Depending on whom you ask, the murder of “Rebel Without a Cause” and “Giant” star Sal Mineo was due to revenge, salacious Hollywood blackmail, Deep State CIA-linked assassins or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Now, criminal justice advocates are arguing that it was also a case of an innocent man being wrongly convicted and serving decades in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
In 1976, Mineo was a down-on-his-luck 37-year-old actor when he was brutally stabbed to death outside his West Hollywood apartment.
The Oscar-nominee was the second “Rebel” star to meet a tragic end. James Dean died in a September 1955 car crash, a month before the film was released. Natalie Wood would round out the so-called “Rebel curse” when she drowned under mysterious circumstances in 1981.
Lionel “Ray Ray” Williams, a black man with a long rap sheet and gang affiliations, was arrested and charged with Mineo’s murder in 1977.
The low-level criminal had never heard of the Hollywood heartthrob, and prosecutors alleged it was a robbery gone awry. Williams, now 69, said he had nothing to do with the actor’s slaying — and has always maintained his innocence.
“They wanted us all off the streets and that’s what they did. They sent a lot of people to prison,” he told the Post from his home in Bakersfield, Calif. “I’ve learned a lot of things about the system when I was in [prison] and the system is not designed for us,
A new documentary about Williams’ case, “Unseen Innocence,” is currently playing at the Angelika Theatre in the East Village.
The film, and Williams’ advocates, allege that it all came down to a crooked police force desperate to close a high-profile crime, and that Ray Ray was a victim of corruption.
The year before his death, Mineo was shopping around a new film, “Sirhan Sirhan,” with himself playing the title character, a fictionalized version of the man who assassinated Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. The film intended to dramatize conspiracy theories surrounding RFK’s killing.
“I had always been convinced that Sirhan was the lone gunman who killed Kennedy, but now I believe there are grounds for doubt. If the film can influence the courts to reopen the case or force out new facts and answer questions, then it will serve its purpose,” Mineo said at the time.
Mineo was told to shut up about Sirhan, but he refused to. Some believe that got him killed.
Rotting away in California’s notorious San Quentin prison, Williams knew nothing of RFK, Sirhan, or alleged CIA mind-control programs. He did get acquainted with another notorious figure from that era — hippie death cult leader Charles Manson, whom he’d listen to sing through the cell walls.
“He’d get a whole bag of mail everyday. And if you didn’t have any mail to read, he’d let you read his,” Williams recalled. “He tried to buy everyone a TV.”
One day, a mysterious man came to visit Williams in the clink.
The man said his name was Herald Blum, and that he was “a senator of some sort.” He made several trips to San Quentin to inform Williams he not only believed he was innocent — but a patsy.
He also wrote paranoid letters to Williams in prison, saying that he was being followed by the FBI and claimed to have known Mineo.
“Clean cut guy, always in a suit, older man. He said I was used as a scapegoat,” Williams said of the elusive visitor. “We tried to find him when I got out but it was like he never existed.”
The shadowy “senator,” whose name doesn’t align with any elected officials of the time, also informed Williams of another theory: good ol’ fashioned sex and blackmail.
By 1976, Mineo was very openly bisexual. It was rumored that he’d slept with some of the most powerful men — and adulterous women — in Hollywood. His flagrant sexuality was a reason he struggled to get work. Legend had it that he felt scorned. Out for revenge, he threatened to publish a list of lovers unless they helped him out.
Five years before his murder, thugs broke into Mineo’s home and beat him so badly he was hospitalized. It was chalked up to a burglary attempt but a social acquaintance named Andreas Fontagne later said that Mineo and an accomplice had been threatening a Hollywood starlet with releasing a sex tape they recorded of her, and that the thugs were sent by the actress.
That alleged conspirator was “Hogan’s Heroes” star Bob Crane, according to Hollywood lore. Crane was murdered two years after Mineo, and his killers were never caught. At the time of his death, he was found to be in possession of scores of kinky porn tapes starring himself and various women.
Others have contended that Mineo’s murder was related to shady drug deals or canoodling with rough trade.
Four witnesses reported seeing a tall, blond, white man fleeing the scene of Mineo’s murder, with yellow locks bouncing as he ran away.
They also described what sounded like a planned hit — not the botched robbery prosecutors alleged. The killer lurked in the shadows outside Mineo’s apartment waiting for him to return home, stabbed him once without a struggle, then fled in a waiting automobile.
Williams is five-foot-five and sported a towering afro back then. Prosecutors contended that Williams must have dyed his hair, or had a white accomplice — but investigators couldn’t find a single white person he knew.
The getaway car was a small, yellow Toyota, according to witnesses. A year later, empty-handed cops desperate for a lead in the high-profile case put out a press bulletin about the car. That’s how Williams got involved: A dealership told police they’d loaned a small, yellow car to Williams around that time. But that car was a Dodge Colt, not a Toyota.
Police swooped in and soon had friends, family members and former jail bunkmates saying Williams had confessed the crime to them.
Williams’s own wife ratted him out, then shot herself in the head after she got home from meeting with police. She survived but the bullet is still lodged in her skull today.
Williams said she and the others were manipulated by cops to give false statements. His gang affiliation and past record didn’t help.
“They questioned every one of my neighbors on my block to see who I was, see who I hang out with. Everybody that I know, they questioned, trying to find someone that could go along with them.”
One star witness for the prosecution, a former friend of Williams who was in custody on kidnapping charges at the time, later said he was offered immunity and an invitation to join the US Marines in exchange for testimony against Williams, according to the documentary.
In 1979 Williams was sentenced to 51 years for the murder of the doe-eyed Mineo. He’s been out on parole since 1998.
He tried talking to the press then, but his family chided him — not wanting the renewed attention. Years later he noticed his young son acting coldly toward him — he’d found out his dad was a “murderer.” That’s when Williams decided to clear his name.
He self-published a memoir in February called “51 Years to Life” making the case for his innocence.
“The truth has to come out because of my youngest son. It hurts me that it’s hurting him and the rest of my grandkids,” Williams said.
“I have to get this story out, because I can’t leave this earth with this murder in my file.”
