Paul Leslie Snider

This article is a Biography

Paul Leslie Snider (April 15, 1951 - August 14, 1980) was the estranged husband of Playboy model Dorothy Stratten, whom he murdered before committing suicide.

Early life with Stratten

Snider met Stratten in 1977 whilst Stratten was working part-time at a Dairy Queen in Vancouver, British Columbia. He promoted her by sending photos of her to Playboy. She was accepted to do photo sessions and became "Miss August 1979". The two were married in June of that year. Paul had many money-making schemes, including forming the basic idea for what would one day become the Chippendales empire.

Dorothy was named as Playboy's Playmate of the Year for 1980.

Dorothy Stratten Murder

Dorothy and Paul's relationship had deteriorated to the point that they were separated by the summer of 1980. Dorothy developed a relationship with film director Peter Bogdanovich. Snider murdered Stratten and committed suicide by gunshot on August 14, 1980 at the age of 29. The killing took place in the west Los Angeles apartment the two had previously shared.

On August 14, 1980, Snider and Dorothy Stratten met at Snider's duplex, in which the couple had once lived along with their friend, Dr. Stephen Cushner. Cushner still lived in the home with his girlfriend and his girlfriend's best friend, but Cushner and the women were all out for the day when Stratten showed up at the home. What exactly transpired is unknown; at noon, Snider's private investigator called the apartment. He was aware that Stratten and Snider were meeting, and wanted to make sure that everything was going smoothly. Snider told the detective "Everything is going fine" and hung up.

At 5:00 p.m., Cushner's girlfriend and her friend arrived home to find Stratten's car in the driveway. The door to Snider's room was closed and Stratten was nowhere to be seen; the women assumed that the two were in the bedroom and wanted privacy. They stayed until 6:00 p.m. to watch the news, then left at 6:30.

At 7:00 p.m., Cushner arrived home and found Stratten's car in the driveway. He assumed that Snider and Stratten wanted privacy. One hour later, at 8:00 p.m., Cushner's girlfriend and her friend arrived back home from dinner. At 11:00 p.m., the private investigator called Cushner. According to the investigator, Snider had given him instructions to periodically check in over the course of the day, but Snider hadn't answered his private line for some time. The investigator told Cushner that he believed something was wrong and that someone needed to check on Snider and Stratten.

Shortly after 11:00 p.m., Cushner broke into Snider's room. There he discovered Stratten dead from a gunshot wound to the head and Snider from a self-inflicted gunshot

Since the coroner's report showed that Snider had died after Stratten, his family successfully petitioned the courts to grant them all of the assets of Stratten and Snider, by virtue of the fact that Snider had "inherited" Stratten's estate upon her death. The court cast no judgment on the fact that her death, in fact, occurred by Snider's hand.

Bob Fosse's 1983 film Star 80 is a dramatization of their relationship and Stratten's murder.

Other snippets

from http://lauralinger.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_archive.html

Dorothy Stratten was murdered. She was killed by her jealous maniac ex-husband, Paul Snider. Snider was well-known both in Vancouver and around the Playboy Mansion to be a two-bit hustler and self-styled pimp. He saw a meal ticket in Dorothy, and he was only too willing to enjoy the perks that came with having a Playmate for a paramour. After a long and tortured relationship, followed by a quickie wedding in Las Vegas and an even quicker Hollywood-style divorce, Snider would not accept that Dorothy had become a star. Indeed, Snider had discovered her: he himself mailed in the photographs to Playboy that caught the magazine's attention. Paul Snider felt that he had been robbed, and by everyone: by Hugh Hefner, by Bogdonovich, by the Hollywood system, and most importantly, by Dorothy herself.

At some point, the meeting turned ugly. No one will ever know exactly what happened, but it is believed that Snider made sexual overtures toward his ex-wife, and was spurned. This hurled Snider into a murderous rage. After violently raping her repeatedly, he placed the barrel of a .12-gauge Mossberg to her delicate right cheek, and pulled the trigger. In a supreme bit of horrific irony, Paul quite literally shot off Dorothy's beautiful face, the face that got her to Playboy in the first place. Snider then moved Dorothy's corpse to a bondage chair that he had constructed, used duct tape to secure the body on the chair, and raped her again. Finally, Snider placed the barrel of the shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

It is a sad thing that Dorothy is notorious today primarily because of the way she died. It's Sharon Tate Syndrome, another beautiful blonde who died way before her time. Had she lived, I think that she would have been the star of the Eighties.

Paul Snider thought so, too, before he killed her. He had such a strong belief about this, he had a special license plate made for the Mercedes Benz that he bought with Dorothy's Playboy earnings: STAR 80.

We'll never know. All we are left with are photographs of a gorgeous and angelic young woman who had her life cut short by a maniac.

The "Bondage Chair"

Paul followed, with all his schemes always working. Although Dorothy's career began to flourish, Paul languished. Seeing that he was losing his grip on her, he constantly pressured her to marry. Finally talking her into it during an on-the-whim trip to Vegas in June 1979, but it was over almost as quickly as it began. Snider was obsessed with Dorothy and her career. He forbade her to drink coffee, because it would stain her teeth, and he supposedly poisoned her pet dog because he was jealous of it. It eventually caused their relationship to deteriorate, and by August of 1980 they were separated, pending a divorce.

Paul had a lot of crazy ideas - he once took to making weight benches, and with the scraps made a bondage bench he was hoping to market. He was inspired when visiting The Pleasure Chest, a sex shop in LA. The Pleasure Chest opted NOT to buy the bench, and it stood in a corner of his bedroom for months and months.

Pauls Suicide

Unbeknownst to anyone, on August 14, she met Snider at their former home to discuss what she thought was a real estate matter. The details of what happened next remained shrouded in mystery and conjecture, but what police were able to piece together was this: at some point that afternoon, Snider physically fought with Stratten (traces of her blond hair were found on his hands) before engaging in rough sex. It was possible that Stratten had been bound to a gruesome bondage chair that Snider was developing for sale in Los Angeles sex shops - and possible that she was bound to it post-mortem.

Eventually, Snider produced a shotgun and fired a shell directly into Stratten's head. Thirty minutes later, he turned the gun on himself, and died immediately. Their friend and neighbor, Steve Cushner, discovered the bodies after the private investigator Snider had hired to spy on Stratten requested he check in on them.

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References

• Wikipedia:Paul_Leslie_Snider