In July 2022, when Holly Madison, a one-time Playboy bunny and girlfriend of Hugh Hefner, started probing into the 2009 homicide of 28-year-old Playboy get together hostess Jasmine Fiore, the ex-pinup was startled by an unpleasant similarity.
While Madison didn’t know Fiore personally, each had been bosomy blondes with beaming smiles — giddily bouncing round between sultry photoshoots and Hef’s star-studded mansion soirées within the early 2000s. And each had a historical past of being abused by males.
“Jasmine’s was such a horrific story. She was a sufferer of a horrific crime and concerned in an abusive relationship,” Madison, 43, informed The Post.
“I’ve additionally been in relationships that had been abusive,” she mentioned, noting that the late Hefner was “emotionally” and “mentally” controlling — dictating every part from the size of her hair to the shade of her lipstick.
“I can relate to her a lot,” she mentioned.
As the host and govt producer of Investigation Discovery channel’s new six-part docuseries, “The Playboy Murders,” out Monday, Madison is shedding mild on the tragic deaths of girls who as soon as bore the long-lasting bunny ears, together with Fiore’s brutal killing by the hands of her husband.
“Men discuss [dating] Playmates … some need that trophy on their arm,” mentioned Madison. “But then they change into so jealous.”
Advertisement
Advertisement
Fiore was raised by a single mom, Lisa Lepore, within the small city of Bonny Doon simply outdoors of Santa Cruz, California.
In 2000, an 18-year-old Fiore auditioned to be a Playboy centerfold. She didn’t make the lower, however was tapped to function a “Girls of Playboy Golf” hostess. Six years later, she was promoted to the place of Playboy occasion coordinator, organizing branded events in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
It was in Sin City that she met Jenkins, a Canadian actual property entrepreneur in his 20s, on March 16, 2009. At the time, he’d simply been booted off the VH1 actuality competitors sequence “Megan Wants a Millionaire,” starring former Playboy “Cybergirl of the Week” Megan Hauserman.
During the present’s filming, Jenkins, who falsely represented himself as a actual property tycoon price over $2.5 million with a purpose to be solid on the present, expressed his love for Hauserman in a sequence of romantic letters.
In “The Playboy Murders,” Hauserman claims producers compelled her to dump him and choose one other suitor as her ultimate match. She acquired a name from him two days later.
“And earlier than I acquired to elucidate to him what occurred, he mentioned, ‘I’ve met the love of my life and I’m married.’”
Jenkins and Fiore tied the knot at Vegas’ Little White Chapel on March 18 — lower than 48 hours after assembly. He popped the query after discovering their birthdays had been simply days aside in February.
“He thought it was a signal that she was the one and he needed to marry her,” says Hauserman. “Ryan thought that if he couldn’t be married to me, he’d discover one other Playboy mannequin to get married to.”
But his adoration of Fiore’s magnificence and celeb had a darkish aspect.
“About a month after they acquired married, he noticed her speaking to any person, acquired jealous and pushed her into the pool,” Buena Park detective Greg Pelton says within the doc.
Jenkins spent the night time in jail after being arrested on a home violence cost.
Advertisement
By June, the newlyweds had been on the verge of divorce and largely residing aside. Jenkins reconnected with Hauserman, in search of her recommendation over dinner in Los Angeles.
“Ryan informed me that Jasmine was ruining his life. But he’s additionally obsessive about her not leaving him as a result of he needs to win. He can’t settle for any rejection,” Hauserman remembers.
Jenkins then signed on for the solid of VH1’s “I Love Money,” Season 3, in Mexico. While capturing, Jenkins’ sole focus was profitable the $250,000 grand prize within the hopes of regaining Fiore’s affection.
“Producers informed me that he was so obsessive about profitable the cash in order that possibly he may win again his spouse,” says Hauserman. “And he’d simply name her on a regular basis from the present. Trying to control her.”
Fiore in the end gave in to his persistence.
On August 13, she agreed to accompany Jenkins to a poker match in San Diego, the place they booked a room on the L’Auberge Del Mar resort.
Later that night, on the match, which was held at a close by location, Jenkins found that Fiore had been secretly texting an ex-boyfriend, Robert Hasman.
Her textual content to Hasman learn, “Send a airplane for me. Come get me. I’m coming again to Vegas to be with you. I’m performed with Ryan Jenkins,” investigative journalist Mark Ebner says within the doc.
The message infuriated Jenkins, sparking an argument.
At 4:30 a.m., L’Auberge cameras confirmed a frantic Jenkins return to his resort room alone.
But investigators say he then left the ground-level room via the patio doorways and dragged a badly crushed Fiore inside. When she tried to name the police, he strangled her to demise.
Advertisement
On August 15, Fiore’s bare and dismembered corpse was discovered stuffed inside a suitcase discarded in a dumpster in Buena Park, California.
But police had been initially unable to determine the body, which was lacking fingers and enamel.
Still, the killer “forgot one merchandise,” Pelton says — her breast implants, which had been eliminated throughout an post-mortem and contained distinctive serial numbers.
An worldwide manhunt for Jenkins ensued.
He managed to sail a wakeboard boat near the Canadian border. When he was stopped by the US Coast Guard, Jenkins took off on foot and ran via the woods into Canada. Once there, Jenkins booked a motel room the place he hanged himself on August 23. He left a suicide be aware that learn, partly: “I’m sorry for working away from accountability.”
Madison — who informed The Post that she feels “kinship” with Fiore as a survivor of relationship abuse — hopes her tragic story, in addition to the others featured within the sequence, evokes empathy for victims.
“They’re all extremely compelling, real-life tales that would occur to anybody,” she mentioned.
: .