Jean Spangler: The actor who vanished without a trace and left Kirk Douglas as a suspect
On October 7th, 1949, a young actor named Jean Spangler disappeared. She had left her Hollywood apartment in the evening, hugging her five-year-old daughter goodbye and leaving her in the care of her sister-in-law. Spangler said she was headed to work, which was not out of the ordinary for an actor whose job consisted mainly of bit parts in Hollywood films that sometimes shot into the late hours of the evening. Two days later, however, her tattered purse was found in Griffith Park, the sprawling property overlooking Los Angeles that remains a popular draw for hikers. In the frantic search that followed, the police set their sights on one of the industry’s most famous stars – Kirk Douglas.
Born in Seattle, Washington, in 1923, Spangler was a lot like many working actors in Hollywood at the time – barely scraping by as a bit player and nightclub dancer, patiently waiting and working for her big break. Between 1948 and her disappearance a year later, she worked in movies like The Miracle of the Bells, When My Baby Smiles at Me, and Young Man With a Horn.
During that time, she had also been struggling through an on-again, off-again relationship with her ex-husband, plastics manufacturer Dexter Benner. The couple had married in 1942 and divorced six months later, with Spangler citing “cruelty” as the cause, but their relationship continued in fits and starts, yielding a daughter in 1944. When she disappeared, Spangler and Benner were in a fierce custody battle, which initially led police to suspect him of homicide. When they questioned him, he said he hadn’t seen his ex-wife for weeks, and they apparently took him at his word.
One of the reasons that the authorities might have so quickly abandoned the possibility of Benner as the killer was that they had found a much more incendiary clue. Inside Spangler’s torn purse was a note reading, “Kirk, Can’t wait any longer. Going to see Dr. Scott. It will work best this way while mother is away.”
It might seem far-fetched for the police to immediately suspect the most famous Kirk in Hollywood of being the subject of the note, but they had at least some reasoning behind it. Shortly before she disappeared, Spangler had finished work on Young Man with a Horn, which starred Douglas. The actor called the police himself when he learned about the note.
“I told Detective Chief Thad Brown that I didn’t remember the girl or the name until a friend recalled it was she who worked as an extra in a scene with me in my picture Young Man With a Horn,” Douglas told The San Bernardino Sun in 1949. “I recalled that she was a tall girl in a green dress and that I talked and kidded with her a bit on the set, as I have done with many other people,” he continued. “But I never saw her before or after that and have never been out with her.”
Spangler’s disappearance has never been solved, and the Los Angeles Police Department still hasn’t closed the case. Over the years, theories have abounded. In addition to Benner and Douglas, suspects have included the mysterious Dr Scott mentioned in the note, the infamous mobster Mickey Cohen, and the unidentified Black Dahlia serial killer. Given the wording of the note, some have speculated that she might have been planning an illegal abortion. Several people reported sightings of Spangler over the years, but none of them have been corroborated.
Seven decades later, Benner (who died in 2007) still seems like the most likely suspect. Within weeks of his ex-wife’s disappearance, he gained full custody of their daughter and fled with her to Florida, denying Spangler’s mother partial custody in defiance of a Los Angeles court.
