From Faroutmagazine.com:
But perhaps the strangest mystical theory about Dean’s death involved a prominent television witch. Maila Nurmi was an American actor who developed a character called Vampira, who became television’s first horror host. Modelling herself as a witch, Nurmi had jet black hair, dramatically arched eyebrows, and long pointed nails. Her show, The Vampira Show, aired on Los Angeles’s local television station from 1954 to 1955, and she went on to become an actor in cult sci-fi movies like Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space. Her brand of the occult was decidedly campy, but there was a rebellious edge to it, too. She overtly mocked the housewife stereotype and played up her sexuality in ways that only a self-professed witch could get away with at the time.
It was this persona, one that made 1950s audiences equally uneasy and fascinated, that led to the legend of her involvement in Dean’s death. Given the sources at the time, it’s impossible to know exactly where fact ends and myth begins, but it is clear that Nurmi was a friend of Hollywood’s newest heartthrob, and possibly a lover according to some sources. She even built an altar to him over fears about his car racing.