THE MURDER OF A PLAYBOY BUNNY

dorothy stratton was one of playboy's most successful models and she lived the high life parties at the mansion secret relations with the rich and famous but as the cliche goes sometimes you can have too much of a good thing and sometimes that good thing can turn deadly so today's video is going to be another solved true crime case today we are going to be talking about the life and tragic death of superstar dorothy stratton but before we get into it i do just want to thank our sponsor for making this video possible function of beauty function of beauty has been my ride or die hair care brand for years now and you want to know why because they make their formulas custom to each person all you have to do is go on their website fill out a quick quiz tell them your hair type what your hair goals are so i usually choose things like strengthen volumize straighten to help me style it you also get to pick your color your scent and the name that's on your bottle everything is customizable with 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treat the people you love this christmas link down below in the description thanks again to function of beauty for sponsoring this video now quickly before we get into it i do just want to give my usual disclaimer that i mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone that i talk about in this video this video is for educational purposes and everything that i'm about to say is just information that i have found on the internet and i'm compiling into one video just a couple of content warnings on this one this case does involve themes of rape and suicide so if either of those are something that you don't feel like you can listen to right now i completely understand your mental health is the most important thing click out of this video go make yourself a cup of tea or something i'm sure i'll catch you again some other time with a video that's maybe a bit more suitable for you but in the meantime look after yourself and with all that out of the way let's get into the case dorothy stratton full name dorothy ruth hoogstraten was born on february 28 1960 in vancouver canada she was the first child to dutch immigrant parents named simon and nelly and shortly after they had dorothy they had another two kids a boy and a girl so dorothy was the oldest of three dorothy did really really well in school she was a straight-a student and she was just really dedicated in every aspect of her life no matter what it was when she set her mind to something she was doing it well so like she got a part-time job at dairy queen and she was like one of the best employees there she just always put her everything into everything she did dorothy worked at that dairy queen for four years and one year when she was working there she was 17 years old at this point and a man walked through the door and it was very clear that dorothy had caught his eye this man was 26 year old paul snyder a nightclub promoter by dare and pimp by night but he didn't tell dorothy that but he walked over to dorothy as she was working and struck up a conversation with her immediately turning on the charm flirting with her and dorothy was quite taken aback by this because she was a very like wholesome innocent little girl that had like grown up on a farm she'd never had a boyfriend before she'd never like had male attention like this before she was just a very innocent little thing and so she like nervously tried to flirt back because she liked him i mean he was charming he was attractive to her she tried to flirt back and it was a little bit awkward at first but then the conversation quickly became quite comfortable and the two of them started chatting like they'd known each other for years dorothy described herself as being swept off her feet by paul snyder he was smooth and charming he knew all the right things to say to her he asked dorothy out on a first date and of course she agreed and it went really well they went on a second then a third and then before long the two of them were officially together but dorothy's parents did not approve of this relationship i don't know if you remember but there was quite an age gap between the two of them dorothy was 17 when they met and paul snyder was 26 nearly a decade older than her he's almost twice her age and dorothy's parents were concerned they felt like dorothy was actually just ruining her life with this relationship they felt like it was distracting her from her education it was gonna set her off down a bad path they just felt like this relationship was gonna change the trajectory of dorothy's life because she was a good girl she was intelligent she was hard working it was clear that she was gonna have a really really successful future and now her parents worried that this boy man fully grown man was going to distract their daughter from that and they also just found it really weird with the age gap i think they were more upset because they were kind of thinking of this from the angle of like they were immigrants and they had worked so so hard to give dorothy and her two siblings the lives that they'd had all the opportunities that they'd had the schooling that they'd had her parents had worked their backsides off to get that for them and they feared that dorothy was just throwing all that away with this man but paul snyder was very very charming and the first time he met her parents they were quite cold and they you know they didn't really want to know they weren't impressed by this boy but after a few times of meeting them he'd managed to charm them he was a very very charming individual i've said this and i will continue to say it because he seems to win over every single person in his life no matter how many reasons they have to not like him people will always end up liking him eventually dorothy's parents began to see him as this hard-working guy that was in love with their daughter and wanted to give her the whole world and so they accepted him into their family with open arms because he seemed like a great man for their daughter to be further the main reason that dorothy's parents did end up accepting paul was just because of how happy he made dorothy they'd never seen her this happy before in her whole life and if she was happy they were happy but things were about to get weird eventually paul had the conversation with dorothy about what his job really was that he was a pimp and not only that he was actually a scout for playboy magazine as well so dorothy hears this and she like freaks out a bit at first i imagine it's quite a shocking thing to hear but after a while she kind of comes to the conclusion that well if he's not cheating then it's fine it's none of her business what he does as a job i suppose so she told him that she was fine with it you know she she wanted to stay with him and that was when paul asked her if she'd ever thought about modeling before she hadn't like i said she was like an innocent naive little farm girl that grew up in the sticks she'd never done anything like out there like that but paul told dorothy that she just had something special about her of all the models that he'd met and he'd met a lot because of his job obviously um he said that dorothy just had this quality over them that she was better than any professional he'd seen he said she had a real star quality like she just lit up a room when she walked into it and she really changed the energy of the room it was almost a disservice for her to not use this talent to like entertain and make people happy he told her that without a doubt she could model for playboy she had the look she had the vibe she you know he knew playboy best because he scouted for them and he knew that dorothy was perfect he was saying to her you will 100 get a contract with playerboy all you have to do is say yes and she was reluctant to do so at first like i said she was a relatively shy girl and so for her immediately topless photoshoots were completely out of the question she was not comfortable with nudity at all but as the conversation went on he was telling her more about what the job entails and that she didn't have to do nudity if she didn't want she could continue to wear lingerie the whole time and she started warming to the idea you know if she could keep her morals and her values and still have this cool job that paul thinks she'd be good at then why not she was like why not i will try it and paul was so excited about this he was so happy for dorothy he was like let me sort everything for you he hired a professional photographer a professional studio and dorothy stratton had her first ever photo shoot in just her underwear and this was quite a mental hurdle for her to get over but as soon as she did she unleashed a whole new dorothy the pictures came out incredible she was such a natural she was really friendly and flirty and like she was just she had the vibe she looked at these photos and she was so happy she could finally see what paul was seeing when he was saying you'll be perfect for this she was finally seeing these pictures and she's like yeah i kind of am and this gave her the confidence to send these photos off to playboy and as soon as they saw them they were obsessed they wanted dorothy stratton they said they wanted her to start asap they wanted her working at the bar they wanted her in the mansion they wanted her doing photo shoots but there was one issue her age dorothy was a fresh 18 years old at this point but where she lived in canada that was still a minor the age of legal responsibility over there was or is 19. but this wasn't a huge issue however they were still allowed to take photos of an underage girl in her underwear just as long as they had parental consent honestly playboy as a company is a whole true crime in itself you're going to hear so many dodgy things throughout this video a lot of them are kind of smoothed out these days a lot of them were happening when playboy was just starting out but weird company really weird but anyway dorothy was told that she could be a playboy bunny if she just got her mummy and daddy's permission and they gave her it to be fair to her parents they were dutch and the legal the age of legal responsibility over there is 18 so they probably did see their daughter as as an adult that can consent and make her own decisions so i mean if her parents were okay with it she was buzzing she was off to the mansion i actually have a quote from someone who worked at the magazine at the time they said i wanted her on the next plane here she was a turtle babe in the woods life was about to be completely different for dorothy stratton and her boyfriend paul snyder was very aware of what the playboy bunny life entailed he knew that there were parties there were men there was a lot of sex that went on in the mansion and he wanted to get a ring on that girl as quickly as he possibly could and so in june of 1979 the two of them got married it was about a year after they'd first met and a couple of months after the wedding dorothy jetted off to the playboy mansion in an interview about this time in her life dorothy said i was very shy i never dated boys really i never went out to parties the first time i went to los angeles to shoot for playboy it was my first time on an airplane playboy's motto is the girl next door they look for girls that are wholesome fresh and naive which i suppose dorothy stratton fit to a t she was that wholesome naive girl that was now shipped off to la living the highlight so let's talk about dorothy's life as a playboy bunny shall we we're going to kind of step away from the true crime just for a second just to talk about player boy i suppose most of the bunnies in the house around that time were between the ages of 21 and 24 and like i said dorothy stratton 18. so she stuck out like a sore thumb she got a lot of attention positive attention because men like young women sometimes too young so she was a lot of men's favorite shall we say in terms of her job because this is a job this was her career at this point she was paid a thousand dollars every single week all of the bunnies were that was like a flat rate to be a playboy bunny flat rate interesting way of putting that but all the bunnies got paid a thousand dollars every week and that was mainly for general upkeep because their rent was taken care of their food was taken care of everything bill wise was taken care of so this a thousand dollars was to spend on things like hair nails fake tan i don't know did play by bunnies fake tan or is that just the uk it was basically just money to keep them pretty you know what i mean and although a big chunk of this one thousand dollars a week ended up just going back into the women's appearances that 1 000 a week salary actually made these women some of the highest earning women in the country at that time oh and they were also offered plastic surgery on hugh hefner's coin like if they wanted a boob job if they wanted lipo if they wanted a bbl if they wanted anything he was like yeah it's on me i'll pay for it though living in the playboy mansion did come with its rules all the girls actually had a 9 p.m curfew and this was strict the consequences for breaking curfew even if they were just five minutes late was that their weekly allowance that one thousand dollars would be cut i don't know how much buy i think it was different depending on what the bunny had done that required this punishment because this was the general punishment for all bad behavior in the mansion was that their allowance would be cut so if they didn't get into trouble all week they would get the full 1 000 but if they did a few naughty things throughout the week maybe they're only getting 700 this week all the girls had a strict uniform that consisted of a tight corset with a bunny tail on the bum there were bunny ears wrist cuffs a bow tie a little collar they had the option of wearing stockings or tights if they wanted and of course they had to be wearing heels at all times these poor girls feet but the uniform actually only came in two sizes at this time i don't know how many sizes it comes in now do they even still have that uniform now i don't know but it only came in two sizes back then 34d or 36c and i bet a lot of girls are listening to that like that's not me which obviously most of the playboy bunnies did not fit into one of these two sizes so the girls all had to come up with ways to fit into them they would stuff their bra with things to kind of fill it out they would sew in extra bra cups so that they had a bit more extra push this wasn't against the rules because obviously the playboy mansion understood that if they're only supplying two lots of uniforms then the girls are gonna have to make alterations but there were a lot of things that were against the rules actually and they would have frequent surprise inspections and if anything was out of line with these girls uniforms again they would get their allowance cut even things as little as like having chipped nail polish apparently hugh hefner hated chip nail polish the girls had what was called a bunny mother which was an older woman that came into the mansion to help them all get ready for the night and all the girls actually had to be there at the mansion an hour before their shift unpaired so that they could get ready because obviously they had to be all done up to be able to work in the mansion they needed makeup hair all that they could not turn up to work after just rolling out of bed no chance so dorothy herself as for her main job she actually couldn't work behind the bar because she was only 18 and she couldn't legally serve alcohol so instead she was just greeting people on entry she was just kind of standing in the doorway being her usual happy smiley self and people loved her but still she had all the same strict uniform requirements even though she wasn't in the main bar oh and one of these requirements that i forgot to mention earlier was actually that the girls had weekly weigh-ins to make sure that they weren't putting on weight which is violent in fact they allegedly had money knocked off of their allowance if they gained too much weight i don't know how true that is that's why i say allegedly but even worse i know the girls were also required to have regular medical checkups and also regular sti screenings even though they were actually banned from having sex with other men while they were playing boy bunnies other hmm i actually don't know what the specifics of that rule were but i know they weren't allowed to sleep with just anyone i don't know if they had to like get hugh hefner's permission to have a boyfriend i don't know i actually don't know so the girls were banned from having sex with any of the men that came inside the club inside the playboy mansion but there was a particular small and very exclusive group of men that were exempt from this rule and these were the c1 key holders if a man had a c1 key which was a key to a room in the mansion kind of like the the red room in the mansion then he was allowed to date or have sex with any of the playboy bunnies i mean consensual on both ends is implied there i know that probably doesn't sound it but if he wanted to sleep with one of the bunnies and she wanted to sleep with him then they were allowed because he had this key to this special room where it was allowed to go down only the richest and most powerful men in the world had these keys all the like senior playboy bunny staff had them as well as hugh hefner's greatest friends whenever a new girl would join and become a playboy bunny hugh hefner and all of his friends would take her into a room take a picture of her with a polaroid camera and then give her a number from one to three the girls never knew what any of this meant they didn't know what the picture was for they didn't know what the number meant it was never explained to them and it later turned out that this was hugh hefner and his friend's way of deciding whether a girl was good-looking enough to come back that number was a rating from one to three one was gorgeous two was all right and three was she's never coming back in here ever again so i don't know how glamorous i've made the playboy bunny lifestyle sound so far to me it's not very glamorous to you i don't know but i'm about to make it sound like hell on earth sir enjoy most of what i'm about to say comes from a woman named holly madison who is a former playboy bunny who has since come out about a lot of that goes on behind closed doors she was the one that exposed the weigh-ins and you know the consequences if they put on weight all that kind of stuff all those horrible details of what those girls went through holly also mentioned that the girls were expected to be naked at all times in the mansion when it wasn't open to the public they were only allowed to wear their underwear in the house if they were air on their period or be to indicate that they didn't want to have sex that night but actually they were expected to have sex every day it was supposed to only be like a once in a while thing where they would turn it down it was kind of part of the job that they had to have sex whether that was with each other or even sometimes with hugh hefner if he chose them or you know one of his associates or friends the c1 key holders if a playboy bunny was found to actively be dating and sleeping with someone that wasn't hugh hefner another bunny or one of the c1 key holders that hadn't been approved then she would be kicked out of the mansion orgies were like a twice weekly occurrence in the playboy mansion and the girls all the playboy bodies were as a rule expected to join in obviously there were times when they didn't want to or they couldn't and they didn't have to in those situations but it was kind of you know as a rule everybody is expected to be involved and usually after a big party they would go on massive drug drink binges and that was when these orgies would take place viagra was available in pretty much every single room in the mansion they made sure every room was fully stocked up but one thing that wasn't very easily available was protection condoms anything because hugh hefner was not a fan of condoms he actually refused to wear protection with any of the girls which let's be real that's why the sti screenings were so regular it wasn't really to protect the bunnies it was to protect hugh hefner but i'm finally done with the tangent wasn't that the tangent of the century i was talking about dorothy stratton and then all of a sudden i'm talking about hugh hefner's weekly sti test but anyway that was the life that dorothy stratton was now swept up in this small town girl from a farm in canada was now the next biggest thing coming up in l.a in one of dorothy's first ever photo shoots for the magazine she was actually the double page spread at the center fold of the magazine you know the middle page that's always the best bit it's the best bit and this was a really really big deal because basically the bunny that was the centerfold in the double page spread she was supposed to be like the it girl of the moment she was the next big thing she was the one to watch and that was dorothy stratton in august of 1979 and she was so excited for the shoot dorothy was sent somewhere abroad with a whole team like a whole crew that was going to take photos of her for the centerfold it was a really big budget thing but it was while she was on this work trip that some of her co-workers noticed some red flags in dorothy stratton's long-distance relationship remember of course she's still married to paul snyder and he you know as supportive as he was of dorothy he was a little bit jealous about the whole playboy mansion situation which i think you know a lot of boyfriends would be but dorothy really tried her best to reassure him that like he was the only man that she wanted she wasn't interested in sleeping with anyone else and so she would ring him every single day at the mansion which you know kind of normal but then when she went away on this trip her co-workers realized that she was ringing him like multiple times during one shoot just to kind of update him let him know how the shoot was going why did he need to know but i think the reason for this was because dorothy always felt like she owed all her success to paul snyder he was the one that encouraged her to do her first ever photo shoot and send them off to playboy he was the reason that she was as successful as she was i mean well that's how she saw it of course she was the reason that she was so successful she's the talented one she's the one taking the photos not paul she was well deserving of this success but she didn't see it you know she she always saw paul as the guy that gave her everything so yeah she just tried to be the best girlfriend that she possibly could and if that meant ringing him five times in five hours then okay after a few months of dorothy working at the playboy mansion paul snyder decided that he couldn't bear to be away from her any longer and he moved all the way from canada to l.a so that he could be close by the two of them bought a house together even though obviously dorothy wasn't gonna be living there most of the time but while dorothy's career was well only just beginning paul snyder's was the complete opposite actually his was falling apart so i just need to give you a little bit of context to this move that he did from canada to l.a he couldn't actually get a work visa so he had to travel on like a tourist visa so for that reason because he didn't move there for work he couldn't actually get a job in l.a so he couldn't make any money and so he essentially brought himself over there bought a house with dorothy and then he was like yeah but you've got to pay for me and she was like what well i mean of course she was willing to pay for him she loved him and she just expected him to be able to find a job within the next few months she was fine paying for him for the time being but it wasn't for the time being dorothy's one thousand dollars a week paycheck was now split between the two of them and of course i mean a thousand dollars a week is a lot but remember most of it is actually supposed to go back into the way that she looks she's got to get ahead and she's gotta get all these different things so actually when it came down to it the two of them weren't living on a lot of money now that it had to be split paul snyder did try and find some like shady work obviously he couldn't get a legitimate legal job um but you know he wasn't used to that he was a pimp back in canada so he was kind of used to shady jobs so he tried to kind of get back into that but it was very hard for him because you know in canada he was well known well respected you know he was a big guy in the scene but in la he was no one so it wasn't really possible for him to kind of start up that shady pimp career again because he couldn't find the connections and so he was just living off of his girlfriend's paycheck but dorothy was more than happy to do so because remember she felt like she owed something to this man for giving her her success even though she earned it but modeling wasn't the only thing that dorothy stratton wanted to try her hand at she was very interested in acting she'd always loved the movies and actors and actresses and she always thought it would be so good to be one and now she actually felt like it was possible because she had access to connections and people in the industry so she had many conversations with hugh hefner and the other bunnies about this and she did a few like little acting jobs that hugh hefner saw and he thought she was so talented so much so that it was him that managed to get dorothy her first ever like serious acting roles and she got a lot in a short space of time she was in episodes of book rogers fantasy island she was in a bunch of movies around this time i'm not even going to list them but as dorothy started to shine as an up-and-coming actress and a very successful model her husband paul snyder was growing bitter in canada he had been the main bread winner of the house you know the dominant the one that was bringing in the money and here the roles were reversed it was now dorothy that was providing for him and he didn't like it his ego was damaged he grew very desperate to prove himself like he was trying every get-rich-quick scheme that he could get his hands on he was buying and selling and trying to flip things and he was offering services and then he eventually landed on stripping with the help of a few friends paul snyder put together a male strip group called the chippendales and it was actually inspired by the playboy branding they were supposed to be like the male version of the playboy bunnies and their uniforms were bunnies it's reported that hugh hefner himself did not like paul snyder he knew just how toxic and jealous he was heff actually banned paul snyder from the playboy mansion and he always would tell dorothy to just leave him just leave him move on but she always thought that hef was just flirting with her and so she just kind of dismissed it like oh of course you want me to get rid of my husband but there was a real sentiment behind it hef was being serious like leave that man but regardless dorothy stratton was now at the peak of her career her career just keeps going from strength to strength to strength i can never say that whenever you say strength so many times in a row i get tongue-tied anyway she was gaining a lot of attention like all of her acting work was being released all the playboy fans absolutely adored her she was like one of the favorite playboy bunnies every magazine that she was in was so popular sold incredibly well in fact she was so loved that she actually won the playmate of the year award in 1980 which is a big big deal because the playmate of the whole year one girl is picked every year and it was dorothy stratton that shows how good she was how at the top of her game she was she was better than all the others like i said she was a natural this kind of thing just came so naturally to her but quickly following that good news only came even more good news when dorothy stratton found out that she'd landed the lead role in a film that they would be shooting out in southern california later that year she was so excited and so was paul paul was very excited for her very supportive and he agreed to move out to southern california with her so that she could shoot this film while they were out there dorothy actually managed to give paul a kind of illegitimate job i don't think he was claiming taxes but it was technical well it wasn't technically his job it was uh secretly his job he became dorothy's chauffeur he would just drive her around anywhere and everywhere she needed to be and she needed to be a lot of places she was a woman in demand and he would also act as her manager from time to time although it was very clear to see where his intentions lied with this he wasn't just trying to help his wife he just really liked the fame and the attention that it brought him he enjoyed finally having some power you know as a chauffeur he has no power as her manager the power is now back in his hands but as supportive as paul snyder was or seemed to be he was also still very very bitter very outwardly jealous and everyone could see it he like made no effort to hide it which is very interesting i think the source of this bitterness was that his wife's career is absolutely thriving in la and that's why they're over there but because of that he had to leave his career behind in canada and you know that was the source of his resentment he quickly became very controlling of dorothy stratton and he did this kind of from a business point of view under the guise of her manager you know he's just a manager he's just doing what he has to do but really it was so that he could control her finances he could see where all the money was going he could control all her real estate he had access to everything all the records she didn't actually have the control over her own finances he even went so far with this manager thing as to instruct his own wife to sleep with different individuals within the industry so that she could further her career he is instructing his wife to have sex with other men so that he can make more money what's going on it was during the filming of this movie in southern california that it is reported that dorothy began to see these red flags for the first time in her own husband red flags that she'd never been able to see before everyone else around her could always see them and now dorothy was finally starting to see them although i couldn't find exactly what those red flags were she was certainly starting to see a different side to paul a few months later dorothy landed another movie role and this time she was going to be shooting over in new york which is the complete opposite side of the country and she no longer needed a chauffeur which left paul snyder out of a job once again he asked her a few times over and over again actually if he could move out to new york with her he was desperately like almost begging her to let him move to new york with her and she was like no it's a it's a top secret film you know it's only cast and crew allowed but that was a lie the set wasn't top secret paul snyder could have come but dorothy didn't want him to she didn't want a repeat of last time she was quite frankly embarrassed with how he'd acted how jealous he'd been in front of all of her co-workers and how controlling and stuff she just didn't want to be known as the girl with the controlling boyfriend so she left him at home for this one so dorothy left her husband at home in l.a and she flew off to new york and the very next day after she landed she started an affair with another man peter bogdanovich was the writer and director of the movie that she was starring in in new york he also happened to be a very close friend of hugh hefner's and heff was very aware of this affair that dorothy stratton was now having and he was happy for dorothy i mean he knew how horrible paul snyder was he knew how bitter and jealous and toxic and controlling he was and he knew that peter bogdanovich was none of those things and that he would actually be a really nice man for dorothy even though the situation was less than ideal um he was happy that she finally had a nice man by her side in april of 1980 sir at this point dorothy had only been in new york for maybe about a month she flew back to el air and this was for the playmate of the year awards ceremony like i said she won that really massive playboy award the biggest award that playboy gives every year and this was her ceremony she was going to get a crown and everything it was a big party a really big deal for her so she goes back to l.a and she arrives back at the home that she shares with her husband paul snyder and he's happy to see her he doesn't suspect a thing at this point he has no idea she acts as if nothing had been happening in new york the whole time she is loving towards paul snyder as she always had been he would have never suspected a thing the next day was the award ceremony for playmate of the year and dorothy stratton was showered in over half a million dollars worth of gifts this included fair cuts a jaguar car not an animal and a giant copper bathtub that was big enough to fit 10 people in i don't know why you would need that but it does sound kind of fun i'm not gonna lie and straight after this awards ceremony dorothy flew out to canada and the plan was that she was gonna do a full tour of canada i don't know what she was doing but she was touring girl was touring and of course because her hometown was in vancouver canada um it just made sense for her to visit home around the same time so the plan was she's going to do this whole tour and then they were going to book in a week off at the end of the tour where she could go back home and just spend the week with her family since she never really got to see them at this point she was always in la she actually hadn't seen her family in almost a year at this point because she'd been in la and then she went to southern california for that movie and then to new york for that movie and she was just excited to to be back home so the tour began at the end of april and within just a few days dorothy stratton was starting to realize just how much she liked peter bogdanovich like more than her husband she was realizing that the man she missed while she was on tour was peter it wasn't paul she'd never missed paul the way that she felt about peter right now she really really missed him and she didn't want to wait until the end of her canadian tour to go and visit him and so she managed to work out a weekend that she had off throughout this tour and she booked a plane ticket to new york to go and see peter and it was actually this exact feeling that made dorothy realized that her marriage was over she wanted to leave paul snyder at this point she wasn't going to put up with her any longer because she wanted peter so she made the decision to write an email to paul snyder her husband and ask him for more freedom in their marriage which is essentially like i don't want to break up with you but like i kind of want to see other people and he didn't respond well to this i'm sure you can imagine he actually completely flipped out and he was like i always knew there was something going on between you and peter i always had my suspicions he'd always said to dorothy that they were too close and they were too cozy in all the photos that he would see of them on set he was like no i don't like how close you are with that man and now he was taking this dorothy wanting freedom in their marriage he was taking that as confirmation that something was going on with peter but i mean he was right but he flew into this fit of rage over the phone he was demanding that dorothy respect those wedding vows that they made the day that they got married and she actually handled this really well like respect to her because i personally wouldn't she was really really calm on the phone and she was like look i understand that you're very upset about this and i do want to talk it out with you but not right now while i'm in canada we can't do this over the phone she was like when i return to la we will sit and we'll discuss this we'll discuss our marriage we'll talk about where we want to go from here but that wasn't good enough for paul he didn't want to wait for her to return to l.a and so he flew out to canada to go and meet her he greeted her at the airport by letting her know that he had booked her a bunch of appearances interviews shows all this kind of stuff on the week that she had off in canada that week that she had implemented into her schedule to make sure that she finally got to see her family he'd made sure that she wasn't going to get to enjoy that dorothy had no choice but to do all of these appearances because cancelling them would be bad for her reputation and sir she barely got to spend any of that week off with her family it was just another tactic of paul's that manipulation and control so obviously because this was right at the end of her canadian tour by the time that the payment came through for all of these appearances that she did in canada in that week she wasn't there anymore she'd flown back to new york to continue filming the movie but paul snyder was still in canada so guess who pocketed every single penny from all of those appearances interviews that dorothy stratton did that week it was all paul snyder she didn't see a single penny of it i think the reason that paul did this was well er he had no money he had no job he needed the money but b people think that maybe he thought that this would bring dorothy back if he stole her money then she would have no choice but to like get in contact with him and ask for it back what kind of tactic is that but obviously all this actually did was just drive dorothy even further away this made her hate paul snyder and i don't blame the girl she was realizing how much better for her paul bogdanovich really was he would never do anything like this he would never steal her money and like use it against her like hold it as ransom i think it took meeting a good man a good nice man that treated her how she should be treated for dorothy to realize that she'd been treated horrifically the whole time by paul and so finally in june of 1980 dorothy stratton drafted a letter to paul snyder ending their marriage she told him that she was cutting him off financially socially she wanted nothing to do with the man this was like a complete get out of my life kind of letter and i'm sure you could have guessed this but paul snyder did not react well to this letter at all the first thing he actually did was he went straight to the bank and drained every single penny out of their joint account all into his and he actually used this money it gets even worse by the way he used this money to hire a private investigator to follow dorothy around and find evidence that she is having an affair with peter um and he spent so much money on this private investigator that now he did not have any money again so he went from not having any money suddenly he has all this money from their joint account and he spends it all on a private investigator now he doesn't have money for food because he spent it on a private investigator to follow his ex-wife so to make some money for food he starts getting desperate and he starts selling anything and everything he can around his house mainly dorothy's things because of course dorothy was the one earning the money and buying the things so he sold a bunch of her stuff even like really important stuff like her awards her playmate of the year award he sold it he sold her jaguar her car her actual car he sold it like everything he could like he was doing this both to make money and to get back at dorothy but actually dorothy was blissfully unaware that all of this was happening because she was still over in new york still filming this thing with her new man peter bogdanovic and everything's actually going really really well for her like she was having such a good time when they wrapped up filming for that movie in new york she and peter actually went on a romantic trip to london they like toured england for like 10 years together and eventually they moved back to bel air because peter bogdanovich had a massive bel-air mansion and he asked dorothy stratton to come and live there with him and she was like hell yeah meanwhile paul stratton on the other hand is not quite doing so well as his ex-wife because obviously no job no money he can't afford to stay in that house by himself much longer so he went out and got two roommates like two strangers they weren't friends of his like he was that desperate to stay in this house that instead of selling it and you know getting one that he could afford he brought in other people to pay the rent so that was paul's living situation and it was around this time that he learnt that dorothy was back in l.a and that she was living in the bel-air mansion with peter and paul was fuming he flipped out and he tried to say that it was because she was back in l.a and she didn't get in contact to have that conversation about their marriage do you remember she promised that she'd talked to him when she got back to earlier he was saying that he was mad because she hadn't contacted him but really we all know that the real reason that he's mad is because she's living with peter and he this is pretty much confirmation that there was an affair going on and all that so paul is absolutely fuming at dorothy but he has no way to get in contact with her and talk to her and and you know share these feelings so he's just angry by himself in the house for a while but then a week later dorothy actually turned up at his house and paul was elated he was buzzing he thought that she was coming back because she'd forgiven him and like she wanted to get back with him she was leaving peter for him turns out that wasn't the case she was actually just there to pick up some of her stuff in fact she thought that paul was out at the time and that's why she'd chosen that particular time to go to the house she didn't even want to see him when paul saw her he dropped to his knees and started begging for her to leave peter and come back to him move back in with him love him again and she was just like no i don't like you anymore it was like really embarrassing for paul he was making a scene in front of the whole street and eventually when he realized that no amount of begging was gonna get her back he got back to his feet they went inside and the two of them agreed that maybe they needed a little bit more time apart before they could have a conversation so they said that they were going to have a week apart to just kind of get over this and then they were going to meet up again to have a mature conversation about their divorce like an actual discussion about how this was going to go they agreed that on august 14th 1980 dorothy was going to come back to paul's house and they were going to have this conversation again and paul promised that he was going to have a better handle on his emotions next time so august 14th rolls around and dorothy stratton jumps in her car and drives to paul snyder's home she has 1 100 in cash on her in her bag and her plan was to give that to paul as a down payment on a new house because obviously he wasn't going to be able to live in that home that he shared with her for much longer and she knew that and she didn't have to give him that money that's the thing she didn't owe him anything this woman did not have to give that man a single penny but she felt again like she owed her career to him she owed her success to him and she felt that 1 100 was the least that she could do just to help him get back on his feet after the split so anyway dorothy stratton goes to paul snyder's home around midday that day and then at 8 p.m that same evening paul's two roommates named steven and patty came home and they knew all about dorothy and all about the divorce and they knew how bad paul snyder wanted her back and of course they knew that she was coming over on this day to have this discussion and so they told paul that they would get out of the house and let them to have some privacy to have this conversation so they'd been out of the house all day so they arrived back at 8 p.m and dorothy's car is still in the driveway and immediately they look at each other and they're like wow that means it's gone well because she's still there why else would she still be at the house in the evening if it hadn't gone well right so stephen and patty enter the house and there's no sign of any of them anywhere the house is silent and paul's bedroom door is actually closed and so the two men just thought that maybe paul and dorothy had gone in there and they were just gonna leave them to do whatever they were doing they were really happy for their friend and they just expected that they were gonna talk to him about it later and so stephen and patty just went on with the rest of their day they went to their own bedrooms you know but later that evening the house fun rang and one of the roommates picked it up and it was paul snyder's private investigator he was telling the roommate that he hadn't heard from paul all day and he really wanted to know how the meeting had gone with dorothy and this was actually more unusual than it sounds because this private investigator had become more like paul snyder's best friend while they'd been working together and spying on dorothy the two of them just talked all day every day just about normal things like friends do they would go out together on shopping trips and they'd go for drinks and stuff so this private investigator was more like a friend and he was concerned that he hadn't heard from paul all day and that was when the private investigator started sharing some concerns that he was having about paul recently and he wanted to know if the roommate had the same concerns and that was that he was worried that paul snyder was growing an obsession with guns and stephen and patty knew exactly what the private investigator meant they'd noticed this exact same thing recently as well there was one incident not long before this where paul had somehow gotten hold of a gun i think he'd borrowed it off someone and he was telling his roommates that he was suicidal and he was gonna use the gun on himself they actually took it off him of course they weren't gonna let him do that and they didn't think he'd managed to get hold of it again and as they were having this conversation on the phone the roommate and the private investigator they started piecing together the two sides of paul schneider that they'd both seen so private investigator thinks paul has an obsession with guns the roommates see him borrowing a gun and talking about how he wants to use it they take that gun off him and then a couple of days later he invited the private investigator out on a gun shopping trip because he wanted a new gun but without an american id of course paul snyder is canadian he couldn't actually buy a gun himself um and that's probably exactly why he wanted the private investigator to come because he was an american citizen and he would be able to buy a gun for paul and i think the private investigator actually tried to help him buy it but the cashier realized what was going on that this man was buying a gun for this other man and that's illegal it's like by proxy or something anyway he couldn't sell them it at that point so he's refused the sale and paul snyder leaves that gun shop very moody and gunless the private investigator said that whenever paul was talking about wanting a gun he was always saying that he wanted one for home protection although no one believed that because paul snyder had a history of suicidal thoughts and tendencies and so when he started talking about wanting a gun everyone around him just assumed that it was for that reason and it was at this point during the phone call that stephen and patty remembered a conversation that they'd had with paul literally the night before this because the night before paul had somehow managed to purchase a shotgun from an ad in the local newspaper and he was showing off this shotgun to his roommates he claimed that he was gonna take up hunting and then he started talking really cryptically about playboy bunnies he was mentioning all these famous playmates that had either been murdered or had died very suddenly and unexpectedly in particular he was talking about this one playmate named claudia jennings who had died the year prior in some kind of like freak car accident it was really really tragic and snyder was making a lot of comments about how playboy reacted to her death and how like they can only pull the pictures of dead bunnies from the magazine before publication if there's enough time so right now all three of these men are on the phone stephen and patty and the private investigator are having this conversation and they've just realized how serious this is paul snyder the night before had been waving around a shotgun showing it off talking about dead playboy bunnies and now paul and dorothy are nowhere to be found and we know that paul snyder has access to a shotgun and i don't know whose decision this was but this will stress everyone out i can guarantee all three men they realized how dangerous this was and they thought well maybe let's just give it a few hours and see if they turn up what in fact they actually still believed at this point that paul and dorothy were still in his bedroom because they thought they were like you know asleep together or something no no they thought that they were just in the bedroom with the door closed so why is no one intervening why is no one going to check why did no one even just knock on the door why were they just giving it a few hours to wait and see if they come out or if they turn up at the house what three hours went by and still no one had heard from paul or dorothy dorothy hadn't come back to get her car it was 11 p.m now and she had arrived there at the house at midday something wasn't right here she hadn't been seen or heard from for 11 hours and she hadn't come back and got a car so stephen and patty finally decided that it was about time that they should knock on paul snyder's door so they walked over and knocked on the door and no one came there was no answer so they pushed it open a little bit and tried to peek inside and that was when they saw the most horrifying scene that had been laying there undiscovered for hours while they had been in that same house both paul snyder and dorothy stratton were laid dead on the ground completely naked with clear gunshot wounds to the head when police and paramedics arrived at the scene they determined that both of them had been dead there for hours at this point and they also recovered the weapon it was a shotgun and it was found laying under paul snyder's body so immediately based on this evidence alone police theorized that this had been a murder suicide maybe paul had shot dorothy and then turned the gun on himself and that's why it had fallen underneath him that's the only way that this makes sense in the autopsy it was approximated that dorothy had died around 1pm that day which was less than an hour after she arrived at the home it's actually believed that as soon as she arrived there they never even got to a proper conversation because as soon as she did paul grabbed her and raped her he already knew that his plan that day was to kill her he knew that that was what he was going to do with this meeting and so why waste time being nice to her when he knew that this was the final few hours of her life anywhere he raped her once and then shot her in the head and killed her instantly but he actually wasn't even done there because then he proceeded to rape her dead body now for a second time and then after that he spent the next 10 20 minutes walking around the crime scene and trying to think what to do i suppose they can tell this because there's like blood traced around the room of course no one actually knows what paul snyder was doing or thinking in his final moments but eventually he decided what he was gonna do and he walked back into the room where he had murdered the supposed love of his life he stood next to her dead body and shot himself in the head at the time of her death dorothy stratton was just 20 years old with such a promising career ahead of her paul snyder on the other hand was 29 and unemployed living off stolen money from his successful ex-wife at the time of his death when dorothy's body was found the police and the paramedics coroner everyone remarked at how beautiful and peaceful she was even in death even though her face was quite messed up from this bullet her hair and everything was just falling so perfectly it was like she was still an angel i said the bullet messed up her face and that's because it actually entered at close range just above her left eye and it completely shattered the whole of her skull so there was no like structure in her face at all apparently her whole skull was just shattered and like displaced so anyway both of their bodies were recovered and sent back to a mog and police got to work on this investigation because this was you know still a murder they spoke with paul's roommates and showed them the shotgun that they'd found under paul's body and they confirmed that that was paul's shotgun that he'd been showing him the night before saying that he was gonna take up hunting and talking about playboy bunnies but one thing his friends didn't know about and this is something that came out much much later and that is that paul snyder had actually been planning to get a gun and kill someone for weeks months nearly but his initial target wasn't actually dorothy stratton the original person that paul actually wanted to kill was peter bogdanovich dorothy's new man that she'd been living with two weeks before the murder suicide paul snyder borrowed a shotgun and he made his way to peter bogdanovich's bel-air mansion his initial plan was to shoot peter but then when he got there he changed his plan to just oh i'm just going to shoot the first person that leaves whether it's peter or dorothy or someone that works for peter i just want to get anyone he sat outside the house for hours and eventually got bored because no one was coming in or out and he decided to just leave and it was actually that exact same night that he went home to his roommates and he was telling them that he was suicidal and that he wanted to take his own life and that was when they took the gun off him but anyway back to the crime scene sorry about that tangent um police actually found dorothy's handbag with the one thousand one hundred dollars in cash still in there which suggested to them that they hadn't even got to the conversation part yet the violence had already begun before dorothy had even gotten chance to offer him it within hours of dorothy stratton's body being found paul snyder's private investigator got in contact with hugh hefner and informed him of the untimely passing of one of his favorite playboy bunnies and it was actually heff himself that then got in contact with peter bogdanovich because they were friends and informed him of the news that his girlfriend had been murdered by her ex-husband and peter was oh my god he just broke down he was such a mess he like collapsed he couldn't breathe he had to be medically sedated he just could not handle the news he was so heartbroken because they were so happy together peter and dorothy really felt like they'd found the one they felt like they'd finally fallen into place yes they'd had other people in the past that weren't right for them but now they had each other and they'd only just gotten together when she was ripped away from him and even though hugh hefner had been informed of dorothy's passing as soon as possible literally as soon as they found out that she died he was informed but just like paul snyder said they couldn't pull her pictures from the publication and so the next issue with playboy magazine had loads of pictures of dorothy stratton still in it which a lot of people felt a certain way about i mean that was her work and i think you know if she's proud of her work then why not put that out there and like let her have one last amazing issue you know what i mean but of course because the pictures are sexual in nature there are a lot of like you know it is a bit you know like there's men going to be looking at that and you know and she's just dying playboy released a statement following dorothy stratton's death and i'm not going to read the whole thing so it's you know long um but this is just a short snippet they said the death of dorothy stratton comes as a shock to us all her lost takes from us all a very special member of the playboy family hefner himself actually spoke on the case and said there's still a great tendency for this thing to fall into the classic cliche of small town girl comes to playboy comes to hollywood life in the fast lane and that was somehow related to her death that's not what happened a very sick guy saw his meal ticket and his connection to power slipping away and that was what made him kill her that statement was kind of more in relation to a lot of people somehow blamed playboy for her death even though completely unrelated absolutely other than the fact that like he got her the job in the first place but anyway shortly after dorothy's death the movie that she filmed in new york with peter bogdanovich that was released and unfortunately it tanked it it did really badly to be honest and peter was just absolutely heartbroken i mean it wasn't only his work it was the love of his life's last piece of work and he was so heartbroken more on her behalf than anything that it hadn't done well he thought that dorothy was the most talented woman in the world and he wanted everyone to see this he wanted people to see how great she was in this movie and so he himself actually invested a lot of his own money into trying to kick-start the buzz behind this movie he bought the rights for the film and then started paying loads of different cinemas to to play the film hoping that that could generate some traction some buzz and then people would be talking about it and then it would be a smash hit but it didn't quite catch on and eventually peter ended up bankrupting himself and it actually gets even worse though because when he was declared bankrupt he had no money to pay all of his debt and stuff so he actually had to sell pretty much everything he had all of his cars his bel-air mansion which was the last place that he lived with dorothy they made so many special memories there and now he didn't even have that he didn't even have the place that they lived so in one last attempt to keep dorothy stratton's memory alive peter bogdanovich decided to write a book all about her life and times and it was called the killing of a unicorn and this book this book i mean it sounds good on paper doesn't it like a book made to memorialize dorothy stratton and all of her work it's it sounds like a really good thing but it caused a lot of problems so it was written like a biography so it started out with like dorothy being born her childhood and then her teenage years moving to the playboy mansion becoming an actress all of that even going into her affair and then all the way into her death of course but throughout this book peter bogdanovich's tone and the way that he goes about things is not very good a lot like he fires a lot of shots at hugh hefner for some reason and he like insinuates the playboy and the playboy mansion and her job had a hand in dorothy's death which a lot of people didn't agree with because if you remember hugh hefner knew how jealous and toxic and controlling paul snyder was and so he banned paul from the playboy mansion because he didn't want that kind of person in there you know like fair enough but peter argues that this only made paul snyder even more angry that he couldn't you know go and visit his wife and then it was ultimately that anger that made him murdered dorothy but like no one sided with him on this obviously because that's obviously not why dorothy was murdered it was very clear that the thing that led to this murder-suicide was the breakdown of paul and dorothy's relationship and the affair with peter it was absolutely nothing to do with the playboy mansion or her job in the slightest i don't get it i don't get it but anyway let's talk about some of the huge claims that peter bogdanovich was making in this book and they got him into a lot of trouble i'll tell you that the most notable claim of all was that hugh hefner allegedly raped dorothy stratton when she was 18 and he was 52 and of course hugh hefner as soon as he read this he adamantly denied that he ever did anything like that well actually peter used the word raped when he wrote the book but his publishers actually made him change the word to seduced because you know the word rape that's a heavy you can't just be throwing that around but still hugh hefner even still said that he didn't even seduce dorothy stratton he knew that she was married and he always respected his married bunnies which actually brings me on to the next thing that peter said in this book and that was that dorothy only got married to paul snyder because it was a known fact that hugh hefner didn't bother with the married bunnies like he didn't expect sex from anyone that was married he kind of expected sex from the single ones because i mean that's what they were there for really when you get in a job at the playboy mansion you kind of know that that's what you're there for but with the married ones he was very respectful he never you know expected anything they could if they wanted but he didn't expect it he expected them to honor their commitment to their partner and sir peter claimed that dorothy actually didn't care about paul snyder at all she never loved him she was just using him to marry him so that she could go into the playboy mansion a married woman so that she could ward off any advances from hugh hefner so anyway peter bogdanovich releases this book the killing of the unicorn with all these claims in it and just like the movie it absolutely tanked in fact it got bad reviews it didn't just get you know neutral reviews people didn't like the book because peter was just telling dorothy's life story in such a negative way and like he was airing all this dirty laundry and like making all these claims and people were like why why couldn't you have just written a nice happy positive book remembering all the great parts about dorothy's life why did you have to like i don't know accuse her old boss of raping her to be honest actually a lot of people questioned peter bogdanovich's motives in writing this book because he seemed very anti-player boy in this book doesn't he he seems like he hates hugh hefner but actually he had no issue with playboy or heff when he was partying at the mansion with dorothy but as soon as dorothy's not there to invite him to the parties anymore he now he has an issue it seemed that he only really cared to like bring playboy to justice when he could put his own name on it and make money from it you know he didn't care that hugh hefner had you know allegedly raped his his girlfriend up until now when he wrote a book on it you know of course as soon as hugh hefner read all of these claims in this book he got a lawsuit out against peter bogdanovich asap he said that all of the claims in this book about him being forceful with dorothy and seducing her he said that all of them were not true and he even had all the other bunnies as witnesses but heff wasn't done with this lawsuit there he was actually going to add a little bit more fuel to the fire he accused the 40-something-year-old peter bogdanovich of having an overly close relationship with dorothy stratton's 13 year old younger sister her name was louise like i said 13 years old one three and he is in his 40s heff accused peter of paying for 13 year old louise to have several different plastic surgeries boob jobs you know nose jobs to make her look more like dorothy peter denied this even louise herself denied this but as the years went by well the proof is in the pudding i suppose in 1988 peter bogdanovich ended up marrying dorothy stratton's younger sister louise when she was 20 years old he was 49 and she was 20 the same age as dorothy was when she died peter had in many people's opinions groomed louise from a very young age he had spent lots of money sending her to acting classes and modeling classes so that she could grow up to be just like her sister that's a really weird and uncomfortable way to end this case i suppose good news they're not married anymore but they were married for a very long time and it's still weird that it happened in the first place but anyway that's everything there is i promise i'm done promise thanks again to function of beauty for sponsoring this video remember you can get 49 off a custom holiday bundle plus free shipping when you go through the link down below in the description of this video a huge huge thank you to all of my channel members for supporting me and helping decide the cases that i cover especially my tier 2 members whose names are all on screen right now if you want to become a channel member you can click the link to do so in the description or you can click the join button if you're on a desktop but yeah thank you so so much for watching if you enjoyed this video you'll probably also enjoy this one i'm gonna pick you one out special this is just for you hope you enjoyed it sorry i don't know why i did that um you could subscribe as well if you enjoyed it because i post stuff like this all the time uh bye sorry i kissed you that's really weird

Channel: Eleanor Neale

Views: 1,932,313

Keywords: eleanor, neale, eleanor neale, unsolved, unsolved mystery, true crime, solved, documentary, killer, murder, serial killer, buzzfeed, buzzfeed unsolved, podcast, true crime podcast, netflix, storytime, dateline, dorothy stratten, playboy, playmate, playboy bunny, hugh hefner, playboy mansion, natalia taylor, holly madison, hefner, the murder of a playboy bunny, hollywood, model, actress, la, 2021, true crime daily, paul snider, peter bogdanovich, snider, paul, photoshoot, mansion, playboy playmate

Id: byJ3Ou0hrUM

Length: 67min 30sec (4050 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 14 2021