Posted on 04/24/2004 10:17:45 PM PDT by 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.
Anthony Joseph Frederick, 46, and Jennifer Mitkus, 29.
Nightmares looming from all 3 pics.
Just for the record...the FBI has been searching for just such a film for thirty years now. Al Goldstein of Screw magazine has, for the same amount of time, been offering a $5 million reward if someone can find a "snuff" film.
To date, no one has ever found one. The consensus is that, though they were much talked about, especially in the '70s, they are an Urban Legend, with no factual basis.
That said, nothing is out of the realm of possibility (especially once an idea has been stated). It is true that Islamofascists decapitate live prisoners/hostages on video all the time. Several such videos have even been put online. They don't exist for a sexual thrill and what started as terrorist indoctrination also shows effectively "Why We Fight".
There was a bru-ha-ha last month about possible new prosecutions against hardcore pornographers. One filmmaker cited as possibly being targeted makes videos that simulate rape and murder. He took comfort in making the most "extreme" videos and being a "bad boy". Someone making an S&M video that goes "too far" and actually kills the submissive could be what we are talking about here. There IS a body even if it wasn't the intent.
Hardcore Muslim wackos are extremely repressed. Who knows what they get off on?
In palestine?
It must be racalled, too, that the FBI's, and Goldstein's, definition of a snuff film is one in which a murder is preplanned (without, of course, the knowledge of the victim) andd filmed for the express purpose of sale and distribution, for the purposes of perverted titillation.
The FBI's lead investigator on the project has said that he doesn't believe that such films were ever made. The FBI was offering everything it could, from money to legal "help", to informers who would have been in a position to know of such films, if they existed. None ever turned up.
Of course, an accidental killing might occur in some insane S&M movie shoot, but those who did it would hardly be willing to try to sell the footage, as it would constitute evidence of murder. This could be what happened here. The reporter might have tossed in the "snuff" angle for a bit of extra titillation.
BTW, have you ever heard of the Charlie Sheen story, regarding a "snuff" film he thought he had seen?
Allah approves, don'tcha know?
The Zapruder film was neither a preplanned filming nor was it done for titillation purposes or for profitable sale. Zapruder just happened to be filming a Presidential motorcade on a sunny day.
Similarly, news footage of deaths and carnage does not qualify; indeed, it is rarely ever seen, and is edited out, unless it's Al Jazeera.
R. "Bud" Dwyer's suicide comes to mind.
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