In 1969, a young woman named Diane Linkletter fell from the sixth floor of her Los Angeles apartment building. She was twenty years old and the daughter of Art Linkletter, one of the most beloved television hosts in America. Within hours, the story was everywhere. Her father went on national television and told the world that LSD had killed his daughter. The headlines ran it. Schools taught it. Politicians cited it in Congress. It became one of the most famous drug deaths of the 1960s. There was only one problem. It was not true.The man who told the story was Edward Durston, a well-connected socialite in his thirties who had been spending time with Diane. He was the only person in the apartment that morning. When police arrived, he told them Diane had taken LSD during the night, panicked, and gone over the balcony before he could stop her. The media repeated it without question. Art Linkletter believed it completely, and that belief shaped the rest of his life. He became one of the most visible anti-drug crusaders in the country, traveling to schools, churches, and congressional hearings, warning parents and children about the dangers of acid. He made a record with his son urging kids to call home before it was too late. That record won a Grammy. All of it was built on a story told by a single man who had been alone in a room with his daughter.The coroner's toxicology report came back weeks later. It showed no LSD, no marijuana, no alcohol. Nothing at all in Diane's system. She had taken no drugs. The report landed in a file drawer and stayed there while the myth spread. Schools kept teaching it. Preachers kept preaching it. Politicians kept citing her name as proof of what acid could do.Durston's story had shifted in small ways in the days after her death. Details moved. The timeline changed. Police noted the inconsistencies but had no physical evidence to contradict him. The case was ruled an accident. Durston left Los Angeles and moved in wealthy social circles.Sixteen years later, in January 1985, a woman named Carole Wayne, an actress and model best known from appearances on The Tonight Show, disappeared while on a trip to Mexico with Durston. They had argued the night before. She walked to the beach to cool off. Three days later, a fisherman found her body floating in the water. Mexican authorities called it an accidental drowning. Durston said he had last seen her alive hours earlier. He flew home and refused to discuss it. No charges were ever filed.A reporter in Los Angeles recognized the name, pulled the old files, and wrote about both cases side by side. Same man. Same pattern. Two women. Two accidents. Two sets of authorities who asked questions and walked away.Durston died in 2002. Art Linkletter, who spent four decades campaigning against the drug that the toxicology report proved had never touched his daughter, died in 2010. The myth of Diane Linkletter, the girl who jumped on acid, persisted in textbooks, anti-drug pamphlets, and political speeches for years. The file with the true report sat mostly unread.This is the real Diane Linkletter story, including the LSD myth exposed, the coroner report that stayed buried, the man who was never charged, and the second woman who died the same way sixteen years later. If you have ever heard her name used as a drug warning, this is what the file actually said.

For the FULL experience, watch this story as a Video on our YouTube channel here:

⁠youtube.com/@talesfromtheglovebox⁠