SUSAN CABOT

Susan Cabot was an actress of the 1950s and early 1960s who is probably better remembered for her sad off-screen life than for her on-screen roles. She worked for Universal in the 1950s, appearing in many forgettable westerns and Arabian-themed movies, and at the end of the 1950s, she signed with Roger Corman, and she is best remembered for playing the monster in 1959's "The Wasp Woman". But she had a turbulent childhood, growing up in foster homes, and she had a much publicized affair with King Hussein, but that ended when he discovered she was Jewish (she was born Harriet Schapiro). She married her second husband in 1968, had a son who was born with dwarfism due to a defective pituitary gland, and divorced her husband in 1983. To "cure" her son of dwarfism, she enrolled him into a program for an experimental growth hormone made from the pituitary glands of corpses, and after 15 years, he was only slightly under average height. In her later years, Cabot's psychologist found her so troubled and ill that the sessions became "emotionally draining". Cabot lived alone with her son after the divorce, became increasingly unable to care for herself, and the interior of her home was littered with years of trash, and spoiled food. On December 10th, 1968, emergency services was called to the home to find Cabot bludgeoned to death. She was 59. Her son initially claimed a Latino ninja had killed his mother, but later confessed to killing her in self-defense when she attacked him with a scalpel. His defense in court was not guilty by reason of insanity because an unusually high percentage of the recipients of the experimental growth hormone ended up with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), a rare, incurable brain disease (usually seen in those who eat infected cow meat). It was also revealed that Cabot herself was taking the drug in an attempt to make herself look younger. In the end, her son was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, and was sentenced to three year's probation.