Psychic Detectiveectiv
Each month, ex-cop and psychic Nicky Alan teams up with her spirit guides to investigate an unsolved mystery. Here she delves into the death of Hollywood actor, Nick Adams
With trembling fingers, a woman opens a white cardboard filing container. For decades, she’s called it ‘Daddy’s Box’, but has never investigated its contents. It has sat in her home, a silent tribute to her late father.
Inside, she finds a stack of old photos, many of her father, smiling and handsome. From underneath, she draws out a yellow envelope with some loose pages of a typed manuscript stuffed into it.
Who would want him dead?
On the front of the envelope, the woman sees the words Elvis Presley, Singer, Actor, Man, as well as her father’s name. Suddenly, tears are streaming down her face and her heart begins to pound. She realises that what had been struggling to find lucrative acting roles in Hollywood. After completing a low-budget Western in Mexico, he had hopes of landing a part in a sci-fi horror movie being filmed in Italy.
Using his own money, Nick bought a plane ticket and flew to Rome. But when he arrived, he was informed that the project had fallen through. A colleague later reported seeing a despondent Nick nursing a drink in a Rome bar.
Returning to Hollywood, Nick once again faced the daunting task of trying to land a job in the movie capital.
On Wednesday 7 February 1968, he was supposed to go to dinner with his lawyer and friend, ex-LAPD officer, Ervin Roeder. Only, Nick she’s about to read will be like hearing the voice of her beloved father from beyond the grave.
The woman was Allyson Adams, and her father was the film and TV actor, Nick Adams.
Allyson had learnt of her father’s tragic death in 1968 when she was just seven years old. At the time, she and her brother were living with their mother, after their parents’ on-off marriage had finally ended in divorce proceedings.
In the years before his untimely death, Nick Adams didn’t show up.
Worried, Ervin drove to Nick’s Beverly Hills home. As he pulled up in front of the house, he saw a light on inside, and Nick’s car in the garage.
Ervin broke a window and went upstairs to Nick’s bedroom. There, he found his friend slumped against a wall. Nick Adams was dead at only 36 years old.
An autopsy was carried out by ‘the coroner to the stars’, Dr Thomas Noguchi. In 1962, the doctor’s services had been called upon after the death of Marilyn Monroe. He would later perform autopsies of Robert F Kennedy, Sharon Tate and Janis Joplin.
Dr Noguchi found no traces of alcohol in Nick’s system. He listed ‘paraldehyde and promazine intoxication’ as the immediate cause of death.
Paraldehyde was often given to those suffering withdrawal symptoms from alcohol abuse. The sedative had been prescribed to
