Mystery of glamorous Hollywood groupie who had string of scandalous affairs with A-list stars before being brutally murdered - as her daughter reveals haunting final memory

It was the revolting stench coming from the trunk of a parked car outside a busy Los Angeles grocery store that first sounded the alarm.

When police finally arrived on the scene, they made the grisly discovery of a decomposing body identified as 39-year-old Cynthia Bouron - who had been reported missing ten days earlier on October 20, 1973, by her two teenage sons.

The twice divorced mother-of-three was found hog tied and an autopsy revealed that she had been bludgeoned to death with a hammer.

It was a horrifying end to what gossip columnists called a 'reckless life'.

Like so many starry-eyed hopefuls before her, Bouron was an aspiring actress from the Midwest lured to LA by Hollywood's illusory promise of fame and fortune. 

Instead, her ill-fated pursuit of stardom led her into the dark and dangerous side of Tinsel Town that culminated in her brutal Mafia-style execution.

Along the way, she gained infamy as a celebrity groupie who was rumored to have had love affairs with some of Hollywood's biggest players - including Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Jerry Lewis, Omar Sharif, and renowned Twentieth Century Fox producer, Harry Sokolev.

Yet over 50 years later her murder remains a mystery - and her daughter Stephanie Strom is now speaking out for the first time as she desperately seeks answers. 

In the years leading up to her slaying, Bouron had been connected to some of Hollywood's most significant scandals.

Some reports claimed that Bouron was a high-priced call girl. 

Other newspapers identified her as an 'attractive personal manager,' a model a showgirl, a department store sales clerk, an actress, a producer, and a writer at Twentieth Century Fox. 

In 1966, her estranged husband, a mobbed-up Yugoslavian stuntman by the name of Milos Milosevic, killed himself and his lover Barbara Ann Rooney in a gruesome murder-suicide. 

Barbara Ann was said to be on the brink of reconciling her marriage with the mega famous child star, Mickey Rooney, when Milos shot her in a jealous rage as her four children slept in bedrooms nearby.

In 1970, Bouron filed a high-profile paternity suit against Cary Grant alleging that he was the father of her daughter, whom she named Stephanie Andrea Grant.

The case was eventually dismissed by the court. 

For someone who spent a lifetime on the fringe of Hollywood living as some would call, a professional 'hanger-on' - news of Bouron's violent ending in October 1973 went largely unnoticed in the film community.

Buried deep in the back pages, her murder was given a cursory two-line mention, and Bouron was all but forgotten. 

Now, over 50 years later, Stephanie - who was three years old at the time of her mother's death - seeks closure. 

Speaking to DailyMail.com, she said: 'Some days I worry I'll never get the answers I need.

'All I was ever told is that my mother ran with a fast Hollywood crowd and it got her killed.'

After Bouron's death, Stephanie was adopted by a middle-class Jewish family in San Diego, where she took on their surname, Strom.

'I wouldn't say my childhood was happy,' she says. 'It was difficult.'

Strom said she was kicked out of the house at age 13 when she began to butt heads with her adoptive mother. 

'I just never felt like I belonged,' she told  DailyMail.com.

Compounding her sense of loneliness was her loss of contact with her older brothers, Marc and Eric Bouron, who disappeared in the aftermath of their mother's death.

'My whole real reason for digging is to find my brothers,' Strom said. 'I did my DNA test, signed up for Ancestry.com, and I found a lot of distant cousins, but nothing on my brothers.' 

The life story of Cynthia Bouron would have been all but forgotten had a journalist not revived the mystery of her death last week in an article published for AirMail.

According to the publication, Bouron was born Cynthia Louise Krensky to a wealthy family in Chicago on September 24, 1934.

Strom said her mother 'was enamored with Hollywood from a young age.' 

Bouron attended school in Paris as a teenager where she fell in love and got married to a dentist named Robert Bouron in 1956. The couple had two sons named Eric and Marc.

But Tinsel Town called, and Bouron moved to Los Angeles in 1964 where she met and married Milos Milosevic, a slick Yugoslavian gangster known as 'Milos Milos.'

Back in his home country, Milos earned quick cash as a street fighter alongside his pal, Stevan Markovic.

But he always wanted to make it big in showbusiness and saw Alain Delon as his ticket to Hollywood after they met during a chance encounter in 1962 when the French movie star was filming Marco Polo in Belgrade.

Delon, also known for his links to organized crime, quickly took a liking to the rough pair and hired Milos as his stuntman and bodyguard.

Markovic also worked as a bodyguard for Delon, but was found shot dead outside a Paris dump in 1968 with his limbs tied back in eerily similar fashion to how Bouron was killed five years later. His murder also remains unsolved. 

The two men were said to enjoy the privileges that came with being in Delon's social circle. According to AirMail, their duties as bodyguards often involved 'procuring women for an evening's entertainment.'

Cary Grant's biographer, Marc Elliot claimed that Bouron was paid 'a high five figure sum' to marry Milos in order to 'save him from deportation to Yugoslavia where he faced a 15-year prison term for army desertion.'

Their relationship was stormy and toxic from the start.

Milos was described by a co-star in 'The Russians Are Coming' as 'very pleasant but nuts.'

'He would drive sports cars and aim for people. They would have to jump out of his way. This was always a big laugh to him.'

In March 1964, Bouron called the cops on Milos, which turned into a police chase through Miami beach as he evaded arrest in his Bentley. Officers discovered that he was packing two handguns and carrying a tear-gas pen.

By July 1965, Bouron had officially called it quits and filed for divorce after Milos was arrested for domestic assault in Los Angeles.  

It was during that time, that Milos began a passionate affair with Barbara Ann Rooney, the fifth wife of the adulterous, pill-popping, alcoholic child star, Mickey Rooney.

Milos moved into the Rooney family home while Mickey was away in the Philippines filming a movie. Upon discovering Barbara Ann's infidelity, Mickey filed for divorce and threatened to take custody of their four children. 

In January 1966, as Rooney recovered in the hospital from a drug overdose, he convinced Barbara Ann to rekindle their marriage. 

Milos flew into a jealous rage when Barbara Ann broke the news later that evening, and shot her in the jaw before turning the gun on himself.

Their bodies were found the next morning, slumped on top of each other in the bathtub. 

The shocking murder-suicide became a global tabloid sensation; and Bouron -  who was still legally married to Milos at the time - became the subject of intense public curiosity. 

She basked in the newfound spotlight, hitting up the Daisy (an exclusive members-only disco) with TV star Stuart Whitman while dancing alongside Natalie Wood, Ryan O’Neal, and Nancy Sinatra, AirMail reported. 

She was also spotted at parties hosted by the actor George Hamilton and the artist André Andreoli.

'People tell me that she was very beautiful and charming,' said Bouron's daughter.

In early 1967, Bouron was romantically linked to the Oscar-winning Swiss star, Maximilian Schell, but she reportedly declined his proposal before becoming involved with Alan Friedman, who was Schell's writing partner and a producer and screenwriter.

On another occasion, she spotted at a Hollywood tiki bar on the arm of actor Omar Sharif. 

She was then rumored to have dated the mega powerful Twentieth Century Fox producer Harry Sokolov.

'I learned from my grandmother that she dated Frank Sinatra,' Strom added. 'She did not stalk Frank Sinatra like people have said.'

She also paired up with Jerry Lewis who, according to Airmail, thought about marrying her for a short time until he learned that she lied about being a member of the Bourbon royal family.

During this period, Bouron formed a close bond with Marilyn Hinton, a philanthropist and prominent figure in Hollywood social circles, through whom she met Cary Grant.

Bouron was just his type: beautiful and nearly three decades his junior. 

The two allegedly had a short affair around 1969 following Grant's divorce from the actress Dyan Cannon - who claimed in her 2011 memoir that their rocky two-year marriage was blighted by his abuse of LSD.

As detailed in 'Cary Grant: In Name Only,' Bouron shacked up with the movie star in a suite at the Dunes hotel and casino in Las Vegas, where they enjoyed evenings of 'candlelight, champagne, and sexy evening dresses.'

The rumored affair was brief, but in early 1970, Bouron announced to the press that she was pregnant with Grant’s child.

Grant - who carefully managed to avoid scandals throughout his extensive Hollywood career - reportedly felt humiliated and agreed to cover Bouron's maternity expenses. 

On March 12, 1970, Bouron gave birth to a baby girl. She named the child Stephanie Andrea Grant, and listed Grant as the father on the birth certificate.

In May, after retaining the services of the same lawyer who represented a woman's failed paternity suit against Elvis Presley, Bouron filed a paternity suit against Grant asking for 'reasonable support.'

Grant initiated his own lawsuit, asking the court to stop Bouron from claiming he was Stephanie’s father.

According to AirMail, Grant hired a private detective to sneak into Bouron’s apartment for a glimpse of the baby to ensure that she bore no resemblance to him.

'I'm biracial,' Strom told DailyMail.com. 'So the truth is I do not think Cary Grant was my father.'

'The brown started kicking in and the hair is a little tight,' she joked.

The case was eventually dropped when Bouron failed to comply three times with a court mandated blood test to prove Grant was the father. 

But the court dismissal did little to stop Bouron from continuing to harass her former lover. 

In November, she sent a pair of Stephanie's booties to Grant while he was staying at the Dorchester Hotel in London, along with a note that read: 'You wouldn’t want to be in my shoes.'

Following the scandal, Bouron retreated to Palm Springs, where a local paper noted her connections to the local entertainment and nightlife scene.

Her final mention in the gossip columns was in March 1972, when she was seen at a party hosted by Jolie Gabor with Eva Gabor, Rock Hudson and an Italian prince.

Strom has very few recollections left of her mother, but she vividly remembers feeling a pervasive sense of 'nervousness.' 

'If I try to feel her, I remember anxiety. I remember just running around a lot,' she explained to DailyMail.com.

'My adoptive mother hinted to me that she wasn't 100 percent mentally healthy. She was going through a lot. She just couldn't find a husband. She always wanted to be married and instead she was just dating all these different men,' she continued.

Sadly, history repeated itself for Strom, who became a stripper as a teenager and 'looked for love in all the wrong places. 

Strom described her upbringing as being in a 'nice home,' but claimed that her adoptive mother was 'verbally and emotionally abusive.'

And while she always knew she was adopted, it wasn't until she was a teenager that she discovered why.

'I was coming home late hanging out with the wrong crowd, and my [adoptive] mother said 'You're gonna end up just like your mother, chopped up and tied up in the trunk of a car.''

After that, Strom didn't think about her again until she was in her late 20s, when she hired a lawyer to appeal to the adoption agency for more information.

Her adoption file revealed a trove of new details. 'That's how I learned that my mother wrote poetry, and that she was a writer for CBS,' Strom said.

In the enigmatic last days of her life, Strom believes that her mother might have sensed that she was in danger.

'She sent me to live with this woman for a few weeks before she died,' she told DailyMail.com.

Strom has a vague memory of being in a 'place with a bunch of kids' before her grandmother took her away. 

A social worker noted in her file that she was found in an 'unexpected place' - like 'in a bad neighborhood at a black woman's house,' Strom said.

A big argument ensued between Strom's grandmother and the woman charged with little Stephanie's care. 

'She just kept telling my grandmother, 'No! I promised I would take care of her,' Strom said.

Over the years, Strom's grandmother would visit her in San Diego and regale her with stories about her mother, which allowed her to piece together the  fractured memories she had left. 

'I just had little things that I would recall, but I wasn't sure for many years if they were real memories or not.'

She could recall her mother's blue Volkswagen Bug, and the words to a song she would sing. 

Strom said: 'I didn't know what she looked like though. I knew she had long dark hair but I couldn't picture her face for years.

'I would always check Google to see if anything new popped up and finally a photographer released a few photos, and I instantly recognized myself as a baby, because I have another picture of me wearing the same outfit. 

'I thought, 'Oh my God, that's me!'

As a child, Strom said she used to think her mother was the actress in the 1970s sitcom, 'That Girl.'

'I used to think as a little girl, 'That's my mommy, she's in the TV.'

'Come to find out, she looked just like her! Wow. So I did have memories. I just didn't think they were real.'

While Strom has been unable to track down her brothers, one silver-lining is that she managed to learn the identity of her father after connecting with a first cousin on Ancestry.com. 

'He messaged me right away,' said Strom. Through this cousin, she discovered that her father was his uncle Theodore, who never had any other children of his own.

Her newfound aunt explained that Theodore was the only relative to briefly visit her mother while she lived in Los Angeles during the 1970s.

'So it must have been a great few days for my mom!' Strom joked. 

Sadly, Theodore had already passed away when she discovered his identity, but Strom has since developed a close relationship with her cousin.

'I love him, he's awesome!' she says. 'He sends me all these pictures. He's a foodie. He's just so nice. He sends me a lot of black cultural stuff because I think he thinks that I don't know since I grew up with a white family.'

Today, Strom, 51, is happily married and living in San Diego where she works as a domestic violence advocate, after surviving what she describes as 'two decades worth' of her own toxic relationships.