Pattern Recognition

The lurid saga is over.

Ryan Jenkins' body has been found in a motel room, after an apparent suicide. His charmed life is finished.

He was on the run for a week, after being charged with the murder of his former wife Jasmine Fiore. She was found stuffed into a suitcase, her teeth and finger tips removed. (Her body was identified via the serial numbers on her breast implants.) The suitcase was in a dumpster.

According to reports, the couple checked into a motel on Aug. 13. But he left alone. Fiore was never seen alive again.

Who knows what happened?

The evidence is damning.

Was he previously abusive to her? There doesn't appear to be any signs of that -- although he had been convicted of assault before. And she did have their brief marriage annulled.

But maybe, like happens all too often, he was trying to hang on to her. If he couldn't have her, nobody could. And then, realizing what he had done, he offs himself.

The most dangerous time for a woman in an abusive relationship is when she leaves.

A sad and all-too-familiar pattern. 

But there's another aspect to this: The objectification of Fiore, who was seen by her -ex and the media as nothing more than a bum, breasts and lip implants. This was a woman, in a world where women are still judged by their looks and in an industry that commodifies female sexuality.

Think I am kidding? Look how CBS is reporting this. (Click here for the video.)

Here's Sabina on the subject:

Back in my early teens, there was a huge hoopla up here over the death of another beautiful, blond model who wasn't exactly a fashion icon either, because her brand of modelling involved very little clothing, and wasn't designed to sell anything but magazines. She was a Playboy centrefold girl named Dorothy Stratten. She, too, was killed by her estranged husband, who was a sleazeball to end them all. He was so sleazy that Hugh Hefner himself characterized him as "a hustler and a pimp". Stratten got tired of her ex's abuse, separated from him, and moved in with movie director Peter Bogdanovich, and that's when her troubles spiralled out of control. Her ex, livid that he couldn't have her anymore, decided that no one else would, either. After he shot her, he turned the gun on himself, probably to evade capture and punishment. It was the ultimate objectification of a sweet girl who'd already become a sex object in record time.

And yes, Dorothy's ex, too, had a prior history of violence and abuse.

H/T to DeBeauxOs

Comments

[JimComments]

You should really think about applying to the Toronto Sun to become their crime story reporter/columnist. He does a bang up job of reporting on the bizarre and unusual twists of homicides---and has even written a book about such cases. I think you have a talent for that sort of reporting.

Jim

[Antonia]

Assuming you mean that Jim, I used to be a crime reporter for CBC-TV in Montreal. Bikers were my specialty.

[Daniela Disugsted & Saddened in Toronto]

Antonia, this disgusting treatment by the so-called media is enraging.

All I see before, during, and after the TV coverage of this sad male violence against women are the nude & half-nude photos of the murder victim.

The media can't even give a woman some respect after she's been murdered & mutilated.

Have some respect...

[mozo]

Daniela, I don't see it as disrespect if the photos shown were willingly posed for. What would be disrespectful, to my mind, is the display of her mutilated body.

[sooey]

The media has always been very finger-wagging about women's "choices". Raped and murdered prostitutes aren't considered to be the same victims of male violence that raped and murdered teenaged girls from the suburbs are, for instance. It's as if male violence is a given and women are at fault for putting themselves in its path. It's all a variation of "she asked for it". And, the media is both puritan and prurient.