Andrew Prine

In 1962, Prine began dating actress Karyn Kupcinet, who unbeknownst to him, was abusing diet pills along with other prescription drugs. After Kupcinet had an alleged abortion in July 1963 and her increasing unstable behavior, the relationship cooled. Prine told Kupcinet he was going to date other girls. Kupcinet began spying on Prine and his new girlfriends. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department later determined Kupcinet had delivered threatening and profane messages, consisting of words and letters she had cut out of magazines, to Prine and herself. When the two of them discussed the messages, she claimed to know nothing about them and seemed puzzled. FBI found her fingerprints on Scotch tape she had used to attach the messages to the door to Prine's home and the door to hers. In another desperate effort to keep Prine's attention, she called Prine and told him a baby was left on her door. Prine suggested she immediately call the authorities. On November 30, 1963, Karyn Kupcinet, age 22, was found dead in her apartment by her friends. Coroner Harold Kade concluded that due to a broken thyroid bone in her throat. Her death was officially ruled a homicide. During the investigation, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department questioned Prine. He said he had talked with Kupcinet twice by phone the previous day. Edward Rubin and Robert Hathaway, the two men who had possibly been the last to see her alive, both had spent the evening with her in the apartment the night before her death and were questioned. In 1988, Kupcinet's father, Irv Kupcinet published a memoir, KUP, in which he revealed that he and his wife Essee believed that Andrew Prine had nothing to do with their daughter's murder and Prine was innocent. Irv Kupcinet named suspicious David Lange, a neighbor of his daughter's who had twice confessed to friends he was guilty. Later when questioned, Lange suggested he was kidding. However, a girlfriend with Lange in his upper apartment told him about the police activity at his friend Karen's apartment and his reaction was adamant and told her to close the drapes and keep quiet. She thought his demeanor was strange as Lange had often been in Karen's apartment. David Lange was still alive when Iv Kupcinet wrote his memoir and named David Lange. Lange did not sue for libel. Irv Kupicinet also wrote Prine had no connection to Karen Kupcinet's death.