"The Tinseltown Murder Of Thelma Todd" is a video made by Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej, uploaded onto YouTube on March 27, 2020. It was the third episode of the sixth season of BuzzFeed Unsolved: True Crime, and the fifty-first episode overall. You can find it here.
Description[]
A Hollywood starlet struck down in her prime- was it an accident, suicide or murder? This episode contains sensitive subject matter pertaining to suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health or self-harm, there are resources available online to speak directly with a trained professional or to find local community outreach services If you're in the US, you can visit suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ or call them at 1-800-273-8255.
Background[]
In 1906, Thelma Alice Todd was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts. She trained to become a school teacher, while doing some modeling on the side, and in 1925, won the title of Miss Massachusetts. After her win, Paramount Pictures signed Todd to a one-year contract that set her Hollywood career in motion. Over the next decade, Todd made a name for herself as a talented comedic actress, playing leads in films with the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, and ZaSu Pitts. Her rise in Hollywood, however, was no walk in the park. One of Todd's early contracts involved a clause that specified her weight at the time of signing, 122 pounds, and that if she gained more than three or lost more than six pounds from that mark, the contract could be terminated. Hollywood's concern with her weight resulted in Todd becoming addicted to diet pills.
Between 1932 and 1934, Todd was married to agent Pat Dicicco, a union which could hardly be described as happy. When Todd filed for divorce, she cited the reason as "grievous mental and physical suffering". Todd also found herself fighting against typical Hollywood casting couch situations, even at the threat of being blacklisted. She refused to entertain producers at parties and was outspoken about her experiences. Nevertheless, Todd was known as a fun-loving party girl, extremely popular in the L.A. social circuit, carrying on multiple love affairs with men, and often overheard ordering her signature drink, three fingers of rye.
She was known for elevating the typical dumb blonde stereotype in her films, often playing independent women, rare in early Hollywood shorts, at the time. Wary about being used in films simply for her looks, Todd once said in an interview, "building on beauty seems to me the worst thing any girl can do".
In 1934, Todd opened the successful restaurant, Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Cafe, on the Pacific Coast Highway. Her business partners in the venture were director and producer Roland West, with whom Todd had been having an on again, off again affair, for the past three years and silent film actress, Jewel Carmen, who was also Roland West's wife.
Todd kept an apartment above the cafe, as did the West-Carmens, with only a single drawing room separating the units. In a detail that will come into play later, West and Carmen also shared a house about 500 yards from the cafe. On Saturday, December 14, 1935, Todd attended a party thrown in her honor at Cafe Trocadero, a popular nightclub, on Hollywood's Sunset Strip. Attendees said Todd seemed to be having a great time at the party, sipping brandy and champagne, and at one point, betting some friends a free dinner that they wouldn't visit her restaurant the next day.
Roland West had asked Todd to be home by 2:00 a.m., and at 1:50 a.m., Todd asked famous theater manager, Sid Grauman, to call West and inform him she'd be leaving soon. Regardless, Todd stayed at the party until around 3:15 a.m. Todd's chauffeur, Ernest Peters, dropped the starlet off at the Roadside Cafe sometime between 3:00 a.m. and 4:20 a.m. Sunday, the friends Todd had bet wouldn't show up, came to collect their free dinners. Though no one had seen Todd at the restaurant, the friends, nevertheless, enjoyed a comped meal.
The next day, December 16th, Todd's maid, Mae Whitehead, began her morning routine, which included getting Todd's Lincoln Phaeton ready from Roland West's home and bringing it down to Todd at the apartment above the cafe. When Whitehead opened the garage, she found the body of Thelma Todd slumped over the steering wheel with a broken nose and two cracked ribs. Todd's obituary, in the L.A. Times, described the scene in graphic detail. Coagulated blood marred the screen comedienne's features and stained her mauve and silver evening gown and her expensive mink coat when she was found, her blonde locks pathetically awry, in the front seat of her automobile, in the garage of Roland West.
Theories[]
- Thelma Todd died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning. It was a cold evening in the middle of December. Her apartment was near the ocean, and Todd was wearing a lightweight gown, though she also had a mink coat. It's assumed that upon arriving home early Sunday morning, Todd was locked out of the building her apartment was in and went to the garage of West's house, where she got into and turned on the car to stay warm, making the fatal mistake of leaving the engine running with the garage door shut.
- The county autopsy surgeon, Dr. A.F. Wagner, fixed Todd's time of death about 5:00 a.m. Sunday morning. The New York Times quoted Dr. Wagner as saying, "the autopsy showed monoxide poison to the extent of 70% of total saturation, in her blood. There may have been other contributing causes, but that definitely was the major factor". It's interesting Dr. Wagner mentions how there may have been other contributing causes, as there are some notable details that may point away from an accident. For instance, while it's possible Todd's nose could've broken as she slumped unconscious onto the steering wheel, it is harder to say how Todd sustained two cracked ribs.
- Todd was also known for her interest in cars, and there was apparently a media campaign informing the public about carbon monoxide poisoning. It seems highly likely Todd would have known the dangers of running a car in a closed garage.
- There's also the question of how Todd wound up in the garage in the first place. Todd would've had to trek up the hill, from her apartment to Roland West's garage. Her shoes, however, were not consistent with having walked 500 yards, on uneven ground, in the damp night. Additionally, when her body was found, he hair was still neatly styled for the party at the Trocadero, not as tussled as one would expect after walking through the reportedly windy evening air.
- Perhaps no one was more confounded to hear Todd had died early Sunday morning than one Mrs. Martha Ford. Ford was throwing a party at her home in Laurel Canyon, and reported to police that she received a phone call from Todd on Sunday afternoon saying she was on her way with a surprise guest. Ford even claimed Todd told her quote, "I went to a party last night and I'm still in my evening clothes. Do you mind." Ford put the call around 4:00 p.m., around 11 hours after the coroner pegged the time of Todd's death.
- Todd's autopsy found peas and carrots in the starlet's stomach, neither of which had been served at the Trocadero party. The peas had just started to digest at the time of her death, which could suggest Todd had been picked up again after being dropped off by Peters, taken to eat somewhere else, and then taken back to West's garage to die.
- Thelma Todd intentionally killed herself, in the garage of her lover. In addition to her having the key to her apartment building with her when she died, her chauffer said Todd was unusually quite as he drove her home that night. He reported that she did not ask him to escort her to her door, as she usually did. One source also claimed Todd had received an upsetting message from an anonymous person on the night of the party. With her interest in cars, Todd would likely have known running a car in her garage would result in her death.
- This theory is, however, admittedly thin, and her actions had not aligned with self-destructive behavior around the time of her death. Her restaurant was a hot, new success. She had recently signed a new film contract, and the trunk of her car was full of Christmas presents for family and friends. The host of the party at the Trocadero also said that Todd told her she was newly involved with a man in San Francisco.
- Thelma Todd was murdered. It's unlikely she was killed by a stranger who wanted to rob her, as none of the jewelry she had been wearing was missing.
- The first is Roland West, her lover in whose garage Todd's body was found. West was said to be a jealous man, and Todd and West opened their popular cafe so they could spend more time together. If Todd had actually begun dating a new man in San Francisco, West may have been hypocritically upset. On his deathbed, West actually admitted to being responsible for Todd's death and accidentally locking her in the garage. His recounting of the events which occurred that night, however, was full of inconsistencies and contradictions.
- Another suspect is Jewel Carmen, Roland West's wife. While a jealous wife might sound like an obvious suspect into her husband's mistress's death, it is said she did not resent her husband's affair. Instead, the Chicago Tribune claimed Carmen threatened to kill Todd for squandering money at the restaurant in which she, her husband, and Todd were business partners. Beyond a potential motive, however, there is no physical evidence Carmen was involved in Todd's death.
- The third suspect in a potential murder is Todd's ex-husband, Pat Dicicco, a self-described "agent with underworld connections". Dicicco was said to have a violent temper, and his second wife, heiress, Gloria Vanderbilt, described him as a brute with a bad temper who would physically abuse her when he was drunk. The night her death, at the Trocadero, Todd ran into Dicicco. Many eye witnesses said their interaction seemed heated. When summoned for the grand jury, Dicicco testified that he hadn't heard about Todd's death. In Todd's will, dated from when they were still married, Dicicco was left $1.
- A fourth suspect, one that was especially popular at the time, is that mobster, Lucky Luciano, had put a hit out on Todd. Earlier, in 1935, Todd received a string of eight letters threatening her life if she didn't pay $10,000, signed by the "ace of hearts". After a suspect was arrested in August 1935, however, the letters stopped. Nevertheless, Todd, who was found dead four months later, was convinced the whole ordeal was mob related. Many speculated Luciano had wanted to set up a high-ticket casino on the third floor of her restaurant, but Todd refused, resulting in her murder. This theory supposes that after she was dropped off at the cafe, someone with ties to Luciano picked her up again, took her out to eat, killed her, and put her in West's garage afterwards, which could explain the peas found in her stomach and her two cracked ribs. While it appears Luciano left Los Angeles abruptly, shortly after Todd's death, never to return, it should be noted that this entire theory is merely speculation. In reality, there is no evidence that Todd and Luciano ever actually met.