True Crime Time Hop ep. 25: Andy Warhol

Today is June 4, but for all intents and purposes, we're gonna call it the third because this is the episode I meant to post yesterday. For a video version of these trips back in true crime history, I also have a true crime channel on youtube @TrueCrimeTimeHop. Please feel free to check it out and if you like what you see, I encourage you to subscribe to one of the tiers on this channel. Not only do subscriptions encourage me to keep going, they give me the ABILITY to keep going which I would appreciate more than anything.

Our story is set in New York, in 1968. Andy Warhol was one of the most influential artists of the era. Along with his signature portraiture and pop art pieces, he enjoyed creating small films. A woman named Valerie Solanas heard of his creative endeavors in film and noticed the exposure he could bring to her cause if he was to pick up her manuscript and film her manifesto. With that in her mind, she began to approach the artist over and over in person and through the mail. She was the founder and the only member of the "Society for Cutting Up Men" aka SCUM. The manuscript she was attempting to push was her masterwork was the SCUM Manifesto. The manifesto attempted to push the agenda that men needed to be phased out of society and that women had a duty to find ways to dominate all industries including genetics until biological males were no longer being produced basically. She even offered Warhol a place in the "male auxiliary branch" of the society she was attempting to create. He wanted no part of any of it but after she repeatedly attempted to work with him, he offered her a part as an extra in one of his films which paid her $25.

Then, her manuscript, entitled Up Your Ass, came up missing. She thought for sure that she had left it with Warhol. She harassed him repeatedly attempting to recover it. In her mind, he had it and his actions in not returning it were a threat to her intellectual property. She thought he would steal the concepts and put his own spin on it and she did not want him taking credit for her work. This delusion only fueled her contempt of men, with Warhol being at the top of her shit list. She called and called and eventually his office stopped taking her calls.

This brings us to that fateful day on the sixth floor of Warhol's new office in Union Square, where he was having a meeting with Mario Amaya who was a London art gallery owner. Valerie Solanas showed up with a .32 Beretta as well as a 22 caliper revolver. With the .32 in her hand, she shot Warhol as well as Amaya. Two bullets pierced Warhol's esophagus, liver, spleen, stomach, and both lungs. He was briefly pronounced dead and when he was eventually revived, he was stuck having to wear a medical corset for the rest of his life to keep his organs in their designated places. Amaya was thankfully not badly wounded.

A few hours after the shooting took place, Solanas approached a policeman in Times Square. She relinquished both her weapons along with making the admission that Warhol "had too much control over her life".

After several psych evaluations, she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. In spite of this, she was still found to be competent to stand trial. She pled guilty to an assault charge and was ordered to serve 3 years, and she was given credit towards her time with the time she served already while she awaited psychological findings. She was released from jail in late 1971. Even after all this, she continued to try to gain traction for her idea to create a group of women that would make it their goal to irradicate men from the gene pool. Her mental health continued to decline however. In 1988, she died alone in a homeless hotel in San Francisco.

As far as the effects of this for Andy Warhol, his wounds went much deeper than the bullets. His art and his filming began to diminish. “I said that I wasn’t creative since I was shot, because after that I stopped seeing creepy people,” Warhol wrote in his journal in November 1978.

He had a series of paintings he created centered around death and another one centered around guns, but otherwise his pursuits here mostly business-related. The whole ordeal also intensified his crippling fear of hospitals. He began to practice homeopathic remedies more and he enjoyed incorporating crystals into his daily routine, but sadly his avoidance of medical professionals resulted in his untimely death. He delayed a gallbladder surgery that he desperately needed for several years. When he finally got the surgery, he had complications after which ultimately resulted in cardiac arrest. On February 21st 1987, at the age of 58, Andy Warhol lost his life.

He left a legacy of beautiful art and an empire of business endeavors in his wake. May his name never be forgotten.