This is Deborah Roberts. Welcome to the 2020 True Crime Vault. Each week, we reach back into our archives and bring you a story we found unforgettable. Only a true psychopath could do this. A pool of blood coming from his head. Somebody had been paid to kill me. Why would you want your husband killed? Take a listen. Coming up. Oh, my God. This really happened? Somebody gets murdered. This is the Hollywood dream gone wrong. I'm leaving you behind. I don't believe you Here's a waitress and a dairy queen, and within a matter of months, she was a playboy playmate. She lit up a room. All the corny phrases were true about Dorothy. She became sought after by every man in the world, even if it was in their minds. Paul was a small-time hustler who found the golden nugget. Dorothy was his meal ticket. He's telling her, My goodness, you could be a playboy bunny. You could be this, you could be that. I think he really thought, This is mine. He wanted ownership. He wanted to be somebody, and he was nobody. He looked like a putz. They wanted her, but not him. I think for Paul, losing Dorothy to Peter Bogdanovic, a huge star director, was like the ultimate insult.

I knew that he was dangerous, and somehow or other, she didn't see that. But you don't do me good, and I don't think you could. Went and gave you way more credit than I ever should. I'm John Quineones. A chance meeting at a Derry Queen and a meteoric rise to Fame. From Playboy Playmate to roles in film and television. Then, in just For a little over two years, it was over. Dorothy Straton was dead, murdered at the age of 20. Those who knew and loved her feared for Dorothy as they watched the trajectory of her life unfold. But it wasn't just those close to her who mourned her loss. As we first reported in 2019, the story of Dorothy Stradon inspired books, movies, and songs. The images that remain portray a young woman on the cusp of stardom, but still holding on to the person she had always been. Are you really shy, sensitive, and romantic? Yes, I'm getting over my shyness as fast. But I am very sensitive and I'm very romantic. That's the type of girl a lot of men fantasize about. A lot of men like the girl next door. Are you the girl next door?

Because it seems to me that I've never lived next door to anyone who looked like you. Well, when I came from the town that I came from, I lived with my family still. I just graduated from high school. I worked in a Derry Queen for four years, wearing pigtails and no makeup. Who's the playmate you're supposed to be when you're the playmate of the month? I think I'm supposed to be the playmate whoever chooses me as their fantasy. Dorothy Straton, in many ways, was almost like a fantasy of what the Playboy reader or the Playboy fan would want. She's blonde, she's well-built, she has an innocence about her. Dorothy Straton was an angel. She just was a sweet, effervescent angel. I said, She's gorgeous. And this town will destroy her. She was just breathtakingly beautiful. There was something very otherworldly about being with her. Time would stop, and you just felt you were in a frozen moment. She was a young girl from Vancouver, British Columbia. She was very naive. A high school student really had no worldly experience. She is the daughter of a woman who came over after World War II. She has almost never known her biological father.

Dorothy really wanted people to love her. She had felt abandoned by any male figure that was in her life. She was being raised by a mother. I think that her mother, Nelly, was a very hard worker, and she worked in a school, cafeteria. It was difficult. Dorothy went to work because her mother needed the money. She took care of me a lot because my mom wasn't around. Taught me how to tie my shoes. Was there for every school function, sports day, talent day. She was there. Dorothy had started working at this Derry Queen when she was 14, and she was really pleased to have found a job that young. I can picture this beautiful blonde girl, still young and beautiful skin and beautiful eyes and long legs and saying to you, You know what? Do you want vanilla or chocolate? She's still working at that Derry Queen when she's 18, and she's still in high school. And that is where she is the day that Paul Snyder, a local pimp, walks into the Derry Queen and sees Dorothy, and both of their lives will be changed forever after. Paul Snyder is an interesting character, a scary one, but undeniably interesting.

He didn't keep a low profile. In fact, he drove a black Corvette or a mint coat. Star of David encrusted with jewels that he had on his chest. He was called the Jewish Pimp. He cultivated that. Paul Snyder was dressing in exactly the way that he thought that success couple of men were dressing in disco clubs. It was almost like he was looking at what John Travolta was wearing in Saturday Night Fever, and that was the image that he was also trying to convey with the shirt that was open and gold jewelry hanging his hairy chest hanging out. That was the look of the time. I found him to be basically a very streetwise individual, trying to basically make a buck any way he could, especially on the backs of others, using others. He was an opportunist, and he was always looking for his opportunity to make money. He was not on the up and up. If you shake hands, you count your fingers after How do you do it. He made a pretty good living as a promoter for automobile shows and cycling shows, but it wasn't enough to accommodate his extravagant taste. So he began to procure girls just pimp them on the side.

He had a stable of several girls. They called him the Jewish pimp. He would find them and then exploit them to build his own power. Paul But the predator was a predator. You think of him and you think of a wolf, and you think of him stalking his prey. So he sees a sexy girl, the Derry Queen. She's a child, basically. But you know, what can happen for me through her is of interest to me. And he decides to groom her like a lot of people like this, too. You look at them and you wonder, My goodness, this is the perfect victim for Schneider. You have this innocent, untouched, young piece of canvas. He had a good eye. He saw the playboy, playmate of the year, behind a counter in a Derry Queen. He saw the possibility. That's an eyeball. That's a good eye. And he was right. She was spectacular to look at. And she was also sweet and likable and approachable and nice. He bought her beautiful jewelry, beautiful clothes, so she was totally taken in by him. There was a bit of a pathology about her in the sense that when this guy paid attention to her and showered her with gifts, she grabbed onto that.

There was something missing in her life. As a 26-year-old man, he goes to her high school prom. He buys her the gown that she's going to wear for the prom. It was a very beautiful ruffled dress that highlighted her features. So in the movie that I was in, Star Eady, Paul Snyder comes and takes Dorothy to her prom, her high school prom. It It really does feel uncomfortable. After the dance, took her to a professional photographer who took her first professional photo. It was in this very chaste but luxurious gown. Paul Snyder worked her insecurity and gave her compliments in the places where she felt most vulnerable. When you're insecure, you hear those words, they fill holes that you feel you're made up of. People at school would tease her about her lips being so big, and she felt awkward. She wasn't comfortable in her own skin. Paul Snyder saw this young girl who was almost old enough at the Derry Queen as the sexy girl next door. Now, that's what Playboy magazine would advertise all their girls as, the hot girl next door. She could live next door to you, pal. Really? You think?

Let me look. And if she's not there, she's in this magazine. He's telling her, My goodness, you could be a Playboy Bunny. You could be this, you could be that. And in her world, working a Derry Queen and not seeing the future for herself, that could be something. She was very shy at the time, too. So this is a whole new world for her. It took him a little while to talk me into agreeing to taking some test pictures. I had never taken my clothes off for anyone I didn't know. He said, This will be good for your mother. This will be good for your family. So I think over time, he probably figured out what buttons to push. And eventually she said yes, and it was just this gradual experience of of saying yes a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more until you suddenly find yourself as a part of this completely different world. And it's hard to look back and measure how far you have come. She was afraid her mother would not like it, and she didn't feel comfortable doing it. There was arguing going on.

I recall that. Dorothy crying, Paul trying to convince her that this is right, that it'll be fine. It's not the worst thing in the world. Go ahead, do She was enamored with him. I mean, he saw that in me. Oh, my God. And it made her happy to be her. She's happy to be her with him. So it was artificial, but it was a relationship. And it was wonderful. It was great. And she trusted him. I think the early devotion to Dorothy was partially an act. He considered Dorothy class merchandise. I thought, this guy is a A real con artist. Paul said to her, you're beautiful, and you know the effect that those words can have on a woman. The summer of 1978, Paul Snyder has convinced 18-year-old Dorothy Straton to take nude photos. Those pictures have been sent to Playboy magazine, which featured Marilyn Monroe in its first issue. Now, Dorothy is about to become part of Hugh Hefner's legendary empire. Playboy's success was a matter of being the right guy with the right idea in the right place at the right time. People forget that Hugh Hefner was in some ways, was a visionary.

When it started, Playboy was a shock. I mean, where did this come from? Playboy magazine, up until the mid '70s was a no-no in everybody's house. Only if you're really hip. Was it okay to... Yeah, I have a playboy, so. But if you weren't hip, you were probably nasty. The 1970s were as sexualized a decade as we've really ever seen. You have movies like Deep Throat and The Devil and Ms. Jones becoming mainstream box office successes. It was an era that felt liberated all of a sudden. It was very exuberant. Women were feeling free sexually. This was the first generation that had the pill. The idea of more and more sexual frankness and candor is in the cultural. In the '70s, Playboy had established itself as a dominant commercial force. Hugh Hefner was an icon. He was a legend. He managed to find a way to thread the needle where he could have pictures of nude women that were indeed attractive and compelling, but it didn't feel dirty. He scraped the word dirty off the idea of dirty pictures or dirty movies, and that's what made him famous. I read it for the articles. It would be one of the most familiar lies of the '60s and the '70s as it related to Playboy.

Playboy was trying to say, Let's have fun, innocent fun. Why are we being so puritanical about this? But it wasn't dozens of men in bikinis roller-skating around in a circle while women cheered. Somehow, the sexual revolution didn't cause us to re examine the fact that women were going to be the ones on display. To commemorate their 25th anniversary, Playboy had a big playmate hunt, looking for the 25th anniversary playmate. So they had a big outreach, and there were going to be lots of prizes and things like that. And so Dorothy was one of the runners up. Playboy was looking for a 25th anniversary playmate. They were having a great playmate hunt, they called it. I brought her down. It was her first airline flight. It was her first limo ride. It was a Sunday afternoon. Dorothy Straton talked about that day in an interview with Playboy. I remember driving this driveway and I see this huge castle, and my legs would not move. I was shaking so bad. I thought that everyone in that room could hear my knees knocking. I was so shy. Well, that's what they liked. They liked the innocence and they liked the sexuality.

And that's what they saw when they saw Dorothy. They saw someone fresh, almost seemingly unaware of the effect that her nudity had on men. The 25th anniversary special was supposed to be the biggest centerfold ever. I think it came down between Candy Loving and Dorothy. Dorothy was just shy and she needed a lot of grooming. So they knew She wasn't ready yet. Even though she was as beautiful as Candy Loving and could easily have been that special playmate, she wasn't ready. She was a total babe in the woods. I cannot remember another playmate being that, I don't want to say naive, inexperienced, unused to her surroundings, and not used to thinking that she was really beautiful. Can you imagine having never left this small town and working at the Derry Queen to come to Hollywood to end up at parties where people are drinking cocktails that you've never seen a cocktail before. Everything about your experience is brand new. So when Dorothy first came to Hollywood for Playboy, she was just 18. She'd only just graduated high school. The whole thing was just one big trip after another, going from one world into another. I got a call from Paul.

Max Baer was Jethro on Beverly Hillbillies. How do you gentlemen like your tea? We don't know, ma'am. We ain't tasted it yet. And of course, we all still think of him that way, but it's been in a few years, and it turns out that he was friends with Paul Snyder. He said he had met this girl, and she was gorgeous. And they took some pictures of her, and they sent him down, and Playboy is really interested in her. And he said, She's going to be a star. I said, Oh, yeah, of course. She had to have felt excited, overwhelmed, scared. Paul was the only person that was from back in the the world that she came from that she knew. And so she held on. She held on tight. She was on the phone with him daily. When we shot her, she would call and tell him how great it was going. And she thought that whatever success she was having, and it was embryonic at that point, was totally due to Paul. She leaned on him. And so if stuff ever got too big or too scary, he who was the one who was going to be in her corner.

And so for him, that's an incredibly powerful position because the more and more power that she builds, the more he gets to be the person who's the foundation for it all and who benefits from it all. Paul was a small-time hustler who found the golden nugget. Paul thought he could ride his golden girl all the way to the top. This wasn't love, per se. This was love business. This was desire in business. He came to Los Angeles. He had an idea. And let's face it, he wasn't wrong. He told her, take these pictures. Let's go to Hollywood. Let's meet Hefner. And in his mind, I'm a Hugh Hefner. I can see myself having a big mansion, and this girl could be the beginning of that. This is about discovering your world is not the world that you thought it was. It was women being there to satisfy men's lust. He definitely looked at her as a commodity. Used her from the very beginning. This is the Hollywood dream gone wrong. This show is sponsored by Better Help. Have you ever wondered what you do with an extra hour in your day? Would you go for a run, take a read a book, or maybe show up for a friend.

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Learn to make time for what makes you happy with Betterhelp. Visit betterhelp. Com/2020. That's the numbers, 2-0-2-0, to get 10% off your first month. Again, betterhelp. H-e-l-p. Com/2020. Hey, I'm Andy Mitchell, a New York Times best-selling author, and I'm Sabrina Kohlberg, a morning television producer. We're moms of toddlers and best friends of 20 years. And we both love to talk about being parents, yes, but also pop culture. So we're combining our two interests by talking to celebrities, writers, and fellow scholars of TV and movies. Cinema, really. About what we all can learn from the fictional moms we love to watch. From ABC Audio and Good Morning, America, pop Culture Moms is out now wherever you listen to podcasts. What basically is the principle behind the Playboy Clubs? The club is really an extension of the concept that was developed in the magazine. It's an attempt as much as possible to bring to life many of the notions that are popularized in the magazine. A Playboy Bunny was someone who worked in the clubs, learned the Bunny Dip, which was a particular way of serving a drink. Okay, once again, let's see the Bunny Dip done just so.

That's absolutely correct. A bunny is sophisticated, but she's also naive. A bunny is available, but also you cannot touch her. All of Playboy is about these contradictions between one idea and another, and then trying to live inside of them. We take blatant sexuality and then try to layer over it a bunch of childlike, charming, asexual aspects as if that cleans it up. That's like doing heroin and taking vitamins. Playboy is an attempt to put together a quality entertainment magazine for an adult male audience, which brings together things of an erotic and sensual nature with things of an intellectual nature. Faster. Very good. Around the table. I think it was a very traditional approach to men's roles and women's roles. We're attempting to do in a very real way is try to give sex a good name. You wouldn't think that would be so difficult, but it is. The clubs were still in operation at the time that Dorothy Straton came to Playboy. And when she needed a job, both to get her green card and maybe to make a little extra money, she wound up working as a Playboy Bunny at the Los Angeles Playboy Club.

I don't think she was allowed to serve alcohol because she was only 18. So she was a door bunny that would greet people coming in. And from a business standpoint, that was a pretty good move. A lot of women come to Playboy, and they want to be published in the magazine, and they're beautiful, they're gorgeous, but they are not, if you have an idea of the girl next door, they are too worldly or womanly. A lot of men like to have their women as not... Having not been around too much. She was so thrilled and happy to be part of it. And the innocence is what you want to keep. Hef saw that. Everyone saw that. You could not spend a minute with Dorothy and not be in love with her. Ken Honey submitted her. They were the tests that he shot. He sent me the pictures and I called up and said, When could she be ready to come down? I wanted her on the next plane. That was a big day for me. They flew me out that Sunday, the first time I was on an airplane. I don't think she said much.

She listened to me. I explained the whole thing. We test her, we'll send her home, we'll let her know. And they did test shootings with me that same day. They brought me up to Hepner's mansion that same day. I introduced her to people. She relaxed a little, but not a lot. It was very exciting, very nerve-wracking. And She came in the next morning, bubbly and ready to go. I thought, Wow. So how do you do a nude layout? Do you just walk into a room, take off all your clothes? I mean, did they work up to gradually? Do you take a few shots with just Like a bare chest and then work up to a new shot? How do they do? How do they make you feel comfortable? Depending. I think it's depending on each individual girl and how nervous she is. Were you nervous? Yes, very. I think even when her pictures first came in, they knew right away because she came right back to the mansion and they shot her very quickly. And it all happened very fast for Dorothy. I worked for my wife for 43 years. It was pretty easy to know if a girl was going to make it or not.

Luminescent, angelic. She lit up her room. All the corny phrases were true about Dorothy. So Playboy did a documentary called Portrait of Dorothy Straton, in which you can see them filming her photoshoot. Yeah, okay. Toss the head around. And you can see what it is that goes into that thing that made Playboy so successful. Obviously, the bits that they chose for these documentaries were very flattering. A little more, Dorothy. Oh, now it happens. Look at that. And yet still, she laughs so much. She spends so much time just seeing how silly it is. I call her a woman-child. When you looked at her, she was a total lady. Had this statuesque look, but when you talked to her, she was still a little girl. She was thrilled about the whole session. I noticed in the first centerfold that we ran that if you look at it, that she's looking up. So you saw the YTS of her eyes. And I'm not going to say it exaggerated in the sense, because I don't even think she recognized what power she had at all. That picture told me a lot. That was a male fantasy that she was this innocent, almost virginal young woman making herself available, maybe for the first time, to the man of her dreams or to every man and his fantasies.

She was about as naive as anybody that I'd ever met in Los Angeles. And I said to Paul, I said, Paul, do you care about her? And he said, Yeah. I said, well, if you really care about her, take her and take her back to Vancouver. She doesn't belong here. And then the photos are incredible and Hef's thrilled. And the next thing you know, you get your month. She was really happy then. That's when I think it was starting to change with Paul. Paul tried to keep tabs on her. I know he did, but it wasn't out of, I don't think, jealousy. It was protecting his interest. Paul had shaped her like Pygmalian, to be a certain type of woman. But then she came to Playboy, and then the Playboy world started to shape her. This is how you answer a question. This is how you arch your back. This is how you look good in pictures. They were trying to give her the level of sophistication that would make her succeed more in the world. And that was at the same time about, maybe Paul is not the man for you. He found out when he turned up there, they didn't want him, right?

The gates were closed to him. They wanted her, but not him. Why is that? Because a guy like Hugh Hefner in a place like Playboy is about maximizing female archetypes. They didn't need Paul Snyder. They could handle that thing on their own. Become a household name. But few people know of Paul Snyder, the boyfriend who discovered Dorothy and propelled her toward Fame, the man who, after her death, would obtain the recognition, some say, he so desperately he craved. The movie that Bob Fossey directed is called Star 80. Star 80 is a reference to the vanity plates that Paul Snyder had taken out to put on his Mercedes. That was a declaration of what he thought was going to be the future for Dorothy. It stars Mariel Hemingway as Dorothy Straton, and it stars Eric Roberts as Paul Snyder in a really breakout role. Snider. Paul. I'm having this conversation with myself in a mirror. It's vain. I'm this important, see? That's where his confidence came from because he didn't have it built in. So he had to make it up somehow. So it was on the presentation. Paul, if anything, certainly had trappings of inadequacy from the very beginning.

He was orphan at an early age. His family fell apart, and he dropped out of school in the seventh grade to support himself. Himself. I know he was very vain, very much into bodybuilding. He worked out every day, so he was really pushing for the exercise. He felt he was too skinny. I always had the feeling there was something of a little man syndrome about him. He didn't know if he was a pimp a manager, an agent, actor, a weightlifter. Paul Snyder wanted to be anything that would make him money, that would get him on the in with the in people, the elite. He wanted to He was somebody, and he was nobody. Paul really admired Hefner and the whole Hefner philosophy. To him, having easy access to the mansion was the pinnacle human achievement. The whole idea of the Playboy mansion was to be cool. Look, they're hot and cold running women here. Just be cool. Paul Senator didn't know how to do that, and he knew that Dorothy was his meal ticket. Who was going to give him access to anything? He looked like a putz. I mean, he had The fur coats all the way to the floor, the chains, the silk, black shirts.

I mean, he just was such a cartoon character. Paul was offensive. Paul was also... He looked small time, he dressed small time, he sounded small time, he acted small time, and Hef didn't. Dorothy made this incredible impression. Everybody loved her, and almost everyone was universally put off by Paul. He was a Wheeler dealer in a obvious one. Hefner took one look at Snyder, and one word came into his mind, pimp. That was the dirtiest word you could say at the Playboy mansion. The mansion was that Friday night party that you need to be at with the greatest movie stars and the greatest cars and the greatest credits and the most indulgent egos. It's Hollywood. It's everything you think it is. It was grandiose and it was glamorous. It's flashy. People are drinking a lot and hobnobbing with a lot of celebrities and a lot of directors. There was a lot of personalities, a lot of opportunity for people that went there, especially for the playmates that went there because they would be introduced to the film industry and other industries that would give them a start in their career. Bill Cosby was always there. Johnny Carson was there.

Robin Williams. Why do you have great parties? Beautiful broads. They're coming up here for the girls. There was a grotto, famously, where young women would come and men would sit in this hot tub. And it's like the cyberidic place you can go and have fun and act like a hedonist. Even for me, it was like, Holy mackereel. This is wild to me. So can you imagine Dorothy coming into that situation? And while Hugh Hefner himself would deny that it was this licentious palace, it was in fact a place where men could meet women to have sex. I can remember Paul feeling inadequate when he was at the Playboy mansion and feeling I'm part of it now. But in reality, you're looking only through a gate. Paul Snyder fits into the Playboy mansion like a pair of brown shoes in a room full of tuxedos. Hey, Kip. I got this idea. This is great. I got that idea. I'm sure that he was trying to do that. Kip was rolling his eyes to himself and going, God, I got to listen to this guy. But he was polite. Dorothy was a ticket to something that he wanted.

It was a connection with Hollywood. It was a connection with Playboy. It was a connection with celebrity. Paul was a weak man. Paul couldn't take it. Paul had to be more. Paul seemed to be like a promoter. He had done a Friar Fawcett lookalike contest or a John Travolta lookalike contest. I got a call from Paul, and he said, Max, He said, I have an idea for something, and I would like to talk to you about it. And I said, What is this about? And he said, Well, this is about male dancers. I said, Dancers? What dancers? He said, Male strippers. I said, Is this for a gay joint or something like that? And he says, No, no, no, no. He said, I'll talk to you about it when I get there. He was the founder or had the idea of Chippendales, which at the time was a great idea. And the fact that the Chippendale dancers have the cuffs and collars that are exactly the same as Playboy Bunny's came directly from Paul because Dorothy was working as a bunny at the Playboy Club. Paul was one of those idiot savants. He knew what people liked.

He was a pretty good promoter, and that was the only good idea that I ever heard him say. It was a monumental success. He had a gift. He had a lot of gifts. Paul was not a soft banana. But all So you have to understand that just having the idea is different than bringing the idea off. It went nowhere under his guidance, but then, of course, became a huge, huge business for Chippendales. The partners that he was involved with took the idea, liked the idea, and then kicked him out of it. So he said that he got ripped off on that. He wanted to win. He just didn't know how to win. And that's why he used other people. It didn't take a rocket scientist to say that this was a sleazy guy. You got the heebie jeebies. He was creepy. He would be in the grotto trying to make out with other girls. You have the most beautiful girl at the mansion, and you're a scumbag. Security caught him with another girl, so they kicked him off the property, and the only time he could come up is if it was with her. Otherwise, he wasn't allowed.

In the movie Star 80, the scene that sticks with me the most is the moment that they walk into the mansion and him being so out of place and so oblivious to being out of place and so wanting to be accepted there. Got it. Hef here and I feel happy in our old friends. I think we even have some mutual buddies. Is that Telly at this bash? Telly? Civalis. Telly Civalis. He's an old pal. I've seen that guy a million times. They will do anything to get this thing. It's just this raw hunger, and there are no boundaries. That is always a dangerous person. The fact of the matter is, Playboy magazine and Hollywood and all kinds of industries need people like him. He was a guy out there bottom feeding and getting people that he ended up bringing to the Playboy mansion. And the Playboy mansion, they basically said, Thanks, we'll take it from here. When Half introduced her to a real money manager and took the ability of him to have the checkbook away, it really affected him. He was not a happy camper. So Paul was left out. Paul was not part of the package.

I can remember Paul feeling like Dorothy forgot about him when they were up there. Hollywood is clearly trying to saw this guy off the gangplank. He was just a conduit to find her. There was an article in the Village Voice about Dorothy Stratt. The last line of Theresa Carpenter's story says, something like, The unforgivable sin of Paul Snyder was that he was small-time. And that's the theme of the movie, Star 80, that Paul Snyder is too small time to succeed in Hollywood, and he knows it. And it's what makes him crazy. It leads to Dorothy's destruction. Even to the most cynical sensibilities, there is something miraculous to the way Hollywood took to Dorothy Straton. In a city overpopulated with beautiful women, Dorothy caught some current fortune and floated steadily upward through the spheres of that indifferent paradise. I think you have to... You saw her as being someone who could be in the movies and posters and shows and someone who could represent as an ambassador, the Playboy brand in a way that he'd been struggling to find. Hefner was never the Hollywood insider that he wanted to be. The big producers would come to his parties and would party, but they never gave him respect.

So in order to get respect, he needed to field a star, a breakthrough star. That would give him legitimacy. And he had high My hope is that Dorothy could do that. And then in '79, Playboy did an hour-long special for the ABC television network featuring the Village People and Richard Dawson, who was then the host of Family Feud. Playboy has clearly already decided that there's something special about Dorothy Strat. Hey, Dorothy's coming. I bet you $100. She'll pretend not to see me. Look, here she comes. So Dorothy is the ingenue that's being as the Star of Tomorrow throughout this wacky little Playboy special. I couldn't believe how little actually happens in this special and how little they felt like needed to happen. I will say she gets up there with Victor Willis, the lead singer of the Village People, and she drops to the ground and you go, Okay, okay. You didn't learn that in Vancouver. Well, she was already a star with Playboy, and then the ABC Roller Disco, and that was on national television, and then that started steamrolling into other movie parts. Her move into movies is very rapid. It's small in the beginning, tiny parts, but considering from the moment in 1978, where the photographs were taken, by 1979, early 1980, she's starring in Hollywood Pictures.

I've done it for you. I love you, Sergeant Thor. She plays Galaxina, who is this perfect female robot, sexy, but you can't actually have sex with her. Perfect only as a tool to the men around her. Galaxina. She became sought after by basically every man in the world, even if it was only in their minds. And a lot of them said, I want to know her. I want to hold her hand. I want to touch her. I want to picture with her. A lot of men were entering my life all of a sudden, and a lot of them wanted me. No one was ever pushy or forceful, but talk can be very powerful, especially to a mixed little girl. She couldn't believe that all this was happening to her. Every minute, there was something new and exciting, and people were faunting all over her. Paul Snyder would say, We're on a rocket ship to the moon. It was like, We, we, we. He saw her business career beginning to increase and improve and a volume of attention and agents calling and wanting to sign her. And now she has a Hollywood agent. Does she really need him now?

She was the meal ticket, and he loved her Fame, but he was jealous because he was afraid that he could lose her, which he did. At this point, he was pressing Dorothy to marry him, thinking that she would then support and they would have a lifetime bargain. And I immediately said, Live with him. Don't marry him. But she loved Paul, and she cared about him, and felt very much gratitude towards him. She came to me very much as she went to a father and told me that she was going to marry Paul. I urge her against it, but I did it gently because I really thought it would be an affront and inappropriate for me to say what I really felt. And So over the disapproval of the Playboy Empire, she married Paul Snyder. When they got married, we were like, Really? What is she thinking? People were just like, No, this can't be happening. She did not marry this guy. Everybody was upset. There wasn't one person who was happy for her. He pushed her to marry him. She, I don't think, really wanted to. Pressure. She felt that she owed him that. So she just kept hoping for the best.

Now he had a subtle handcuff on her. At the very worst, if she got popular and he got divorced, she's getting something. Dorothy saw the good in everybody, but Paul scared me because he had that need to control. As a woman, I knew that he was dangerous, and somehow or other, she didn't see that. I wonder if people really marry for love. Maybe it's loneliness, or maybe it's just they don't want to be left out. So the nearest person of the opposite sex or the same sex that pays any amount of attention at first is good enough. And each one is content that they wouldn't do any better. She never felt that there was any danger in anything with Paul Snyder. And then, bang, she was murdered. Dorothy Stratton has become someone who represents all manner of things: power between men and women, sexual exploitation, the fundamental notion of the fantasy factory in Hollywood and how it exploits people. When the editor of Playboy told me that I had one, Climbing of the Air, the first thing out of my mouth was, Are you sure? If you think about it, she was 17 when she was in Vancouver at the Derry Queen, and then all of a sudden, she becomes Plamate of the Year in 1980.

And so in those few years, she had a monumental splash. And she was so excited to be Playmate of the air. She was very excited. In the Playboy documentary, The Portrait of Dorothy Straton, Dorothy is at the Playboy mansion. They're announcing her centerfold. I'm sure that this has been many a girls dream. During that particular day, it was clear that there were trouble between her and Paul. She was avoiding it. There's a shot in this documentary that was done in the '80s where she's sitting at this table next to one of her coworkers, and he's sitting next to her, and you can see him grab onto her hand, and she squeezing it, but then she's also pulling away. I think he wanted to be able to stand to go like, Yeah, I'm the one that brought her here, a thing. Well, it was way beyond that. There's pictures of it, and it's in the documentaries of the things that Playboy did where he was getting too close at the Playmate of the Year party, and Dorothy had to wean him away. These are triggers. It's the smallest things that happen like that that create the biggest darkness.

This realizing that he is nobody to anybody. There are shots of Hefner talking to him also. Hefner never looked super comfortable to me, but he looks particularly uncomfortable in those shots. I don't know if anybody has moved that fast because I've been following the movie on the street for many years. Hefner gave Dorothy what her husband and she wanted, and that was to be playmate. And then she was playmate of the year, and she got a lot of money for that. I got a $65,000 Russian first able coat. I I didn't see that one here. A $26,000 jaguar and a $25,000 check. $15,000 diamond necklace, a diamond ring, a hand-built brass bathtub worth $13,000. So many things I can hardly remember. She It's not a bad deal at first. No, it's not a bad deal. He calls me on the phone and he says, Max, I want to show you all the stuff that Dorothy got for being Playmate of the Year. He would go through each one of them and say, What do you think I could get for this one? What do you think I could get for this one? And I remembered the tub.

It was a big, beautiful gold fixtures on it, stand-alone type tub. But he wanted to sell everything. When Dorothy made a little money based on her being Playmate of the Year, he took that money and tried to buy a hot car for himself, not for her. Pulled her off the set of a movie and tried to get her to approve all this money. I think he really thought, This is mine. He wanted ownership of her. He wanted to say that he owned something, that he did something. I think he thought he made her. He didn't say anywhere in the magazine that you were married, did he? No. How does your husband feel about this? What's your playmate of the year? He's very encouraging. He's very proud of me. It's great for his ego. I suppose. She was always subservient to his wishes. I know that he made certain demands, and whether she was happy or not, she would do it. Marilyn Grubowski, I think, would say to her, You are responsible responsible for the success. He didn't develop anything in you. You were always this person. He was just the first to recognize it. Don't think he gave you anything.

You always had it. That was her message to Dorothy. By the time she became Playmate of the Year, Dorothy was pretty confident in herself, and she could say, No, no, Paul. I'm not doing this. She grew a pair. Yes, she did. While Dorothy was slowly leaving him, he was trying find new hustles and new ways to do things. He kept trying to promote young women as playmates. I was actually working in a grocery store then and finishing high school. He was telling me that his wife was Playmate of the Year and that I was really pretty and that I should maybe consider doing Playboy sometime. But of course, I wasn't old enough yet. He was hoping Patty could turn into something like Dorothy, as a matter of fact. It's probably becoming inescapable to him that unless he gets her back on his side or finds somebody else, this Hollywood dream is over. He managed to find Dorothy Straton, who really was actually very good at all of the skills that you needed in order to be a fantastic playmate. You cannot just pick off any other girl and then assume that you can groom her into being that same person.

Nothing against Patty. She was an attractive young lady. But turning anybody into a Dorothy Stradin is a pipe dream. Dorothy Stradin was once in a lifetime. Are you going into movies? Is this the logical? It's not logical for a playmate or a playmate of the year to go into the movie business, but so many doors in that field are open to them, that they have a very good chance. A lot of the girls are married when they become a playmate. You're married, aren't you? Mm-hmm. Playboy doesn't want to publicize the fact that its playmates have husbands. So he was He kept even further away from her by virtue of marrying her, and he was growing increasingly resentful of that. I know that there were a lot of fights and a lot of problems. He wanted to own stuff. He wanted to rip things apart that weren't working and control the things that were. They both started to have other lives. And being the possessive man he was, he didn't want her to this other life. In one session, in particular, I do remember we were interrupted. She left the room or the studio, went into a room, locked herself in for about 5 to 10 minutes, came out, started crying.

I asked her what was wrong. We found out later that she was talking to Paul, and she was very upset with that conversation. Of course, it was maybe a month before she was killed. As she started to slip away, he started to realize he owned nothing. He wasn't doing anything. Nobody was admiring him. Hugh Hefner is not going to call him back. And then this deep, deep, deep, freaky thing that was going on inside of him took control, and he lost it. The spring of 1980, Dorothy Stradon has hit the pinnacle of Playboy Fame, being named Playmate of the Year. She's had minor roles in film and television projects. But now, while Dorothy is about to work with one of Hollywood's hottest directors, and it'll change her life in ways no one could have imagined. We talk of the 1970s as being a time of great personal expression and sexuality. The other thing that characterizes the 1970s is the auteur, the director being the most important figure in movie making. Peter Bogdanovic was a huge star director. At the time that Dorothy met him. Action. Here's Mr. Peter Bogdanovic. You're welcome. Peter Bogdanovic. Peter Bogdanovic got famous in 1971 when he directed The Last Picture Show.

What you all doing back here in the dark? Hello. He makes What's Up, Doc, which is a big hit. Action. I beg your pardon. We've got to stop meeting like this. And then he made Paper Moon. I want my $200. That had won Tatum O'Neill an Oscar. It looks like he can do no wrong. So that combination of hubris and the times creates a guy who is somewhat successful, but also too big for his riches. Peter Bogdanovic has made a movie in color. He was a real ladies' man. He left his wife for Sibyl Shepard during the filming of the last picture show. By the mid '70s only, he's down on his luck. He can't get any projects. He and Shepard are breaking up, and he starts to hang around the Playboy mansion, and that's when Dorothy Stradton meets Peter Bogdanavich. He and Peter were extremely close. Compared to Paul, Bogdanavich was a prince. When you're comparing Filet Mignon to a hot dog on a stick, There's a big difference. He ostensibly sees someone he wants to cast for a part in his movie. Oh, it's just a small role, but you would be perfect.

She was so mesmerized disparizing. When he met her, he was compelled to actually take a role and create it for her. When I met Dorothy, I thought it would be great to have her in the picture. So the booby evolved, and I went to Los Angeles and wrote it. This was a Cinderella story. He was picking her up from just being this nobody and elevating her to be the Queen of Hollywood. Ms. Stratton is with us this morning. Good morning, Dorothy. Good morning. Dorothy thought, Let Peter Bogdanovic make her into what Paul couldn't make her into. I'm in the middle of another movie right now that I'm shooting in New York called They All Laught, with Peter Bogdanovic's directing, Audrey Hepburn and Ben Gazzara starring. Do you have some talking parts? Oh, I have a co-starring role. Oh, good. He's valuing her in a different way than just, Let's get more of these nude photographs. She had a glow in the way she talked, the way she moved, her laugh. I I remember driving her to the airport to start filming, and she was very excited. And she saw this as a big break. She was looking forward to working with Bogdanovic and taking another step in becoming a star.

Director, Peter Bogdanovic is in New York City to shoot his new comedy, They All Loved. Peter wanted to make a love story in New York about how falling in love can be a mistake. The John Ritter character in the movie is has modeled on Bogdanovic, and he cast Dorothy Stradin as the the object of his desire. Being in love with Dorothy is what inspired the picture, and I think that has a feeling of being in love with the picture. Are you okay? I'm very well, thank you. How are you? It has a certain sparkle to it that none of my other pictures have. They All Laught was absolutely a movie about Peter. It was very autobiographical. She and Ritter have dialog where he goes, Will you marry me? And she goes, Yes, as soon as my divorce comes through. Will you marry me? Okay, I will. You will? Well, yes, after my divorce. Those were the words that Peter Bogdanavich was happier to write than any he ever wrote before or since. There was fireworks, and I could tell that he was crazy about her She moves essentially out of the hotel she's sitting in for production and moves in with him.

And they try to keep it secret, but the world finds out they're in love. I was in love with her in a way that I never had been before us since. It just seemed like we had wings. Every little thing had power. When I heard that she was having this affair with him, I wasn't happy, really. He did confide in me that he was madly in love with her, and I just cautioned him. I said, Peter, be really careful because You have no idea who this guy is that she's separated from. I knew she was unhappy in her marriage, and I knew he was... His husband was a bit of a pain in the ass. That's all I knew. Roseanne Caton, a friend of mine, approached me on the about Paul being a potentially dangerous person. Coleen said, Well, what do you think of Paul? And I just said, I think he's really bad news. She said that this guy is not going to let Dorothy go. I just knew that he was capable of doing harm and that Peter should be really careful because he's the guy that could kill him. I think the minute Dorothy got interested in Peter, Paul felt like he got left behind, like he got shafted.

For Paul, losing Dorothy to Peter Bogdanovic was like the ultimate insult because Peter, in his own way, was a much bigger Paul. He had discovered a star just It was like when Paul found Dorothy at the Derry Queen, she was nothing. When a person knows they're inadequate and they can feel that inside, but they won't say anything, and they'll try and put up a front. He probably did that. He put his best face on. When really inside, he was probably crying. He was injured, bruised, and cut with a sharp knife in his soul and heart. Paul veered into that dark place. He just didn't know how it would It was going to manifest itself, but you knew it was coming. I just kept saying, Paul, take it easy. When she gets back here after the movie, you'll talk it out, hopefully resolve your problems. But by and large, You can't control her. You can't make her love you. She's becoming more independent. People are helping her become more independent. You got the dear John letter as proof that he was losing her. She just said that she doesn't think that the marriage is working right, and she doesn't want to hurt him.

There was no bitch in her. As far as I was concerned, my limited knowledge of her, no bitch. Paul started telling me, I can't get through. And Peter was telling her to fire all the people that represent her and have his people represent her. And he's starting to control her and take over for her. Lawyers, agents. She got Bogdanaviched. Gone. Paul's last hope for a big score was a project begun a month or so before he and Dorothy were married. He had worked out a deal with Dorothy. They would print a poster they hoped would sell a million copies and net $300,000. He figures this is his one last attempt to cash in on her. Peter was very against her doing this poster, and he felt that she was being used by Paul. So we hop on a plane, fly to New York. She opened the door and saw them. She said, Oh, my God, what are you doing here? I said, We want to show you this poster. We talked about it with Paul and all that. She took it with her inside the room, comes out moments later. She says no, and that's it.

That was the final shutdown. He had no more income. And I think that's when Paul went into high gear. She never felt that there was there's no danger in anything with Paul Snyder. But I always say, you just don't know how people are going to react to rejection. They were naive that there was a very present danger. When we look at what exists of Dorothy Straton, when we look at her photographs, when we look at her movies-I love you, Sergeant Thorne.we go, Really? Where is the Snap? Would you welcome Dorothy Straton? You look at her, Johnny Carson, you go, I don't get what everybody gets. What do you notice first about a man? A man's walking down the street. Are you walking to a room? Stand up. His chest. I noticed a man's chest first. That was going to change. Everyone in this story, Paul Snyder, Hefner, Peter Bogdanovic, was going to remain as they were. The person who was changing was Dorothy Strat. Maybe in the beginning, Dorothy loved Paul. But I think once she saw the world, she realized that it's not what she wanted. The more she got away from him, the more of a creep he appeared to be, which he was.

In other words, she went from being naive to be able to see what he was. Even now, looking back on those videos, I see this this desperate boy, Paul Snyder, who wanted to be Hugh Hefner. He needed her to make him. He was a eunuch. He got his balls from her success. He didn't have any balls. I never saw him naked, but I'd have bet he didn't have any. She moves into Bogdanavich's house, but she's trying to figure out some way to settle with him. All of us were pretty happy When we heard Dorothy was going to divorce Paul, we were happy for her. I think by that time, it was pretty well established that they were going their separate ways, at least in her mind. Schneider expected he would receive 50% of everything she did from that point forward because he was the one, he was the creator. He looked at this as not her being a human being, but her being a commodity. I don't know if Paul was capable capable of real love. There's those people out there that they're users. They don't have the capacity to love enough to let someone go for their own good.

People begin to tell Dorothy, You never have to see him again. This can all be handled by people. Clean as a whistle. But she didn't think that was right for some reason. She had a meeting with her, and she said, Hey, we We're going to work this out. We're going to have a separation, and maybe we can still be friends. There's a way I can take care of you, and there might be some settlement, and it'll be okay, Paul. You're the one. You're the reason I'm here, and it'll be fine. My My understanding, talking to people who knew her that she was compassionate and that she wanted to make this as easy as possible for Schneider. That was a revealing moment to me because it said that she Deep down, she was worried about his welfare. He's listening to that. He's not hearing any of those words. He's hearing abandonment. Looking on hindsight, probably there should have been an attorney negotiating with Paul and giving him some money to walk away. He had lost his ticket to his life in California. His whole world was crumbled. Paul was distraught. He was sad. He was like, Gosh, she didn't even tell me she loved me or kiss me.

There were times when he talked to me and he would start crying, and he would sit on the couch and play his guitar, and he had wrote songs to Dorothy. Those who saw him during the five days prior to the murder caught only glimpses of odd behavior. In retrospect, they appear to form a pattern of intent. He was preoccupied occupied with guns. It was after Dorothy confessed to him that she loved Bogdanovic and wanted to make a financial settlement with him that he first started talking about the guns. Paul had borrowed a '38 revolver and had gone to Peter Bogdanovic's home. Why would you give a crazy guy, going through a divorce, angry at his wife? Why would you give him a gun? His transition was, first he went to the house and scouted, was a peeping tom, if you will, and he's replaying his choice of thoughts. That's a dangerous road. He's not a happy person. He's very angry, very upset. And that's what drives him his pain. So now here he is wondering, how do I handle this? All my My friends think I'm a loser. My girl's screwing around on me with another guy.

It's humiliating. And so what do I do here? He sat outside the gate of Peter's mansion for two hours, apparently, with a gun in his hands. There was a belief that he was going to kill himself. I don't know how accurate that is, but I know that he did go up there and he got tired of waiting. They, by luck, avoided that situation. Paul Snyder was at a point where he was willing to sacrifice everything versus losing control. And that's when he was... Perpetual motion was at full RPM, going as fast as he could. First, a friend of him lends him a 38 caliber pistol, but the friend then decides to take it back. So Paul then went on to the classifieds, and what a shotgun. He knows that it's not right what he's going to do, but he has some momentum and velocity now that is starting to get out of his control. When that takes place, that's a scary, scary place for all of us, right? The second gun he came across was a 12-gate shotgun. It is a very powerful weapon. It's something that's going to stop you right in your tracks if you get hit.

It becomes clear in retrospect that he's plotting to end it together. He just got out of control. Way out of his mind. Dorothy Straton has told her husband she wants out of their marriage. That decision has set Paul Snyder on edge, and he has bought a 12 gage shotgun. Now, Dorothy is about to step into Paul's deadly trap. The day of the murder, Dorothy decided, against everyone's direction, to go to Paul and try to negotiate a payment settlement with him. All of us said, Don't go. Go home. Go back to where you were. Don't go there. Hath and Peter forbid her from going to see him. They forbid it. She had to sneak. She had to lie. Nobody knew she was going there except a few people. She never told Peter that she was going to Paul Snyder's that day. But she just misjudged that guy so badly. She just had that little flaw. That was her flaw, not being able to see the evil in people. In her mind, she would never have gotten there if it weren't for this punk from Vancouver. And so she felt that she owed him one final conversation.

So she drove to his house and met with him there, parked her car out in front, went in, and never came out. He had already had it all planned and brought her to his house, made sure his roommates were gone. I believe I left in the morning because she was supposed to be there around noon or so. It's the worst day of my life. It was a Thursday. That I'll never forget. The doctor had the upstairs with the and Paul and Dorothy had the downstairs in the back of the house. I saw her car was there. I went in the house, and her purse was on the stairs. I remember Patty saying that she had arrived sometime that afternoon. She even has a dog, too, which was in the backyard. I guess the dog was barking a lot. Patty and I were watching television and talking. They hear Schneider's phone going and nobody answering the phone. Steven was sitting up there, and he goes, This is so weird. I haven't even heard the toilet flush. Finally, after many, many hours, one of the roommates convinces the doctor to open the door. We knocked on the door.

Steven did the knock like, Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, opened the door. The first thing you see is Paul laying on the carpet. But instead of a whole head, it's like his head is this thick because he just blew the whole front of his face off. She was against the far wall. They were both naked. She's dead. He's dead. It looked like it was a horror movie. It's a staged horror movie, like mannequins and fake blood. It's a picture that never goes away. A mental picture that's stuck in here for forever. Were you in the house when the bodies were discovered? Yes. You were? Yes. Were you in the house when the shooting occurred? No. You were not? No. It's a brutal murder and scary. Very, very scary. She was violently raped by Paul before he killed her. I think if you look at the control factor of having forcing sex upon her, I think that's all part of his regaining his position of power. I think it was more realizing that he had no future without her and didn't want anyone else to have a future without her. Snyder apparently shot Straton in the face with a 12 gage shotgun.

Shooting someone in the face obliterating the most familiar thing about her, the entry point to her stardom, just completely demolishing, not just ending her life, but preventing anyone from ever looking at her again. That's what he did. I think there was a moment there that he really realized what had happened. But it just seemed to me at one point, he knew I had to kill himself. There was nothing left. He shot himself in the left temple right behind his eyes, and killed him instantly. He knew by taking her, he was done. So he also took himself. What a weakling. He ultimately had to do what he did and basically to Hefner, to Bogdanovic, everybody else, to society in general, put up not one, but two middle fingers and say, That's what you get for messing with Paul Snyder. There was one photo taken that Bussy copied as the last shot of the movie, which is the overhead shot. That was shot from the crime scene. And what stood out was the smallness of our lives. Two little bodies all bloodless, lying there together. We're all so insignificant when we're done. And they weren't supposed to be, especially her.

Come on. She was not just any playmate, but the '80s first playmate of the year who, as Playboy trumpeted in June, was on her way to becoming one of the few emerging goddesses of the new decade. Dorothy Straton was buried at the same cemetery that houses Marilyn Monroe. She becomes immediately upon her death frozen as some archetype of women and Hollywood and fantasy and the perils of the Hollywood life. Hef was never the same. That was that part of him died. Part of all of us died because Dorothy was special to us. I remember driving in the limo with Hef to the funeral, and I remember his take on life and death. He said, You know, it's the luck of the draw. Bogdanovic fell apart in every respect. He wrote the inscription that's on her grave. He chose it from Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms. It's poignant and a little disturbing. It talks about how the world will kill you, how pure yourself is the world will kill you all the same. He still wants this movie to get out, whether it's for his own reasons or as a testament to Dorothy and her enduring memory.

Nobody wanted to see a movie in which its charming ingenue had been brutally murdered. So he took the tragic decision of taking it back from its exhibitor and attempting to distribute it himself. It went through all of his money. It was really dramatic and tragic. There were so many things that he just wanted to not lose that he wanted to control because he certainly couldn't control what had just happened. Five years After her death, he publishes a book about Straton. I think the killing of the unicorn was a way for him to sort out what had happened and look at it almost like a murder mystery. How did this event happen? He went after Hugh Hefner with both barrels. Dorothy, when she got to Hollywood, found herself maneuvered by Hefner into a sexual situation that she found very shocking, and in fact, it traumatized her. For the record, did you seduce her? No, I didn't, and never tried to. Now things were really raised to the ultimate level. And Hef was so devastated It's really truly what led to his stroke. I remember being up there for a big press conference, and he was indignant.

He's tragic death was motivated not in any way by her association with Playboy, but clearly by the breakup of her marriage because of the affair with Peter McDonald. What a bizarre spectacle. It was just all guys yelling at guys about women. How crazy. And so you've got this jockeying of these two very powerful, very big-name men in Hollywood who were carrying tremendous guilt and grief about Dorothy's death. One of the tacit tenets of playboy philosophy that women can be possessed had found a fervent adherent in Paul Snyder. He had bought the dream without qualification, and he thought of himself as perhaps one of playboy's his most honest apostles. Therese's story would say two things that Playboy didn't like. One was that Hefner was frustrated in the fact that his playmates didn't become stars. But the other thing was, and this was the unforgivable thing to say if you were Playboy, was that what Paul Snyder did to Dorothy Straton in the final minutes of her life was just the extreme of the whole Playboy Hefner, he was definitely interested in his spin on the story. And he said, Please stay away from this narrative. It was a classic cliché, small-town girl comes to her, gets chewed up and spit out.

This was a case where she came into a family and we protected her. Well, it turns out it wasn't the case at all. It was more of the classic cliché. It would seem these must be lonely people. I mean, to try to have a relationship with somebody who was on a piece of paper. Sure. How do you feel about that? Well, I'm happy to make them happy. Peter supported the family for years. He had tremendous guilt. And so when news later came that Peter Bogdanovic and Louise Straton had, in fact, gotten married. Strange doesn't even begin to describe it. It's good for the back, your legs, and your behind. Would you like to be just like your sister when you grow up? Yeah. Why? Because I'm proud of Peter always took care of the Hogstraton family after Dorothy died. Peter supported the family for years. He had tremendous guilt and sadness. What's funny When we were thinking about the years after, we didn't see much of them, but we heard that the mother and the daughter were living at Bogdanavich's house. He's always just helped our family and Family Matters and helped get through the pain and sorrow.

He paid for their rent. He sent Louise to school. He said, If I'd married Dorothy, this would be my family. So I wasn't going to stop being their family because she was dead. He was really there for me and some connection I had with him, and he became a lot of roles in my life. It seemed natural to gravitate toward Dorothy's sister. It didn't seem unusual. We both felt blasted, so we helped each other. That grew to be another time of love. Peter eventually married Louise Straton when she was 20 years old. They were on the boat of grief together because only one person in the world understands what you're feeling. When I heard that Peter Bogdanovic had married Dorothy's sister, it made me very sad for her. It wasn't going to last because she was so young. In 2001, 13 years after they got married, Louise Straton filed for divorce from Peter Bogdanovic. I think it's really interesting that the relationship that he developed with Louise, it was a real relationship. It continues to this day. They're business partners. They produce movies together. It wasn't like this was just some passing guilt phase. He has stayed close and connected and in love with that family ever since he met Dorothy.

Whether or not Dorothy Straton would have fulfilled her extravagant promise can't be known. She's only 20. So young. So young. In the end, Dorothy Straton was less memorable for herself than for the yearning she evoked. In Snyder, a lust for the score. In Hefner, a longing for a star. In Bogdanovic, a desire for the eternal enginou. Where does one's career go from here? I mean, are you worried that you have to make it quickly? I think the acting career actually can't be taken too quickly because if you rush things and you make the wrong decisions, it could be over very quickly. The real tragedy of Dorothy's life is that she couldn't live long enough to really ever tell her own story. She never was able to say, Okay, this is what got me here, but now these are the things that I want to be. Here's who I actually am. The rays of the sun are slowly shining brighter. The evening will be forever. Yet time is not enough. Thanks for listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault. Tune in on Friday nights at 9:00 for all new broadcast episodes of 2020 on ABC.