The Last Take

Did A Hollywood Actress' Secret Love Diary Lead To Her Murder?

(CBS)  Tony Sirico is the actor best known as "Paulie Walnuts" of The Sopranos. But 30 years ago, Sirico was a Brooklyn tough guy trying to make it in Hollywood.

"Back in 1977 Tony Sirico was an up-and-coming actor. And he knew some of the same people that Christa knew," Harris says. "We know after Christa was killed, Tony Sirico was sent to her residence to check on the welfare and watch over her roommate for a few days and to make sure that she was ok…according to the roommate, Tony Sirico removed some tapes out of Christa's room and never to be seen again."

Christa's roommate, who to this day is too frightened to talk publicly, also told detectives that Sirico took some of Christa's furs and clothing. But at the time, police never questioned him.

The new investigators finally spoke to Sirico in 2006. Asked if he has been cooperative, they say, "not exactly."

"Mr. Sirico told us at first that he didn't even remember the victim, he didn't really know Christa and that he didn't even remember that she had been killed. And then his memory got a little bit better that, 'Yeah… I think I had heard about her being killed but I didn't really know her that well,'" Brandenburg says.

According to the detectives, Sirico denied going to Christa's apartment, and denied he even knew the roommate. "We started getting to the point of where he was on that day and asked him those type of questions…and the interview was abruptly stopped by his attorney," Brandenburg says. "We explained to Mr. Sirico that he was not a suspect in this investigation. He was considered a witness and someone that we were trying to glean information from."

Years later, most of Christa's missing things did turn up at the home of Christa’s closest friend and confidant, Lennie Barin.

"All of the furniture, all the crystal, the Shah of Iran had given my mom a lot of crystal and jewels and beautiful things. She had fur coats, all of which were found in his home," Nicole says. But the tapes and diary were not there.

Police now think it was Lennie who sent Tony Sirico to clean out Christa's apartment to protect her. "We believe he didn't want her reputation soiled, didn't want the information out there about her surreptitiously recording people or even her sexual activities," Harris explains.

Asked if it's possible that Lennie may have had the audio tapes and the written diary, the investigators say, "It’s possible."

Possible, but Lennie died about ten years ago, and Tony Sirico’s manager says Tony didn't want to talk to 48 Hours.

But there's another new clue from Christa's friend Darlene, who never spoke with police until now. Right before she died, Christa sent Darlene a postcard with a mysterious message. "She said, 'Dar…I am in way over my head here. I'm into something I can't get out of,'" Darlene remembers.

Without Christa's sex diary to guide them, Detectives Harris and Brandenburg have had to dig deeper to find people who were involved with her.

They discovered that Christa may have been in well over her head. "She had a lifestyle that was provocative. She had a lot of upscale friends that were famous, some of them. And then she also had a lot of friends that were on the seedy side of life, if you will, street people," Harris says.

So job one has been tracking down all those people Christa socialized with in her two years in Hollywood.