Raven-haired and lovely, Susan Cabot was a moderately-popular stage and screen actress in the 1950s. As a young woman living in New York, she made her first screen appearance in a bit part for 20th Century Fox. Not long after, she moved to Hollywood where she worked for Columbia and Universal. Her roles were primarily limited to Westerns, and because of her dark features, she was typecast playing Native American women. Frustrated, she moved back to the New York stage. Again returning to Hollywood, she played supporting roles in a few more films. She finally landed a lead role in what would be her last picture, Roger Corman's THE WASP WOMAN in 1959.
Sadly, all during her career she had carried with her the mental and emotional scars of an abusive childhood which would continue to haunt her for the rest of her life. After retiring from acting, her mental state began falling further into the dark abyss of her past, eventually leading to clinical depression and suicidal thoughts.
This all culminated one horrific night in the winter of 1986, when her life came to an untimely end, the victim of a brutal murder in her own home.
Born Harriet Pearl Shapiro on July 9, 1927 in Boston, Massachusetts, Susan Cabot (aka Susan Cabot-Roman) suffered a relentlessly traumatic childhood underscored with abandonment and abuse. Her father deserted the family when she was still a child and left her with her mother, who was already mentally unstable and eventually committed to an institution. She was forced to live in foster care where (sources vary) she lived in between 8 and 14 different homes. After her passing, her psychiatrist revealed that she was "emotionally and sexually abused" at one or more of these households.
After graduating from High School in New York, she got a job illustrating children's books and sang at the Village Barn, a country music club in Greenwich Village. In 1944, she married childhood friend and artist Martin Sacker, which gave her the opportunity to free herself from foster care.
Interested in acting, she landed a bit part in the film noir, KISS OF DEATH (20th Century Fox, 1947) which was filming on location in New York. During this period she adopted her stage name, Susan Cabot. While performing at the Village Barn, she caught the attention of Columbia casting director, Maxwell Arnow (noted for discovering Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn), who invited her to come to Hollywood for a role in ON THE ISLE OF SAMOA (1950). She signed a contract with Universal-International and became moderately successful playing mostly in Westerns. She divorced Martin Sacker in 1951.
Over the next few years, Cabot broke her contract with Universal and went back to the New York stage. Sometime after 1954 she returned to Hollywood and played in eight more pictures, including the two genre films, THE VIKING WOMAN AND THE SEA SERPENT (1957) and her best-known (and last) role as THE WASP WOMAN (1959). Other than a guest spot in an episode of the TV drama series, BRACKEN'S WORLD in 1970 and a couple of local stage plays, she was retired from acting.
 |
| Susan Cabot in The Viking Women and the Sea Serpent. |
Film historian Tom Weaver later asked Cabot in an undated interview why she quit Hollywood after making THE WASP WOMAN. "I felt that I had more within me to explore, as a music and art major and as a person," she said. "And the way my film career was headed, I didn't feel that that was going to offer me a way to develop any more, except on a very superficial level. I mean, how many Wasp Womans can you do?"
Another question by Weaver foreshadowed what was to come in her personal life. After asking her if she enjoyed playing villainous women, she replied: "I loved it from the standpoint of their being a challenge, but it was very hard for me to play an unfeeling character -- to do or say something cruel to another person, not feeling it in my bones or in my heart, and know that that other person is suffering. I've been victimized by people like that, and it hurts."
Not long after her departure from Hollywood, her life took a unconventional and truly bizarre turn. This became clear years later, in 2017, when government files on President John F. Kennedy's assassination were declassified and made available to the public. The files included those from the FBI, CIA and other official agencies.
Reported as being discovered among the papers was a document that revealed the then 32-year-old Cabot was approached by an ex-FBI agent on behalf of the CIA, who wanted to her to date and (allegedly) "go to bed with" 24-year-old King Hussein of Jordan who was set to arrive for a visit to the United States. The document went on to say Hussein “was especially desirous of female companionship during his Los Angeles visit and it was requested that appropriate arrangements be made through a controlled source of the Office [italics mine] in order to assure a satisfied visit.”
The CIA wanted to make sure he wasn't disappointed. How Cabot's name came up is unclear. Cabot initially rebuffed the offer, but later agreed to meet him at a party.
She was ultimately "charmed" by him and they struck up an apparent intimate relationship that lasted for about seven years. During this period, she gave birth to a son, Timothy, on January 27th, 1964. Largely believed to be a child by King Hussein, other rumors claimed the father was actor Christopher Jones or her recently-married second husband, former actor and businessman Michael Roman. It was reported that Hussein, a Muslim, and regarded as a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, was forced to end their relationship after it became known that Cabot was Jewish. In any event, it is again reported Cabot began receiving a $1,500 monthly payment from Hussein (or from his government), believed by many to be child support. Although substantiated by an attorney in a newspaper report, this was later refuted by Michael Roman in an interview with Tom Weaver. The author said: "Whenever she needed anything, she’d call, and he would send some cash for her".
Timothy Roman was born with dwarfism and a pituitary gland abnormality. "Both the baby and I barely made it," Cabot said in a news report. "The poor little fellow spent his first four months in an oxygen tent." His size may have been partially hereditary, as Cabot was a short-statured 5' 2". Michael Roman raised and cared for the boy as his own son.
When he was about 7-years-old, Timothy began a government-sanctioned experimental treatment for his dwarfism which consisted of undergoing regular injections of a hormone derived from the pituitary glands of cadavers He eventually grew to 5' 4", but the drug's effects would have long-term effects, including contracting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a neurodegenerative disorder sometimes caused by, among other things, an inherited gene mutation. Symptoms include: memory problems, behavioral changes, visual and auditory disturbances, involuntary movements and blindness. There is no cure and it is always fatal. Incidentally, Mad Cow disease is a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob.
Sometime between the years 1975-1976, the Romans purchased a home at 4601 Charmion Lane in Encino, California. The brick house was tucked away above the busy San Fernando Valley thoroughfare of Ventura Boulevard, surrounded by palm trees and pines. Their seemingly halcyon home-life came to an end when Michael divorced Cabot in 1983, reportedly "due to Susan’s increasing mental instability and paranoia".
Now living with her only son, and with few exceptions, Cabot appeared to have assumed a life withdrawn from the activities of the outside world. Besides Michael Roman's claims about her mental health, there is no indication exactly when Cabot's life began to further unravel. It is probable that she had been experiencing mental health symptoms since her childhood or teenage years, but was able to either control or hide them, or might even have been unaware of what they were. Nevertheless, she and Timothy led a quiet, sheltered existence and largely kept to themselves. Certainly, no one knew what, if anything, out of the ordinary was occurring inside the Cabot household. A neighbor told THE LOS ANGELES TIMES that Cabot and her son were “very, very close,” and “She never went any place without him. He was very dependent on her.” Another claimed “she was… different.”
On the night of Wednesday, December 10, 1986, an event occurred that shocked Hollywood and the greater Southland.
Tomorrow: The account of one of the strangest crimes in Hollywood History.
