author did turn up once again, he was in Baltimore, Maryland.
It was Oct. 3, four days before his death. Poe was found lying in the gutter of Gunner's Hall tavern, delirious, disheveled, and dressed in someone else's clothing. His friends assumed him to be drunk, so he was sent to Washington College Hospital to recover. While there, he drifted in and out of consciousness, covered in sweat and talking to seemingly imaginary things nobody else could see. He was unable to adequately answer the physician's questions and was reported to have repeatedly asked for someone by the name of "Reynolds" on his final day in the hospital. To this day, no one knows who "Reynolds" is.
There are loads of theories as to what exactly happened to the Tell-Tale Heart author, from suspicions of carbon monoxide poisoning to rabies. One of the most popular theories, though, is that Poe was "cooped." Cooping was a method 19th-century gangs would use to rig elections by kidnapping people, disguising them, forcing them to vote for their preferred candidate, then "rewarding" them with alcohol, as this occurred during Prohibition. Poe was found on Election Day, and the tavern had been a polling site. He ultimately passed away at the hospital on Oct. 7.
While the theory definitely carries its weight, unfortunately, we will likely never know for certain what happened to Poe that day.Suggested by: Rigistroni and Blametheorangejuice. You can read more about Poe's death here.
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