Cheryl Crane

Who is Cheryl Crane?

Cheryl Christina Crane is the only child of actress Lana Turner, from her marriage to actor-restaurateur Stephen Crane, her second husband.

On April 4, 1958, at age 14, Cheryl Crane stabbed her mother's boyfriend Johnny Stompanato to death. The killing was ruled a justifiable homicide: Crane was deemed to have been protecting her mother. Stompanato was well-known to have been abusive, extremely jealous of Turner and had previously pointed a gun at actor Sean Connery, her co-star in Another Time, Another Place, only to have Connery take the gun from him, beat him and force him from the movie set.

Following Stompanato's death, Crane was made a ward of the State of California and sent to an all-girls boarding school, from which she escaped in 1960. She was captured and then released in 1961. In 1969, Crane was detained by the Los Angeles Police Department when three half-grown marijuana plants were discovered in the back seat of her car.

Years later, Cheryl publicly revealed that she was a lesbian to her mother, who accepted the news well. Turner said she regarded Cheryl's partner, Jocelyn "Josh" LeRoy, "as a second daughter".

In her autobiography, Detour: a Hollywood Tragedy - My Life With Lana Turner, My Mother, Crane discussed the Stompanato killing publicly for the first time and admitted to the stabbing. She further alleged that she was subject to a series of sexual assaults at the hands of her stepfather and her mother's fourth husband, actor Lex Barker.