Post by darkstar2 on Jul 24, 2008 19:17:00 GMT
Is This The End? Still No Clues To Mystery Coed Who Lit Morrison’s Fire
By: Randall Beach
New Haven Register
July 27 2003
She is long lost, hiding deep in the haze of the ’60s, a mystery figure of New Haven cultural history.
She has never been named. She was referred to in the New Haven Register merely as "an 18-year-old Southern Connecticut State College coed," decades before that college became a university.
And yet this young woman set in motion the notorious chemical spraying and arrest of Jim Morrison, lead singer of the rock band the Doors on Dec. 9, 1967, at the old New Haven Arena.
And now I want to find her.
Who is she? Where is she?
My mission is to talk to her, to find out what she remembers of that nutty night, what it was like necking with a rock icon.
This is what I do know about those events, pieced together by reading accounts from the Register, the old Journal-Courier and the Morrison biography, "No One Here Gets Out Alive" by Jerry Hopkins and Daniel Sugerman.
The Doors had come to New Haven to promote their recent hits, including "Light My Fire."
Backstage before the show, Morrison and that unidentified coed were eyeing each other.
"We can’t talk here," Morrison told her. "Let’s find some place quieter."
The young lady followed the singer into a shower room. They started necking.
Then a New Haven police officer, one of many assigned to the Arena that night, discovered them.
"Hey, you kids!" he shouted. "Get outta here! Nobody allowed backstage!"
The girl ran off, but Morrison wasn’t budging. "Eat me," he told the man in blue.
Thereupon Morrison tasted Mace in the face. He stumbled out of the shower, screaming in anger.
During the show, Morrison told the crowd what had happened. He called the officer "this little man in a little blue suit."
Moments later, the police turned on the Arena lights and hauled Morrison off stage.
He was charged with breach of peace, resisting arrest and "performing an indecent and immoral exhibition." As a melee broke out, 12 others were arrested.
But the unidentified coed was not arrested. Nobody ever reported what happened to her after she fled that shower room.
I can’t ask Morrison about it — he’s dead. He perished in a bathtub in Paris in 1971.
But before he died, the Doors recorded "Peace Frog," which carried the line: "Blood in the streets in the town of New Haven."
The remaining Doors toured this past spring and performed at the Oakdale Theater in Wallingford. When the Register’s entertainment editor Fran Fried used the reunion to write about the Arena show, I got very curious about that mystery coed.
I figured somebody affiliated with Southern from those days must remember her name. But three months of tracking down people across the country has resulted only in a lot of head-scratching.
Janice Kornacki, a secretary in SCSU’s Alumni Office, loaned me yearbooks from the classes of 1971 and 1972, one of which should’ve been the coed’s graduating year. I picked out campus newspaper editors, radio station people and class presidents, then Kornacki gave me their current phone numbers.
None of them could dredge up the name.
The closest I came was in a conversation with Richard Farricielli, now SCSU’s dean of student affairs and a member of the class of ’71. He said he remembered the gal in question and that she did graduate with his class. But he couldn’t come up with her name.
State’s Attorney Mary Galvin, from the class of ’71, also tried to help me. But even her investigative skills led to a dead end.
Rick Mahoney, who edited the Southern yearbook in 1970, thought the coed might have an Italian name, so I started reading to him from the yearbooks the dozens of possibilities. Nothing rang a bell.
Mystery coed, who are you? Where are you? Come out, come out and reveal yourself!
A Tantalizing Clue To The Great Doors Make-Out Mystery Emerges
Randall Beach
New Haven Register
August 10 2003
I’ve finally got the name of the "mystery co-ed" from the Doors’ infamous New Haven Arena show. But she remains an elusive butterfly.
Two weeks ago I wrote about my obsessive search for the unidentified woman who was necking backstage with Doors’ singer Jim Morrison just before a policeman sprayed him with the chemical Mace.
Morrison, outraged, later told the audience he was Maced by "this little man in a little blue suit" while the singer was getting acquainted with the woman in a shower room.
Police stopped the performance and arrested Morrison for "performing an indecent and immoral exhibition."
It seems virtually everybody connected with those events on Dec. 9, 1967 (excepting the deceased) has contacted me with leads, stories or the supposed name of that young woman.
Everybody, that is, except the woman herself.
I thought I had hit the jackpot when Gary Deleone of East Haven called. He said he had a copy of the police report about that crazy night, written by New Haven Police Lt. James Kelly.
I had been informed the police department no longer had this document, so I was excited as I drove over to Deleone’s house.
Deleone has the report because his father, Joe Deleone, worked at the Arena.
Kelly’s report said Officer Arthur Baker received a complaint from Thomas Janette about "two subjects in a shower room." Kelly said Janette had personal belongings there.
"Officer Baker went into this room and observed two subjects, later identified as James Morrison, 24, of Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, Calif. and Sandy Spodniak, 18, of 1590 Blvd., a So. Conn. College student, standing inside the shower room embracing and kissing," Kelly wrote.
"Officer Baker advised both subjects that he had received a complaint about them and asked them to leave," Kelly reported. "Morrison then became belligerent and refused to leave. A scuffle followed and a shot of Mace was used to subdue Morrison."
Kelly said police decided not to arrest Morrison because they feared "the audience would react in a violent manner."
But Kelly said near the end of the show, Morrison "began to use vile and filthy language."
Kelly said this "caused unrest" in the crowd. He quoted a mother, Mrs. Doris Heath of North Haven, complaining her 13-year-old daughter was hearing "those filthy statements."
"I went up on the stage and notified the group that the show was over and to leave the stage," Kelly wrote.
After Morrison shouted "Turn off the lights!" and an obscenity, Kelly said, "Morrison was then placed under arrest and had to be forcibly removed from the stage."
The police report is from a carbon copy, so it is partially blurred. Deleone and I eyeballed the young woman’s name and we think it is Sandy Spodniak, although it could be Sandy Spodnick.
But when I asked Southern Connecticut State University officials to check both names, they couldn’t come up with any record of her.
Did she lie to the police about being a Southern student? Did she make up a name? Maybe because she wasn’t arrested the police let her run off without seeking formal identification.
Baker is dead. So is Kelly. So is Morrison.
Two other people who said they were there gave me different names of the mystery necker, but neither checked out.
Janette himself contacted me. He confirmed he was there with his opening act Tommy and the Rivieras and did complain to the police about Morrison because the Rivieras had their wallets stashed near the shower room.
Janette said he saw Morrison in the shower room with "a pretty brunette." He also saw him get Maced.
A man who asked not to be named told me he too was backstage that night and saw Morrison with "a brunette with shoulder-length hair."
This man recalls seeing Morrison being arrested. "His head was bouncing on the stairs."
Now: Will the real "Sandy Spodniak" stand up?
Despite Some Hot Tips, Jim Morrison’s ‘Date’ Still Eludes Detection
By: Randall Beach
New Haven Register
December 12 2003
Now that we're near the end of fun-filled 2003, it’s high time for a whatever-happened-to column, starting with the ever-elusive "Doors mystery co-ed."
Imagine my disappointment; despite dozens of tips and leads, I’m still looking for Sandy Spodniak.
I did find the police report, with her name on it, from that infamous night at the New Haven Arena (Dec. 9, 1967) when she was found making out with Doors lead singer Jim Morrison in an Arena shower.
Their tryst was historic because a police officer discovered them and sprayed Morrison with Mace. The singer was so mad he ridiculed the police during the show that night, prompting the men in blue to turn on the lights, shut down the show and arrest him.
My public appeal last summer for information on Spodniak’s whereabouts led to some odd events and characters. A well-meaning reader linked me up with an online service that supposedly reunites people.
The service boasted it had found my gal.
But after I paid $19.95, the service said, oops, we don’t have her after all. At least I got a refund.
Then there was the alleged "retired detective from a local P.D." who in mid-October e-mailed me to announce he had tracked her down.
"I know where she is," he wrote. "Want to know?"
When I quickly said I did, he wrote back, "How much is it worth to you? Not to be rude, but I researched this for four months."
Then his e-mail took a left turn toward loony land: "She is not willing to talk, although she does admit to being the former ‘Sandy Spodniak.’ Rolling Stone offered me $3,500, which barely covers my expenses, and they will picture me with Sandy on the cover."
He also told me, "I could probably get a covert picture of her for less money."
I told him he had lost all credibility with his nutty story about being promised the cover of Rolling Stone. And I told him we don’t play ball with checkbook journalism.
So the question remains: Whatever happened to Sandy Spodniak?
Occasionally people have asked me: Whatever happened to Christopher Rynn? He’s the unemployed accountant I interviewed in July about his diligent but frustrating job search.
When I last spoke with Rynn a few weeks ago he was still unemployed and continuing to log about 25 hours every week at CT Works in New Haven, looking for jobs by using the computers.
I asked Rynn if he had considered scaling down his expectations and taking a lower-paying job, but he said he wasn’t willing to do so. He has been out of work for more than two years now and is still living with his mother in Milford.
My column on Stephen Votto Sr. closing Beirne’s Pharmacy in New Haven had an unintended consequence: Many people assumed Beirne’s Home Medical Equipment in North Haven, run by Stephen Votto Jr., had closed too. But that business is still going strong.
For those wondering whatever happened to the plans to reopen Kavanagh’s, the popular bar-restaurant on Chapel Street, there have been the inevitable renovation and permit delays. It won’t open New Year’s Day.
But Pattie Mastriano, who will give the old joint a new lease on life as Sullivan’s on Chapel, told me recently she and her sisters are optimistic about a gala opening in mid- to late January. Maybe we can see the Super Bowl there.
There is also good baseball news for the people of Greater New Haven. Although we mourned the passing of the New Haven Ravens in September — many of us ceremoniously ran the bases after that final game with tears in our eyes — it’s all but certain we at least will have a Northeast League team moving here from Pittsfield, Mass.
I hope the "Babalu" brigade will be back in force at Yale Field next spring. And my apologies to those diehards (as well as to the spirit of Desi Arnaz) for my grievous mistake of spelling it "Bobaloo."
www.nhregister.com/site/news.cfm?
BRD=1281&dept_id=7576&newsid=9985231&PAG=461&rfi=9
By: Randall Beach
New Haven Register
July 27 2003
She is long lost, hiding deep in the haze of the ’60s, a mystery figure of New Haven cultural history.
She has never been named. She was referred to in the New Haven Register merely as "an 18-year-old Southern Connecticut State College coed," decades before that college became a university.
And yet this young woman set in motion the notorious chemical spraying and arrest of Jim Morrison, lead singer of the rock band the Doors on Dec. 9, 1967, at the old New Haven Arena.
And now I want to find her.
Who is she? Where is she?
My mission is to talk to her, to find out what she remembers of that nutty night, what it was like necking with a rock icon.
This is what I do know about those events, pieced together by reading accounts from the Register, the old Journal-Courier and the Morrison biography, "No One Here Gets Out Alive" by Jerry Hopkins and Daniel Sugerman.
The Doors had come to New Haven to promote their recent hits, including "Light My Fire."
Backstage before the show, Morrison and that unidentified coed were eyeing each other.
"We can’t talk here," Morrison told her. "Let’s find some place quieter."
The young lady followed the singer into a shower room. They started necking.
Then a New Haven police officer, one of many assigned to the Arena that night, discovered them.
"Hey, you kids!" he shouted. "Get outta here! Nobody allowed backstage!"
The girl ran off, but Morrison wasn’t budging. "Eat me," he told the man in blue.
Thereupon Morrison tasted Mace in the face. He stumbled out of the shower, screaming in anger.
During the show, Morrison told the crowd what had happened. He called the officer "this little man in a little blue suit."
Moments later, the police turned on the Arena lights and hauled Morrison off stage.
He was charged with breach of peace, resisting arrest and "performing an indecent and immoral exhibition." As a melee broke out, 12 others were arrested.
But the unidentified coed was not arrested. Nobody ever reported what happened to her after she fled that shower room.
I can’t ask Morrison about it — he’s dead. He perished in a bathtub in Paris in 1971.
But before he died, the Doors recorded "Peace Frog," which carried the line: "Blood in the streets in the town of New Haven."
The remaining Doors toured this past spring and performed at the Oakdale Theater in Wallingford. When the Register’s entertainment editor Fran Fried used the reunion to write about the Arena show, I got very curious about that mystery coed.
I figured somebody affiliated with Southern from those days must remember her name. But three months of tracking down people across the country has resulted only in a lot of head-scratching.
Janice Kornacki, a secretary in SCSU’s Alumni Office, loaned me yearbooks from the classes of 1971 and 1972, one of which should’ve been the coed’s graduating year. I picked out campus newspaper editors, radio station people and class presidents, then Kornacki gave me their current phone numbers.
None of them could dredge up the name.
The closest I came was in a conversation with Richard Farricielli, now SCSU’s dean of student affairs and a member of the class of ’71. He said he remembered the gal in question and that she did graduate with his class. But he couldn’t come up with her name.
State’s Attorney Mary Galvin, from the class of ’71, also tried to help me. But even her investigative skills led to a dead end.
Rick Mahoney, who edited the Southern yearbook in 1970, thought the coed might have an Italian name, so I started reading to him from the yearbooks the dozens of possibilities. Nothing rang a bell.
Mystery coed, who are you? Where are you? Come out, come out and reveal yourself!
A Tantalizing Clue To The Great Doors Make-Out Mystery Emerges
Randall Beach
New Haven Register
August 10 2003
I’ve finally got the name of the "mystery co-ed" from the Doors’ infamous New Haven Arena show. But she remains an elusive butterfly.
Two weeks ago I wrote about my obsessive search for the unidentified woman who was necking backstage with Doors’ singer Jim Morrison just before a policeman sprayed him with the chemical Mace.
Morrison, outraged, later told the audience he was Maced by "this little man in a little blue suit" while the singer was getting acquainted with the woman in a shower room.
Police stopped the performance and arrested Morrison for "performing an indecent and immoral exhibition."
It seems virtually everybody connected with those events on Dec. 9, 1967 (excepting the deceased) has contacted me with leads, stories or the supposed name of that young woman.
Everybody, that is, except the woman herself.
I thought I had hit the jackpot when Gary Deleone of East Haven called. He said he had a copy of the police report about that crazy night, written by New Haven Police Lt. James Kelly.
I had been informed the police department no longer had this document, so I was excited as I drove over to Deleone’s house.
Deleone has the report because his father, Joe Deleone, worked at the Arena.
Kelly’s report said Officer Arthur Baker received a complaint from Thomas Janette about "two subjects in a shower room." Kelly said Janette had personal belongings there.
"Officer Baker went into this room and observed two subjects, later identified as James Morrison, 24, of Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, Calif. and Sandy Spodniak, 18, of 1590 Blvd., a So. Conn. College student, standing inside the shower room embracing and kissing," Kelly wrote.
"Officer Baker advised both subjects that he had received a complaint about them and asked them to leave," Kelly reported. "Morrison then became belligerent and refused to leave. A scuffle followed and a shot of Mace was used to subdue Morrison."
Kelly said police decided not to arrest Morrison because they feared "the audience would react in a violent manner."
But Kelly said near the end of the show, Morrison "began to use vile and filthy language."
Kelly said this "caused unrest" in the crowd. He quoted a mother, Mrs. Doris Heath of North Haven, complaining her 13-year-old daughter was hearing "those filthy statements."
"I went up on the stage and notified the group that the show was over and to leave the stage," Kelly wrote.
After Morrison shouted "Turn off the lights!" and an obscenity, Kelly said, "Morrison was then placed under arrest and had to be forcibly removed from the stage."
The police report is from a carbon copy, so it is partially blurred. Deleone and I eyeballed the young woman’s name and we think it is Sandy Spodniak, although it could be Sandy Spodnick.
But when I asked Southern Connecticut State University officials to check both names, they couldn’t come up with any record of her.
Did she lie to the police about being a Southern student? Did she make up a name? Maybe because she wasn’t arrested the police let her run off without seeking formal identification.
Baker is dead. So is Kelly. So is Morrison.
Two other people who said they were there gave me different names of the mystery necker, but neither checked out.
Janette himself contacted me. He confirmed he was there with his opening act Tommy and the Rivieras and did complain to the police about Morrison because the Rivieras had their wallets stashed near the shower room.
Janette said he saw Morrison in the shower room with "a pretty brunette." He also saw him get Maced.
A man who asked not to be named told me he too was backstage that night and saw Morrison with "a brunette with shoulder-length hair."
This man recalls seeing Morrison being arrested. "His head was bouncing on the stairs."
Now: Will the real "Sandy Spodniak" stand up?
Despite Some Hot Tips, Jim Morrison’s ‘Date’ Still Eludes Detection
By: Randall Beach
New Haven Register
December 12 2003
Now that we're near the end of fun-filled 2003, it’s high time for a whatever-happened-to column, starting with the ever-elusive "Doors mystery co-ed."
Imagine my disappointment; despite dozens of tips and leads, I’m still looking for Sandy Spodniak.
I did find the police report, with her name on it, from that infamous night at the New Haven Arena (Dec. 9, 1967) when she was found making out with Doors lead singer Jim Morrison in an Arena shower.
Their tryst was historic because a police officer discovered them and sprayed Morrison with Mace. The singer was so mad he ridiculed the police during the show that night, prompting the men in blue to turn on the lights, shut down the show and arrest him.
My public appeal last summer for information on Spodniak’s whereabouts led to some odd events and characters. A well-meaning reader linked me up with an online service that supposedly reunites people.
The service boasted it had found my gal.
But after I paid $19.95, the service said, oops, we don’t have her after all. At least I got a refund.
Then there was the alleged "retired detective from a local P.D." who in mid-October e-mailed me to announce he had tracked her down.
"I know where she is," he wrote. "Want to know?"
When I quickly said I did, he wrote back, "How much is it worth to you? Not to be rude, but I researched this for four months."
Then his e-mail took a left turn toward loony land: "She is not willing to talk, although she does admit to being the former ‘Sandy Spodniak.’ Rolling Stone offered me $3,500, which barely covers my expenses, and they will picture me with Sandy on the cover."
He also told me, "I could probably get a covert picture of her for less money."
I told him he had lost all credibility with his nutty story about being promised the cover of Rolling Stone. And I told him we don’t play ball with checkbook journalism.
So the question remains: Whatever happened to Sandy Spodniak?
Occasionally people have asked me: Whatever happened to Christopher Rynn? He’s the unemployed accountant I interviewed in July about his diligent but frustrating job search.
When I last spoke with Rynn a few weeks ago he was still unemployed and continuing to log about 25 hours every week at CT Works in New Haven, looking for jobs by using the computers.
I asked Rynn if he had considered scaling down his expectations and taking a lower-paying job, but he said he wasn’t willing to do so. He has been out of work for more than two years now and is still living with his mother in Milford.
My column on Stephen Votto Sr. closing Beirne’s Pharmacy in New Haven had an unintended consequence: Many people assumed Beirne’s Home Medical Equipment in North Haven, run by Stephen Votto Jr., had closed too. But that business is still going strong.
For those wondering whatever happened to the plans to reopen Kavanagh’s, the popular bar-restaurant on Chapel Street, there have been the inevitable renovation and permit delays. It won’t open New Year’s Day.
But Pattie Mastriano, who will give the old joint a new lease on life as Sullivan’s on Chapel, told me recently she and her sisters are optimistic about a gala opening in mid- to late January. Maybe we can see the Super Bowl there.
There is also good baseball news for the people of Greater New Haven. Although we mourned the passing of the New Haven Ravens in September — many of us ceremoniously ran the bases after that final game with tears in our eyes — it’s all but certain we at least will have a Northeast League team moving here from Pittsfield, Mass.
I hope the "Babalu" brigade will be back in force at Yale Field next spring. And my apologies to those diehards (as well as to the spirit of Desi Arnaz) for my grievous mistake of spelling it "Bobaloo."
www.nhregister.com/site/news.cfm?
BRD=1281&dept_id=7576&newsid=9985231&PAG=461&rfi=9