Porn actress' death may have been in 'snuff' film

AP via Houston Chronicle ^ | April 24, 2004, 3:16PM | no byline

[weegee]

WHITEMARSH, Pa. -- A Canadian porn actress found stabbed to death last month may have been killed while shooting a film that was to have simulated the murder of a woman during sex, prosecutors said.

DNA clues and a scrawled note referring to a "snuff" video connect photographer Anthony J. Frederick to the death of 23-year-old Natel King, whose body was found in a trash-filled ravine in March, District Attorney Bruce Castor said at a preliminary hearing Friday.

Frederick's attorney, Daniel-Paul Alva, said his client had nothing to do with snuff videos.

"We don't know who killed her," he said. "What we do know is that my client is in the unsavory business of photographing women in very compromising positions. But that kind of business was entered into voluntarily by the victim."

Frederick, 46, was being held for trial on first- and third-degree murder charges. His assistant, Jennifer Mitkus, 29, was held on charges of lying to authorities and hindering apprehension.

King, who was from the Toronto area, disappeared Feb. 29 after posing for Fredericks in a hard-core bondage shoot that had been arranged over the Internet, authorities said. Her body was found nearly a month later, naked and slashed and still wearing bondage devices.

Castor said police found a note in a camera bag in Frederick's home that served as a contract between a photographer and an actor. It listed various types of video and photo shoots and used the phrase "snuff vid."

A snuff video is a pornographic film depicting someone being murdered, but prosecutors believe King was supposed to only simulate death in the video.

Detectives obtained several bloodstained items from Frederick's car and from his apartment in the Philadelphia suburb of Conshohocken, and the DNA matched that of Frederick and King, authorities said.

Authorities said still photos Frederick provided to police after his arrest show King displaying bondage paraphernalia similar to a leather device found with her body.

[monkeyman81]

The only real snuff film that I have seen or heard of are the jihad videos that show the beheadings of "infidels." It seems to me that the motive is more to indoctrinate fellow jihadists in violence and to shock and intimidate the West by showing them the lengths Muslims are willing to go to in the name of Allah.
I don't really understand the psychology of Islamic fundamentalists. It may well be that violence gives them a sexual thrill, esp. given how sexually repressed the culture is. There is a sexual aspect to Islamic "martyrdom" in that fundamentalist Muslims believe that Allah will reward them with sex in heaven, so perhaps the linkage between sex and violence is broader.
Patai's The Arab Mind talked about attitudes toward sex in the Arab world, but it was written long before al-Qaeda appeared, so I don't know how much insight it could have.

[monkeyman81]

I think Robert Duvall played Stalin once in a made for TV movie. Haven't seen it but might. He's a good actor. I wonder how good he is at playing a psychopathic killer.