Why do I believe Kim Carlyle is still alive? Part II

Over the years, my grandfather, Otis “Pop-Pop” Weaver, told me many stories concerning Kim Carlyle’s funeral, and of his long, soul-bearing talk with actor Cliff DiMarco. To begin, please allow me to relay a startling revelation concerning Kim Carlyle’s famous gunmetal blue coffin...

It seems that when Pop-Pop’s crew tried to lower Kim’s casket into the ground, they were shocked at the extra weight they unexpectedly found themselves wrestling with. Most empty caskets weight between 200 and 300 pounds (perhaps a little more, depending on the materials used). Judging from photographs, Kim Carlyle may have weighed all of 118 pounds at the time of her “death”. So, at most, her casket should have weighed approximately 325 to 425 pounds, with her body inside. And yet the crew found itself handling a casket that they estimated weighed an incredible 650 pounds!

Why would the coffin be so much heavier, you may ask? Well, not that anyone dared to open the casket to find out for sure, but Pop-Pop always wondered if there wasn’t some sort of refrigeration unit hidden inside. He said that, strangely, the foot of the loaded coffin was much heavier than the head. This is very unusual, as the heaviest part of a body (the torso), would be more centralized to the container. He also said they could definitely hear a sound at one end, like a heavy, squared-off piece of equipment shifting back and forth, ever-so-slightly, buffered by the thick satin lining. According to Pop-Pop, the crew had to struggle for all they were worth to keep the overburdened coffin from hitting the floor of the grave hard enough to do it damage.

Unfortunately, once the casket was lowered, no one on Pop-Pop’s crew was interested in extricating it once again to see if there were any more anomalies with its design. Though Pop-Pop’s long time co-worker, Reggie McAfee, swore he saw a plug-in socket subtly worked in among the coffin’s silver handles.

Which brings us to the question: why would a refrigeration unit be necessary in a casket? I mean, if Kim Carlyle was dead and embalmed, and on her way to burial, there was no reason to keep the body refrigerated for the amount of time it would take to accomplish the average viewing and funeral service. And if we want to proffer the ludicrous idea that Kim was alive and somehow capable of controlling her breathing long enough to get away with posing in her own casket for the required ceremonies, there would still be no reason for a refrigeration unit to enter into the equation. Bottled oxygen, perhaps, but not refrigeration! This leads me to the one and only logical conclusion.

I believe that Kim Carlyle faked her own death for reasons that I will go into further. I believe she contrived, through her contacts in the art world (including Salvador Dali), to have a perfect likeness of herself created out of wax and placed in the casket. This wax figure would require a certain amount of refrigeration to survive the California heat (even in November), in order to preserve the perfection of the likeness. It is for this reason that I believe a very cleverly disguised, cutting-edge, nearly silent air conditioning unit was placed within Kim’s casket to keep her wax likeness looking fresh and believable throughout the services.

Remember, the funeral director responsible for Kim’s body was no doubt bought off, paid handsomely for his continued silence, as were key members of his staff. The body was roped off from the viewing line, and none of the guests were allowed to get too close to the casket while it was open. (Though it was reported that security officers had to physically restrain Gavin Hurrell from giving Kim one last kiss. They later had to remove him when he threw himself onto the closed casket during the graveside service.) All this, plus the din of the crowd, was probably enough to muffle whatever soft hum might have been heard coming from the refrigeration/air conditioning unit -- though Rona Barrett complained later to friends that she was irritated, during the viewing, by a high-pitched whine that she attributed to John Carradine’s hearing aid.

As for the cemetery crew? Well, I’m sure no one gave them or their work much thought. The coffin, after all, would be unplugged and sealed when the time came for it to be lowered into the ground. By then, the invasive press and the weeping throng would be gone, and Kim Carlyle’s terrible secrets would finally be laid to rest. If not for a wonderful old man regaling his beloved granddaughter with stories of Old Hollywood, the actual truth might have been buried forever.

More to come in Part III…