Luke Ford

IT is a mystery that has hung over New York for five years, another unresolved tragedy in the city of a million heartbreaks.

The naked body of pretty Leigh Zurmuhlen, an aspiring 19-year-old actress, was found dead of an apparent drugs overdose in room 1610 of New York's Mayflower Hotel on October 27, 1995.
She had checked into the room in the early hours of the 25th with a mysterious Hollywood television producer - signed in as Dean Sche- - who slipped away from the hotel two days before her corpse was discovered by security guards arriving to tell the couple that their lease had expired.

Showbusiness insiders racked their brains as to who this mystery man might be, and newspapers across the city had no luck in locating him.

Despite enquiries across the California TV industry, no trace of anyone called Dean Sche- could be found.

But there is new evidence the phantom producer was the hotshot Darren Star, creator of Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place and Sex In The City, which starred Sarah Jessica Parker.
Star was in New York at the time of the death working on another TV series -- Central Park West -- which was being filmed only a few blocks from the hotel.
Now investigative writer Mark Kramer has alleged that Sche- is, in fact, Star's original name, and he was the man who sneaked out of the Mayflower.
That fateful night, Leigh had gone to the trendy celebrity hangout, the Bowery Bar, where Darren Star had hosted his 33rd birthday party a few months earlier.
She called her mother at 4 a.m. to say she would be staying with a friend, then travelled to the hotel room where she would die.
Now Kramer has alleged that a group of glittering stars blackened the memory of a dead teenager to save one of their own.
"A dead blonde used to mean something in this town, but the Leigh Zurmuhlen overdose made clear that New York's gossip junta exhibited a contempt for their readership that would have been comprehension were it not so transparent," he says.
Changing your name for the sake of fame is not unusual in Hollywood, particularly if having the name Sche- identified you as the son of disgraced funeral director Dean Sche- Sr, who had mistakenly removed a living woman from a nursing home instead of her deceased roommate in 1988.
Star has been profiled in top magazine Vogue by Sex in the City co-writer Candace Bushnell. But now it is believed that most of it is fictitious.
When Star fled the scene for his Los Angeles home, his lawyer acted as intermediary with the New York Police Department.
Star -- described by the police, who referred to him as Mr. Sheu, as a "friendly witness" -- was interviewed by telephone shortly before he sped off to Hawaii on holiday.
The producer had told the police that Leigh had been asleep when he left the room, and that he had gone because she had been "acting irrationally." They decided that no action against the Hollywood power player was required.
But Leigh's mother Kathleen said: "If she was acting irrationally, why didn't he dial 9-1-1? He didn't call an ambulance, he didn't offer her a cab home, he didn't try to call her mother -- he only thought of himself."
But Star was worried about the impact the death would have on his career.
Although reports appeared on newswires and in the Zurmuhlen's local newspaper, mentions of Star were scarce in the city newspapers. A wall of silence was thrown up around the incident.
But Baird Jones, an assistant on the New York Daily News gossip desk at the time, claimed his bosses -- celebrity columnists George Rush and Joanna Molloy -- covered up for Star.
He said: "I remember the week the Star thing went down. George and Joanna were going crazy on the story -- not trying to report it, but trying to bury it."
Molloy did finally report the story, but not until over a fortnight later, when, unaccountably, she removed all mention of Star's name.
On the New York Post, it was a similar story.
Columnist Richard Johnson, who writes about the "handsome Darren Star" and "sexy scribe Candance Bushnell" is married to publicist Nadine Johnson who was Press consultant for Star's favorite haunt, the Bowery Bar.
"There is no doubt in my mind that these people conspired to completely remove any reference to Darren Star by any name from the story of Leigh's death," said Kramer.
"They knew exactly who that man in the hotel room was, but chose to ignore this because, as a constant source of celebrity gossip, he was worth more to them than a dead teenager."
Leigh's parents then had to live with the shame of having their daughter's name blacked in the Press.
An article in the New York Press by Jared Paul Stern alleged: "Leigh Zurmuhlen was a celebrity hunter whose stalking ground was the Bowery Bar's maining dining room."
He printed claims from the publicist of Star's friend and novelist Brett Easton Ellis that Leigh was "an extremely obsessive fan."
He said Leigh had harassed him at a book signing weeks before her death, begging that he took her telephone number so that they could meet. Leigh's family was outraged. Her uncle, Kurt Zurmuhlen, said: "Eight months before she died, Leigh was just another decent, bright young girl living in Saratoga Falls. Nobody who knew her believes that her character could have changed that drastically."
Her father, Edward, was horrified. But having lost another child -- Leigh's elder sister -- in a traffic accident shortly before, he was too distressed to take action.
Edward Zermuhlen died within a year of his daughter, but not before presenting what he saw as the truth to local newspaper, the Saratogian.
This was a very different picture, one of an active intelligent young woman who excelled in her school swimming team and shone academically.
He said: "Leigh was a very confident young woman. She had a good social life, lots of friends, and made the school honour roll every year."
Kramer agrees: "Leigh Zurmuhlen was a Nineties American Pie, and the day they found her corpse at the Mayflower Hotel was the day the music died, dead of Darren Star-related causes.
Daily News gossip columnist Molloy refuses to talk about her involvement in the cover-up.
Jeane MacIntosh, a former report on the daily Post, said suggestions of a cover-up are "hysterical." She said Stern was acting in good faith when he failed to link Star to the death.
"I don't think Jared knew it was Star, because I asked him and he was genuinely clueless," she said.

Star's brother Marc, a California pornography journalist, physically attacked publisher Luke Ford when he refused to remove details of the case until the producer had proved his innocence.
Neither Darren Star nor his agent Nancy Josephson would comment, staff saying that the pair were "unreachable."
But lawyers for Star have since said that all allegations against him are "completely false."
Star's career and social life have carried on regardless. He was seen at Brett Easton Ellis's annual festive party together with Jared Stern.
And as Sex in the City basked in the publicity generated by its loose moral stance, Star celebrated by hosting a party in which himself, Sarah Jessica Parker and Easton Ellis were spanked by a dominatrix hired for a joke.
But Leigh's relatives are not going to forget what became of their daughter.
They still want to know why the last man to see her alive was allowed to escape virtually unquestioned.
A few days after Leigh's funeral, a letter arrived at her mother's house from the State University of New York -- where she had applied to study acting and writing.
"It was a letter of acceptance," Mrs. Zermuhlen said emotionally. "It just came too late for her to read it."