[1] After her parents divorced, Lederer was raised in Southern California by her wealthy aunt at her Beverly Hills estate and later at Hearst Castle in San Simeon.

[3] In May 1935, due to drug addiction or her overt sexual orientation,[4][5] William Randolph Hearst committed Lederer against her will to a psychiatric ward at Good Samaritan Hospital.

[18] She often played pranks on Hearst's important guests, such as stealing actress Claire Windsor's "false bosom" and writer Elinor Glyn's red wig while they slept.

[21] In December 1929, Lederer upset Davies and Hearst after a mutual acquaintance revealed her sexual relationship with African-American actress Nina Mae McKinney.

[3] Outraged, Davies and Hearst shipped Lederer to New York City where she lived alone in an apartment at 42 West Fifty-fourth Street and continued having sexual relations with women.

[3] During this period of exile, Lederer became close friends with actress Alma Rubens, and both women allegedly shared an addiction to drugs, including heroin and morphine.

[21] Following a riotous New Year's Eve party in 1930, a male acquaintance drove an inebriated Lederer to her New York apartment and, after she became unconscious, raped her.

[30] After several weeks, Lederer and Morris departed for Los Angeles, where they stayed at Marion Davies' Beverly Hills mansion on Lexington Road.

[31] Either due to her drug addiction or her unconcealed sexual orientation,[4][5] Hearst committed Lederer to the psychiatric ward of Good Samaritan Hospital at 1212 Shatto Street in late May 1935.

[33] Early newspaper obituaries attributed Lederer's suicide to "acute melancholia" as described by her doctor, Samuel Hirshfeld,[9] a frequent visitor at San Simeon and a personal acquaintance of Hearst.

[35] A subsequent obituary printed by Hearst's flagship newspaper The San Francisco Examiner instead depicted Lederer's suicide as an accidental mishap and attributed her involuntary hospitalization to "a nervous breakdown caused by overstudy".