Paul Leslie Snider (April 15, 1951–August 14, 1980) was the estranged husband and manager of
Playboy model
Dorothy Stratten, whom he murdered before killing himself the same day.
Biography
Snider was born in
Vancouver,
British Columbia to Jewish parents. By the mid-1970s he was a night club promoter and erstwhile
pimp. In 1977 Snider met Dorothy Stratten at a Vancouver-area
Dairy Queen, where she was working part-time while still attending high school, and he romanced her. In 1979 he sent professionally taken nude photographs of Stratten to
Playboy magazine, and she was chosen as a monthly
Playmate for August of that year. Snider and Stratten moved to
Los Angeles and were married that June in
Las Vegas.
While Stratten worked as a
bunny at the
Century City Playboy Club and got a few television and film roles, Snider had sundry money-making schemes, including building and selling exercise benches. Stratten help support Snider financially throughout their short-lived marriage (as he was a Canadian with no working visa, and was not allowed an income with the U.S.) In 1979, Snider partnered with
Steve Banerjee to form what would become the male
strip club format of
Chippendales.
In 1980 Stratten was named Playboy’s
Playmate of the Year and had been cast in a major motion picture,
They All Laughed directed by
Peter Bogdanovich, with whom she began...
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