According to a disturbing new book, Lana Turner may have slain her violent partner and then blamed the stabbing on her daughter.

Turner had already had a successful film and television career as a star at MGM for 17 years. She became a household name because of her parts in Peyton Place (1957) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).

Miss Turner was also known for her chaotic personal life, having married eight times and dated celebrities such as Clark Gable, Rex Harrison, and, allegedly, Frank Sinatra.

Cheryl Crane, the actress’s only child, was held responsible for her boyfriend’s death. The motive for the teen’s actions, however, remained a mystery for the next 30 years.

Historian Darwin Porter claimed to have evidence linking her to the murder of her Mafioso boyfriend Johnny Stompanato, whom she discovered in bed with her 14-year-old daughter at her Beverly Hills home.

Stompanato was slain in April 1958 by Miss Turner’s daughter, Cheryl Crane, when he ‘ran into’ a kitchen knife she had seized to defend her mother, according to an inquest.

Crane described the night in the Beverly Hills residence, “I ran down the stairs into the kitchen. I don’t know what I was looking for but I found a knife.”

Daughter Cheryl Crane

“I ran back upstairs, the door burst open and mother was there looking at me and John was coming toward me. I stepped through the door and he literally ran into the knife.”

But what many people didn’t realize about Stompanato’s dying night was the severity of the stabbing.

“I went upstairs to do a book report and mother came in and said, ‘I’m going to ask John to leave. I don’t want you to come downstairs but if you hear us arguing that’s what it’s about,’” Crane recalled to KMIR 6 News in 2009.

Crane began to hear the intense debate downstairs as she was up in her room. Crane was unfazed at first, but when she heard Stompanato threaten to disfigure her mother and destroy her family, she decided to act.

Following the stabbing, the adolescent was declared a ward of the court and placed in the custody of her grandmother. The killing was judged a lawful homicide.

Miss Turner told the coroner’s jury that she and Stompanato had been bickering and that he had threatened to ‘cripple’ her and murder her kid.

Cheryl was raised without the motherly affection she sought as a celebrity’s kid. Her mother was usually working, and she admitted to going into Turner’s closet to “inhale her essence” on occasion.

However, in his latest book, Lana Turner: Hearts and Diamonds Take All, Porter claims that individuals close to the celebrity, including a detective, tell a different story.

Mr Porter presents new information from interviews with key players in the case, including investigator Fred Otash.

Mr Otash allegedly confessed reconstructing the crime scene with Miss Turner’s lawyer, Jerry Giesler, before his death in 1992. He further claimed that Mr Giesler, whom Miss Turner had summoned before police, advised his client to blame her daughter since she would not face a trial as a juvenile. The book claims Mr Otash said: ‘I was the one who wiped the fingerprints off the knife in Lana’s bathroom sink. I was a naughty boy doing what I’m not supposed to do.’

Turner’s friends have reportedly claimed that she confessed to the murder in private.

He told the Daily Mail, “The evidence is overwhelming.”

Mr Otash recalls receiving an urgent cry for assistance from Mr Giesler. ‘Giesler told me what had happened … “Get … right over here. Stompanato’s on Lana’s bed, which looks like a hog was butchered”,’ he said.

‘From what I gathered, Lana had walked in on Johnny in bed with Cheryl. Both of them were in a post-coital sleep. Lana confessed to Giesler that she’d bought the kitchen knife the day before to protect herself against Johnny, who was threatening her.’

‘When she’d assumed he’d seduced her daughter, she went for the knife in a drawer in her nightstand, and plunged it into his stomach.’ Cheryl was weeping that she ‘didn’t mean to kill him’ when police chief Clinton Anderson arrived, according to reports. However, the lack of blood and fingerprints made him suspicious.

Stompanato allegedly made money by blackmailing people and has ties to LA criminal Mickey Cohen.