Ed Durston

I searched and found out he passed away in 2007....

To review who Durston was, he was a preliminary suspect in the Cielo case....

He was also present and the primary witness to the death/suicide of Diane Linkletter:

From October 6, 1969:

Interesting to note however, according to the autopsy report, there was no presence of drugs or alcohol in her system.

A first hand account of talking to Durston after Linkletter's death is by Bobby Jamison: (another suspect in the second homicide report, but was cleared ((100%)), as was Durston)....

"I went up to the apartment on Horn Ave. to talk to Ed Durston after Timmy Rooney told me Ed was in the apartment when Diane jumped from her 6th floor kitchen window. I also wanted to see Jimmy George, who lived below the apartment where Nancy and I had lived with Ed. 

From what I'd learned, Jimmy had actually been outside his apartment, and seen Diane falling to the pavement below. At first he'd thought someone was playing a practical joke and had thrown something out the window, but then realized it was a person. 

He didn't know at first it was Diane, and he'd seen her hit the ground. He was in shock, but ran over to where the person hit the pavement, and that is when he realized it was Diane. He told me he could not do anything for her, and it made him feel like an asshole. 

He said she was still alive when he reached her, and that she looked up at him but couldn't speak. He said she was bleeding a lot from her head, and he wanted to help her, but didn't know what to do. I knew Jimmy, and he was a happy go lucky guy, but on this day he was broken in a way that is hard to describe, just broken. 

I tried to tell him there wasn't anything he could have done, but how do you tell somebody that, after what he'd seen. He was the only one on the planet who had seen it; how the hell did I know how he felt, or what it was doing to him? It was the last time I ever saw him, and to this day I still don't really know how that may have altered his life.

When I got to Ed, he was doing better than Jimmy, but he still looked like he'd been through the ringer. I asked him, "What the fuck happened Ed, what the fuck was going on?" He looked up at me from where he was sitting and said, " I don't know man, I really don't know. We were just there, the two of us," he said, "talking a long time about life. You know, like half the night, and everything was OK. Then she just started acting crazy." 

"Whatta ya mean Ed, crazy how?" I asked. "Well, we were sitting on the couch, and she got up and went out on the balcony, and just started climbing up on the railing like she was gonna jump off. I ran out there and drug her off, and pulled her back into the living room, and pinned her down on the floor and said "What the fuck are you doing Diane? What the fuck is wrong with you?" 

Ed was ringing his hands as he told me the story. He was having a lot of trouble going over that night. "So did she tell you what was wrong?" I pleaded. "No," said Ed, "She told me she was just screwing around and everything was OK and to let her up because it was just a joke." Ed kept rubbing his hands together like he couldn't get them clean. He just kept rubbing them together. 

He continued on, "I made her promise me that if I let her up she wasn't gonna do anything crazy, and she said, "I promise." "I let her up, and she said she was going to go in the kitchen and get a glass of water, and I said OK." Ed looked like he might start crying at any second, and I didn't blame him, because it was too awful to comprehend.

"She walked into the kitchen and I turned around to watch her and she just climbed up on the countertop by the window over the sink. I ran in the kitchen and tried to grab her, but she just went out the window before I could get there." He paused for a moment, as if to get his courage up and said, "I had a hold of her ankle man, I had her by the ankle, but I couldn't hold her, I just couldn't hold her man." 

I stood there in front of Ed with this crystal clear picture of Diane's kitchen in my head, with her going out the window, and Ed trying to hold her by the ankle. I just broke down and cried like a little boy. I just couldn't believe that it had happened. I stood there in front of Ed crying, for I don't know how long. I just sobbed, because there wasn't anything I could do about it either."

http://bobbyjameson.blogspot.com/2008/07/part-72-me-jimmy-george-ed-durston-and.html

Ed Durston was also the last person to see Carol Wayne alive too....

Excerpt from Carol Wayne website http://www.tvparty.com/wayne.html )

According to published reports, Carol Wayne was on vacation in Santiago Bay, Mexico with Los Angeles car salesman Edward Durston on January 10, 1985 when (it has been reported) the couple had a argument about where they were going to stay that evening (they were scheduled to fly back to Los Angeles the next morning).

Durston checked into a hotel and Wayne reportedly left to walk down the beach (to cool off?). That was the last time anyone saw her alive. Local fisherman Abel de Dios found her limp body floating in the shallow bay waters three days later.

Mexican authorities wondered how Carol Wayne came to drown in waters four feet deep, fully clothed. There were no cuts or abrasions, so a fall from the nearby rocks was ruled out. The coroner stated that death occurred 3 - 4 days earlier and the body tested negative for drugs and alcohol.

Suspicions were raised: Carol Wayne had to be identified by workers at the Las Hadas resort where the couple had been staying earlier in the week. When locals went to look for Wayne's traveling companion, they discovered that Edward Durston checked out three days earlier - leaving Wayne's luggage at the airport with a message that she would pick up her bags in the morning.

As an aside, many readers may remember the (alleged) LSD related death of Art Linkletter's daughter Diane. She jumped (or fell) from a sixth floor apartment building in 1969.

Art Linkletter basically ended his successful television career when he started crusading against drugs with a fervor that made it hard for middle America to find the afternoon talk show host funny anymore.

Not that it necessarily means anything, but Diane Linkletter's companion the night she was killed was Edward Durston.

According to early police claims, Durston was friends with Abigail Folger and on "speaking" terms with Voityck...he possibly knew Sharon Tate....from The Daily Reporter - October 10, 1969:

I want to make this clear;  Ed Durston was cleared of all involvement in these tragic deaths... he was never suspected nor charged in either the Linkletter or Wayne deaths...

This is for discussion only - I just find it odd that he was at the wrong place at the wrong time, in three tragic celebrity deaths.

Durston was a well known drug dealer in the Hollywood area, as was Bobby Jamison.  I highly recommend reading Bobby's blog/life story if you're interested in 1960's Hollywood, Sunset Strip, the recording industry, and an up and coming rock star that did not make it.  I admire Bobby for his candid truth and his hard path to sobriety.

http://lifeandtimesofbobbyjameson.blogspot.com/