The Sandpiper and Tate’s Don’t Make Waves, Tirella was moving on from Duke's employ. He’d arranged to join his partner, artist Edmund Kara, who sometimes worked alongside him, in California.
Instead, on that fateful 1966 eve in Newport, R.I., Tirella’s goodbye became permanent. He ended up crushed under a Dodge Polara station wagon, having been pushed through giant iron gates, dragged 20 feet, and plowed into a tree.