Nearly hidden today behind a couple of huge trees is this house overlooking the Pacific on the exclusive Palos Verde peninsula. In 1964 the home belonged to Dr. Samuel Stornelli, a neurologist with offices in Hollywood. At 11 pm on November 14, 1964, Dr. Tornelli's houseguest, movie starlet Kate Manx, woke her host and fiancé with the alarming news that she had swallowed a lethal dose of sleeping pills. The divorced mother of a toddler son was rushed to the Little Company of Mary Hospital in Torrance, CA, where, sadly, she passed away. She was 34. Manx had been embroiled in a bitter divorce from her second husband, playwright Leslie Stevens, who had written, produced, and directed her screen debut, Private Property (1960), which had been filmed entirely at the couple's Beverly Hills home. Stevens went on to create the TV series Battlestar Galactica.
