Wild conspiracies surround murder of 1950s ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ heartthrob, as his convicted killer seeks exoneration
Depending on whom you ask, the murder of “Rebel Without a Cause” and “Giant” star Sal Mineo was due to revenge, salacious Hollywood blackmail, Deep State CIA-linked assassins or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Now, criminal justice advocates are arguing that it was also a case of an innocent man being wrongly convicted and serving decades in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
In 1976, Mineo was a down-on-his-luck 37-year-old actor when he was brutally stabbed to death outside his West Hollywood apartment.
Lionel “Ray Ray” Williams, a black man with a long rap sheet and gang affiliations, was arrested and charged with Mineo’s murder in 1977.
The low-level criminal had never heard of the Hollywood heartthrob, and prosecutors alleged it was a robbery gone awry. Williams, now 69, said he had nothing to do with the actor’s slaying — and has always maintained his innocence.
“They wanted us all off the streets and that’s what they did. They sent a lot of people to prison,” he told the Post from his home in Bakersfield, Calif.
A new documentary about Williams’ case, “Unseen Innocence,” is currently playing at the Angelika Theatre in the East Village.
The film, and Williams’ advocates, allege that it all came down to a crooked police force desperate to close a high-profile crime, and that Ray Ray was a victim of corruption.
The year before his death, Mineo was shopping around a new film, “Sirhan Sirhan,” with himself playing the title character, a fictionalized version of the man who assassinated Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. The film intended to dramatize conspiracy theories surrounding RFK’s killing.
“I had always been convinced that Sirhan was the lone gunman who killed Kennedy, but now I believe there are grounds for doubt. If the film can influence the courts to reopen the case or force out new facts and answer questions, then it will serve its purpose,” Mineo said at the time.
Mineo was told to shut up about Sirhan, but he refused to. Some believe that got him killed.
One day, a mysterious man came to visit Williams in the clink.
The man said his name was Herald Blum, and that he was “a senator of some sort.” He made several trips to San Quentin to inform Williams he not only believed he was innocent — but a patsy.
He also wrote paranoid letters to Williams in prison, saying that he was being followed by the FBI and claimed to have known Mineo.
The shadowy “senator,” whose name doesn’t align with any elected officials of the time, also informed Williams of another theory: good ol’ fashioned sex and blackmail.
By 1976, Mineo was very openly bisexual. It was rumored that he’d slept with some of the most powerful men — and adulterous women — in Hollywood. His flagrant sexuality was a reason he struggled to get work. Legend had it that he felt scorned. Out for revenge, he threatened to publish a list of lovers unless they helped him out.
Five years before his murder, thugs broke into Mineo’s home and beat him so badly he was hospitalized. It was chalked up to a burglary attempt but a social acquaintance named Andreas Fontagne later said that Mineo and an accomplice had been threatening a Hollywood starlet with releasing a sex tape they recorded of her, and that the thugs were sent by the actress.
That alleged conspirator was “Hogan’s Heroes” star Bob Crane, according to Hollywood lore. Crane was murdered two years after Mineo, and his killers were never caught.
Four witnesses reported seeing a tall, blond, white man fleeing the scene of Mineo’s murder, with yellow locks bouncing as he ran away.
They also described what sounded like a planned hit — not the botched robbery prosecutors alleged.
https://nypost.com/2025/08/28/entertainm...-innocent/
Depending on whom you ask, the murder of “Rebel Without a Cause” and “Giant” star Sal Mineo was due to revenge, salacious Hollywood blackmail, Deep State CIA-linked assassins or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Now, criminal justice advocates are arguing that it was also a case of an innocent man being wrongly convicted and serving decades in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
In 1976, Mineo was a down-on-his-luck 37-year-old actor when he was brutally stabbed to death outside his West Hollywood apartment.
Lionel “Ray Ray” Williams, a black man with a long rap sheet and gang affiliations, was arrested and charged with Mineo’s murder in 1977.
The low-level criminal had never heard of the Hollywood heartthrob, and prosecutors alleged it was a robbery gone awry. Williams, now 69, said he had nothing to do with the actor’s slaying — and has always maintained his innocence.
“They wanted us all off the streets and that’s what they did. They sent a lot of people to prison,” he told the Post from his home in Bakersfield, Calif.
A new documentary about Williams’ case, “Unseen Innocence,” is currently playing at the Angelika Theatre in the East Village.
The film, and Williams’ advocates, allege that it all came down to a crooked police force desperate to close a high-profile crime, and that Ray Ray was a victim of corruption.
The year before his death, Mineo was shopping around a new film, “Sirhan Sirhan,” with himself playing the title character, a fictionalized version of the man who assassinated Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. The film intended to dramatize conspiracy theories surrounding RFK’s killing.
“I had always been convinced that Sirhan was the lone gunman who killed Kennedy, but now I believe there are grounds for doubt. If the film can influence the courts to reopen the case or force out new facts and answer questions, then it will serve its purpose,” Mineo said at the time.
Mineo was told to shut up about Sirhan, but he refused to. Some believe that got him killed.
One day, a mysterious man came to visit Williams in the clink.
The man said his name was Herald Blum, and that he was “a senator of some sort.” He made several trips to San Quentin to inform Williams he not only believed he was innocent — but a patsy.
He also wrote paranoid letters to Williams in prison, saying that he was being followed by the FBI and claimed to have known Mineo.
The shadowy “senator,” whose name doesn’t align with any elected officials of the time, also informed Williams of another theory: good ol’ fashioned sex and blackmail.
By 1976, Mineo was very openly bisexual. It was rumored that he’d slept with some of the most powerful men — and adulterous women — in Hollywood. His flagrant sexuality was a reason he struggled to get work. Legend had it that he felt scorned. Out for revenge, he threatened to publish a list of lovers unless they helped him out.
Five years before his murder, thugs broke into Mineo’s home and beat him so badly he was hospitalized. It was chalked up to a burglary attempt but a social acquaintance named Andreas Fontagne later said that Mineo and an accomplice had been threatening a Hollywood starlet with releasing a sex tape they recorded of her, and that the thugs were sent by the actress.
That alleged conspirator was “Hogan’s Heroes” star Bob Crane, according to Hollywood lore. Crane was murdered two years after Mineo, and his killers were never caught.
Four witnesses reported seeing a tall, blond, white man fleeing the scene of Mineo’s murder, with yellow locks bouncing as he ran away.
They also described what sounded like a planned hit — not the botched robbery prosecutors alleged.
https://nypost.com/2025/08/28/entertainm...-innocent/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
