Five years before Ron Ely’s Sept. 29 death, his son fatally stabbed his wife of 35 years in the family home and was then shot and killed by responding Santa Barbara County sheriff’s deputies
Ron Ely, the handsome, affable 6-foot-4-inch actor who starred as “Tarzan” in a 1960s TV show, has died at age 86, five years after his wife and son were killed in a devastating family tragedy.
Ely’s daughter, Kirsten Ely,that her father died peacefully at home on Sept. 29, surrounded by his family. She also shared an emotional tribute to the Texas-born TV actor in a lengthy Instagram post, calling her “brilliant,” “funny,” “stoic and sensitive” father her “role model and inspiration.”
Kirsten Ely also mentioned the grief he had lived with since Oct. 15, 2019. That’s when his 30-year-old son, Cameron Ely, fatally stabbed his mother, 62-year-old Valerie London Ely, in the family home outside Santa Barbara. A short time later, Cameron Ely was shot death in the driveway of the home by responding Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s deputies.
The autopsy done on Ely, a star high school athlete who once played football for Harvard, found that he was in the early stages of CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease that can be caused by repeated blows to the head
“My greatest comfort is knowing that my dad is with my momma and my brother,” Kirsten Ely explaining her belief that the three have been reunited in death. “It is also my greatest sadness, because I miss them all so much that it’s etched into my soul. I will proudly carry all of my favorite pieces of them — lovingly cemented into my heart — until we all meet again.”
Kirsten Ely didn’t mention a cause of death, but the actor was recovering from a stroke at the time his wife and son were killed.
A year after the incident, the Santa Barbara District Attorney’s Office ruled the fatal shooting of Cameron Ely “justifiable” even though he was unarmed, Noozhawk.com reported. Cameron Ely was shot 22 times. In a report, the D.A’s office said that, while deputies were trying to take a disheveled-looking Cameron Ely into custody in the driveway, he sprang back up towards the officers. He also bent forward at his waist and claimed, “I have a gun.”
