SECRETS OF PLAYBOY The suicide of Paige Young and the secret tapings at the Playboy Mansion

In 1974, Melanie Myers discovered the body of her neighbor, 30-year-old Paige Young, lying on an American flag. On one of Paige’s walls was a mural of clippings from newspapers and magazines. At the top of the wall were the words “Hugh Hefner is the devil.” The scene was cleaned up the next day and there were no media reports about her message about Hugh Hefner. Melanie believes that her friend died hoping that her death would erupt take because of the writing on her wall. Instead, Paige’s last message was not reported on until decades later when Melanie started talking about it.

Melanie first spoke out in a 2014 article in The Daily Mail, and now she’s appeared in A&E’s Secrets of Playboy to share Paige’s story.

Melanie remembers Paige, who was an artist and had been the 1968 Playmate of the Month for November, telling her before her suicide that she was “thinking about leaving.” At the time, Melanie thought she meant California, but Paige was expressing her suicidal thoughts.

At the scene cops let Melanie read Paige’s suicide note, which expressed anger towards men and the industry that had chewed her up and spat her out. She mentioned Hugh Hefner and director John Huston specifically in the letter. Later reports came out linking her to Bill Cosby as well. She had just returned from an Ireland trip with John Huston before she took her own life.

Melanie once went to the Playboy mansion with her friend Paige. She saw Paige go into the infamous Playboy “grotto” that night, and she felt like Paige was in over her head with what was expected of her in this environment. “She didn’t really get the Hollywood thing at all,” Melanie says. “You have to be careful who you’re sleeping with. What I think happened to her is somebody broke her. Somebody did something to her that she found unacceptable and she didn’t know how to go on from there.”

One of the things that happened to Paige that made her feel violated, according to Melanie, is that she was filmed having sex at the Playboy mansion without her consent. Melanie says the tape “felt like the end of the world for her.”

Secret Recording

One of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends, Sondra Theodore remembers being shocked when she saw herself on a monitor. Hugh always invited more people into their bedroom and record them too. Sondra says he would tell people that he would turn off the camera for them if they wanted, but it would still be recording anyway. Sondra says that he had “tapes on everyone.”

Former valet Stefan Tetenbaum says he would use these tapes as blackmail material on many famous and powerful men who came to have sex at the Playboy mansion. Hugh himself was often a voyeur to these escapades, rather than a participant. He liked having power over powerful men.

Miki Garcia, who had once been a Playmate and the head of promotion, took notes about an incident with Tony Curtis, who was a regular at the mansion. He had gotten upset because Hugh Hefner filmed an orgy and his attorneys tried to get the tapes away from the mansion.

Did Paige Young really have a connection to Bill Cosby?

When Holly Slavic read the 2014 Daily Mail article about Paige Young, she decided to sleuth out exactly what Paige’s connection to Bill Cosby could be.

She found one of Paige’s friends, an artist named Richard Sample, who told Holly that Paige confided in him that Bill Cosby was always trying to “put the make on her,” but she had no interest. In fact, one night when Richard picked Paige up from the Playboy mansion, he saw Bill Cosby behaving very angry with her because she had rejected him again.

Later, Holly says Paige confided to a friend that she had been raped by Bill Cosby. She did not explicitly say she had been drugged but said that she had realized she had been raped after she “came to,” which implies that she had been drugged unconscious.