THE PLAYBOY ‘CURSE’

Dorothy Stratten is sadly not the only woman to have appeared in Playboy and subsequently suffered a premature death.

ANNA NICOLE SMITH

Anna was the 1993 Playmate of the Year at the age of 26, and went on to live a roller-coaster life in the glare of the media spotlight, before dying nine months short of her 40th birthday in 2007. Her body was found in the Hard Rock Hotel in Hollywood and her cause of death was ruled an accidental overdose of a cocktail of prescription pills.

STEPHANIE ADAMS

After featuring in the magazine in 1992, Stephanie founded her own organic beauty business and established a publishing company, but became embroiled in a bitter custody battle with the father of her seven-year-old son Vincent. The legal dispute proved too much for her and in 2018, she pushed Vincent from a 25th-floor window of a New York hotel, then plunged to her own death.

JASMINE FIORE

In 2009, the body of model Jasmine was discovered in a suitcase in a rubbish bin in an alleyway in California. The former Playboy employee had no teeth or fingers and could only be identified by the serial numbers of her breast implants. Her husband was charged with murder, but took his own life before he could be arrested.

CHRISTINA CARLIN-KRAFT

Another of the magazine’s former models to fall victim to murder was 36-year-old Christina. She appeared in Playboy in the late 2000s, but died in 2018, when killer Jonathan Harris tied her up in her bedroom in Pennsylvania and choked her to death. Harris claimed at trial he was high on ketamine and had not intended to murder her, but received a sentence of life without parole.

ASHLEY MATTINGLY

Ashley was Miss March in 2011, but her life subsequently spiralled out of control. A victim of domestic abuse, she also had problems with alcohol and substance abuse, and was arrested in 2016 for drink-driving. In 2020, her problems became too much for her and she took her own life at the age of 33 with a gunshot to the head at her home in Texas.

CLAUDIA JENNINGS

Known as the “Queen of the B movies”, Claudia was Playmate of the Year 1970, and used the profile her appearance afforded her to land roles in over 15 films and several TV shows. Her acting career, however, was cut short in 1979 when she died in a car crash on the Pacific Coast Highway near Malibu, just two months before her 30th birthday.