You might recognize the face on the far left—that’s because it is actor Dylan McDermott, who played the role of Dr. Ben Harmon on American Horror Story. Despite his success as an actor now, Dylan had quite a traumatic childhood. He was born on October 26, 1961 to teen parents Diane and Richard McDermott. His parents had split at an early age, and Diane began dating a man by the name of John Spanza. Dylan recalls the vicious arguing that went on between them almost daily. On February 9, 1967, when Dylan was now only 5, Diane’s boyfriend kicked him out of the apartment and he stood outside of the door when he suddenly heard a loud gunshot coming from inside. He stood outside and watched as a gurney carried his dead mother from the apartment, her head bandaged up from a gunshot wound. John told police that she committed suicide, and they easily bought his story. But it wasn’t until a few years ago that Dylan would go to police and ask them to reopen the case. They did, and they drew to new conclusions. The medical examiner determined that the gun found near her body couldn’t have been the real weapon that killed her, as it was too small a caliber. Furthermore, the gun was likely pressed against the back of her head.
Police now had sufficient evidence to arrest John Spanza, but it was all too late. They discovered that he had been murdered in 1972, his body having been found in the trunk of a car. John apparently had ties to organized crime.
When asked why he showed up to police headquarters after so many years, Dylan would explain, ‘’In order for me to survive and to get where I am today, I needed to bury that moment in my life deep within myself.“ He further stated that it was only recently when he’s finally begun to process what had happened in his early childhood.
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