47. They Speculated About The Truth
Vélez’s friend Estelle Warren said that because of her religion, Vélez had claimed that she’d rather take her own life than have an abortion. Ultimately, taking all the notes and testimony under consideration, the coroner ruled that she’d completed suicide to avoid the problems she’d face having a child out of wedlock. Despite this finding, people began to spread different stories about what they claimed had really happened that night.
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48. They Said She Did It To Mess With Her Ex
Strangely enough, one of the people to retell an account of that night was Vélez’s ex-husband Johnny Weissmuller’s son. In his memoir, he recounted what his father had told him, which was that Vélez had invited Ramond over that night and only took the Seconal to either calm her nerves or make a dramatic attempt to scare him. Sadly, it had clearly failed.
Other accounts weren’t so generous.
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49. She’s The Subject Of A Notorious Urban Legend
In the infamous book Hollywood Babylon, author Kenneth Anger told a sensationalized version of the story that sadly became an urban legend. He claimed that Vélez had wanted to stage a dramatic scene where her body would be found in bed, but instead, her stomach had got the best of her. He said she slipped while on the way to throw up and cracked her head on the toilet, eventually drowning.
Anger clearly sensationalized the story to make it more lurid and gruesome—but there was yet another, even more scandalous version that spread.
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50. The Baby Might Have Been Someone Else’s
Multiple people who traveled through the same social circles as Vélez made an especially scandalous claim. They believed that Vélez had secretly been meeting with her ex-boyfriend Gary Cooper, even though he was married, and that the baby was his. One of them even claimed that Cooper had confirmed it. In conflicting accounts of the story, either Vélez wanted to cover for Cooper by tying the knot with Ramond, or Cooper’s rejection of her and their child had led to her overdose.
There’s really no way of knowing, but one thing is for sure: Vélez deserved better, and her sad and lonely death at 36 is one of Hollywood’s greatest tragedies.
