DSW: You mentioned to me during our initial e-mails that Dorothy once gave you a gift. Can you please repeat that story here for us?
ELISE: Yes, Dorothy gave me many gifts, and vice versa. She was always supportive of my efforts of whatever I was "selling" at the time for school or Girl Scouts, etc. I gave her a glass stained parrot ornament type thing for Christmas that she hung over her kitchen sink in the window, I could see it from my house. She loved that parrot. She and Paul sat me down to give me my Christmas present, and I was not prepared for what they were about to give me. Paul brought out this long black box with a ribbon around it and handed it to me. Dorothy was all excited, but at the same time a bit apprehensive. When I opened the gift, I found a gorgeous thick gold bracelet, with playboy bunnies all over it. I was thrilled, and then I thought, oh my gosh, what am I going to do, my parents will never let me wear this, much less keep it. I thanked them profusely, and went home rather abruptly. I hid the bracelet in my drawer for a little while, and then I decided that I just needed to return it. When I went back I talked to Dorothy first and explained to her about how upset my parents were about the whole Playboy thing, and that they would never allow me to wear it, but how much I appreciated her giving me such a beautiful expensive gift. Paul eavesdropped on the conversation and then came in and exploded on me. He couldn't believe how rude I was returning a gift that nice and screamed at me that they had spent a bunch of money on it, that I was ungrateful, etc. He had me and Dorothy both in tears. I didn't go back there for a long time after that. She called me later and told me she had something else for me. It was a pair of the*nicest* roller-skates that were made at that time, I remember they were a sort of brown suede looking material with lots of cool pom-poms and stuff (70's-80's fluff). I loved those skates, they were the envy of all my friends! I think they were skates she wore on a movie set, I seem to remember that. Dorothy always brought me back a souvenir from the movie sets she went to, or if she went on a trip she always brought me something home. She said she liked to share part of the experience with me. Talking about this makes me miss her so much right now that I think I'll stop for this question anyway!
DSW: I can understand your feelings, thank you for sharing that wonderful story. Tell me though, did Dorothy ever talk to you about where she wanted her career to go or what she really wanted to do ultimately?
ELISE: No, I cannot remember much about Dorothy having huge aspirations about her career or her life in general. I just remember her being so surprised that she was so famous so quickly. I think she was still caught up in that surprise and really didn't have much time to have many plans or aspirations as far as the career she was moving towards. My opinion, as her friend, was that she was so young, she was easily manipulated and wasn't really *asked* what she wanted to do or what she aspired to be. She was pretty much offered (or in Paul's case, pushed into) career moves and she went with the flow. I know she really "got the acting bug" though, so my guess is that she would have ultimately have gone on with a strong acting career. She was a genuine person and even though she didn't get the best parts to show off her talent, she would have been a phenomenal actress. But we never talked about what she *wanted* to do, because it seemed to me that she was never allowed the time to think about that in her whirlwind life once she got to LA.
DSW: In all the time that you knew Dorothy what would you say was the single most wonderful thing you ever saw her do for yourself or anyone else?
ELISE: It's hard to separate all the thoughts and memories I have of her into one special time or instance. If anything, I would say the self-respect and positive self-esteem that she gave me was the most wonderful thing she did for me. She was such a kind, positive person, she always made everyone else around her feel special. She did many small things like give me little gifts from places she had been, and that alone was very sweet. But the gift of love and kindness she showed me were the most wonderful thing she gave to me.
DSW: Tell me something about the relationship between Dorothy and Paul. How did their relationship change during the time you knew them. What was it like at first and how did it become before and right after Dorothy moved out. Also how did all this effect your friendship with Dorothy?
ELISE: I honestly didn't get to see that much interaction between them, and she didn't talk about him much. I distinctly remember her always trying to get me away from him, we rarely spent much time around him. She was afraid of him, that I knew, she never said so, but it was obvious. I did notice a large change in his behavior during their relationship however. He used to be really nice to me and always invite me over, and if I stopped by to see her and she wasn't home, he was gracious. He was very sickly sweet to her and treated her like a princess in front of me *at first*. Later on, right before she moved out, he was mean to her and would yell at her in front of me. He would also be mean to me sometimes when I would stop by. I will never forget when I came by right after she had left him, he was SO creepy that day. I asked if she was home and if I could see her, and he said no, but tried to get me to come in anyway. I never went in if she wasn't there because I was scared of him, so I declined. Then he got really mad and started yelling at me to never come by again, called Dorothy a bunch of names, said she had moved out, etc. But then he did one of his infamous changes of personality and immediately apologized, and told me that she would be coming back, he was sure of it, and they were having problems, but no big deal. He said he would tell her to call me. I did talk to her on the phone after that, and she did come back to the house a few times after that, no one seems to know that. Everyone thinks she just went back that one time and he killed her then, but she did come back quite a few times, she had a hard time leaving him. He killed her after she let him know she was gone for good, which he obviously hadn't previously admitted to himself. My relationship was cut off from her almost completely after she left, as she couldn't exactly come see me without him knowing, he could see my house from his. I was so sad she was gone, but relieved for her that she got away from that lunatic. I distinctly remember thinking to myself when I heard he had killed her at the house, *what was she doing there????*.
DSW: Now I want to ask something hard from you Elise, I need for you to take your time and describe in the best detail that fateful day Dorothy was killed. Just start from the beginning of the day and tell us how things began that day, how you learned of her death, what it was like, and how that day and the next few days went for you. I know it is a highly personal question but I believe it is very necessary that people know the true story of what went on. To this day we have mostly tabloid stories and media hype, please give us the true facts of that day as you experienced them and most importantly, what it was like for a young girl like yourself to lose a person like Dorothy who in a sense had become a big sister to you.
ELISE: I remember so clearly that day that I found out. Keep in mind that the day she died and the day everyone found out were two different days. I had gone to see the movie "Xanadu" the day Dorothy died, and the reason I remember that so clearly is because I had a lot of pictures and stuff from when she had done the Galaxina movie. I recall that I thought that Dorothy should have been in Xanadu instead of Olivia Newton-John because she was so much prettier, and I kept thinking that during the movie! I couldn't wait to tell her that, I remember that it was one of the first thoughts I had after I heard that she had died, that I wasn't going to be able to tell her that I thought she should have been in that role! I know that sounds stupid, but it was important to me for some reason. I think she and I must have talked about that movie, maybe she had wanted that role and that was why I kept thinking that. I think of her every time I see that movie on cable! I was taking a piano lesson in my house when a neighborhood boy came in and started chanting that "Dorothy's dead". This kid was a boy that was always being mean to me, and he was very jealous that I was always over with Dorothy (he would ask me to take him over to her house with me and I never would), so I just told him to shut-up. But my piano teacher stopped and she asked him if that was true. He told us that Paul had shot her and there were police everywhere, and that hey wanted to ask me some questions. She excused me from my lesson since she knew Dorothy was my friend and I walked outside my house to see police and reporters everywhere. Someone from the neighborhood had told some reporters and police that I was a friend of hers and they started asking me lots of questions. It is kind of a blur after that, I'm sure you can imagine what a mess it was out there. The thing I remember the most was walking over there to the house and seeing them taking out all the bloody furniture and things from the house. For some reason the police had me up very close to the house and I saw everything. I won't go into what I saw because its gory and painful to discuss. I don't know why they had me up there, I was a kid, and my parents were extremely upset when they came home to find out that the press and police had been talking to me and exposing me to all of that. I remember one thing very specifically and it has always stayed imprinted on my memory like a picture. When I was up at the house, there was a blonde woman standing there, she had been living there with Paul, supposedly she was his new "discovery". She had told me before she was a friend of Dorothy's, but I never knew who she really was or what she was doing living there. She was holding a calendar that I had given to Dorothy, it was a Girl Scout calendar, Dorothy used to write down her appointments on it. The girl was holding it and crying, looking at it for some reason. It was covered in blood, her writing all smeared, the calendar ruined of course. I told the girl that I had given it to Dorothy and she said she knew that, and she knew that Dorothy had really cared about me. I don't know why Dorothy had brought it with her to the house that day. The girl did not give it to me, she gave it to the police as some sort of evidence, maybe because she had written on there what she had planned to that day or something. After that I ran home crying. I went into my room and tore down all the pictures I had of Dorothy, threw away everything I had of hers, ripped up all my photos of her, I had many originals from her portfolio. I scribbled her name out of our phone book, we had her home numbers written down in it on the back where my family would write down the numbers of friends and family. I absolutely got rid of anything that had to do with her. I even gave away the roller-skates she had given me to one of my friends from school. I still to this day don't know why I did that, she was the first person I ever was close to that died and I suppose I was angry and hurt over her death. I regret so much getting rid of everything that reminded me of her. It was a shock to my system to see the pictures of her on your website, as I had many of them up in my room. I had most of her "PG-rated" pictures, of course she never gave me anything but that! I had posters of her and many of her original modeling pictures, and some that Paul had taken of her. There was one of her that was taken in a field in a white dress, and I think I had the only copy of it because I have never seen it anywhere else. She had given it to me straight out of her book, so it may have been the only print of it. It was my favorite picture of her, and its the way I like to think of her, surrounded by flowers and soft sunlight.
DSW: Your reaction of throwing all your Dorothy stuff away and removing anything relating to her sounds like a form of mental shock. Her death was so horrible to your 12 year old mind that the only way you could deal with it was to in a sense forget her and your connection to her. Did this continue for the weeks that followed or did you eventually try to learn more about what exactly happened to Dorothy?
ELISE: I remember looking into the papers after she died and reading a few of the stories, and when I saw all the lies it was too painful to keep reading. The first week or so after she died I talked to people a little about it, but mostly I kept it to myself. Everyone at my school knew I was friends with her and would constantly question me about her, a few of them had met her when they had come over to my house, so they were all curious as to how I felt. I just wouldn't talk about it any more. I think that there was no "happy ending" in it for me, and being 13 you think that is what life is, until something like this happens. I think it shattered many ideals I had about life itself when she was murdered. Years later, there were movies and books made about her, and I never read the books or watched the movies. I finally watched "Star 80" when it was on cable, it was when I was in my late 20's I think. It made me physically ill to watch it, I actually got sick to my stomach from watching it. Having to see the violence, seeing the actual house (that freaked me out, I didn't expect that), seeing the reenactment of what I had to see the aftermath of, it was too much. Especially since there were some details about her murder that I didn't know about until I saw the movie, it took me totally by surprise. I never read the books about her, and I have avoided anything I saw about her. That really continued until now, I finally looked her up on the Internet for the first time about a month ago, and I ran across your website. I was touched by your tasteful, caring, and kind remembrances of her. This is the first time I have really talked about her to anyone since she died. Even my husband of 12 years knows very little of this story. He was there with me when I watched Star 80 and saw how upset I got, so he knew to leave it alone. Now as I recount what I knew of her, it is good to remember her, and healing in a way. It has brought back many good memories, and also been good to deal with the sad feelings too that I never told anyone about.
DSW: One last question, of all the things you have heard or read about Dorothy over the years, what would you say is the biggest misconception about her?
Elise: That is an easy question to answer. People assume she was immoral, slutty, all those names they put on women who pose in Playboy. I can tell you this. She wasn't comfortable about the nude posing and was hoping that it would be a bridge for her to an acting career and modeling, and that was it. Paul pretty much made her do the nude pictures, and she was *apologetic* about it to a fault to me when I found out. She was embarrassed and almost seemed humiliated at the look that I must have had on my face, I know I was shocked and surprised. But because I knew her well and knew that she was not the stereotypical "porn" type, I knew that this was a huge compromise of her ethics. I never judged her for that, and it did not change the way I felt about her. She told me that herself, that Paul thought it would get her the exposure she needed to get into acting and modeling in L.A., and to a point he was right I suppose. Unfortunately it got her a lot of exposure that she probably didn't want or need either.
DSW: Elise, I really want to thank you for your bravery in coming forward with what we all know must be very painful memories. You have provided key information and wonderful accounts of a special life and unique time. I know Dorothy would be proud of you. Hopefully your interview will inspire others to come forward as well and help add to the unique stories I am trying to present on the Dorothy Stratten Website. From my deepest heart I thank you and on behalf of the fans I thank you as well. May all the success and blessings of the divine be yours .