Death
On Sunday, 18 September 1932, an anonymous woman telephoned the police and said that while hiking she had found a body below the Hollywoodland sign (now known as the Hollywood sign) and then, according to a police transcript of the call, "wrapped a jacket, shoes and purse in a bundle and laid them on the steps of the Hollywood Police Station." A detective and two radio car officers found the body of a moderately well-dressed, blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman in the 100-foot ravine below the sign. Entwistle remained unidentified until her uncle connected her two-day absence with the description and initials P.E. on a suicide note which had been found in the purse and published by the newspapers. He said that on Friday the 16th she had told him she was going for a walk to a drugstore and see some friends. The police surmised that instead, she made her way from his Beachwood Drive home up the nearby southern slope of Mount Lee to the foot of the Hollywoodland sign, climbed a workman's ladder to the top of the "H" and jumped. The cause of death was listed by the coroner as "multiple fractures of the pelvis."
The suicide note as published read:
"I am afraid, I am a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this a long time ago, it would have saved a lot of pain. P.E."
Entwistle's death brought wide and often sensationalised publicity. Her funeral was held in Hollywood and the body was cremated, with the ashes later sent to Glendale, Ohio for burial next to her father in Oak Hill Cemetery, where they were interred on 5 January 1933.
Read more about this topic: Peg Entwistle
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“I never can hear a crowd of people singing and gesticulating, all together, at an Italian opera, without fancying myself at Athens, listening to that particular tragedy, by Sophocles, in which he introduces a full chorus of turkeys, who set about bewailing the death of Meleager.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“Parents shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their parents; only for their own crimes may persons be put to death.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 24:16.
“It is not death therefore that is burdensome, but the fear of death.”
—Ambrose (c. 333–397)