Where Are They Buried? (3 page)

In 2007 Heath locked himself away in a London hotel for a few weeks to develop the subtleties of the iconic twitches and cold-blooded laugh for his character impersonation of a murderous clown, The Joker, for the latest big-budget
Batman
sequel,
The Dark Knight
. Though it would turn out that he wouldn’t survive even to see its release, his performance was the talk of audiences and he won posthumous a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for the role.

On a winter afternoon at his Manhattan apartment, Heath’s masseuse found him cold and unresponsive on the floor near his bed and reacted in a fairly unusual manner—she called actress Mary-Kate Olsen in California. Olsen herself then phoned a New York-based security guard while, presumably, the masseuse madly searched for the phone book to find the number for 911. In any event, her failure to respond to the situation appropriately didn’t matter as Heath was already a long time gone. Autopsy would demonstrate he’d suffered accidental “acute intoxication” from the combination of two strong painkillers.

At 28, Heath was cremated and his ashes scattered near his grandparents’ gravesite in Karrakatta Cemetery, Perth, Australia.

MAY 27, 1971 – APRIL 25, 2002

Lisa Lopes, a feisty rapper, songwriter, and keyboardist, was the “L” in the multimillion-selling rhythm-and-blues group TLC as well as the catalyst and onstage focus of the trio. Her self-given “Left Eye” moniker came about because a boy once told her she had beautiful eyes, “particularly the left eye,” which was slightly larger, and she celebrated her nickname by wearing glasses with a condom over the left lens which was later toned down into a mere trademark stripe under the eye.

TLC’s breakout 1991 album,
Ooooohhh…on the TLC Tip
, spawned the hit “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg” and the group found
traction with their looks and wardrobe. Their 1994 album,
CrazySexyCool
, addressing safe-sex and black-on-black crime, was an even bigger hit and became the best-selling album by an all-female group, with 4 million-plus copies sold.

From the start, the TLC trio presented themselves as independent women and on the second album Lisa named herself “crazy.” That was also the year she pleaded guilty to arson for burning down her boyfriend’s Atlanta mansion; to avenge his infidelity and alleged abuse, she set fire to his tennis shoes and things got out of control.

In 1995 the group declared bankruptcy, saying that a meager royalty rate had left them broke. After a court upheld their filing and invalidated their old contract, TLC shopped for a new and better deal and roared back with another multi-platinum album. Followers in the fickle world of hip-hop stayed loyal and TLC toured sold-out arenas.

In 2002, as Lisa awaited the release of her first solo album,
Supernova
, she traveled to Honduras for a thirty-day spiritual retreat with family and friends. While driving a Mitsubishi Pajero minivan with seven passengers on a winding and rolling mountain road, Lisa lost control and the van went off the road, flipping several times. Thrown from the vehicle, Lisa died instantly of head injuries, the sole fatality of the mishap.

At 30, she was buried at Hillandale Memorial Gardens in Lithonia, Georgia. Here’s an excerpt of the 172-word headstone epitaph that hangs over her grave like a bubble of cartoon dialogue: “Who’s to blame for tootin ’caine into your own vein? What a shame your shootin’ aim for someone else’s brain.”

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-20 take Exit 74 for Lithonia Industrial Boulevard, turn left onto Hillandale Avenue and the cemetery is a half-mile on the left.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery and park in front of the office. Walk onto the lawn oriented so that your back is to the street, and you’ll see Lisa’s grave overlooking the pond, topped with the biggest tablet marker on the block.

AUGUST 23, 1970 – OCTOBER 31, 1993

Named for the river of life in Herman Hesse’s counterculture novel,
Siddhartha
, River Phoenix was a heartthrob teen actor who was idolized and critically acclaimed for his openness and sensitivity.

The golden boy’s early childhood was spent in Venezuela, where his parents worked as Children of God missionaries. Shortly after they moved to Los Angeles, ten-year-old River landed commercial roles that led to a television series
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
, and eventually a movie career.

Star potential in the vegan, politically minded actor first showed in
Stand By Me
, and later roles could often be mined for flecks of autobiography: In
The Mosquito Coast
he played the son of a renegade idealist who sequesters his family in a Central American jungle; in
Running on Empty
he gave an Oscar-nominated performance as the son of fugitive radicals; and in
My Own Private Idaho
, River’s character suffered narcoleptic convulsions.

As every generation faces the moment when the myth of its own immortality is shattered, so too did the Generation X’ers with River’s untimely demise. It came outside Johnny Depp’s hip Los Angeles club, the Viper Room, on Halloween in 1993. After seven or eight minutes of horrifying convulsions, with his sister Rain atop him in hysterics, trying desperately to somehow stop his spasms, River lay still and blue on the sidewalk when paramedics arrived.

He never regained consciousness, and River’s death was attributed to accidental “acute multiple drug intoxication” involving lethal levels of cocaine and morphine.

River was cremated and his ashes scattered at his family’s ranch near Gainesville, Florida.

APRIL 16, 1971 – MARCH 31, 1995

With a pouting smile and suggestive clothing, singer Selena Quintanilla was the ruling diva of Tejano music—“La Reina de la Musica Tejana”—and for seven years in a row was voted its best female vocalist. Tejano’s roots are in the bouncy and fast-paced polka rhythms that are popular in Texas, but Selena’s added twists of salsa and merengue resulted in a new and irresistible form of Tejano that found overwhelming popularity.

Born and raised in Texas, Selena had an impressive fan base in her home state, but she was most popular south of the border, where she succeeded in becoming the first American to conquer the enormous Mexican and Latin American markets. In 1993, her eighth album,
Amor Prohibido
, spawned four number one Latin singles and sold millions. But despite her triumphs in the Latin markets, it became apparent that to gain true critical acceptance, Selena needed to develop a coast-to-coast fan base in the States,
which required an album with lyrics sung in English. (Though English was her first language, Selena had always sung in Spanish.) Work on such a crossover album began and expectations were high, but Selena would never see its release.

Yolanda Saldivar was a rabid fan of Selena’s who started a grassroots Selena fan club. The club became the “official” fan organization, and, due to her assertiveness, Yolanda soon gained access to Selena’s inner circle. In 1993, when Selena introduced a clothing line and opened her own Selena Etc. boutiques, Yolanda’s loyalty was rewarded and she was named manager of the fledgling San Antonio store. But it turned out that Yolanda had almost zero business acumen, and matters soured even further when Selena’s father, through a casual audit of the business’s receipts, discovered that Yolanda had been embezzling funds.

Yolanda steadfastly maintained her innocence, and she drove to Selena’s hometown of Corpus Christi to meet with Selena, supposedly to present bank statements that would exonerate her. Yolanda checked into Room 158 at the Day’s Inn at Interstate 37 and Navigation Boulevard and, on a Friday morning at around 11:45, Selena arrived. No one is exactly sure what happened at the motel, but somehow Selena was mortally wounded by a gunshot to the back. Staggering into the lobby, a terrified Selena fingered Yolanda as the shooter and collapsed. Though Selena was pronounced dead an hour later, for all intents, she died on the floor of the motel’s lobby; when paramedics arrived there within minutes, she lay in a massive pool of blood with no pulse and no blood pressure.

In her red pickup truck, Yolanda kept police at bay for more than nine hours until she was taken without further shots fired. She was sentenced to life in prison and won’t be eligible for parole until 2026.

Meanwhile, Selena’s legacy lives on in her music, biographies, a movie, and her namesakes—in the five months following her murder, 619 Texas newborns were named Selena, a 600 percent increase over previous periods.

At 23, Selena was buried at Seaside Memorial Park in Corpus Christi, Texas.

CEMETERY DIRECTIONS:
From I-37, take Route 358 east to the Airline Road exit, then follow Airline Road north for almost two miles. Turn left on Gaines Street and the cemetery is a short distance on the right.

GRAVE DIRECTIONS:
Enter the cemetery and drive straight to the end of the drive. Turn right and, after 150 feet, you’ll see Selena’s grave.

JUNE 16, 1971 – SEPTEMBER 13, 1996

In the early 1990s Tupac Shakur joined the rap group Digital Underground, but he soon outgrew the group and went solo. His debut album,
2Pacalypse Now
, went gold, and a 1993 follow-up,
Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.,
saw platinum. That same year, Tupac costarred in the popular movie
Poetic Justice
, which further fueled his celebrity.

The next couple years were turbulent, and the pages turned quickly. In late 1994 Tupac was in and out of court—and jail—on sexual assault charges. Then, during a robbery (to his credit, he was the victim and not the perpetrator), he was shot five times. In February of 1995 Tupac was sentenced to 4½ years in prison on sexual assault charges. While passing time behind bars, his third release debuted at number one. In October of 1995, while the case was on appeal, Tupac was released on bail, funded by Suge Knight, the owner of Death Row Records. Tupac’s fourth release came in 1996 under Suge’s label, and it raced up the charts.

On September 7, 1996, the whirlwind ended abruptly. Tupac was gunned down in the passenger seat of Suge’s BMW while stopped at a traffic light near the Las Vegas strip. Six days later Tupac died without ever regaining consciousness. He was cremated and his ashes scattered by family and friends.

Since Tupac’s death, two others very closely related to his murder have themselves been murdered. Just two months later, Yafea Fula, a member of Tupac’s entourage and an eyewitness to his murder, was gunned down in New Jersey. Next to meet a bloody end was Orlando Anderson, who happened to have had an assault suit pending against Tupac at the time of Tupac’s murder. Further, just hours before Tupac was killed, he and his Crips gang brothers had rumbled with Tupac’s entourage in a hotel lobby. Neither of those murders has been proven to be directly linked to Tupac’s. To date, Tupac’s murder hasn’t been solved, though not for lack of speculation about who might have had reason to commit it.

JANUARY 29, 1927 – MARCH 14, 1989

The novelist and essayist Edward Abbey was a man mightily threatened by the encroachment of technocracy upon the individual and his environment. In his books and articles he profiled the West the way it once was, the way it is today, and the way he feared it would become unless the intrusions of civilization and industrialization were curbed. In his role as defender of the southwestern landscape, Abbey attained the status of a modern-day folk hero for ecological subversives everywhere.

Of his 21 books, the 1968 nonfiction work,
Desert Solitaire
, made his initial reputation, but seven years later Abbey eclipsed it with the riotous
Monkey Wrench Gang
. In it, he depicts a small gang of “monkey wrenchers,” a term he seems to have coined, as they sabotage road builders and others who would develop the desert.