Virginia Rappe

Case background and investigation

Virginia Rappe was a Chicago-born model and film actress who had appeared in a number of silent pictures. Her year of birth is disputed: Wikipedia, citing Cook County birth registers, gives July 7, 1891, which would make her 30 when she died, while other accounts, including one published by the Bar Association of San Francisco, give 1895.

On Labor Day, September 5, 1921, Rappe attended a party in a suite of rooms taken by comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. During the afternoon she became seriously ill in one of the bedrooms. According to the BBC, Arbuckle consistently said he had found her collapsed in the bathroom and had helped her to a bed. Rappe remained at the hotel for a time and was later moved to a sanitarium, where she died on September 9, 1921. The cause of death was peritonitis resulting from a ruptured bladder.

Maude Delmont, who had accompanied Rappe to the party, told authorities that Arbuckle had assaulted her. Arbuckle was arrested and initially held on a murder charge, which was reduced to manslaughter. Smithsonian Magazine notes that Delmont was never called to testify, and that medical evidence presented at trial indicated Rappe had a chronic bladder condition. The BBC likewise reports that she suffered from chronic cystitis.

Arbuckle was tried three times in San Francisco. According to the Bar Association of San Francisco, the first trial ran from November 14 to December 4, 1921, and ended with the jury deadlocked, a majority favoring acquittal. The second trial, from January 11 to February 3, 1922, also ended in a hung jury, this time with a majority favoring conviction. The third trial began on March 13, 1922.

On April 12, 1922, the third jury acquitted Arbuckle after deliberating for only a few minutes. The jurors issued a written statement saying that a great injustice had been done to him and that no evidence connected him with any crime. Despite the acquittal, Will H. Hays barred Arbuckle from the screen days later; the ban was lifted in December 1922, but his career did not recover.

No one else was charged in connection with Rappe's death, and the question of what caused her bladder to rupture was never resolved. She is buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles.