Carter Roy

Cheryl felt constantly judged.

Being gossiped about as a teenager is hard.

Imagine if it was about you being a murderer.

One of the running jokes around school was that Cheryl was in charge of the cafeteria's knives.

As the years passed, Cheryl struggled to find her place in the world.

She spent time in institutions and psychiatric hospitals.

Meanwhile, Lana's career stalled.

Movie offers were dropped thanks to the scandal.

However, she'd eventually become top of the call sheet again in an odd niche, playing mothers who had tumultuous relationships with their daughters.

The first of these films, ironically called Imitation of Life, became her career's biggest box office success.

And eventually, Cheryl too found her footing again.

As an adult, she thrived in her father's hospitality business, moved to Hawaii, and in 2014, married her partner of 44 years.

But the shadow of Johnny Stompanato's killing still followed her.

She and Lana referred to the event as the paragraph, since any article about them included at least one paragraph about it.

And some of these paragraphs raised an important question.

How did a 14-year-old manage to knife down an ex-Marine mafioso?

Well, perhaps she didn't.

Maybe her mom.

On April 4th, 1958, 14-year-old Cheryl Crane overheard mobster Johnny Stompanato abusing her mother, Lana Turner.

After an hour with no end in sight, Cheryl needed to protect her mom.