Johnny Stompanato

John Stompanato Jr. (October 10, 1925 – April 4, 1958), was a United States Marine and gangster who became a bodyguard and enforcer for gangster Mickey Cohen and the Cohen crime family. In the mid-1950s, he began an abusive relationship with actress Lana Turner. In 1958, he was stabbed to death by Turner's daughter, Cheryl Crane, who said she did it to defend her mother from a vicious beating by Stompanato. His death was ruled as justifiable homicide because he had been killed in self-defense. From 1953 to 1955 Stompanato was married to actress Helene Stanley. John Stompanato Jr., was born into an Italian American family in Woodstock, Illinois. His father, John Sr., owned a barber shop and his mother, Carmela, was a seamstress. Both parents were born in Italy but were married in Brooklyn. They had moved to Woodstock in 1916. Stompanato was the youngest of four children: he had two older sisters, Grace and Teresa; and an older brother, Carmine. Six days after his birth, his mother died of peritonitis. Johnny's father soon married a woman named Verena Freitag. In 1940, after Stompanato's freshman year at Woodstock High School, his father sent him to Kemper Military School for boys in Boonville, Missouri. In 1942, he graduated at the age of 17. In 1943, Stompanato joined the U.S. Marines serving with the headquarters and service company, 1st Marine Division. He served in the South Pacific theater, in Peleliu and Okinawa, and then served in China. Stompanato left the Corps in March 1946, being discharged in China. Stompanato met his first wife, Sara Utush, a Turkish woman, while stationed in Tianjin, China. They wed in May 1946. Utush was a dress designer who had formerly lived in Beijing. Stompanato converted to Islam in order to marry her. They returned to Woodstock where they had their first son, John Stompanato III, who was born in September 1947. Stompanato left his wife and child and moved to Hollywood, California, in 1947. His wife was granted a divorce in Illinois on the grounds of desertion in January 1949.