Sal Mineo Heart Stabbed in a West Hollywood Alley

(Salvatore Mineo, Jr.) received a best supporting actor Oscar nomination for "Rebel Without A Cause," and "Exodus." He was renting an apartment in West Hollywood, at 8569 Holloway. Marvin Mitchelson, the famous lawyer, owned it.

On Thursday Feb 12, 1976 at about 11:30pm, Sal returned home from the Westwood playhouse, where he was rehearsing the play, "P.S. Your Cat is Dead." He parked his blue Chevelle in the parking garage, and headed up to his flat. Just outside the garage, a man with a knife confronted him.

Mitchelson's mom and neighbor Raymond Evans heard Mineo scream, "Help! Help! Oh my God!" Evans rushed to the scene and found Sal lying in a pool of blood trailing 10 feet to the sewers. Evans saw that Sal was losing color in his face and tried giving him mouth to mouth, but the stab wounds were fatal. After 5 or 6 minutes of gasping, Sal was dead at 37. He was stabbed in the heart.

-- Find A Death

A pizza deliveryman, Lionel Ray Williams, was sentenced to 57 years in prison for killing Mineo and committing 10 robberies in the same vicinity. Although there was considerable confusion relating to what witnesses had seen in the darkness the night Mineo was murdered, it was later revealed that prison guards reportedly overheard Williams admitting to the crime. Williams claimed he had no idea who Mineo was. Williams was paroled in the early 1990s, but was soon jailed again for criminal activity.

-- wiki