James Handy, the veteran actor known for roles in Top Gun: Maverick, Jumanji and Arachnophobia, died Wednesday after he was stabbed in the chest at a Tarzana home. He was 81.
The LAPD said officers responded at around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday to a call in Tarzana and found Handy unconscious in the front yard of the residence. He was taken by ambulance to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The case took a sharp turn when police said the 911 caller made the cryptic statement, “I am the son of man, I just killed the man of sin,” before 44-year-old Michael Gledhill later flagged down responding officers and told them he was the one they were looking for. Gledhill was arrested and booked on suspicion of murder, with bail set at $2 million.
Police said Gledhill lived with Handy and his mother, who was Handy’s girlfriend, turning what might have first sounded like a random emergency call into a killing inside a shared household. That detail gives the case its force: a longtime screen actor, a family connection in the home and a suspect who was close enough to the victim to be living under the same roof.
Handy’s career stretched from his onscreen debut in two 1977 episodes of Ryan’s Hope to a long run of film and television work that included The Verdict, K-9, The Rocketeer, Point of No Return, Unbreakable and Logan, along with appearances on series including Matlock, Quantum Leap, Law & Order and Criminal Minds. The unanswered question now is what led to the stabbing in Tarzana and whether investigators have established a motive.
