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Jean Spangler, Jean Spangler was a 26-year-old actress and dancer living in Los Angeles in the fall of 1949. She had appeared in several small film productions and was working steadily in the way that many young women with ambition and looks tried to work in postwar Hollywood — picking up B-picture roles, attending auditions, building something. She had a daughter. She had an ex-husband. She was managing, but not comfortably. On the evening of October 7th, 1949, Spangler left her home in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. She told her sister-in-law, who was watching her daughter, that she was first going to meet her ex-husband regarding a support payment, and then going to a late-night shoot on a film production. It was a plausible story. Night shoots were common. She left without much ceremony. Neither appointment existed. The following morning, her purse was discovered at the entrance to Griffith Park, a large urban park in the hills above Los Angeles. The strap of the purse had been torn, suggesting force. Inside was her identification, her money, and an unfinished note. The note was addressed to a man identified only as Kirk. It referred to an appointment in vague but pointed terms. It mentioned that a certain procedure, whatever that procedure was, could no longer be postponed. Investigators quickly formed a theory. The note's language, they believed, referred to an illegal abortion. Abortion was a criminal act in California in 1949. Women who needed one had few safe options and often relied on covert arrangements. The word Kirk and the reference to a medical procedure pointed, in investigators' view, toward exactly that kind of arrangement gone wrong. The name Kirk pointed toward Kirk Douglas. Douglas had worked with Spangler on the film Young Man with a Horn, which had recently wrapped production. He was interviewed by investigators. He denied knowing anything about her disappearance. He denied any personal involvement with her.