Somehow June Mack was a footnote in her own life. She was a footnote in film history after she appeared in a Russ Meyer film, Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens. A footnote for her family who forgot she existed. A footnote in L.A., the jaded city where she’d re-invented herself. And a footnote in a shooting that left her dead. It seems strange. June Mack was big, black, and beautiful. So why did she end up just a footnote? She died in 1984. Many accounts of her murder still linger on message boards in dusty corners of cyberspace. Each tries to figure out how and why she died. Jimmy McDonough in his biography of Russ Meyer wrote: “June was murdered when a drug dealer was going to shoot her boyfriend. She stood in front of the guy to protect him, and took the bullet.” Sounds heroic. Sounds like something that her film character, Junkyard Sal, might have done. But was it true? Other reports say she was the target of gangland hit, someone wanted her wiped out. Or was her death jus...