Inside the Haunted Life of Donald Turnupseed, the Other Man in James Dean’s Fatal Car Crash

It’s been over 70 years since James Dean’s untimely death, but the other man involved in the crash, Donald Turnupseed, spent most of his life avoiding speaking about the accident. 

On Sept. 30, 1955, the 24-year-old Oscar-nominated actor was driving westbound in his brand-new Porsche Spyder along US 466 in Cholame, Calif., en route to a racing event in Salinas, 90 miles south of San Francisco, when Turnupseed, headed the opposite way, crossed the center line while attempting to make a left turn onto Route 41. 

Whether it was the sun’s 5:45 p.m. glare or the Porsche’s low height, Turnupseed didn’t see Dean’s silver sports car coming, and his Ford Tudor sedan crashed directly into the actor’s lightweight vehicle, nicknamed “Little Bastard,” nearly head-on.

“The Spyder cartwheeled in the air and came to a halt in a ditch, resting against a telephone pole,” the Los Angeles Times reported. 

Upon being taken to the Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital, 28 miles from the crash site, Dean was pronounced dead on arrival. The other man in his car, Porsche mechanic Rolf Wütherich, was also transported in the same ambulance as the East of Eden star, but his injuries were non-fatal. 

Turnupseed, meanwhile, reportedly suffered facial lacerations and bruising.

A California Polytechnic State University student at the time of the crash, Turnupseed was not cited and hitchhiked in the dark to his home in Tulare, Calif., afterward.

“I didn’t see him coming,” Turnupseed, then 23, reportedly told his hometown paper, the Tulare Advance-Register, hours after the crash in the only interview he gave about the incident.

Following an inquest, a coroner’s jury determined the death as accidental with no criminal intent.

Still, the Navy veteran’s life was filled with media requests, particularly every year around Sept. 30.

“That’s something that bothered him his whole life,” Wally Nelson, a family friend, told the Advance-Register in 1995 when Turnupseed died at the age of 63 of lung cancer.

Another friend, Al Paggi, said Turnupseed was always somewhat of an introvert, but the crash “more than likely” furthered that. 

“You could never get close to Don,” he said. 

Dean biographer Warren Beath once met Turnupseed, telling the American Legends website, “Everything about him was guarded and wary. He even seemed to move in slow motion as if he was walking in a mine field. A totally withdrawn personality.”

Rather than reliving his part in Hollywood lore, the man forever linked to Dean instead focused on his successful business. The Tulare Advance-Register reported that Turnupseed built an electrical contracting business, Turnupseed Electric Service Inc., and his clients included Kraft Foods, Häagen-Dazs, United States Cold Storage and California Milk Producers, among others. From 1990 to 1994, he was president of the San Joaquin Valley chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association.

“They were tough competitors,” said Paggi, owner of Paggi Electric, told the Tulare Advance-Register. “As a business person, (Turnupseed) learned from his dad. His dad was a very, very tough-minded person. But they never shorted anybody on their work.”

It became clear as time went on that Turnupseed was determined to distance himself from the 1955 accident. Beath attempted to get the adept electrician to comment on the crash. 

“I told him that I was researching the accident and wanted to know if we could talk about it,” Beath recalled in 2003. “He said, ‘Not a chance.’ Then, ‘Sorry.’ He had a condescending sense of humor but was gracious under the circumstances.”

In 2006, a letter purportedly written by Turnupseed to a friend sold at auction. The correspondence included images from the crash. 

“I am certainly sorry you have not heard from me before now but I have had quite a bit of excitement in the last year or so, first starting back to school then the affair with Dean,” he allegedly wrote to his pal. “Bought another car & a home so I am now just getting time to catch my breath. I am enclosing some shots of mine and Dean’s cars…Thank God I got out of it in one piece. But that is in the past and as I have said in poker games on the ship ‘That was yesterday.’ ”

Nearly a month after Dean’s death, Rebel Without a Cause was released. The following year, Dean’s final work, Giant, opened in theaters, earning him a posthumous Academy Award nomination.