28. Lana Turner’s Teenage Daughter Stabbed Her Mother’s Boyfriend to Death
Lana Turner’s relationship with mobster Johnny Stompanato came to a dramatic end on the evening of April 4th, 1958. Her hoodlum boyfriend arrived at her Beverly Hills home, and as was their habit, the duo began arguing in Turner’s bedroom. Turner’s fourteen-year-old daughter Cheryl stood outside the bedroom eavesdropping. When at some point Stompanato threatened to kill Turner, her daughter, and her mother, Cheryl ran to the kitchen and grabbed a knife. As Turner tried to push Stompanato out of her bedroom, Cheryl fatally stabbed him in the stomach.
The ensuing scandal became a media sensation. Hundreds of journalists crowded into a jury inquest over the killing, which after four hours of testimony and twenty-five minutes of deliberations, deemed Stompanato’s killing a justifiable homicide. Cheryl was kept as a ward of the court for over two weeks. After a juvenile court judge expressed concern over her lack of “personal parental supervision”, she was released into the custody of her grandmother, with court-ordered visits to a psychiatrist alongside her parents.
