On Trial For Murder At 14
The Story Of Cheryl Crane and the Murder of A Mobster
Since her earliest years, Cheryl Crane found herself in the media spotlight. She was the only child of the iconic Lana Turner, one of Hollywood’s most enduring sex symbols from the Golden Age of cinema. Crane’s life was immersed in scandal right from her birth, be it the questionable dealings of the movie industry’s influential figures or her mother’s numerous highly publicized romantic entanglements.
Cheryl Christina Crane was born on July 25, 1943, born to Lana Turner and B-movie actor Steve Crane. Her parents’ union was brief, and it was marked by turmoil. Crane, in fact, failed to mention that he hadn’t finalized his divorce from his first wife at the time of his marriage to Turner.
Shortly after Cheryl’s first birthday, the tumultuous relationship between Turner and Steve Crane, who likened life with the movie star to living in a “goldfish bowl,” came to a permanent end. When she reflects on her parents, Crane would often express a sense of being “captivated by them, yet I lived at a distance, like a princess in a tower.”
Turner ensured her daughter received an education at some of Los Angeles’s finest private schools and reveled in her role as a glamorous yet nurturing mother. Nevertheless, Cheryl Crane remembered, “I was well…
