Disclaimer: This article contains mentions of abuse and murder. Reader discretion is advised.
Dorothy Stratten was Playboy’s Playmate of the Year 1980 and a budding actress from Vancouver, Canada. Per People Magazine, she filmed her first movie, a Peter Bogdanovich directorial, that year. Then, in August of that same year, her estranged husband, Paul Snider, killed the 20-year-old in a tragic murder-suicide. ABC News stated that Snider raped Stratten and then fatally shot her before turning the gun on himself. The incident occurred in the Los Angeles home the couple once shared.
Dorothy Stratten: Why did Paul Snider kill the former Playboy Playmate?
According to ABC News, Dorothy Stratten and Paul Snider met in Vancouver in 1978 when the former was only 18. Snider reportedly set her up for a nude photoshoot. After this shoot, Playboy discovered Stratten and thus began her Hollywood journey. Playboy and its founder, Hugh Hefner, even named her Miss August 1979. Stratten also worked as a Playboy Bunny at the Playboy Club in Los Angeles and began living in the Playboy Mansion.
Stratten’s career was peaking when she married Snider in 1979. Then, in 1980, she was named Playboy Playmate of the Year and was cast in Peter Bogdanovich’s movie They All Laughed, which also starred Audrey Hepburn. Reportedly, the model-turned-actress began an affair with Bogdanovich. People Magazine noted that Snider grew increasingly jealous and enraged and hired a private investigator. The then-20-year-old eventually filed for divorce.
The outlet reported that the events that followed resulted in Dorothy Stratten’s tragic murder. She and her estranged husband, Paul Snider, were to meet on August 14, 1980. ABC News stated that Stratten went to the Los Angeles home she once shared with Snider and their other housemates. There, Snider raped and fatally shot Stratten in the face with a 12-gauge shotgun before shooting himself in the head.
Former Playmate Holly Madison told People Magazine about Stratten’s abusive and controlling relationship with Snider. Madison said, “For the moment, she didn’t feel like she was in danger. She felt like it was one last meeting. She was going to give him a little bit of money, and that’s when he took her life.”
ABC News stated that Dorothy Stratten’s former housemates, Patti Laurman and Stephen Cushner, who lived in that same house, were the first to discover the crime scene. Both Laurman and Cushner hadn’t been at home on the day of the murder.
Laurman claimed she left the house on the morning of August 14 because Stratten was coming over. Cushner said he spent the previous night at his girlfriend’s home and then went to work in the morning. He only returned home later that evening.
Both Laurman and Cushner found Paul Snider and Stratten’s naked bodies. Laurman said, “It looked like it was a horror movie — a staged horror movie — like mannequins and fake blood. That’s a picture that never goes away, a mental picture that’s stuck in here forever.”
Four years later, Peter Bogdanovich published a book about Dorothy Stratten’s death titled The Killing of The Unicorn. He wrote the book in response to Stratten’s murder-suicide, blaming Playboy and Hugh Hefner for the tragedy.
Then, in 1985, Hefner told ABC News during a press conference, “Dorothy’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 Bogdonavich.”
Dorothy Stratten’s death has had an immeasurable impact. Several documentaries, films, and true-crime shows have previously chronicled the infamous case. Very Recently, ID’s The Playboy Murders covered Stratten’s murder-suicide case.
