Evelyn Hoey

Evelyn Hoey (December 15, 1910 – September 11, 1935) was a torch singer and actress whose Broadway career spanned from 1928 to 1932. Born in Minneapolis, she began performing at the age of ten and went on to appear in London and Paris before establishing herself on the New York stage.

Hoey's Broadway credits included the musicals Yours Truly and Fifty Million Frenchmen, as well as the revues The Vanderbilt Revue and Walk a Little Faster. She was particularly noted for her work in Fifty Million Frenchmen. Beyond the stage, she held one film credit: a role in the 1930 comedy Leave It to Lester, directed by Frank Cambria and co-starring Lester Allen and Hal Thompson.

Hoey died on September 11, 1935, at the age of twenty-four. She was found shot in an upstairs bedroom at Indian Run Farm, the Wallace Township property near Downingtown, Pennsylvania, belonging to oil heir Henry H. Rogers III, where she had been a guest for a week. Others present at the property that night included Rogers, photographer William J. Kelley, cook George Yamada, a butler, and Rogers' chauffeur Frank Catalano. Her body was subsequently transported to the county hospital in West Chester, Pennsylvania, for an autopsy.

A coroner's inquest followed, at which Rogers and Kelley testified that they were on the first floor when they heard the shot. Their account was corroborated by Yamada, Catalano, and a farmer who had come to collect wages. The coroner's jury returned an open verdict concluding that Hoey had died by her own hand.

District Attorney William E. Parke was unsatisfied with the inquest's proceedings and in October 1935 requested a grand jury investigation into both Hoey's death and the conduct of the coroner's jury members, including their contacts with newspaper reporters who had covered the inquest. The grand jury convened in West Chester on November 12, 1935. Among those who testified was Hoey's singing coach, Victor Andoga, who stated that he believed she had taken her own life due to distress over a love affair with a New York theatrical man and anxiety that her voice was failing. Andoga recounted that Hoey had twice expressed a desire to end her life, and that in 1932 she had confided to him that a man wished to marry her, though she declined because of her attachment to the theatrical man. He also testified that she had asked him to evaluate her voice upon her return from a trip to Bermuda in 1934, and that she had told him she had considered jumping overboard during that voyage but had not followed through. The grand jury concluded on November 18, 1935, that Hoey had died by suicide. It also found that members of the coroner's jury had been too closely associated with news reporters covering the case, though it determined there had been no criminal interference with any juror or the deputy coroner.