EXCLUSIVE: Burt Reynolds MURDER Mystery Solved? Actor Opens Up About How His Mother Told Him He Witnessed 'Deliverance' Acting Icon Kill Her Lover... As One of Hollywood's Darkest Chapters Resurfaces
Burt Reynolds is a suspected killer.
Feb. 27 2025, Published 11:00 a.m. ET
Movie legend Burt Reynolds beat love rival David Whiting to death with his bare hands in a jealous brawl over sexy movie beauty Sarah Miles, and her young son witnessed the slaying.
And decades on Tom Bolt, now, 55, has sensationally admitted the episode has haunted him throughout his life, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
Reynolds was renowned for his macho swagger.
Miles, 83, who had a 20-year affair with Laurence Olivier on either side of two marriages to the late playwright Robert Bolt, recently said she knows the truth about the notorious death of former Time magazine journalist David Whiting during the filming of The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing in Arizona in 1973.
Miles said her son – who was four years old and staying in an adjoining room when his mother discovered Whiting's body in her bathroom at a Travelodge – told her so.
"He said Burt did it, the next day," she told Robert Emery's Backstage podcast.
Bolt has disputed the claim but confessed: "Mum, who is now 83 and retired, suggested the reason she knows Burt killed David – a belief she firmly holds – is because I told her, which must mean I witnessed it.
"I don’t think for a minute this is true; I think it’s just what mum felt like saying on the spur of the moment in the interview. But it’s interesting that I’ve had a recurring nightmare throughout my life that I’ve murdered someone."
Reynolds was arguably THE leading man of the 1970s.
Last year Bolt boarded a plane to Arizona, staying in the same hotel – and same room – where Miles found Whiting's body more than half a century ago.
Bolt said he felt "remarkably little", simply offering up a prayer for Whiting, who Miles says she found dead on his back and covered in pills.
But was it an overdose, as that scene would suggest, or something more sinister?
Perhaps few would be better placed to address that question than Reynolds – arguably the leading man of the '70s and the star of hits including Deliverance, Smokey and the Bandit and Boogie Nights.
But Reynolds died in 2018 and the truth behind a tragedy – which left "a lot of unanswered questions", in the words of Mulford Winsor IV, a justice of the peace who presided over an inquest into Whiting's death in March 1973 – may never be known.
Miles says she was confronted by Whiting, who she claims had an unhealthy obsession with her, after returning to her room in the early hours following a birthday party thrown by Reynolds.
Reynolds was renowned for his womanizing.
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Miles added Whiting began to punch her.
She called out to Bolt's nanny for help, then told her to get Reynolds, at which point Whiting fled into the night.
He was shortly followed by Reynolds, who said he was unable to find Whiting, and invited Miles to stay in his room for safety.
Whiting was never seen alive again.
His blood was found in three different rooms in the hotel and was found with a star-shaped wound in the back of his head – as well as scratches and bruises on his body.
A pill bottle Whiting was allegedly found clutching went missing.
Reynolds, who said he removed it from the body and took it to Miles to ask her what he had been taking, claimed he could not recall where he left it.
One autopsy cast doubt on suggestions the drugs found in Whiting's system, most notably methaqualone, a sedative-hypnotic drug, were sufficient to kill him.
The uncertainty was compounded by a trio of inquest verdicts – that it was suicide, murder, then suicide again – which to many was evidence of powerful forces at work behind the scenes covering up for Reynolds' suspected murder.
