Hollywood publicist Ronni Chasen was a woman of unanticipated means, accumulating an estate worth more than $6 million that included jewels, furs, paintings by Picasso and David Hockney -- and no immediate heirs with whom to leave it.
If whoever killed the veteran Hollywood publicist was after money, there is certainly a substantial amount to go around.
On Thursday, as new details trickled in about the "person of interest" who shot himself in a seedy Hollywood hotel the night before, TheWrap obtained a copy of Chasen's will, originally signed in 1994 and filed in Los Angeles Superior Court this week.
It's possible that the document has been superseded by a 2006 will: Her brother, Lawrence Cohen, The screenwriter, who believes his sister was the victim of road rage, according to ShowBiz411, has a key to a safe-deposit box that may contain the more recent filing.
"The contents of the safe-deposit box are unknown," wrote lawyer James Murphy in the recent filing, "but it is suspected that a more recent will of the decedent may be contained in said safe-deposit box since I prepared a new will for her in 2006."
Murphy did not return messages left by TheWrap seeking further explanation.
The document hit the courts along with a “petition for probate,” a legal move in which the nominated estate executor -- in this case her brother Lawrence -- asserts his intention to fulfill that duty.
Chasen listed her personal property as worth $4.7 million, her investments at about $500,000 and real-estate holdings at about $900,000.
Read the complete document here.
Additionally, TheWrap has learned that Chasen’s estate included paintings by Picasso, Hockney and Sam Francis. Though owning such works certainly could have put her in the ranks of serious art collectors, a smattering of prominent area art dealers told TheWrap over the past couple of weeks that she wasn't known in those circles.
Correspondingly, not a lot of information is publicly known at present about the man Beverly Hills police were attempting to serve with a search warrant when "Harold," as some residents of the Harvey Apartments in Hollywood said the man called himself, apparently shot and killed himself.
As reports swirl, in the Los Angeles Times and others, of there being surveillance video of the shooting now in the hands of police, claims by John Walsh, the host of "America's Most Wanted," that a tip from the show assisted BHPD in their investigation and allegations that Chasen's murder by gunfire in the early morning of Nov. 16 was the result of a business deal gone wrong, all that is certain publicly is that the man who was a "person of interest" to police was an African-American in his 40s.
The name "Harold Smith," according the Beverly Hills Courier, is being pinned to the man, as are stories of prison time and even unverified claims by residents of the Harvey Apartments that the man bragged of killing Chasen.
