The Greystone Mansion Murder Mystery: Two Men Dead, No Answers (1929)

The Most Expensive Home in California

In 1928, oil baron Edward L. Doheny Sr. — one of the wealthiest men in California — completed construction of a 55-room, 46,000-square-foot Tudor Revival mansion in Beverly Hills as a gift to his son and heir. Designed by architect Gordon Kaufmann and built at a cost of over $3.1 million (equivalent to approximately $58 million in 2025), the estate at 905 Loma Vista Drive included formal English gardens, stables, a fire station, tennis courts, a greenhouse, a swimming pool and pavilion, a lake, and cascading waterfalls. It was the most expensive private home ever constructed in California at the time. Ned Doheny Jr. moved into Greystone in October 1928 with his wife Lucy and their five children. He lived there for exactly four months.

Ned and Hugh

Edward "Ned" Doheny Jr. had known Theodore "Hugh" Plunkett since 1913, when Ned was courting his future wife and Hugh worked at a gas station owned by her family. The two became close friends and, eventually, inseparable. Hugh worked as Ned's chauffeur, then as his personal secretary, managing his correspondence, finances, and daily affairs for more than 15 years. It was Hugh who oversaw the construction of Greystone while Ned was in Washington supporting his father through the Teapot Dome bribery scandal — a scandal in which both Ned and Hugh had played a direct role. In 1921, Ned had personally carried $100,000 in a black bag from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. to deliver to Interior Secretary Albert Fall as a bribe. Both men were about to testify in the upcoming bribery trial.

The Night of February 16, 1929

At approximately 9:30 p.m. on February 16, 1929, Hugh Plunkett drove to Greystone unannounced. The gatekeeper admitted him — Hugh was a regular fixture and had his own key. Hugh made his way to a guest bedroom in the east wing of the mansion and used the house's internal phone system to call Ned. What passed between them is unknown. Ned went to the east wing. Shortly afterward, Lucy Doheny heard a gunshot from the east wing. Rather than call the police, she enlisted the family doctor to investigate with her. They found Hugh at the door of the room, reportedly highly agitated and holding a gun. He closed and barred the door. A second shot was fired. When access was gained, both men were dead, lying in pools of blood.

The Investigation — Such As It Was

Police were not called until approximately three hours after the shootings. By the time they arrived, the Doheny family and their lawyer had been in the room with the bodies. The official ruling — reached with minimal investigation — was murder-suicide: Plunkett had killed Doheny and then himself. The specific explanation offered was that Plunkett had been suffering from a "nervous disorder" and was angry over a denied raise. The case was closed. Forensic details that emerged later complicated this narrative significantly: Plunkett appeared to have been shot from further away than a self-inflicted shot would require; Doheny's own gun was the murder weapon; Ned was not buried in the Doheny family plot at Calvary Cemetery — a Catholic cemetery — despite the family's devout Catholicism, suggesting the Church believed he had died by suicide, which was grounds for exclusion from Catholic burial at the time.

The Unanswered Questions

The case has generated enduring speculation for nearly a century. Why was there a three-hour delay before police were called? Why did the forensic evidence not clearly support the murder-suicide ruling? Were Ned and Hugh more than friends — and did fear of exposure drive the events of that night? What did they know, and what were they about to say, in the upcoming Teapot Dome trial? The 2007 film There Will Be Blood, loosely based on the elder Doheny's life via Upton Sinclair's novel Oil!, filmed scenes at Greystone. The mansion was purchased by the City of Beverly Hills in 1965, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, and is now a public park — open for tours and available for film and television production. It remains one of Los Angeles' most beautiful, and most mysterious, historic properties.