Saturday, August 14, 2010

The Grisly Murder of Dorothy Stratten, 1980

StrattenWSOMRPlayboyaaThirty years ago today, Dorothy Stratten, the beautiful 1980 Playboy Playmate of the Year was brutally raped and murdered by her estranged husband, Paul Snider. She was just 20 years old. Stratten’s death remains one of the most tragic and disturbingly heinous acts in all of pop culture history and it still haunts Hugh Hefner to this day.

The above gross-out Playboy parody appeared in the July 1984 issue of Hustler. It depicts the gruesome crime scene and mocks both Playboy readers and the insanely jealous Snider. It’s in poor taste even for Hustler, yet the image is so shocking, it’s hard to look away.

One can only imagine the nightmare that transpired between noon and the late evening of August 14, 1980 in a small Westwood house bedroom not far from the LA freeway. Police records indicate Stratten was raped and sodomized, but it’s unclear if Snider had done so before or after he blew half her face off with a shotgun. There’s evidence she was duct taped to a homemade sex bench at one point during her brutal ordeal, and when Snider was finally finished with Stratten, he blew his own head off with the same shotgun. A housemate of Snider’s discovered the bodies several hours later in a state of rigor mortis and covered with hundreds of black ants.

There have been two films made about Dorothy Stratten, Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story (1981) starring Jamie Lee Curtis, and the excellent Star 80 (1983) starring Mariel Hemingway and Eric Roberts as the controlling Snider. Even more macabre is that Star 80 filmed scenes in the very same house in which Dorothy was murdered. Now, let us never speak of this again.

13 comments:

18milesperhour.com said...

Then there's her epitaph. Look it up. She's in the same cemetery as my wife's parents. Stumbled upon that headstone and the depressing message stayed with me for some time.

Anonymous said...

Dorothy lies in the same cemetery as the beautiful Marilyn Monroe who was also the victim of mongrels who destroyed her life.

Anonymous said...

@ Your Older Brother Here - The "message" on Dorothy Stratten's headstone is a quote by Earnest Hemingway, in A Farewell To Arms.

Anonymous said...

The whole thing in a nutshell is we all wonder what could have and should have been.

Retrolady said...

I watched it again today. Very sad.

Unknown said...

That is NOT the real crime scene according to Snider's roommates.

Unknown said...

That is NOT the real crime scene according to Snider's roommates.

Anonymous said...

Well of course not. It says right there It's a parody made by Hustler.

Unknown said...

Correct, cops said at first they couldn't find the shotgun because Snider was lying over it

Unknown said...

then where is the REAL crime scene pics?

Jeff P said...

Feb 28 is tomorrow and it's Dorothy strattons birthday. She'd be 59 years old. God bless her soul ..

Hudson Bay said...

Parody a word lost
Now all we have ANNOYING

Hudson Bay said...

Stand by your man
Principle failed
Get over floozy marilyn
Obsession is pathetic