TLDR: William “Bert” Lennon, father and longtime manager of the Lennon Sisters, was shot and killed on August 12, 1969, at the Venice Golf Course in Marina Del Rey, California.
His killer was Chet Young, a former Air Force officer with a history of psychiatric institutionalization who believed he was married to Peggy Lennon and that Bert was the obstacle standing between them.
Young had mailed the family a letter containing a cutout image of Bert with a gun pointed at his head and the words “High Noon” — which corresponded exactly to when he carried out the murder.
The letter arrived but sat unopened. Young was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the trunk of a car two months later.
Somewhere in the Lennon family home, there was an unopened letter.
Inside it was a cutout photograph of Bert Lennon with a picture of a gun pointed at his head. Above it, two words: “High Noon.”
The letter arrived before August 12, 1969. Nobody opened it. At approximately 12:00 PM that day, Bert Lennon was shot dead in the parking lot of the Venice Golf Course in Marina Del Rey. The killer had told them exactly when he was coming and exactly what he was going to do. The family found out after the fact.
Who Bert Lennon Was
Before his daughters were famous, Bert Lennon was a milkman. He drove his route through the neighborhoods of Los Angeles at dawn, delivering to ordinary households, building the kind of reputation that comes from showing up reliably every morning with no fanfare.
When his daughters were discovered by Lawrence Welk’s son Larry in 1955 and debuted on The Lawrence Welk Show on Christmas Eve of that year, Bert transitioned from the milk route to management. For the next thirteen years, he attended every single television appearance and rehearsal.
Every single one.
He was the person who negotiated with Welk’s organization, managed the sisters’ schedule, and maintained the boundary between their public life and their private one.
His daughters described him in their autobiography Same Song, Separate Voices as iron-hearted but deeply loving. He was the family’s moral center, the final word in disputes, and the person each sister said they could count on absolutely.
By 1968, when the sisters left The Lawrence Welk Show after a prolonged dispute over pay and creative control, Bert stepped back from management and took a position as a golf instructor at the Venice Golf Course.
He was 54 years old. He had earned a quieter chapter.
The Man Who Had Been Watching for Years
Chet Young was a 38-year-old former Air Force officer who had been diagnosed as dangerously insane and committed to Atascadero State Hospital, a high-security psychiatric facility in California. He had been released, as patients in that era routinely were, and had spent years focused on Peggy Lennon.
His delusion was specific and total. He believed he and Peggy were married. Not that he wanted to marry her. That they already were. In the psychological framework of erotomania, the subject believes that obstacles to their relationship are the work of external forces preventing a union that already exists.
Young’s initial version of this delusion involved the President of the United States conspiring against him. As his mental state deteriorated, the obstacle became more immediate and personal: Bert Lennon.
Young had written letters to the family. He had sent packages. He had appeared at their home.
Bert’s response, by multiple accounts, was to tell his daughters to be polite. “He’s a fan,” he said.
The era had no framework for what Young actually was. The word “stalker” didn’t yet exist in legal or cultural vocabulary. There were no restraining orders, no celebrity security protocols, no anti-stalking legislation.
There was just a persistent, polite man who showed up and wrote letters and was told to be treated with kindness.
Young’s car was found afterward filled with Lennon Sisters fan magazines. He had been living inside their image for years.
August 12, 1969 — Three Days After the Manson Murders
The timing was almost incomprehensibly terrible. The Tate-LaBianca murders had occurred on August 8 and 9, just three days before. Los Angeles was in a state of collective terror.
The Hollywood community, which had absorbed the news that Sharon Tate and four others had been butchered in a Bel Air home, was operating in a climate of paranoia that had no precedent in the city’s modern history.
Into that climate, on August 12, Chet Young drove to the Venice Golf Course in Marina Del Rey. At approximately noon — the time he had scripted — he confronted Bert Lennon in the parking lot.
There was a brief exchange. As Bert turned to walk away, Young shot him twice in the back. Then he approached and fired a third shot into his head.
He fled the scene. Bert Lennon was pronounced dead.
What the Family Faced in the Hours and Days After
The sisters were notified throughout the afternoon of August 12. Because Young had not been captured and his full intent was unknown, law enforcement treated the family as potential additional targets.
They were placed under 24-hour police protection. For several weeks, they were effectively confined to their homes while a nationwide manhunt began.
Los Angeles in August 1969 was already convinced that some organized campaign against celebrities was underway. When news broke that the father of the Lennon Sisters had been shot dead days after the Manson murders, the climate of fear intensified.
Whether Young had any connection to the Manson Family was an immediate question. He did not.
But the proximity meant the sisters’ ordeal unfolded inside a city that was already traumatized and reaching for explanations that connected everything.
Peggy carried a specific weight that none of her sisters shared. The man had been obsessed with her. He had killed their father because he believed Bert was preventing their imaginary marriage. She later said the knowledge of that dynamic shaped her decision to eventually step away from public life entirely. She retired from performing in 1999.
They Still Had a Television Show to Make
The sisters were six weeks away from launching their new ABC variety series, Jimmy Durante Presents the Lennon Sisters Hour. They had been in the middle of a production hiatus when their father was killed. They were contractually obligated to return.
They went back to the set while Young was still at large. The ABC studios were converted into a high-security facility. SWAT teams and FBI agents were stationed on set. Every person entering the soundstage was screened. The sisters performed comedy sketches and musical numbers with Jimmy Durante and guests including Jack Benny and Phyllis Diller while privately grieving their father and privately terrified for their own safety.
Kathy Lennon later described the period as one of sheer terror. The sense of safety they had carried through thirteen years on The Lawrence Welk Show, the protective bubble their father had maintained, was permanently gone.
They went through the motions of a lighthearted variety program because the contract required it and because their father had raised them to be professionals.
The show was cancelled after one season. Television historians cite shifting tastes. The sisters cite the impossibility of sustaining joy under those circumstances.
The End of the Manhunt
Two months after the murder, in mid-October 1969, Chet Young was found dead in the Sierra Nevada. He had taken his own life in the trunk of an abandoned car. The weapon confirmed to be the same handgun used to kill Bert Lennon was with him.
Among his belongings was the evidence of years of obsession: the fan magazines, the personal writings, the artifacts of a delusion that had been consuming him for years before it consumed Bert Lennon.
The family then found the letter. It had arrived before the murder and sat unopened. Inside was the cutout of Bert’s face with the gun pointed at his head. The words “High Noon.” The time of the murder. The letter had told them what was coming and they had not known to read it.
What Came After
The sisters eventually found their footing again through their partnership with Andy Williams, who invited them onto his show and gave them a professional home that didn’t require them to headline their own production in the immediate aftermath of everything they had been through. That relationship sustained them through the 1970s.
By the mid-1990s they were headlining the Welk Champagne Theater in Branson, Missouri, having reconciled professionally with the Lawrence Welk organization years after the acrimonious 1968 departure.
Branson gave them an environment that felt safe, a community built around the values their father had instilled. They have spoken in interviews about the Branson years as a form of coming home.
As of 2026, all four original Lennon Sisters are still alive. Dianne is 86 and retired. Peggy is 84 and retired. Kathy and Janet, now 82 and 79, continue to perform as part of the trio with their younger sister Mimi. They have been in the entertainment industry for more than 70 years. In every interview they give about their father, the word they use is “stolen.”
Bert Lennon had been present at every performance, every rehearsal, every television appearance for thirteen years. He protected his daughters from every threat the entertainment industry had to offer.
The one that reached him was the one that had been writing letters and showing up at the house and being told to be treated with kindness, because nobody yet had the vocabulary for what he was.
The letter arrived. Nobody opened it. At noon on August 12, Chet Young kept his appointment.
For the full story of the Lennon Sisters’ career, their departure from The Lawrence Welk Show, and where they are today, that’s all covered here. And for more on the dark side of the Welk organization that shaped their professional world, the full story is here.
