Who killed Hot Toddy?

Even though the stories of their demise are quite different, I always associated hers with that of Barbara Payton.

Her boyfriend Robert West beat her ass when she came home drunk after getting into with her ex Pat DiCiccio. West locked her out of the house, she stumbled into the garage to sleep in the car, turned it on, possibly out of habit,passed out, and died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Involuntary manslaughter by West. Along with a cover-up that would clearly make him feel guilty about it the rest of his life. He confessed to multiple people, and the police. But the cover-up stuck.

After an argument about being allowed to come and go on her own as she pleased, and she tried to leave again, he prevented her from leaving the garage by locking the door after she entered to teach her a lesson. But she started the car and just sat there? I’m assuming there was no door leading from the garage to the home.

But why didn’t she just turn the car off and bang on the door for help to get out? She sounds like she was pretty feisty. She must have been drunk enough to lean on the wheel with the car running and just sort of pass out and succumb to the fumes? Weird.

She is buried in her home city of Lawrence, Mass. in the same cemetery as my grandparents.

Was there an autopsy on the body?

R3, happen to have a link for the Roland West confessions?

R2, Pat DiCicco was Gloria Vanderbilt's first husband.

Sorry r3, I should have been more clear: I was asking because I can't find a source for what this blogger wrote and you sound like you'd heard it before yourself, I thought you might know.

Yes, West confessed off-record and on his death he’s according to the blog article. But there are no sources listed.

*on his death bed

Read this.

[quote]Pat DiCicco was Gloria Vanderbilt's first husband.

Gloria Vanderbilt ended her friendship with Truman Capote after he portrayed her as a vacuous socialite who fails to recognize her first husband Pat DiCicco in “La Cote Basque,” a 1975 short story later published as a chapter of his unfinished novel, “Answered Prayers.”

Back in the day this death scenario would offer all kinds of opportunities for staged suicide and foul play.

Yeah, there's no reason why she should have had a broken nose. Passing out on your steering wheel from carbon monoxide poisoning wouldn't be enough to do that. Also, if the asshole locked her out, why not just get in her car and go to a hotel for the night?

She was locked inside the garage with her car. Not out.

Well, that's my point: someone locked her in the garage. The official story is that she went into the garage and sat in her car to keep warm, passed out from carbon monoxide poisoning, and died. It seems more like someone beat the shit out of her and locked her in the garage.

R16 Yes, agree!

R4, Lawrence, MA is an absolute shithole today.

So, he locked her IN the garage, meaning there was no way to open it from inside if the garage door was locked from the outside?

Where does it say she had a broken nose? I can’t find that.

Two broken ribs and a broken nose, r20.

The reason the Roland West story doesn't make sense to me is that she could have just gotten out of the car and gone out the garage door, or turned off the car. Nothing about how she acted beforehand makes it seem like she was so drunk she couldn't have managed that.

Also, the broken ribs and nose don't make any sense.

She might have been hit by a boyfriend and then killed herself later that night, but I doubt it, it doesn't seem in character. It very much seems like someone beat her up enough to make her pass out, then put her in the car and turned it on.

Ugh, tragic.

reading and google are great tools to keep you from looking stupid (r20)

you "link please" idiots are lame and tiresome.

One of my favorite Hollywood mysteries!

R25, The death of Paul Bern is a good one, too.

Don’t people usually seal the garage before turning on the engine? Wouldn’t the carbon monoxide escape through a gap usually? That must be some airtight garage.

I think even in an old garage with gaps in the door and old wood, the amount of fumes pumping out of the car exhaust would build up and overcome you long before they had a chance to all seep out.

Todd's body wasn't discovered until more than 24 hours had passed. She supposedly died in the early morning hours of Sunday but was not discovered until Monday morning. However, a friend of hers who had a party on Sunday afternoon said that Thelma called her during the party. She was SURE it was Todd's voice. Which would imply that Todd didn't die until Sunday evening. However, that doesn't fit the official story, so the friend was not believed.

Years ago I used to own a signed group photo with her in it. I had to sell it but saved a copy, I just dug it out of a file and found it had degraded. I tried to sharpen it, but a lot of detail has gone. This is from a silent film called "Fascinating Youth" (1926). She is third from the left in the lineup which goes (?), Ivy Harris, Thelma Todd, Thelda Kenvin, Jeanne Morgan, Josephine Dunn, Iris Gray. The IMDB cast list did not have any name close to the first woman in the lineup, which is hard to read now.

HOT TODDY, a now out-of-print book about the murder of Thelma Todd by author Andy Edmonds, is terrific. Worth tracking down a used copy!

Newspaper diagram of Thelma Todd murder scene.

BTW, Thelma’s Malibu restaurant and house are still there and virtually unchanged.

So is the garage where she died. There's an apartment over it that was for rent a little while ago. Scroll down in the linked article to see a picture of the garage: The doors and windows are just the same.

^^ um, no.

Who?!

Sorry. Wrong thread.

She was that rarest of beings like Carole Lombard-a beautiful woman who was also funny. I don't think they exist anymore.

All very interesting. Can DL recommend to a newbie anything she’s in that is a good starting place? I saw Monkey Business a very long time ago when I was much younger and don’t remember it well (but I do remember her, I think).

I found some pictures of the inside of the house. I hope whoever bought it, did not change it too much. Who am I kidding, it probably looks like a boutique hotel lobby inside now.

Even more pictures of the inside.

Beautiful, I'll take it! Just need to talk them down to about $200K.

Thelma appeared in a number of films with trailblazing dyke, Patsy Kelly.

The Art Deco tile is amazing, but the house looks like it hasn't been cleaned since the 1930s.

The official story is that Todd forgot her house key, something she'd done before. Her lover had a key to her house, but she couldn't rouse him. She decided to spend the night in her car but accidentally suffocated herself.

Seeing all those many stairs, it makes no sense why Thelma would try to climb them in heels and an evening gown in the freezing cold (fur coat or no fur coat), when she could have just broken a window in her house, gotten inside, and had the window fixed later.

Castillo de Mal is gorgeous but really looks every second of its age, no one has bothered with much upkeep and some rooms even look dingy, like they hadn't been thoroughly cleaned in decades.