Slaying of publicist shocks L.A. elite
Chasen shot after attending premiere
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – The premiere party for the movie “Burlesque” was just the sort of glitzy Hollywood affair that Ronni Chasen, a veteran movie publicist, loved, and as she had for four decades, she worked the room with relish. While celebrities, including Jane Fonda and the film’s stars Cher and Christina Aguilera, mingled around a rooftop pool Monday night, Chasen moved among the revelers with a songwriter whose work she was promoting.
“She was happy-go-lucky and gossipy and fun, just like she always was,” said Jim Dobson, a publicist who crossed paths with Chasen around midnight.
Less than an hour and half later, Chasen was dead, gunned down in her Mercedes in an execution-style assault that baffled police and made a woman who spent her career touting others the talk of Hollywood.
“I’m devastated by this,” said Academy Award-winning producer Richard Zanuck, who had worked with Chasen since 1982 and had talked to her Monday about the awards-season campaign for his movie “Alice In Wonderland.”
Detectives with the Beverly Hills Police Department spent Tuesday trying to piece together the final minutes of Chasen’s life and discern a motive for the killing of a 64-year-old single woman who, according to friends, had no enemies.
Chasen attended the movie premiere and after-party with client Diane Warren, who wrote the song “You Haven’t Seen The Last Of Me” for the “Burlesque” soundtrack. Sometime after midnight, she steered her E350 sedan away from the W Hotel in Hollywood, apparently en route to her Westwood condominium. At 12:28 a.m., residents of Whittier Drive, a quiet, tree-lined street often used as a cut-through between Sunset and Wilshire boulevards, heard gunshots.
Chasen, who sustained multiple gunshot wounds to her chest, was pronounced dead at Cedars Sinai Medical Center at 1:30 a.m., according to the Los Angeles County coroner’s office.
Beverly Hills police fanned out across the west side of L.A. on Tuesday in search of clues.
Sgt. Lincoln Hoshino said the investigation remained wide open. Detectives were pursuing a range of possible scenarios, including one in which the perpetrator followed Chasen home from the hotel and another in which she was the victim of road rage.