2024 Year in Review!

 

2024 will soon come to a close.  As has become tradition here, it's time to look back on all the fresh dirt that this blogger explored over the last year.  I wasn't sure of the exact numbers myself, but suffice it to say, I was very surprised.

In 2024, this blogger visited 72 graves in 12 states and Washington, DC.  This brings the total to date to 639 famous graves in 32 states and DC.  Next year, we go for 700.

Many of this year's notable graves have already been chronicled here, including Cokie Roberts, Pearl S. Buck, and Philip McKeon.  We've also highlighted some of the more unusual graves we discovered this year, including Stephanie Zimbalist, who is still very much alive, and Ed Headrick, who now exists as a frisbee.

Before we end the year, here's a quick look at some of the other graves we found, who may be blogged in the near future.

Allen Ludden
Game Show Host/Betty White's Husband
Graceland Cemetery
Mineral Point, Wisconsin
Trivia: The location of Betty's ashes remains a mystery.  Urban legend has it that they were secretly buried or scattered here.

Bob Evans
Restauranteur
Mound Hill Cemetery
Gallipolis, Ohio
Trivia: The headstone is shaped like one of his restaurants.

Chris Farley
Actor/Alleged Comedian
Resurrection Cemetery
Madison, Wisconsin
Trivia: Farley died of a drug overdose while entertaining a hooker.  She took photos of his dead body and sold them to the National Enquirer.

Frank Lloyd Wright
Architect
Unity Chapel Cemetery
Wyoming, Wisconsin

Trivia: Like Judy Garland and Anton Yelchin, Wright has two graves.  In 1985, his remains were exhumed from this location and cremated.  Some were re-interred here, while others were buried with his wife in Arizona.  Additionally, this location is but a few miles from one of America's greatest roadside attractions, House on the Rock, which was created by rival architect Alex Jordan, Jr.  Allegedly, Wright told Jordan that he would never amount to anything.  In response, Jordan created the attraction to prove him wrong.  Today, it attracts more than 500,000 visitors every year.

Mark Gruenwald
Comic Book Artist
Ripley's Believe it or Not!
Williamsburg, Virginia
Trivia: Gruenwald was a comic book artist who lived for his work.  Upon his death, his body was cremated, and his ashes were used in the production of the comic book seen below.  

Not pictured: Aaron Burr, Jr., Alan Freed, Anna Anderson, Anne Baxter, Audrey Roth, Barbara Baxley, Bernard Henry Kroger, Charles Atlas, Charles Coburn, Charles Colson, Charles Durbing, Charles Hinton, Jr., Cokie Roberts, David Frisch, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, Ed Headrick, Efrem Zimbalist, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Eileen Brennan, Eugene Stoner, Frederick Branch, Geraldine Ferraro, Henry John Heinz, Henry John Heinz II, Henry John Heinz III, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, James Gamble, Joe Lieberman, Joe Pepitone, John Cephas, JFK, John Gotti, John Philip Sousa, Johnny Appleseed, Joseph Cotten, Kunta Kinte, Leo the MGM Lion, Leon Uris, the John List Family, Louis Lowery, Lucky Luciano, Marilyn Marie Johnson Eastman, Mario Cuomo, Martha Moxley, Martin Balsam, Mary "Kitty" Menendez, Mary Travers, Nancy Kulp, Nancy Parsons, Patricia Cotton, Pearl S. Buck, Peter Kurten, Philip McKeon, Prescott Bush, Robert Williams Daniel, Robert Novak, Scott Hall, Stephanie Zimbalist, Tom Thumb, Victor Borge, Walter Matt Jefferies, William Higgins, and William Procter.

Happy holidays!  This blog will return in January 2025.

The DC Madam

 

"I am not going back to prison.  I will commit suicide first."

If you lived in the Washington, DC area in the early 2000s, you're likely to remember Deborah Jeane Palfrey, affectionately dubbed the DC Madam by the local media. In 2008, she was found guilty of money laundering and racketeering after a four-year hands-on investigation into her escort agency, Pamela Martin and Associates (PM&A), whose clients included national politicians and local celebrities.

She was born in North Charleroi, Pennsylvania on March 18, 1956.  When she was a teenager, her family moved to Orlando, Florida, where she later attended Rollins College, earning her degree in criminal justice.  No, really.  After graduation, she moved to San Diego, taking a job as a paralegal.

It was through her clients in America's Finest City that Palfrey first became involved in the escort business.  She felt that she could run such a service much more efficiently than any of her legal clients had done, so she began recruiting her all-star team.  Her first arrest came in 1990, when she was charged with pimping, pandering, and extortion.  She fled to Montana but was brought back for trial and was ultimately convicted in 1992.  She would spend the next 18 months in prison. Following her release, Palfrey opened PM&A in Washington, DC.

Upon her conviction in 2008, Palfrey was informed that she could spend the next 55 years in prison.  Two weeks later, on May 1, she was found dead at her mother's mobile home in Tarpon Springs, Florida.  Fearing a return to prison, Palfrey had ultimately decided to take her own life.  Her body was found hanging in a tool shed behind her mother's home.  Following an autopsy, her death was ruled a suicide.

Deborah Jeane Palfrey was laid to rest in the family plot at Cycadia Cemetery in Tarpon Springs.

Rest in peace.

Trivia

• A year after her death, Palfrey's lawyer Montgomery Blair Sibley, who was disbarred following the trial, released his tell-all book on the case.  You can pick up a copy of Why Just Her: The Judicial Lynching of the DC Madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, from Amazon.
  
  
• ABC News went through Palfrey's phone records, which contained the names of nearly 15,000 clients.  Ultimately, they decided not to release any of those names, stating that none of them were "sufficiently newsworthy."  Phew!
  
  
• In 2007, Senator David Vitter of Louisiana acknowledged that he had been one of Palfrey's clients.  With his depressed wife standing by his side, Vitter called a press conference, wherein he admitted "his failings," but ultimately refused to step down.  You can check it out on YouTube.
  
  
• Palfrey's younger sister, Roberta Lynn, will one day join her in this dual plot.
  
  
• Following her death, Palfrey's conviction was vacated by the court.

That Guy - Star Wars, Flash Gordon, Superman 4.......

 

"In a sense, my career's been downhill ever since.  Fans still come to greet me at the stage door with action figures of my character and embarrassing photographs for me to sign."

William Hootkins is not exactly a household name.  When I visited his grave in Dallas a few years back, I knew him as Porkins, one of the many rebel pilots who did not survive the original Star Wars. 

I was in the cemetery paying my respects to some more notable internments, when I saw his listing on Find a Grave, and thought, what the heck.  It turns out this guy has been in a ton of my favorite movies and I never made the connection.  But first, a little back story.

He was born in Dallas on July 5, 1948.  He attended private school, where he first became interested in acting.  Upon graduation, he enrolled in Princeton University, where he initially majored in astrophysics before transferring to oriental studies, all the while participating in the school's theatrical productions. Upon graduation, he followed his friend John Lithgow's advice and moved to England, where he studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. 

It was there in 1976 that he was cast as Porkins, a small role that would ultimately define his career.  He'd continue working in England for the next twenty years, appearing in some of the biggest films of the day.  In 1980, he appeared as Munson, lab assistant to the eccentric Dr. Hanz Zarkov in Dino De Laurentis's Flash Gordon.  The following year, he appeared as Major Eaton in Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark.  In 1987, he appeared in the critically panned Superman 4: The Quest for Peace, playing Harry Howler, an American arms tycoon.  Finally, in 1989, he played the corrupt Lieutenant Eckhardt in Tim Burton's Batman.

Hootkins in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Superman 4: The Quest for Peace, and Batman.

By 2005, Hootkins had relocated to California, where he was being treated for pancreatic cancer.  He ultimately died on October 23rd.  He was just 57 years old.

William Hootkins was laid to rest at Sparkman/Hillcrest Memorial Park in Dallas.

Rest in peace.

Trivia

• As a teenager, Hootkins was in the same drama group as future box office star Tommy Lee Jones, whom he was felt was far more handsome than himself.  He once famously stated "I supported from then on."
  
  
• When he was just 15 years old, Hootkins was interviewed by the FBI following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  His teacher at the time, Ruth Paine, was a Russian national and friend to Oswald's wife Marina.  It was later discovered that unbeknownst to the family, Oswald had stored his rifle in Paine's garage, the same one he'd later use to kill the president.
  
  
• Other notable Sparkman internments include Mickey Mantle, Ross Perot, Tom Landry and Mary Kay Ash.
  
  
• When Lieutenant Eckhardt goes to kill Jack Napier at Axis Chemicals in the first few minutes of Batman, Hootkins appears with a scruffy beard.  Moments later, when Napier shoots him, he appears completely clean shaven.