Greystone Mansion: Glamour, Wealth, and Scandal

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The Doheny Estate
The Greystone Mansion, 1930

The 55 rooms of the Greystone Mansion reverberate with whispers from glory days long gone. Perched atop 18 acres of land in Beverly Hills, the sprawling estate was built in 1928 by oil tycoon Edward Doheny as a belated wedding gift to his son. It cost $3.1 million at the time, or over $57 million today—some gift!

TW – There is a graphic image of the crime scene, found in the section “The Ill-Fated Night”. There are also descriptions of violence and possible suicide.

Woman sits by fountain in courtyard

The Setting: A Grand Estate

Currently a public park, the estate has been seen in countless films and TV shows, from The Big Lebowski to There Will Be Blood. The home’s Gothic/Tudor Revival style, thick limestone walls, eight ornate chimneys, and sweeping gardens look more suited to the English countryside than to the sun-drenched hills of southern California. The sheer scale of its opulence dramatically displays the wealth of old Hollywood’s ruling families like the Dohenys. But neither wealth nor aristocratic privilege could ward off the tragedy and scandal about to strike the Doheny family, an event of seismic proportions with Greystone Mansion at its very epicenter.

The Players in the Greystone Drama

Edward L. Doheny: The Oil Baron of the Southwest. His wealth came gushing out of the ground, transforming dusty fields into booming towns and making him a powerful figure in both business and politics. The man who made Los Angeles synonymous with oil.

Oil tycoon with white mustache and glasses
USC Trojan Magazine Photo of Ned Doheny

Ned Doheny: Edward’s son, born into a world of privilege but caught in the crossfire of his father’s ambition. He inherited more than just the family fortune—he inherited the family’s secrets.

Hugh Plunkett: Ned’s right-hand man, the trusted assistant who knew too much. Forever shadowed by rumors and unanswered questions, his loyalty was perhaps his undoing, luring him into the heart of a bloodied scandal.

Hugh Plunkett, man in side profile
Wedding Announcement for Ned and Lucy

Lucy Doheny: The distraught widow left to pick up the pieces of a shattered family legacy. Her poise and grace helped her endure the murmurs that followed her wherever she went.

District Attorney Buron Fitts, the ambitious district attorney with a relish for reform and a keen eye for political opportunity.

DA Buron Fitts portrait
Portrait of Dr. Fishbaugh, another older white man wearing glasses and a suit

Dr. Ernest Fishbaugh: The family doctor—quick to pronounce his verdict at the crime scene. He had been treating Hugh for two years. Summoned from a night at the theater, he arrived at Greystone to find himself thrust into the heart of a deadly scene.

Les White: An idealistic investigator with a reputation for calling it as he saw it. More accustomed to street-level crimes than high society scandals, his knack for uncovering the grittier truths of L.A. made him an invaluable asset.

An old-timey detective looking at clues on a board

Building a Dynasty

Despite his poor Irish background, Edward Doheny had a genius for spinning straw into gold. Whatever he did, whatever risks he took, he made money hand over fist. By the time Ned was born, Doheny’s wealth and power were legendary—and he groomed his son not only to fit into high society but also to dominate it.

Ned attended Stanford and USC, then married his sweetheart, Lucy. Her father owned the Pasadena Rapid Transit District Company, where Ned met Hugh Plunkett who became his assistant, right-hand man, best friend, and–it was rumored–perhaps a little more than that.

Doheny doted on his son, loved his daughter-in-law, and adored the couple’s five children. Such a golden family needed to live in a golden castle on a golden hilltop overlooking the mansions below. It needed to rival Hearst Castle for the opulence of its decor and antiquity of its paintings and ornaments. Such was the home Doheny built for them all.

Ned Doheny, his wife, their five children, and fifteen servants moved into Greystone Mansion in September 1928. It should have been a happy-ever-after story, but both father and son were aware that storm clouds were forming over Camelot.

The Teapot Dome Scandal: Corruption and Conspiracy Warren Harding, undoubtedly one of the most corrupt presidents in US history, was already embroiled in the Teapot Dome scandal, and its tentacles reached out to ensnare the Dohenys. Harding’s equally corrupt Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, didn’t have enough money to cover his debts, so in 1921 he offered a “bribe” to Edward Doheny—Doheny was to give him a gift of $100,000 in return for the lease of government-owned land to increase his petroleum holdings.

Newspaper Headline- Doheny Tells of $100,000 Loan to Fall

Strictly illegal, but that didn’t stop Doheny from putting his son and best pal Hugh Plunkett on a train to New York City where they withdrew $100,000 from a bank, carried it to Washington in a small black case, and delivered it to the grateful Secretary Fall.  By 1928 it was only a matter of time until the feds put all three of them on trial for bribery—and everyone knew it.

The Ill-Fated Night: Murder-Suicide?

On February 16, 1929, only four months after moving into Greystone Mansion, Ned Doheny and best friend Hugh Plunkett were found dead in a luxuriously appointed guest bedroom—both with a single gunshot wound to the head. Plunkett, dressed in a business suit, lay face down on the floor, still holding a cigarette that had burned down and singed his fingers. Doheny lay on his back, dressed in a green silk nightshirt and magnificent dressing gown. For the first couple of hours after the bodies were found, no one thought to inform the police. Or perhaps they needed that time to decide what the police would be allowed to see and hear.

The photo below is quite graphic, so jump if you’d like to avoid!

The Scene of the Crime

The Doctor Arrives

Ernest Fishbaugh, the family doctor, was already on the scene before the shots were fired. He’d been summoned from a night at the movies by an urgent message, relayed by a Doheny maid, that Ned needed him to come to Greystone at once. Unaware that trouble was brewing, Lucy Doheny warmly greeted him and escorted him to the guest suite normally used by Hugh Plunkett whenever he needed to spend the night.

Fishbaugh knew that Plunkett was depressed and deeply troubled but nothing could have prepared him for imminent murder and suicide. Looking agitated and almost beside himself with emotion, Hugh Plunkett appeared in the doorway. In tones almost approaching hysteria, he told Fishbaugh to get out then slammed the door in his face. The next moment, Fishbaugh heard the first shot.

An illustration depicting the crime scenes
An illustration from the LA TImes

A Convenient Conclusion

There was only one explanation acceptable to everyone present. Plunkett was out of his mind and had tragically shot his dearest friend and benefactor before turning the gun on himself.  No one doubted that Plunkett had been seriously mentally unwell for a long time. The doctor thought abscessed teeth had infected his brain.

The Dohenys, on the other hand, also knew he’d been worried to death about being arrested and put on trial for bribery. They knew Ned had been granted immunity for his role in delivering the bribe but Plunkett had not. They had all been urging him to go to a sanitarium but why? Was it concern for his failing mental health or fear that Plunkett, who knew every Doheny secret, might decide to cut his own deal with the feds?

All the way down this hallway and to the left is the room where the crime occurred.

Cracks in the Story

When Leslie White, a detective with admirable forensic skills, examined the scene and the bodies, he wasn’t ready to endorse such a convenient narrative. The ballistics didn’t make sense, nor did the position of the bodies—and neither did the blood pattern on Doheny’s face. But, despite his misgivings, he encountered the hard truth. In the words of the deputy who thought White had a point but was unwilling to back him up:

“Old Man Doheny is too big a man for me to monkey with.”

The Cover-up?

White took his concerns to DA Buron Fitts who swore that no amount of Doheny money and power would get in the way of finding the truth. But by the time he gave a press conference, Fitts–who hoped to be governor one day–was fully on board with the Doheneys’ version of events. After all, it would have been political suicide to call Doheny’s golden boy a murderer.

The murder happened in the room just next to this one.

Tudor living room with gallery and chandelier

The Aftermath

So the investigation was buried with the bodies, and the shattered Doheny family gradually went on with their lives. “Old Man Doheny” went on trial for bribery in 1930 and was acquitted. Lucy Doheny remarried a year or so after the shootings and lived to be nearly 100. The Doheny children grew up and took their place among LA’s social and philanthropic elites. And Buron Fitts made it as far as lieutenant-governor of California–but died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head at the age of 78.

An art deco tiled bathroom

Ned’s daughter’s bathroom

The Rumors Live On

What made their conversation as the two men drank their bootleg Johnny Walker turn so deadly? If Hugh arrived that night with homicide in mind, why did the murder weapon belong to Ned Doheny? If he was so alarmed by Hugh’s state of mind that he called in a doctor, why did he leave his gun within reach of a madman? Why was Doheny, son of a devoutly Catholic family, not buried in a Catholic cemetery? Did a desperate Hugh demand money to secure his silence? Or was it the end of a relationship already rumored to be romantic at the time? We will never know.

A grand staircase
The Grand Entry Hall

Greystone Today: A Legacy Shrouded in Mystery

Lucy Doheny continued to live at the mansion until 1955 when she sold the estate to Paul Trousdale who subdivided the property. Trousdale sold the mansion to Chicago industrialist Henry Crown who, when his wife refused to live there because of its lurid history, rented it out to the film industry.

By 1965 the mansion’s interior needed extensive repairs so Crown decided to demolish it and sell off the remaining land. To prevent that, the city of Beverly Hills bought the estate and renovated the mansion.The city opened it to the public as a park in 1971.

Both inside and out, it has been used in so many movies and TV shows that anyone seeing it in person for the first time is likely to recognize it. It’s a beautiful place that glows in the afternoon sunshine and bears no lingering trace of that fatal night so long ago.

Sources

Greystone Mansion Murders and Background:

● “The Greystone Mansion Murders of 1929.” Vanity Fair. Link.

Detailed History of the Incident:

● “We Shall Never Know: Murder, Money, and the Enduring Mystery of Greystone

Mansion.” PBS SoCal. Link.

Edward L. Doheny:

● “Edward L. Doheny.” Wikipedia. Link.

History of Greystone Mansion:

● “Greystone Mansion.” Wikipedia. Link.

Crime Magazine Article on Greystone:

● “Vintage Noir: Tragedy at Greystone.” Crime Magazine. Link.