The Last Take

24:29So job one has been tracking down all those people Krista socialized with in her two years in Hollywood. If someone is violently murdered, you're never going to forget that. So far, though, few of them remember much, or are saying much. It's very interesting to go back and talk to these people, because people can't remember what their lies were. They can remember what the truth is. The neighborhood that we responded to in 1977 was a pretty upscale neighborhood. I was the lead detective on the case. I think we came in from this direction. We drove in this way. Brandenburg and Harris return to the crime scene with the one witness who is happy to cooperate.

25:14She was probably about like this. 83-year-old retired Los Angeles detective Larry Gansey. Earrings. She had earrings on. I know that. They're hoping to jog the memory of the original investigator. She had no identification. We don't know who is it. About the night Krista died. We found out that she was a party girl. She had come from a party with a girlfriend. She was headed over to see her agent, Sandy Smith. The house looks the same now as it did then, doesn't it? Exactly. This is me right here. They also opened the box of evidence Gansey started 31 years ago. Bringing back some memories? Well, yeah, yeah.

25:58She was bleeding quite profusely there. You could see that she had numerous stab wounds in the chest. Our thoughts then, we had a rage killing, that somebody was really upset with this girl. What strikes you as odd or unusual or interesting about this case? Well, the way she was attacked really sticks out. It was violent, a lot of passion involved. She was stabbed 22 times. 22 times? Yes. Bludgeoned? I'm bludgeoned also. This doesn't strike you as a random act of violence? No. It would be more of somebody was very mad at her. There was a side to Krista that seemed to provoke people. You sound almost charming.

26:49Because while many thought she was a barely passable actress on camera, off camera she was an infamous drama queen. Krista was the role of her lifetime. She loved the daily drama. One of her recurring dramas starred her beautiful and younger sister, Marisa, who learned the hard way the lengths Krista would go to. We'd party together and go to this party and that party. I was excited that I was meeting this actor and dating that actor and they were calling me. And she knew that and was really upset that it was me. When she started to see that I was attracting more attention than her, that started to wear on her.

27:33In an apparent jealous rage, Krista cut her sister off and threw her out of the apartment. She basically said, okay, now you're out on your own. She didn't care if I didn't have any money or a place to live. It sounds like there was a very cold side to her. Oh, just a definite cold. Cut it off and get back in her own world and push you aside. Would she step over bodies to get what she wanted? Would she use people? Yes. I would say so. Is that possible that that has played into what happened to her? I have always presumed that that was a part of what happened to her. Harrison Brandenburg thinks so, too, and wonder if Krista might finally have crossed the wrong man.

28:17As they dig deeper into the case, they find a startling confession of sorts. This guy bragged about doing the killing. His name? Rudy Mazzella. And he was known for his anything-goes parties, where Christo was a frequent guest. He was very flamboyant, very strange. He would do certain things like wearing nothing but a cowboy hat and a gun belt with a six-gun on it. And that's the way he walked around the house. But Mazzella was also a known drug dealer. He was a thug. With a bad reputation. He's a violent kind of guy. He was known to carry guns and knives. We spoke to his ex-wife, deathly afraid of him.

29:01Said that he would threaten her. What was Krista doing with him? He was in that other circle of friends, what we call the dark side of her life. The street people, the drug dealers, that would come to these parties. Rudy is a pretty big guy. Pretty powerful and scary guy. In this interview in July of 1977, a woman who frequented Mazzella's house told police what she had heard about him. My boyfriend told me Rudy had told him that he had murdered Krista. He didn't give a reason, but he said that he had murdered Krista. And was that followed up on back then? They did question Rudy, yes. They questioned him.

29:41He denied any involvement. Rudy was the kind of guy that would brag about things that maybe he didn't do just to get some notoriety and to boost his standing with people. With no other evidence tying Mazzello to the crime, the original investigators left it at that. Was he serious? We don't know, because the person he bragged to is deceased, and so is Rudy, so we can't talk to either one of them anymore. And now, three decades later, the Cold Case Squad can only wonder, is there any other lead? I don't know that we can actually eliminate anybody at this point. It does seem like something or someone had Krista spooked.

30:21My last visit with her, she had actually said that she was leaving Hollywood. Nicole now believes her mother realized she was in some kind of danger. I think that the fight just got to be a little too difficult for her. It got ugly. There were a lot of dark people and dark lifestyles that she didn't really want to be part of.

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33:3431 years into the Krista Helm case, detectives Larry Brandenburg and Tom Harris have uncovered a long string of boyfriends and girlfriends that Krista left in her wake. They now suspect jealousy may have been a motive in her murder. We've identified people that she was involved with who had other girlfriends, and those girlfriends found out about Krista. There were a couple other females that we believe that she was involved with sexually that were upset because she would be with men. So she had relationships with both men and women. Yes. And felt no compunction or loyalty to be with any one person.

34:20No. And no one person was off limits to her. Yeah, I mean, that was her lifestyle. The detectives are now focusing on Krista's final stab at fame, a recording session she set up in the winter of 1977. Go on and dance, dance, dance, child. They've gotten a firsthand account of the session from backup singer Debbie Danilo. She and Krista became good friends. Dance in the face of fear. Once in a while you meet someone and it's like you've known them forever. Soulmates, maybe. And when I met Krista, it was like she was an instant soul sister. The detectives now believe that the session exploded in a storm of jealousy and betrayal.

35:06It began when Krista apparently got involved with the record's producer. The top ten, the top 25. Well-known DJ Frankie Cronker. With Fast Frankie in the City. And I think that she was probably a boyfriend or sleeping with him. and so he had a beautiful Beverly Hills mansion and part of the music scene, part of the party crowd. And what was he like? Oh, very full of himself, rich. I'm somebody in Hollywood, you're not. Debbie says Krista flaunted the relationship. I remember that day telling Krista, I said, I don't think that it's going to work out with Frankie because I don't think he likes the way I'm handling the songs.

35:50And she said, don't worry about Frankie. I've got him by the balls. Debbie also claims Krista was having an affair with the other backup singer. Her name was Patty Collins, and Patty didn't like to share. Patty was very, very jealous of anyone being around Krista. Very jealous, very, you know, just watch your step kind of thing. As if things weren't complicated enough, the session's keyboard player, Blair Aronson, has told detectives that he was casually involved with Debbie. We were told originally that they were boyfriend, girlfriend. Some come back and say maybe casual dating. Some come back and say, well, that, you know, they were a pretty heavy item.

36:40I believe that Debbie had a more serious commitment to Blair than Blair did to Debbie. Then Blair dropped a bombshell. He told detectives that he slept with Krista the night before she died and that Debbie caught him. We interviewed Blair Aronson and he explained to us that he and Krista had spent the night together. We're in bed and they got up, were sitting on the edge of the bed and happened to look over and saw Debbie looking through the window waving at them. Blair and Krista were startled, obviously, by seeing her outside the window, but they laughed about it and she ran away. Debbie adamantly denies any involvement with Blair, or that she saw him in bed with Krista, and Blair declined to speak to 48 Hours.

37:28But detectives find the entire recording session suspicious, especially since Debbie and Patty were both abruptly pushed out. It seems Patty took the news especially hard. And apparently she was very upset about it at that time. We don't know if she was removed by Frankie Crocker or by Krista herself. When Debbie talked to the original investigators about Krista, she pointed the finger squarely at Patty. I told them that she had a female lover that seemed that she was extremely jealous. Alice, that was my first thought, that maybe her female lover killed her. Because every time that I was around her, she seemed so threatened and so dark.

38:15Just days after Krista's murder, Debbie packed up her entire L.A. life, disguised herself in a wig, and then made a mad dash out of town. I didn't want anybody to know who I was. I was afraid that somebody had killed her because she knew something she wasn't supposed to know. I thought, well, what if they think she told me? You know, I had never been around anybody that had been murdered. And I just wanted to be away from it. Frankie Crocker is now dead. Still, the cold case squad is left to wonder. Could Krista's killer have been a woman? It just seems like a pretty violent, really vicious attack for a woman.

39:04I don't think I would characterize it as that. I think when somebody is in a violent rage, I think their gender doesn't matter. Then investigators get a break. One of Krista's fingernails preserved for three decades yields DNA. It's obvious to us that she put up quite a fight. And a lot of times in that situation, you're going to find skin cells or blood or something from the other person under the fingernails. Even more intriguing, that DNA is from another woman. Did you try to match the DNA to a specific person? Well, we are requesting from people that we interview, at times we're requesting oral swabs.

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40:37I've been searching my heart to remember songs I've left behind. For nine long months I questioned why my God would forsake me. Debbie Danilow put Hollywood and Krista Helm behind her many years ago. But she never really got over the murder that struck so close to home. Changed me. Changed the way I looked at everybody in the group. You know, you start looking around going, who did it? Who did this? Who could have done this? You know? And it's scary. And then recently, out of the blue, she got a letter from Krista's daughter, Nicole. And it said, hi, my name is Nicole. I think you knew my mother as Krista Helm.

41:25And I am trying to find out information about her because I didn't know her. Shortly afterwards, Debbie heard from the cold case squad. Of course, they had gotten my name from Nicole. And they said, can we talk to you? I said, sure. But detectives Harrison Brandenburg didn't just want Debbie's memories. They wanted her DNA. And what they really wanted to know was if it matched the scrapings they had found under Krista's fingernails. We did collect DNA from Debbie Danilo, and it was not her DNA that was under the fingernails. There is no other evidence tying Debbie to the murder either, and she has told police she had nothing to do with it.

42:11Tom and I are in agreement. Debbie Danilow is much farther down on the scale as a person of interest in this case now. With the help of an anonymous tip, the Colquet squad finally tracked down the woman they believe was Krista's girlfriend, Patty Collins. Patty and Krista had a relationship according to more than one person. They had a close sexual relationship and a professional relationship. At some point, they had a falling out with one another, it looks like, according to these people. And was it serious enough for murder? We don't know that. But we'd like to talk to Patty about that. Hopefully she's home.

42:58Hopefully we can get an interview and maybe collect a sample of her DNA. Patty was happy to talk to the detectives and willingly gave them a DNA sample. But they were stunned by what she had to say. I do not know Christy Helm. I have no idea who she is. They showed me a photograph they thought was me, and it's not me. We're trying to bring closer. Not only that, Patty claimed she was never in Southern California. She was in Southern California. We know that. But for some reason, she's denying ever being there in her life. I got a feeling we'll be back to talk to her again. I really do. But not until they get the DNA results and confirm her identity.

43:39Meanwhile, they'll go after other leads. It's an ongoing process. We still have a lot of work to do. She was probably about like this. The Colkay squad's best lead might turn out to be the oldest lead of all. And it comes from the man who first worked the Christelhelm case, 83-year-old Larry Gansey. Sal Mineo's killer is the same killer that killed Krista Helm. In my own mind, I'm so sure of that, I bet the deed to my house that he is A1 number one suspect. Remember, Sal Mineo was murdered a year before Krista on the same day, and in the same way, a stabbing, and in the same neighborhood. method of operation the area of operation was so similar to sal minio's killing it's almost identical the man ultimately convicted of minio's killing was 21 year old lionel williams and he was thought to be in jail at the time of krista's murder but the cold case squad recently learned that Williams wasn't arrested until after Krista's death.

44:51Even more surprising, he was never questioned about Krista's death. I don't even know what he looked like. They never saw him. Never got the chance to talk to him. Shortly afterwards, Gansey and his partner were reassigned. And then Gansey left the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department for good. That's when the Krista Helm case went cold. I think this case has affected me personally more than any I worked, and you're not supposed to get involved. You're supposed to put everything behind, and you're neutral. You're just doing a job. But with me anyway, I couldn't put this one to bed.

45:48Meanwhile, Lionel Williams served 12 years for the murder of Salminio. In 1990, he was released from prison. He has been in and out of jail since this occurred. He's been arrested for other crimes. We believe we have an idea where he is living. We believe that he's not that far away, and we're going to go talk to him. So after sifting through all the drama of Krista Helm's life, The myriad lovers, the diary and the sex tapes, the tales of jealousy and betrayal. Could it really be that detectives will discover that Krista was simply the victim of a random, late-night street robbery at the hands of a career criminal?

46:33She was so young. She had so much time left. Krista's daughter, Nicole, now 40, hopes that discovering the truth about the murder will finally bring solace. She was 13 years younger than I am right now when she died. All Nicole has to remember her mother by are a scrapbook, a couple of B-movies, and the stuff nightmares are made of. In the end of one of her films, The Legacy of Satan, she's stabbed to death at the end of the film.

47:08And that was a little eerie as well. All I know is that she had told several people that she was terrified of knives, and she believed that was the way she was going to die. That's kind of freaky. Yeah. But Nicole still has a child's hope that justice will somehow be served, even after all this time. I believe that the person is still out there, and I believe that we're going to find closure one day for my mom, and we're going to find justice. And I believe that this person is, they know that they did it, and we're ready.

48:01Detective Larry Brandenburg says the connection to Sal Mineo's killer has been discounted because the crimes were so different. He said he and colleague Tom Harris would focus their attention on people who knew Krista Helm personally.