On the evening of February 12, 1976, actor Sal Mineo was returning home from rehearsing for a play in Hollywood, California, when he was fatally stabbed in the chest as he parked his car behind his apartment.

Mineo was a well-known actor in the 1950s, having co-starred with James Dean in both Rebel Without a Cause and Giant.

He later appeared in films such as The Longest Day and Escape From the Planet of the Apes, and had numerous guest appearances on television series.

Neighbors who heard Mineo’s cries for help saw a white man with brown hair fleeing the scene. Despite efforts to save him, Mineo died a few minutes later.

The police launched an investigation into the murder, and initially suspected that Mineo’s work for prison reform may have put him in contact with a dangerous ex-convict.

However, the focus of the investigation shifted to Mineo’s personal life when the police discovered that his home was filled with pictures of nude men.

Despite this, the investigation into Mineo’s homosexuality did not yield any leads.

Two years after the murder, authorities in Michigan arrested Lionel Williams on bad check charges, and he began bragging that he had killed Mineo.

Williams later recanted his stories, but his wife in Los Angeles told police that he had returned home on the night of the murder covered in blood.

There was one major inconsistency in the case, however: Williams was black with an Afro, while all eyewitnesses had described the perpetrator as a white man with long brown hair.

Despite this discrepancy, the police were able to unearth an old photo of Williams in which his hair had been dyed brown and processed so that it was straight and long.

In addition, the medical examiner had made a cast of Mineo’s knife wound, and the police were able to match it to the description of the knife provided by Williams’ wife.

Based on this evidence, Williams was eventually convicted and given a sentence of life in prison for the murder of Sal Mineo.

Sal Mineo was a talented actor who rose to fame in the 1950s as a teen star.

He was known for his performances in films such as Rebel Without a Cause and Giant, and continued to act in both film and television throughout his career.

Mineo’s untimely death at the age of 37 was a tragedy, and his murder remains one of the most mysterious and controversial cases in Hollywood history.