May 1, 2003
The Murder of Sal Mineo
by Denise Noe
(photo courtesy salmineo.com)
"He’ll end up with a knife in him."
Residents of New York City’s crime-ridden Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood
predicted that Salvatore Mineo Jr. would come to a bad end. The slight boy they
called "Junior" in elementary school was a playground brawler, thief, and gang
member, according to Marvin J. Wolf and Katherine Mader in
Fallen Angels.
The biographers wrote that acquaintances predicted he would wind up on the wrong
end of a knife.
But questions cluster around the beginning of Sal Mineo’s life as they do
around the tragic end to it. John Seger, owner of Sal Mineo’s official website
(www.salmineo.com),
says that "According to Sal’s family, Mineo was never arrested. The entire
juvenile-delinquent angle was something made up for publicity."
Mineo was born Jan. 10, 1939 to Salvatore Mineo Sr., a coffin maker from
Sicily, and his wife Josephine. He was the third child and third son. His sister
was born four years later.
Mineo took dancing classes as a prepubescent and the people who saw him dance
then knew the boy had talent and that he loved dancing. But, according to biographer H. Paul
Jeffers, there was a downside to being a dancer in his macho neighborhood. The
other boys in his gang no longer wanted him with them and taunted him as a
"sissy." Outraged, Junior fought the teasers with his fists.
The dancing lessons paid off, landing Mineo a gig on a local TV program
called "The Ted Steele Show."
At 11 years old, Mineo won a part in The Rose Tattoo, a Tennessee
Williams play appearing on Broadway that starred Eli Wallach and Maureen
Stapleton. Mineo had a single line: "The goat is in the yard."
His stint in The Rose Tattoo led to his becoming the understudy for
the role of the crown prince in a production of The King and I. In August
1952 the boy who played the prince went on vacation and it was Mineo’s turn to
show what he could do. He did so well that he was given the part.
In private life, the pubescent Mineo was discovering that a handsome boy with
olive skin, large, soulful eyes, and pouty lips was attractive to some adult
men. The discovery disturbed him. To scare off potential pedophiles, he began
carrying a realistic-looking toy gun.
As Mineo entered his teenage years, television was just becoming a part of
American life. As a teenager, Mineo got parts on "The Hallmark Hall of Fame,"
"Omnibus," and "Janet Dean, Registered Nurse." These appearances led to a
role in a motion picture starring Tony Curtis called Six Bridges to Cross.
Then Mineo played a military cadet in the movie The Private War of Major
Benson.
The next movie Mineo made – Rebel Without A Cause – would
become a
classic and make him a star.
Rebel’s Plato
Rebel Without A Cause would establish James Dean as a movie icon, kick
off a phenomenon called "Mineo Mania," and become a landmark in its portrayal of
adolescent angst.
James Dean, then 25, played Jimmy Stark, a troubled teenager who is new in
town. One way that the film shows its age is in the depiction of Stark’s
parents. Their marriage embarrasses Jimmy because the mother (Ann Doran) appears
dominant in the relationship and her hen-pecked husband (Jim Backus) wears an
apron while doing household chores.
Stark’s ostensible love interest is Judy (Natalie Wood), a girl alienated
from her family. Dean and Wood had a genuine chemistry: Sparks flew in their
love scenes.
The relationship between Jimmy and a lonely young man played by Mineo named
Plato is necessarily more ambiguous. In the story line, Plato hero-worships
Jimmy. Many observers, however, consider Mineo’s greatest achievement playing
American film’s first gay teenager. Although no clear reference to homosexuality
is ever made, the eroticism between Plato and Jimmy is palpable.
Mineo and Dean became fast friends off screen. That, plus their obvious
onscreen chemistry and Dean’s known bisexuality, led many people to believe they
had an affair while Rebel was being made. Mineo always denied a physical
relationship between them. He said he was not yet conscious of the sexual nature
of his attraction to other men. He did acknowledge that he was in love with
Dean, but said his lack of understanding of his sexuality prevented him from
acting on it. Jeffers recounts Mineo saying, "If I’d understood back then that a
guy could be in love with another one, it would have happened. But I didn’t come
to that realization for a few more years and then it was too late for Jimmy and
me."
In Rebel, Jimmy Stark feels he must prove his courage through a "chickie
ride" in which he and another teenage boy race cars toward a cliff. That boy is
Buzz (Corey Allen), the leader of a gang at their high school, and Jimmy’s
ostensible rival for Judy’s affections. In a chickie ride, the one who jumps out
of his vehicle first is a the "chickie." Jimmy believes his "honor" is at stake
in this foolish game. The other boy racing in the chickie ride is killed because
his sleeve gets caught and he can’t pull away in time to leap out of his
vehicle.
The teenagers are aghast and frightened. They believe that a guilt-ridden
Jimmy is going to tell all to the police and a group of them are determined to
prevent that. Plato wants to protect Jimmy and fetches a gun from home.
Plato, Jimmy, and Judy meet in an abandoned mansion that Plato had previously
told Jimmy was his favorite retreat when things were going badly. The outside
world seems to be pressing in on them, so the teenagers appear to retreat to
childlike make-believe as Plato pretends he’s a real estate agent showing a
prized home to a couple of newlyweds. But the three look like a kind of
ambiguous family in and of themselves. Plato can be seen as the child of Jimmy
and Judy. She hums a lullaby and Plato falls asleep.
He wakes to find Buzz’s gang outside. Plato believes
Jimmy has abandoned him. Ironically, he uses the gun he wanted to protect his
friend to shoot at Jimmy as well as another gang member. A police officer shoots
Plato dead.
Many critics believe that Plato had to be killed off at the end because a
"queer" could not survive in a movie. His death leaves viewers believing that
Jimmy will grow into a "normal" heterosexual adulthood through his relationship
with Judy.
Rebel Without A Cause was a sensation. It got a poignant publicity boost
just before its release when James Dean careened to his own death in his newly
acquired sports car. The irony of his character’s surviving the movie’s "chickie
ride" added an enormous tragic weight to a movie already rich in emotional
power.
Natalie Wood was nominated for the 1955 Academy Award for best supporting
actress and Mineo was nominated for best supporting actor. Neither won. "Mineo
Mania," nonetheless, took on a life of its own, making the handsome heartthrob
the subject of many movie magazine articles. Fan letters streamed in from
thousands of female admirers. Young women mobbed the actor in public
appearances. According to Jeffers in
Sal Mineo, "He
dated the most beautiful women in Hollywood and New York."
The newly minted star bought his parents a $300,000 mansion in the Mamaronek
suburb of New York that had formerly been the home of silent screen high
priestess Mary Pickford.
In the interim before the release of Rebel Without A Cause and Dean’s
death, both Dean and Mineo worked on Giant. Mineo’s role was small but
his name appeared on advertising to lure in his many, often female, fans.
Many of Mineo’s parts after Rebel were versions of Plato. He played
young but vulnerable toughs in movies like Crime in the Streets, The
Young Don’t Cry, and Dino. He was nicknamed "The Switchblade Kid" for
his depictions of juvenile delinquents.
An indication of the strength of Mineo Mania can be seen in the response to a
Bob Hope joke. "No school tomorrow kids," Hope joshed in 1959 on his TV show.
"It’s Sal Mineo’s birthday. All those in the Bronx can stay home." The next day,
absences in Bronx schools skyrocketed.
Trying to break out of typecasting, Mineo played an Indian brave in the 1958
film Tonka and the title character in a television "Du Pont Show of the
Month" drama called "Aladdin." His first truly adult role, and the one in which
he left Plato-incarnations behind, was that of drummer Gene Krupa in The Gene
Krupa Story. For Mineo, an accomplished drummer in his own right, the role
was a near perfect fit. He and Krupa were the same size and shared the same
Italian-American heritage.
In 1960 Mineo played a Jew in Exodus who had survived the Nazi death
camps and, after World War II, wanted to fight for a Jewish homeland in what was
then known as Palestine. In this film, homosexuality was explicitly mentioned,
albeit in the most negative possible context.
Mineo’s character, Dov Landau, admitted that he had cooperated with his Nazi
captors. He had used dynamite to help the murderers make mass graves for his
fellow Jews. He had shaved the heads of the other captives.
He had done more, he confessed to the Zionist officer questioning him. Dov
wept as the words spilled out: "They used me. They used me like you use a . . .
a . . . woman."
Dov makes up for his humiliation as a courageous fighter for the Zionist
Irgun.
For this performance, Mineo won a Golden Globe Award for best supporting
actor, and was again nominated for an Academy Award for best actor in a
supporting role. His hopes were high that he would win. "The first time, when I
got a nomination for Rebel," he recalled. "I was very excited . . . but I
knew I did not have a chance." When nominated for Exodus, "I felt that at
this point in my career winning an Oscar would firmly establish respect for my
acting ability." To his bitter disappointment, the award went to Peter
Ustinov for his role as a slave dealer in Spartacus.
A Man’s Man
As more significant dramatic roles were coming his way in the early 1960s,
Mineo’s private life was undergoing a major transformation. Years later, he
would describe this encounter to his biographer H. Paul Jeffers: As Mineo was
strolling along a beach close to his home, he met an adoring fan as he had so
often before. But Mineo felt something special for this particular young man
that he could not, or did not want, to deny. He admitted to himself that he was
sexually attracted to the man. He invited the fan to his home. The man accepted
and Mineo discovered to his delight that his feelings of erotic attraction were
reciprocated. Jeffers would write that Mineo looked back on this incident "with
astonishment" because, in Jeffers words, it allowed the actor to finally realize
"his true sexual nature."
This experience apparently made Mineo want more like it because he started
regularly looking for male sex partners. Like any actor of the time period, he
realized that he would have to keep his sexual preferences from becoming public
knowledge if he wanted to continue as a star.
In 1962, Mineo tried to get a part in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia.
The director refused the actor’s services. Mineo attributed this disappointment
to his having played Dov Landau. "I lost because I had appeared in a pro-Jewish
picture," he claimed, "played a sympathetic Jewish boy, and shot four Arabs."
Mineo appeared in John Ford’s Cheyenne Autumn in 1964. Sporting a
black wig with large braids, he played Red Shirt. To get around Mineo’s
pronounced Bronx accent, Ford did not have Red Shirt say a single word in
English.
The End of Mineo Mania
By the mid-1960s, Mineo found his career stymied. He had been best in the
roles of delinquent yet sensitive adolescents. Now in his mid-20s, he was no
longer young enough for that sort of role and could not be comfortably cast as a
leading man in many movies.
He was baffled by the difficulty he had in getting the roles he wanted. "It’s
a situation I’ve never been able to fathom," he told a columnist. "One minute it
seemed I had more movie offers than I could handle, the next – no one wanted
me." Mineo Mania was over.
While Mineo’s career was not what it had been, neither was he completely
washed up. In 1964 he starred as a disturbed busboy named Lawrence Sherman in
Who Killed Teddy Bear? His character is a stalker and would-be rapist. Mineo
turned in a good performance but believed that playing the deranged, evil
character harmed his career. "I found myself on the weirdo list," he commented
about Hollywood’s ranking of him.
Mineo’s social life was more active than ever. It was, after all, the ‘60s, a
congenial time period for someone as sexually adventurous and freewheeling as
Mineo. He is believed to have dabbled in the common recreational drugs of the
time period. When asked by Boze Hadleigh, "Do you believe in trying everything
once?" Mineo replied with a shrug, "You mean drugs, don’t you? Why not? Once,
anyway. I’m not into heavy drugs." He spent a lot of time in nightclubs,
enjoying the loud rock and camaraderie. Often he went from one to another,
ending up in a gay men’s bar. He rarely went home alone.
During the same period that the actor was getting comfortable with his
penchant for same-sex trysts, he made a disquieting discovery about his
financial situation. The government investigated his tax returns and his records
revealed that he no longer had the funds to support a lavish lifestyle. Mineo
was baffled. "I made millions," he said in disbelief. "Not one million. A
few million." But most of it had been spent or taxed. He sold the Mineo
mansion in suburban New York. He also sold several cars and a boat. Badly
needing money, he was doubly frustrated that he was no longer a Hollywood hot
property.
His finances got a needed boost when he got the small role of Uriah in The
Greatest Story Ever Told, making enough money from that film to rent a nice
home in Hollywood Hills, buy a couple of new cars, and throw the parties that he
always relished. Frugality was not for the extroverted actor. "A movie star
shouldn’t be stingy," he commented to a friend who thought he might be spending
too much.
Mineo continued making the rounds of the gay bars and having affairs with a
series of attractive men. He did not want a steady boyfriend. Jeffers quotes him
as saying, "I’ve found a lifestyle that is much more satisfying in total to me
than complete commitment to one person. I really do dig freedom – I always
have." In his interview with Boze Hadleigh, Mineo described himself as
"polygamous."
Believing it was time to branch out, Mineo decided to try his hand at
directing. He chose a play, Fortune and Men’s Eyes, that would operate as
a vehicle for his own "coming out." Set in prison, the play has an onstage
homosexual rape scene. As well as directing, Mineo cast himself as a prisoner
who rapes a convict played by Don Johnson. It also gave Mineo an opportunity to
express his deep feelings for the late James Dean: The program dedicated the
play to him.
Mineo’s version of Fortune and Men’s Eyes opened in Los Angeles where
it garnered many positive reviews, especially from the gay press.
Then Mineo took the play to New York. When the play traveled, Mineo made the
rape scene longer to emphasize its brutality. The respected New York Times
critic Clive Barnes wrote a scathing review of Fortune and Men’s Eyes
that took its director/star to task. "How far can you go?" he asked. "Or, if you
think it is more pertinent, how far are we going? . . . Sir or Madam, I suggest
that if this is the play you would like, you need a psychiatrist a lot more than
you need a theater ticket." Barnes wrote, "I am not sure what kind of reputation
Mr. Mineo has – he is a minor Hollywood player, I believe – but I am perfectly
certain what reputation Mr. Mineo deserves. I consider the changes Mr. Mineo has
made in this play have been made in the interest of sexual titillation – chiefly
of the sadomasochistic variety – rather than in the interest of drama."
Mineo was hurt by this criticism and retorted that Barnes’s reaction was
"based on his own insecurities." He also found it curious that the reviewer
seemed unfamiliar with him. "After I’ve been 18 years in the business, show
business, and he doesn’t know the name?" he asked incredulously. "And as
for the reputation I’ve gotten from the play, I don’t care. It’s on that stage,
and if you want to identify me with it, okay."
He continued pursuing an active social life in the late 1960s and early
1970s. At one point, he and Rock Hudson were dating. There were rumors that
Mineo was into sadomasochism. He often wore leather, a clothing choice that can
be simply a fashion preference but is frequently favored by S&M aficionados. He
told friends and acquaintances that he felt a special attraction to Englishmen.
His sexual preferences remained a subject of some dispute. Mineo never called
himself gay but said he was bisexual. Some people – ignoring the complicated
nature of human sexuality – scoffed at this as a cop-out because, for the last
years of his life, he allegedly had sex only with men. It is possible – because
he had sex with so many women during the years of Mineo Mania – that he had a
sense of "been there, done that" with heterosexual relations. Thus, he preferred
to concentrate on exploring the side of his sexuality that he had denied for so
long. That would not make it a subterfuge when he said he was "bi" but a
realistic recognition that his affairs with women were neither experiments that
failed to take nor attempts to cover up his orientation. Rather, they were
authentic expressions of yearnings that were as strong and genuine as those
desires he had for men. He may have not felt the need to continue them because
the heterosexual part of his sexuality had gone as far as it could go.
The year 1973 was a difficult one for Mineo. He was unable to
make a film about drug trafficking he had hoped to direct, The Wrong People.
Mineo wanted to make it on location in Morocco but an official of that country
refused permission to film it there because of the subject matter. Israel also
turned Mineo down. Mineo saw a play he directed, The Children's Mass,
flop.
Those disappointments paled beside the devastating grief of learning that his
59-year-old father was dying. Mineo spent five days at Salvatore Mineo Sr.’s
bedside. The actor gave a eulogy at his father’s funeral.
Mineo said he came away from this grief determined to make the most of his
own life. "Being in the same room with him," he remembered, "and looking at him,
I realized that one day I would be in the same position as he, facing death.
Before it happens I mean to do the things I want to do. I will not end up
saying, ‘I wish I had.’"
In 1976, Mineo was in a San Francisco production of a quirky comedy called
P.S. Your Cat Is Dead. He played Vito, a bisexual burglar caught in the act
by Jimmy and his girlfriend. Jimmy ties Vito up, then begins interrogating his
captive. A frustrated, would-be writer, Jimmy decides that Vito’s life story is
just the material he needs to write a winning book.
The play was well reviewed and Mineo’s performance especially lauded. Theater
critic Bob Kiggins wrote that "Mineo all but steals the show with his
outlandish, marvelously antic gestures, his facile facial contortions and his
robust delivery." In Touch magazine did a profile of him entitled "Sal
Mineo, the Eternal Original." Gratified to be starring in a hit, Mineo looked
optimistically to the future. He believed his flagging career would revive and
he would get more and better parts.
Knifed in the Heart
P.S. Your Cat Is Dead wrapped up its San Francisco run and moved to Los
Angeles. Mineo went with it. He rented an apartment in West Hollywood. On Feb.
12, 1976, he was at the rehearsal early because his dinner date had canceled out
at the last minute. His co-star recalled Mineo as being in "tremendous spirits"
when rehearsal ended just after 9 p.m. A happy Mineo hopped into his blue
Chevelle and drove home.
Nine-year-old Monica Merrem was sitting at her desk in her bedroom when she
heard a loud, frantic plea. "Oh, no!" a man shouted. "Oh, my God! No! Help me,
please!" She looked out her window and saw a man running away. She would recall
him as a white man with an unusually pale complexion.
From another apartment, Ron Evans heard a man scream. He ran in the direction
of the sound to the alley. He saw Mineo bleeding on the ground. Evans, who was
acquainted with the actor, exclaimed, "Sal, my God!"
Evans turned Mineo onto his back. The actor’s shirt was soaked with blood and
he was having trouble breathing. Evans tried to give him mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation.
A group soon gathered around the injured actor. Someone called for an
ambulance, but it arrived too late. Mineo was dead at the scene. He was
pronounced dead at 9:55 p.m. A single stab would that had cut into his heart
killed him.
Others besides little Monica saw a man flee the scene of the crime. Security
guard Stephen Gustafson would remember a white man with dark blond or brown
hair. Scott Hughes would say he thought the man was Italian or Mexican. He also
said he believed the man jumped into a yellow Toyota to make his getaway.
Who had killed Mineo and why? An early hypothesis was that the murder was
drug-related. There was gossip that Mineo was an addict and even that he was a
dealer. In all likelihood, both were wrong. While he probably took drugs on
occasion, he had none of the symptoms associated with hard-core addiction. His
modest financial situation at the time of his death argues against his being
much of a dope merchant.
Another possibility was that the crime was related to his sexuality. Some
speculated that the killer might have been a hustler Mineo picked up. Retired
silent screen star Ramon Novarro had been murdered in 1968, when he was 69, by
two brothers he had picked up for prostitution but who robbed and killed him.
Had history repeated itself? Friends said Mineo had casual encounters but did
not make a habit of paying for them.
Some wondered if he had died because of an S&M scene that went haywire. Still
another theory was that a rejected or jealous lover had killed him.
Because the killer had not taken his wallet, police ruled out theft as a
motive early in the investigation.
A special phone number was set up to collect tips. Investigators pursued
leads that took them to Arizona, Nevada, Washington, New York, and Florida. They
came up empty-handed.
Over a year passed and it looked like Mineo’s murder would remain a mystery
like the 1922 unsolved killing of silent movie director William Desmond Taylor.
But an unexpected break came in May 1977. Theresa Williams went to the police
and recounted how her husband, Lionel Raymond Williams, had come home with blood
on his shirt on the night of Mineo’s stabbing death in February 1976. She
claimed that her husband confessed to her that he had stabbed someone. Later
that evening when they were watching television, a news report about Mineo’s
murder came on. Theresa said Lionel told her, "That’s the dude I killed." She
also claimed her husband had used a recently purchased $5.28 hunting knife in
the murder. She recalled that he had told her he had used that same knife in a
series of robberies.
Police had doubts about Theresa’s veracity partly because she had waited so
long after the alleged confession to report it and partly because her husband
did not fit the description of the man witnesses had seen fleeing the crime.
Lionel Williams was black and most witnesses thought they had seen a white man,
although one had said he could be Mexican.
Williams was a 21-year-old career criminal who regularly robbed and had a
penchant for violence. Indeed, he was much like "The Switchblade Kid" characters
Mineo had played in his youth and like the kind of man observers supposedly
feared the young Mineo would have become had his show business talents not been
recognized.
Lionel was also fair complexioned so the detectives believed he could have
been mistaken for a white man by eyewitnesses.
He also had an earlier link to the Mineo murder. While in the Los Angeles
County Jail on an unrelated charge, Lionel told an officer, "I want to talk to
someone about the Mineo case." Lionel claimed drug users had told him that they
had been paid $1,500 to murder the actor because he had burned someone in a dope
deal.
The officers were leery of Lionel’s story. It occurred to them that Williams
might have been involved in the crime and was trying to throw suspicion onto
others. But without evidence connecting Williams to the murder, the police soon
dropped their investigation of him.
After hearing Theresa Williams’s claims, police again tracked Williams but
could not come up with anything definite. In the meantime, Williams was
convicted of check forgery and sentenced to 10 months in Michigan’s Calhoun
County Jail. He was scheduled for release on January 18, 1978.
While he was serving that sentence, a deputy reported that he had overheard
Williams tell his cellmate, "I killed a dude a while back. An actor by the name
of Sal Mineo."
Later another guard reported having heard him make the same boast. The
officers were uncertain if they were hearing admissions or fantasizing, but they
informed Los Angeles authorities of the remarks. The L.A. police got a court
order permitting Lionel Williams’s cell to be bugged.
Continuing research into Williams’s background revealed him to be a veteran
robber who was often violent. L.A. Det. Dan Tankersley regretted having
dismissed robbery as motive and said if he had not, "We might have solved [the
Mineo case] a lot sooner."
L.A. Deputy D. A. Burton Katz took the case. He obtained an indictment
against Williams, then sought his extradition from Michigan.
On Williams’s return to Los Angeles, investigators questioned him. He
strongly denied having had anything to do with Mineo’s murder. While
interrogating him, an officer noticed a fresh tattoo of a knife on the suspect’s
arm. Murderers often like to keep souvenirs of their crimes, and the detectives
believed that Williams might have created one with that tattoo.
Theresa Williams was not on hand to testify against her husband at the trial.
She had killed herself with a shot through the head.
The Trial
Deputy D.A. Michael Genelin prosecuted the case when it came to trial. The
charge carried a possible death penalty. Judge Ronnie Lee Martin presided, and a
jury evenly divided between men and women heard the case. Mort Herbert was
appointed by the court to defend Lionel Williams.
Genelin called 26-year-old Allwyn Williams to the stand. No relation to
Lionel Williams, Allwyn had been a partner in crime. At the time he testified
before the grand jury, Allwyn was serving time for robbery and kidnapping. When
he testified at the trial itself, however, he wore the uniform of a U. S.
Marine.
Allwyn testified that Lionel had told him he had killed a celebrity. When
Allwyn asked who it was, Lionel had allegedly replied, "Sal Mineo." He testified
that Williams claimed he had been driving around looking for someone to rob when
he spotted Mineo getting out of his car. Williams approached him with the knife.
Mineo cried out and Lionel stabbed him. He fled in panic without bothering to
grab his victim’s valuables.
Authorities had made a deal with Allwyn in exchange for his testimony. His
robbery and kidnapping charges had been reduced and he had received a one-year
suspended sentence.
Herman cross-examined Allwyn, getting him to admit that he had embroidered
his story in his first dealings with investigators. Then he had claimed to them
that Williams had told him he had used a "pearl-handled knife." Now he
acknowledged that Williams had said no such thing. He also admitted that he had
fabricated a Lincoln Continental getaway car. He said he made things up because
"I was hoping to get out of jail" and thought a "strong" story would do the
trick.
"Would you lie again," Herbert asked pointedly, "if it was absolutely
necessary to get off the hook."
"I guess so, sir," Allwyn conceded.
The prosecution tried to link Williams to the murder weapon in a roundabout
way. The police could not find the knife used in the murder. Theresa Williams
had pointed out stores that her husband patronized that sold knives.
Investigators were able to hunt up a knife sold in such a store that cost $5.28
around the time Williams was likely to have purchased it and which resembled the
one that had struck Mineo’s heart. They matched that weapon to the wound in
Mineo’s tissues that had been preserved in formalin. It was a near-perfect fit.
Herbert pointed out that finding a duplicate of the knife that had killed
Mineo at a shop his client frequented did not put the murder weapon in the
defendant’s hand. He emphasized that the witnesses said they had seen a white or
Mexican man leaving the scene. Genelin countered by showing a mug shot of
Williams from roughly the same time period that showed a fair-skinned man with
long, bleached hair.
In his summation, Genelin called Lionel Williams "a predator" and "a man who
wants the world to know how tough he is." Later he told the jurors to connect
the dots of evidence and the portrait drawn "is the face of the defendant."
Herbert summed up Williams's defense by emphasizing the fact that witnesses
said they saw a white man fleeing the crime scene. If a director were going to
make a movie about Sal Mineo’s murder, Herbert asked, what actor would he look
for? Taking the role of that hypothetical director, Herbert continued by
reminding them of what eyewitnesses said the killer looked like. "I want him to
have large curls," Herbert said. "I want him to look like an Italian. And I want
him to have large cheekbones. I want him to have a long nose. I want him to be
about five feet ten inches tall. And I want him to be white." His client
was "the last person in the world" to be cast for the part, Herbert concluded.
After a trial lasting about two-and-a-half months, the jury convicted
Williams of second-degree murder, a crime that does not carry the death penalty,
but curiously acquitted him of the attempted robbery charge.
March 16, 1979 was the day of sentencing. Judge Martin offered Williams a
chance to speak. Williams criticized both his attorney and Judge Martin. "He
wasn’t in my corner," Williams said of Herbert. "I didn’t want him but you put
him on me. I asked you to get rid of the man twice but you didn’t do it. I fault
you for my going to the penitentiary."
Judge Martin reviewed the defendant’s lengthy record and said, "I don’t think
he’s susceptible to rehabilitation considering his escalating conduct of
committing more and more serious crimes with more and more violence." She
sentenced him to the maximum of 51 years to life. He would be eligible to apply
for parole in 14 years.
Williams was paroled in the early 1990s. When he returned to the outside
world, he also returned to his criminal ways and was soon back behind bars. He
always publicly denied that he murdered Mineo.
Many people, including some of Mineo’s friends, were dissatisfied with the
verdict. They found the evidence flimsy. His biographer, H. Paul Jeffers,
believed that the prosecution failed to prove that
"only Williams could have killed Sal Mineo."
In Fallen Angels, Marvin J. Wolf and Katherine Mader wrote that "the
prophesies of Sal Mineo’s childhood had in the end come true" and that despite
his movie career, he "couldn’t elude his fate." This implication of this
statement is not quite fair. Mineo did not die a criminal, did not die because
he had so often played "The Switchblade Kid," nor did he probably die because of
his lifestyle. He most likely died the victim of a street crime that happened to
catch him in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Bibliography
Interview with Sal Mineo from Boze Hadleigh’s
Conversations With My
Elders, St. Martin’s Press’ Stonewall Inn Editions, 1988.
Biography for James Dean, Internet Movie Database
Sal Mineo Tribute, salmineo.com
Biography for Sal Mineo, Internet Movie Database
Sal Mineo filmography, Internet Movie Database
Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Internet Movie Database
Braudy, Susan,
Who Killed Sal Mineo?,
Wyndham Books, New York, NY, 1982.
Jeffers, H. Paul,
Sal Mineo: His Life, Murder, and Mystery,
Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., New York, NY, 2000.
Mader, Katherine and Wolf, Marvin J.,
Fallen Angels: Chronicles of L.A. Crime and Mystery, Facts on File Publications, New York, NY, 1986.
The author also wants to thank John Seger
for email correspondence.
