The grim tale of the severed human head that turned up near the Hollywood sign was already a full-length, stranger-than-fiction L.A. horror flick. Dog finds head; severed feet and hands show up nearby; skeezy paparazzi try to sell alleged pics of head for $5,000.

But last night on Conan, of-the-moment Bridesmaids actress Maya Rudolph lent a new layer of comedy to the noir.

She says she knows the dog who found the head:

“It was my friend's dog,” said Rudolph. “I got into work, and Will Arnett said, you know that head they found? It was Erin's dog.”

The hero in question is a golden retriever named Olly, according to the former SNL star — and he's nominated for the ASPCA's “Dog of the Year” award.

Just when we thought this story could not get any weirder.

“My girlfriend has been going through this really bizarre, horrific ordeal,” Rudolph told Conan. She described the discovery in detail, saying Olly “likes balls … soccer balls. I think he's a digger, and so he was digging and he came out like all proud with this bag, and something fell out. And it was the head, guys!”

Rudolph added that LAPD investigators strapped Olly into the back of a police car and “questioned the dog for like four hours.” (That's where the above photo was allegedly snapped.)

So it appears Lauren Kornberg, the dog walker to whom Olly delivered his nasty plaything, was hired to walk the golden retriever by this mysterious “Erin.”

Kornberg gave a similar account of Olly's discovery to KPCC radio a couple weeks ago:

“He tends to hunt on the trail … and he was going crazy under a bush. He was digging, digging, digging, barking. And he has a tendency to bring rats and mice and weird things he finds on the trail, or occasionally hills. … When I turned around, he had something in his mouth. The bag that was in question — he had gotten it out of the bag I guess, shredded the bag. And had something in his mouth, which he dropped, and it rolled about 30 feet down the hill, in the ravine.”

As ridiculous as the whole thing is, Rudolph and Conan O'Brien do treat it quite jokingly, for a homicide. The victim has since been identified as 66-year-old Hervey Medellin, who investigators believe was killed in a “crime of passion.” Of course.

[@simone_electra / swilson@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]

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