DEATH & THE MASQUE

In Hollywood in 1977, punk rock was exploding and a small band of scene-makers were flourishing in a dingy basement club. Little did they know a pair of serial killers would soon claim one of their own 

- JOE POMPEO

JANE KING SAT down at the bus stop on Franklin Avenue and stretched out her legs, crossing them at the ankles as she inhaled the nighttime air. Class had ended, and King was waiting to board an 89 for the roughly four-and-a-half-mile ride home.

Across the way, the old Château Élysée loomed over her. A palatial seven stories of Norman revival architecture, the building had begun its journey in November 1924, when the filmmaker Thomas Ince was stricken with chest pains during a party on William Randolph Hearst’s yacht. Days later, Ince died of heart failure, leaving behind $1.6 million for his widow, the actor Elinor Kershaw, who used a portion of her inheritance to construct the Château Élysée. (Gossipmongers whispered that she’d financed the Château with hush money from Hearst, rumored to have murdered her husband, but that’s another story.)

Over the next two decades, before it was sold and converted into an upscale retirement community that fell into disrepair, the Château served as a luxury hotel and apartment complex for Hollywood stars. Now, revitalized amid the towering palms, it belonged to the Church of Scientology.

The church had purchased the property four years earlier and turned it into Scientology’s inaugural Celebrity Centre, also known as the Manor Hotel, where a local theater company hosted an acting class in the basement. King had enrolled in the course, which is what brought her to the Manor on the pleasant Los Angeles evening of Wednesday, November 9, 1977.