[quote][bold]The Mysterious Disappearance of Jean Spangler[/bold]
[quote]Investigators converged on the scene and what they found sparked one of the biggest manhunts in LAPD history. The purse’s double handles had been ripped off at one end, intimating the possibility of violence but it was the note inside the purse, written in Jean’s hand, that intrigued the detectives even more. It read: "Kirk – Can’t wait any longer. Going to see Dr. Scott. It will work out best this way while mother is away…"
[quote]The unsigned note ended with a comma, indicating that Jean had not had time to finish her thoughts
[…]
[quote]Robert Cummings, star of Pretty Girl, the last film Jean had been working on, threw some light on who the "someone" might have been when he told police two weeks before her disappearance he had been sitting on his dressing room steps at Columbia Studios when the pretty starlet had walked by whistling. "You sound happy," Cummings remembered telling her.
[quote]"I am," Jean replied. "I have a new romance."
[quote]"Is it serious?"
[quote]"Not really," Jean told the popular star. "But I’m having the time of my life."
[quote]The only clue the police had to the identity of Jean’s romantic interest was the name "Kirk." Hearing news reports about the case, actor Kirk Douglas phoned investigators from Palm Springs where he was vacationing, and volunteered that Jean may have worked as an extra in his last film, but claimed he barely remembered her. "I didn’t remember the girl until a friend recalled that it was she who worked as an extra in…one of my pictures," Douglas told the Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Thad Brown. "If she’s the one I’m thinking about, IO do recall talking to her that day. But I never saw her before or after that and have never been out with her." (Today, Mr. Douglas offers that "the incident was so long ago, (I) have very little recollection about it," but nonetheless "wishes me success" with this investigation.)
[quote]Jean’s mother wasn’t much more help. "I heard her talk about a ‘Kirk’ she knew around the sets," she said. "But she was at first one studio then another. I simply can’t remember."
[quote]The plot thickened when one of Jean’s girlfriends revealed that Jean had told her she was pregnant, adding a possibly ominous significance to the love affair and Jean’s urgency in seeing the mysterious "Dr. Scott." The reference about things working out better while her mother was way made sense in that context, too, in that Jean’s mother had been visiting relatives in Kentucky during the time Jean disappeared.
[…]
[quote]That did not mean theories about the disappearance of the starlet did not abound: Jean was done in by the mysterious "Kirk" who killed her when she tried to blackmail him.
[…]
[quote]Nearly 50 years later, the still-open case remains one of the mysteries linking the dark side of Hollywood to the night side of the desert.
jean Spangler's name comes up a lot in DL threads about Hollywood mysteries and threads about Kirk Douglas.