The 2022 Ed-Vent Calendar, Day 11: Rob Huffman on Timothy Farrell (and some other stuff)

Rob Huffman wrote me with some thoughts on actor Timothy Farrell.
"You must think me a crackpot at this point," Rob Huffman recently said to me in an email. No, Rob, I can honestly say I don't think you're a crackpot. I know you're a crackpot. That's who writes me, ladies and gentlemen—the obsessives, the die-hards, the never-give-uppers. I mean, who else is still reading this Ed Wood series after nine years? Sane, healthy, well-adjusted people?
Anyway, a few days back, I posted a little article about Timothy Farrell's performance in Ed Wood's Glen or Glenda (1953). In response to this (I think?), Rob sent me an email about Tim's still-living son, an ex-cop turned private investigator. Rob was apparently going to contact this shadowy son but thought better of it after hearing him on a podcast devoted to private investigators. (Such things exist? I thought PIs kept a low profile.) According to Rob, the younger Farrell knew very little of Timothy's film work and was a "dumb and dangerous person." Hmm. Sounds a bit like Tim's "Vic Brady" character in Jail Bait (1954).
Even though Timothy Farrell (real name: Timothy Sperl) played key roles in both Glenda and Jail Bait, plus the Wood-scripted The Violent Years (1956), I have not invested any time investigating the man's life whatsoever. I've been solely interested in Tim as an actor. Or at least I was until I read his :

Worked as a bailiff in the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department while also working in the movies. One of his movies, Paris After Midnight (1951), was actually busted in a vice raid in the mid-'50s, which caused him professional embarrassment. He went on to work 20 years as an L.A. deputy marshall and eventually was appointed County Marshall in 1971. He was convicted of felony charges after his appointment, however, for "illegal use of deputy marshalls in political activities," and was given a six month sentence, but received probation due to poor health. He was fired in 1975.

I guess the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree, eh? Speaking of which, Rob provided these unsavory details about Farrell's son:

A disgraced cop, he got a pension for what now people go to jail for. He once was a bodyguard for Larry Flynt. He got the job via his second cousin, [William Mentzer], who was a one-time Zodiac killer suspect while already doing time for the Cotton Club murders. He’s known as "Manson II." David Berkowitz, The Son of Sam, once said Manson II killed a woman at Memorial Church at Stanford University, but DNA has proven that false recently—like a Scooby-Doo episode, it was the janitor who was there all along for 50 years & had phoned it in.
[Timothy's son now] makes money from managing a block in L.A. that his grandparents bought. I saw him in a paper once giving ghost tours of the neighborhood at Halloween. He continues his mother’s canine charity. She, as you know, a Shirley, was in Glen or Glenda and The Violent Years. Their daughter, a bit actress, died young.

I should point out at this juncture that Rob sent me a little news article about Shirley Sperl, the one-time Mrs. Timothy Farrell, and how she was being honored for her charity work with animals, But Rob also said:

Don’t get me into how the Best Friends Animal Society—a different charity—was once The Process Church of the Final Judgement, a splinter of Scientology with a dose of Satanism to which Manson & Manson II can be linked.

Look, folks, I can't vouch for any of this. But you've gotta admit, it's interesting, right? And I'm well aware that those obsessives, die-hards, and never-give-uppers I mentioned at the beginning of this article already knew this stuff and probably want to send me a bunch more Timothy Farrell trivia. Which they're free to do, naturally. I can't promise I'll acknowledge all of it. Sorry.