by Mike Thomas
“I gotta go,” Brynn tells Kathy for the second time, and hangs up.
From Wisconsin, Kathy’s husband Mike calls Los Angeles 9-1-1. He is told that officers have already been dispatched to the Hartman house.
Brynn is done making calls.
Settling into her king-sized bed with Phil’s body, she props herself up against the headboard with a pillow. In her right hand is the Charter Arms .38-caliber five-shooter she has owned for years and fired countless times. Inserting its two-inch barrel into her mouth, she squeezes the trigger. A fatal bullet passes through her brain and lodges in the headboard. Her head slumps toward Phil and her shooting hand drops to the right, almost touching him. Her index finger is still on the trigger.
Although one of the responding officers hears a single gunshot emanate from the master bedroom at around 6:38 A.M., he cannot be sure of its origin or target. The response team, therefore, proceeds to clear the other bedrooms, including Birgen’s. Once she is taken from the home and handed off to a female officer who carries her to safety, officers devise a diversionary tactic in order to extricate Brynn with as little risk as possible to her, Phil (whose precise condition at this juncture is unknown to anyone but Brynn), or themselves. It proceeds as follows: Two officers leave the residence and set up outside Brynn’s bedroom window. Its curtains are drawn. “Los Angeles Police Department! Come out with your hands up!” the lead officer, Sergeant Daniel Carnahan, shouts two or three times. There is no response. Using a found brick, one officer hurls it through the glass while simultaneously, inside the house, another forces entry into the bedroom. He is accompanied by uniformed backups.
They encounter a grisly scene. Phil and Brynn are both dead—that much is quickly ascertained. But no one knows why. Outside, just beyond the crime scene perimeter, concerned neighbors mill about worriedly. As media outlets get wind of the developing story, an onslaught commences.
Chapter 17
Etching on façade of Church of the Recessional, Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, 2012. (Photo by Mike Thomas)
The circus arrived quickly. Television, print, and radio reporters staked their claims outside the Hartman house, firing questions at LAPD media relations chief Lieutenant Anthony Alba. Along with squad cars and a police van mobile command center, yellow police tape with bold black letters that read POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS blocked the immediate area from cars and pedestrians. A brilliant sun and news helicopters hovered overhead.
As details began to emerge, Phil’s friends and family members—and even those who merely knew him casually or not at all except through his work—sat in shock before their televisions and phoned each other in tears. Jon Lovitz held an impromptu gathering at his home, where he expressed utter incredulity and angrily wondered aloud why this horrible fate had befallen his friend. Others, too, were in a state of drop-jawed, red-eyed incredulity.
Starting around nine A.M., a couple of hours after Phil and Brynn were pronounced dead and forty minutes before their deaths were called in by a West Valley detective, the L.A. coroner’s office began getting phone calls from media outlets seeking details about the case. At 10:20 A.M., two members of the coroner’s office—investigative chief Daniel Akin and investigator Craig Harvey—were summoned to the scene. Prior to their arrival, West Valley handed over jurisdiction of the Hartman case to the LAPD’s Robbery/Homicide division, to be co-led by veteran detective Thomas Brascia. He and his colleague, Detective David Martin, formulated an investigative team that processed the crime scene and coordinated with the coroner’s office.
But it wasn’t until 2:26 P.M.—roughly six hours after they arrived on Encino Avenue—that Akin and Harvey were allowed inside the house to begin examining and ultimately removing Phil’s and Brynn’s bodies. Brascia attributes the delay in part to a “transition of investigative responsibility” and says protocols were set up in ensuing years to allow the coroner quicker access. But Harvey, today the chief coroner investigator and chief of operations, questioned the extended holdup then as he questions it now. “Unfortunately, far too many LEA [law enforcement agency] investigators seem to believe that a death scene is ‘frozen’ in time and therefore they can take all the time they want to deal with that scene,” he explains. “That is only partially true. There are aspects that are frozen to the extent they are not disturbed. However, the human body and biological evidence are changing as the clock ticks.
“The proper management of a death scene is a difficult concept to grasp for some folks. The body, as the most fragile ‘item of evidence’ at a death scene, needs to be addressed quickly and evidence collected. Then the body should be removed from the scene and placed under refrigeration. The body’s value to the death scene is not so important that a sketch or photo would not suffice so that [it] could be removed.”
Still, he concedes, the six hours that elapsed prior to initial examination probably didn’t affect the results of his postmortem work in the Hartman case—though “really, we will never know.”
As more media arrived on the scene, friends and casual acquaintances of Phil’s and Brynn’s were plumbed for information. After Alba’s initial press conference, Commander David Kalish gave another one later in the day to update investigatory developments. Yes, it was a murder-suicide. Yes, they were still questioning friends and family.
On the day Phil died, Pakistan—neighboring India’s longtime foe—claimed it had conducted five nuclear tests. By late in the day, news of Phil’s tragic death had superseded that alarming announcement on many newscasts across the nation. Numerous friends and some family members learned about Phil’s horrible fate along with millions of others.
JOHN HARTMANN:
Nobody could have expected it. I didn’t even believe it when I first heard it. And I went down there instantly from the phone call that announced it to me to prove that it wasn’t true. But I heard the radio guys talking about it, and guys on radio don’t say things that way unless they’re true. By the time I got to the house, I was concerned about the children and I accepted that [Phil and Brynn] were gone.
I knew it was a murder-suicide before I got there. I was not allowed in the house that day because it was a crime scene. But I went straight to where the children were [the West Valley police station] and started to take care of them. That was the issue.
PAUL HARTMANN (FROM CANADA’S NATIONAL POST):
I had gone to town to get some plumbing parts and I was enjoying the ride, but when I pulled up to the house, there was my wife in the driveway. She had this look on her face that made me want to turn the car around.… I went inside and turned on the TV and there was my brother John, in front of Phil’s house, with a police lady. They were wheeling two people away.
NANCY HARTMANN MARTINO:
Mom would have reacted poorly to Phil’s death. Thank God, when he was killed, she was with me up at our ranch in [California’s] Anza Valley. If she’d have been home alone, turned on her TV and seen that, I don’t know what would have happened.
LEXIE SLAVICH (JOHN HARTMANN’S EX-WIFE):
I was moving to Northern California to start my business. And Ohara and [her then-boyfriend] Patrick were driving with me in my Accord, and the [moving] truck was behind us. The minute we pulled out of my parents’ home in Loma Linda, Arizona, that’s when I came across the news. As we headed into the mountains we couldn’t get any reception on our cell phones. But John’s wife Valerie finally reached us when we were approaching Phoenix. I answered the phone and said [upbeat tone], “Hi, Val!” And she said, “I can tell from your voice you haven’t heard the news. Brynn shot Phil and then killed herself.” Ohara was driving and I just blurted out, “Brynn shot Phil and then killed herself!” And Ohara just freaked out. I said, “Pull this car over!” John wanted me to put [Ohara and Patrick] on an airplane to have them take care of Sean and Birgen, and I said, “We are not separating. We’re driving straight to L.A.”
OHARA HARTMANN:
I could tell right away that it was r
eally bad news. Naturally, my first reaction was that something had happened to my dad or brother. I tensed up. My mom turns to me while I’m driving and says, “Brynn shot Phil and killed herself. They are both dead.” I remember breathing in so deep. I knew it was real, but I had no concept of how to process that information. Valerie told my mom that the kids were asking for my boyfriend and I, so we needed to get to L.A. as soon as we safely could. My boyfriend was in the moving truck, so I had to flag them down to pull over on the highway. When I did, I shared the news with him.
Now that I was safely out of the car, I remember just running out into the desert and running in circles and crying and screaming. It felt like the whole world had just fallen. I could not believe that two people who were such a big part of my life were suddenly gone. I couldn’t believe my cousins were now orphans. My heart hurt in a way it never has before or since that moment.
SPARKIE HOLLOWAY:
I’d seen a helicopter hovering over his house and went, “I wonder what that is.” I didn’t have the [TV] sound on. And then the first call I got was from work. I worked Fire Department dispatch and they had somehow leaked it back to the Fire Department dispatch that this was Phil. They all knew Phil was my friend, so I got a call at home: “Hey, Sparkie, turn on Channel 4. Somebody’s shot and killed Phil.’ And I turned that on. Phil was the best man at my wedding and there was another guy named Wally Montgomery who worked Robbery/Homicide. He called to tell me that they were investigating a homicide, and it was Phil. Then I had to sit and watch that stupid news coverage. They were talking about some other man in the house. And I’m going, “What the fuck is this? What are they doing? Do they have to keep talking, because none of this is going to be true. It’s all bullshit.”
MARK PIERSON:
We were all crying off and on for weeks. But I think Jon Lovitz, as much as anyone. Jon really knows that Phil opened doors for him and he wouldn’t be where he is today without Phil. Phil was Jon’s biggest benefactor.
JULIA SWEENEY:
The day he died, I felt a lot of compassion for [Brynn]. Because I had just gotten out of a relationship a couple of years before that with a very passive guy who was making me crazy with his passivity. And I could see how someone [like that] could make you go crazy. And I don’t even do drugs. I can only imagine how I would be if I was also doing drugs. That doesn’t make it right, but [it’s like], “Say something to me! Why aren’t you talking to me? Don’t look down! Or just say what you’re thinking about right now! Just talk to me. But don’t shut down when I’m upset.”
I really empathize with her, even though it was completely her fault and such a disaster how it came out. I also empathize with her about when she realized what she did. The bravest thing she did was kill herself. I thought it was a loving thing to do for Phil.
MIKE SCULLY (THE SIMPSONS):
The day it all happened was a day we were scheduled to have one of our Thursday morning table reads, which are always at 10 A.M. And I found out literally at 9:55 what had happened to Phil. I think it was [writer] George Meyer who came into my office and told me the news. He had just heard it on the radio. It was just such a shock; you couldn’t believe it. And everyone had already arrived for the table read. I decided to cancel the table read and I went down [to the room], and most of the people had not heard yet. So I got up to say something before the read. Frequently the showrunner will get up and welcome everybody, maybe do one joke and then you get started. That day I stood up and said I had an announcement to make and I could see it in people’s faces: They were kind of expecting a joke. And then when I tried to explain what it was, it was really horrifying to see the look of shock and disbelief that fell over people’s faces. They just couldn’t process what they were hearing; it was such a shock to all of us. And then we just quietly left the room. It was a very sad, shocking day on the show.
ALAN CRANNIS (FORMER GROUNDLINGS BOX OFFICE MANAGER):
Phil always took the time to come into the Groundlings box office and say hi to everyone. “How’s everyone doing? How are things shaping up? What’s the show look like?” And he always took it upon himself, after the show, to thank me, to thank the lighting guys, the tech guys, the people who walked onstage and moved the props. That’s the reason why—and this sticks out so strongly in my mind—during that very confusing time when we all first learned about his death, and up to the memorial service that was held at the [Groundlings] theater in his honor—I started getting phone calls from former lighting technicians, former stage managers. All of these other people who, like me, were in the shadows nonetheless remembered how nice Phil always was and wanted to pour their hearts out about what a tragic loss it was.
VICKI LEWIS:
When he was killed and I was still in that relationship [with Nick Nolte], I would ask Phil, “How do I guide my way out of this?” In those moments of despair and loneliness and fear, I don’t know why I went to him but I did. And I felt like he was there. The day that he was murdered, I was asleep and Nick came in to tell me that he was killed, and I knew he had been killed. And I sat up before Nick said anything and I said, “It’s Phil.” I just knew. And so I do sort of always have him there, like a Christmas tree ornament in my mind.
JAY LENO:
Not much shocks you after a while, but I remember going to work and having the radio on and hearing “Comedian Phil Hartman was shot by his…” What?! You know, in the movies, when people react violently to something they hear on TV or they look shocked? I always thought that looked kind of crazy. It really did that to me. I remember stopping the car and pulling over and going, “What?” Grabbing at the radio. “We’ll be right back after this…” And I thought, “Jesus.” It was so shocking and it made absolutely no sense. When you do this job you don’t really get to know people outside the show because you’re never outside the show, so I would always see Phil in a professional capacity. And he always brought such life to everything and always brought a funny take and a funny way of doing it. It’s one of the great sadnesses of my life.
ED BEGLEY JR.:
I had a reaction that was quite immediate. I went, I think that same day or perhaps the next day, to get rid of a shotgun I’d had for years just for home protection. That opinion changed that day with Phil. I went, “Not even a shotgun. It’s not worth it.” I didn’t want a gun in the house after that. And let me be clear: This wasn’t for fear that my wife would use it. I just wouldn’t want to get up in the middle of the night to go after an intruder and then have a friend be at the back door [instead]. So I took it to the North Hollywood police station. I walked in without it and said, “I have an unloaded shotgun in the car that I want to turn in. I understand you’ll take it if I surrender it and the ammo. I want to get rid of this gun. I don’t want it in the world.”
* * *
When John arrived at the police station to be with Sean and Birgen, he was up front with Sean about what had transpired: “Mommy and Daddy” were dead. Upon hearing those horrible words, John told Larry King in 2004, Sean “immediately whimpered, then he cried out. It was like a fire rising up in his face and into his eyes.”
That night, as the two of them lay in bed, Sean told his uncle: “I think Mommy did it.” John agreed, but cautioned that they should wait for an official report from the police.
* * *
Phil’s family and closest friends were tight-lipped from the start. On the emphatic counsel of John Hartmann, everyone ultimately agreed that silence was the best course of action. “Greg Omdahl [Brynn’s brother] wanted to go on Larry King that week,” John says, “and I said, ‘What’re you gonna do? Say she was a nice girl? She was a cheerleader in high school? What do you think’s gonna happen on that show? You’re not doing it.’ And I had no authority, no power in this scenario other than pure meanness. But I would not let anybody talk to the media in either family.”
“You couldn’t go home,” John adds. “There were people in your driveway. And this awful, ugly idea that they have a rig
ht to know is absurd. I’ve spent my life in the media, so I know these things, whereas the guy in Peoria whose son kills twelve people in school doesn’t know that they don’t have to go on TV the next day and expose their pain. I did not want to see Birgen and Sean one day go seeking the heritage of this, the legacy of this, and find my mom crying, my brother hating their mother on TV, and all that stuff. And I absolutely hammered everybody to the floor.”
Instead, a press release was issued that effectively stated: This hurts too much to talk about. Please leave us alone.
And so, while former nannies and mere acquaintances, bartenders, and law enforcement officials told what they knew, and even what they didn’t, Phil’s siblings, mother, and kids went into temporary seclusion on two floors of a Woodland Hills hotel whose access was restricted by a round-the-clock security detail. Although the families stayed on separate floors, they met in a common area for meals. Sometimes things got tense. During one gathering, Doris and Brynn’s mother Connie had a showdown of sorts. “It was insane,” John says. “And I went insane. I think everybody went insane. My mother went insane. Brynn’s mother went insane … Brynn’s mother tried to defend her, but my mother didn’t tolerate that and told her right to her face in front of everyone how she felt about it.” Paul Hartmann, too, was deeply upset and began enlisting support among his siblings to keep Sean and Birgen in California. But Phil’s will appointed Kathy and Mike Wright as the kids’ legal guardians, and contesting California law in this matter would very likely prove futile. At John’s urging, the issue was dropped.
When it came to retaining some measure of ongoing financial support for Doris, however, things got contentious. Phil had been sending checks to her and Rupert for years, but his last will and testament included no provision for their continuance. “It was like our family had no control over anything, and I think John really felt that,” sister Jane Hartmann says. “There was nothing left for my parents, and that was a huge ordeal.”