This is the amazing story of a Hollywood star who committed suicide playing Russian roulette on a TV show and whose heart saved the life of a Las Vegas pimp.
After a meteoric rise in the world of showbiz, Jon-Erik Hexum’s life ended on October 18, 1984 when he held a blank-loaded .44 Magnum to his head and pulled the trigger.
The 26-year-old actor directed a scene on his own television show, the CBS spy adventure Cover Up, in which he played an undercover CIA agent posing as a male model.
Hexum became increasingly frustrated with the delays in filming the scene and began to play with the gun, spinning the barrel like a game of Russian roulette.
With a tragic accent, the actor playfully turned the barrel containing a cartridge, put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.
The gun shot out a wad of paper that shattered his skull and forced a bone fragment the size of a small coin into the center of his brain.
After losing several liters of blood on the way to the hospital, the actor underwent five hours of surgery and was placed on life support.
Six days later, Hexum was declared brain dead and his organs were harvested with the permission of his devastated family.
The New Jersey-born star had his heart transplanted into the chest of Michael Washington, a Vietnam War hero who also owned an infamous escort service called Swinging Suzy’s in Las Vegas.
Washington – twice awarded the Purple Heart for combat injuries – became obsessed with the actor towards the end of his life.
Speaking to Sun Online, Washington actor and Hexum archivist Doug Eames contacted him several times before the war hero died in 2002.
Eames sa: “I asked Washington if he felt any kind of psychic or spiritual connection to Jon-Erik after receiving his heart as we spoke.”
“Washington seemed a little surprised by my question and that he hadn’t had any supernatural experiences after the transplant, but that he simply felt a great desire to find out everything he could about Jon-Erik and his life.”*100027 *
Both Hexum and Washington were raised by single mothers after their fathers abandoned them when they were young.
Washington was interviewed on the CBS news program “West 57th” in 1985 and felt “connected” with Hexum.
He says: “I live because of him, so now I want to know about Jon-Erik Hexum.”
“So, now I’m going to ask questions. I send my mother to the store to buy books, to buy this, to buy that. I want to know more about this guy now.”
Washington said watching episodes of “Cover Up” “brought tears to my eyes.”
He added: “Because of this man I’m alive today – so it gets really personal.”
Despite Washington’s insistence, Hexum’s mother Gretha and brother Gunnar declined to meet him, claiming the experience was “too painful”.
Washington sa: “If the mother or brother were here, I would feel like part of their family.”
“It pains me to know that I received the heart of a tragedy.”
Prior to Cover Up, Hexum appeared on the NBC time travel show Voyagers, which was canceled after just one season in 1983, and appeared in the TV movie Making of a Male Model opposite British star Joan Collins. * 100047*
Hexum’s friend Elizabeth Dailly told the Sun Online that the ‘frustrated’ actor’s life was cut short by his own ambition and claimed he felt ‘stressed’ directing the TV show.
She says, “I remember it’s been a very strange couple of weeks. He was very stressed, more stressed than I ever remembered.”
“He just wanted things to move so fast. And he was in such a rush that he couldn’t even enjoy his life.”
“Ambition itself actually killed him. Not caring about that ambition.”
Hexum reportedly had a “fascination” with guns, something that affected fellow Cover Up co-star Jennifer O’Neill, who had also accentuatedly shot herself at her New York home two years earlier.
“Hexum’s fascination with her (guns) made her nervous, and she often asked him to be careful with guns on set,” says author Douglas Snauffer.
The show’s executive producer, Glen Larson, claimed that Hexum insisted on using a .44 Magnum for the scene – a gun that remains one of the most powerful handguns in the world.
Dailly sa Hexum was playful while confirming that he enjoyed playing around with firearms.
She says: “Jon-Erik was very athletic and was always playing around like a little buddy, with weapons and jumping and falling.”
“He was very prone to accent anyway, he got cuts or scratches because he was so athletic.”
“He was such a big man. When I heard that he was injured, I never thought that in a million years it would be life-threatening.”
And in a case of what Dailly calls “divine intuition”, the then 23-year-old woman canceled lunch with her friend to visit Hexum on set the day of his death.
She says: “I found it more important to visit him that day than to have lunch with my boyfriend.”
“It was always weird for me that I canceled this lunch because I could see him and thank God I did it because I had this special moment with him.”
But within an hour of Dailly leaving the set, Hexum was in a coma fighting for his life.
Ase from Washington, one of Hexum’s knees saved the life of a 5-year-old boy while his skin was transplanted to a 3-year-old who suffered horrific burns.
Both of the 26-year-old’s eyes were donated – one went to a 66-year-old man and the other to a young girl.
Hexum’s former boyfriend and roommate Nick Alan said he was dating the actor when he signed up as an organ donor.
Speaking to The Sun Online, Alan said: “When I was living with Jon-Erik, my little cousin needed a liver transplant – the donor was about 9 years old – and I said to Jon-Erik, ‘This is amazing Any K must die to keep my cousin alive.’”
“And Jon-Erik, knowing that, called me and said, ‘Meet me at the post office’, because at the time you had to have your driver’s license signed by a witness, and he decided to become an organ donor, my little cousin .”
Cover Up producers decided to continue the show after Hexum’s death and cast British-born actor Antony Hamilton as the new lead character.
But the action-adventure series never recovered from the tragedy and was canceled after one season.
Hamilton died of AIDS-related pneumonia in March 1995.
American actor and model (1957–1984)
Jon-Erik Hexum (born November 5, 1957 – October 18, 1984) was an American actor and male model, known for starring in the television series Voyagers!and Cover Upand his supporting role as Pat Trammell in the biopic The Bear. He died on the set of Cover Upby an accented, self-inflicted shot to the head from a blank bullet.[1]
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On October 12, 1984, the cast and crew of Cover Up filmed the seventh episode of the series, “Golden Opportunity,” on the 18th stage of the 20th Century Fox lot. One of the scenes filmed that day required Hexum’s character to load cartridges into a .44 Magnum handgun, so he was proven with a working gun and blanks. When the scene in the main shot didn’t go the way the director wanted it, there was a delay in filming. Hexum became restless and impatient during the delay and began messing around to lighten the mood. He had fired all but one (blank) cartridge, rotated it and—simulating Russian roulette—placed the revolver on his right temple and pulled the trigger,[8] unaware of the danger.
Some blanks use paper or plastic wadding to seal the gunpowder inside the cartridge. This floss is ejected from the gun’s barrel with sufficient explosive force to cause death or serious injury if the gun is fired within feet of the body, particularly at a vulnerable spot such as the temple or eye. The wad of paper in the gap expelling hexum didn’t penetrate his skull. However, the explosive effect of the muzzle blast caused trauma with sufficient blunt force to fracture a quarter-sized chunk of his skull and drive it into his brain, causing massive bleeding.
Hexum was taken to Beverly Hills Medical Center where he underwent five-hour surgery to repair his wounds.[1][9] On October 18, at the age of 26, six days after the accent, Hexum was pronounced brain dead.
With his mother’s permission, his body was flown on life support to San Francisco where a 36-year-old man from Las Vegas underwent a heart transplant at California Pacific Medical Center.[10] Hexum’s knees and corneas were also donated: one cornea went to a 66-year-old man and the other to a young girl. One of the Kney recipients was a critically ill five-year-old boy and the other was a 43-year-old grandmother of three who had waited eight years for a Kney. Donated skin was used to treat a 3+1⁄2 year old boy with third degree burns.[11]
Hexum’s body was then flown back to Los Angeles. He was cremated at Grandview Crematory in Glendale, California and a private funeral was held. His ashes were scattered by his mother in the Pacific Ocean near Malibu, California. He left a fortune estimated at $255,000.[12] Death was accentuated.[13] His mother later obtained an out-of-court settlement from 20th Century Fox Television and Glen A. Larson Productions, the production company behind Cover Up.[3]
The episode Hexum was working on aired on November 3, 1984, two weeks after his death.Cover Up Continuation of the production without Hexum’s character. Three weeks later, in the November 24 episode “Writer’s Block,” Antony Hamilton was introduced as Agent Jack Striker, posing as a new member of the modeling team.[14] Hexum’s character Mac is noticeably absent to be on another mission. At the end of the episode, Henry Towler (Richard Anderson) breaks the news that Mac was killed on the other job and wasn’t coming back.[15] As the tears flow, the camera pans back and a memoriam written by Glen Larson appears on screen:
When a star dies, its light shines through the universe for thousands of years [sic]. Jon-Erik [sic] Hexum died in October of this year…but the lives he touched will continue to be illuminated by his light …forever…and always.
Filmography
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Year
title
role
Remarks
1982-1983
Travellers!
Phineas Bogg
20 episodes
1983
Voyager from the Unknown
Phineas Bogg
Editing of episodes 1 and 15 of the TV series Voyagers!
1983
Making a male model
Tyler Burnett
TV movie
1984
Hotel
Prince Eric
Episode: “Tomorrow”
1984
The Bear
Pat Trammell
1984
Coverup
MacHarper8 episodes
Life and career
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Hexum was born in Englewood, New Jersey, in 1957 to Thorleif Andreas Hexum, a Norwegian immigrant, and Gretha Olivia (Paulsen) Hexum, a Minnesota-born American of Norwegian descent.[2] He and his older brother Gunnar were raised by their mother at Tenafly after their parents divorced when Hexum was four years old.[3]
After graduating from Tenafly High School, Hexum went to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland to study biomedical engineering[4] and soon transferred to Michigan State University in East Lansing. During this time he worked as a radio disc jockey, played football for the Spartans in 1978 and appeared in smaller stage roles.[5]
Few days after graduating, he moved to New York in 1980 to pursue his acting career. While working as a home cleaner, he met Bob LeMond of LeMond/Zetter Management, John Travolta’s manager. LeMond saw great potential in Hexum.[6]
At LeMond’s urging, Hexum moved to Los Angeles in September 1981 to audition for a film called Summer Lovers; he lost the role to Peter Gallagher. Hexum was soon cast as Phineas Bogg in Voyagers!, the lead role in the new NBC series.[7]Voyagers! aired during the 1982-83 television season, with Hexum’s role becoming his $10,000-a-week film Making of a Male Model, starring Jeff Conaway and Roxie Roker.[6]
Hexum guest-starred on an episode of ABC’s primetime drama Hotelin 1984, playing Prince Erik, a Prince Charming-type character. That same year, Hexum played terminally ill quarterback Pat Trammell, a small role in the feature film The Bear, a tribute to University of Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant, played by Gary Busey.The Bear would be Hexum’s only feature film performance, released just three weeks before his death. For the upcoming fall television season, Hexum has been cast as Mac Harper, an undercover CIA agent posing as a model, alongside co-star Jennifer O’Neill in Cover Up.
See also
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References
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