The actress who played Kimberly Drummond died of an overdose at the age of 34. She went from early fame to being unemployed in Las Vegas, posing for Playboy, and robbing a store.
When Dana Plato rose to fame for her role as Kimberly Drummond in the popular series Black and White, broadcast between 1978 and 1985, no one imagined the tragic fate that awaited the actress, who died on May 8, 1999, at the age of 34. years from an overdose of pills.
However, the last years of her life anticipated her suicide: excesses, alcohol problems, drug addiction, and even minor crimes that led her to have problems with the police and even spend several days in prison.
She was born on November 7, 1964, in Maywood, California, as Dana Michelle Strain. Her mother, a single teenager who already had another child, could not take care of her, so she was adopted at seven months by Dean Plato. Her adoptive parents separated from her when she was three years old, and she has lived with her mother ever since.
His foray into show business was during his childhood: he filmed more than 100 television commercials and made his film debut at age 13 in Return to Boggy Creek (1977), as well as in The Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). ) and California Suite (1978).
Her jump to stardom came from the hand of Diff'rent Strokes (Black and White), the successful series that NBC premiered in November 1978, and that made her one of the most famous teenagers of the moment. In parallel, her personal life entered an abyss: she began to consume alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine. At just 14 years old, she overdosed on diazepam.
In 1984, at the age of 19, she became pregnant by her boyfriend, rock guitarist Lanny Lambert. She tried to convince the producers of the series to include the pregnancy in the plot, but they refused. She was not believable for her angelic persona of hers. That same year she married and her son, Tyler Edward Lambert, was born.
The divorce came in 1988 and she lost custody of her son. A week later, her adoptive mother died. To top it off, she was no longer a cute teenager and the door to Hollywood seemed to have closed, so she started acting in low-budget movies and even posed for Playboy.
Unemployed, on the brink of poverty, and with nothing to lose, she moved to Las Vegas
In this context, she began her problems with the law. On February 28, 1991, she walked into a video store with a BB gun and demanded money from the cash register clerk. "I just got robbed by the girl who played Kimberly in Black and White," the victim told police.
Just 15 minutes after the assault, Plato returned to the scene of the crime with the $164 she had stolen and was arrested. After her $13,000 bail was posted, she was released on five years of probation. However, she could not escape the media pressure: the front pages of all the newspapers had already echoed the news.
Less than a year later, in January 1992, she was arrested again for forging a prescription for diazepam, the same drug that had caused her to overdose at age 14. She spent 30 days in prison and then had to enter a drug rehabilitation program.
On the day of Dana Plato's death
In the late 1990s, Dana Plato began a relationship with Robert Menchaca, her last partner, with whom she moved into a trailer home in Florida. On May 8, 1999, they traveled to Los Angeles. Since it was her Mother's Day in the United States, they stopped in Moore, Oklahoma, for Robert to say hi to his mom.
After they all had lunch together, the actress said that she was tired and she went to bed in the trailer home. Shortly after, she was found dead. According to the autopsy, she died of an overdose after consuming several Valium and Loritab pills, two well-known sedatives. They labeled the cause as suicide and her body was cremated.
Her son Lambert could never get over the untimely death of his mother and entered the world of drugs and alcohol. In 2010, when she was 25 years old, he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. It was two days before the anniversary of the death of her mother.
