The gruesome murder of Playboy model Dorothy Stratten in 1980 sent shockwaves through LA and took the shine off what at the time seemed like a glamorous life at Hugh Hefner’s famed mansion.
Dorothy, a 20-year-old stunner, was raped and murdered by her estranged husband Paul Snider, 29, in Los Angeles after the couple split, and she began an affair with film director Peter Bogdanovich.
Now, in a sweeping story, Dorothy’s little sister, Louise, has lifted the lid on the murder that rocked her childhood, roiled her family and changed the course of her life forever.
In one two part series in Air Mail, she uncovers terrifying new details about the day of the murder, and reveals why Hugh Hefner later broke down and apologized for his role in the tragedy.
Louise also candidly describes how she married her late sister’s lover, Bogdanovich, and dismisses claims that he groomed her when she was a teenager.
Pin-up Dorothy Stratten, from Canada, was murdered in 1980 at the age of 20 by her estranged husband Paul Snider
Dorothy and her sister Louise Stratten, pictured in the months leading up to the brutal murder of the older sibling
Louise writes about herself as a ‘survivor of three traumas’.
In addition to the murder, she also regrets the “gossip, criticism and unwanted publicity” she endured about her relationship with Bogdanovich.
Her “third trauma,” she writes, involves coming to terms with the director’s death in January 2022, and navigating “the love, the legacy and the wreckage he left behind.”
Dorothy was an 18-year-old serving ice cream at a Dairy Queen in Vancouver, Canada, in 1978 when she caught the attention of Snider, a local nightclub promoter and pimp with dreams of making it big in Hollywood.
Snider saw an opportunity in Dorothy and began grooming her, according to those who witnessed the relationship.
They married and he promptly took her to Hollywood to make her a star.
He persuaded her to pose for a nude photo shoot to help launch her career in LA.
Over the next two years, Dorothy’s “girl next door” appearance made her the Playboy Playmate of the Year with a burgeoning acting career.
Her credits include the TV series Fantasy Island and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.
But as Dorothy’s star rose, so did Snider’s apparent insecurity.
The jealous, abusive husband spent hours at the Playboy Mansion, where he frequently argued with his wife, which irritated Hefner and others in the neighborhood.
When Dorothy was cast in the film They All Laughed, she began an affair with the director Bogdanovich.
Snider hired a private investigator to follow her while filming in New York. She eventually filed for divorce.
Dorothy also caught the eye of Hugh Hefner (pictured together) as she continued to rise through the ranks
Dorothy was photographed by Playboy and was named Playboy Playmate of the Month for August 1979 and Playmate of the Year in 1980
Dorothy began having an affair with film director Peter Bogdanovich, who cast her in his 1981 film They All Laughed (pictured on set).
The couple agreed to meet on August 14, 1980 and talk things out.
Instead, Snider raped Dorothy in the Los Angeles home they once shared and shot her in the face with a 12-gauge shotgun, killing her, police said.
He then turned the gun on himself.
Younger sister Louise provides unknown details about what that harrowing day was like in her new story.
She was in the car with Dorothy on the way to her estranged husband and would-be murderer, she writes.
‘I was in the car with her. Then suddenly I changed my mind. To this day I don’t know why,” she wrote in Air Mail.
“I remember hearing a little voice inside me telling me to stay behind.”
Louise instead returned to Bogdanovich’s home in Bel Air, where Dorothy lived, and she stayed during her visit.
Dorothy had asked Louise to keep the meeting with Snider a “secret” from her new boyfriend, which she did.
But as the hours passed and Dorothy did not return home, the atmosphere became tense.
“I remember him eating coffee-flavored Häagen-Dazs straight from the box when I finally told Peter where Dorothy had gone,” she writes.
“He dropped the spoon. He turned white, as if all the blood had drained from his face, and he left the room.’
She adds, “I only saw him again at Dorothy’s funeral.”
Louise, then 12, says she was left in the dark about the murder when she was returned to her family in Vancouver.
Days later she was back in LA for the funeral.
There she stood between Hefner and Bogdanovich, who “held my hands as Dorothy’s coffin was lowered into the ground,” she writes.
Snider took the blonde bombshell to Hollywood and the pair eventually married – but as she rose in the industry, jealousy started to set in
Peter Bogdanovich married Louise Stratten after the death of her sister and his beloved Dorothy. They are pictured together at a filming event in New York City in July 1999
Louise writes that life in Hugh Hefner’s mansion was seedier than glamorous photos from the 1980s suggest
Louise says she returned to Canada but spoke to Bogdanovich every day and later moved into his home with her mother.
They developed a relationship based on shared tragedy and their love of film, she writes.
Their 1988 wedding sparked tabloid outrage and accusations that Bogdanovich had groomed the youngster.
But Louise insists there was nothing unpleasant about the slow-burn relationship.
“Even though I was 29 years younger than Peter, I came to think of him as my contemporary because we shared and talked as equals,” she writes.
“Or maybe I was an old soul in the sense that I just knew certain things instinctively. When we talked, there wasn’t really a sense of age difference, at least on my part.”
As her feelings grew, she says she “began to get jealous when he talked to other women.”
“I don’t know if that’s when I started to fall in love with him – an infatuation that would develop into love,” she writes.
The couple was married for “13 wonderful years,” she adds, and they remained close, working together on film projects after their divorce.
But even friends of the couple had questioned whether the relationship was healthy.
Bogdanovich blamed Hefner for the predatory atmosphere that led to Dorothy’s murder, she wrote.
In turn, the Playboy owner began “spreading the rumor” that Bogdanovich had groomed his late lover’s sister.
Louise describes a visit to Hefner’s mansion that left the pleasure-seeking celebrity in tears.
According to Louise, she reminded him of Dorothy.
This apparently made Hefner feel guilty about the way he interacted with Snider in the weeks leading up to the murder-suicide.
Louise Stratten attended a special screening of Bogdanovich’s classic Paper Moon in Los Angeles in 2022
Director Peter Bogdanovich was buried next to Dorothy Stratten at the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles
A family photo of sisters Dorothy and Louise Stratten, before tragedy struck the Canadian household
“My biggest regret was that I shouldn’t have banished Paul from the mansion,” Hefner reportedly told her.
“It was the only thing he had left that could get him there. He felt like everything was taken from him when he came to the mansion [and] was rejected.’
This was the “last straw” that turned Snider into a murderer, she writes.
Her descriptions of life in the Playboy Mansion shatter the mystique of a place that was far less glamorous than was thought at the time.
She first visited the 29-room property in LA’s Holmby Hills when she was just 12.
But when she returned to hear Hefner’s apology, the glamor was gone and the place looked “small and tacky,” she writes.
“These are the rooms where Hefner’s friends had sex with the bunnies,” she writes.
“The sheets were torn and stained and smelled of alcohol, sex and cigarettes.”
Frequent guests at the mansion in its heyday – such as James Caan, Peter Fonda, OJ Simpson, Warren Beatty and Bill Cosby – were “certainly not innocent,” she adds.
Louise’s revelations provide details of a murder that captivated Hollywood for the next four decades, becoming a subject for films, podcasts and books.
The sordid details of the case were only exposed in January in an episode of The Playboy Murders.
But Louise’s update brings the story to the present, and her life after Bogdanovich’s death at age 82.
“I’m pretty much alone in Los Angeles with my little dog, Cindy,” she wrote.
Late at night, when just Cindy and I take a long walk, I can’t help but think back to the special life Peter and I shared.’