Subject In Ronni Chasen Murder Case Commits Suicide In Hollywood

Categories: Crime

chasen murder ktla.JPG
KTLA
Chasen was gunned down in her car.
Updated after the jump with more background about how police contacted the man. First posted at 9:05 p.m. Wednesday

A man a neighbor said had bragged about killing Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen fatally shot himself as authorities descended on his residence in a Hollywood residential hotel Wednesday night, authorities said. Late Thursday he was identified as 43-year-old Harold Mark Smith.

Friday morning there was speculation that he was not a suspect but rather a possibly deranged man. A neighbor told Fox 11 News, "To me he was a little slow in the head."

Former neighbor Terri Gilpin told reporters at the scene on Santa Monica Boulevard near Wilton Place that the dead man had "bragged all the time that he was the one who killed the publicist, and he was always talking about how he was going to get paid $10,000 for it.''


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Fox 11 News reported that the someone tipped off the Fox show America's Most Wanted about the subject because he had been bragging about having killed Chasen. That tip apparently inspired authorities to stake the man out.

The Los Angeles Times had described the man as a "suspect." Beverly Hills police had gone to the scene to serve a search warrant and might have been staking the building out in plain clothes when the subject approached and, seeing the cops, put a rifle to his head and pulled the trigger about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.

LAPD Robbery-Homicide Capt. Kevin McClure told reporters at the scene that Beverly Hills cops came to the residence at the Harvey Apartments building (5640 Santa Monica Blvd.).

"The person they were looking for showed up," he said. "They attempted to talk to the suspect. The suspect produced a handgun and it was a self-inflicted gunshot wound."

The man had yet to be identified.

Fox 11 News' Tony Valdez reported that the cops showed up in plain clothes and that the confrontation apparently happened in a hallway or lobby of the building, which is on a seedy stretch of the boulevard known for its transvestites.

harvey apartments google maps.JPG
Google Maps.
The Harvey Apartments in Hollywood.

Meanwhile KTLA News' Cher Calvin and Associated Press spent some time with former sheriff's homicide star Gil Carillo, a retired detective who helped solve the 1980s "Night Stalker" case.

He told reporters that whoever killed Chasen as she drove down Whittier Drive in a tony part of Beverly Hills near the Los Angeles Country Club after midnight Nov. 16 was not only a pro but could be a marksman.

Carillo said she was appeared to have been shot in the chest and shoulder as her car was moving, something your average criminal probably would have had a hard time pulling off.

Chasen was known for handling Oscar Award campaigns for major movies and was headed home to Westwood following a screening that night.

The man at the apartment building was described as an ex-con who had been evicted.

A coroner's official told the Weekly they know who the man is but could not release his name based on two factors: 1 - His next of kin had yet to be notified of his death. 2 - Regardless, the Beverly Hills Police Department put a hold on the release of the man's identity. A coroner's document states, "No information to be released - ongoing investigation," we were told.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports that the man's suicide was captures on security video and that police were taking a look.

Beverly Hills police told Associated Press the man, described by the service as being in his 40s, was a "person of interest" and not a suspect.

On Thursday the LAPD issued a statement saying the department had video of the man's suicide and that it also took possession of his gun, which it stated would undergo ballistic testing -- ostensibly to see if there's a match with the weapon used in Chasen's murder.

The LAPD:

RHD [Robbery-Homicide Division] is in possession of video from inside the lobby of the Harvey apartment building, taken the night of the suicide. Detectives have reviewed the video and are confirming that this incident is a suicide due to a self inflicted gunshot wound to the head by the victim. The weapon used, which was a handgun, has been recovered by RHD and is pending ballistic testing.

Update: Beverly Hills police on Friday confirmed that a tip to America's Most Wanted sent them to Harvey Apartments.

Apparently, Smith killed himself as soon as undercover officers arrived.

Lt. Tony Lee stated that, "At this time, it is unknown if this individual was involved in the Chasen homicide."

That leaves some ominous clouds over the case. If Smith wasn't their man, and the BHPD sent out the cavalry to find him based on a tip because he had been bragging, perhaps fantastically, about his role in the Chasen slaying, then it would appear investigators were reaching for straws and don't have much to go on in the case.

-With reporting from City News Service. Got news? Email us. Follow us on Twitter, too: @dennisjromero.


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3 comments
hogorina
hogorina

                                      UNFORGETTABLE TIMES ARE HERE AGAIN

 

These debates look as though they were held in the backrooms of various fish markets. Actually, both speakers remind me of the catfish, as having all mouth and no brains! Stacking the deck at both conventions will be where the money flows, in buying up various state electoral votes. Years ago, my father told me that such sycophants harbor childhood repressions and politics was a good field to release pent up regressions via never giving any sucker a break, nor a chump another chance: Since the electoral colleges determine the presidency, then let the bankers, land owners, and loan sharks fight it out. Watching Jerry Springer is a lot better rather than hanging around some ballot box

hogorina
hogorina

THE BLIGHT OF IGNORANCE Bernard Baruch during the WW11 war years controlled the Roosevelt political machine indirectly through a special aid, Harry Hopkins. In his Book Barnard ( Park Bench Statesman ), 1947, he states that his ancestors sat up the first KKK clan order. Forest Turner, as head of the later KKK gets the credit mistakenly, that he was the first Prima Donna, of an absurd political movement. This is just to clear the air, of lies that always preceed mass wickedness, through well controlled news and printing industries. At this moment it appears that interested parties can receive more information through the Moscow news industry!

hogorina
hogorina

AMERICAN ANGLO ENGULFED WITH PAYING BUMS NOT TO WORK Karl Marx predicted this in his Communist Manifesto of 1848. Too. that people in the professions were not laborers, ( workers ), and were somewhat above getting corns on their hands. Marx's coworker, Fredrick Engels, witnessed the destruction of the family, in that such of a system was contrary to scientific Socialism. However one might view Marx's and Engels's take on a futuristic society, Marx's economic theory holds water. The eastern world ( Oriental ) and the western world ( Occidental ) are equivalent in handling labor; but the old chime that no one in the professions labor is a well-worn shade of bamboozling various classes of productive and professional labor. And now, Interest capitalism vs pure capitalism must drop their blinders and come to face with both issues of labor as befitting workers using their brains, and laborers on the end of a shovel. Marx proclaimed," Workers of the world unite). Obviously liberalized mobocracy seems to have skipped the mid stream of the world's collective productive systems, ( labor ), and what we view now no one has an answer-CRIME, CORRUPTION, POVERTY, AND DISEASE. Both national pseudo-political parties are stalled with no plan to meet any universal social rebellion world wide. What we witness today actually threads back to 1933 under the ( New Deal Administration ), of the late Franklin D. Roosevelt. The late Teddy Roosevelt, had been beforehand, an instigator concerning the so-called European Concert in western Europe, as a forerunner of the League of Nations-the present United Nations. Organization is a formal political concoction, of the globalizing Rothschild banking network, operating under the The Bank of England. From the hankerings of Teddy Roosevelt until Harry Solomon Truman assumed the unelected presidency of the United States-Harry railed that the buck stops here! This cloistered stooge ( H ), brought to closure a shamefull record and nasty past of collusion between the then, Red Russia, British and American contemporary civilization. In a nutshell, one must take the bull by the tail and to the situation square into its face, Inwardly, all three of the NATO pact are dealing with population explosions. Pseudo Democracy, a banker's syndicated criminal network, plus pseudo republicanism's intellectual platform and Russia's twiddle- dee-dum would never reach into Plato's Republic; for there is no room for any abstract government. Our national governmental system is in the hands of professional criminals in the hands of judicial gangsterism, State Department of ambassadorial lapdogs in alliance with the Devil in order to obtain a valise at large, in order to visit whore houses and free liquor in France at the assumed expence of all tax payers. All of the before mentioned runs into infinity, while lawyers, doctors, and finance continues to breed intellectual paupers, that will eventual rule a future welfare state. Suggestion is that all global revolutionaries, free loaders, deadbeats, anti-social humanoids, and ghetto experts, come to America where the gutters run free with honey and milk,grab a biscuit and sop your way to prosperity. Pseudo Communism and pseudo Democracy, thrown in with a specific mattoids,harboring natural contempt for justice and freedom. Our nationa hangs by a thread, and is reaping what has been sown-revolt of the masses !

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