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Article from the new (or new-ish) BENEDICT CANYON NEWSLETTER:

You may recall reading the LA Times’ story about “the 1950s B-movie starlet Playmate bunny whose ‘partially mummified skeletal’ remains were found by her actress/neighbor in Benedict Canyon.”

Well, I’m that neighbor.

I found Yvette Vickers on Wednesday, April 27th a little before 2 pm. I know the time exactly because the police who interrogated me for several hours (I did after all ‘technically’ break into her house) informed me “my call to 911 came in at 2:02 pm.”

I later learned from a neighbor that the police actually considered me a suspect for a while. I thought my neighbor was joking, but she wasn’t. I ask her does that make any sense? I murder her, wait nearly a year to break into her house yet again to “find” her and then call the police? And my motive?! Did you by chance find Yvette’s will carefully placed underneath her body leaving everything to Susan Savage, a neighbor she barely knew? Apparently, the cliché still stands ‘no good deed goes unpunished.’

You see, when I decided to scale a steeply graded hillside to get up to Yvette’s porch (bloodying myself in the process) to see if she was ok, I did so with the best of intentions. I would’ve gone in through the front gate like a normal person had it not been locked from the inside with 2 slide bolts at the top, a nail in the center, and a 2x4 bracing the bottom. Nobody was getting in that way. The neighbor directly across the street had his house on the market for sometime, and only learned on that very day, that he had moved out last June. So I went next store, and knocked on their front door (well, technically, buzzed the intercom), and a guy responded. I identified myself and asked if he’d seen Yvette. “Who?” “Yvette, your next door neighbor? Have you seen any activity at her house lately?” “What?” He didn’t even open the front door. I was on my own.

From the moment I saw yellowing mail at the bottom of her open mailbox and cobwebs for first time, I just had a bad feeling. There’s no logical explanation for it. But try explaining that to the cops after you’ve broken into someone’s house, I guarantee you it doesn’t look good and makes you seem a little crazy. Of course, when your feeling turns out to be right, at least they won’t charge you with a crime, but you still seem crazy.

Since that infamous day when my life and Yvette’s went viral together in over 900 newspapers worldwide…. our lives forever linked, archived by Google as one, I’ve learned a few things. And I’d like to share them with you. This is a cautionary tale. One, I hope can be prevented from ever happening again on our street or yours.

When LA Times broke the story, I was certainly not prepared for what followed. Reporters, photographers, news trucks camped out in front of my house for a week asking the same questions. Sometimes barely bothering to change verbs “What did the body look like?” “Can you describe the body?” “Paint us a picture of what you saw…you know, her body?” For the first time in my life, I had sympathy for Lindsay Lohan.

I learned a lot about human nature since then. It’s rather disappointing. There’s a story here, but it’s nothing that you’ve read, because none of it explains why.

Why did Yvette die like this? Where were her family and friends? Why were her compact fluorescent light bulbs, space heater and computer monitor still on, if she hadn’t paid the bills for nearly a year? Why was her phone ringing on the very day I found her? Someone was trying to contact her even then, but who? Why didn’t the neighbors directly across the street and next-door smell anything or care enough to check on her? Why was her mailbox only halfway full if she died sometime between June – August of 2010? Why didn’t our mail carrier alert anyone? Did she leave a will? In the end, did anyone really care about her?

I’ve never found a dead body before so I had no idea that I’d feel such a gnawing sense of responsibility to answer some of these questions. If you read the article in the LA Times on line, you may have seen some of the reader’s comments posted about the ‘horrible neighbors’ and ‘her miserable family leaving her alone to die such a tragic death.’ This comment, pretty much sums it up, “I condemn all of those who knew her and never bothered themselves to see if she was okay. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.” Many people all over the world expressed similar sentiments; perhaps some of you may have too? So…. for those of you, who may have lingering questions about the circumstances of Yvette’s death, I will do my best to answer them.

Why was the power still on? I had the same question. Her account had not set up to be paid automatically, so why wasn’t the power shut off? I know for a fact, because I saw her last exorbitant DWP bill. It was in her mailbox and it was current. I have since learned that when you get to a certain age (Yvette was 82), the DWP doesn’t automatically shut off your power even if you haven’t paid your bill in months. Perhaps, this is a courtesy to senior citizens? But still, why didn’t the DWP send out someone to check on her? The power had been on all that time, including a little white space heater that I shut off. It’s amazing it didn’t burn down the house. (And no, I didn’t catch the brand) For the record, until very recently, the lights were still on…perhaps; leading those neighbors living closest to her to believe that she was ok.

Why was the mailbox only halfway full? Why wasn’t it overflowing with mail since she had been dead nearly a year? As it turns out, Yvette went on vacation to visit friends in New Jersey in April 2010. She filed a vacation hold notice with the post office. No one is certain when she returned. She never contacted the post office to resume her mail. Hence, her mailbox was NOT overflowing with mail as it should have been. If it had, I’ve no doubt her immediate neighbors or for that matter, anyone passing by her house would’ve noticed something was wrong a lot sooner.

However, as there was a vacation hold, why was any mail delivered at all? (I’m glad you asked) Apparently, a few pieces of mail did occasionally get through over those many months, when our regular mail carrier, Gloria had her day off. I gather her replacement, who does her route doesn’t seem to pay much attention to vacation holds, mail stop notices, or even addresses (while we’re on the subject.)

Several disparaging comments were directed viciously at Gloria as to ‘why didn’t she alert anyone?’ the fact is she did! Gloria left several notes in Yvette’s mailbox asking her to call her directly at the post office. I know this for a fact, because as I was waiting for our local Fire Dept. 99 and the LAPD to arrive, I wanted to make myself useful so I started pulling Yvette’s mail out of her mailbox and began sorting. That’s when I found Gloria’s notes along with several other notes from concerned neighbors. Beyond writing notes, Gloria knocked on Yvette’s triple locked front gate many times over these months, and also she spoke directly with neighbors asking ‘if anyone had seen her?’ No one had apparently. But after speaking with Gloria, a neighbor, Karen Trent grew concerned and took it upon herself to investigate. Karen also left a note for Yvette, and started knocking on the doors of Yvette’s immediate neighbors. Only one neighbor was home; a couple that lived diagonally across the street from Yvette. He informed Karen, “Yvette regularly goes to Las Vegas.” As he didn’t seem concerned in the slightest, Karen relayed this information to Gloria, which I assume must have assuaged her worries. To this day, no one understands why this neighbor said that. Nor his wife saying as the police were milling about Yvette’s house that day “we used to always know when Yvette was up, because we could hear her music or TV blaring a way.” So, if you hadn’t heard anything in at least 10 months, weren’t you even a little concerned???

Our mail carrier never said anything to me about Yvette’s ‘vacation hold’ until that day, crying as she told me, “I knew something was wrong. I knew it.” If I had known about this ‘vacation hold,’ I would’ve broken in sooner.

And while we’re on the subject of the immediate neighbors, why didn’t they smell anything? I asked the police about that myself, they said “you would have noticed the smell the first month, but then it would’ve dissipated.” From the moment I entered Yvette’s house, I kept breathing deeply to see if I could smell anything, I couldn’t. Yvette’s house is a two-story, rustic dwelling set off from the street, draped over with ivy and bougainvillea, and the grounds are overgrown with foliage. I found Yvette on the second floor. The windows were slightly ajar on both floors. So perhaps, because of the open windows and the height of her house, you couldn’t detect anything from the street. The vegetation may have also acted as a filter.

There was a sign that I misread as well. Several weeks prior to my finding Yvette, new phone books were delivered to the residents of Westwanda and Reevesbury. As I walk my dogs up the street past Yvette’s house, I noticed her phone books were in front of her garage for a while. As they were delivered in orange plastic bags, it caught my attention. However, as Yvette wasn’t the only neighbor who hadn’t bothered to take hers in, I wasn’t overly concerned but I did notice. Then one day, the phone books were gone. I assumed Yvette had taken them, and everything was ok.

It wasn’t until that day…as I was trying to make myself useful, sorting her mail that I learned the truth. As I categorized her bills, letters, and junk mail, I figured the police wouldn’t care about a coupon to Bed, Bath & Beyond. Subsequently, I decided to pitch the obvious junk mail, and that’s when I opened her black garbage bin, and discovered the orange plastic bag with Yvette’s phone books. Someone had dumped them in her garbage bin. What I took as a sign that she was ok… clearly, I was wrong. Again, it would not have changed the cause of death, but maybe I would’ve found her sooner.

Why was the phone ringing that day? While organizing her phone bills, the bills kept increasing, despite the fact she hadn’t made any calls in months. The police answered this question too. They told me even if you haven’t paid your phone bill in months, the phone company will not turn off your landline as they want to make sure you can still call 911. This only applies to landlines, not to cell phones.

This may answer some of the logistical questions, but it doesn’t answer the family and friends questions. Where were they?! In the end, did anyone care about Yvette? In my search for her, the answer is yes, and many times over. However, the answer’s not that simple.

Yvette was by her own choice a reclusive woman. It’s funny, I’d known Yvette since 1992, but I can’t say I really knew her. Our dogs, Garbo and Orson used to play together many years ago, but when her dog, Garbo died, I didn’t see her much after that. Thinking back on their names, maybe we had a little more in common than I initially thought. But on that rare occasion when we would speak, Yvette only wanted to tell me about ‘the people parked in front of her house that were stalking her.’ After a half dozen conversations like that, I decided to keep my distance.

I’m happy to say, Yvette did reach out to a handful of neighbors on street. Some neighbors bought groceries for her; the neighbor above her trimmed her hedges and fixed her sprinklers; and another neighbor even got her out of her house to attend a neighborhood watch meeting 4 years ago. To my knowledge in the past 5 years, only one neighbor was actually invited into her house, and that was only because her phone wasn’t working. 

When Yvette left town in April 2010, no one knew she was gone because she didn’t tell anyone. Again, this was confirmed by the many neighbors’ notes I found in her mailbox, asking for her to give them a call. Her absence did not go unnoticed in spite of what you may have read.

I believe they were many people who cared about Yvette. I’ve spoken with her cousins in California, Arizona, and Missouri, and all freely shared their stories with me. But it was her cousin, Rosalee, who was able to shed some light as to what forever estranged Yvette from her family. It was Yvette who chose to cut off her family, not the other way around.

This seems to be a recurrent theme throughout Yvette’s life. In my search to find Yvette’s next of kin, I encountered this same abrupt severing of quite a few relationships. Yvette slowly but irrevocably seemed to cut loose anyone who really knew her. She compartmentalized her friendships…all her relationships for that matter. It seems I’ve become the repository of so many stories, piecing together this mosaic structure of Yvette’s life. Truly, it’s exhilarating when you find two pieces of this puzzle that actually fit together that shed some light on this mystery. Ironically, I’ve come to know Yvette better in death than I ever did in life, and I’ve grown incredibly fond of her. Of course, I don’t know who was calling Yvette that afternoon on April 27th, but I’ve no doubt in the end, she was loved.

This is a tragic story in any neighborhood. If there had been better communication on all sides, I believe Yvette would not have been alone when she died, and certainly not for this long. Unfortunately, given what I learned about her life and her behavior, her prophetic ending was written long ago. But WE have an opportunity to write a different ending for ourselves and for our neighbors, and this is how….

Get to know your neighbors, especially the standoffish, reclusive ones. If they’re anything like Yvette, they could regale with fascinating stories for hours. She worked on the first film that James Cagney ever directed. She dated Lee Marvin, Cary Grant, and several of my neighbors (who knew?) If I had known any of this, I would’ve been wearing a wire every time we spoke.
Be aware and observant of the older residents living on your street, especially those living alone.
Put together a neighborhood watch including names, addresses, phone numbers and car license plates as well. That way when you see a stranger’s car out front, you won’t think you’re being robbed; you’ll just know your neighbor Bob’s kid is home from UCLA.
Just because the lights are on at your neighbor’s house doesn’t mean everything’s ok! Call and check in on them. Knock, if you don’t have their number.
Just because the phone still rings doesn’t mean someone’s able to answer it. Again, be a good neighbor and go knock on their door.
Just because the mailbox is only halfway full doesn’t mean everything’s ok! Go and check yourself to make sure. Talk to your postal carrier maybe he or she can enlighten you about your neighbor’s whereabouts.
If you live so close to your neighbor that their stereo or TV is so loud that it starts startles you in to consciousness every morning, and you haven’t heard YOUR wake-up call in 10 months, it’s time to check on your neighbor!
When the ivy, bougainvillea, etc. are so overgrown that your neighbor’s front entrance is no longer passable; also, time to pay a visit.
Remember, communication is a two-way street. If you are an older resident presently living alone in Benedict Canyon, seek out at least one neighbor. Come on, they can’t all be idiots?! And preferably, someone’s who’s not 85! Develop a friendship with them, and hopefully establish trust. So the next time you go on vacation, you’ll feel comfortable enough to let them know. And of course, also let them know when you return.
10) Lastly, write a will. Do it today! I don’t care if you’re 20, and you think, you’re immortal! Write it! Then put it in a safety deposit box at your bank and leave it there for the next 1000 years (remember, you’re immortal!). Otherwise, your will may never be found, and your estate will be left to the state of California to determine who gets your home, your property, and all that you ever valued in your life. 

The real tragedy of Yvette’s death was that her life’s work: her recordings, film clips, photographs, clothing, furniture… everything that she ever cherished was thrown out onto the street, crushed by a bob cat, loaded onto a truck, and hauled away to the public dump. That’s what happens when the state can’t find your will, and a half-brother that hated his sister takes control of her estate. The swiftness and thoroughness with which he had ALL of Yvette’s belongings trashed was ironically, the very same moment, he gave her eulogy! The Half-brother, his wife ‘Lady Macbeth’ and her three Gorgon daughters will inherit everything.

Write your will! Do it today!

If you haven’t guessed by now, this whole experience has been surreal to say the least. And I’ve learned from this horrific experience is people will hang on your every word, but they don’t really listen. I hope you will. Get to know your neighbors. Some of them might actually be really cool, and at best, you’ll make a new friend. And when that time comes…theirs or yours, hopefully, you won’t be alone.

This is for you, Yvette, rest in peace. Your neighbor, Susan Savage

A peek inside Yvette's cozy dollhouse:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZjB2oHfh44