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The original was posted on /r/unresolvedmysteries by /u/SniffleBot on 2024-01-21 12:38:52+00:00.
I have not been able to make an actual post here (as opposed to commenting) for some time due to having had some computer issues that limited how much time I could spend online for much of the latter half of last year. But they were resolved last month (i.e., I replaced my old computer, and finally installed the new one) and for my return I have chosen this case, which piqued my interest after having been alluded to in another thread here about Hollywood within the last year that I can't find.
I post it tonight as it is Saletri's 96th birthday. He probably wouldn't be alive today even if he hadn't been murdered, but still ...
The Black the Ripper mystery
When Frank Saletri's name comes up in connection with an unresolved mystery, it's usually not his death. His sole film credit is as writer, producer, director and star of the 1973 blaxploitation horror film Blackenstein, basically Frankenstein with a black cast, notable beyond that as one of the first American films (if not the first) to use the Vietnam War as a plot point (basically, the monster character was a U.S soldier in the war resurrected by science, to the regret of the other protagonists).
In the wake of that success, he planned another genre blaxploitation horror film: Black the Ripper (no prize for guessing the plot inspiration). Whether it was actually made is the chief question his life raises today when his name comes up among genre (or rather in this case, subgenre) film fans. It was actually too late to really be making more blaxploitation movies ... after the surprisingly huge success The Exorcist enjoyed with black audiences despite not having any black people in it, or anything, really, that explained why so many black people went out of their way to see it, the studios asked themselves why they were spending all this money on, basically, niche films, and stopped greenlighting new ones.
But that didn't stop independent filmmakers like Saletri, and in 1974 a Variety blurb indicates the film is planned, giving Saletri's name and the leads. Two years later the same publication reported that the film was being readied for a Memorial Day weekend release. Nothing more was heard about it, though, and after Saletri's death Black the Ripper sank into history as an obscure footnote to an obscure filmmaker's short career.
However, in 2013, someone scanning a directory on a BitTorrent server chanced across a listing for the film. They thought nothing of it until learning that the film was not believed ever to have been finished, and wrote on Dailygrindhouse.com that they saw it listed. They were unable to find their way back to where they saw it. But another user on the same forum claimed to have actually watched it, and posted what they said were screenshots from the film. If genuine, they are the only evidence that anything related to Black the Ripper was ever actually shot. Some others said they, too, had watched it, and that while feature-length it seemed incomplete, not only narratively but technically (i.e., the film had no end credits). There was enough to make the plot summarizable ... see the above link.
It should be noted that the original DailyGrindhouse post was made on April 1. This sets another level to an Internet mystery akin to My Immortal, but we'll just leave that there since this isn't what I came to write about.
Frank Saletri, The Man
There isn't much in the record about Saletri. What I can find says that he was born in 1928 in lllinois, joined the Navy during the Korean Conflict, learned to fly, and afterwards headed west to Southern California, where he apparently did whatever it took to become a lawyer. He appears to have practiced on his own rather than join a firm, specializing in representing plaintiffs in consumer law and criminal defendants. Most of his clients were, Crimefeed claims, people involved in the sex trade and other seamy industries that feed Hollywood's bottom, but he seems to have sometimes had some high-profile clients, such as a woman who one fine day in the 1970s let the media know that she would be streaking down Hollywood Boulevard, and did.
Outside of his work he had hobbies. He liked flying single-engine planes and self-published a book about Luscombes, and a history of the Ercoupe. He also, like so many people who make money in LA, dabbled in screenwriting, seeming particularly interested in genre mashups, such as a musical parody of The Maltese Falcon, and a Sherlock Holmes vampire movie. Since he had money, he could do more than just write scripts; by the early 1970s he was able to make Blackenstein, the sole script confirmed to have been produced out of the nine blaxploitation scripts he wrote.
Saletri's money also bought him a nice house in the Hollywood Hills. It is sometimes asserted that he also owned Bela Lugosi's mansion higher up in the hills, but this may just be be because he was a fan and told people that Lugosi had been a previous owner of his house (which does not seem to be the case, and he was referring in any event to another nearby house he had previously owned (now long-demolished for the Hollywood Freeway), which also was never Lugosi's). Stories that he owned a supposedly cursed mirror in which one of Belosi's wives had been murdered in front of are also dubious, not only because the house Saletri found it in had never been Belosi's but because Belosi's last wife survived him and his other two divorced him. The story may have come from confusing that with Saletri's death.
Saletri married once (other than it having ended in divorce, I cannot find any information about it) and had no children that we know of. He was however, very active in the local Count Dracula society, and his largest social connection was the Cauliflower Alley Club, a group whose members were mostly former pro wrestlers or boxers but also, since this was Hollywood, included actors who'd played wrestlers or boxers (Sylvester Stallone is a member, apparently). He was also active in the Midtowne American Legion post, and was elected its commander in mid-1982.
The Murder
Shortly afterwards, on July 12, 1982, the LAPD were sent to Saletri's home for a welfare check after his friends noticed that no one had heard from him or seen him for a couple of days. They found him dead from a single gunshot wound to the temple, inflicted (I would guess) at close range. The autopsy found that he had been dead for a couple of days ... that was a Monday, and he had last been seen having dinner with someone described as "an associate" the previous Friday night.
Detectives ruled out robbery or suicide as motives very quickly. Money and valuables that should have remained in the house and could easily have been taken were where they were supposed to be. In another room, there were signs of a struggle—several pieces of furniture overturned and broken in the living room.
The gun was not found. But the clearest indicator against suicide is one of the few things that make you go "hmm" in a case where that factor is markedly absent (although there is one other thing we'll get to in a minute). It isn't widely reported, the two LA Times stories I've been using as sources for this part of the story (one linked above; the other, from July 18, 1982, is available through newspapers.com if you have an account there) do not mention it, perhaps understandably, but it's in a lot of online coverage.
Whoever shot Saletri seems to have, after the killing, gone to the trouble of taking some instrument, most likely a screwdriver, to the wound and gouging out the bullet, most likely to avoid the bullet being traced to the gun used (This reminds me of the puzzling star-shaped shallow wound in the back of David Whiting's head (another unsolved Hollywood death, even if it took place in Arizona, because it was on a movie location) which I wrote about here almost a year ago. I wonder, now, if someone else had removed a bullet there). Another account, the only other Reddit post I've found that seems to be devoted to Saletri's killing, suggests his legs were b...
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