In 1991, friends and associates begged Jim Mitchell to “do something” about his brother Artie’s wildly out of control booze and coke binges. Jim did something alright. One rainy evening in February he drove to Artie’s house with a .22 rifle and fatally shot him.
The jury in the highly-publicized murder trail rejected a murder charge and handed back a voluntary manslaughter conviction instead, for which he served three years at San Quentin prison.
Released in 1997, Mitchell returned to San Francisco to manage the legendary O’Farrell Theatre, the adult film and strip club that they opened in 1969. Mitchell died in 2007 of an apparent heart attack. In 2000 Emilio Estevez directed a film dramatizing the often-contentious relationship between Jim and Artie Mitchell; Rated X starred Estevez and his brother Charlie Sheen as the two brothers.
Sadly, the Mitchell name has just been entered once more into the log book of Bay Area grief and tragedy. From the Chron:
The 27-year-old son of the late Jim Mitchell, a pioneering and tragic figure in pornography, is in custody today after allegedly killing the mother of his 1-year-old daughter with a baseball bat at her Novato home and making off with the girl, prompting a five-hour manhunt, authorities said.
The entire article is here.
Filed under: Breakdown on Paradise Road | Tagged: Jim Mitchell, Mitchell Brothers, Novato
thats fucked. Runs in the family. They just celebrated 40th anniversary last week with a big ol bash. ’scuse the pun.
Oh, man. That was a bad pun. Interestingly, so far this story only seems to be tracking in the Bay Area news, not national.