The Death of Ned Doheny
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Due to the nature of today's story, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder and suicide. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. To get help on mental health and suicide, visit Spotify.com slash resources. The night of February 16th, 1929 was cool and cloudy.

The mountains around Los Angeles were nearly uninhabited. The Hollywood sign cut through the trees, but at the time it read Hollywood Land, advertising a local real estate development. The city was growing fast in the suburban lowlands, but if anyone looked up at the hillsides, they'd see huge washes of chaparral and sagebrush. A little to the west lay a cluster of mansions, Beverly Hills.

And one of these grand houses especially stuck out. It loomed over Sunset Boulevard, looking more like a medieval fortress than a breezy California estate. It was angular, old-fashioned, and elegant, with walls covered in smoky limestone. That's how it earned its name: Greystone. On some nights, the mansion's glowing windows could be seen for miles.

It was only natural for Angelenos to wonder what was going on inside. Of course, they all knew who resided there. Ned Doheny, the son of the city's most prominent oil baron. But hardly anyone could imagine how someone like that lived. And no one who glanced up at Greystone that night would have guessed that Ned Doheny was dead.

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Ned Doheny lived his entire life in the shadow of his father, Edward. And to be fair, Edward Doheny's shadow is massive. He was one of the most influential industrialists of the 20th century. At one point, he had more money than John D. Rockefeller and was often referred to as one of the richest men in America. He'd made his money in oil.

In the spring of 1892, Edward and a business partner bought some swampland close to downtown Los Angeles after hearing of black gold in the area. Edward spent months trying to find the deposit. When it became impossible to dig by hand, he built a ramshackle oil rig and pushed further down. On April 20th, 1893, the drill got stuck on something. When Edward pulled it back up,

It was covered in black, glistening oil. After this discovery, oil fever spread throughout Southern California, and Edward reaped the rewards. In the first decade of the 20th century, the Model T automobile was invented, and for thousands of Americans, it was their very first car. Those cars needed gas, and tycoons like Edward Doheny were more than ready to sell it to them.

The same year he struck oil, Edward and his wife had a son, Edward Doheny Jr., who usually went by Ned. Edward held the baby in his arms, promising he wouldn't let the boy down. He would give Ned the best of everything. As Ned grew, so did his family's fortune.

By the time the boy was five, his father had drilled 81 oil wells in California. And by 1901, Edward had reached a staggering level of wealth. He purchased a 10,000 square foot mansion at 8 Chester Place near downtown Los Angeles.

In The Dark Side of Fortune, Margaret Leslie David's biography of Edward, she cited one estimate of his wealth. By 1910, he may have been taking in at least $10 million every year and had potentially accrued up to $75 million total. He was a bona fide oil baron now.

Still, Edward knew he couldn't run this company forever. Though he was in good health, he was getting on in age, and the oil business didn't seem like it was slowing down. He needed to start training a successor, and his son was the obvious choice. By 1912, Ned had become a confident teenager. He wasn't exactly studious, but paid close attention to his father's business and seemed intent on taking over one day.

After high school, he eventually attended the University of Southern California, which wasn't too far from his childhood mansion. In the summer of 1914, Ned married Lucy Smith, his high school sweetheart.

It was a predictably over-the-top wedding, complete with a bridal gown from Paris and massive floral arrangements. Ned and Lucy were already popular socialites in Los Angeles, but the wedding cemented their status in the city's upper crust. The guest list was a who's who of Southern California businessmen and politicians. But there was one guest who stuck out in the polished crowd. Hugh Plunkett was one of Ned's dearest friends.

Lucy had actually introduced them. Her father operated an automobile service station downtown, and Hugh worked there as a mechanic. The two men struck up a conversation, and they'd been close ever since.

They seemed like a strange pair for sure. Ned was the scion of one of the most powerful families in America, and Hugh was a mechanic. Still, they were thick as thieves, and their bond only got tighter as the years went on. They both enlisted in the Navy around 1916 and served in the First World War together.

After they were discharged, Ned started working for his father's company, the Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company. Around the same time, Hugh was hired to work for the Dohenys and became one of Ned's closest confidants. By 1921, Ned had amassed a tremendous personal fortune. He and his wife Lucy bought a mansion for their growing family down the road from 8 Chester Place.

His comings and goings were meticulously covered in the society pages of Los Angeles newspapers. Ned spent a lot of time on the road, making deals and checking in on partners. And wherever he went, Hugh Plunkett came along too. Hugh had risen in rank from family mechanic to personal secretary. He was fiercely loyal to Ned and rarely left his side.

Ned himself had also risen in the ranks by this time. He'd been a junior executive at his father's company for more than two years, and he was well on his way to succeeding Edward as the next head of Pan American. Ned was determined to do whatever it took. He was willing to do anything for his father, even something that could risk his entire career.

In November of 1921, Ned and Hugh left on one of their many business trips, this time to Washington, D.C., to meet with one of the elder Doheny's oldest friends, a politician named Albert Bacon Fall. Ned's father had actually met Albert during his rough-and-tumble prospecting days in New Mexico. Albert eventually reconnected with Edward after becoming a Republican U.S. Senator.

This relationship became particularly important in 1921 when Albert became Secretary of the Interior under President Warren G. Harding. As a key member of the president's cabinet, Albert was in charge of managing federal land and the natural resources held there. See, by the early 1920s, many of North America's oil reservoirs were drying up.

Some of Pan American Petroleum's wells had gone from gushers to tricklers if they were producing oil at all. Edward knew that global demand was rising, but he worried his supply couldn't keep pace. But he also knew there were large, untapped oil deposits under certain swaths of federal land. These were earmarked as reserves for the U.S. Navy,

But Edward and his fellow oil barons saw them as a potential source of profit. Luckily, Edward's friend Albert just happened to control these naval reserves. And after a prolonged battle with conservationists, he'd convinced the federal government to lease them out to private companies. Companies like Pan American. It was under these circumstances that Ned and Hugh paid Albert a visit in November 1921.

Their brief meeting ended with Albert walking away $100,000 richer. In later years, both Albert and Edward would claim that this money was simply a personal loan between friends. Albert even gave Ned a promissory note, which showed he intended to pay the money back.

But there are some other factors to consider, like the fact that Albert never actually fulfilled this promise or that he gave Edward the lease to two of the naval reserves in Elk Hills, California, just a few months later. When those facts come into play, this meeting between Ned, Hugh and Albert looks a bit like a bribe.

They might have gotten away with it, though, if Albert didn't lease another one of the naval reserves to a different oil man named Harry Sinclair. While Pan American got access to the land in California, Sinclair's company was allowed to drill on a piece of land that's now considered infamous. Teapot Dome, Wyoming.

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Before long, the U.S. Senate launched a formal inquiry into Teapot Dome, along with Edwards' lease in Elk Hills. The whole thing stank of corruption, and it looked like Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall was at the center of it. He denied any wrongdoing, but still he resigned in March of 1923. In the eyes of investigators, this seemed like a tacit admission of guilt—

giving them even more reason to look into his deals with Edward Doheny and Harry Sinclair. In August of 1923, the Senate investigators found evidence that at the very least, Sinclair had bribed Albert. According to a reporter in New Mexico, Albert was deep in debt with 10 years in unpaid property taxes when Sinclair paid him a visit in the winter of 1921.

After Sinclair left, Albert's financial status went through a marvelous transformation. He paid the back taxes on his ranch, bought another piece of land, and spent at least $40,000 on home improvements. Clearly, he'd gotten a windfall while Harry Sinclair was staying with him. They couldn't confirm if Sinclair actually gave him the money, but the correlation seems suspicious.

In January 1924, Edward was called to testify in the Senate hearings. He admitted to giving Albert the $100,000 and said that he asked his son to deliver it in cash. According to him, it had nothing to do with his business affairs. He'd been friends with Albert for years and wanted to help him purchase some land next to his ranch. This was a personal loan, nothing more.

He also conceded that there wasn't any official documentation of the loan. When he showed Albert's promissory note to the Senate, the portion with Albert's signature had been ripped off, as you can see here. The whole thing looked mighty suspicious. After the hearings wrapped up in the spring of that year, the Senate Democrats demanded formal trials for Harry Sinclair, Albert Bacon Fall, and Edward Doheny.

The national attitude toward Edward seemed to shift overnight. Once upon a time, he'd been seen as a gentle, grandfatherly American hero. Now, the press called him a crooked oil millionaire. In June of 1924, the Dohenys received yet another crushing blow. The federal government indicted Edward on charges of bribery and conspiracy, which was expected...

But they also indicted Ned. Though he played a major role in the alleged bribe, Ned had mostly been able to stay out of the Teapot Dome scandal. He was Edward's golden child and the future of Pan American Petroleum. So it makes sense that his father tried to shield him from harm. But now, Ned's luck had run out. He was charged with bribery, which carried a minimum sentence of 15 years.

Many of his fellow socialites turned on him. Even his alma mater almost removed him from the board of trustees. He did his best to ride out the scandal, hoping that it would die down soon. Only one person probably saw the full extent of his anxiety, his private secretary, Hugh Plunkett. But Hugh couldn't help because he was crumbling under the pressure too.

He hadn't been indicted in the federal case, but he probably thought it was only a matter of time. After all, only three people were in the room when Ned handed over the cash, and Hugh was one of them. And even if he didn't get charged with anything, he knew he'd be called to testify in one of the upcoming trials.

That presented a serious dilemma. If he told the truth, he could endanger his best friend and employer. If he lied to protect Ned, he could be held in contempt of court. The first of many trials opened in October of 1924. To note, this proceeding didn't have anything to do with the federal indictments. It was a civil suit from the government that aimed to get rid of the Elk Hills lease.

but it would set the tone for the criminal trials looming on the horizon. Edward's lawyers argued that the entire Teapot Dome scandal was a political plot and that Edward hadn't participated in any kind of fraud or conspiracy.

But the following May, the district judge ruled against Edward, declaring Pan American used fraud to improperly secure the Elk Hills lease. He suspended the company's right to drill on the Naval Reserve and insisted the land be returned to the federal government.

It was a huge blow to the Dohenys, and it felt like the eyes of the entire country were trained on 8 Chester Place. The family craved an escape. Luckily, Edward had just the thing. He owned 400 acres out in Beverly Hills.

which was barely developed at the time, and he now wanted to turn it into a proper estate for Ned, Lucy, and their children. So, Edward gifted his son 12.5 acres of the land for only $10. He also hired a famous architect to design the mansion, which would eventually be known as Greystone.

Ned trusted only one person to wrangle the dozens of contractors, landscapers, and designers hired to work on the project, his right-hand man, Hugh Plunkett. Hugh is tasked with planning and supervising the construction, on top of his other duties as Ned's secretary. Managing any kind of building project is a difficult task, but this wasn't just any old house.

The floor plan laid out 55 rooms at over 46,000 square feet with a private movie theater, a speakeasy-style bar, and a two-lane bowling alley. There was a custom wine cellar, a walk-in fur closet, and a room just for wrapping gifts.

But the mansion was just the beginning. Multiple outbuildings were planned. The Dohenys wanted their own fire station and a garage complete with a mechanics shop. And Hugh had to coordinate all of it. Needless to say, he was overwhelmed. But he knew he couldn't say no to the Dohenys, especially now.

December 1926 brought a small victory for the family. Edward was ruled not guilty of conspiracy, but his impending trial for bribery was more of a problem because that implicated Ned too. Hugh was also nervous for that trial, certain he would be called to testify.

For the next 18 months, Hugh immersed himself in Greystone's construction. He spent all his time there, even moving out of his family home to live in an apartment closer to the building site. And then, in April of 1928, his boss and friend Ned was ordered to appear in Harry Sinclair's criminal trial for conspiracy.

Federal prosecutors wanted Ned to testify about the $100,000 he'd given Albert Bacon Fall. This was an issue. If Ned described the transaction to the court, he would essentially be admitting to bribery. Because his own trial was still on the horizon, his lawyers pleaded the fifth.

The federal prosecutors were desperate to secure a conviction against Sinclair, and they thought Ned's testimony could increase their odds, so they offered him a deal. If Ned participated in the case against Sinclair, they would drop his bribery charges. Ned's legal team accepted the offer.

He took the stand in Sinclair's trial and told the jury about his meeting with Albert to show that Albert was open to taking bribes. Despite this testimony, the jury wasn't swayed. They acquitted Harry Sinclair of conspiracy charges on April 21st, 1928.

This caused a nationwide uproar, but two trials still remained. The first was Albert's for accepting a bribe. The second was Edward's for offering it. Hugh was certain that he and Ned would be called to speak against Albert. If either of them admitted to delivering the cash, they could be sent to jail. Or rather, Hugh could be sent to jail.

Ned had immunity now, which gave him more of an incentive to tell the truth. Hugh knew that he would have to bear the consequences. Still, the loyal secretary couldn't give up on Greystone. He pushed himself harder than ever throughout the summer of 1928 and finished up construction in September. Ned and Lucy were delighted by their new home, but Ned was worried about Hugh.

According to later statements, Hugh wasn't sleeping regularly. He developed reliance on prescription pills and seemed more nervous with each passing day. He'd spent so much time working on the mansion, his wife officially divorced him, claiming that he'd deserted her.

The Doheny family physician, Dr. Ernest Clyde Fishbaugh, later said that Hugh developed a painful issue with his jaw and began to suffer from tremors. He fainted at the family's Christmas Eve gathering and was ordered to stay in a guest room at Greystone for his own safety. According to Dr. Fishbaugh, he was suffering a mental breakdown.

It soon became apparent that Hugh needed a lot more than a few days rest. As 1929 began, the Dohenys tried to convince him to take some time off and check into a sanatorium. Hugh resisted this idea at first, but he eventually seemed to change his tune. Records indicate he bought new clothes and got his car serviced on February 2nd. His roommate later remembered Hugh saying he'd be out of town soon.

It could have been an extended hospital stay, but all he said was he was planning on an extended vacation. Hugh was terrified to testify, but he'd never make it to the stand because a few weeks later, he was dead. Welcome to Naughty Island. Next on Naughty Yacht Island. I knew I deserved so much more, so I left. I finally switched to Metro and got what I was looking for.

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If Leslie White's phone ever rang after midnight, something was seriously wrong. The detective was an evidence specialist for the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office. He thought he'd seen the worst the city had to offer. He'd examined hundreds of dead bodies after a flood obliterated Ventura County. He'd come face to face with murderous bootleggers and millionaire scam artists alike. He'd seen the worst of the city's

But none of that could have prepared him for the call that came at 2 a.m. on February 17th, 1929. It was his boss, Lucian Wheeler, telling him to get to Beverly Hills as soon as he could. Someone had killed Ned Doheny. The detective had never handled a case like this before. These weren't everyday crooks or underworld kingpins. The Dohenys had reputations to uphold, but

and the resources to maintain them. But according to Richard Rayner's book, A Bright and Guilty Place, White couldn't get into Greystone easily. A heavy iron fence surrounded the property. As he approached the mansion, he noticed multiple armed guards roaming the grounds. Three of them stopped him at the gatehouse, and it took several minutes to verify his identity. Once he got in,

White noticed there were dozens of people at Greystone, including police, the district attorney's office, servants, and the family doctor, Ernest Fishbaugh. Ned's wife, Lucy, and their five children were around there somewhere too. White made his way to the guest bedroom. There were two bodies on the floor. The first was that of Hugh Plunkett, Ned's personal secretary and confidant.

He was splayed out next to the doorway, face down in a pool of blood. Ned Doheny lay nearby at the foot of the two twin beds. He was on his back with a halo of blood around his head. White took out his camera and started snapping photos, trying to piece together the evidence. The first clue? Their clothes.

Ned had on a green silk dressing gown and fine leather slippers. Clearly, he was getting ready for bed. Hugh, on the other hand, wore a pinstripe suit. He looked prepared for a business meeting. Both men had been shot in the head. There was an empty glass on the ground and an open bottle of Johnny Walker on the side table. Cigarettes lay next to both Ned and Hugh's hands. Ned's was unlit.

But Hughes was stubby and covered in ash. His fingers had fresh burns on them. He'd been actively smoking when he died, and it had continued to smolder for several minutes afterward. Detective White noticed something was radiating heat nearby. The detective carefully lifted up Hughes' torso. There was a gun pinned underneath him. A very warm gun.

White wrapped the weapon in a cloth, grabbed a few other pieces of evidence, and headed back up the stairs. He couldn't make heads or tails of the crime scene, but he hoped the witnesses would set him straight. Pretty much everyone in the house was willing to talk, and their stories matched up remarkably well.

So, the trouble started around 9:30 PM when Hugh arrived at Greystone. He parked his dark blue cabriolet next to the garage. Then he started rummaging through one of the cabinets in there, where he usually kept guns and fishing equipment. He casually walked toward the mansion's front doors, waving hello to a security guard along the way.

He used his own key to open the door. He trotted up the stairs and made a beeline for the master bedroom where Ned and Lucy slept. It was still relatively early in the evening, and the couple had just gotten to their pajamas. They jumped when they saw Hugh, who looked jittery and pale. His visit wasn't completely unexpected, though. Hugh had been arguing with Ned and Lucy earlier in the day.

He'd met with them and Dr. Fishbaugh for about half an hour earlier that afternoon, but stormed out when they recommended once again that he go to a sanatorium. The couple visited him at his apartment after that, where they pushed the idea even harder. The conversation quickly escalated into an argument, but Ned and Lucy left before they could come to any resolution.

A few hours later, Hugh called the house and Lucy picked up. He wanted, no, needed to talk to Ned. She wanted him to stay away. It'd probably be best to wait until morning. Clearly, this didn't satisfy Hugh. Soon enough, he was standing at the doorway in his pinstripe suit. He demanded to talk with the man he'd once called his best friend.

Ned knew it was useless to resist any further. He tightened his robe, put on his slippers, and offered to talk with Hugh in the guest bedroom downstairs. The men stayed in the room for about an hour and a half. Then Lucy heard a bang. She didn't think anything of it at first and assumed someone was moving around furniture. But a few seconds later, there was a knock at the door.

It was Dr. Fishbaugh. He said he'd been at the theater that evening, but was pulled away to respond to a phone call around 10.30. Ned wanted him to come to Greystone as soon as possible. The doctor didn't know what it was about, but he could only assume it had something to do with Hugh. Lucy led him down to the guest room. The door was hanging open.

Just then, Hugh leapt out into the hallway. He glared and told them to stay out. Then he slammed the door shut. There was another bang. This time, it did not sound like furniture. It was a gunshot. When the doctor finally pushed the door open, both Ned and Hugh were bleeding out on the floor.

As far as Fishbaugh could tell, Hugh must have fired the first shot as the doctor arrived around 11 p.m. That was the one that Lucy mistook for falling furniture. That meant Ned had already been shot when Hugh yelled at the doctor. After closing the door, Hugh must have shot himself. It was an engaging story, for sure. But Detective White wasn't certain he could trust it.

If the shooting occurred at 11, he didn't understand why he wasn't called till 2 a.m. Dr. Fishbaugh's arrival appeared to be a little too perfectly timed, and the servants' stories seemed a little too rehearsed. They all emphasized the same details, and none of them said they were alarmed by the first gunshot, which seemed odd.

The gun under Hugh's body was much warmer than it should have been. It had been fired more than three hours earlier, but it felt like it had been sitting in an oven. Then there were those burns. Hugh died with a lit cigarette next to his left hand. If Dr. Fishbaugh and the rest of the staff were to be believed...

That meant he lit a cigarette and held it with one hand while shooting Ned, slamming the bedroom door, and shooting himself with the other. It seemed preposterous. Before he left Greystone, Chief Investigator Lucian Wheeler pulled White aside and told him to take another look at the bodies once they got to the morgue. It seemed like the Dohenys were hiding something.

But the detectives couldn't be sure what. Around 5 a.m., Detective White went to the Beverly Hills Mortuary. Finally, he could take a good look at the bodies without any staff or dohinis breathing down his neck. He started with gunshot wounds. It looked like the bullet had ripped through one side of Ned's head and then exited the other. But when White leaned in to get a better look at the entry wound, he noticed something strange.

There were powder burns near his ear. That meant Ned was shot at close range, very close range. The gun was probably held less than three inches from his temple. Based on the witnesses' stories, White had expected Hugh to be the one with powder burns. He was the one who supposedly held the gun to his own head. Then the detective checked Hugh's bullet wounds.

He'd been shot in the back of the head and there were no powder burns whatsoever. White was stunned. He'd assumed Hugh shot Ned from a few feet away, then turned the gun on himself after slamming the door.

But these bodies told a very different story. The murder-suicide theory seemed more or less impossible. Hugh would have needed to press the revolver against Ned's skull and kill him execution style, then extend his arm all the way behind his head to shoot himself. None of it made sense. Following the examination, Detective White's mind turned to the strangely warm gun he found under Hugh's torso. It was time to test it.

He carefully unwrapped the revolver and dusted for prints. There were none. Not even a smudge. It seemed like someone had wiped it clean. White also couldn't understand why the gun had been hot when he found it. He fired it himself a few times, but it didn't heat up in any noticeable way. The warmth must have come from an outside source. Detective White was thoroughly stumped.

He knew the story told at Greystone that morning was wrong, and that Hugh probably wasn't responsible for both deaths, but he had no idea where to go from there. He'd only been in this job for a few months, and a case like this was far above his pay grade. After a quick call with his boss, the young detective decided to meet with the fearsome district attorney, Buren Fitz, at his home in Hollywood.

White spread out the crime scene photos and explained all the inconsistencies in the Doheny story to Fitz. He thought the case warranted a full-on investigation. And Fitz agreed. The investigation should be launched as soon as possible. White wanted to bring all of the Greystone witnesses back in for questioning. And there was one witness who White especially wanted to see again. Dr. Ernest Fishbaugh.

DA Fitz took the lead, and after several back and forths, he caught Fishbaugh in a lie. The doctor admitted that Ned wasn't dead when he first arrived. He actually bled out for about 20 minutes. During that time, Fishbaugh rolled him over so he didn't choke on his own blood. It was a last-ditch attempt to save the young man, but it didn't work.

Soon after this, the Los Angeles Times reported that Fitz was ready to start a, quote, sweeping investigation into the shooting. He didn't publicly discount anything that Dr. Fishbaugh said. According to him, the case needed a second pair of eyes to confirm the physician's account. The Times devoted more than two pages to the story. They described the crime in detail, or at least one version of it.

Even though Detective White and D.A. Fitz had caught Dr. Fishbaugh in a lie, the press didn't know that yet. In fact, their reporting seemed to solely rely on the family doctor's account of the evening. All the details match those given to the first law enforcement officers on the scene.

And the paper highlighted Hughes' alleged mental struggles multiple times. They described him as, quote, insane, mad, or crazed in almost every paragraph, and mentioned Ned's pleas for him to visit a sanatorium.

Additionally, there are errors and inconsistencies in the newspaper coverage. For example, one part of the article states that Hugh was open to the idea of a sanatorium stay during his afternoon visit with the doctor, but he's later described as being angry at the mere suggestion. And it appears that Dr. Fishbaugh contradicted himself on a few occasions, too. He told the Times that Hugh slammed the guest bedroom door before shooting Ned.

But he told another paper that the door closed gently. These small details could be honest mistakes. But it's worth noting that the Doheny family ran in the same social circles as the owners of these newspapers. Edward even shared a lawyer with Harry Chandler, the Times publisher. It's not impossible to imagine Doheny pulling some strings and insisting that Chandler's staff repeat the party line.

Hugh's body had been officially examined by the coroner's office at this point, and the newspaper included a quick summary of the medical examiner's findings. It stated that Hugh's bullet wound looked like he'd held the gun up against his own head and that gunpowder was found inside his skull. The autopsy was completely at odds with Detective White's observations. He'd noticed powder burns on Ned's temple, not Hugh's.

But it matched up with the official narrative almost as if it were planned that way. The DA called an emergency press conference just a few hours after announcing the investigation. He told reporters that there would be no formal autopsy on Ned Doheny's body. The inquiry was already over. Death certificates had been signed and both deaths were attributed to Hugh Plunkett's mental health.

The strange bullet wounds and warm gun weren't mentioned. The case was closed and that was final. Many have since wondered why the DA's office ate their words and who might have forced them to. White would be haunted by that question for the rest of his life.

He continued to believe the deaths at Greystone were not a straightforward murder-suicide. In fact, he was certain Hugh Plunkett had not shot himself, as the Dohenys claimed. He knew there was some manipulation of the crime scene before the police could arrive. He knew the investigation was killed abruptly, and he suspected Edward Doheny was behind it.

The detective was also shocked at how quickly reporting tapered off for such a significant crime. Within a week of the shooting, the articles had disappeared from newspapers almost entirely. That doesn't mean that everyone bought the official story. Alternative and underground newspapers boldly proclaimed that D.A. Fitz was lying. Some openly wondered if Ned and Hugh's deaths had to do with the Teapot Dome scandal.

In hindsight, it's surprising that so few people seem to make this connection at the time. Hugh had gone with Ned when he delivered $100,000 to Albert Baconfall in 1921. Both of them were about to become key witnesses in Albert and Edward's trials. Ned had been granted immunity in these trials and Hugh hadn't. This disparity probably ratcheted up the tension between the two men.

If Dr. Fishbaugh is to be believed, it might have affected Hugh's mental health as well. But as the years went on, researchers began to call that narrative into question too. In Richard Raynor's book, A Bright and Guilty Place, he points out that all the information about Hugh's alleged instability came from Fishbaugh and Doheny family insiders.

Other friends and relatives actually said Hugh was fine in the months leading up to his death. The upcoming trials were incredibly stressful, but he was far from the raging madman the Doheny family circles portrayed him to be. These theories didn't make it into the mainstream, though. Most people seemed to accept the murder-suicide theory and wrote it off as a singular tragedy.

After both men were buried, the Dohenys did their best to retreat from public life, but they couldn't stay out of the headlines for long. The Teapot Dome trials resumed less than two months after the shooting in April of 1929. Edward was called to testify at Albert's bribery trial on October 7th of that year.

He tried to convince the court that, as he'd been saying, he loaned his friend $100,000 for personal reasons and that Albert didn't have any criminal intent in taking the money. But the jury didn't seem to buy his arguments. On October 24th, 1929, Albert Bacon Fall was found guilty of accepting a bribe. Edward's trial was up next, and as the man who offered the alleged bribe, his chances didn't look good.

When he took the stand in March of 1930, he repeated the same arguments he'd been using for years, but his voice caught on his throat when he spoke about Ned. These emotional displays were probably unintentional, but they did buy Edward some sympathy. On March 22nd, he was found not guilty of bribery, even though Albert was already in jail. In the years since, the Doheny family remained tight-lipped about Ned and Hugh's deaths,

And historians have been hard-pressed to find any more information in Edwards' personal papers or diaries, because his wife is said to have burned them right after his funeral. This has turned the deaths of Ned Doheny and Hugh Plunkett into a bit of a black box. They've been labeled as solved since 1929, but so much evidence calls that into question, and plenty of alternative theories have shown up in the years since.

Some have said that Hugh was blackmailing Ned. Others wondered if a third person was in the room and shot both of them. Many have speculated that Ned and Hugh were romantically involved. A few have even wondered if Ned's wife pulled the trigger. But there's one theory that shows up more than any other. It has to do with where Ned and Hugh were buried. It wasn't fully appreciated until Edward was in the ground too.

The young men's graves were placed just a few feet from each other at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. The Dohenys bought Ned a huge mausoleum that had been shipped over from Italy, but left his sarcophagus unmarked. Hugh's gravestone was much smaller. Its placement seemed intentional, though. It's a bit unusual to bury a murderer and his victim that close together.

almost as if they weren't a murderer and victim at all. When Edward Doheny, a Catholic, died, he was laid to rest in a cemetery far away from Ned and Hugh. It's only natural to wonder why Edward would choose not to be buried next to his beloved son. Some have wondered if Ned was disqualified from a proper Catholic burial.

At the time, the Catholic Church considered dying by suicide to be a mortal sin. They've changed their views in the time since, but in 1929, this meant that those who took their own lives couldn't be buried on consecrated ground. Remember the powder burns that Detective White found on Ned's temple? They indicated the gun was within three inches of his skull when it fired, which might mean he was holding it up to his own head.

In other words, the standard narrative might have gotten things backward. Ned could have killed Hugh and then himself, not the other way around. This theory seems to fit the physical evidence fairly well, but it's unclear why Ned would have killed his right-hand man and oldest friend. Because the investigation was shut down so fast, it's impossible to speculate with any degree of accuracy.

As the years go on, it seems less and less likely that anyone will figure out what really happened at Greystone on that night in February. But the mansion still looms over the Sunset Strip just like it did in the 1920s. Though the estate has been turned into a public park, the city of Beverly Hills decided to keep the thick iron gates up. In some ways, they're the most important feature of the mansion.

They remind visitors of the extreme levels of privacy and control that the Dohenys had in their heyday, and the secrets they were able to hide.

Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories. We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. If you're watching on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts or email us at conspiracystories at spotify.com. For

For more information on Ned Doheny and Hugh Plunkett, amongst the many sources we used, we found two books extremely helpful. A Bright and Guilty Place, Murder, Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age by Richard Rayner, and Dark Side of Fortune, Triumph and Scandal in the Life of Oil Tycoon Edward L. Doheny by Margaret Leslie Davis. Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story and the official story.

is noise the truth? This episode was written by Kylie Harrington, edited by Chelsea Wood, researched by Mickey Taylor, and fact-checked by Laurie Siegel. Video editing and sound design by Spencer Howard. I'm your host, Carter Roy.