Hollywood Starlet's Murder Continues to Stir JFK Conspiracy Theories

Six decades after President John F. Kennedy's assassination, the unsolved murder of 22-year-old Hollywood actress Karyn Kupcinet continues to haunt researchers and conspiracy researchers alike. Kupcinet was found strangled in her West Hollywood apartment on Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1963, six days after Kennedy's death in Dallas, in a case that quickly drew attention for its timing and for rumors of connections to the Kennedy tragedy.

Initially, investigators and medical examiners considered her death potentially related to weight-management struggles and possible overdose given her recent efforts to lose weight and her emotional state following a breakup with actor Andrew Prine. However, the autopsy later determined the cause of death to be asphyxia due to manual strangulation, with the hyoid bone in her neck broken—a finding that established homicide rather than suicide. There was no sign of forced entry at her residence, and investigators believed Kupcinet might have known her killer, a factor that deepened the mystery surrounding the case. Kupcinet had moved to Hollywood after building a profile as a rising starlet with appearances on Perry Mason, Hawaiian Eye and The Donna Reed Show, and a role in the 1961 Jerry Lewis comedy The Ladies Man. The circumstances surrounding her death left many questions unanswered even as 400 people were interviewed and a dozen polygraphs administered in a case that remained unsolved.

As investigators sifted through the case, speculation tied Kupcinet’s death to the Kennedy assassination in a way that has persisted in popular lore. On the day Kennedy was killed, Kupcinet’s boyfriend at the time, Andrew Prine, later said he visited Kupcinet that day and that they drove to Palm Springs with friends to escape the day’s news. Prine, who had starred in The Miracle Worker and appeared on several television series, became a suspect for a time after their tumultuous relationship, but he was ruled out after a polygraph test and corroborated alibis from witnesses. Other names surfaced as possible suspects; for example, David Lang, brother of actress Hope Lang, drew attention because of a joking remark about Kupcinet’s murder, but police noted he had been on a date the night of the crime and eliminated him. Yet the case never produced a conclusive culprit, and a $5,000 reward remained unclaimed.

The Kennedy assassination itself had quickly become a focal point for conspiracy theories that linked Kupcinet to broader plots or to individuals connected to the Dallas events. In 1967, journalist W. Penn Jones Jr. claimed in Forgive My Grief that a telephone call had been heard by operators near Oxnard, California, in which a woman—identified by Jones as Kupcinet—warned that Kennedy would be killed and then described the government