Video: 'Inside a Hollywood Scandal: The Cheryl Crane Story'

(Good Friday, April 4, 1958, at about 9:25 p.m. PST) — Johnny Stompanato, 32, a bodyguard and enforcer for gangster Mickey Cohen and the Cohen crime family and the boyfriend of actress Lana Turner, was stabbed to death tonight at Turner’s house in Beverly Hills, California, by Turner’s teenage daughter, Cheryl Crane, who said she did it to defend her mother from a vicious beating by Stompanato.

Stompanato’s death was ruled as justifiable homicide because he had been killed in self-defense.