The $125,000 Question: Who Really Killed Hollywood Powerhouse Ronni Chasen?

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Oct 14

In the heart of Beverly Hills, just after a red-carpet movie premiere, the life of Ronni Chasen, one of Hollywood's most connected and beloved publicists, came to a violent and mysterious end. On November 16, 2010, the 64-year-old was gunned down in her Mercedes-Benz while stopped at a red light. The shocking murder of the woman who helped secure Oscar Gold for films like Driving Miss Daisy and The Hurt Locker instantly made national headlines.

Ronni's influential friends quickly offered a combined $125,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. This massive reward signaled that her inner circle wasn't convinced the killing was a random act.

A tip to America's Most Wanted led police to Harold Martin Smith, a man with a lengthy criminal record living in a rundown apartment complex. When confronted by detectives, Smith ended his own life with a .38 caliber revolver.

The Beverly Hills Police Department officially closed the case in 2011, declaring Smith the sole killer and the motive of a random robbery gone wrong.

However, this "solved" status remains highly controversial due to several glaring contradictions:

Ronni's purse was untouched and nothing was taken, contradicting the robbery motive.
Police claimed Smith was on a bicycle, but her autopsy report suggests an unknown vehicle pulled up beside her car.
The ballistic evidence was inconclusive; documents revealed the findings were "insufficient for an identification" to definitively match the bullet to Smith's gun.
Law enforcement was criticized for failing to interview multiple residents and for poor evidence collection.

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Mandy: [00:00:00] She was Hollywood royalty, just not the kind you see on the screen. Ronnie Chason built her career making Hollywood stars shine brighter. But one night after a movie premiere, she didn't make it home. Gunshots rang out in Beverly Hills and left Hollywood with a mystery it still can't quite solve.

Marker

Mandy: guys, and welcome to the Moms of Mysteries podcast, a True Crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa.

Hi, Melissa.

Melissa: Hi Mandy. How are you?

Mandy: I am doing wonderful. I am finally actually feeling like October

is here. We're over a week into it now, but I finally am like, okay, this is actually my favorite time of year. I love this time of year. It's get, things are getting spooky and I love that.

Melissa: They are. Have you, you or your kids figured out costumes for this

year?

Mandy: Um, I asked my

youngest recently and he basically had no ideas and I was like, well, we need to start thinking about it. Otherwise, it's gonna be like the week of Halloween and we're gonna be picking through whatever is left like we do every year because we [00:01:00] go through this every year. I haven't even asked my oldest what his plans are.

I feel like now he's at the age where he likes to do things with friends.

And group costumes and group things. So I don't know that they have even figured out what they're doing. I think I'm gonna go as scary Chucky this year.

Melissa: First of all, Chucky's. Scary. You can't be scary Chucky. That's just his thing. Um, oh, okay. Please. You

know, that's like my all time, like I was nicknamed

Chuck in high school because I was so scared of

Chucky.

So, um, yes.

Mandy: Well, I'm gonna dress

as Chucky and then I'm gonna come over and scare you.

Melissa: No. Okay. Well my son is gonna do the dinosaur, the inflatable one, and he tried it on yesterday and I went ahead and bought like a target had 40% off. So I bought the, like a fish costume that you just like put over your head. 'cause I know. As soon as we get started, it's go. He's not gonna be able to breathe.

You can't grab ca, there's, it's just gonna be

terrible. So I was like, I gotta back

[00:02:00] up all the way. I'm gonna be a Diet Coke can, which is not very

exciting. But Target

Mandy: How have you not done that, already? I

Melissa: I don't know. I love it. I was like, this is so easy. so yeah, I'm excited,

but, and my

daughter, I have, oh, actually she wants to be SpongeBob and her friend's

gonna be Patrick.

So, um, that's kind of how it

goes over here.

Mandy: Yeah. I mean, I feel like I don't, I'm, my kids have gone through.

Phases where they wanna have really complicated and complex costumes. And those are kind of fun sometimes. We've definitely had some really cool ones over the years that, you know, my husband has really gotten into

Melissa: Oh, I remember the um, yes. transformer.

was

Mandy: good. but we've had definitely some that

are really good. But I always am fine with it when my kids are like, I just, like, last year my oldest was, they, he. Him and his friends were doing minions, and I'm like, that's the easiest thing you could possibly do

for me. So thank you.

Like, you know, but uh, yeah, so we're not doing anything too crazy. I feel like now that my kids are getting older, there's not a lot

of hype about Halloween anymore. I mean, you know, I'm always hype about Halloween, but I don't know [00:03:00] they're

into it, but not in the same way they used to be. So.

Melissa: Yeah,

It says the

person that's going is

scary. Chucky.

I cannot believe this.

This is

Mandy: I'm just gonna go like that all day on Friday.

'cause Halloween's on a Friday this

year. So I decided I'm just

going to wear my Chuckie outfit and just walk around town all day

looking like that.

Melissa: Okay, well don't come around here. That's all I have to say.

Mandy: All right, so we'll get into this story for this week. This is a story that I've

actually never heard of, and I was surprised, and you'll see why as we get into the

story. So it was just after midnight in Beverly Hills on November 16th, 2010, a Mercedes-Benz was making its way down North Whittier Drive headed home from the kind of event that really defines Hollywood.

It was a red carpet movie premiere. The driver of the car was a woman named Ronnie Chason, and if that name doesn't immediately ring a bell. You're not alone. As I just said, she wasn't an actress or a director or anyone that you might recognize from the movie poster itself.

But inside the industry, Ronnie [00:04:00] truly was a powerhouse. She was the publicist behind some of the biggest films and award campaigns in Hollywood. But on this night. Ronnie wasn't basking in the glitz and glamor. She was just another 64-year-old woman heading home after a long workday. She called her office one last time to leave a to-do list for her staff, and six minutes later she was sitting at a red light.

When someone opened fire on her car, multiple shots ripped through her window and they hit her as she sat behind the wheel. Somehow Ronnie managed to keep driving for a quarter mile before her car swerved off the road and crashed into a streetlight. Neighbors in this upscale neighborhood woke up to the sound of either gunfire or the crash itself, depending on who you ask.

One woman said that she looked out her window and saw the Mercedes crumpled against the pole. Her family rushed outside and found Ronnie still alive, but barely clinging to life. She was bleeding heavily from her chest and struggling to breathe. Paramedics rushed her to [00:05:00] Cedar-Sinai Medical Center, but by one 30 in the morning she was pronounced dead. It was determined that Ronnie was shot with a 38 caliber revolver. Investigators believed the shooter had to be an experienced marksman. Early reports said Ronnie was shot five times From the outside of the car though, that number would later be corrected to four times.

But the damage was done and Hollywood had its latest scandal within hours news spread that one of the most connected publicists in the industry had been assassinated or possibly ambushed on one of the quietest streets in Beverly Hills. And the big question was, why?

Melissa: So before we go any further, let's talk about Ronnie. Ronnie wasn't born into the glitz of Beverly Hills. She was born Veronica Sue Cohen on October 17th, 1946 in Kingston, New York to parents, Carolyn and Irving Cohen. She grew up in New York City, in Washington Heights, in Riverdale with her brother Larry. Their father was a real estate [00:06:00] broker and their mother was a homemaker, and Ronnie was especially close to her mom, so much so that she cared for her mom until her death in 2000. As a kid, Ronnie was described as being athletic and gregarious, but she had her quirks too. Her brother Larry once told the New York Times that she actually won yo-Yo contest, hosted by Dunkin Toys, and when she was just five she had her first celebrity Encount.

At Madison Square Garden where she met the actress Dale Evans, who was actually Roy Rogers wife, nicknamed the Queen of the West, and Ronnie was so thrilled by this meeting. She told everyone on the subway ride home, I touched the Queen of the West, and And Larry said that moment was the beginning of it all. Ronnie was also very proud of her Jewish heritage. Her rabbi later said that she lived her life with Judaism at her core. once while at the Venice Film Festival during the high holidays, she actually walked the streets of Venice until she found a synagogue where she could attend services. [00:07:00] And that

really summed up

Ronnie. She worked hard, played hard, but she never lost sight of her roots.

Mandy: Ronnie studied journalism at Hofstra University, but her

first crack at showbiz was in front of the camera in the late 1960s. She played bit parts in soap operas like Guiding Light, and she even appeared on the Patty Duke show once she moved to Los Angeles in the 1970s. She dropped the last name Cohen and adopted Chasin, and this was reportedly after the famous Hollywood restaurant, Chasins, but acting just wasn't where she thrived.

Her brother put it bluntly and said rejection of acting wasn't for her. She was a natural publicist. Oh, how? She loved to throw a party and he was right. Ronnie really carved out her lane in publicity and Oscar campaigning, and she was very good at it. She worked her way up at American International Pictures and became executive VP of Motion Pictures at Rogers and Cohen.

Then senior VP of Publicity at MGM. By [00:08:00] 1989, she launched her own boutique firm, Chasen and Company, which she still ran at the time of her death. Her specialty was representing composers and songwriters. Think people like Diane Warren, Han Zimmer, and also campaigns that brought home Oscar Gold for films like Driving Miss Daisy, the Lord of the Rings, return of the King Slum Dog, millionaire Chicago, the Hurt Locker.

I really could go on and on. Morgan Freeman once said of her that she is someone he greatly admired and she will be remembered. Diane Warren even dedicated her Golden Globe win for the song. You haven't seen The Last of Me from Burlesque to Ronnie after her death. So this is definitely, if you don't know, you know, didn't know who Ronnie was, you definitely have seen, heard, or know of something that she has been involved in for sure.

But it wasn't just about work. She supported charities like the Tower Cancer Research Foundation. Project Rebirth Big Sisters and the Scott Newman Foundation and Friends described her as a [00:09:00] positive force of nature and an unshakeable support. When she was in your corner, she wore Armani suits, she collected art, and she also had some personal plans for the future as well, such as hip surgery in 2011.

And after that, she was going to go spend two months in Paris. She never remarried after divorcing really young and she had no children. But as you can imagine, with everything I just listed, her life was extremely full. And we have more to get into after a quick break to hear a word from this week's sponsors.

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Mandy: I.

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Melissa: This isn't quite holiday related, but I did get this beautiful cat litter box enclosure that looks like furniture. So it [00:10:00] hides Luna's litter box and you wouldn't even know that's where the cat does her business, which she very much does. And then I also grab this peel and stick wallpaper from Wayfair that completely transformed the hallway. and it's such an easy and

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Melissa: And now back to the episode.

Marker

Melissa: Before the break, we talked a little about who Ronnie Chason was. She was a trailblazer in Hollywood publicity, and really a woman whose story seemed destined for a happy ending. But back in Beverly Hills, investigators were facing a very different picture. A beloved publicist was dead. Her car riddled with bullets and not a single clue pointed to who did it or why. And the news of Ronnie Cha's murder spread like wildfire. The same day she died. Investigators were already combing through her office and even seizing computers. Really just hoping for anything that might point to a motive. And that's how big this was. Hollywood's go-to Oscar publicist being gunned down in Beverly Hills was the kind of story that made national [00:13:00] headlines instantly, and her friends didn't hesitate to put their money where their heartbreak was. Harold Matzner, the chairman of Palm Springs International Film Festival, as well as being a very close friend of Ronnie's, offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. Another long time friend Michael Levine added $25,000 of his own. That's $125,000 on the table within days, and that tells you two things. One, that Ronnie was incredibly well connected, and two, that her circle wasn't convinced this was some random act, but when the shock wore off, the rumor mill kicked in. One of the earliest and most persistent theories was that Ronnie had been the victim of a targeted hit. Hollywood thrives on gossip, and boy do I love Hollywood gossip, and I don't like this kind of thing, but other stuff. But this is perceived as Hollywood gossip. So people wondered, was it mob related?

Did she cross the wrong person in the industry? And then someone floated the idea of [00:14:00] gambling debts, but her brother And others close to her, shot that down immediately. And they insisted that Ronnie had no such baggage. Other theories got tossed into the mix too. Maybe it was road rage, maybe mistaken identity, and at that point, police really weren't ruling anything out.

But what they didn't have were absolutely any clear suspects And no solid motive, and that's where this case makes an unusual leap to prime time. So just days after Ronnie's murder, her story was featured on America's Most Wanted. Now if you know the show and you grew up watching it, like Mandy and I did, you know that they usually spotlight cold cases or fugitives who've been on the run for a while. It was almost unheard of to feature a case. Still in its earliest days of investigation, you were constantly seeing things like 25 years ago, this father of two left, you know, in the middle of the night, never returned. Have you seen him? And this is very, very different to be like a few days out and they have enough to make a segment on it. But of course, Ronnie was well connected and her [00:15:00] friends knew how to pull strings, and that's exactly what they did. And it worked. A man named Laramie Beque was watching and decided to call in a tip. so he actually lived in a rundown apartment complex on Santa Monica Boulevard called the Harvey Apartments Rent there ran about $650 a month, and according to Laramie, the place was a mix of struggling actors and musicians as well as families being packed into tiny units and also people battling mental health and addiction issues. It wasn't exactly what you think of when you think of Beverly Hills, and one of his neighbors was a man named Harold Martin Smith and Laramie thought Harold had just been acting. Well, suspicious the tip might have seemed flimsy to outsiders, Laramie's, just this guy with a weird neighbor. But it would set off a chain of events that led investigators to a man with a violent past, a growing

paranoia,

and ultimately a confrontation that ended in another

sudden

death.

Mandy: So let's talk more about Harold Martin Smith. Once he entered the [00:16:00] investigation, there was quite a lot to learn about him, and if Ronnie was someone who represented the polished side of Hollywood, then Harold represented Hollywood's underbelly. He lived at the Harvey Apartments on Santa Monica Boulevard, which is the same place that Laramie called his home.

So Laramie admitted that he actually didn't know Harold very well. He described them though as being polite and maybe even sensitive, and he said that sometimes they would share food from the food bank, but if you asked other people in the building, Harold had a different reputation.

A guy named Sammy told CBS that Harold basically just loitered out in front of the building for hours on end every single day. He said quote to me, he was mental criminal, but not so sophisticated. He had very bad vibes. End quote. This guy said he didn't think Harold was capable of pulling off a professional hit though.

Then there was another neighbor, Terry, who said that Harold quote had a screw loose. At one point, he literally walked [00:17:00] into her apartment completely uninvited, and she had to call the police. But not everyone thought he was dangerous. Another neighbor named Robin said that Harold was friendly and loved to chat.

He always worried about finding steady work because of his criminal record, and he mentioned a wrongful termination lawsuit that he had filed. He told Robin that he was expecting a payout from this lawsuit. That brings us to Harold's rap sheet. By 2010, he had actually racked up a string of convictions.

In 1985, there was a burglary in New York. Then he moved to California in 1991 and he got another burglary conviction. By the mid nineties, he was charged with robbery in Oregon. In 1998, he hit rock bottom. There were several robberies that landed him with an 11 year prison sentence. Within that year, he had held a woman at knife point and attacked another woman so violently that he broke her jaw by kicking her. He ended up going to prison and wasn't [00:18:00] released until 2007, but even after that, he still couldn't keep himself out of trouble. In 2009, he was arrested in Manhattan Beach for marijuana possession and loitering, and he did plead guilty to loitering and was fined $160, but he never paid that.

By September of 2010, there was an active warrant for his arrest, and here's really what made him all the more dangerous Under California's three strikes law. If Harold were to pick up another felony conviction, he could be sentenced to life. So that's kind of like looming over this whole thing. It's almost goes to that like.

When you don't have a lot to lose, you're willing to lose everything kind of thing. So they're like, he only has this one shot. if he's gonna do anything intentional, it's gonna be something big.

Melissa: Right,

So according to Laramie, Harold's behavior turned strange right after Ronnie's murder. Laramie claimed that less than two hours after the shooting, Harold showed up at his apartment asking weird questions like, had the police been here? Has there been anything on [00:19:00] tv? And then we haven't had this conversation. So the next morning, Harold knocked again this time asking for a dollar. He said he needed to get his bike back from Beverly Hills of all places. Laramie told the Hollywood reporter, I was at a loss for words. I knew what this was. Now, some people do question this timeline. Ronnie's identity wasn't released publicly until later that day. So really the question is, could Laramie have known it was connected only a few hours later? Regardless though, Harold's behavior kept spiraling. Six days after the murder, he was evicted for not paying rent. Laramie let him stash some of his belongings at his place. In the meantime. Then things got even darker. About a week after the shooting, Harold told Laramie, if I'm not back by Thursday, take my things because I'll be resting in peace. By this point, Laramie really thought that Harold was becoming paranoid and maybe even losing his grip on reality. [00:20:00] He even admitted later that he didn't call in the tip right away because Harold was black.

He already had two strikes, and as Laramie bluntly put it, quote, he'd be done for. So fast forward to December 1st, 2010, and Beverly Hills detectives showed up at the Harvey Apartments to talk to Harold. They found him in the lobby, told him to take his hands out of his pockets and said they wanted to ask him about Ronnie Chasins murder instead of answering, Harold pulled out a 38 Smith and Wesson model 67 revolver and shot himself in the head. He died instantly right there in front of them. Police found a flyer in his pocket for cheap lodging that was a hundred dollars per week, and some job postings, which was proof that he was looking for work and maybe a new place to live. and when they went back to collect the stuff, Harold had left with Laramie after his eviction, they claimed they found four empty shell casings in one of the boxes. But the story doesn't stop there. Another neighbor, Terry Gilpen, the same one who thought Harold had a screw loose. [00:21:00] Came forward after his death saying Harold had actually bragged about killing Ronnie. According to her. Harold Harold had been offered $10,000 to do it, though he was still waiting to be paid. His exact words were, you know, that lady on tv, that publicist. I did it. I did it. Terry said she and her husband really just didn't believe him at the time, so they never reported it. And just like that police were left with a dead suspect, a potential murder weapon, and a whole lot of unanswered questions. And we still have more to get into after one last break to hear. Were from this week's sponsors

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Marker

Mandy: Before the break, we laid out the night. Ronnie Chasins. Life came to a violent

end. We talked about the gunfire, the car accident, and the chaos that really followed. But as the sun came up over Beverly Hills, the focus really shifted. Within hours. The industry that Ronnie helped build was in full-blown panic mode, and there were headlines about it.

There was a lot of heartbreak and a lot of speculation in Hollywood, and that's where the investigation really began. Once Harold Martin Smith was gone, detectives were left with one big piece of evidence, and that was the 38 caliber Smith and Wesson model 67 revolver that he used to end his own life.

If they could tie that gun to Ronnie's murder, the case would be solved. At first, though, the story just didn't line up that [00:25:00] neatly. In early December of 2010, several newspapers reported that the gun Herald used on himself did not match the murder weapon, and that meant the police were right back at square one.

But then by December 9th, just days later, Beverly Hills police suddenly announced the opposite. They said that preliminary ballistic tests showed the bullets that killed Ronnie, most likely did come from Harold's gun. So notice the phrasing they used, which is most likely, and of course in legal terms, that means it's not a definite thing, not a 100% match, but just a very cautious, probably maybe, but still this is enough for them to really hang their case on.

From there, the official theory came into focus. This wasn't just a mob hit or an industry conspiracy. According to the police, Ronnie was the victim of a random robbery gone wrong. Sergeant Mike er told a b, C news quote. We believe it was a random act, and we believe Ms. Chason was going to be the victim of a robbery.

[00:26:00] The problem with that though was that nothing about the scene looked like a robbery. Ronnie's purse was still inside the car. Nothing appeared to have been taken, and even the logistics were really hard to imagine. Investigators said Harold had pulled up next to Ronnie on his bicycle and opened fire from there.

Neighbors did confirm Harold owned a bike, But as I just said, you have to imagine the scene of a man pulling up on a bicycle in Beverly Hills, somehow coming up to a Mercedes and tending to rob the person inside. Um, but firing multiple shots into the passenger side window, and then just like riding off on their bicycle.

Like it just, even for someone who is really a seasoned marksman, like that scene doesn't feel like it would be. Likely that it would be a hit or that it would be anything or a robbery or anything like that. It seems seems more like a riddle than like a real situation.

Melissa: So despite those glaring questions, the department pressed forward by January, 2011, which is less than two months after the [00:27:00] murder. Beverly Hills police officially declared that Harold Martin Smith was a man who killed Ronnie Chason. That's it. Case solved in their words. And by 2011, they closed the investigation completely Saying they reviewed more than 150,000 pieces of evidence and tips before making that call. But in 2013, when filmmaker Ryan Katzenbach Sued for access to Ronnie's autopsy report as part of his documentary. 6 38, the Death of Ronnie Chason. More inconsistencies spilled out. First, the autopsy corrected one of the earliest mistakes. Ronnie wasn't shot five times as news reports initially claimed. It was actually four shots once in the back, once in her right arm and back, and twice in the chest. Two of those wounds were instantly fatal. The bigger bombshell came in how the autopsy described the shooting. The reports state that an unknown vehicle pulled up next to Ronnie's car before the shots were fired, and that directly contradicts what Beverly Hills police had told the [00:28:00] public that Harold rode up on his bicycle.

And there's a big difference and not something you're likely to mistake a car versus a bicycle that's

pretty big. So to sum it all up, Police said the ballistics most likely matched, though not definitively, they called it a robbery gone wrong, but Ronnie's perch was untouched. They painted this picture of Harold on a bike while the autopsy describes a car and yet Beverly Hills police still declared the case solved. officially, Ronnie Cha's

Killer was

Harold Martin Smith, but unofficially the inconsistencies left. Plenty of room for doubt.

Mandy: Even after Beverly Hills police closed the case, the media still wasn't buying

it. Journalists, especially the Hollywood reporter, kept poking holes in the official story and they ran multiple pieces, questioning not just the Harold Smith theory, but also the way the entire investigation had been handled.

Thanks to the lawsuit brought by filmmaker Ryan Katzenbach. Hundreds of pages of case files became public, and [00:29:00] those files revealed details that painted a much shakier picture than this neat little robbery gone wrong.

Conclusion, one of the biggest problems was the gun police had claimed early on that ballistics proved Harold's revolver killed Ronnie, but the Hollywood reporter dug into that fine print. According to the actual case files, the bullets and Harold's revolver only showed similar general rifling characteristics and some agreement of individual characters.

So in plain English, that means they couldn't say for sure if it was the same gun. The documents literally state the findings were insufficient for an identification, but yet the police still closed the case. On top of that, the Hollywood reporter pointed out sloppy police work. For example, Ronnie's Mercedes wasn't even dusted for fingerprints on the passenger side, which is the exact side, the bullets came in from Investigators also declined to answer whether they had looked for or obtained any surveillance footage from the neighborhood, which it's Beverly Hills.

This is one of the most [00:30:00] heavily surveilled patches of real estate in this country. Surely there is footage somewhere. Somebody caught something.

Melissa: Absolutely. And the idea that this lady is

just driving through Beverly Hills at night in her Mercedes. If someone wanted to rob her, they would've robbed her. If they killed her, they killed her, but they would have robbed her. They would've known she had stuff with her. because of it being in an AFF fluent area, they're not gonna shoot her and then not even take her purse.

That makes absolutely no sense. So when reporters asked about those gaps years later, Beverly Hills police weren't exactly eager to revisit the case. In 2016, a spokesperson told the Hollywood reporter quote, we believe this is a closed case. We have no plans to ever reopen it, and quote Sanders Spagnoli, who became chief after the murder insisted quote. My understanding is that this was investigated with care and diligence by our staff. Our evidence, including ballistics matched, it was convincing and [00:31:00] conclusive. Quote. And the chief at the time of Ronnie's death, David Snowden doubles down two.

He said, quote, it was an attempted robbery that went south. There's nothing more to it then was in the initial investigation period, But industry insiders and law enforcement experts just weren't convinced. Retired LAPD Homicide Detective TT Williams Jr.

Said it was bizarre that there wasn't a single piece of footage or eyewitness testimony placing Harold Smith near the crime scene that night. He told the Hollywood reporter, there has to be some security cameras in that neighborhood that would've caught him. I mean, Beverly Hills, give me a break. You have a black man supposedly on a bike in the middle of the night.

He'd be stopped 15 times. would've stood out like a sore thumb. And then there was a problem of who the police didn't talk to. So several people who had been at the burlesque premier with Ronnie were never even interviewed. Even neighbors who lived right where the [00:32:00] shooting happened, some of which who actually reached out to the police department themselves. Weren't followed up with. By 2017, another 200 pages of case files were released confirming that Beverly Hills Police Department had failed to interview multiple residents of the neighborhood where Ronnie was shot. Uh, to that, the confusion over whether Harold supposedly shot her from a bike while the autopsy suggested it was a car, and you can see why the official story just never really satisfied people.

For many in Hollywood, the Beverly Hills Police didn't really solve the case

They just closed it.

Mandy: Even with The

Beverly Hills Police Department officially stamping the case closed. The story did not fade away. Hollywood, of course, did what Hollywood always does, and they turned it into TV. In 2011, law and Order, Los Angeles produced an episode called Benedict Canyon that was directly inspired by Ronnie's case and their version.

The Victim wasn't a publicist, but a Hollywood stylist that was killed in what turned out to be a Murder for hire plot. [00:33:00] That was one of the earliest theories in Ronnie's real case, was that she had been targeted for a professional hit. The episode aired in the spring of 2011, just months after Ronnie's death, which is proof that even scripted television can't resist the, you know, twists and turns of a story of a glamorous woman gunned down in Beverly Hills.

But while Hollywood dramatized it, the people closest to Ronnie were still grappling with their own doubts about how the case was actually handled. Remember Harold Matzner, that's the Palm Springs Festival chair, who offered a hundred thousand dollars as reward money. So after the police pinned the crime on Harold Smith, Laramie Beque, the neighbor who, uh, called in that tip tried to collect, but Matzner wasn't having it.

He flat out said he didn't believe that the case was solved, and he also argued the fine print, which is that the reward was specifically for the arrest and conviction of Ronnie's killer. And since Harold Smith was dead. There was no arrest nor conviction and therefore there would be no [00:34:00] payout. And he admitted that many of Ronnie's friends weren't comfortable with how quickly the police had tied things up, and they weren't convinced Harold Smith was the real killer, or at least he was maybe not the only one.

Melissa: Laramie though wasn't ready to walk away. He actually sued both Matzner and Michael Levine, who pledged the extra $25,000 for a combined total of $150,000. Eventually though the lawsuits were settled. Laramie got some money though, not the full reward. And what did he do with it? He bought himself a green Camaro. Years later, he told the Hollywood reporter that the whole thing left him scarred. He said quote. I had to use the money within a year or else I'd lose my disability and supplemental benefits. I see a psychiatrist to this day. Tipping isn't making one phone call and getting money. Every day. I think I'm getting into my car because a lovely lady died. I have PTSD from this case. LA Combat, not War. Combat. So in the end, the Beverly Hills police closed the [00:35:00] file. The reward fight turned into lawsuits, and Hollywood turned the tragedy into entertainment. And Ronnie Chasins friends, colleagues, and plenty of industry insiders kept whispering the same thing. Maybe Harold Smith did it. Maybe he didn't, but either way, the case still doesn't feel solved. Some people accept the official version that Harold was desperate, unstable, facing a potential life sentence under the three strikes law, and he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Others look at the contradictions though, and say, Nope, not buying it. What we know for sure though is that Ronnie Chason left an enormous mark in Hollywood. She launched campaigns that defined award seasons, championed composers and songwriters who might have gone unnoticed. And even in her sixties, She was planning new adventures. She was gonna have hip surgery, followed by a summer in Paris. She didn't get to live out those plans. Instead, she became a mystery, a Hollywood story with an ending that just didn't feel like an

ending at all.

I guess I can see both [00:36:00] sides, right? Like it's wild that somebody calls in to say that somebody did this and that he turns and Shoots himself when confronted. but the thing that really got to me is that one neighbor who said that he said he was given $10,000 for it,

but he hadn't been paid before. To me that theory, I don't know that that comment like kind of stuck with me. 'cause that would make sense, right? Somebody desperate taking $10,000 for a hit or whatever. I don't know. Like to me that was just something that really stood out that I was like, I could see it

either being him and he was paid to do this, or maybe not him at

all,

Mandy: Yeah, I agree. I

I don't really feel strongly one way or the other in this case. Um, I do definitely think that I don't buy that it was a robbery. I don't think that

was the motive behind it. I think for sure that, Ronnie was targeted on purpose, because of who she was. And,

but it is strange because there was no robbery.

So I don't think that was ever the motive to begin with it. It's just a very sad case.

Melissa: For sure.

Mandy: All right [00:37:00] guys. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode. We'll be back next week. Same time, same place. New story.

Melissa: Have a great

week.

Marker

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Marker

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Marker

Mandy: Do you know those mornings when you're already behind, you haven't had breakfast, and somehow everyone in your house still needs something from you? Yeah, that's my, every morning coffee is my love language, but [00:40:00] lately I wanted something that could keep up with me.

Melissa: And that's

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Right.

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