Latest / True Crime California / TCC Episode 1: Dorothy Stratten

Transcript

TCC Episode 1: Dorothy Stratten · True Crime California

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, Welcome to True Crime California. I'm your host, Cindy,
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and I'm glad you're here. Welcome everybody, this is a
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really exciting day. This is the first episode of True
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Crime California. I'm your host, Cindy, and as some of
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you may know, I am formerly a podcast host from
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the podcast Twisted Listeners. I used to host that with
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my friend and co podcaster Diva. We did it for
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about three and a half years. It was super fun,
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it was pretty successful. We had a lot of listeners,
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but unfortunately life kind of got in the way and
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we just found it more and more difficult to find
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time to record together. So eventually we had to kind
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of put it on the back burner and I decided
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to strike out on my own with my own podcast.
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If anybody's wondering, I definitely have Diva's blessing and told
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me that she would be one of my listeners. So
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I know I'm going to get at least one download
1:04
a week, which is great, hopefully more. But yeah, I
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decided to do a topic that I am really familiar
1:12
with and just love, and that is true crime in
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the state of California. Now, many of you who have
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listened to Twisted. Listeners know that I'm from California. I
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spent a little time in Oregon, but basically, you know,
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most of my life, I've been born and raised in California.
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I live in southern California currently, and I always get
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really excited when I'm doing cases from California, So it
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feels right to do a whole podcast but dedicated to that.
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And you know, fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you
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look at it, I'm probably not going to run out
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of material for a very very long time. Now. I'm
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going to do cases that are both super well known
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and also more obscure. I want to kind of run
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the gamut there and keep things interesting and tell the
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stories of victims and survivors that maybe you haven't heard
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of before. But I'm also definitely going to give my
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take on more popular and well known stories as well,
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because I think people like to hear, you know, various
2:06
retellings and different versions of things that we all know
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and are familiar with. So without further ado, I'm going
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to jump in and do just that. I'm going to
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tell the story of a celebrity murder that took place
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in the eighties. Actually so it's not a brand new
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case by any means, but it's one that was really
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well known and kind of shaped Hollywood and you know,
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kind of the way that we look at certain parts
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of Hollywood kind of change our view. And it was
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a really well known case back then. It's still pretty
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well known now. There's going to be some names that
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we all recognize in this story, and I'm really excited.
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So let's get into it. For my first true crime
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California case, I am going to cover the murder of
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Dorothy Stratton. Now I don't know if people are familiar
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with her, but she was a huge star in the
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late seventies and early eighties, so I'm just going to
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get into it. Dorothy Stratton was actually born Dorothy Hoog
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Stratton February twenty eighth, nineteen sixty in Vancouver, British Columbia,
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so she's Canadian. She was born to Simon and Nellie
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hoog Stratton. They were immigrants from the Netherlands and Dorothy
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was a first generation Canadian, so her parents immigrated to
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Canada and then had Dorothy once they were there. She
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had a younger sister and a younger brother who were
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always told they had the same father, but in reality,
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her younger sister I believe was from a different father.
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But they were not told that for many, many years.
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And this is because Simon left Nelly when Dorothy was
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four years old. Now I've read that he went back
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to Holland. I really don't know. I do know that
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once he was gone, there was sort of a constant
3:51
succession of men, mostly shitty men, courting Nelly, sometimes living
3:56
with the family, but ultimately always leaving. Now, Nellie had
3:59
grown up in hall And, like I said, and she
4:01
grew up there during the First World War and had
4:04
been taken by authorities from her mother during that time.
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What I heard was her mother had gone out to
4:09
work and left the children alone, and they were taken
4:12
at that time because her mother was seen as unfit.
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It's very difficult to get specifics from a different country
4:18
that far back for somebody who's not necessarily themselves famous,
4:23
but that is what I read. Her father, Nellie's father,
4:26
So this is Dorothy's grandfather died in the war. The
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family struggled to survive, and eventually, you know, the authorities
4:32
stepped in. But this was definitely not for the better
4:35
of the children. Nellie was separated from her brother, who
4:37
was put in a mental institution supposedly due to lack
4:41
of space at the orphanage. And while she was in
4:43
the orphanage, Nellie had to fight for food, clothing, everything.
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So this coupled with the constant falling of bombs during
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the war, left her with severe PTSD along with as
4:55
you can imagine, a host of other issues related to
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being abandoned by her family. Was pretty young. She married Simon,
5:02
who I'm sure you know was awesome before he abandoned
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the family when Dorothy was four years old. I'm sure
5:08
everything was just perfect up to that point. That's heavy sarcasm.
5:12
If it's not clear, anybody who doesn't know me, you're
5:14
gonna get to know me. From there. The aforementioned men
5:17
came and went. One relationship produced Louise, the other daughter,
5:22
who was eight years younger than Dorothy, so Dorothy is
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the oldest. Often saw, you know, the worst of these relationships,
5:28
including one where one of Nellie's boyfriend drank the bottle
5:33
of perfume that Dorothy had given her mother for her birthday.
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He was such a raging alcoholics. This is so fucked
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up that he drank the perfume to get drunk, which
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is horrible on just so many levels. I don't know
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that there was ever any physical abuse, but the tony
5:48
is being set, you know, for bad relationships with men.
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For Dorothy, like this is normal for her, This is
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all she knows. Her mother has modeled this, and I
5:56
don't necessarily blame her mother because her mother came from,
6:00
you know, a lot of trauma. So it just feels
6:03
like these women didn't kind of stand a chance. One
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reason for all the boyfriends, though, beyond you know, just
6:09
the volatility of the household, was that Nelly was very
6:12
beautiful and Dorothy was very beautiful as well. I usually
6:18
will not comment on things like that if I can
6:20
avoid it, but it actually is very important to this story.
6:25
Dorothy's looks because she goes to Hollywood, and I think
6:27
it's you know, fair to point that out. So when
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Dorothy was seventeen, she was working at a dairy queen
6:33
in Vancouver, sort of just living her life. I don't
6:35
know that she really knew what she wanted to do,
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but again, she's seventeen and she got a lot of attention.
6:40
There one person in particular who gave her a lot
6:43
of attention was a man named Paul Snyder. When Dorothy
6:47
turned eighteen, barely i should say, he was twenty six
6:50
and had already established himself in the area as a
6:53
pimp and a hustler. He promoted nightclubs, which gave him
6:57
access to a lot of seedy places and people. And
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you know, he wasn't good looking, but he was very
7:03
charming and very good at controlling women to get what
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he wanted from them, which, as we've talked about, you know,
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Dorothy's the perfect target, and Paul was the perfect fit
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for her, considering kind of what she was used to,
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you know, her idea of what relationships with men should
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look like. Paul began to lavish her with gifts and
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compliment her on the things he knew she was insecure about,
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because I think, you know, people often don't really realize
7:26
that really beautiful women tend to be very insecure about
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their looks because I think, on the one hand, they're
7:31
reduced to the way they look by strangers and friends alike,
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which is really horrible when you think about it. But also,
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you know, beauty is fleeting, so it's got to be
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pretty crazy to think that, you know, the only thing
7:44
that people value for isn't going to stick around forever.
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So anyway, we have Dorothy here, barely eighteen, naive and wounded,
7:52
and Paul older. He's got experience of manipulating women. Obviously
7:57
he makes money doing this. And Paul had some connections
8:00
to Hollywood. I'm not one hundred percent sure how, but
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like I know, he went to la for a while
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when he was in trouble in Canada with some bad
8:08
people over some money. But in any case, he started
8:11
working on Dorothy, getting her to consider posing nude for
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him for some test shots to try to get into Playboy. Now,
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she really wasn't into it at first, and it definitely
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took some convincing, but of course, you know, she did
8:22
finally relent, and Paul took these photos and sent them
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to the editor of Playboy. The editor at the time
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was a woman named Marilyn Grabowski, and she said that
8:33
when she saw the photos, she quote wanted her on
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the next plane out to Los Angeles. Again, Dorothy is
8:40
very naive, she'd never even been on a plane before
8:43
in her life. But here she goes out to Hollywood
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with Paul, you know, to meet with Marylyn to get
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more test photos done, and at that point, Marilyn knows
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what she's looking at, and she just starts, you know,
8:54
introducing Dorothy to a ton of people, and pretty soon
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before you know it, Dorothy he's on her way out
9:00
to LA to become a star. And I realize that
9:04
Playboy bunnies really don't very often become stars. Like I know,
9:07
there was the point where Playboy had the reality series,
9:10
and we all know some of those you know, Playboy
9:13
bunnies from there, but generally, you know, people who pose
9:18
nude are kind of frowned upon in Hollywood. And I
9:21
don't know what she thought when she went or what
9:23
she expected, but I think that Paul sort of, you know,
9:26
convinced her, no, this is your way in. This is
9:29
going to make you a star. You're going to be different.
9:31
You know, you can pose nude and then still get
9:33
into Hollywood. And I think, really, you know, he was
9:37
just using her, even if it was short term. He
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just wanted the money. And I know, you know, part
9:42
of this was, you know, he was already proposing marriage
9:44
to her, trying to lock her down. He saw her
9:47
as his meal ticket and he was not about to
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let that go. So he of course moved out to
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Ellie with her and became something of her manager. He
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inserted himself into all of her business dealings and used
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her to propel himself into these groups of people that
10:00
he could have never you know, had anything to do
10:03
with if he didn't have Dorothy, you know, if he
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wasn't hanging on to her, nobody would have given this
10:08
loser the time of day. So anyway, Dorothy, you know,
10:11
starts posing for Playboy and it's very successful. Pretty soon
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she's at all the best parties, meeting celebrities from mainstream films,
10:20
meeting directors, and that same year, in nineteen seventy eight,
10:24
she was officially picked for the twenty fifth anniversary Great
10:27
Playmate Hunt. Now, this is a huge deal as it's
10:30
propelled her, you know, into the I don't know, the
10:34
mailboxes of people around the country. I don't know if
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there was a subscription to Playboy at that point, if it,
10:39
you know, was just something that men hid under their mattresses.
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But you know, around this time, there was a little
10:44
bit of a shift in Hollywood and they were a
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little bit more open to sort of nudity and sex
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and kind of accepting, you know, people a little bit
10:53
more into their main stream and so Dorothy was really
10:56
benefiting from this and started to actually be taken seriously,
11:00
you know, for roles in mainstream movies. And of course
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Paul Schneyder was with her the entire way. People on
11:07
set it Playboy said, Dorothy seemed lost and scared and
11:10
would call him multiple times a day to check in
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and tell him how things were going. He seemed to
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be sort of her safe person, but most people outside
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of their relationship saw trouble and saw through his facade
11:21
of a loving boyfriend and manager. I think it's pretty obvious,
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you know, he was exploiting Dorothy, and most people saw this,
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and unfortunately, she was one of the only people who,
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at least at the time, did not, and he continued
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to convince her to pose nude for Playboy, even though
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she said she really didn't want to. He told her again,
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you know, this is how you get into Hollywood. You know,
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this is what this is what you're going to do
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to like make it. And again she believed him, and
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again they both got lucky. He got lucky lying to
11:49
her and it happened to come true, and she got
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lucky believing him because Again, up until this point, most
11:55
women who posed nude, and I mean even to this day,
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there's not a lot of cross Oftentimes the women will
12:02
start in movies and then like do a Playboy shoot,
12:05
but it's usually not the other way around. Now, definitely
12:08
we've got like Pamela Anderson. There's definitely some women where
12:10
that's not the case, but in this instance it was.
12:13
It was definitely weird. It was not common for somebody
12:17
to go from Playboy to mainstream. So in any case,
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you know, she believed him. She kept working for Playboy,
12:24
and Hugh Hefner took a lot of interest in Dorothy
12:26
and kind of took her under his wing and as
12:29
we will later learn, very likely abused her while she
12:32
was under his employment. After Dorothy's death, in fact, it
12:36
was said that Hugh Hefner had at one point raped
12:38
her in a hot tub. Now he vehemently denied this,
12:42
stating there was no force and that she consented. But
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this was back before people considered pressuring someone into sex
12:48
as a part of rape culture, so it's definitely a
12:50
gray area. This accusation was made by somebody that Dorothy
12:54
was in a relationship with, and we'll talk about that
12:56
a little bit more later, which leads me to believe
12:59
it because it feels like she was probably confiding in
13:02
this person something that she felt she couldn't tell people,
13:06
because again, he's her boss, he's her way of getting
13:10
into this industry. He can make her do his bidding.
13:12
So I do tend to believe that this is true.
13:15
Maybe not in the you know, purest sense of the
13:18
word rape, but I do believe that he sexually assaulted
13:21
her and that it was not consensual. And you know,
13:24
we've all heard stories, recent stories about you know, this
13:27
type of thing. So moving on, we're now in nineteen
13:30
seventy nine or a theas nineteen, and she just has
13:32
all these various men exploiting her for money, and she's
13:36
also meeting these Hollywood stars, these producers, and you know,
13:40
again they sort of tanked. Hollywood tanked in the seventies.
13:44
There was like sort of an about face regarding the
13:47
nude models. Like I said, so, she did start getting
13:49
cast in roles for Hollywood films, and the more she
13:52
was cast and brought into this world, the further she
13:54
got away from Paul. Paul was not the type of
13:56
person to transition into a mainstream lifestyle, and Paul was
14:01
acutely aware of this and was very unhappy to see
14:04
his meal to leave him behind. Before she even became
14:07
a model. He told his friend that quote that girl
14:11
can make me a lot of money. So again, total
14:13
piece of shit, knows exactly what he's doing. He continues
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to pressure her about getting married, not because he loves her,
14:19
but so he can lock her down, and finally, on
14:22
June first, nineteen seventy nine, they were married. When her
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friends asked her why she married Paul, she said she
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felt she owed it to him, which is kind of
14:31
exactly what you might expect given her upbringing and track record,
14:34
you know, as well as the fact that she's nineteen
14:37
and most nineteen year olds don't make amazing decisions anyway.
14:40
She's got all these men in her head. She's being
14:42
exploited at every turn. It's not a good situation. And
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of course, the marriage did not fix the issues Paul
14:48
was worried about, as you can imagine, and as Dorothy's
14:51
fame continued to increase, their time together became less and less.
14:56
They did live in an apartment together at least three bedrooms,
14:59
but Dorothy ended up spending more and more time away
15:01
from home while filming movies in various locations. Although her
15:05
first few movies weren't large roles or very well received,
15:09
she was able to make some really great connections via
15:11
the Playboy Mansion, which had always attracted celebrities even when
15:15
it was still a very taboo place. The celebrities she
15:18
met that changed the entire trajectory of her very short
15:21
life was director Peter Bogdanovich. At the time they met,
15:26
he had recently split with his celebrity girlfriend, Sybil Shepherd. Now,
15:31
for those who don't know, Sybil Shephard was a model
15:33
turned actress who got her start when Bogdanovich saw her
15:36
on the cover of Cosmo when she was only twenty
15:39
one or twenty years old. He was thirty one at
15:42
the time and married with two children. He of course
15:45
left his wife for Sybil after they quote fell in
15:47
love on the set of The Last Picture Show, probably
15:50
the best movie he ever made and one of the
15:52
best movies of all time. If you haven't seen it,
15:54
go watch it. It's fantastic. In fact, before they fell in love,
16:00
he told his wife when he saw Sybil on the
16:01
cover of the magazine that she was the one he
16:04
was going to cast saying, quote, that's jc Jac's one
16:07
of the characters in the movie. The two were together
16:10
for about nine years until nineteen seventy nine, when Sybil
16:12
decided she wanted a family and Peter kind of already
16:15
had one. From there, Peter was a swinging dick, making
16:18
critically acclaimed movies and also ones that were totally fucking panned.
16:24
As far as his time at Playboy that actually started
16:27
in a really weird way that also involved Sibyl. Playboy
16:31
had published photos of Sybil Shepherd nude which were from
16:34
the Last Picture Show. They did this without permission, which
16:39
is super fucked up, and Sybil sued, which is great.
16:42
She won and she ended up with some money and
16:45
also the rights to a film which Playboy agreed to
16:48
produce with Bogdanovitch directing. So he and Hugh Hefner became
16:52
kind of frenemies, almost like they were working together, and
16:56
you know, hef was funding this movie, Sybil was in it,
17:00
you know, so as Sybil's partner. Obviously he didn't like Hugh,
17:03
but they did work together, and when he became single,
17:05
he definitely, you know, used his connection to spend a
17:08
lot of time at the mansion, which is where he
17:11
met Dorothy. At this point, I want to point out
17:15
he was forty one. I hit my microphone. I'm mad
17:18
about this. He was forty one. And once again, she's
17:22
barely twenty years old. I think she may have even
17:24
still been nineteen. So he's like, what's his face from days?
17:28
And confused like high school girls, you know, I keep
17:30
getting older, they stay the same age. It's fucking disgusting,
17:33
like total fucking scumbag behavior, like to just keep finding
17:37
like the young blonde. The older he gets, he keeps
17:40
finding the young blonde. And I want to come back
17:43
to this because it comes up later, but I am
17:46
not a fan of this man. I think he's gross.
17:49
Also part of the course, you know, for Dorothy to
17:52
have yet another man much older than she sort of
17:54
controlling her and her career, you know, and just kind
17:59
of being it's like a father figure. I mean, I
18:02
think we all kind of know where this is coming from.
18:04
This is a father figure. So he cast her in
18:06
a movie. They all laughed, and in a turn of
18:09
events that shocks absolutely no one, the two quote fell
18:12
in love on set. The film shot in New York,
18:16
so it was easy to spend time together without Paul
18:18
Schnyder knowing. They also used the set as a place
18:21
to rendezvous, of course, and Dorothy would make excuses to
18:24
not have Paul fly out to be with her, which
18:26
I'm sure he read between the lines on At this point,
18:29
you know, Dorothy was fully over the relationship with Paul.
18:32
I don't think she was ever truly into it, but
18:35
you know, she'd found her way out, and so she
18:39
was not only over him, but she was over Playboy.
18:42
Even so, she was chosen as the Playmate of the
18:45
Year in early nineteen eighty and did agree to do
18:47
some publicity for them. She later said that her hatred
18:50
for Playboy and the photographers actually helped her get through
18:53
the shoots. I think, you know, she always hated it,
18:56
and when she was doing the shoots before she had
18:59
met Peter and she had sort of made this switch,
19:02
she felt abused. She felt like a victim. She was
19:05
being victimized in a way because she had all these
19:09
men telling her she had to do this, telling her
19:11
this was what was best for her career, and I
19:14
think she felt really powerless. And now she has an
19:17
out with Peter, she has this mainstream Hollywood lifestyle, so
19:21
she doesn't feel to spare at her situation, and instead
19:24
this turns into like a rage. You know, she wants
19:27
to tell them to fuck off, you know, like you're
19:29
not going to use me anymore. I'm gonna do this
19:31
as like a final fuck you, and then I'm fucking done.
19:35
At one point, she even thought of suing the magazine
19:37
for printing a photo of her that she didn't realize
19:39
was being taken and that showed more of her body
19:42
than she was comfortable with. And I think we can
19:44
read between the lines on that, as we know. You know,
19:47
because of Sybil Shepherd here, Playboy had no problem printing
19:50
unauthorized photos of naked women anyway. By early nineteen eighty,
19:54
she was trying to really pull away from Paul done
19:56
with Playboy, and Paul, in his jealousy, used her money
20:01
because they had a shared bank account, because they were married,
20:03
and he wasn't working to hire a private detective to
20:06
follow her and get information about her and to see
20:08
if she was having an affair. I'm sure this PI
20:11
was able to confirm the affair long before Dorothy told Paul,
20:14
but eventually the truth did come out and she asked
20:17
him to separate and divorce. Upon coming back to Los
20:20
Angeles from filming the movie, she immediately moved into Peter
20:24
Bogdanovitch's Brentwood home and the two planned to marry as
20:28
soon as her divorce was final. Now Paul lost his
20:32
entire fucking mind. He was still using her money to
20:35
pay the PI, but realized that was about to dry up.
20:38
So as soon as Dorothy told him she wanted a divorce,
20:41
he drained something like fifteen thousand dollars from their shared
20:44
account before she cut off access to it. Dorothy was
20:48
still making money and as far as I know, started
20:50
putting it into a different account, so his funds definitely
20:53
had a limit since he was not working. And then
20:56
she and Peter, you know, just tried to move on.
21:00
Now they were obviously, or seemingly I should say, very happy.
21:03
He's twenty one years her senior. So again that's a
21:05
bit of a problem to me. But Paul kept begging
21:09
Dorothy to see him, to talk, to try to work
21:11
things out. At one point during all of this, he
21:15
also quote borrowed a gun from a friend. He had
21:18
apparently made a comment about killing Dorothy, and at one
21:21
of the times they met up, he lost his nerve.
21:24
He told his friend that he instead had driven out
21:25
to a park and considered suicide, but also lost his
21:29
nerve there as well. As the months were on, though,
21:32
he became much more desperate, to the point that they
21:36
he asked the PI if they would buy him a gun.
21:39
Thank God, the PI was like, abs fucking lutely not,
21:42
so instead, he bought one from a private seller he
21:45
found in the paper, because it's definitely not difficult to
21:49
get a gun, especially back then, even in California. What
21:52
he bought was a twelve gage shotgun, which just thinking about,
21:56
like what that kind of weapon does to a person
21:59
is insane. He then convinced Dorothy to meet with him.
22:05
She agreed, expecting that they would discuss splitting up their
22:08
money and property. She was going to give him a
22:11
little money to help him out until he could get
22:13
on his feet. She was trying to be kind and
22:16
she wanted to amicably settle their divorce. And again, she's
22:21
twenty years old, she's you know, doesn't have a lot
22:24
of experience with this not the best idea, but she
22:28
did agree to meet with him. So she met him
22:30
at their formerly shared apartment, which he then had two
22:33
roommates living with with him, but neither of those roommates
22:36
were home. Now, this was on August fourteenth, nineteen eighty.
22:40
When his roommates came home later, they said they found
22:42
his door close and saw Dorothy's car outside, and they
22:46
had kind of assumed that the two had reconciled, so
22:49
they left them alone. This was because, you know, there
22:52
was a lot of back and forth in their relationship,
22:55
much like what Dorothy was used to in her home
22:57
life growing up, and I think the roommates were so
23:00
used to this kind of thing going on. The Next day, however,
23:04
they had still seen neither Paul nor Dorothy, so they
23:08
decided to knock on Paul's door. When he did not answer,
23:12
they opened it and went into his room, and very unfortunately,
23:16
they found an absolutely horrifying scene. Both Paul and Dorothy
23:23
were naked inside the room and both were dead. Dorothy
23:27
was on the bed and had been shot in the
23:30
face with the shotgun. She was also missing a piece
23:34
of her finger as she had put her hand up
23:36
in self defense as Paul shot her. There was also
23:40
some sort of horrific sex machine in the room that
23:43
Paul had made and it was later determined and this
23:46
is big trigger warning that it was used to sodomize
23:49
Dorothy while she was still alive. There was also evidence
23:53
that he raped her, either pre or post mortem. I've
23:56
read both, but in either case he was clearly using
24:00
as a way to assert his power over her and
24:02
to show her one final time that he was in charge.
24:05
He also, you know, I think, used killing her and
24:09
then himself as a way of showing everyone that in
24:12
the end they couldn't mess with him without paying the price.
24:14
This is a man who saw his meal ticket getting away,
24:18
who was bitter at the world because he was not
24:21
allowed into these groups. The woman he wanted didn't love him.
24:25
You know, he's just he shit obviously, but this is
24:29
sort of his final fuck you. So Paul was also
24:32
shot in the head, not in the face, but shot
24:34
in the head. He was twenty nine, Dorothy was only twenty.
24:39
This was huge news, extraordinarily sad, just fucking terrible. You know,
24:44
she had become kind of a darling. You know, in Hollywood.
24:47
People knew who she was. People loved her. She was beautiful,
24:50
she was funny, she was you know, a good actress.
24:53
People were just very very upset about this, and from
24:57
here the so called men in her life used her
25:00
death in various ways to write books, to make movies,
25:03
more exploitation of this poor woman. Even in her death,
25:06
both Hugh Hefner and Peter Bogdanovitch went after each other's character,
25:10
which is hilarious, and I wanted to take a little
25:12
time to discuss those specifics because of what I said about,
25:15
you know, Bogdanovic earlier on. So Peter was the one
25:19
to claim that Hugh Hefner raped Dorothy, and again, I
25:22
do believe that, and I think we all kind of
25:24
know Hugh Hefner's track record in general, he was not
25:27
a great person. When you build your empire on the
25:30
bodies of naked women, you know you're probably not a
25:33
good guy. And beyond this, you know, Bogdanovich blamed Hugh Hefner,
25:39
saying that it was the playboy culture that led to
25:42
her death, saying, you know, her being in that world
25:46
with that guy Paul and with people exploiting her was
25:49
exactly why this happened. In return, have came out denying everything,
25:54
denying the rape, saying it's not okay to blame playboy
25:57
basically saying, you know, Playboy's been blamed every time something
25:59
goes ways with anybody connected to us. And I honestly
26:03
do see both sides of this sort of but I think,
26:07
especially back then, most women who were involved in this
26:10
type of lifestyle were not having They didn't have the
26:14
best lives in general. It was definitely big exploitation. Now
26:18
we can talk sex positive and say that there's opportunities
26:21
now where women are in control, but I do believe
26:23
back then it was a very different landscape where this
26:27
type of thing was concerned. So hef comes out denies
26:32
all of this. He also calls Peter Bogdanovich out for rape,
26:36
but not rape of Dorothy, statutory rape of Dorothy's younger sister. Now,
26:44
let's remember that when Dorothy died, I mentioned her sister
26:49
was eight years younger than her. So Dorothy was twenty,
26:52
Louis was twelve. Hugh Hefner said that Peter Bogdanovitch began
26:59
grooming her immediately after Dorothy's death in some twisted grief
27:03
power thing where he just can't let Dorothy go, so
27:07
he's doing the next best thing and grooming her sister.
27:11
And let's not pretend that he doesn't like his women
27:14
very very young. So it's not that big of a
27:16
leap to think that he would do something like this,
27:19
especially when he's grieving and used to you know, he's
27:23
a producer, he's or a director in Hollywood. He's like
27:25
big guy. He's probably used to getting his way, you know.
27:28
I this is not out of the realm of possibility,
27:32
and what comes next is going to kind of drive
27:34
this home. So Dorothy's family launched a lawsuit against Hugh Hefner, saying,
27:39
you know, this is a defamation and da da da
27:41
da da. They then dropped it pretty promptly. A few
27:46
years later, when Louis Stratton was twenty years old, the
27:50
magic number she and then forty nine year old Peter
27:55
Bogdanovich were married. I wonder why they dropped the lawsuit.
28:01
Fucking disgusting shit all around, and I wanted to take
28:06
a moment also to say that Louis's former father in
28:10
law came out in an interview. And I can't verify
28:14
this story, but he did come out in an interview
28:16
and say that Peter not only groomed Louise, he was
28:21
also grooming Nelly. Dorothy's mother, and he and Nellie are
28:26
not married anymore, and according to him, Peter Bogdanovitch is
28:29
a big reason why. So this just sounds disgusting all around.
28:34
All of the men in this story are complicit in
28:38
the exploitation, the abuse, and ultimately the death of Dorothy Stratton.
28:43
All of these men are fucking disgusting. I cannot fucking
28:47
believe this. The fact that her younger sister, who does
28:50
look a lot like her, was eight years younger than her,
28:53
and you know, Mary's Peter, like what what the fuck?
28:59
And people love they love him as a director. And
29:01
you know what's interesting is I hear other podcasts covering
29:04
this case and they all tell the love story of
29:08
Dorothy and Peter, and I am like, fucking gagm. This
29:12
is not a love story. This is just another in
29:15
a long line of abusive men that this poor young
29:18
woman dealt with before she was finally murdered by one
29:21
of them. And it is a tale as old as time.
29:24
There is nothing I could never feel sorry for Peter
29:28
Bogdanovitch in this situation. I could never feel bad for
29:31
him because he is a part of the fucking problem.
29:34
And he can sit here and point fingers at Playboy.
29:36
But dude, without Playboy exploiting her, they wouldn't have had
29:39
her ready for you to come in and exploit either.
29:42
So give me a fucking break. I'm sorry. I just
29:45
I hate it. I hate it so much. It's so gross.
29:48
So this story is really sad and horrific and really centered,
29:51
you know, around these three horrible, abusive men drunk on power,
29:55
and the way they all just harmed Dorothy who was
29:59
just lost the world and trying to make a life
30:01
for herself. Now, there have been numerous songs, movies, and
30:05
books written about the very short and tragic life of
30:08
Dorothy Stratton, including one by Peter That's where these accusations
30:12
were launched, because of course he has to write a
30:14
book about it and make some money off of the tragedy.
30:17
You know, it's just a really fucked up situation. And
30:20
I think he and Luis were married for like, actually
30:23
like a decent amount of time, they had some kids together.
30:25
None of it makes it okay. None of it makes
30:27
it okay. And there's no way that that accusation of
30:30
statutory rape was just happened, to be correct, There's no
30:33
way you get that Lucky like that shit was going on.
30:36
Everybody fucking knew it. So, I mean, I hate that
30:40
this is her legacy, that it's just mired in all
30:42
of this disgusting, gross business. But that's Hollywood, you know.
30:48
So that's it. That's the story of Dorothy Stratton, her
30:52
very sad short life. I feel terrible for her. She
30:55
was beautiful, she seemed extraordinarily sweet, talented, and she had
31:00
the potential to have such a long, successful, beautiful life
31:04
and it was just cut short and that really fucking sucks.
31:07
So all right, guys, there we have it. There's episode one.
31:12
Some of these will definitely be longer than others. They're
31:15
gonna be slightly deeper dives than we did on the
31:18
Twisted Listeners podcast for the most part. But I did
31:22
just want to get kind of a well known case
31:24
out there to get the party started, as it were.
31:28
Thanks again for listening. I hope you guys continue to
31:31
tune in. Thanks for supporting. I know the commercials are annoying,
31:35
but if you can listen, it puts a little money
31:36
in my pocket and makes it worthwhile for me. I'll
31:39
be back again next week with another California story of
31:43
true crime, some sort of murder. We're gonna do some
31:46
survivor stories as well, and until then, thanks everybody,