The gruesome murder of Playboy model Dorothy Stratten in 1980 shocked Los Angeles and took the shine off what then seemed to be a glamorous life inside Hugh Hefner’s famous mansion.
Dorothy, a 20-year-old beauty, was raped and murdered by her ex-husband Paul Snider, 29, in Los Angeles after the couple split and she began an affair with film director Peter Bogdanovich.
Now, in a revealing account, Dorothy’s little sister, Louise, has uncovered the murder that upended her childhood, shook her family, and altered the course of her life forever.
in a two part series In Air Mail, he lays bare disturbing 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 dead sister’s lover, Bogdanovich, and rejects claims that he groomed her when she was a teenager.
Pin-up Dorothy Stratten, from Canada, was murdered by her ex-husband Paul Snider in 1980 at the age of 20.
Dorothy and her little sister Louise Stratten, photographed in the months before their older brother’s brutal murder.
Louise writes of herself as a “three-trauma survivor.”
In addition to the murder, she regrets the “gossip, scrutiny and unwanted publicity” she endured over her relationship with Bogdanovich.
Her “third trauma,” she writes, involves coming to terms with the director’s death in January 2022 and how she had to “navigate the love, legacy and debris he left behind.”
Dorothy was 18 years old and 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 who 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 quickly took her to Hollywood to make her a star.
He convinced her to pose nude for a photo shoot to help launch her career in Los Angeles.
Over the next two years, Dorothy’s “girl next door” appearance made her Playboy’s Playmate of the Year with a budding acting career.
His credits included the television series Fantasy Island and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.
But as Dorothy’s star grew, so did Snider’s apparent insecurity.
The jealous and abusive husband spent hours hanging in the Playboy Mansion, frequently arguing with his wife, irritating Hefner and others close to him.
When Dorothy was cast in the film Everybody Laughed, she began an affair with its director Bogdanovich.
Snider hired a private investigator to track her down during filming in New York. She finally filed for divorce.
Dorothy also caught the attention 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 in 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 and talk things out on August 14, 1980.
Instead, at the Los Angeles home they had once shared, Snider raped and shot Dorothy in the face with a 12-gauge shotgun, killing her, police said.
Then he pointed the gun at himself.
Younger sister Louise in her new account details unknown details about what that heartbreaking day was like.
She was in the vehicle with Dorothy as she headed to meet her ex-husband and future murderer, she writes.
“I was in the car with her. Then I suddenly changed my mind. To this day I don’t know why,” he writes in Air Mail.
“I remember hearing a little voice inside me telling me to stay back.”
Louise instead returned to the Bogdanovich home in Bel Air, where Dorothy lived and was staying 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 I was eating coffee-flavored Häagen-Dazs straight from the carton when I finally told Peter where Dorothy had gone,” he writes.
‘He dropped the spoon. He turned white, as if all the blood had drained from his face, and left the room.
And he adds: “I didn’t see him again until Dorothy’s funeral.”
Louise, then 12, says she didn’t find out about the murder as she was being returned to her family in Vancouver.
Days later, he returned to Los Angeles for the funeral.
There, she stood between Hefner and Bogdanovich, who “held my hands as they lowered Dorothy’s casket into the ground,” she writes.
Snider brought the blonde bombshell to Hollywood and the couple eventually married, but when she began to rise in the industry, jealousy began.
Peter Bogdanovich married Louise Stratten after the death of his sister and his lover, Dorothy. They appear together at a film event in New York City in July 1999.
Louise writes that life inside Hugh Hefner’s mansion was seedier than glamorous photographs from the 1980s would suggest.
Louise says she returned to Canada, but spoke to Bogdanovich every day on the phone and then moved in with her mother to live in her house.
They developed a relationship based on shared tragedy and their love of cinema, he writes.
Their marriage in 1988 sparked a tabloid frenzy and accusations that Bogdanovich had groomed the young man.
But Louise insists there was nothing wrong with the slow relationship.
“Although I was 29 years Peter’s junior, I began to think of him as my contemporary because we shared and spoke as equals,” he writes.
‘Or maybe he was an old soul in the sense that he knew certain things instinctively. When we talked, there was no real feeling of age difference, at least on my part.’
As her feelings grew, she says she “started to feel jealous whenever he talked to other women.”
“I don’t know if that was when I started to fall in love with him, a crush that would turn into love,” she writes.
The couple was “married for 13 wonderful years,” he adds, and they stayed close and worked on film projects together 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, he writes.
In turn, the Playboy owner “began spreading a rumor” that Bogdanovich had groomed his dead lover’s little sister.
Louise describes a visit to Hefner’s mansion, during which the pleasure-seeking celebrity burst into tears.
According to Louise, she reminded him of Dorothy.
This apparently made Hefner feel guilty about how he handled Snider in the weeks leading up to the murder-suicide.
Louise Stratten attends a special screening of Bogdanovich’s classic Paper Moon in Los Angeles in 2022
Director Peter Bogdanovich was buried next to Dorothy Stratten at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.
A family photo of sisters Dorothy and Louise Stratten, before tragedy struck the Canadian home.
“My biggest regret is not banning Paul from the mansion,” Hefner allegedly told him.
‘It was the only thing he had left, to be able to come there. He felt like everything had been taken from him and when he arrived at the mansion (and) they rejected him.’
This was the “last straw” that turned Snider into a murderer, he writes.
His descriptions of life inside the Playboy Mansion shatter the mystique of a place that was far less glamorous than was understood at the time.
He first visited the 29-room property in Los Angeles’ Holmby Hills when he was just 12 years old.
But when he returned to hear Hefner’s apology, the glamor was gone and the place “seemed small and tacky,” he writes.
“These are the rooms where Hefner’s friends had sex with the bunnies,” he writes.
“The sheets were tattered 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,” he adds.
Louise’s revelations provide details about a murder that has plagued Hollywood for the next four decades and has become the subject of movies, podcasts and books.
The sordid details of the case were revealed in an episode of The Playboy Murders in January.
But Louise’s update brings the story to the present and her life after Bogdanovich’s death at the age of 82.
“I’m practically alone in Los Angeles with my dog Cindy,” she writes.
“Late at night, when it’s just Cindy and I taking a long walk, I can’t help but think about the extraordinary life Peter and I share.”