Murder Monday #9 Virginia Rappe

    

    Virginia Rappe was born on July 7, 1895, in Chicago. Her single mother died when Virginia was 11 and her grandmother started to raise her. Virginia started to work as a commercial and art model and in 1916 she moved to San Francisco to pursue her career. She eventually became engaged to dress designer Robert Moscovitz, but he was killed shortly later in a streetcar accident, causing her to move to Los Angeles. In 1917, she finally got her first movie deal playing a prominent role in Paradise Garden and costarred in Over the Rhine, where she won "Best Dressed Girl in Pictures," although this film wasn't released until 1920, where he released it as An Adventuress and then rereleased it in 1922, after Rappe's death, as The Isle of Love. In 1919, she began a relationship with Henry Lehrman, a director/producer. They became engaged and were living together, although according to the 1920s Census, she listed herself as a "boarder" in Lehrman's home and she also appeared in at least four of his films, although many of his films are lost. 

   On September 5, 1921, Virginia Rappe went to a party with Bambina Maude Delmont at Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle's suite, where Rappe suffered a trauma. She later died on September 9 from a ruptured bladder and secondary peritonitis. Shortly after her death, rumors arose: one that she had given birth to a child in 1918 and that the child was in foster care, which was proven false in her autopsy; and that she had previously suffered from a venereal disease. However, Bambina Delmont, the woman that went with Rappe to Arbuckle's party, accused him of raping Rappe and that she had died as a result of the assault.

  Arbuckle was formally acquitted after three manslaughter trials, although he was more or less blackballed in Hollywood, which caused him to work as a film director under the name of William Goodrich.