Jean Spangler

On the evening of Friday, October 7, 1949, a young actress and dancer named Jean Spangler kissed her five-year-old daughter goodbye, told her sister-in-law she was going to see her ex-husband about a child support payment, and then go to work on a night shoot for a movie, and walked out the door of the house she shared with her family in Los Angeles.

She was twenty-six years old, beautiful, with dark hair and a dancer’s figure. She had been working steadily as a bit player in movies, dancing in nightclubs and modeling. She was, by all accounts, a devoted mother.

She never came home.

Two days later, her purse turned up in Griffith Park, with a strange, unfinished note inside. It’s been one of the most enduring mysteries of Hollywood’s golden age ever since.

Jean

Jean Spangler was born in Seattle in 1923 and grew up in Los Angeles. As a teenager, she began dancing professionally in nightclubs and was soon working as a model and a chorus girl. By the late 1940s, she was getting small roles in films — usually uncredited, as a dancer or an extra — including parts in films by major studios.

In 1942, she married a manufacturer named Dexter Benner, and they had a daughter, Christine. The marriage was difficult. They divorced in 1946, and fought a bitter custody battle over their daughter, which Jean ultimately won. She lived with Christine, her mother, Florence, her brother, Edward, and Edward’s wife, Sophie, in a house near Park La Brea, close to the Hollywood studios.

The Last Evening

On October 7, Jean’s mother was out of town, visiting relatives in Kentucky. At around 5 p.m., Jean left the house. She told Sophie that she was going to meet Dexter Benner to talk about a late child support payment, and that afterward she had to go to work on a film shoot that would last through the night.

At around 5:30 p.m., a clerk at a store near her home saw her. She seemed to be waiting for someone.

At about 7 p.m., she called home and spoke with Sophie. She said she was about to go to work and would be filming for the next eight hours. That was the last time her family heard from her.

When Jean didn’t come home the next morning, Sophie called the police.

The Purse

On October 9, a groundskeeper at Griffith Park, the vast public park in the hills above Hollywood, found a woman’s purse near the Fern Dell entrance. The purse belonged to Jean Spangler. One of its straps was torn, as if it had been ripped from her arm.

Inside was an unfinished, handwritten note. It read:

“Kirk: Can’t wait any longer. Going to see Dr. Scott. It will work best this way while mother is away.”

The note ended abruptly, as if the writer had been interrupted.

There was no money in the purse.

The Investigation

The Los Angeles Police Department launched an enormous search. More than a hundred officers and three hundred volunteers combed Griffith Park. They found nothing more.

Investigators quickly learned that much of what Jean had told her sister-in-law wasn’t true. Dexter Benner said he hadn’t seen her that evening; he had been with his new wife, who backed up his story. And there was no film shoot that night — no studio had scheduled her to work.

Police focused on the note. Who were Kirk and Dr. Scott?

They couldn’t find any Dr. Scott connected to Jean. Some investigators believed that “Dr. Scott” might be a code name for a doctor who performed illegal abortions, which were common, dangerous and secretive at the time. Friends of Jean’s told police she had confided that she was three months pregnant, and that she was thinking about having an abortion.

As for “Kirk,” the press and public quickly zeroed in on the most famous Kirk in Hollywood at the time: Kirk Douglas. Jean had recently worked as an extra on one of his films. When police contacted him, Douglas said he barely remembered her. Investigators found no evidence connecting him to her disappearance, and he was never considered a suspect.

Other men named Kirk in Jean’s life were looked into. One, a man who had recently dated her, was investigated and cleared. Some reports claimed she had been seen with a man named “Kirk” at a restaurant shortly before she vanished.

Theories

Over the years, many theories have been proposed.

The most widely held is that Jean went to see a doctor for an illegal abortion, and that something went terribly wrong. A doctor in that situation, facing prison, might have hidden her body. The note seems to support this: she was “going to see Dr. Scott,” while her mother was away, and it would “work best this way.”

Others have wondered about her ex-husband, and the bitter custody battle. Others suspected that she might have been involved with gangsters; there were reports that she had been seen in the company of men connected to the Los Angeles underworld, including associates of the mobster Mickey Cohen.

And some have suggested that she may have chosen to disappear, though it’s hard to believe that a mother so devoted to her daughter would have left her behind forever.

The Daughter

Jean’s daughter, Christine, was five years old when her mother disappeared. She grew up without ever learning what happened to her mother.

In 1949, there were no cell phones, no surveillance cameras, no DNA. There was only a torn purse in a park, and a note that ended mid-sentence.