No answers in Moran’s death
‘Happy Days’ star had her struggles
INDIANAPOLIS - The death of Erin Moran in Southern Indiana Saturday afternoon remains surrounded by questions, rumors and wild speculation.
In that sense, her passing in the southern part of the state shares much with her life there — a tapestry woven together by tabloid reports, court filings and statements by those who claimed to have crossed paths with the former child star as she moved from place to place in Harrison County.
Public records and IndyStar archives show Moran making her way to Indiana in 2011 alongside her second husband, Steve Fleischmann. The couple had been married since 1993 and owned a number of properties together in California, according to online public records.
After losing their California home to foreclosure in 2010, ABC News reports that a rep for Moran confirmed that the couple moved into a trailer park with Fleischmann’s sick mother.
The rep said that Moran and Fleischmann moved into the trailer to provide care for Fleischmann’s mother. But in September 2012, the Huffington Post reported that the couple had been kicked out of the trailer because of excessive partying. IndyStar archives indicate that after Moran was kicked out of the trailer she was seen living in a Holiday Inn Express in Corydon, about 130 miles south of Indianapolis, apparently after falling into financial difficulty and struggling with homelessness.
There were also reports of Moran quickly spending her portion of a settlement she and three “Happy Days” co-stars received in 2012 in a breach-of-contract lawsuit against CBS. Huffington Post reports that the settlement originally asked for $10 million, but the final decision was reportedly $65,000 per person and future royalties.
But since her sighting in Corydon, reports of Moran’s activity have been hard to come by, and her Internet Movie Database page indicates that she has not appeared in any movies or TV shows since 2010. Online records indicate that Fleischmann’s most recent address was a home in New Salisbury, about eight miles north of Corydon in Harrison County.
Officials from the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office said Moran, 56, was found unresponsive Saturday shortly after 4 p.m. when authorities received a 911 call. The cause of her death remains under investigation, and the results of an autopsy are pending.
She was already a veteran actress when in 1974 she was cast in “Happy Days” as Joanie, the kid sister to Ron Howard’s Richie Cunningham in the sitcom set in the 1950s.