Tragic, Mysterious & Too Weird For Words: 13 Bizarre Hollywood Deaths

From Michael Jackson to Natalie Wood to Sharon Tate, RadarOnline.com has a gallery of 13 bizarre Hollywood deaths that are more tragic, mysterious and too weird for words.

From Michael Jackson to Natalie Wood to Sharon Tate, RadarOnline.com has a gallery of 13 bizarre Hollywood deaths that are more tragic, mysterious and too weird for words.

Michael Jackson: The King of Pop, 50, suffered a death as bizarre as his flamboyant life. Jackson -- desperate to sleep while getting ready for a series of comeback concerts--was treated by Dr. Conrad Murray, who gave him the anesthetic propofol, causing the singer’s death on June 25, 2009. Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2011. Michael’s kids and his mother are currently fighting Jackson’s concert promoter, AEG Live, in a wrongful-death case, contending the company was responsible for Murray’s treatment of the star.

Whitney Houston: It shocked the world when the pop singer, 48, was found dead in the bathtub of the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Feb. 11, 2012 as she prepared for a pre-Grammy Awards party. The coroner ruled she’d accidentally drowned in the bathtub with heart disease and cocaine use as contributing factors. Marijuana, Xanax, Flexeril, and Benadryl were also found in her system. The 2012 Grammy Awards, held the night after Houston’s death, turned into an emotional tribute to the star.

Sonny Bono: Cher’s ex-husband and I Got You Babe singer went on to become a congressman but died on Jan. 5, 1998 at age 62 after skiing into a tree near Lake Tahoe. The timing was as strange as the accident itself, as Bono’s death happened less than a week after the late Robert Kennedy’s son, Michael, died in a similar skiing mishap in Aspen, Colorado. Bono’s widow Mary, who took over his congressional seat after he died and went on to her own political career, later claimed his use of prescription drugs caused the accident although the coroner had found no evidence of that.

Jon-Erik Hexum: The hunky up-and-coming actor, 26, was fatally injured on the set of his TV show Cover Up on October 12, 1984, when he accidentally shot himself with a blank from a gun. When there was a delay during a scene that called for Hexum's character to load blanks into a .44 Magnum handgun, the star became restless and began playing with the gun, putting it to his head and pulling the trigger. The actor was apparently unaware that blanks use paper or plastic wadding to seal gun powder into the shell, which was dangerous if fired at close range. The accident caused massive brain hemorrhaging and Hexum died six days later, on October 18, 1984. Parts of his body were donated and a man reportedly lived with Hexum’s heart for the next 18 years.

Linda Darnell: The beautiful 1940s movie star was burned to death in a terrible inferno at a friend’s house in Glenview, Illinois on April 10, 1965. Darnell, 41, who was preparing for a stage role in Chicago, had watched her 1940 film, Star Dust, on TV on the night of the fire with her friend and the friend’s daughter. After they went to bed, a still-smoldering cigarette ignited on the downstairs couch. The Letter to Three Wives star was burned over 80 percent of her body because she tried to make it to the front door instead of jumping out the window like her friends, who survived the 3:30 a.m. fire. Darnell died later that day at the hospital with her 16-year-old daughter by her side.

Jayne Mansfield: The busty blonde movie bombshell was just 34 when she died in a grisly car wreck on June 29, 1967 in Biloxi, Mississippi. After Mansfield performed at a super club, the actress, boyfriend Sam Brody, their driver Ronnie Harrison, four Chihuahuas, and three of her five children—Miklos, Zoltan, and Mariska—were bound for a TV interview in New Orleans when tragedy struck in their 1966 Buick Electra. The speeding car hit the back of a trailer truck which had stopped abruptly behind a city vehicle spraying the swamps with mosquito insecticide. The crash sheared off the top of the car, leading to the false story that Mansfield was decapitated in the accident. However, Mansfield, Brody, and Harrison were very much dead, their bodies thrown onto the highway, while luckily, the kids, including future Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay, received only minor bruises in the back seat.

Phil Hartman: The Saturday Night Live and NewsRadio comedian was violently murdered in bed by his wife Brynn Hartman in Encino, CA, on May 28, 1998. After they argued about her drinking that night, Phil, 49, went to bed and Brynn, reportedly believing that he was having an affair, crept in and shot her husband three times. After she drove to a male friend’s house and confessed she’d shot her husband, the friend followed her back to the Hartman home and called the police after finding the star dead. As cops rushed the couple’s two young kids out of the house, Brynn, who had barricaded herself in the bedroom with Phil’s corpse, lay down beside him and shot herself to death. Since the murder-suicide, the Hartman children have been raised quietly in the Midwest by Brynn’s sister and brother-in-law.

Sharon Tate: The Valley of the Dolls actress and wife of director Roman Polanski was eight and a half months pregnant when she was murdered by the Manson Family -- along with three of her prominent friends and a guest of her caretaker – at her Los Angeles home on the evening of August 9, 1968. According to convicted Manson Family member Susan Atkins, Tate, 26, had begged for her life but she had shown her no mercy. In fact, the blonde beauty was stabbed to death 16 times and Atkins dipped a towel in her blood to scrawl “PIG” on the front door of the house. While Atkins died in prison in 2009, Charles Manson and other followers remain incarcerated for the heinous massacre.

David Carradine: On June 3, 2009, the Kung Fu and Kill Bill star died of auto-erotic asphyxiation, the intentional restriction of oxygen to the brain for sexual arousal. Carradine, 72, wearing fishnet stockings and a woman’s wig, was found hanging in a Bangkok hotel room with a rope tied around his neck, wrists, and genitals. Investigators concluded it was an accident caused by the sexplay, and two of Carradine’s ex-wives confirmed that he practiced self-bondage.

Vic Morrow: The Combat! star perished at age 53 with two child extras on July 23, 1982 when a stunt helicopter crashed into them during the filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie in Ventura County, California. Morrow and the two kids, aged 6 and 7, were filming a Vietnam scene in which their characters were trying to escape from a U.S. Army helicopter. However, things went terribly wrong when special effect explosions apparently damaged the helicopter, causing it to crash on top of them. Morrow’s kids (including Jennifer Jason Leigh and the parents of the Twilight Zone child extras sued the studio over their deaths and settled out of court -- while director John Landis and other crew members were acquitted of involuntary manslaughter in 1987.

Ramon Novarro: The silent movie star of 1925’s Ben-Hur was 69 and had been out of the spotlight for years when he was murdered on Halloween Eve, October 30, 1968, by two brothers he’d hired to come to his Laurel Canyon, California, home for sex. When Novarro tried to perform a sex act on Paul Ferguson, 22, the man beat the nude actor unconscious. After Tom Ferguson, 17, briefly revived Novarro by washing the blood off him in the shower, Paul smashed a cane over the actor’s head. Novarro fell to the floor and suffocated in his own blood. The brothers apparently believed a rumor that the classic film star had $5,000 stashed in his house, but only fled with $45. The Fergusons were convicted of Novarro’s murder but paroled in the ‘70s; both went to prison again for other crimes, with Tom eventually dying and Paul reportedly still serving a 30-year sentence for raping a woman.

Steve Irwin: TV’s Crocodile Hunter died on September 4, 2006 at age 44 after being pierced in the chest by a stingray barb in Queensland while filming the underwater documentary Ocean’s Deadliest. An eyewitness said Irwin was videotaped pulling the barb from his chest moments before losing consciousness forever. Irwin's death is believed to be the only fatality from a stingray ever captured on video but all copies of it were reportedly destroyed at the request of his family. Irwin’s daughter Bindi has enthusiastically followed in her dad’s footsteps by appearing on wildlife-themed shows.

Natalie Wood: Natalie Wood's dead body was found floating off the coast of the Catalina Islands on November 29, 1981 after she had apparently slipped off her yacht and then drowned in the water during a vacation with husband Robert Wagner and her Brainstorm co-star, Christopher Walken. But reports of the Rebel Without A Cause actress, 43, arguing with Wagner and flirting with Walken have raised questions about her death for years. Although it was ruled an accidental drowning, cops reopened the case in November 2011 and after a fresh investigation, Wood’s cause of death was changed from accidental drowning to “drowning and other undetermined factors,” which might relate to bruises found on her body.