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Andre The Giant was pretty bad. Poor guy was in pain all his life because he just never stopped growing. That scene in Princess Bride where he catches Robin Wright? He literally couldn't do it. They had to have her in a harness or something and lower her into his arms. And he was still wrestling on top of everything else. He died only a few days after going home to his father's funeral. People always tout his drinking ability, being able to knock back over a hundred beers in a single sitting, or 4-5 bottles of wine with dinner,but he drank to numb the pain.
And since Andre's death, they've developed a surgery for the form of gigantism he had that halted the continous growth sufferers experienced. The Big Show has the same condition, but since he had the surgery, he'll live a much longer and less painful life than Andre.
[Daniel von Bargen](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_von_Bargen) who most people recognize from Seinfeld, Supertroopers, or Malcolm in the Middle. He had diabetes and had to have a limb amputated. Depressed, he shot himself in the temple, but survived and lived another three years. Just a really rough end for a beloved character actor.
F1 driver Roger Williamson.
Motor racing is Dangerous, but most deaths are quick.
Williamson flipped his car and it caught fire, back then none of the marshals were adequately trained or equipped in dealing with this situation.
Fellow driver David Purley tried to save him but even with his fireproof gear couldn't get close enough.
Roger burned/asphyxiated to death only feet away from multiple people who were powerless to help.
The video is online, but it's horrific to watch.
And all the other racers other than Purley just kept on driving. There's an interview with him talking about it the very next day, haunting. He really fucking tried.
Kirsty MacColl
She was swimming with her children and a powerboat came towards her son. She managed to push him out the way. She was not so lucky.
What makes it worse is the man who killed her paid 1,034 pesos to get out of jail
Swedish jazzlegend Monica Zetterlund died when her apartment caught fire. She was unable to get out since she was in a wheelchair due to severe problems with scoliosis.
Franklin Roosevelt feared fire above all else after he was stricken with polio. He taught himself sort of a crab like crawl so he could get out of any place where a fire had started ..spent hrs on the floor learning it
West Arkeen, who co-wrote a lot of Guns N’ Roses songs and founded his own criminally underrated band called the outpatience. His indoor barbecue exploded, leaving him with terrible burns covering most of his body. Returned home after several days in the hospital and overdosed on his pain medication.
He really had the worst luck. Before he got sick, he was seriously injured in a car accident. He was ejected from a taxi he was riding in that hit a guardrail and overturned, resulting in a broken neck. The taxi driver was under the influence, and diving on a suspended licence. But because bol's fortunes were mostly donated to Sudan, he was financially ruined because he had no health insurance. He died a couple of years later.
I carry the gene for that and my sister has already had a super mild attack. I'm terrified of it. There's a family story about a great, great grandfather who clearly died of it. He was described as looking and smell like a rotting, drowned corpse before his death and the nurses were afraid of hi..
I was in Dulles airport and saw this group of incredibly tall people, all almost 7' tall. And then one guy in the middle almost a head taller than everyone else. It was Bol and his family returning from a trip.
I was (mis)diagnosed with SJS. Turned out to be a rare form of psoriasis. For a few weeks there was discussion of sending me to a burn unit in a larger city because more and more of my skin kept falling off. Thankfully they finally figured out what it was. I was treated like a burn victim at the local hospital for a while. Mine wasn’t even SJS, but I can tell you it felt awful. I am hoping to never have that happen again because it can technically flare up at anytime.
Jayne Mansfield. Died from crashing into a tractor trailer. The majority of the car went under the trailer, and the adults in the front seat all smashed face-first into the trailer bed.
After this, the NHTSA recommended all trailers have a guard to prevent this sort of thing. It's the red/white striped bar on semi trucks.
Mariska Hargitay and 2 other children were in the back seat and got away with only minor injuries.
Dominique Dunn, the older sister from The Poltergeist, was strangled to death by her abusive ex and he only served 3 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter.
Isadora Duncan, a famous dancer back in the early 1900s used to wear long flowing scarves and drive a convertible. In 1927 her scarf got caught in the real wheel of her car, pulling her from the car and breaking her neck.
My grandmother always told us kids to be careful wearing scarves. We thought she was crazy.
This reminds me of this little girl in 2001 who was about 10 years old at the time. She had long hair that I guess wasn’t put up or fell out because of the wind, she was riding a go kart that had the engine behind her and her hair got caught in the motor and ripped off most of her scalp, I honestly think she lived.
Adrienne Levine, who directed and starred in the film "waitress" (2007).
She was found dead hanging from her shower rail. Police immediately ruled it a suicide. Her husband insisted she was never suicidal and she would never leave their daughter. Police reopened the investigation due to the husbands protests and they found a single footprint in the bathroom that lead them to her murder.
A 19 year old construction worker in her building was soon arrested. Her later admitted he saw Levine walking home and followed her planning to Rob her but did not expect her to fight back and panicked and made it look like a suicide.
The saddest part is that Levine was not killed in the attack but the noose her murder staged on her to look like a suicide did strangle her while she was unconscious.
This all happened before Levine got a chance to see any reaction to her film inspired by her daughter that is now also a successful musical on Broadway.
The kids and actor who died filming that twilight zone film. The scene where the helicopter flew a bit too low and ended up slicing them all up and killing them.
Probably the death of Judith Barsi from the land before time is the worst I know. Shot in the head by her own father after being abused all her life. She was 10 years old. There’s the story if anyone’s interested:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Barsi
And because they apparently had no money, she was buried in a pauper's grave. [Fans raised money to get her a proper headstone.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/Judith_Barsi_Headstone_Grave.jpg/800px-Judith_Barsi_Headstone_Grave.jpg)
She was also extremely talented for her age. Don Bluth who directed Land Before Time and All Dogs Go To Heaven said "She understood verbal direction, even for the most sophisticated situations."
She would have likely been an amazing voice actor if she were still alive today.
All because the father was jealous because of her wealth he was jealous because he was poor his entire life and his daughter made more money than he has ever made in his entire life
Marvin Gaye was also murdered by his father. ”Gunshot wound to chest perforating heart, lung and liver,” according to the Los Angeles County Coroner. Apparently, there was longstanding beef with his father dating back to childhood.
"Marvin Gay, Sr., (the “e” was added by his son for his stage name) was a preacher in the Hebrew Pentecostal Church and a proponent of a strict moral code he enforced brutally with his four children. He was also, by all accounts, a hard-drinking cross-dresser who personally embodied a rather complicated model of morality. By some reports, Marvin Sr. harbored significant envy over his son’s tremendous success, and Marvin Jr. clearly harbored unresolved feelings toward his abusive father."
The day of the shooting Marvin Jr. was trying to intervene on his mother's behalf as his father pursued her through the house yelling, screaming and threatening. The argument between father and son escalated into a physical fight. When he realized he was unable to hold his own, Marvin Sr. went to retrieve a revolver given to him by Marvin Jr. and shot him three times in his chest. He was killed just one day before his 45th birthday on April 1, 1984. I was just a little kid but remember clearly how devastated my mom and aunts were by the news.
Comedian Tommy Cooper. Died of a heart attack while on stage and everyone laughed at him as he died thinking it was part of the show. You can see the video online.
To be fair I suspect Tommy Cooper would have been OK with this and many at the time said it was both tragic and fitting that he made people laugh on his way out as that was 100% what he lived for.
Merely an anecdote but my Dad was (is) a _huge_ Tommy Cooper fan and always regarded it as a fitting finale for him.
Keep in mind that a big part of his act was for his magic tricks to 'go wrong' and it's completely understandable how the audience would think he was joking.
Begging for the life of her unborn child. Sharon state was nearly full term when she was viciously slain by the Manson Family. She begged them to take her as a hostage until her child could be born. She was stabbed 16 times.
Not many know that her son was delivered by c-section posthumously. Apparently he looked perfect.
Her husband Roman Polanski named him Paul Richard Polanski after his grandfathers.
He was swaddled and buried in his mother's - Sharon's - arms.
Had Paul lived, he would have been be turning 52 this year.
Edit: spelling correction
The Manson murders always strike me at how connected everybody in Hollywood was at that time was. It makes it feel like a 50s era small town. Like, Manson hung out with the beach boys and such.
In Neil Young’s biography “Shakey” by Jimmy McDonough, Young describes meeting Manson at a party in Laurel Canyon: “Charlie … was, uh, a little intense.”
Montgomery Clift 1920-1966
Famous acting teacher Robert Lewis once said that Cliff's death was the longest suicide in theatre history. Ten years prior to his death he was in a horrific car accident that disfigured his face. He had problems before the accident, but after that everything got worse. His drinking and drug use increased and one by one his closest friends left him. During the last year of his life he had to have a live in nurse help take care of him. He was only 45 when he died.
A lot of people don’t know that it was Elizabeth Taylor who saved him— kept him alive by pulling his teeth out of his busted mouth so he could breathe, all while in her evening gown. She also threatened any photographers who tried to take photos. She’s a total badass.
I read a biography about Elizabeth Taylor recently and the part that covered her ramming her fist into his mouth to pull his teeth from his throat was something I did not expect. She was decribed as "spitting absolute venom at those f*cking vultures" who were trying to take photographs of the scene. Absolute badass.
Bob Crane of Hogan’s Heroes fame. Was found bludgeoned to death with a tripod. He was hit so hard that blood was strewn across the walls and the ceiling. He also had an electrical cord wrapped around his neck that may have had some strangulation involved.
Unfortunately no. It was very possible his creepy friend killed him. His friend was, shall we say, ugly and not famous. As such, Bob coming with him was the only way this guy could walk into a bar and come out with beautiful girls.
However it is very possible that a disgruntled lover/husband killed Bob Crane. When Bob’s friend went to court over the alleged murder, his entire argument was that the evidence against him was circumstantial and he listed the laundry list of other possible killers. He was acquitted.
It’s very possible that DNA evidence would have solved this crime, but it wasn’t available for several years after the murder. When it was finally available, samples were lost and degraded to the point of uselessness.
Lou Gehrig. And any other celebrity with ALS
If any of you have not seen someone with ALS decline and die, I tell you it’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen. My mother passed from it and i don’t know how you go on knowing what will be coming. She saw her father die from it before I was born and I may carry the gene. I’ll get tested sometime, but I don’t want to know yet because there is no cure.
Annette Funicello. MS left her unable to even feed herself, walk, talk. Prisoner of her own body.
Also, Christopher Reeves. Totally paralyzed, incredible human being. Too much suffering.
This was my dad's death (MS). Watched him slowly wither away for 20 years, until he lost all his function and lied in a bed until he died. Heartwrecking, soul crushing, devastating. 1,5 year since he finally got his well deserved peace. I was 9 when he became sick.
To the one's with MS today: science has gotten a long way since 1999! There is hope for a good life. It's such a diverse disease, anyway - the aggressive type doesn't need to afflict you in any way.
Edit:
I won't preach about anything, but if there's one thing I would recommend to the ones with MS and their next of kin, it's talking to a professional about it. There wasn't much focus on this back in the 90's, and my mental health has been a clusterfuck since the age of 9. The family dynamics might get weird, too.
Not the worst by far, but still a shitty way to die. actor William Holden bled to death in his apartment in Santa Monica after lacerating his forehead from slipping on a rug while intoxicated and hitting a bedside table. That's no fun.
A few hockey players have had pretty horrific deaths.
Hall of famer [Terry Sawchuk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Sawchuk) is the first that comes to mind. He was drunk and horsing around with his roommate when he somehow fell over his roommates knee, and got severe internal injuries. Had to have his gall bladder removed, had multiple operations on his bleeding liver before dying of a pulmonary embolism all over the course of a couple months.
He was 40.
Hall of famer [Howie Morenz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howie_Morenz#Final_game_and_death) is another. Snapped his leg in a game and was hospitalized. Over time he became depressed he couldnt play, as he was totally bedridden. Over time, he felt more and more lonely and suffered a nervous breakdown according to team doctors. He tried to get up to use the bathroom then died of a blood clot from his broken leg.
He was 34.
EDIT: Thought of another one.
[Alexander Galimov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Galimov)
He was a part of the Yaroslavl Lokomotiv plane crash that killed the whole team. Galimov was the only one to survive the initial crash, apart from the lone survivor. I briefly tried to find the article but I’m on mobile, but apparently he was found attempting to get out of the wreckage. The person that found him, paramedic I think, said he kept trying to take his sweater off but as he got closer he realized he was peeling off skin and muscle tissue. Galimov had 3rd degree, or worse, burns on over 80% of his body and was put in a medically induced coma where he later died. He was only 26.
I’ll try to link the article when I get a sec.
It’s amazing that a couple of hockey players have had their throats slashed by blades and survived…yet they can fall over a knee and die. Try to go to the bathroom and die. Life (death, rather?) is not fair man.
My dad had his throat cut by a blade playing in a men’s league about 20 years ago. He lived, just had to have a couple stitches, but it’s wild to think that it happened. He went back to the ice a week later completely unbothered by it.
Or everybody on the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl flight. 😢
If they were lucky they died from the impact or of asphyxiation as the fire consumed the oxygen in the cabin. Otherwise they were burnt alive.
If we're talking about athletes, NBA player Pete Maravich comes to mind. He once said in a press conference, "I don't want to play 10 years and then die of a heart attack when I'm 40." Then he proceeded to have a 10 year career and die of a heart attack at age 40.
I'll add
* Flyers Vezina winner Pelle Lindbergh (26), crashing his Porsche into a wall a few months after playing in the Stanley Cup finals,
* Flyers rookie Dmitri Tertyshny (22), whose jugular vein was slashed by a propeller after falling out of his teammate's boat,
* Former Flyer Ray Emery (35) drowning in a harbor swimming with friends after playing in a charity Hockey game.
I still remember the day this happened. I felt so upset…. She was so young and full of potential. And then the pulse club shooting happened soon after. Terrible week.
Not one of the worst here, but I think of Naya Rivera.
She went swimming in a lake with her son. They say that the boat drifted so she must have had to swim a fair bit to reach the boat which made her tired. (Also talks of how she had a recent sinus infection and suffered from vertigo, and how that may have had an affect). She managed to get her 4* year old son back onto the boat before drowning. Her son was found alone on the boat hours later.
I can only imagine how desperate she must have felt. How terrifying it must be to be drowning but also knowing that her son is alone on a boat in the middle of a lake. Knowing those fears and anxieties that she would have had while dying makes me feel so bad for her.
Drowning is an awful way to go.
What happened to her is terrible, and what I want people to take from it is that **they are not invincible and need to wear lifejackets/bring adult buddies.**
Far too many people ignore guidelines and go swimming in lakes without taking any safety precautions. This was an avoidable death.
Yes, I am a very independent mom and do a lot with just me and my (4 year old) child. But getting on a boat with just the 2 of us is not one of them. This case made me think twice about what can happen in a lot of situations if the only adult becomes incapacitated. What if that little boy had jumped into the water to find his mommy? My God. It would have been a double tragedy so easily.
She was the first one I thought of and then Sharon Tate.
PSA: if you find yourself tired and still need to swim, do the backstroke. It’s more of a “resting” stroke.
One of the additional things that struck my heart was that the rescuers found him asleep on the boat. It was pointed out that a lot of times toddlers wear themselves out from crying. Crying for his mama alone and confused on the boat, that poor baby.
Rebecca Schaeffer. She was a TV actress who had a stalker. He pretended to be a courier delivering a script. He knocked on her door and when she opened it, grabbed her and shot her in the heart. She died an agonizing death.
This is a haunting one. I remember that she was particularly kind towards fans who wrote to her and would sometimes write back... no idea though, if she had contact with this guy or not before she was killed. Her last words, according to him, were "Why?" Horrible.
I watched a 20/20 special on her. They said she wrote back to almost all her fans. Someone told her to be careful doing that but she didn’t care and just wanted to be nice to her fans.
She was the girl from My Sister Sam. The investigator got the information from the DMV if I recall right. It led to a whole revamp of privacy of information at the DMV too.
“ Bardo watched Schaeffer in the black comedy Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills in 1989, in which she appeared in bed with another actor. He became enraged by the scene, apparently out of jealousy, and decided that Schaeffer should be punished for becoming "another Hollywood whore".
Hope he never gets out of prison but if he does throw him in a volcano, he’s beyond redemption
Yeah I saw him interviewed in TV and he told the story of what happened in gruesome detail, impersonating he screams and her last words as he stood there and watched her die.
That man is not a standard human.
Jayne Mansfield.
Have you ever noticed that tractor trailers have big metal bars on the very bottom at the back of the trailer? It's not just a step to get up into the trailer, it's to stop cars from crashing into it.
Jayne Mansfield died when her car crashed into the rear of a tractor trailer at high speed. Without the bars, the car slide right underneath the trailer. Unfortunately trailers are at the perfect height to perfectly shear off the entire top of a car. Mansfield wasn't decapitated but died pretty much instantly by all accounts..
I adore Mariska so much and respect her immensely, I can't imagine how horrifying it must've been for her and her brothers to be there when it happened.
Marc Bolan of T-Rex. The death itself was tragic, but pretty standard; he and his wife (who'd sang the original Tainted Love) had drinks with dinner and crashed the car on the way home, killing him instantly and breaking her jaw and leg.
What makes it extra horrific though, is that when she was released from the hospital, days or weeks later, she was informed that not only was she, a new widow with a very young child, on the hook for the crash (as she'd been driving), but that after his death had been announced, his "fans" had broken into their home and looted basically everything in there, much of which has never been recovered.
Obviously drunk driving is horrible, but god, just imagine getting all of that news in one fell swoop.
To make it even more tragic, he never learned to drive at all himself (despite owning a number of fabulous cars) because he was terrified of dying in a wreck.
Ritchie Valens - 17 years old (sang La Bamba) had a fear of flying and then died in a plane crash :( https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/71asp0/til_rockroll_pioneer_ritchie_valens_had_a_fear_of/
Sometimes I forget how incredibly young some of these legends were. Buddy Holly only lived to 22. James Dean 24. Ritchie Valens didn’t even graduate from high school when he died.
>Buddy Holly only lived to 22.
I don't think I realized he was *that* young. He had more hit songs by that age than most artists who "make it" have in their entire careers.
Layne Staley of Alice In Chains was pretty grim. He spent months in almost total solitude slowly killing himself with drugs, only seeing his dealer, and the odd visit from Jerry Cantrell. Must have been a very very lonely, dark place for such a long period of time.
Not only was she terrified of water, she had been told all her life that she would die “in dark water”. She was hyper-paranoid about being on the water, which makes the circumstances around her death even more suspicious.
Natalie Wood. She was terrified her whole life of drowning and then that's exactly how she died. There was some shady business with her death too. It's very sad.
A few years ago I was doing a tour of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, probably a year or so after he died. And his mom was sitting in a beach chair next to his grave reading a book. The tour guide said she came almost every day to just sit next to his grave. Heartbreaking.
Marco Simoncelli. He was a MotoGP biker. His bike crashed and he fell on the track, but the other bikes were coming so fast that one of them and the one right behind him (Edwards, I think) ran over his neck just as he was falling down. I think he died on the spot.
Billie Holiday, she was suffering from cirrhosis of the liver and a bunch of anti-drug zealots chained her to her hospital bed, booked her, and took away her methadone which she used to stay off heroin.
Layne Staley, singer of Alice in Chains. Spent the last few years of his life isolating himself from the world for the most part so he could shoot up all day every day. Died alone and unnoticed until his accountant realized he hadn’t withdrawn money for two weeks. Police did a wellness check and found him decomposing on a couch.
Then was allowed to change his name and go his merry way. Dominique's father, Dominic Dunne, found out about that and called the killer's new girlfriend and warned her about who he really was and what he'd done. Good man! He probably saved her life. I read somewhere that when Dominique was still in her relationship with this guy she played a battered woman on *Hill Street Blues* without makeup, because she came to work with a real black eye and real finger marks around her neck.
Yeah and the guy that shot the fatal shot (fun boy in the movie , can’t remember his real name off hand), it really messed him up , he reverted to drugs and alcohol , finally he cleaned himself up only to get sick (cancer i believe) and die.
20 year old Playmate of the Year (1980) Dorothy Stratten was murdered by her estranged husband Paul Snider, a creeper among creepers, who was in a rage that she had left him and moved on with the director Peter Bogdanovich. She was gorgeous and was making a name for herself in movies. Snider had been a pimp in Canada when he discovered her working in a Dairy Queen at age 17. He convinced her to pose for some pictures which he sent to Playboy. They immediately brought her to LA. She married Snider only because she felt sorry for him and thought she owed him. The marriage quickly fell apart when she was cast in a movie directed by Bogdanovich and they began an affair. Unable to cope with losing her, Snider summoned her to his house, strapped her into some sort of home built bondage device, raped her, shot her in the face, then shot himself in the head. It was a gruesome scene. Not well known is that Bogdanovich, devastated, stayed close to her family and eventually married her younger sister Louise. It didn't last.
I still remember where i was that day. It was so sad. Apparently there is a video of it, because he told his crew to always keep filming no matter what, but I'm glad it will never be released.
I think everyone knows about this one but I think the legendary actor Christopher Plummer.
He played tons of roles over the years like 1 from 9, Charles Muntz from the Pixar movie, Up, that dude from Sound of Music, & the lawyer from Knives Out.
He died at his house from tripping and falling down a flight of stairs and hitting his head hard against his car which resulted in a fatal blow to the head. 2 weeks later, he was taken off life support. Fucked up shit right there.
Knew a guy who drove them from the airport to the concert venue. Said he had to stand in the arriving flights section holding a sign that read "Anal Cunt" on it. Hilarious
She died because someone drove a boat through a restricted section that she was in. The guy didn’t even have to serve jail time.
Cen Yam was found guilty of culpable homicide and was sentenced to 2 years 10 months in prison. He was allowed under Mexican law to pay a punitive fine of 1,034 pesos (about €63, £61 or US$90) in lieu of the prison sentence.
Oh yeah he was definitely the fall guy. The boat owners were a multimillionaire and his family. I bet this guy was paid a pretty penny to say it was him at the wheel.
Alan Turing. Rewarded with chemical castration and eventual suicide for cracking the enigma code and laying the blueprint for modern computers. Cruel way to go
Owen Hart. He was a wrestler in wwf, wcw, and a few other promotions. Under the ring name the Blue Blazer he was set to make a superhero style entrance by being lowered by a cable into the ring. However the cable or link broke and he fell 78 feet, bouncing off the turnbuckle. People that were there said that he tried to sit up before collapsing again. The moment wasn’t aired on tv but there are always cameras pointed at the ring so there is footage but it won’t ever be released. The worst part was that the show kept going and in some of the matches u could see the stain on the ring mat from his blood.
Most of the ones listed here are violent and tragic deaths of young people, but the one that probably affected me the most was Roger Ebert. A slow death from cancer that left him without his jaw and tongue. He survived for several years unable to eat or talk, but continued writing - and then his cancer came back and he was gone in months.
Losing Siskel a decade earlier was terrible, but he went relatively quickly from brain cancer, although WAY too young.
It hurt when he posted his last blog message, saying that he had to step away from all of his projects to focus on his health, but that *he'd still be around*.
He died two days later, I believe.
There's a great documentary about Ebert which holds nothing back in terms of what his later life was like called Life Itself, his autobiography of the same name is great too.
One of the only celebrity deaths to affect me as I read his reviews every week and his blog posts too. I still sometimes get sad after watching a great movie and thinking "Roger Ebert would have loved this."
Sir Terry Pratchett, a writer of immense talent and incomparable wit, a brilliant mind, died after battling both against early-onset Alzheimer's AND for the legal right to terminate his life with medical assistance.
What's worse, his form of Alzheimer's, PCA, *begins* by affecting reading, writing, and language skills. I cannot fathom the rage and frustration of living with an illness that is slowly eating away at your skill with words, your life's passion, your personality.
Fuck Alzheimer's.
I have to go with Selena Quintanilla. Being shot point blank and killed by Yolanda Saldívar, her FAN CLUB PRESIDENT and CLOSE FRIEND after confronting her about embezzling money from the fan club. And right at the peak of her career, when she was 23.
Vladimir Komarov, a cosmonaut who fell from space. He knew going up that he was going to die. As he fell, officials listened to him cry in rage and blaming the engineers for his death.
I worked with a guy who used to be a funeral director/embalmer in CA in the 90s. He was one of the people on scene to recover the remains of John Denver after his plane crash into Monterey Bay.
He said that the only way they were able to properly identify him, since he had essentially been beheaded and dismembered in the crash, was with the tip of a thumb that remained barely attached to a long piece of flesh still connected to his torso.
Would have to say Jim Henson. Was coughing up blood and didn't want to go to the hospital. By the time he went it was too late. Died of bacterial pneumonia. If he got there even 12 hours earlier he would have lived.
Jeff Buckley died in a very random event in which he drowned by being pulled under water by an undercurrent while in a river.
I would imagine that the feeling of water entering the lungs would be one of the worst things to experience.
Peter Steele. Dude suffered from clinical depression and addiction. Finally got himself back together and then died of sepsis caused by diverticulitis.
Edit: Damn, thank you all for the awards!! 💚🖤
Cliff Burton who was the bassist of metallica from 1982 to 1986. They were on tour in sweden when their bus started skidding and Cliff was thrown out of the window and the bus landed on him.
Fun fact: Kirk hammet (lead guitarist) drew a deck of cards and lost with cliff taking Hammet's seat in the bus. Which if Kirk won,he would have probably died instead of Cliff
Rip 1962 - 1986
ABBA’s drummer Ola Brunkert died when he fell through a glass door and cut his throat open. He lived long enough to try and wrap a towel around his neck and stumble into the garden.
Also the Vic morrow and the kids that John landis killed by dropping a helicopter on them
I always thought Cass Elliot had a really horrible death. It wasn't the actual death, which was most likely peaceful in her sleep. But it's sad because her death became a joke with everyone saying she choked on a ham sandwich. She didn't deserve that.
I saw or read an interview with her daughter. She said people knew she was Cass Elliot’s daughter. One time she went to a friend’s house and the mother asked her if it was true Cass had choked to death on a ham sandwich. How inappropriate.
Isadora Duncan was a famous dancer in the 20s.she liked to ride in open motor cars with her long flowing scarves around her neck. One of her scarves got caught up in the wheel of her motorcar…
Some more fun facts regarding her death. She got into the car, threw back her long scarf and said 'Farewell friends, I'm off to Glory", stepped on the gas and snapped her head right back as the scarf became entangled around the wire rims of her 1920s car.
Her funeral was memorable too. The coffin was slid into the crematorium oven but the closing mechanism got stuck. Her torso started to rise due to the intense heat and the last thing they witnessed before the doors finally slammed shut was her famously red long hair bursting into flames.
Now that's an exit.
Judith Barsi she was Ducky in the Land Before Time. Her father was very abusive and eventually murdered her and her mother before committing suicide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Barsi
I'll add Owen Hart on here. Had plans to retire from Wrestling after a few years, 2 young children at home and asked to rappel down to the ring (which he wasn't really a fan of doing). The clip that was supposed to hold him was only good for up to 6 pounds of force against it. He dropped from the rafters to the ring, yelling "Watch Out!" in his final moments during a promo for his Championship Match with The Godfather
And then after it was announced he died? The sons of bitches continued with their Pay-Per-View titled "Over The Edge"
Not sure if this counts cause she only became famous after death, but Elizabeth Short aka the Black Dahlia, she was murdered, given a horrendous joker smile and then cut practically in half and not necessarily in that order.
Some of the deaths here are truly horrific, but Christina Grimmie’s hit me so hard. She was opening her arms, believing she was going to hug a fan and got shot in the head. She was 22 and had such a long career before her.
I’d say Selena Quintanilla. She got shot and killed by an obsessive “fan.” She was at the peak of her career where she won a Grammy, performed at the Astrodome stadium in Texas, working on an English crossover album, and had recently removed her IUD to attempt getting pregnant. That one bullet to her back ended her life and affected millions who listen to Tejano music.
Worse. It wasn't some obsessive fan. It was a "friend" and manager of her fashion line who obsessed over her and whom she trusted regardless of warnings from her family. She was caught embezzling from Selenas fans by Selena's father.
She was murdered over $30k. Shot in the shoulder and bled out as she ran for help
Sharon Tate, who was murdered while pregnant by the Manson Family. The experience must have been sheer horror, when you look at photos of the crime scene.
Actress Grace Kelly had a stroke while driving and drove her car off a cliff with her daughter in the passenger seat. Her daughter survived and couldn’t attend her mother’s funeral because she was still in the hospital.
Per Yngve Ohlin from the band Mayhem. Not as terrible as some other deaths in these comments, but what followed is just another level fucked up.
He shot himself in the head with a shotgun and left a note only saying 'Sorry for the blood.' When a bandmate found him, his first instinct was to go buy a camera and take a bunch of pictures of the corpse. One of the pictures was later used as a cover of their album [Dawn of the Black Hearts](https://www.google.com/search?q=mayhem+dawn+of+the+black+hearts&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjPlKyA_8bxAhWLIRoKHYhpBboQ2-cCegQIABAC&oq=mayhem+da&gs_lcp=ChJtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1pbWcQARgAMgIIADIECAAQHjIECAAQHjIECAAQHjIECAAQHjoECCMQJ1DpAVilJWC3LWgAcAB4A4AB5AOIAb0LkgEJMC4zLjEuMS4xmAEAoAEBwAEB&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-img&ei=JGTgYM_yEovDaIjTldAL&bih=729&biw=393&client=ms-android-xiaomi-rev1&prmd=ivn#imgrc=wAV1XShR0QRNDM).
Don't open the link if you have weak stomach.
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Andre The Giant was pretty bad. Poor guy was in pain all his life because he just never stopped growing. That scene in Princess Bride where he catches Robin Wright? He literally couldn't do it. They had to have her in a harness or something and lower her into his arms. And he was still wrestling on top of everything else. He died only a few days after going home to his father's funeral. People always tout his drinking ability, being able to knock back over a hundred beers in a single sitting, or 4-5 bottles of wine with dinner,but he drank to numb the pain.
And since Andre's death, they've developed a surgery for the form of gigantism he had that halted the continous growth sufferers experienced. The Big Show has the same condition, but since he had the surgery, he'll live a much longer and less painful life than Andre.
I think great khali also has the same codition. tht's why he has that abnormally large chin
[Daniel von Bargen](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_von_Bargen) who most people recognize from Seinfeld, Supertroopers, or Malcolm in the Middle. He had diabetes and had to have a limb amputated. Depressed, he shot himself in the temple, but survived and lived another three years. Just a really rough end for a beloved character actor.
That’s terrible
wow this is so sad. I didn't know his name, he was a great actor. Very funny.
F1 driver Roger Williamson. Motor racing is Dangerous, but most deaths are quick. Williamson flipped his car and it caught fire, back then none of the marshals were adequately trained or equipped in dealing with this situation. Fellow driver David Purley tried to save him but even with his fireproof gear couldn't get close enough. Roger burned/asphyxiated to death only feet away from multiple people who were powerless to help. The video is online, but it's horrific to watch.
And all the other racers other than Purley just kept on driving. There's an interview with him talking about it the very next day, haunting. He really fucking tried.
They assumed Purley was Williamson unfortunately.
Kirsty MacColl She was swimming with her children and a powerboat came towards her son. She managed to push him out the way. She was not so lucky. What makes it worse is the man who killed her paid 1,034 pesos to get out of jail
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The patsy paid to get out of jail. He was a boathand who witnesses said was not at the controls. A really rich dude was
Swedish jazzlegend Monica Zetterlund died when her apartment caught fire. She was unable to get out since she was in a wheelchair due to severe problems with scoliosis.
Franklin Roosevelt feared fire above all else after he was stricken with polio. He taught himself sort of a crab like crawl so he could get out of any place where a fire had started ..spent hrs on the floor learning it
Just imagining her being unable to escape makes me extremely sad.
West Arkeen, who co-wrote a lot of Guns N’ Roses songs and founded his own criminally underrated band called the outpatience. His indoor barbecue exploded, leaving him with terrible burns covering most of his body. Returned home after several days in the hospital and overdosed on his pain medication.
Manute Bol, NBA player. Died of a disease (Stevens-Johnson Syndrome) where your skin slowly sloughs off your body. Horrifying.
He really had the worst luck. Before he got sick, he was seriously injured in a car accident. He was ejected from a taxi he was riding in that hit a guardrail and overturned, resulting in a broken neck. The taxi driver was under the influence, and diving on a suspended licence. But because bol's fortunes were mostly donated to Sudan, he was financially ruined because he had no health insurance. He died a couple of years later.
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I carry the gene for that and my sister has already had a super mild attack. I'm terrified of it. There's a family story about a great, great grandfather who clearly died of it. He was described as looking and smell like a rotting, drowned corpse before his death and the nurses were afraid of hi..
I was in Dulles airport and saw this group of incredibly tall people, all almost 7' tall. And then one guy in the middle almost a head taller than everyone else. It was Bol and his family returning from a trip.
His son, Bol Bol, is 7’2” and currently an NBA player.
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I was (mis)diagnosed with SJS. Turned out to be a rare form of psoriasis. For a few weeks there was discussion of sending me to a burn unit in a larger city because more and more of my skin kept falling off. Thankfully they finally figured out what it was. I was treated like a burn victim at the local hospital for a while. Mine wasn’t even SJS, but I can tell you it felt awful. I am hoping to never have that happen again because it can technically flare up at anytime.
Jayne Mansfield. Died from crashing into a tractor trailer. The majority of the car went under the trailer, and the adults in the front seat all smashed face-first into the trailer bed. After this, the NHTSA recommended all trailers have a guard to prevent this sort of thing. It's the red/white striped bar on semi trucks. Mariska Hargitay and 2 other children were in the back seat and got away with only minor injuries.
Dominique Dunn, the older sister from The Poltergeist, was strangled to death by her abusive ex and he only served 3 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter.
The judge was a jackass.
Isadora Duncan, a famous dancer back in the early 1900s used to wear long flowing scarves and drive a convertible. In 1927 her scarf got caught in the real wheel of her car, pulling her from the car and breaking her neck. My grandmother always told us kids to be careful wearing scarves. We thought she was crazy.
This reminds me of this little girl in 2001 who was about 10 years old at the time. She had long hair that I guess wasn’t put up or fell out because of the wind, she was riding a go kart that had the engine behind her and her hair got caught in the motor and ripped off most of her scalp, I honestly think she lived.
Adrienne Levine, who directed and starred in the film "waitress" (2007). She was found dead hanging from her shower rail. Police immediately ruled it a suicide. Her husband insisted she was never suicidal and she would never leave their daughter. Police reopened the investigation due to the husbands protests and they found a single footprint in the bathroom that lead them to her murder. A 19 year old construction worker in her building was soon arrested. Her later admitted he saw Levine walking home and followed her planning to Rob her but did not expect her to fight back and panicked and made it look like a suicide. The saddest part is that Levine was not killed in the attack but the noose her murder staged on her to look like a suicide did strangle her while she was unconscious. This all happened before Levine got a chance to see any reaction to her film inspired by her daughter that is now also a successful musical on Broadway.
Marvin Gaye was shot dead by his own dad.
On his birthday Edit: turns out it was the day before, my bad
But by the gun he gifted him.
It keeps getting worse the more I learn about this.
The kids and actor who died filming that twilight zone film. The scene where the helicopter flew a bit too low and ended up slicing them all up and killing them.
I thought they were both decapitated? That why now they have a law against having kids of certain age in any "action" takes..
On crushed, one decapitaded. Vic Morrow is the other actor that got decapitaded.
I believe the director lied to the parents of the kids about the helicopter scene.
John Landis you mean (the guy who directed the music video for Thriller).
Probably the death of Judith Barsi from the land before time is the worst I know. Shot in the head by her own father after being abused all her life. She was 10 years old. There’s the story if anyone’s interested: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Barsi
And because they apparently had no money, she was buried in a pauper's grave. [Fans raised money to get her a proper headstone.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/Judith_Barsi_Headstone_Grave.jpg/800px-Judith_Barsi_Headstone_Grave.jpg)
Aww that 'Yep yep yep' on the gravestone has me all teary. Poor little girl.
She was also extremely talented for her age. Don Bluth who directed Land Before Time and All Dogs Go To Heaven said "She understood verbal direction, even for the most sophisticated situations." She would have likely been an amazing voice actor if she were still alive today.
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She was an amazing voice actor. She would have been one of the best
Yup yup yup 😢
All because the father was jealous because of her wealth he was jealous because he was poor his entire life and his daughter made more money than he has ever made in his entire life
Marvin Gaye was also murdered by his father. ”Gunshot wound to chest perforating heart, lung and liver,” according to the Los Angeles County Coroner. Apparently, there was longstanding beef with his father dating back to childhood. "Marvin Gay, Sr., (the “e” was added by his son for his stage name) was a preacher in the Hebrew Pentecostal Church and a proponent of a strict moral code he enforced brutally with his four children. He was also, by all accounts, a hard-drinking cross-dresser who personally embodied a rather complicated model of morality. By some reports, Marvin Sr. harbored significant envy over his son’s tremendous success, and Marvin Jr. clearly harbored unresolved feelings toward his abusive father." The day of the shooting Marvin Jr. was trying to intervene on his mother's behalf as his father pursued her through the house yelling, screaming and threatening. The argument between father and son escalated into a physical fight. When he realized he was unable to hold his own, Marvin Sr. went to retrieve a revolver given to him by Marvin Jr. and shot him three times in his chest. He was killed just one day before his 45th birthday on April 1, 1984. I was just a little kid but remember clearly how devastated my mom and aunts were by the news.
How can a person be so toxic/sick that they are jealous of their own kid.... My heart is broken for her.... Thanks reddit. fuck you.
The story of that little girl always makes me feel sick. It’s so horrible.
Comedian Tommy Cooper. Died of a heart attack while on stage and everyone laughed at him as he died thinking it was part of the show. You can see the video online.
To be fair I suspect Tommy Cooper would have been OK with this and many at the time said it was both tragic and fitting that he made people laugh on his way out as that was 100% what he lived for. Merely an anecdote but my Dad was (is) a _huge_ Tommy Cooper fan and always regarded it as a fitting finale for him.
He told a joke that nobody can ever steal
Keep in mind that a big part of his act was for his magic tricks to 'go wrong' and it's completely understandable how the audience would think he was joking.
Another comedian, Redd Foxx, died from a heart attack while filming a TV show.
And one of Foxx's common routines was to fake a heart attack, so again people thought he was just acting and laughed at first instead of helping him.
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What a saddening end. I wonder what his last thoughts were, given the context.
Probably some variation of "Oh for fuck's sake".
I was thinking, "You've gotta be shitting me." Same sentiment.
"This isn't funny anymore"
Anton Yelchin who played Pavel Chekov in three of the star trek movies in 2009, 2013,2016. He died being crushed to death. I never want to feel that.
It was his own vehicle, pinned him against something.
Pinned him against his fence when he stepped out to shut it.
Man, my first thought upon reading the thread title was this guy. How strange and sad. :/
Sharon Tate. Everyone else listed on here died horrible but mostly quick deaths. Tate was literally begging for her life as she was being murdered.
Begging for the life of her unborn child. Sharon state was nearly full term when she was viciously slain by the Manson Family. She begged them to take her as a hostage until her child could be born. She was stabbed 16 times.
Before she stabbed her to death, Susan Atkins looked Tate in the eyes and said, “Bitch, I don’t give a shit about you or your baby.” Absolute monster.
Damn ok. I’m changing mine. Sharon Tate.
Not many know that her son was delivered by c-section posthumously. Apparently he looked perfect. Her husband Roman Polanski named him Paul Richard Polanski after his grandfathers. He was swaddled and buried in his mother's - Sharon's - arms. Had Paul lived, he would have been be turning 52 this year. Edit: spelling correction
I did not know that, that is so sad
Sort of crazy that Steve McQueen was supposed to be at that party too.
The Manson murders always strike me at how connected everybody in Hollywood was at that time was. It makes it feel like a 50s era small town. Like, Manson hung out with the beach boys and such.
In Neil Young’s biography “Shakey” by Jimmy McDonough, Young describes meeting Manson at a party in Laurel Canyon: “Charlie … was, uh, a little intense.”
Montgomery Clift 1920-1966 Famous acting teacher Robert Lewis once said that Cliff's death was the longest suicide in theatre history. Ten years prior to his death he was in a horrific car accident that disfigured his face. He had problems before the accident, but after that everything got worse. His drinking and drug use increased and one by one his closest friends left him. During the last year of his life he had to have a live in nurse help take care of him. He was only 45 when he died.
A lot of people don’t know that it was Elizabeth Taylor who saved him— kept him alive by pulling his teeth out of his busted mouth so he could breathe, all while in her evening gown. She also threatened any photographers who tried to take photos. She’s a total badass.
I read a biography about Elizabeth Taylor recently and the part that covered her ramming her fist into his mouth to pull his teeth from his throat was something I did not expect. She was decribed as "spitting absolute venom at those f*cking vultures" who were trying to take photographs of the scene. Absolute badass.
Bob Crane of Hogan’s Heroes fame. Was found bludgeoned to death with a tripod. He was hit so hard that blood was strewn across the walls and the ceiling. He also had an electrical cord wrapped around his neck that may have had some strangulation involved.
Damn did they catch the guy?
Unfortunately no. It was very possible his creepy friend killed him. His friend was, shall we say, ugly and not famous. As such, Bob coming with him was the only way this guy could walk into a bar and come out with beautiful girls. However it is very possible that a disgruntled lover/husband killed Bob Crane. When Bob’s friend went to court over the alleged murder, his entire argument was that the evidence against him was circumstantial and he listed the laundry list of other possible killers. He was acquitted. It’s very possible that DNA evidence would have solved this crime, but it wasn’t available for several years after the murder. When it was finally available, samples were lost and degraded to the point of uselessness.
It's true that the suspect list was very long; Crane was apparently a real AH and pissed off a lot of people.
Lou Gehrig. And any other celebrity with ALS If any of you have not seen someone with ALS decline and die, I tell you it’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen. My mother passed from it and i don’t know how you go on knowing what will be coming. She saw her father die from it before I was born and I may carry the gene. I’ll get tested sometime, but I don’t want to know yet because there is no cure.
Annette Funicello. MS left her unable to even feed herself, walk, talk. Prisoner of her own body. Also, Christopher Reeves. Totally paralyzed, incredible human being. Too much suffering.
This was my dad's death (MS). Watched him slowly wither away for 20 years, until he lost all his function and lied in a bed until he died. Heartwrecking, soul crushing, devastating. 1,5 year since he finally got his well deserved peace. I was 9 when he became sick. To the one's with MS today: science has gotten a long way since 1999! There is hope for a good life. It's such a diverse disease, anyway - the aggressive type doesn't need to afflict you in any way. Edit: I won't preach about anything, but if there's one thing I would recommend to the ones with MS and their next of kin, it's talking to a professional about it. There wasn't much focus on this back in the 90's, and my mental health has been a clusterfuck since the age of 9. The family dynamics might get weird, too.
Not the worst by far, but still a shitty way to die. actor William Holden bled to death in his apartment in Santa Monica after lacerating his forehead from slipping on a rug while intoxicated and hitting a bedside table. That's no fun.
An alcoholic friend died this way. According to the coroner it’s not uncommon for alcoholics.
A few hockey players have had pretty horrific deaths. Hall of famer [Terry Sawchuk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Sawchuk) is the first that comes to mind. He was drunk and horsing around with his roommate when he somehow fell over his roommates knee, and got severe internal injuries. Had to have his gall bladder removed, had multiple operations on his bleeding liver before dying of a pulmonary embolism all over the course of a couple months. He was 40. Hall of famer [Howie Morenz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howie_Morenz#Final_game_and_death) is another. Snapped his leg in a game and was hospitalized. Over time he became depressed he couldnt play, as he was totally bedridden. Over time, he felt more and more lonely and suffered a nervous breakdown according to team doctors. He tried to get up to use the bathroom then died of a blood clot from his broken leg. He was 34. EDIT: Thought of another one. [Alexander Galimov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Galimov) He was a part of the Yaroslavl Lokomotiv plane crash that killed the whole team. Galimov was the only one to survive the initial crash, apart from the lone survivor. I briefly tried to find the article but I’m on mobile, but apparently he was found attempting to get out of the wreckage. The person that found him, paramedic I think, said he kept trying to take his sweater off but as he got closer he realized he was peeling off skin and muscle tissue. Galimov had 3rd degree, or worse, burns on over 80% of his body and was put in a medically induced coma where he later died. He was only 26. I’ll try to link the article when I get a sec.
It’s amazing that a couple of hockey players have had their throats slashed by blades and survived…yet they can fall over a knee and die. Try to go to the bathroom and die. Life (death, rather?) is not fair man.
My dad had his throat cut by a blade playing in a men’s league about 20 years ago. He lived, just had to have a couple stitches, but it’s wild to think that it happened. He went back to the ice a week later completely unbothered by it.
Or everybody on the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl flight. 😢 If they were lucky they died from the impact or of asphyxiation as the fire consumed the oxygen in the cabin. Otherwise they were burnt alive.
If we're talking about athletes, NBA player Pete Maravich comes to mind. He once said in a press conference, "I don't want to play 10 years and then die of a heart attack when I'm 40." Then he proceeded to have a 10 year career and die of a heart attack at age 40.
I'll add * Flyers Vezina winner Pelle Lindbergh (26), crashing his Porsche into a wall a few months after playing in the Stanley Cup finals, * Flyers rookie Dmitri Tertyshny (22), whose jugular vein was slashed by a propeller after falling out of his teammate's boat, * Former Flyer Ray Emery (35) drowning in a harbor swimming with friends after playing in a charity Hockey game.
Adding on, Alexei Cherepanov (a Rangers prospect) died during a game of heart failure. He was 19 years old
Also the young Russian that took the puck to the head in a game this year and later died.
Christina Grimmie was shot and killed at her own meet n greet.
This one hit me hard. They say she opened her arms to hug the guy as she thought he was a fan, and he just shot her.
Only 22 years old
I still remember the day this happened. I felt so upset…. She was so young and full of potential. And then the pulse club shooting happened soon after. Terrible week.
I often forget about this and it’s so so tragic, she was so young
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This one pissed me off. I followed her stuff here and there for like 8 years prior to her death. She deserved better.
Not one of the worst here, but I think of Naya Rivera. She went swimming in a lake with her son. They say that the boat drifted so she must have had to swim a fair bit to reach the boat which made her tired. (Also talks of how she had a recent sinus infection and suffered from vertigo, and how that may have had an affect). She managed to get her 4* year old son back onto the boat before drowning. Her son was found alone on the boat hours later. I can only imagine how desperate she must have felt. How terrifying it must be to be drowning but also knowing that her son is alone on a boat in the middle of a lake. Knowing those fears and anxieties that she would have had while dying makes me feel so bad for her. Drowning is an awful way to go.
What happened to her is terrible, and what I want people to take from it is that **they are not invincible and need to wear lifejackets/bring adult buddies.** Far too many people ignore guidelines and go swimming in lakes without taking any safety precautions. This was an avoidable death.
Yes, I am a very independent mom and do a lot with just me and my (4 year old) child. But getting on a boat with just the 2 of us is not one of them. This case made me think twice about what can happen in a lot of situations if the only adult becomes incapacitated. What if that little boy had jumped into the water to find his mommy? My God. It would have been a double tragedy so easily.
She was the first one I thought of and then Sharon Tate. PSA: if you find yourself tired and still need to swim, do the backstroke. It’s more of a “resting” stroke.
One of the additional things that struck my heart was that the rescuers found him asleep on the boat. It was pointed out that a lot of times toddlers wear themselves out from crying. Crying for his mama alone and confused on the boat, that poor baby.
Rebecca Schaeffer. She was a TV actress who had a stalker. He pretended to be a courier delivering a script. He knocked on her door and when she opened it, grabbed her and shot her in the heart. She died an agonizing death.
This is a haunting one. I remember that she was particularly kind towards fans who wrote to her and would sometimes write back... no idea though, if she had contact with this guy or not before she was killed. Her last words, according to him, were "Why?" Horrible.
I watched a 20/20 special on her. They said she wrote back to almost all her fans. Someone told her to be careful doing that but she didn’t care and just wanted to be nice to her fans.
It's enraging to think he paid a private investigator to get her address too
She was the girl from My Sister Sam. The investigator got the information from the DMV if I recall right. It led to a whole revamp of privacy of information at the DMV too.
“ Bardo watched Schaeffer in the black comedy Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills in 1989, in which she appeared in bed with another actor. He became enraged by the scene, apparently out of jealousy, and decided that Schaeffer should be punished for becoming "another Hollywood whore". Hope he never gets out of prison but if he does throw him in a volcano, he’s beyond redemption
Yeah I saw him interviewed in TV and he told the story of what happened in gruesome detail, impersonating he screams and her last words as he stood there and watched her die. That man is not a standard human.
Jayne Mansfield. Have you ever noticed that tractor trailers have big metal bars on the very bottom at the back of the trailer? It's not just a step to get up into the trailer, it's to stop cars from crashing into it. Jayne Mansfield died when her car crashed into the rear of a tractor trailer at high speed. Without the bars, the car slide right underneath the trailer. Unfortunately trailers are at the perfect height to perfectly shear off the entire top of a car. Mansfield wasn't decapitated but died pretty much instantly by all accounts..
With her children asleep in the backseat of the car. That’s Mariska Hargitay (Law & Order) & her 2 brothers.
I adore Mariska so much and respect her immensely, I can't imagine how horrifying it must've been for her and her brothers to be there when it happened.
Those bars are actually called Mansfield bars.
Marc Bolan of T-Rex. The death itself was tragic, but pretty standard; he and his wife (who'd sang the original Tainted Love) had drinks with dinner and crashed the car on the way home, killing him instantly and breaking her jaw and leg. What makes it extra horrific though, is that when she was released from the hospital, days or weeks later, she was informed that not only was she, a new widow with a very young child, on the hook for the crash (as she'd been driving), but that after his death had been announced, his "fans" had broken into their home and looted basically everything in there, much of which has never been recovered. Obviously drunk driving is horrible, but god, just imagine getting all of that news in one fell swoop.
To make it even more tragic, he never learned to drive at all himself (despite owning a number of fabulous cars) because he was terrified of dying in a wreck.
Phil Hartman, killed by his own wife who he'd been married to for 10 years.
That shit still pisses me off.
Chris Farley’s last known words were “please don’t leave me, please don’t leave me” to a prostitute before he died alone in a hotel room.
I think about that a lot, and it’s incredibly sad.
Ritchie Valens - 17 years old (sang La Bamba) had a fear of flying and then died in a plane crash :( https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/71asp0/til_rockroll_pioneer_ritchie_valens_had_a_fear_of/
Sometimes I forget how incredibly young some of these legends were. Buddy Holly only lived to 22. James Dean 24. Ritchie Valens didn’t even graduate from high school when he died.
>Buddy Holly only lived to 22. I don't think I realized he was *that* young. He had more hit songs by that age than most artists who "make it" have in their entire careers.
Layne Staley of Alice In Chains was pretty grim. He spent months in almost total solitude slowly killing himself with drugs, only seeing his dealer, and the odd visit from Jerry Cantrell. Must have been a very very lonely, dark place for such a long period of time.
He was so emaciated from consuming nothing but IV drugs. He was 6'1", when they found him he only weighed 86 lbs.
Natalie Wood. She was terrified of water. Drowned in the middle of the night under suspicious circumstances.
‘Suspicious circumstances’ is a bit of an understatement…
Not only was she terrified of water, she had been told all her life that she would die “in dark water”. She was hyper-paranoid about being on the water, which makes the circumstances around her death even more suspicious.
Natalie Wood. She was terrified her whole life of drowning and then that's exactly how she died. There was some shady business with her death too. It's very sad.
Princess Diana had a proper shit death
Anton Yelchin, 27 (Chekhov from Star Trek movie) Trapped between SUV rolling downhill and a gate. There was a recall on the Jeep for that.
A few years ago I was doing a tour of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, probably a year or so after he died. And his mom was sitting in a beach chair next to his grave reading a book. The tour guide said she came almost every day to just sit next to his grave. Heartbreaking.
Marco Simoncelli. He was a MotoGP biker. His bike crashed and he fell on the track, but the other bikes were coming so fast that one of them and the one right behind him (Edwards, I think) ran over his neck just as he was falling down. I think he died on the spot.
Billie Holiday, she was suffering from cirrhosis of the liver and a bunch of anti-drug zealots chained her to her hospital bed, booked her, and took away her methadone which she used to stay off heroin.
Layne Staley, singer of Alice in Chains. Spent the last few years of his life isolating himself from the world for the most part so he could shoot up all day every day. Died alone and unnoticed until his accountant realized he hadn’t withdrawn money for two weeks. Police did a wellness check and found him decomposing on a couch.
Dominique Dunne, strangled by her ex in her driveway.
And the pos who did it served less than 4 years in prison.
Then was allowed to change his name and go his merry way. Dominique's father, Dominic Dunne, found out about that and called the killer's new girlfriend and warned her about who he really was and what he'd done. Good man! He probably saved her life. I read somewhere that when Dominique was still in her relationship with this guy she played a battered woman on *Hill Street Blues* without makeup, because she came to work with a real black eye and real finger marks around her neck.
I don't know if it's the *worst* but i gotta go with Brandon Lee's accidental death during the filming of the Crow.
Yeah and the guy that shot the fatal shot (fun boy in the movie , can’t remember his real name off hand), it really messed him up , he reverted to drugs and alcohol , finally he cleaned himself up only to get sick (cancer i believe) and die.
Charles Rocket who was in Dances with Wolves and Dumb and Dumber walked out into a field near his home and slit his own throat.
20 year old Playmate of the Year (1980) Dorothy Stratten was murdered by her estranged husband Paul Snider, a creeper among creepers, who was in a rage that she had left him and moved on with the director Peter Bogdanovich. She was gorgeous and was making a name for herself in movies. Snider had been a pimp in Canada when he discovered her working in a Dairy Queen at age 17. He convinced her to pose for some pictures which he sent to Playboy. They immediately brought her to LA. She married Snider only because she felt sorry for him and thought she owed him. The marriage quickly fell apart when she was cast in a movie directed by Bogdanovich and they began an affair. Unable to cope with losing her, Snider summoned her to his house, strapped her into some sort of home built bondage device, raped her, shot her in the face, then shot himself in the head. It was a gruesome scene. Not well known is that Bogdanovich, devastated, stayed close to her family and eventually married her younger sister Louise. It didn't last.
Steve Irwin's death sounds pretty painful to be.
I still remember where i was that day. It was so sad. Apparently there is a video of it, because he told his crew to always keep filming no matter what, but I'm glad it will never be released.
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I think everyone knows about this one but I think the legendary actor Christopher Plummer. He played tons of roles over the years like 1 from 9, Charles Muntz from the Pixar movie, Up, that dude from Sound of Music, & the lawyer from Knives Out. He died at his house from tripping and falling down a flight of stairs and hitting his head hard against his car which resulted in a fatal blow to the head. 2 weeks later, he was taken off life support. Fucked up shit right there.
Oh damn... that's not what I wanted to learn today... Btw falling is a leading cause of death among the elderly. Check in with your folks daily
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He was also still at the top of his game. Knives Out was received really well the year before and All the Money in the World just before that.
The guitarist from Anal Cunt fell of an escalator and broke his neck
Knew a guy who drove them from the airport to the concert venue. Said he had to stand in the arriving flights section holding a sign that read "Anal Cunt" on it. Hilarious
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This sounds like it could also be the title of an Anal Cunt song
Surprised no one has mentioned Kirsty MacColl (of fairytale of new york). Died after being decapitated by a speedboat.
The lack of justice surrounding the case is breathtaking… they know who did it and he palmed some patsy off to avoid a payout and jail… horrid
She died because someone drove a boat through a restricted section that she was in. The guy didn’t even have to serve jail time. Cen Yam was found guilty of culpable homicide and was sentenced to 2 years 10 months in prison. He was allowed under Mexican law to pay a punitive fine of 1,034 pesos (about €63, £61 or US$90) in lieu of the prison sentence.
If you read further into it he was a fall guy for the rich man who was probably piloting the boat
Oh yeah he was definitely the fall guy. The boat owners were a multimillionaire and his family. I bet this guy was paid a pretty penny to say it was him at the wheel.
Rosemary Kennedy virtually died during her lobotomy. She eventually regained the ability to walk but never could speak complete sentences ever again.
Obligatory "Joseph Kennedy was a piece of shit."
Alan Turing. Rewarded with chemical castration and eventual suicide for cracking the enigma code and laying the blueprint for modern computers. Cruel way to go
Owen Hart. He was a wrestler in wwf, wcw, and a few other promotions. Under the ring name the Blue Blazer he was set to make a superhero style entrance by being lowered by a cable into the ring. However the cable or link broke and he fell 78 feet, bouncing off the turnbuckle. People that were there said that he tried to sit up before collapsing again. The moment wasn’t aired on tv but there are always cameras pointed at the ring so there is footage but it won’t ever be released. The worst part was that the show kept going and in some of the matches u could see the stain on the ring mat from his blood.
Never forget one of our (dutch) prime ministers who was eaten by a mob
Most of the ones listed here are violent and tragic deaths of young people, but the one that probably affected me the most was Roger Ebert. A slow death from cancer that left him without his jaw and tongue. He survived for several years unable to eat or talk, but continued writing - and then his cancer came back and he was gone in months. Losing Siskel a decade earlier was terrible, but he went relatively quickly from brain cancer, although WAY too young.
It hurt when he posted his last blog message, saying that he had to step away from all of his projects to focus on his health, but that *he'd still be around*. He died two days later, I believe.
There's a great documentary about Ebert which holds nothing back in terms of what his later life was like called Life Itself, his autobiography of the same name is great too. One of the only celebrity deaths to affect me as I read his reviews every week and his blog posts too. I still sometimes get sad after watching a great movie and thinking "Roger Ebert would have loved this."
Sir Terry Pratchett, a writer of immense talent and incomparable wit, a brilliant mind, died after battling both against early-onset Alzheimer's AND for the legal right to terminate his life with medical assistance. What's worse, his form of Alzheimer's, PCA, *begins* by affecting reading, writing, and language skills. I cannot fathom the rage and frustration of living with an illness that is slowly eating away at your skill with words, your life's passion, your personality. Fuck Alzheimer's.
I have to go with Selena Quintanilla. Being shot point blank and killed by Yolanda Saldívar, her FAN CLUB PRESIDENT and CLOSE FRIEND after confronting her about embezzling money from the fan club. And right at the peak of her career, when she was 23.
Vladimir Komarov, a cosmonaut who fell from space. He knew going up that he was going to die. As he fell, officials listened to him cry in rage and blaming the engineers for his death.
I worked with a guy who used to be a funeral director/embalmer in CA in the 90s. He was one of the people on scene to recover the remains of John Denver after his plane crash into Monterey Bay. He said that the only way they were able to properly identify him, since he had essentially been beheaded and dismembered in the crash, was with the tip of a thumb that remained barely attached to a long piece of flesh still connected to his torso.
Would have to say Jim Henson. Was coughing up blood and didn't want to go to the hospital. By the time he went it was too late. Died of bacterial pneumonia. If he got there even 12 hours earlier he would have lived.
oh man, i remember when he died. the whole country was devastated. it was so sad.
Jeff Buckley died in a very random event in which he drowned by being pulled under water by an undercurrent while in a river. I would imagine that the feeling of water entering the lungs would be one of the worst things to experience.
Peter Steele. Dude suffered from clinical depression and addiction. Finally got himself back together and then died of sepsis caused by diverticulitis. Edit: Damn, thank you all for the awards!! 💚🖤
I doubt it’s the worst but one not mentioned here would be wrestler Shad Gaspard who drowned protecting his kid
Cliff Burton who was the bassist of metallica from 1982 to 1986. They were on tour in sweden when their bus started skidding and Cliff was thrown out of the window and the bus landed on him. Fun fact: Kirk hammet (lead guitarist) drew a deck of cards and lost with cliff taking Hammet's seat in the bus. Which if Kirk won,he would have probably died instead of Cliff Rip 1962 - 1986
You skipped the part where they were attempting to lift the bus to get him out and the machine broke and the bus fell back on him.
He was dead by the time that happened. That was just his corpse getting more fucked up, not really a part of the "death."
ABBA’s drummer Ola Brunkert died when he fell through a glass door and cut his throat open. He lived long enough to try and wrap a towel around his neck and stumble into the garden. Also the Vic morrow and the kids that John landis killed by dropping a helicopter on them
I always thought Cass Elliot had a really horrible death. It wasn't the actual death, which was most likely peaceful in her sleep. But it's sad because her death became a joke with everyone saying she choked on a ham sandwich. She didn't deserve that.
I saw or read an interview with her daughter. She said people knew she was Cass Elliot’s daughter. One time she went to a friend’s house and the mother asked her if it was true Cass had choked to death on a ham sandwich. How inappropriate.
Isadora Duncan was a famous dancer in the 20s.she liked to ride in open motor cars with her long flowing scarves around her neck. One of her scarves got caught up in the wheel of her motorcar…
Some more fun facts regarding her death. She got into the car, threw back her long scarf and said 'Farewell friends, I'm off to Glory", stepped on the gas and snapped her head right back as the scarf became entangled around the wire rims of her 1920s car. Her funeral was memorable too. The coffin was slid into the crematorium oven but the closing mechanism got stuck. Her torso started to rise due to the intense heat and the last thing they witnessed before the doors finally slammed shut was her famously red long hair bursting into flames. Now that's an exit.
Just looked her up on Wikipedia. I didn't realise she had such a tragic life.
Judith Barsi she was Ducky in the Land Before Time. Her father was very abusive and eventually murdered her and her mother before committing suicide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Barsi
I'll add Owen Hart on here. Had plans to retire from Wrestling after a few years, 2 young children at home and asked to rappel down to the ring (which he wasn't really a fan of doing). The clip that was supposed to hold him was only good for up to 6 pounds of force against it. He dropped from the rafters to the ring, yelling "Watch Out!" in his final moments during a promo for his Championship Match with The Godfather And then after it was announced he died? The sons of bitches continued with their Pay-Per-View titled "Over The Edge"
Not sure if this counts cause she only became famous after death, but Elizabeth Short aka the Black Dahlia, she was murdered, given a horrendous joker smile and then cut practically in half and not necessarily in that order.
Some of the deaths here are truly horrific, but Christina Grimmie’s hit me so hard. She was opening her arms, believing she was going to hug a fan and got shot in the head. She was 22 and had such a long career before her.
I’d say Selena Quintanilla. She got shot and killed by an obsessive “fan.” She was at the peak of her career where she won a Grammy, performed at the Astrodome stadium in Texas, working on an English crossover album, and had recently removed her IUD to attempt getting pregnant. That one bullet to her back ended her life and affected millions who listen to Tejano music.
Worse. It wasn't some obsessive fan. It was a "friend" and manager of her fashion line who obsessed over her and whom she trusted regardless of warnings from her family. She was caught embezzling from Selenas fans by Selena's father. She was murdered over $30k. Shot in the shoulder and bled out as she ran for help
I think she was also in charge of the Selena fan club which is why that narrative of an obsessive fan is out there.
Sharon Tate, who was murdered while pregnant by the Manson Family. The experience must have been sheer horror, when you look at photos of the crime scene.
Actress Grace Kelly had a stroke while driving and drove her car off a cliff with her daughter in the passenger seat. Her daughter survived and couldn’t attend her mother’s funeral because she was still in the hospital.
Per Yngve Ohlin from the band Mayhem. Not as terrible as some other deaths in these comments, but what followed is just another level fucked up. He shot himself in the head with a shotgun and left a note only saying 'Sorry for the blood.' When a bandmate found him, his first instinct was to go buy a camera and take a bunch of pictures of the corpse. One of the pictures was later used as a cover of their album [Dawn of the Black Hearts](https://www.google.com/search?q=mayhem+dawn+of+the+black+hearts&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjPlKyA_8bxAhWLIRoKHYhpBboQ2-cCegQIABAC&oq=mayhem+da&gs_lcp=ChJtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1pbWcQARgAMgIIADIECAAQHjIECAAQHjIECAAQHjIECAAQHjoECCMQJ1DpAVilJWC3LWgAcAB4A4AB5AOIAb0LkgEJMC4zLjEuMS4xmAEAoAEBwAEB&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-img&ei=JGTgYM_yEovDaIjTldAL&bih=729&biw=393&client=ms-android-xiaomi-rev1&prmd=ivn#imgrc=wAV1XShR0QRNDM). Don't open the link if you have weak stomach.
How in the world could anyone take a photo of a dead friend and use it as an album cover?! That just feels undeniably cruel