Feisty adult-entertainment attorney David Wasserman kills himself

David Wasserman (seen in this file photo) made his career as a lawyer defending strip clubs, X-rated bookstores, swingers

Not long ago, David Wasserman was a high-powered attorney for the adult-entertainment industry who wore $100 ties, lived in the country-club community of Heathrow and had an office overlooking tony Park Avenue in Winter Park.

But then Wasserman was arrested, his law license was suspended and he started living in a $350-a-month Orlando-area apartment.

On Thursday, Wasserman, who owned Lake County’s only strip club, committed suicide at home, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said Friday. He had battled depression since his mother’s death 16 years ago, said his companion, Lois Stone, 48, who found his body.

“I want David to be remembered for who he really was,” said Stone, a bartender at Wasserman’s Fantasy Gentlemen’s Club in Four Corners. “He was the most loving, caring individual I have ever met.”

Wasserman, 52, was a passionate defender of the First Amendment who loved a good fight and reveled in speaking his mind, those who knew him said. He was the Christian Coalition’s nightmare, a guy whose credo was naked bodies are no big deal. And none of the government’s business.

“I’m a crusader,” Wasserman said in an April interview with the Orlando Sentinel. “A lot of people love to hate me.”

At the time of his death, Wasserman was fighting for the survival of his club as Lake County and his landlord tried to shut him down. He was facing criminal charges for what investigators say were violations of Lake’s adult-entertainment law stemming from a raid earlier this year. Last month, he sued Lake County in federal court over the matter.

But his tribulations only made Wasserman feistier. A human run-on sentence, he was eager to preach his gospel of First Amendment freedom.

“When I knew him, he was passionate, he was bright, he was committed and he was absolutely a believer,” said Orlando defense lawyer Mark NeJame.

Wasserman made a name for himself in the 1990s by defending high-profile clients in Central Florida and beyond.

He argued for the rave club Cyberzone, which was fighting a county ordinance requiring it to close at 2 a.m. In Kissimmee, he battled the city over a store that sold X-rated videos and argued for a couple who operated a sex dungeon at a warehouse. He represented men who ran a gay-pornography Web site out of a Seminole County home. He fought adult-entertainment laws in New Smyrna Beach, where he owned a lingerie shop that gave the locals fits by selling adult videos and sex toys.

Although he was proud of his work, depression remained a near constant in Wasserman’s life. He told the Orlando Sentinel that he wrote his own eulogy and had tried to kill himself, including the night in January 2003 that he was arrested for growing marijuana at his Heathrow apartment. His law license was suspended in 2004 after he pleaded no contest.

“I’m not afraid to die,” Wasserman said.

“I want to be remembered as a first-class lawyer who was very ethical, that I was a caring person and tried to help the poor and the downtrodden.”

Wasserman is survived by his father, several siblings and a stepdaughter.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orange/orl-wasserman2708sep27,0,192306.story

AVN Hall of Fame Performer Missy Reported Dead

Missy 1967-2008

PORN VALLEY - Missy, the soft-spoken five-foot-high blonde who took the adult industry by storm shortly after her first appearance in 1994, was reportedly found dead in her apartment in Valencia, Calif. from an accidental overdose of her prescription medication. She was 41 years old.

A funeral service was held approximately a month ago, unpublicized reportedly because Missy’s family wanted no adult industry presence at the ceremony. The death was not considered to be a suicide.

“I adored Missy,” said Joy King, Vice-President of Wicked Pictures, for whom Missy was briefly a contract performer. “I thought she was an angel, and we were deeply saddened by her tragic loss, everyone in the company, and our hearts went out to her family. She was very special.”

Missy made her adult debut in Midnight Pictures’ 1994 production Cuntrol, directed by Jim Enright, where she performed a girl/girl scene with Tiffany Mynx – though neither it nor any of her earlier features garnered good reviews.

Cuntrol, 1994

In fact, it wasn’t until Missy’s first movie for Wicked – Anal Maniacs 3, directed by Jonathan Morgan – that the critics took notice, describing her as “enormously appealing,” and her short anal scene as “quality pork.” Indeed, by 1997, Missy and then-husband Mickey G. had been signed to non-exclusive contracts with Wicked, and it was in that year that the couple directed the top-rated Heart & Soul for that company – her sole directorial credit.

Missy appeared in over 350 XXX movies during her five-year career, receiving five AVN awards – including both Best New Starlet and Female Performer of the Year at the 1997 AVN Award show – and three from the X-Rated Critics Organization (XRCO). She was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame in 2002.

Toward the end of her career, Missy and Mickey were reportedly having escalating marital differences, and by the summer of 1999, she had effectively stopped doing scenes. She appeared in just two more movies, both likely utilizing footage shot months or years earlier.

But Missy’s ties to the adult industry didn’t break that easily. For months, rumors flew that Mickey, whom she had met while both worked at a local hospital – she in the administration department, he as a male nurse – had been a sort of Svengali, coercing her into performing sex on camera.

Desperate Measures, 1998

“I know there was some contention that that’s the way it was,” said King. “I was very close to Missy, and I never got the impression she was doing anything she didn’t want to do. I wouldn’t have hired her if I had. Had she been single, would she have searched out a career in this industry? Probably not. But she certainly didn’t seem like she was waiting until the time she could escape. She was always very, very content with what she was doing, and certainly didn’t seem unhappy in her decisions.”

Still, performer Hank Armstrong, husband of the late Anna Malle, while recalling several swing parties to which he and Anna had taken Missy and Mickey, told of a darker side to the relationship.

“About six months before she quit, we were in New York City and staying at Neville’s [Chesters] with Michael [Mickey] and Missy and we were all going to work together,” Armstrong told AVN in November, 2001. “And she had very strange behavior where she wouldn’t talk to anybody, she wasn’t socializing, and that’s not the Missy we knew, because we were all friends; we hung out. And we asked her what the hell was wrong – Anna asked her – and she goes, ‘I want to get out of the business. I’m scared. I’m afraid that Michael will kill me.’ And we go, ‘What!?’ And she goes, ‘I’m just really afraid for my health, my safety.’ She goes, ‘I want to quit and I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ And she was just very scared, and she says, ‘I’m sorry I even told you that because I know it’ll get back to him. Please don’t tell him that I said it.’ I said, ‘We’re your friends. We’re not going to tell nobody nothing.’”

Mickey G

“In our presence, he wasn’t physically or verbally abusive to her either, so we didn’t really know,” Armstrong continued. “So we shut our mouths. I mean, what could we do? We didn’t know what was going on, but that’s my personal opinion, that it was maybe physical and mental anguish that pushed her to get away.

That same month, AVN received a letter from Missy, “to tell you about my absence.” Several of her industry friends described Missy as “spiritual” when they had known her, but nothing prepared them for what was apparently the next step on his spiritual path.

“Four years ago I had a mental breakdown and went crazy,” Missy wrote. “It took alot of prayer to be normal again. The only thing is now I can’t be around alot of people…”

“Since then I’ve had several doctors and breakdowns and went through some kind of evil terror and pain. Lord God and Jesus never left me and now I will never leave them. I fear for all of you because I met something that was pure evil in that industry. I’m having premonitions of the end of time. I freaked out and had a seizure. God will not leave us. Jesus gave me a message of pure love, it was God. Now I’m a Christian and always have been. I pray for all of you all the time, because I came to your industry to one day change it to a more loving atmosphere with God. Guess what – Jesus came. Please don’t ever forget what Jesus did for us. He died so we may be with our Lord God in Heaven…”

“Michael [Mickey G.] and I aren’t together anymore because I choose to be a Christian and to not have sex any more, and also, he can’t take care of me. I don’t think anyone could have taken care of me. He can’t afford the doctors and medication or my spells. I miss that man, but I did it for his own good. Michael is a Christian as well, that’s what kept us together for so long.”

Missy, Back in the 90's

According to one source who knew Missy well, Mickey “always seemed very, very caring. He cared a lot about her. He didn’t seem overly controlling to me, although after the fact, I’ve heard he was very controlling, but it didn’t appear that way when I worked with them. He seemed to adore her. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t controlling. You don’t know the intimate details of a relationship from looking at it from the outside. I do know that when they had just split up, it wasn’t particularly pleasant, and I do know that the family wasn’t supportive of their relationship.”

Although Missy went to live with her parents after her retirement and the breakup of her marriage to Mickey, she was living alone at the time of her death.

Taken from:

http://www.avn.com/performer/articles/32557.html

Megan Leigh, Suicide

Megan Leigh

Megan Leigh (born Michelle Maira Schei on (March 2, 1964 – June 16, 1990) was an American exotic dancer and pornographic video star.

Leigh was born in Oakland, California, USA. She ran away from home for the first time at age 14, and by 16 was working at a Guam massage parlor. At 18, she began dancing nude at the Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theater in San Francisco. Although the O’Farrell’s management considered her little more than a passably pretty bleach blonde with little dancing talent, she became popular as stripper “Eve” and made a few thousand dollars per month in tips (which she reportedly spent mainly on drugs). In late 1986 she quit working at the O’Farrell Theatre and underwent a “makeover” (i.e. detoxification and cosmetic surgery), reemerging as Megan Leigh. In the summer of 1987, she starred in Secrets Behind the Green Door (see Behind the Green Door with Marilyn Chambers). She became known for her ability to deep throat her partners, getting a starring role in 1989’s Deep Throat III.

Megan Leigh

Her body was discovered on June 16, 1990 at her home in Solano, California. She had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.  According to former porn performer and message board contributor Brandy Alexandre, an autopsy discovered a lethal dose of Valium in Leigh’s system. Porn historians, including Luke Ford, have said that Leigh had recently entered a lesbian relationship and had moved in with her girlfriend, when her family reportedly denounced her for her decision to enter into a same-sex relationship. Reports claim that she had become despondent by her family’s rejection, and had been abusing drugs before her suicide. She left behind a note mentioning unresolvable personal problems, a body of work numbering 133 titles, and a $500,000 (USD) house that Leigh had purchased for her mother just one month before her suicide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Leigh

Megan Leigh Hustler Article

Melba Bruce, Mysterious Death

Melba Bruce

Melba Bruce was a little known porn actress who was active in adult films for 2 years in the mid 70’s.  She apparently died sometime in 1977, and some sources list her death as a suicide.  Very little is known about Bruce’s background before her porn career.  In fact IAFD does not list any biographical data on her other than the fact that she was blond, and an American, no date of birth, hometown, nothing.

I am interested if anyone has any other information about Melba.  I’d like to know more about her life and the circumstances leading up to her death.  I hate for people to go unremembered.  Please leave a comment below with any pertinent information.

http://www.iafd.com/person.rme/perfid=MelbaBruce/gender=f/Melba-Bruce.htm

http://www.francesfarmersrevenge.com/stuff/archive/oldnews/deadpornstars.htm

Miyuki Asou, Gravure Idol Turned Japanese Porn Star Commits Suicide

Mikuki Asou was a stage actress as a teenager, and as a young adult became a gravure idol. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, a gravure idol is a young Japanese model who poses for sexually provocative photo shoots. The models are never nude, but mostly pose in bikinis or scant clothing, in a sexually suggestive manner. Basically it’s softcore porn without nudity, think Barely Legal magazine with clothes on.

Unhappy with the level of success she was achieving as a gravure girl, Asou made the transition into performing hardcore Japanese porn in February of 2008. She believed that she would be a much more popular porn star, and would be in higher demand, having worked previously as a model. She was poorly represented, and was immediately thrust into the dirtier side of Japanese video, filming a gang bang rape scene in only her second appearance.

In Japan ex-gravure girls often become famous stars. Many of Asou’s fans were upset about her decision to do hardcore, as she more-or-less ended her chances of ever being a respectable mainstream star. Apparently the career move and the backlash caused her some shame, and she committed suicide a month after filming her first hardcore scene. Police found her in her bathroom, dead from intentional inhalation of hydrogen sulfide gas. The method of suicide Asou used is a growing practice among young people in Japan. By mixing certain detergents and bathroom cleaners, a chemical reaction occurs which produces the hydrogen sulfide gas which is then inhaled.

Asou was 22 years old at the time of her death.

http://gaijinheart.blog100.fc2.com/blog-entry-99.html

http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=4456

Dorothy Stratten, Murder Of A Playmate

Dorothy was raised in Vancouver, B.C., and it was in Coquitlam that Dorothy Hoogstraten grew up, and, in 1976, entered high school. She was already a beauty– darlingly blue eyed, blonde, voluptuous. An early male admirer, Jeff Staudacher, described her as being “wholesome” and “sexy” at the same time. To earn spending money, Dorothy took a part-time job at a Dairy Queen in Vancouver, and it was there that she met a local promoter, Paul Snider.

Paul was a fanatical “get rich quick” kind of guy. Pushy, sleazy, know-it-all obnoxious – he quickly saw Dorothy’s potential and after boyfriending her, he persuaded her to take some nude photos for him, which he sent to Playboy. She forged her mother’s signature on the model release when she sent her nude pictures to Playboy. A year later she was a Playboy Playmate and living at the mansion in Los Angeles. On Stratten’s Playmate data sheet, she listed her major turnoff as “jealous people.”

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.

Posing by Paul’s Car Back In Canada, The Dairy Queen She Worked At, and 1977 Yearbook Photo

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.

Anyways – Dorothy went to work on the Peter Bogdanovich film THEY ALL LAUGHED. She fell in love with the director and was basically leaving Paul for him. Now to talk to Paul and get rid of him….yeah, right. She didn’t know that Snider hired a private detective to follow Stratten around after she began staying part of the time at Peter Bogdanovich’s Bel Air home.

On the morning of August 14th, 1980, Dorothy agreed to meet Snider at the apartment, and showed up just after noon. She was wearing flats and slacks, carrying a big zippered handbag. She had withdrawn $1000 in cash to give to Snider, and hoped to settle her split from him, once and for all. At 12:30, the private investigator called Paul, and Paul told him that “everything was going fine.”

SNIDER – Almost Like A Bad Caricature of Himself – You Can FEEL His Creepiness From a .jpg

At 5 in the afternoon, the two female occupants of the apartment came home and noticed the two vehicles (Dorothy’s and Paul’s) in the driveway. They saw that Paul’s door was closed, and they heard no sounds. They assumed that Paul and Dorothy wanted privacy. At 6:00 they watched the news, and then went out to eat. At around 7, Dr. Cushner came home and he too decided to give them privacy. At 8, the women returned home. At around 11, the investigator called the Doctor on his private line (no one was answering Snider’s phone, and it was continually ringing), and suggested they take a peek into the room. Boy oh boy did they get a surprise. They called the cops.

Cops arrived at 12:30am. They found Dorothy lying across the end of a low waterbed. Get this: she had black ants crawling all over her. Wild, eh? They found a bullet hole from a 12-gauge Mossberg shotgun (that Snider had bought from and ad in a local newspaper) on her cheek, blood on the walls and curtains, and she was missing the tip of her left index finger.

Marriage License and Tombstone – Same Shape

No one knows for sure what transpired during their meeting, but blonde hair was found in Snider’s fists. The only scenario that makes sense, was that Dorothy was sitting on a corner of the bed when Snider put the gun up to her cheek. She tried to shield her face with her left hand, thus destroying her left index finger when Snider pulled the trigger. A half an hour later, Snider turned the gun on himself, and fell on top of the shotgun. Kinda makes you wonder what he did for 30 minutes. No wait, I don’t want to know. There were bloody handprints on Dorothy’s buttocks. Oh yeah, Paul had ants crawling all over him too.

Near Dorothy, was the “love seat.” According to police, it was set in a position for “possible rear entry intercourse.” There was evidence that the seat had been used, and she had been fastened to it with medical tape.

Murder Scene – 10881 W. Clarkson – Los Angeles, California

Bogdanovich married Stratten’s younger sister, Louise, who was born in 1968, a year after Bogdanovich’s own daughter. The couple divorced in 2001.

Taken from: http://www.francesfarmersrevenge.com/stuff/archive/oldnews/stratten.htm

Kathy Harcourt … A Mysterious End

Kathy Harcourt was a little known porn actress who appeared in a handful of films in the early 80’s. Her biography is scarce at best. IAFD does not list her date of birth, date of death, or place of birth. Because she was only active in the industry for a couple of years, and was not exactly a fan favorite, very little is known about her.

According to RAME.net, Harcourt did die sometime in the mid 80’s. Her body was allegedly found floating the East River; the cause of death was determined to be a gunshot wound to the head. The gun was actually found upstream leading some to believe that that the wound was self inflicted. Because the gun had been in the water for nearly a day no fingerprints could be lifted. It is also rumored that Harcourt was deeply in debt to a drug dealer who might have murdered her and thrown the gun into the river after the murder took place. To this day the case is unsolved.

I would like to hear from any of Kathy’s friends or family who may have a little more information about her life. Please leave a message below.

Vanessa Freeman, Murdered By Her Boyfriend

Vanessa Freeman AKA Trudy Webb was found in her bed strangled to death on January 9, 2007. Webb was a British porn actress and an escort. She had boasted a boy band member among her list of A-list clients. Shortly after her death police discovered Webb’s boyfriend attempting to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge. She was 30 at the time of her death.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article7664.ece

Angela Devi, A Tragedy In Scottsdale

Angela Devi was born Angela Dhingra on July 30, 1975. She was an Internet model who had her own adult website. Despite how much the adult industry has grown, Indian women are still a rarity and Angela stood out with her shapely curves and alluring eyes.

On March 31, 2006, Angela was found on the floor of her home in Scottsdale, AZ with a piece of cloth wrapped around her neck and a toppled over chair next to her body. A hook that was screwed into the ceiling had come loose after the hanging and her body fell to the floor. Police also found empty Xanax packages on the scene.

A posting was put up on her site announcing her death and then quickly removed. The post and it’s immediate removal prompted many of her fans to speculate that Angela had faked her own death. However, a police report eventually surfaced confirming Devi’s demise. Click this link to read the Police report.

The reason that Angela took her own life may never be known. Let’s hope for the sake of her and her family that she has found peace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Devi

Naughtia Childs, Did She Jump Or Was She Thrown?

Porn Star Naughtia Childs was one of the most exciting young women on the scene during her short stay in the business. A round-faced, extremely youthful looking lass, Naughtia Childs exuded sexual enthusiasm in every role she took. Her piercing blue eyes were among the most alluring we’ve seen, and her scrumptious 5′2″ frame was home to some mouthwatering natural 34B-28-33 curves.

Naughtia Childs was born Megan Serbian in San Diego, California in 1980. After graduating from high school, she ended up working a variety of go-nowhere jobs before hitting on the idea of porn. In 1999, she drove the short hitch up the freeway to Porn Valley and proceeded to make her mark in the industry with a string of awesomely erotic outings.

Naughtia Childs made her hardcore debut opposite Ed Powers in ‘More Dirty Debutantes 102.’ Her combination of youthfully innocent good looks and down-and-dirty performance skills were a heady brew, and Naughtia Childs quickly got noticed by lots of mainstream hardcore producers. Her do-anything nature insured that she would be kept as busy as she wanted to be.

Naughtia Childs left the scene in 2000, after sexing her sassy way through over forty fiery features. Along the way, she blossomed from a cheeky young cutie to a streamlined, sexual-charged vixen. Naughtia Childs remains one of the favorites among fans of cute brunette bad girls.

In January of 2002 Childs’ body was found at the bottom of a four-story apartment balcony. Her death was officially ruled a suicide but according to sources the LAPD have an ongoing homicide investigation. Apparently the fact that she landed feet first, and the distance from the ledge, are not consistent with a jump. Several sources have also stated that Childs was allegedly tripping on LSD at the time of her death.

http://www.einsiders.com/features/columns/januaryobituaries.php

http://www.moviefilmfest.com/PornList/StarPGs/Naughtia_Childs.htm

http://www.lukeisback.com/stars/stars/stars/female/naughtia_childs.htm