It’s a miracle that Mariska Hargitay and her brothers survived the car accident that killed their mother, 1950s film star Jayne Mansfield, and two other adults. But as Hargitay’s new documentary, My Mom Jayne, reveals, she very nearly suffered a worse fate: the future Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star was trapped in the wreckage and inadvertently abandoned by paramedics.
As has been public knowledge for decades, Mansfield, her boyfriend, Sam Brody, and their driver were killed on June 29, 1967, near New Orleans, Louisiana, when their car rear-ended a tractor-trailer that slowed due to a cloud of insecticide, as the Associated Press reported at the time. Mariska, then 3, and brothers Mickey Jr., 8, and Zoltan, 6, were asleep in the back seat and became injured in the accident.