 After his teenage daughter Danny (Joey Heatherton) is arrested for the murder of his ex-wife s current lover, Luke Miller (Michael Connors) recalls his marriage to Valerie Hayden (Susan Hayward) and the subsequent events which led to the tragedy. The lurid story seems to have been suggested by the real-life Lana Turner/Johnny Stompanato/Cheryl Crane murder scandal of six years earlier when Lana s daughter Cheryl stabbed her mother s boyfriend (Stompanato) to death in the bedroom of Lana s Beverly Hills home.