Ramon Novarro's house

This is the house where actor Ramon Novarro was murdered.

It is located at 3110 Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Studio City, California.

Several social media posts claim that the original house was torn down and replaced. However, this is untrue, as property records indicate that the current house was built in 1945.

Furthermore, newspaper listings from 1981 describe it as a one-story hacienda.

Over the years, it has seen a large number of additions. Building permits show that the two-story building at the front was not added until the late 1980s.

Ramon Novarro

Novarro was a leading Mexican-American actor during the 1920s and early 1930s.

He is best known for his roles in movies such as Ben-Hur (1925), The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927), and Across to Singapore (1928).

Novarro was a closeted homosexual who reportedly struggled with his sexuality due to his Catholic upbringing. He also knew that being openly gay would destroy his career as one of Hollywood's romantic idols.

Plagued by internal conflict, he soon turned to alcohol.

His career began to falter in the 1930s, just as the silent film era was coming to an end. By that stage, his battle with alcoholism had aged him so much that he could no longer play the part of a handsome male lead.

Although he appeared in movies and TV shows in the 40s and 50s, the roles were much smaller than his earlier work.

As his career declined and roles became less frequent, Novarro was forced to sell his home at 5609 Valley Oak Drive and move to Laurel Canyon.

Murder

On the morning of October 31st, 1968, the 69-year-old's secretary, Edward Weber, found him beaten to death in his bedroom.

Upon entering the house, Weber noticed overturned chairs and empty bottles scattered across the floor. When he entered the bedroom and opened the curtains, he saw Novarro's body on the bed.

His killers had tied his feet and hands together with an electrical cord. The autopsy report revealed that he suffered injuries to his nose, face, chest, arm, knees, and genitals.

The official cause of death was asphyxiation, as the actor had died from choking on his blood.

Novarro's killers were two brothers named Paul and Tom Ferguson, who had tricked the actor into believing they were escorts.

The Ferguson brothers were so convinced that the Ben-Hur star had a large sum of money hidden on the property that they decided to beat him until he revealed its location.

They refused to believe the actor when he explained that all of his money was tied up in the stock market and in bank accounts.

Convinced that Novarro was lying, Paul began to repeatedly beat him with a silver cane.

In reality, there was no hidden money, which means that the actor was tortured to death over something that didn't exist.

Following the murder, his killers tried to mislead the police by writing "Us girls are better than fa*gots" on a mirror.

This attempt to stage the crime scene did not fool investigators, who felt that such an obvious misdirection pointed to a male offender.

Arrests and trial

It did not take long for the police to locate the Ferguson brothers. While Paul was beating Novarro, Tom had used the victim's phone to call his girlfriend, Brenda Metcalf, in Chicago.

When the police looked at the outgoing calls and tracked Brenda down, she immediately gave them Tom's name and said that she had heard a man screaming in the background.

A forensic investigation revealed that the brothers' fingerprints were all over the house.

Following their arrest, Paul convinced Tom to confess to the crime. He argued that Tom would get off lightly because he was only 17 years old when the murder took place.

Initially, Tom agreed, as he believed that he was sparing his older brother from a life sentence or the death penalty. However, he changed his mind when he learned that prosecutors intended to try him as an adult.

At that point, he recanted his confession and told the authorities that Paul had killed the actor. During their trial, the two brothers tried to pin Novarro's murder on each other.

In September 1969, both men were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. However, they were released in the mid-1970s, as the law at the time allowed parole boards to grant early release even on life sentences.

After leaving prison, the brothers reportedly never spoke again.

Tom was found guilty of raping a 54-year-old woman in 1987 and sentenced to eight years in prison. He committed suicide at a motel in 2005.

In 1989, Paul was also convicted of rape in Missouri and given a 60-year sentence. He died in prison in 2018.