Pete Duel’s Family Knows Who Really Killed Him! The “Twin” Son They Fear Will be Next
by Al Crowley; Movie Mirror, April 1972
It was a cold Wednesday afternoon, but the Penfield Baptist Church was filled to the brink. The first week of the New Year found hundreds of friends and family in Penfield, a suburb of Rochester, New York, to mourn the death of its hometown boy who made it big in Hollywood — but couldn’t live it big, who really couldn’t live at all.
Pete Duel was his name. A 31-year-old actor who had struggled to break into the Hollywood star system and who was just beginning to receive well-deserved praise for his TV series, ABC’s Alias Smith and Jones. But Pete was getting little joy from it…
The black limousine pulled up in front of the church. Pete’s look-alike brother, Geoffrey, stepped out of the car. He held out a helping hand to his grandmother. Pamela, his younger sister, followed closely behind. Pete had helped her make it in a singing group out on the West Coast. He was so excited when she opened in Las Vegas.
Pete’s parents, Dr. and Mrs. Ellsworth Deuel slowly emerged from the car. His father held his mother’s arm supportingly as they climbed the few steps up to the church. The Deuel family sat in the front pew of the church which was decorated with three unobtrusive flower arrangements. Dianne Ray sat behind the family.
Dianne Ray, Pete’s longtime girlfriend, was in the house that fateful evening, the night before the New Year. He had invited her to watch his show on the TV. In the middle of the program, Pete switched to a basketball game in a fit of self-disgust. Confused, Dianne left the living room. She fell asleep in the bedroom, leaving Pete, perhaps with the thoughts that ultimately ended his life.
When he walked into the bedroom, Dianne woke up. She saw him take a wrapped box from the dresser, tear the paper off and remove a .38 caliber revolver from the box. “I’ll see you later,” he muttered to her and walked into the living room. That was 1:25 a.m., December 31st.
Before Dianne could even absorb what Pete had done, a shot thundered through the whole house. And there was Pete, dead with the gun by his side, near the Christmas tree they had decorated together…
Pete’s body was brought to rest in the town he loved. Pictures of his hometown, Penfield, painted by a local artist were all over the walls of his Hollywood home. Over 2,000 people came to the Penfield funeral home. In fact, special sherrif’s units were sent out to direct the traffic that was backed for over a mile.
Two days before, over a thousand fans and television celebrities attended a memorial service for Peter in the Self-Realization Fellowship Temple in Los Angeles. Pete had hoped this group could help him find a reason for living.
Why couldn’t Peter find happiness — and why was he finally driven to take his own life? At the funeral, as one looked at his mother’s tear-strained face, she seemed to say, “My son. My Pete. I know you always wanted to be a star — even as a little boy I remember you pretending to be an actor. But I knew it was no good for you. I knew it wouldn’t bring you happiness. Being an actor is the roughest thing in the world, and you have to be made of steel to take it. And you, Pete, you had a soft, kind heart … You were not meant for this kind of crazed life. Pete, why did you ever leave Penfield where your family and friends were?” But Mrs. Deuel knew that it was too late to help her son Pete, but what of Geoffrey, who people mistakenly took for Peter all the time — what about Geoff? He was following right in his older brother’s footsteps — an actor, too.
Peter had been having emotional problems for quite a while. He drank excessively. On October 24, 1970, he was in an auto accident in which he pleaded guilty before a Santa Monica judge to charges of driving while intoxicated. A week before Pete shot himself, he shot at a telegram framed and hung in the hallway of his home — a telegram which informed him he had lost election to the Board of Directors of the Screen Actors Guild.
In an interview here last year, Pete said, “After talking about pictures and how they’re made and what I’m going to do next, there’s nothing more to say.” He then told the interviewer, “There’s nothing much to smile about anymore.”
And so, friends and family had come to the little church that day to, as the minister said, “Honor the good and kind in Peter.”
Pete’s uncle, Theodore J. Ellsmore, echoed these words when he described his nephew as a “kind and good person who never forgot his family and friends. Whenever something big was happening in the family, he was always here. We all loved him.” Little more than a week before that, Pete was in Rochester spending Christmas Eve with his uncle.
The friends who had come to the memorial service that day included middle-aged couples dressed “appropriately” in dark dresses and suit and ties, long-haired types with bell-bottomed jeans and dungaree jackets and young teenage fans.
“Pete was the kind of guy who could make friends with anyone,” a high school classmate said. Someone Pete knew for only a few weeks in New York while he was in acting school took a bus up from Brooklyn last night. One classmate had flown all the way from Seattle to be with the Deuel family.
At the simple half-hour service, the pastor of the church read two poems. One, written by Pete as a junior at Penfield High School, spoke of life and death, that death is “just the end of a glorious fall.” His mother wrote the other, “What is a Child?” on the long plane ride back from the Los Angeles memorial service.
She wrote that “a child is like the day / As some days are long, and some short, / So is the life of a child … So too / as the sun sets to rise again, / Our life sets to rise again, / to know no end.”
No one knows for sure who Pete Duel really was or what made him pull the trigger on himself. His girlfriend, Dianne, still insists that his death was an accident, although the coroner’s report said he died from a “self-inflicted gunshot wound” and the Los Angeles police called it suicide. But one thing is clear, Pete was a terribly unhappy, despairing man who suffered deeply. He chose the only way he saw out of his misery.
Is his family right in thinking that Pete would be alive today if he had not journeyed to the tinsel city to find his fortune — to be an actor? Did Hollywood and all its painful disappointments emotionally and spiritually kill Pete? One can never know the answer. But the family’s fears for “twin” son Geoffrey are certainly understandable after having suffered such a tragedy as the death of Pete.
It’s so very sad that pete never got to know how many people loved him so much he was my first real love even though I was only 13 at the time I still feel the pain I felt for this truly lovely gentle young man. I was so heart broken for a long time my friends from school still say to me you were so in love with Pete wasn’t you. I say yes and I still am and always will be I hope I can meet you in heaven one day dear peteX
I told my nan I was going to marry him after I saw him on Alias Smith and Jones. He was beautiful. And I have never forgotten him.
He was my first crush as a young girl. You never forget your first.
Did Dianne find happiness? I pray for her.
Can you share the photo you have? Never heard that story!
You will never be forgotten. Love always. ❤️
I agree with you Brian. I also never even knew until one day in 2014 I searched it on the internet and was totally distraught. I was so sad. It makes me sick to know that happened. Later as I was reflecting, I was almost glad I did not know earlier in my life because it may have been too difficult to bear. I drove by the house he died at as it’s about an hour from my house and I just was wishing he was still around today so I would have been able to meet him. I get so much joy from AS&J and watch it almost daily. It is even more precious now as this is all I have left of Pete. It sucks !!!!
He went to venice high school and played in a basketball game. We were all so excited it was 1971. I have a picture if him and autograph i was so sad when i heard he died. Loved him in gidget and alias smith and jones
I remember watching Alias Smith and Jones reruns when I was a kid, about 10 years after Pete died.
I was so broken hearted when I learned what had happened. I remember looking up information on Mr. Duel in the library and crying after reading the article in People Magazine.
Thank you.
Brian