Mal Evans

On January 4, 1976, Evans's girlfriend Fran Hughes called John Hoernle and asked him to come to the apartment she shared with Evans at 8122 West 4th Street.

Hoernle had been working with Evans on a book about the Beatles. When he arrived, he found Evans crying and saying "please make sure you and Joanne [Joanne Lenard, Hoernle's assistant] finish the book."

Evans picked up an unloaded 30.30 rifle. Hoernle tried to take the gun from Evans but was unable. Fran Hughes called the police saying "My old man has a gun and has taken Valium and is totally screwed up."

Two police officers, David D. Krempa and Robert E. Brannon, found Evans upstairs in the apartment with the rifle. Evans pointed the rifle at the officers. The officers told him to put down the rifle and he refused. The officers then fired six shots, four of which struck and killed Evans.

Years later, Harry Nilsson continued the story in response to an interviewer's question:

I got a call from his [Mal Evans's] girlfriend, who said she was in jail and was being held as a material witness and that the police had just shot Mal to death. So I said, "Jeezus! Slow down, where are you?" She told me and I went down and got her out. Took her home and gave her some valium. My wife and another friend went over and cleaned the apartment. That was a braver thing than I did.

The next morning, I put her on a plane to Philadelphia and I went down to Forest Lawn and said I was sort of new at this, but what happens next? I said that I thought he should be cremated because it's cheaper for the family. So they cremated him and as I was walking out, I said, "By the way, how do you get these ashes to London?" They said, "Well, we have these cardboard cylinders." I said, `You'd send a mother the remains of her son in a cardboard box? What else do you have?" And they said, `We have this beautiful diamond-encrusted ruby old . . . We have this brass thing here with emeralds." So I picked out a nice sort of shape that looked expensive and was appropriate, and sent that to London.

A couple of days later, Neil Aspinall from Apple called and kept saying, "Harry, Harry! Where's Mal?" And I said, "Well, I sent him". And he said they couldn't find him, he's not here, and his mother's downstairs and his wife Lil is here and they're all crying, what am I supposed to tell them?" So we sent out tracers at both ends, and eventually I got a call from the airport that they'd found him. I asked where, and they said, "In the dead letter office!"

Visitor Comments:

Rob (June 20, 2008) I'm glad to hear that Mal's ashes were eventually found. I'd heard the story many times that they'd been lost, but this is the first time I'd read that they'd been located.

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